London, Tuesday, Jan. 24, 1854 

The attempts of the Russian army to cross the Danube 
simultaneously on the whole line of operations—at Matchin, 
Giurgevo and Kalafat—are to be considered as reconnoitering 
maneuvers rather than as serious attacks, which can hardly be 
ventured upon with the present forces Gen. Gorchakoff has to 
dispose of. 

Last Saturday’s Press—the Disraeli paper— published a note of a 
conversation very recently held at Gatchina between the Czar and 
a “distinguished” Englishman. Almost the whole of the daily 
London press has reprinted this note, which, besides the known 
and worn-out commonplaces of Russian diplomacy, contains some 
interesting statements. 

The Czar “distinctly stated that the ultimatum of Menchikoff had not been 
disapproved of in London, but that the English Ministry, having been informed that it 
would probably be accepted by the Porte, had recognized it as a satisfactory settlement.” 

This would only prove that poor John Russell was falsely 
informed by Baron de Brunnow as to the “probable” intentions of 
the Sublime Porte, and that the Porte’s refusing to yield to the 
Menchikoff ultimatum at once, was by no means the fault of the 
Coalition Cabinet. The Czar goes on informing “the individual of 
distinction” that 

“when the news of the victory of Sinope arrived, General Castelbajac” (the 
French Ambassador) “addressed him a letter beginning something in this way: ‘As 

a Christian and as a soldier, permit me [...] to congratulate your Imperial Majesty 
on the glorious victory obtained by your Majesty’s fleet.’” 

Let me remark that Gen. Castelbajac, an old Legitimist and a 
relative of La Rochejaquelein’s, gained his generalship, not by 

services in the camp, but by less dangerous service in the 
ante-chambers of the Court, and the ardent confession of exalted 
royalist principles. Bonaparte appointed him as Ambassador to the 
Court of St. Petersburg, with a view to give the Czar a proof of 
deference to his personal wishes, although he was fully aware that 
Castelbajac was to conspire with the Czar for the restoration of the 
Bourbons rather than further the interests of his nominal master. 
This Castelbajac, then, is the very man to have congratulated the 
Czar “as a soldier and a Christian” on the resultless butchery of 
Sinope. 

“He did not believe,” the Czar is stated to have said, “that England, with a 
Bourgeois Parliament, could carry on a war with glory.” 

There is no doubt that the Czar knows his Cobdens and his 
Brights, and estimates at its just value the mean and abject spirit 
of the European middle classes. Finally, the Czar is quite right in 
stating that, on the one hand, he had not been prepared for 
war—fully convinced as he was that he should obtain all he cared 
for by the simple act of bullying—and that, on the other hand, if 
war were brought about, it would be the “war of incapacities,” 
making it inevitable by their anxious efforts to prevent it, and 
plunging into it finally in order to cover their blunders and save 
their places. 

“Public opinion is half-inclined to sacrifice Prince Albert at the shrine of rumor. 
A whisper, which was first insinuated for party uses, has grown into a roar, and a 
constructive hint has swelled into a positive and monstrous fiction. That those who 
seek the presence of the Queen* should find Prince Albert with her Majesty, is a 
fact which rather won the sympathy and esteem of the English public; but then it 
was said that he attended meetings of the Queen with her Ministers; next, that 
Ministers were made aware of his presence—that, however reluctant to proceed 
with business before a third party, they found it necessary to do so—that it even 
became necessary to defend their opinions before the Prince—that the Prince, in 
fact, interfered with their counsel to their Sovereign—that he not only influenced 
the Royal mind, but possessing the power of free communication with foreign 
Courts, he constituted an unlicensed channel for information between the 
confidential council of the Queen and the Cabinets of foreign potentates, perhaps 
of the enemies of England—that in short, Prince Albert was a traitor to his Queen, 
that he had been impeached for high treason, and finally, that on a charge of high 
treason he had been arrested and committed to the Tower. This was the story not 
only told in all parts of England a day or two back, but by some believed.” 

I quote the above passage from The Spectator, in order to show 
your readers how public rumor has been induced by the 

* Victoria.— Ed. 

The Czar’s Views 59] 

Palmerstonian press to make a poor stupid young man the 
scapegoat of the responsible Ministers. Prince Albert is a German 
Prince, connected with most of the absolute and despotic 
Governments of the Continent. Raised to the rank of Prince- 
Consort in Great Britain, he has devoted his time partly to 
fattening pigs, to inventing ridiculous hats for the army, to 
planning model lodging houses of a peculiarly transparent and 
uncomfortable kind, to the Hyde Park Exhibition, and to amateur 
soldiery. He has been considered amiable and harmless, in point 
of intellect below the general average of human beings, a prolific 
father and an obsequious husband. Of late, however, he has been 
deliberately magnified into the most influential man and the most 
dangerous character of the United Kingdom, said to dispose of 
the whole State machinery at the secret dictation of Russia. Now 
there can exist but little doubt that the Prince exercises a direct 
influence in Court affairs, and, of course, in the interest of 
despotism. The Prince cannot but act a Prince’s part, and who was 
ever silly enough to suppose he would not? But I need not inform 
your readers of the utter impotency to which British Royalty 
itself has been reduced by the British oligarchy, so that, for 
instance, King William IV, a decided foe to Russia, was forced by 
his Foreign Minister*—a member of the Whig oligarchy—to act 
as a foe to Turkey. How preposterous, then, to suppose Prince 
Albert to be able to carry one single point in defiance of the 
Ministry, except so far as little Court affairs, a dirty riband, or 
a tinsel star, are concerned! Use is made of his absolutist penchants 
to blind the people’s eyes as to the plots and treacheries of the 
responsible Ministers. If the outcry and attack means anything it 
means an attack on royalist institutions. If there were no Queen 
there would be no Prince—if there were no throne there would 
be no Court influences. Princes would lose their power if thrones 
were not there to back them, and for them to lean upon. But, now 
mark! the papers which go the farthest in their “fearful boldness,” 
which cry the loudest and try to make a sort of political capital out 
of Prince Albert, are the most eager in their assertions of loyalty to 
the throne and in fulsome adulation of the Queen. As to the Tory 
papers this proposition is self-evident. As to the radical Morning 
Advertiser, it is the same journal which hailed Bonaparte’s coup 
d’état, and recently attacked an Irish paper for having dared 
to find fault with the Queen, on the occasion of her presence at 
Dublin, which reproaches the French Revolutionists with profess- 

* Palmerston.— Ed. 

ing Republicanism, and continues to designate Lord Palmerston 
as the savior of England. The whole is a Palmerstonian trick. Pal- 
merston, by the revelations of his Russianism and his opposition to 
the new Reform Bill, has become unpopular. The latter act has 
taken the liberal gilding off his musty gingerbread. Nevertheless, 
he wants popularity in order to become Premier, or at least 
Foreign Minister. What an admirable opportunity to stamp himself 
a Liberal again and to play the part of Brutus, persecuted by 
secret Court influences. Attack a Prince-Consort—how taking 
for the people. He'll be the most popular statesman of the age. 
What an admirable opportunity of casting obloquy on his present 
colleagues, of stigmatizing them as the tools of Prince Albert, and 
of convincing the Court that Palmerston must be accepted on his 
own terms. The Tories, of course, join in the cry, for church and 
crown are little to them compared with pounds and acres, and 
these the cotton-lords are winning from them fast. And if the 
Tories, in the name of “constitution” and “liberty” talk daggers 
against a Prince, what enlightened Liberal would not throw himself 
worshipping at their feet! 

At the annual meeting of the Manchester Commercial Associa- 
tion the President, Mr. Aspinall Turner, declared with regard to 
the strikes and lock-outs and the general agitation of the 
workingmen, which he justly described as “the civil war going on 
between masters and operatives in Lancashire” —that, “as Man- 
chester had put down royal tyranny and aristocratic tyranny, so it 
would also deal with the tyranny of Democracy.”?’ 

“Here we have,” exclaims The Press, “an involuntary avowal of the policy of the 
Manchester school. The crown is in England supreme—then diminish the royal 
power. The aristocracy stands before us—sweep it from our path. Workingmen 
agitate—crush them to the earth.” 

Written on January 24, 1854 Reproduced from the New-York 

; . : : Daily Tribune 

Tribune, No. 4000, February I1, 1854;