I was able to see the State procession of the Queen’ to open 
Parliament, as it passed the Horse Guards. The Turkish Ambas- 
sador was received with loud cheers and hurrahs. Prince Albert, 
whose countenance was deadly pale, was furiously hissed by the 
crowds on both sides of the streets, while the Queen was sparing 
of her usual salutes and morbidly smiled at the unwonted 
manifestations of popular discontent. In a previous letter I have 
it to be a mere party trick.” The public demonstration is, 
nevertheless, of a very grave character, as it proves the ostensible 
loyalty of the British people to be a mere conventional formality, a 
ceremonious affectation which cannot withstand the slightest 
shock. Probably it may induce the Crown to dismiss a Ministry, the 
anti-national policy of which threatens to endanger its own 
security. 

When the recent mission of Count Orloff to the Vienna 
Cabinet *” became known The Times informed its credulous 
readers that Orloff was the very man the Czar used to employ on 
pacific errands.“ Now I need not inform you that this same Orloff 
appeared in the spring of 1833 at Constantinople to squeeze out 
of the Porte the Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi.*” What he now asks 
from the Cabinet at Vienna is the permission to send a Russian 
corps from Warsaw, by way of Hungary, to the Danubian seat of 

“ The Times. No. 21650, January 28, 1854.— Ed. 

war. It may be considered as the first result of his presence at 
Vienna, that Austria now insists upon the Porte’s dismissing its 
present commanders on the Danube—Selim Pasha, Ismail Pasha 
and Omer Pasha—on the plea that they are renegades*™’ and 
revolutionists. Every one acquainted with the past history of 
Turkey knows that from the beginning of the Osman power all 
always been Christian renegades, Serbs, Greeks, Albanians, etc. 
Why not ask Russia to dismiss the forty or fifty men she has 
bought from all parts of Europe, and who constitute her whole 
stock of diplomatic ingenuity, political intelligence and military 
ability? In the meantime Austria has concentrated 80,000 men on 
the Turkish frontiers in Transylvania and Hungary, and ordered 
a Bohemian corps mustering some 30,000 men to join them. The 
Prussian Government on its part is stated to have declined to 
comply with the command of the Czar ordering Frederick William 
IV to send a corps of 100,000 men to occupy Poland in the name 
and interest of Russia, and thus set the garrisons there at liberty to 
march to the south for the prosecution of the campaign in the 
Principalities. 

In a previous letter I called your attention to the recent 
financial expedient resorted to by the Austrian Government of 
exacting a discount of.15 per cent. upon their own paper money, 
when paid for taxes.* This ingenious “tax upon the payment of 
taxes” is now extended to Italy also. The Milan Gazette of the 22d 
inst. publishes a decree from the Austrian Minister of Finance, 
announcing that 

“in consequence of the fall in the value of paper money it will not be received 
at the custom-house unless at a discount of 17 per cent.” 

As to the Russian Exchequer, I had on a previous occasion, at 
the beginning of what is called the Eastern complication, to warn 
your readers against the industriously circulated statement of the 
“hidden” treasures slumbering in the vaults of the Bank of St. 
Petersburg, and the ridiculous exaggeration of the vast monetary 
power that Russia can wield at a given moment.” My views are - 
fully confirmed by what has happened since. Not only has the 
Czar been forced to withdraw his metallic deposits from the banks 
of England and France, but, moreover, to commit an act of 
fraudulent confiscation. Prince Paskiewich has informed the War- 

saw mortgage or discount Bank that its capital will be taken as a 
forced loan, although the statutes of that bank forbid its advancing 
money upon any security but landed property. We are also 
informed that the Russian Government-:intends issuing a sum of 
60,000,000 roubles in inconvertible paper, to defray the expenses 
of the war. This contrivance is no new one on the part of the 
Petersburg Cabinet. At the close of 1768, Catherine II, in order to 
meet the expenses of the war with Turkey, founded a bank of 
assignats, ostensibly instituted on the principle of issuing converti- 
ble notes payable to the bearer. But by a well-managed oversight, 
she forgot to tell the public in what sort of money these notes 
were to be payable, and some months later the payments were 
only made in copper coin. By another untoward “accident” it 
happened that these copper coins were overvalued by 50 per cent. 
when compared with the uncoined metal, and only circulated at 
their nominal value in consequence of their great scarcity and the 
want of small money for retail purposes. The convertibility of the 
notes was, therefore, a mere trick. In the first instance Catherine 
limited the whole issue to 40,000,000 roubles, in 25 rouble notes, 
the rouble representing a silver coin varying from 38 to 40d. 
British money, according to the rate of exchange, being equivalent 
to somewhat above 100 copper copeks. At the death of Catherine, 
in 1796, the mass of this paper money had risen to 157,000,000, 
nearly four times its original amount. The exchange in London 
had come down from 41d. in 1787 to 31d. in 1796. During the 
two subsequent governments, a rapid increase of issues having 
taken place, in 1810 the paper circulation reached 577,000,000, 
and the paper rouble was only worth 25°/,; copeks, i.e., 
one-quarter of its value in 1788; and exchange in London, in the 
autumn of 1810, sunk to 11'/sd. the rouble, instead of represent- 
ing 38-40d. In 1817 the amount of notes in circulation was 
836,000,000, according to the statement of Count Gurieff. As the 
custom-house duties and other taxes were calculated in silver 
roubles, the Government now declared these assignats to be 
receivable in the proportion of 4 to 1, thus avowing a depreciation 
of 75 per cent. During the progress of the depreciation, the prices 
of commodities rose proportionably, subject to very great fluctua- 
tions, which commenced troubling the Cabinet itself, and forced it 
to contract foreign loans in order to withdraw from circulation a 
portion of the notes. On the Ist of January, 1821, their amount 
was announced to have been reduced to 640,000,000. The 
subsequent wars with Turkey, Persia, Poland, Khiva, etc., again 
swelled the mass of the bank assignats, lowered the exchanges 

anew, and subjected all commodities to extensive and irregular 
oscillations of prices. It was not till the Ist July, 1839, that, the rate 
of exchange being ameliorated in consequence of an enormous 
export of grain to England, the Czar issued a manifesto, according 
to which, from the Ist of July, 1840, the huge mass of bank 
assignats was to be converted into bank notes payable on demand 
in silver roubles at the full amount of 38d. The Czar Alexander 
had declared the assignats to be receivable, on the part of the 
tax-gatherer, at the proportion of 4 to 1; but the Czar Nicholas is 
said to have restored them, by his conversion, to their full original 
value again. There was, however, a curious little clause annexed, 
ordering that for every one of such new notes three and a half of 
the old ones should be delivered up. The old note was not 
declared to be depreciated to 28 per cent. of its original amount, 
but 3'/. of the old notes were declared to be equivalent to a full 
new note. Hence we may infer, on the one hand, that the Russian 
Cabinet is as conscientious and punctilious in financial as in 
diplomatic distinctions; and on the other, that the mere danger of 
an approaching war suffices to throw it back into all the monetary 
difficulties which Nicholas has tried for about twenty years to 
emerge from. 

One of the European Governments after the other comes 
forward appealing to the pockets of its beloved subjects. Even the 
King of sober-minded Holland* demands of the States General 
600,000 rix-dollars for works of fortification and defense, adding 
“that circumstances may determine him to mobilize a portion of 
the army and to send out his fleets.” 

If it were possible to meet real wants and to fill the general 
vacuum of money chests by any ingenious art of book-keeping, the 
contriver of the French budget,” as published some days ago in the 
Moniteur, would have done the thing; but there is not the smallest 
shopkeeper at Paris unaware of the fact that, by the most skilful 
grouping of figures, one cannot get out of the books of his 
creditor, and that the hero of the 2d of December,‘ deeming the 
public pocket to be inexhaustible, has recklessly run into the 
nation’s debt. 

There can be imagined nothing more naif than the announce- 
ment of the Danish Ministry at the sitting of the Folketing, on the 

17th inst., that the Government intended postponing to a more 
expedient season the proposition to change the fundamental 
institutions of Denmark, and introduce their much cherished 
Whole State Constitution (Gesammistaatsverfassung).*”° 

Written on February 3, 1854 Reproduced from the New-York 
Tribune, No. 4007, February 20, 1854: