No. 29, January 18, 1855.  
Midday edition  

X. London, January 15. (On the Assessment of the Four Points.) “By way of diplomacy nothing further can be done before 1st February. (Before 5th or 6th February, says the Vienna correspondent of The Times.) Meanwhile the Czar has a full month before him to move his forces wherever he wishes. The month gained by the acceptance of the four points may be extended to two months, by disputing each point step by step—which is probably what the instructions of the Russian ambassador amount to—while it is by no means improbable that the most strenuous efforts will be made to satisfy Austria with conditions unacceptable to England and France. To separate the three powers is a very plausible aim.” Thus the Morning Post.

More important than the to and fro talk of the English press about Russia’s secret intentions is its open admission (with the exception, of course, of the ministerial organs) that the basis of the negotiations, the four points, is not worth negotiating about. “When the struggle began,” says the Sunday Times, “the attempt was made to make the world believe that the object at issue was the breaking up of the Russian Empire, or at least the conquest of material guarantees for the preservation of European peace. Nothing has been done, and nothing will be done, to achieve one or the other purpose, should peace be concluded on the basis of the so-called four points. If there can be any talk of a triumph here, it can only be a triumph that Russia has carried off.” “The ministry of all incapacities,” says the Leader, “cannot get beyond the four points; it deserves to go down to posterity with the title: The Ministry of the Four Points. No more of this tedious comedy of a war without purpose! Peace on the basis of the four points can only be concluded from fear lest in the turmoil of war the peoples themselves become too important; perhaps also in order to prevent the English from regaining the rights which Cromwell conquered for them. This alone could be the motive for patching up the old conspiracy with Russia again and giving her back the licence, under the protection of the flag of peace, to renew her encroachments in Europe.”

The Examiner, which incontestably holds first place among the weekly papers of the middle class, carries a detailed article on the “basis” of the peace negotiations, the essence of which we briefly summarise. “If concessions such as can be derived even from the harshest and strictest interpretation of the four points are considered as an equivalent for the treasures England has squandered in this struggle and the blood it has sacrificed, then the Emperor of Russia was a great statesman when he began the war. Russia is not even to pay compensation for the large sums it has annually extorted from us by non-observance of the Treaty of Vienna. The mouths of the Danube, which, according to the recently published official correspondence, it strove by every means to close to English trade, are to remain in its hands. The point concerning free navigation of the Danube practically amounts to the status quo, for Russia has never denied that the stipulations of the Treaty of Vienna relating to river navigation are also authoritative for the Danube. The abolition of the treaties of Kainardji and Adrianople matters little, since it is agreed on all sides that these treaties did not entitle Russia to the demands it makes on Turkey. If, on the other hand, we consider that Russia is to be one of the 5 powers exercising a joint protectorate over the Danubian Principalities and the Christian subjects of the Sultan, we believe that the advantages expected from this change are entirely illusory, because it undeniably brings with it the enormous disadvantage of giving a legal character to Russia’s machinations for the partition of Turkey. We shall of course be reminded that among other stipulations the four points include a revision of the Treaty of 1841, indeed a revision in the interest of the balance of powers. The phrase is vague and mysterious enough, and from all that has lately transpired, we are by no means convinced that the intended innovation is not far more threatening to the independence of our ally (Turkey) than to the supremacy of our enemy. … We would have rejected every possibility of such a ‘basis’ as appears to be debated at this moment in Vienna as completely incredible, had not Lord John Russell, in reply to Cobden’s speech, solemnly declared in Parliament that the government by no means wishes to deprive Russia of any of its territories.”

The last point is, indeed, quite decisive, since, for example, even the freedom of Danube shipping could only be secured if Russia lost the “territory” at the mouths of the Danube, which it has seized, partly through the Treaty of Adrianople in violation of the London Treaty of 1827, and partly through a ukase of February 1836 in violation of the Treaty of Adrianople. The point which the Examiner fails to highlight relates to the Dardanelles Treaty of 1841. This treaty differs from the treaty concluded by Lord Palmerston in 1840 only in the circumstance that France acceded as a contracting party. The content is the same. Only a few months ago Lord Palmerston declared the Treaty of 1840, and therefore also the Dardanelles Treaty of 1841, to be a victory of England over Russia, and himself the author of the treaty. How is the abrogation of a treaty that was a victory of England over Russia suddenly to be a defeat of Russia before England? Or, if England was then deceived by its own ministers, and believed it was acting against Russia while it was acting for her, why not now? During the last extraordinary parliamentary session d’Israeli cried: “No four points.” From the above extracts one sees that he has found an echo in the liberal press; the astonishment that Russia accepted the four points, with or without reservations, is beginning to give way to astonishment that England proposed them.