By Karl Marx

Parliamentary. —

[On the Question of War or Peace]

["Neue Oder-Zeitung" No. 263, June 9, 1855]

London, June 6. Palmerston has again proved his old mastery in managing diplomacy through Parliament and Parliament through diplomacy. The policy of the Ministry was to be discussed on the basis of the amendments of Baring, Heathcote and Lowe. The amendments all rested on the foundation of the Vienna Conference. During Whitsun week, Palmerston spirits away the Vienna Conference, appealing to the past parliamentary debate vis-à-vis Austria, and to the reassembled Parliament he spirits away the debate, appealing to the past Conference, which, he says, now exists only in legend. With the Vienna Conference fall the amendments resting on its premise; with the amendments falls the discussion on the policy of the Ministry; and with this discussion falls the necessity for the Ministry to declare itself on the tendency, aim and object of the “new” war. This object, David Urquhart, alias David Bey, assures us, is none other than to acquaint the allied troops with the summer diseases of the Crimea after they have tried out the winter diseases of the Crimea. And if Urquhart does not understand everything, he understands his Palmerston. Only he deceives himself as to the power of secret intention over public history. Palmerston therefore declares to the reassembled Parliament that there is no longer any subject for deliberation, and the House can now do nothing better than address a war address to the Crown, i.e., give the Ministry a vote of confidence. For the time being he founders on the obstinacy of the parliamentarians, who have rehearsed long speeches on the amendments and want to bring their commodity to market. But by the dissolution of the Conference he has broken the point of these speeches, and the horror vacui, the boredom, will drive Parliament to accept his address. To save itself from the speeches, it will grasp at the address.

Lowe’s amendment had changed its meaning with the changed situation. Originally it signified the breaking-off of the Vienna Conference. Now it signifies the sanction of the Vienna Conference and of ministerial diplomacy, inasmuch as it elevates the reduction of Russian naval power in the Euxine (actually Euxinus, the ancient Greek name for the Black Sea) to the ultimate aim, to the real object of the war. A stumbling-block for the peace party, inasmuch as it demands too much, for the war party, inasmuch as it demands too little, it is a stumbling-block for the Ministry, inasmuch as it demands any object at all, an admitted object of the war. Hence the phenomenon that peace men and Tories were now for, and the Ministry against, the continuation of the debate on Lowe’s amendment; hence Palmerston’s attempt to throw it overboard. The attempt failed. He therefore adjourned the debate until Thursday evening. A day gained. In the meantime the Vienna farewell protocol has been printed. It is laid before the House. A new incidental point arises, and Palmerston can hope, with his dissolving views (Nebelbilder), to remove the real object at issue from the eye of the debate.

The two-day parliamentary discussion was as boring, tedious, confused, as could only be demanded of speeches whose point had been broken beforehand.

It did, however, offer the characteristic spectacle that, whereas before the vote on Disraeli’s resolution the peace men had coquetted with the Ministry, they now coquetted with the opposition, we mean the professional opposition. It further showed the entente cordiale between the Peelites and the Manchester School. The Peelites evidently flatter themselves that they will rule England after the peace, at the head of the industrial bourgeoisie. Thus the Peelites, after long wanderings, would at last have a real party behind them, and the industrialists would at last have found professional statesmen. If the peace men have thus won Gladstone, Graham and Co., they have lost the “radical” Sir William Molesworth, a friend of more than twenty years. Molesworth must have read in the Hobbes he edited that “understanding comes through the ears”. He therefore appealed not to the understanding, but to the ears. He did what Hamlet forbids the player to do. He out-tyrannised the tyrant, was more Russell than Russell himself. He had also read in his Hobbes that all men are equal because each can take the other’s life. Since he is now concerned to prolong his ministerial life, he spoke in the spirit of the men who can take it from him. It remained a strange sight to see this calculating machine dithyrambise. Even Babbage had not foreseen that in his “Philosophy of Machines”.

Milner Gibson, the baronet from the neighbourhood of Manchester, was monotonous, soporific, dried-up and drying. He has evidently learnt from the neighbouring metropolis of English industry to deliver as much as possible at as little cost of production as possible. He is a man whose whole appearance betrays that he is bored. Why should he seek to amuse his fellow men? As you do to me, so I do to you! Besides, he clearly counts wit, humour, life among the faux frais de production (incidental costs of production), and it is the first law of the economic school to which he belongs to avoid “false costs”.

Bulwer hovered between the heroic mood of his “King-maker” and the contemplative mood of his “Eugene Aram”. In the first he flung down the gauntlet to Russia, and in the second he bound a myrtle wreath around the head of Metternich.

Milner Gibson, Molesworth and Bulwer were the coryphaei of the first evening, Cobden, Graham and Russell those of the second. Cobden’s speech alone deserves an analysis which space and time do not permit at this moment. Let us only note that he asserts Bonaparte was ready to accept the latest Austrian proposals. The late Sir Robert Peel’s dirty boy (schmutziger Bube), who of late has taken to “sentiments” (Gefühle), “broken hearts”, and “love of truth”, delivered a self-apology for his neighbour, namely Sir James Graham. He had forbidden Napier to act in the Baltic Sea until the season had arrived when any action is ruinous for the English fleet. He had forbidden Dundas to bombard Odessa. He had thus neutralised the English fleet in the Baltic as in the Black Sea. He justifies himself by the size of the fleets he equipped. The mere existence of these fleets was the proof of English power. Their action was therefore superfluous. A few days ago Napier addressed a laconic letter to a friend of Urquhart’s, which Urquhart read out at the Stafford meeting. This letter reads literally: “Sir! I hold Sir J[ames] Graham capable of any baseness. Ch[arles] Napier.”

Russell finally surpassed himself. At the beginning of his speech he declared that the great question before them was the following: “If we want to make peace, what peace terms can we obtain? If we want to continue the war, for what purposes do we continue it?” As regards the first question, he said, his answer is to be found in the Vienna protocols. As regards the second, the object of the war, his answer must be a very general one, namely none at all. If one wanted to take the phrase “security for Turkey” as an answer, he had no objection. One interpretation of this “security” had been given in the Vienna Note; another in the four points; to find a third was not Russell’s business, but the war’s. It was Napoleon’s principle that the war must pay its own costs; it is Russell’s principle that the war must find its own object.