Karl Marx

Two Crises

["Neue Oder-Zeitung" No. 67, 9 February 1855]

London, 6 February. Two crises are absorbing public opinion at this moment – the crisis of the Crimean army and the ministerial crisis. The first occupies the people, the second the clubs and salons. The latest letters from the Crimea, painted in grey on grey, show the English force melting away from 14,000 to 12,000 men and hold out the prospect of the imminent raising of the siege of Sevastopol. Meanwhile, the salon cabal is being debated in the House of Commons. Lord [John] Russell and Mr Gladstone once again fill an entire sitting with lengthy disquisitions on, for, and against the resignation of the great Russell from a cabinet that no longer exists. No new facts are adduced by either side, but the old ones are argued. Lord John is his own advocate, Gladstone the advocate of the Duke of Newcastle. The profound investigations into the latter’s suitability as Secretary of State for War receive a new lustre from the circumstance that there is no longer any army left that needs to be administered. Even this House of Commons, however, gave vent to its indignation in the well-known traditional grunting when Gladstone, at the close of his well-phrased speech, let fall the words: “He wished the entire misunderstanding” (between Russell and Newcastle) “could be undone.”

Hence not the vote of no confidence by the House, still less the ruin of an English army, nothing but a “misunderstanding” between an old lord and a young duke – to this the ministerial crisis is reduced. The Crimea is merely a pretext for the salon cabal. The misunderstanding between the ministry and the Commons is not even worth the honour of being mentioned. That was too much even for these Commons. Russell failed, Gladstone failed, the whole sitting failed.

Both Houses were informed that Lord Palmerston had been entrusted with forming a ministry. However, he has encountered unexpected obstacles. Lord Grey refused to take charge of a war which he had disapproved of from the beginning and still disapproves of. A stroke of luck for the army, whose discipline he would just as certainly have broken as he broke the discipline of the colonies in his day. But Gladstone, Sidney Herbert, and Graham also showed themselves reluctant. They demanded the restoration of the Peelites, root and branch. These statesmen are conscious of forming a very small clique that commands about 32 votes in the House of Commons. Only by keeping their “great” talents together can the little clique hope to preserve its independence. To have one part of the leading Peelites in, and another outside, the cabinet would be tantamount to the disappearance of this solid club of statesmen. Palmerston meanwhile is going to the most extreme lengths to foist himself on Parliament, where he has no party, just as he foisted himself on the Queen. His cabinet is not yet formed, and already he threatens in the “Morning Post” to appeal from the legislature to the people. He threatens the House with dissolution should it dare “not to bestow upon him the esteem which he enjoys outside the Palace of Westminster, amongst the people”. This “people” is confined to the journals which belong in whole or in part to him. Where the people has recently made itself heard, for example at the meeting at Newcastle-upon-Tyne – from which petitions have been sent to Parliament demanding that the ministry be placed in a state of impeachment – Palmerston was most violently denounced as the secret leader of the deceased coalition.

A few retrospective items to complete the necrology of the “Cabinet of All the Talents”. On 30 November 1853 the event of Sinope occurred; on 3 December it became known in Constantinople; on 12 December the representatives of the Porte handed in a note demanding greater concessions from Russia than the notorious Vienna Note. On 14 December the English ministry telegraphed to Vienna that Sinope should not interrupt the Vienna peace conferences. Lord Palmerston attended the cabinet council in which this decision was taken. He approved it, but the next day resigned from the cabinet under the pretext that Russell’s intended Reform Bill conflicted with his conservative view. The real purpose was to wash his hands in innocence before the public concerning the Sinope affair. As soon as this purpose was achieved, he returned to the cabinet without further ado.

At the beginning of February 1854 Parliament reopens. The diplomatic documents concerning the Oriental complications are allegedly laid before it. The most important papers are missing. Parliament receives them from Emperor Nicholas instead of from the British ministers via Petersburg. The “Secret and Confidential Correspondence” published there proves to the astonished Parliament as clear as daylight that it was deliberately duped by its ministers about foreign policy throughout its entire previous session, in 1853 as in 1854. It compels the ministers to declare war on 27 March. On 6 February Palmerston had given notice that he would introduce a Bill for embodying the militia in Scotland and Ireland. But as soon as war is declared, he postpones his Bill and does not introduce it before the end of June. On 13 February Russell lays his Reform Bill before the House, postpones the second reading until the end of April, withdraws it in March amid pathetic sobs, and is rewarded by his colleagues for this sacrifice by receiving – he having previously been without a department and without a salary – as it were an extraordinary minister, a ministerial sinecure with a salary, the presidency of the Privy Council. On 6 March the great financier Gladstone presents his budget. He confines himself to doubling the income tax for six months. He demands “only the sum sufficient to bring back to England the 25,000 men who are about to leave it”.

His colleague Newcastle has now relieved him of this concern. Already on 8 May he is forced to bring in a second budget. On 12 April he declares himself opposed to any state loan; on 21 April he requests the House to sanction a loan of 6 million to meet the costs of his unlucky state debt conversion experiment. On 7 April Lord Grey delivers his speech on the defects of the English war administration. On 2 June the ministry uses its reform case – just as it used Indian reform, just as it used the reform [in connection with] cholera – to create a new post. The War Department is separated from the Colonial Department. Everything else remains the same. The legislative achievements of the ministry during this session can be summed up thus: It presents 7 important Bills. It gets defeated on 3 items: the Bills for Settlement, for Education in Scotland, for changing the parliamentary oaths. It withdraws 3 items: the Bills for the prevention of electoral bribery, for the complete transformation of the civil service, and for parliamentary reform. One Bill passes, that for the reform of Oxford University, but so plastered with amendments that its original form is no longer recognisable. The diplomatic and military exploits are fresh in memory. That was the “Cabinet of All the Talents”.