[Disturbances in Syria –

The English Parliamentary Session –

The Situation of British Trade]

From the English.

[“New-York Daily Tribune” No. 6021, 11 August 1860]

London, 28 July 1860

Since the Blue Book on the disturbances in Syria has only just been published and Lord Stratford de Redcliffe has announced his question on the Syrian affairs for next Tuesday, I hesitate to enter upon this important subject and would merely warn your readers not to be deceived by the sentimental declamations of the Decembrist press, by shudders at horrific atrocities of savage tribes, and by the natural sympathy felt for the sufferers. But there are a few points that should be noted. Firstly, the Russian Empire finds itself, in consequence of the internal convulsions arising from the movement of serf emancipation and its disordered financial situation, in a pinch from which the present government knows no way out except through a war on a large scale. War seems to them the only means of ridding themselves of the threatening revolution so reliably foretold in Prince Dolgorukov’s “La vérité sur la Russie.” Hence, about three months ago, Prince Gorchakov attempted to raise the Eastern Question again by issuing his circular on the grievances of the Christians in Turkey; but his appeal, answered by only a single voice from the Tuileries, fell unheard upon the ears of Europe. Precisely from that moment onward, Russian and French agents endeavoured to bring about a political-religious quarrel – the former on the Dalmatian coast, the latter on the Syrian – the two movements supporting each other, since the disturbances in Montenegro and Herzegovina forced the Porte to withdraw almost the whole Turkish army stationed in Syria and thus left the field to the artificially heightened resistance of the barbarous tribes of Lebanon. The Emperor of the French found himself, like the Orthodox Tsar, confronted by the same necessity of looking out for a fresh, exciting crusade and of plunging his empire once more into the Lethe (river of forgetfulness) of war hallucinations. The Italian movement, which slipped from his guiding reins and struck a course opposite to the one he wished to impart to it, has, as was delicately hinted in the “Constitutionnel,” become a burden in the opinion of Paris. His attempts to cajole the Prince Regent of Prussia into a forcible “consolidation of Germany” to be paid for to France by a “moral compensation” in the shape of the Rhenish provinces proved a complete failure and even cast a semblance of ridicule upon the entrepreneur (creator) of the trick of nationality emancipation. The conflict with the Pope, in which Louis Napoleon found himself entangled, damaged the support upon which his rule over the peasantry rests – the Catholic clergy of France. The imperial treasury had for some time been reduced to a state of exhaustion in which it still remains and which was vainly sought to be remedied by hinting at the announcement of an emprunt de la paix (peace loan). That was too much, even for the France of the Decembrists. To supplement a loan raised under the pretext of war by one raised under the pretext of peace was an abominable effrontery even for Paris stock-jobbers. A faint voice in the effeminate Paris press ventured to point out that the blessings of the Second Empire were as great as they were costly, the nation having purchased them by an increase of the public debt by an amount of fifty per cent. The project of a peace loan of 500,000,000 francs was therefore dropped, a retreat which only encouraged M. Favre to expatiate at length in the Corps législatif upon the menacing “financial crash” and to tear to pieces the floral veil which the imperial budget-monger had thrown over the state treasury. The critical remarks in the Corps législatif before the “chiens savants” (learned dogs) of the sham representation, ventured by M. Favre and M. Ollivier on the characteristic traits of the Decembrist regime, as well as the furious onslaught upon the intrigues of the “old parties” with which the official and officious press of Paris is filled, uniformly testified to the serious fact that the rebellious spirit of Gaul is again blazing up from its ashes and that the continuance of the usurper’s rule once more depends on the staging of a great war spectacle, as two years after the coup d’état and again two years after the conclusion of the Crimean episode. It is evident that the autocrat of France and the autocrat of Russia, both labouring under the same compelling necessity to blow the war trumpet, are giving a joint concert. While semi-official Bonapartist pamphlets were offering the Prince Regent of Prussia the “German Union,” combined with a “moral compensation” for France, Emperor Alexander, as has just been officially established in the publications of the German National Association without a denial from the Berlin government press, openly proposed to his uncle the annexation of the whole of Northern Germany up to the sea by Prussia, on condition of ceding the Rhenish provinces to France and consenting to Russia’s advance to the Danube. It is this plan, simultaneously put forward by the two autocrats, that has brought about the rendezvous between the Emperor of Austria and the Prince Regent at Teplitz. The conspirators of Petersburg and Paris, however, should their temptation of Prussia fail, held in reserve the exciting incident of the Syrian massacres; these were to be followed by a French intervention, which – should it not succeed in entering through the main portal – was to open the back door for a general European war. With regard to England, I will only add that in 1841 Lord Palmerston supplied the Druses with arms, which they have kept ever since, and that in 1846, by an arrangement with Tsar Nicholas, he actually destroyed the Turkish rule which held down the savage tribes of Lebanon and put in its place a quasi-independence which, in the course of time and under skilful guidance by foreign agents, could only bring forth a bloody harvest.

You will have noticed that the present parliamentary session has an appalling series of government failures without parallel. Apart from Mr Gladstone’s miscarriage of the protective duties, not a single important measure has been carried. But while the government withdrew bill after bill, it planned to smuggle through a little resolution by the second reading, a resolution containing a single little clause which, however, if carried out, would have occasioned the greatest constitutional change since 1689. This resolution simply proposed the abolition of the local English army in India and its absorption into the British army, and consequently the transfer of its supreme command from the Governor-General in Calcutta to the London Horse Guards, alias the Duke of Cambridge. Quite apart from the other serious consequences which such a change would have entailed, it would have withdrawn a part of the army from the control of Parliament and would have strengthened the royal patronage to the greatest extent. It seems that some members of the India Council, who unanimously opposed the government’s plan but who, under the India Bill of 1858, cannot take a seat in the House of Commons, whispered their protests into the ears of some Members of Parliament, and so it came about that when the government thought its ruse already successful, a sudden parliamentary riot, led by Mr Horsman, smashed its intrigue just at the right moment. The embarrassment of an unexpectedly caught Cabinet and the consternation of a House of Commons stirred up by the snares laid for its profound ignorance are a truly ludicrous spectacle.

The declared value of exports in the last month shows the continual downward movement of British trade. I have shown in a previous article that, compared to the exports of June 1859, a decline of nearly one and a half million pounds sterling is to be recorded for June 1860.

The figures for the months of June of the last three years are as follows:

1858

1859

1860

£10,241,433

£10,665,891

£9,236,454

In the half-year to 30 June, the declared value of exports is one million lower than in the same six months of last year:

1858

1859

1860

£53,467,804

£63,003,159

£62,019,989

The decline in the last month is spread over the cotton and cotton yarn trade, the linen, metal and cutlery, iron and worsted yarn trades. Even in the export of woollen goods, the trade, which had previously shown a constantly growing prosperity, shows a decline this month – with the exception of woollen and worsted yarn. The export of cotton goods to British India for six months has fallen from £6,094,430 in the first half of 1859 to £4,738,440 in the first half of 1860, or by £1,360,000 in the value of goods.

With regard to imports, the most striking feature is the enormous volume of cotton imports. In June 1860, 2,102,048 cwts. were imported, against 1,665,306 cwts. in June last year and 1,339,108 cwts. in June 1858. The increase in the six months amounts to no less than three million cwts., so that the half-year imports are more than sixty per cent greater. The cotton imported in the month of May 1860 is £1,800,000 higher in value than the import in May 1859. No less than 6½ million pounds sterling more was spent on raw cotton in the first five months of 1860 compared with the sum spent on it in the same period of last year.

If one compares the rapid decline in the export of cotton goods and yarns with the even more decided rise in cotton imports, it becomes clear that a cotton crisis is approaching, all the more so as the new arrivals of the raw material are entering unusually full cotton warehouses.