Since the year 1815 the Great Powers of Europe have feared 
nothing so much as an infraction of the status quo. But any war 
between any two of those powers implies subversion of that status 
quo. That is the reason why Russia’s encroachments in the East 
have been tolerated, and why she has never been asked for 
anything in return but to afford some pretext, however absurd, to 
the Western powers, for remaining neutral, and for being saved 
the necessity of interfering with Russian aggressions. Russia has all 
along been glorified for the forbearance and generosity of her 
“august master,” who has not only condescended to cover the 
naked and shameful subserviency of Western Cabinets, but has 
displayed the magnanimity of devouring Turkey piece after piece, 
instead of swallowing it at a mouthful. Russian diplomacy has thus 
rested on the timidity of Western statesmen, and her diplomatic 
art has gradually sunk into so complete a mannerism, that you may 
trace the history of the present transactions almost literally in the 
annals of the past. 

The hollowness of the new pretexts of Russia is apparent, after 
the Sultan* has granted, in his new firman to the Patriarch of 
Constantinople,” more than the Czar himself had asked for—so 
far as religion goes. Now was, perhaps, the “pacification of 
Greece”'** a more solid pretext? When M. de Villéle, in order to 
tranquilize the apprehensions of the Sultan,° and to give a proof 
of the pure intentions of the Great Powers, proposed “that the 

allies ought above all things to conclude a Treaty by which the 
actual status quo of the Ottoman Empire should be guaranteed to 
it,’ the Russian Ambassador at Paris* opposed this proposition to 
the utmost, affirming 

“that Russia, in displaying generosity in her relations with the Porte, and in showing 
inappreciable respect for the wishes of her allies, [...] had been obliged, nevertheless, 
to reserve exclusively to herself to determine her own differences with the Divan; 
[...] that a general guarantee of the Ottoman Empire, independently of its being 
unusual and surprising, would wound the feelings of his master and the rights 
acquired by Russia, and the principles upon which they were founded.” 

Russia pretends now to occupy the Danubian principalities, 

without giving to the Porte the right of considering this step as a casus 
belli. 

Russia pretended, in 1827, “to occupy Moldavia and Wallachia 
in the name of the three Powers.” 

While Russia proclaimed the following in her declaration of war 
of April 26, 1828: 

“Her allies would always find her ready to concert her march with them, in 
execution of the Treaty of London, ~~ and ever anxious to aid in a work, which 
her religion and all the sentiments honorable to humanity recommended to her 
active solicitude, always disposed to profit by her actual position only for the 
purpose of accelerating the accomplishment of the Treaty of July 6th,”* 

while Russia announced in her manifesto, A. D. Ist October, 1829: 

“Russia has remained constantly a stranger to every desire of conquest—to every 
view of aggrandizement.” 

Her Ambassador at Paris was writing to Count Nesselrode. 

“When the Imperial Cabinet examined the question, whether it had become 
expedient to take up arms against the Porte, [...] there might have existed some 
doubt about the urgency of this measure in the eyes of those who had not 
sufficiently reflected upon the effects of the sanguinary reforms, which the Chief of the 
Ottoman Empire has just executed with such tremendous violence. [...] 

“The Emperor has put the Turkish system to the proof, and his Majesty has found it to 
possess a commencement of physical and moral organization which it hitherto had not. lf 
this Sultan had been enabled to offer us a more determined and regular resistance, 
while he had scarcely assembled together the elements of his new plan of reform 
and ameliorations, how formidable should we have found him had he had time to 
give it more solidity. [...] Things being in this state, we must congratulate ourselves 
upon having attacked them before they became more dangerous for us, for delay 

would only have made our relative situation worse, and prepared us greater 
obstacles than those with which we meet.” 

Russia proposes now to make an aggressive step and then to talk 
about it. In 1829 Prince Lieven wrote to Count Nesselrode: 

“We shall confine ourselves to generalities, for every circumstantial communica- 
tion on a subject so delicate would draw down real dangers, and if once we discuss 
with our allies the articles of treaty with the Porte, we shall only content them when 
they will imagine that they have imposed upon us irreparable sacrifices. It is in the 
midst of our camp that peace must be signed and it is when it shall have been 
concluded that Europe must know its conditions. Remonstrances will then be too 
late and it will then patiently suffer what it can no longer prevent.”* 

Russia has now for several months been delaying action under 
one pretence or another, in order to maintain a state of things, 
which, being neither war nor peace, is tolerable to herself, but 
ruinous to the Turks. She acted in precisely the same manner in 
the period we have alluded to. As Pozzo di Borgo said: 

“It is our policy to see that nothing new happens during the next four months 

and I hope we shall accomplish it, because men in general prefer waiting; but the fifth 
must be fruitful in events.” 

The Czar, after having inflicted the greatest indignities on the 
Turkish Government, and notwithstanding that he now threatens 
to extort by force the most humiliating concessions, nevertheless 
raises a great cry about his “friendship for the Sultan Abdul 
Mejid” and his solicitude “for the preservation of the Ottoman 
Empire.” On the Sultan he throws the “responsibility” of 
opposing his “just demands,” of continuing to “wound his 
friendship and his feelings,” of rejecting his “note,” and of 
declining his “protectorate.” 

In 1828, when Pozzo di Borgo was interpellated by Charles X 
about the bad success of the Russian arms in the campaign of that 
year, he replied, that, not wishing to push the war 4a outrance 
without absolute necessity, the Emperor had hoped that the Sultan 
would have profited by his generosity, which experiment had now 
failed. 

Shortly before commencing her present quarrel with the Porte 
Russia sought to bring about a general coalition of the Continental 
Powers against England, on the Refugee question, and having 
failed in that experiment, she attempted to bring about a coalition 
with England against France. Similarly, from 1826 to 1828, she 

intimidated Austria by the “ambitious projects of Prussia,” doing 
simultaneously all that was in her power to swell the power and 
pretensions of Prussia, in order to enable her to balance Austria. 
In her present circular note she indicts Bonaparte as the onl 
disturber of peace by his pretensions respecting the Holy Places; 

but, at that time, in the language of Pozzo di Borgo, she attributed 

“all the agitation that pervaded Europe to the agency of Prince Metternich, and 
tried to make the Duke of Wellington himself perceive that the deference which he 
would have to the Cabinet of Vienna would be a drawback to his influence with all 
the others, and to give such a turn to things that it would be no longer Russia that 
sought to compromise France with Great Britain, but Great Britain who had 
repudiated France, in order to join the Cabinet of Vienna.”* 

Russia would now submit to a great humiliation if she retreated. 
That was identically her situation after the first unsuccessful 
campaign of 1828. What was then her supreme object? We answer 
in the words of her diplomatist: 

“A second campaign is indispensable in order to acquire the superiority 
requisite for the success of the negotiation. [...] When this negotiation shall take 
place we must be in a state to dictate the conditions of it in a prompt and rapid 
manner.... With the power of doing more His Majesty would consent to demand less. 
[...] To obtain this superiority appears to me what ought to be the aim of all our 
efforts. This superiority has now become a condition of our political existence, such as we 
must establish [...] and maintain in the eyes of the world.” 

But does Russia not fear the common action of England and 
France? Certainly. In the Secret Memoirs on the Means possessed 
by Russia for breaking up the alliance between France and 
England, revealed during the reign of Louis Philippe, we are told: 

“In the event of a war, in which England should coalesce with France, Russia 
indulges in no hope of success. unless that union [...] be broken up; so that at the 
least England should consent to remain neutral during the continental conflict.” © 

The question is: Does Russia believe in a common action of 
England and France? We quote again from Pozzo di Borgo’s 
dispatches: 

“From the moment that the idea of the ruin of the Turkish Empire ceases to © 
prevail, it is not probable that the British Government would risk a general war for 
the sake of exempting the Sultan from acceding to such or such condition, above 
all in the state in which things will be at the commencement of the approaching 
campaign, when everything will be as yet uncertain and undecided. These 

considerations would authorize the belief that we have no cause to fear an open 
rupture on the part of Great Britain; and that she will content herself with 
counseling the Porte to beg peace, and with lending the aid of the good offices in 
her power during the negotiation if it takes place, without going further, should 
the Sultan refuse or we persist.” * 

And as to Nesselrode’s opinion of the “good” Aberdeen, the 
Minister of 1828, and the Minister of 1853, it may be well to quote 
the following from a dispatch by Prince Lieven: 

“Lord Aberdeen reiterated in his interview with me the assurance that at no 
period it had entered into the intentions of England to seek a quarrel with 
Russia—that he feared that the position of the English Ministry was not well 
understood at St. Petersburg—that he found himself in a delicate situation. Public 
opinion was always ready to burst forth against Russia. The British Government 
could not constantly brave it; and it would be dangerous to excite it on questions 
[...] that touched so nearly the national prejudices. On the other side we could 
reckon with entire confidence upon the [...] friendly dispositions*of the English 
Ministry which struggled against them.” 

The only thing astonishing in the note of M. de Nesselrode, of 
June 11, is not “The insolent mélange of professions refuted by 
acts, and threats veiled in declaimers,” but the reception Russian 
diplomatical notes meet with for the first time in Europe, calling 
forth, instead of the habitual awe and admiration, blushes of 
shame at the past and disdainful laughter from the Western world 
at this insolent amalgamation of pretensions, finesse and real 
barbarism. Yet Nesselrode’s circular note, and the ‘“ultimatis- 
simum” of June 16, are not a bit worse than the so much admired 
master-pieces of Pozzo di Borgo and Prince Lieven. Count 
Nesselrode was at their time, what he is now, the diplomatical 
head of Russia. 

There is a facetious story told of two Persian naturalists who 
were ‘examining a bear; the one who had never seen such an 
animal before, inquired whether that animal dropped its cubs alive 
or laid eggs; to which the other, who was better informed, replied: 
“That animal is capable of anything.” The Russian bear is 
certainly capable of anything, so long as he knows the other 
animals he has to deal with to be capable of nothing. 

En passant, I may mention the signal victory Russia has just won 
in Denmark, the Royal message having passed with a majority of 
119 against 28, in the following terms: 

“In agreement with the 4th paragraph of the Constitution d. d. June 5, 1849, 
the United Parliament, for its part, gives its consent to the arrangement by His 

Majesty of the succession to the whole Danish Monarchy in accordance with the 
Royal message respecting the succession of Oct. 4, 1852, renewed June 13, 1853.” 

Strikes and combinations of workmen are proceeding rapidly, 
and to an unprecedented extent. I have now before me reports on 
the strikes of the factory hands of all descriptions at Stockport, of 
smiths, spinners, weavers, etc., at Manchester, of carpet-weavers at 
Kidderminster, of colliers at the Ringwood Collieries, near Bristol, 
of weavers and loomers at Blackburn, of loomers at Darwen, of 
the cabinet-makers at Boston, of the bleachers, finishers, dyers and 
power-loom weavers of Bolton and neighborhood, of the weavers 
of Barnsley, of the Spitalfields broad-silk weavers, of the lace 
makers of Nottingham, of all descriptions of workingmen 
throughout the Birmingham district, and in various other 
localities. Each mail brings new reports of strikes; the turn-out 
grows epidemic. Every one of the larger strikes, like those at 
Stockport, Liverpool, etc., necessarily generates a whole series of 
minor strikes, through great numbers of people being unable to 
carry out their resistance to the masters, unless they appeal to the 
support of their fellow-workmen in the Kingdom, and the latter, 
in order to assist them, asking in their turn for higher wages. 
Besides it becomes alike a point of honor and of interest for each 
locality not to isolate the efforts of their fellow-workmen by 
submitting to worse terms, and thus strikes in one locality are 
echoed by strikes in the remotest other localities. In some instances 
the demands for higher wages are only a settlement of long- 
standing arrears with the masters. So with the great Stockport 
strike. 

In January, 1848, the mill-owners of the town made a general 
reduction of 10 per cent. from all descriptions of factory-workers’ 
wages. This reduction was submitted to upon the condition that 
when trade revived the 10 per cent. was to be _ restored. 
Accordingly the work-people memorialized their employers, early 
in March, 1853, for the promised advance of 10 per cent.; and as 
they would not come to arrangements with them, upward of 
30,000 hands struck. In the majority of instances, the factory- 
workmen affirmed distinctly their right to share in the prosperity of 
the country, and especially in the prosperity of their employers. 

The distinctive feature of the present strikes is this, that they 
began in the lower ranks of unskilled labor (not factory labor), 
actually trained by the direct influence of emigration, according to 
various strata of artizans, till they reached at last the factory 
people of the great industrial centers of Great Britain; while at all 

former periods strikes originated regularly from the heads of the 
factory-workers, mechanics, spinners, &c., spreading thence to the 
lower classes of this great industrial hive, and reaching only in the 
last instance, to the artizans. This phenomenon is to be ascribed 
solely to emigration. 

There exists a class of philanthropists, and even of socialists, 
who consider strikes as very mischievous to the interests of the 
“workingman himself,” and whose great aim consists in finding 
out a method of securing permanent average wages. Besides, the 
fact of the industrial cyclus, with its various phases, putting every 
such average wages out of the question. I am, on the very 
contrary, convinced that the alternative rise and fall of wages, and 
the continual conflicts between masters and men _ resulting 
therefrom, are, in the present organization of industry, the 
indispensable means of holding up the spirit of the laboring 
classes, of combining them into one great association against the 
encroachments of the ruling class, and of preventing them from 
becoming apathetic, thoughtless, more or Jess well-fed instruments 
of production. In a state of society founded upon the antagonism 
of classes, if we want to prevent Slavery in fact as well as in name, 
we must accept war. In order to rightly appreciate the value of 
strikes and combinations, we must not allow ourselves to be 
blinded by the apparent insignificance of their economical results, 
but hold, above all things, in view their moral and _ political 
consequences. Without the great alternative phases of dullness, 
prosperity, over-excitement, crisis and distress, which modern 
industry traverses in periodically recurring cycles, with the up and 
down of wages resulting from them, as with the constant warfare 
between masters and men closely corresponding with those 
variations in wages and profits, the working-classes of Great 
Britain, and of all Europe, would be a heart-broken, a weak- 
minded, a worn-out, unresisting mass, whose self-emancipation 
would prove as impossible as that of the slaves of Ancient Greece 
and Rome. We must not forget that strikes and combinations 
among the serfs were the hot-beds of the mediaeval communes, 
and that those communes have been in their turn, the source of 
life of the now ruling bourgeoisie. 

I observed in one of my last letters, of what importance the 
present labor-crisis must turn out to the Chartist movement in 
England,* which anticipation I now find realized by the results 
obtained in the first two weeks of the reopened campaign by 

Ernest Jones, the Chartist leader. The first great open-air meeting 
was, as you know, to be held on the mountain of Blackstone-Edge. 
On the 19th ult., the Lancashire and Yorkshire delegates of the 
respective Chartist localities congregated there, constituting them- 
selves as Delegate-Council. Ernest Jones’s petition for the Charter 
was unanimously adopted as that proposed to emanate from the 
meetings in the two counties, and the presentation of the 
Lancashire and Yorkshire petitions was voted to be entrusted to 
Mr. Apsley Pellatt, M. P. for Southwark, who had agreed to 
undertake the presentation of all Chartist petitions. As to the 
general meeting, the most sanguine minds did not anticipate its 
possibility, the weather being terrific, the storm increasing hourly 
in violence and the rain pouring without intermission. At first 
there appeared only a few scattered groups climbing up the hill, 
but soon larger bodies came into sight, and from an eminence that 
overlooked the surrounding valleys, thin but steady streams of 
people could be viewed as far as the eye could carry, through the 
base pelting of the rain, coming upward along the roads and 
footpaths leading from the surrounding country. By the time at 
which the meeting was announced to commence, upward of 3,000 
people had met on the spot, far removed from any village or 
habitation, and during the long speeches, the meeting, notwith- 
standing the most violent deluge of rain, remained steadfast on 
the ground. 

Mr. Edward Hooson’s resolution: “That the social grievances of 
the working classes of the country are the result of class- 
legislation, and that the only remedy for such class-legislation is 
the adoption of the people’s Charter,” was supported by Mr. 
Gammage, of the Chartist Executive,” and Mr. Ernest Jones, 
from whose speeche: I give some extracts.’ 

“The resolution which has been moved attributed the people’s [...] grievances to 
class-legislation. He thought that no man who had watched the course of events 
could disagree with that statement. The House of Commons, so called, had turned 
a deaf ear to all their complaints, and when the wail of misery had arisen from the 
people, it had been mocked and derided by the men who assumed to be the 
representatives of the nation, and if by any singular chance the voice of the people 
found an echo in that House, it was always drowned in the clamor of the 
murderous majority of our class-legislators. [Loud applause.] The House of 
Commons not only refused to do justice to the people, but it even refused to 
inquire into their social condition. They would all recollect that sometime ago, Mr. 
Slaney had introduced into the House a motion for the appointment of a standing 

Chartism”, The People’s Paper, No. 60, June 25, 1853.— Ed. 

commission, whose business it should be to inquire into that condition and suggest 
measures of relief—but such was the determination of the House to evade the 
question, that on the introduction of the motion, only twenty-six members were 
present, and the House was counted out. [Loud cries of shame, shame.] And on 
the reintroduction of that motion, so far from Mr. Slaney being successful, he (Mr. 
Gammage) believed that out of 656 honorable men, but 19 were present even to 
enter on a discussion of the question. [...}] When he told them what was the actual 
condition of the people, he thought they would agree with him, that there existed 
abundant reasons for inquiry. Thev were told by political economists that the 
annual production of this country was £820,000,000. Assuming that there were in 
the United Kingdom 5,000,000 of working families, and that such families received 
an average income of fifteen shillings per week, which he believed was a very high 
average compared with what they actually received [cries of “a great deal too 
high” ], supposing them, however, to average this amount, they received out of 
their enormous annual production a miserable one hundred and _ ninety-five 
millions,—{cries of shame].—and all the rest went into the pockets of idle 
landlords, usurers and the capitalist class generally.... Did they require a proof that 
these men were robbers? [...] They were not the worst of thieves who were 
confined within the walls of our prisons; the greatest and cleverest of thieves were 
those who robbed by the power of laws made by themselves, and these large 
robberies were the cause of all the smaller ones that were transacted throughout 
the country.... Mr. Gammage then entered into an analysis of the House of Commons, 
proving [...] that from the classes to which the members of that House belonged, and 
the classes which they represented, it was impossible that there should exist the 
smallest sympathy between them and the working millions. In conclusion, said the 
speaker, the people must become acquainted with their Social Rights.” 

Mr. Ernest Jones said: 

“To-day we proclaim that the Charter shali be law. [Loud cheers.] I ask you 
now to reengage in this great movement, because I know that the time has arrived 
for so doing, and that the game is in your hand, and because I am anxious that 
you should not let the opportunity go by. Brisk trade and emigration have given 
you a momentary power, and upon how you use that power depends your future 
position. If you use it only for the objects of the present, you will break down when 
the circumstances of the present cease. But if you use it, not only to strengthen 
your present position, but to secure your future one, you will triumph over all your 
enemies. If brisk trade and emigration give you power, that power must cease 
when brisk trade and emigration cease, and unless you secure yourself in the 
interval, you will be more slaves than ever. [Hear, hear.] But the very sources that 
cause your strength now will cause your weakness before long. The emigration that 
makes your labor scarce, will make soon your employment scarcer.... The 
commercial reaction will set in, and now IJ ask you, how are you preparing to meet 
it? [...] You are engaged in a noble labor movement for short time and high 
wages, and you are practically carrying it through to some extent, [...] but mark! 
you are not carrying it through Parliament. Mark! the game of the employer is this 
—amuse them with some concessions, but yield to them no law. Don’t pass a Wages 
bill in Parliament, but concede some of its provisions in the factory. [Hear.] The 
wages slave will then say, “Never mind a political organization for a Ten Hours bill 
or a Wages measure—we’ve got it, ay, ourselves without Parliament.” Yes, but can 
you keep it without Parliament? What gave it you? Brisk trade. What will take it 
from you? Dull trade. [...] Your employers know this. [...] Therefore, they shorten 
your hours of work or raise your wages, or remit their stoppages, in hopes that you 

will forego the political organization for these measures. [Cheers.] They shorten the 
hours of work, well knowing that soon they will run their mills short time—they 
raise your wages, well knowing that soon they will give thousands of you no wages 
at all. But they tell you also—the midland manufacturers—that, even if the laws 
were passed, this would only force them to seek other means of robbing you—that 
was the plain meaning of their words. So that in the first place, you can’t get the 
acts passed, because you have not got a People’s Parliament.In the second place, if 
they were passed, they tell you that they would circumvent them. [Loud cries of 
“hear.” ] Now, I ask you, how are you preparing for the future? How are you using 
the vast strength you momentarily possess? [...] That [...] you will be powerless, 
unless you prepare now—you will lose all you may have gained; and we are here 
to-day to show you how to keep it and get more. [...] Some people fancy a Chartist 
organization would interfere with the Labor movement. Good Heaven! it is the 
very thing to make it successful.... The employed cannot do without the employer, 
unless he can employ himself. Thc employed can never employ himself, unless he 
can command the means of work-—land, credit and machinery. He can never 
command these, unless he breaks down the landed, moneyed and mercantile 
monopolies, and these he cannot subvert except by wielding sovereign power. Why 
do you seek a Yen Hours bill? If political power is not necessary to secure 
labor-freedom why go to Parliament at all? Why not do in the factory at once? 
Why, because you know, you feel, you by that very act admit tacitly, that political 
power is needed to obtain social emancipation. [Loud cheers.] Then I point you to 
the foundation of political power—I point you to the suffrage—I point you to the 
Charter. [Enthusiastic applause.] ... It may be said: “Why do we not wait till the 
crisis comes, and the millions rally of their own accord.” Because we want not a 
movement of excitement and danger, but one of calm reason and moral strength. 
We will not see you led away by excitement, but guided by judgment—and 
therefore we bid you now reorganize—that you may rule the storm, instead of 
being tossed by it. Again, continental revolution will accompany commercial 
reaction—and we need to raise a strong beacon of Chartism to light us through the 
chaos of tempest. [...] To-day, then, we reinaugurate our movement, and to obtain its 
official recognition, we go through the medium of Parliament—not that we expect 
them to grant the petition— but because we use them as the most fitting mouth-piece 
to announce our resurrection to the world. Yes, the very men that proclaimed our 
death, shall have the unsought pleasure to proclaim our resurrection, and this petition 
is merely the baptismal register announcing to the world our second birth.” [Loud 
cheers. | 

Mr. Hooson’s resolution and the petition to Parliament were 
here, as well as at the subsequent meetings during the week, 
enthusiastically accepted by acclamation. 

At the meeting of Blackstone-Edge, Ernest Jones had an- 
nounced the death of Benjamin Ruston, a workingman who seven 
years before, had presided at the great Chartist meeting held at 
the same spot’**; and he proposed that his funeral should be 
made a great political demoustration, and be connected with the 
West Riding meeting for the adoption of the Charter, as the 
noblest obsequies to be given to that expired veteran. Never 
before in the annals of British Democracy, has such a demonstra- 
tion been witnessed, as that which attended the revival of Chartism 

in the West Riding, and the funeral of Benjamin Ruston, on 
Sunday last,* when upward of 200,000 people were assembled at 
Halifax, a number unprecedented even in the most excited times. 
To those who know nothing of English society but its dull, 
apoplectic surface, it should be recommended to assist at these 
workingmen’s meetings and to look into those depths where its 
destructive elements are at work. 

The Coalition has gained the preliminary battle on the Indian 
question, Lord Stanley’s motion for delay of legislation having 
been rejected by a majority of 182 votes.” Pressure of matter 
obliges me to delay my comments upon that division.