Bonaparte compensates the French Navy for their humiliating 
position in Besika Bay by a reduction in the price of tobacco to the 
sailors, as we are informed by to-day’s Moniteur“ He won his 
throne by sausages.””* Why should he not try to hold it by tobacco? 
At all events, the Eastern complication will have produced the 
démonétisation of Louis Bonaparte in the eyes of the French 
peasants and the army. They have learned that the loss of liberty 
at home is not made up by a gain of glory abroad. The “Empire 
of all the glories” has sunk even lower than the “Cabinet of all the 
talents.” 

From the Constantinople journals which have just arrived, we 
learn that the Sultan’s” manifesto to his subjects appeared on the 
Ist August, that the Russian Consul at Adrianople has received 
orders from St. Petersburg to withdraw from Turkey, that the 
other Russian Consuls expect similar orders, and that the 
Constantinople papers have been prohibited in the Principalities. 
The Impartial of Smyrna, of Aug. 1, has the following communica- 
tion with regard to Persia: 

“The Shah of Persia, after the correspondence exchanged between the Porte 
and the Russian Cabinet on the occasion of the pending dispute, had been 
communicated to him on his request, has officially declared that all the right was 
on the side of the Porte, and that in case of war, he will fairly stand by her. This 

news had made a great impression on the Russian Ambassador at Teheran, who is 
said to prepare for demanding his passports.” 

The contents of the proposition made to Russia, and accepted 
by the Czar,’ according to the mysterious Petersburg dispatch, 

* Le Moniteur universel, No. 223, August 11, 1853.— Ea. 

form the subject of conjecture through the whole European Press. 
The Palmerstonian Morning Post avers: 

“On the 25th of July M. de Meyendorff transmitted to his Imperial master, not 
indeed the formal propositions” (accepted at the Vienna Conference),“but an 
account of what had passed at the conference of the 24th.... We believe we. shall 
not be far wrong when we confidently affirm that the affair is settied in such a 
manner as to preserve intact the independence and integrity of the Ottoman 
Empire. The mode of settlement will be this: Reshid Pasha will address the Count 
Nesselrode a note, in which he will inclose the firmans in which are accorded to the 
Greek Christians, subjects of the Sultan, more privileges than even Russia had asked 
for them. He will say many civil things to the Czar and assure him of the excellent 
disposition of the Sultan towards his own subjects, to whom he has accorded such and 
such rights. This note will be presented by a Turkish Ambassador, and the affair will 
be at an end... By the 10th of September the last Russian soldier will have crossed the 
Pruth!” 

On the other hand, private letters from Vienna, alluding to the 
appearance of Russian gun-boats above the confluence of the 
Pruth and the Danube, confirm the statement given in my last 
letter, that the propositions sent to St. Petersburg, do not include 
at all the withdrawal of the Russian armies from the Principalities, 
that they emanate from the Austrian Cabinet, to whose interven- 
tion the British Ambassador at Vienna,” “that true lover of 
harmony,” had appealed, after the French and English proposals 
had been rejected by the Czar; and that they afford Russia the 
desired opportunity for prolonging negotiations in infinitum? 
According to the semi-official Frankfort Ober-Postamts-Zeitung, 
Russia has only permitted Austria to enlighten Turkey with regard 
to her own interests. 

The lately published Population Returns prove the slow but 
steady decrease of the population of Great Britain.‘ In the quarter 
ending June, 1853, 

the number of deaths was .... 107,861
while the number of births was .... 158,718
Net increase of births as far as the registered districts are concerned .... 50,857
The excess of births over deaths in the United Kingdom is assumed to be .... 79,820
Number of emigrants during the quarter .... 115,959
Excess of emigration over increase of births .... 36,139

“ The Morning Post, August 11, 1853.— Ed. 
“ The data are quoted from The Times, No. 21498, August 4, 1853.— Fd. 

The last Return showed an excess of emigration over births of 
only 30,000. 

The decrease of population, resulting from emigration, coincides 
with an unprecedented increase in the powers of production and 
capital. When we remember Parson Malthus denying emigration 
any such influence, and imagining he had established, by the most 
elaborate calculations, that the united navies of the world could 
never suffice for an emigration of such dimensions as were likely 
to affect in any way the overstocking of human beings, the whole 
mystery of modern political economy is unraveled to our eyes. It 
consists simply in transforming transitory social relations belonging 
to a determined epoch of history and corresponding with a given 
state of material production, into eternal, general, never-changing 
laws, natural laws, as they call them. The thorough transformation 
of the social relations resulting from the revolutions and evolu- 
tions in the process of material production, is viewed by the 
political economists as a mere Utopia. They see the economical 
limits of a given epoch, but thev do not understand how these 
limits are limited themselves, and must disappear through the 
working of history, as they have been created by it. 

The accounts relating to Trade and Navigation for the six 
months ending July 5, 1853, as published by the Board of Trade, 
show in general a great increase when compared with the exports, 
imports, and shipping in the corresponding period of the year 
1852." The import of oxen, bulls, cows, calves, sheep and lambs 
has considerably increased. 

The total import of grains amounted, in the six months ending July 5th, 1852, to qrs. 2,604,201
But in the corresponding months of 1853, to qrs. 3,984,374
The total imports of Flour and Meal amounted, during six months of 1852, to qrs. 1,931,363
And in the corresponding months, 1853, to qrs. 2,577,340
Total imports of Coffee, 1852 lbs. 19,397,185
Total imports of Coffee, 1853 lbs. 21,908,954
Total imports of Wine, 1852 gals. 2,850,862
Total imports of Wine, 1853 gals. 4,581,300
Total imports of Eggs, 1852 No. 64,418,591
Total imports of Eggs, 1853 No. 67,631,380
Total imports of Potatoes, 1852 cwts. 189,410
Total imports of Potatoes, 1853 cwts. 713,941
Total imports of Flax, 1852 cwts. 410,876
Total imports of Flax, 1853 cwts. 627,173
Total imports of Raw Silk, 1852 lbs. 2,354,690
Total imports of Raw Silk, 1853 lbs. 2,909,733
Total imports of Cotton, 1852 cwts. 4,935,317
Total imports of Cotton, 1853 cwts. 5,134,680
Total imports of Wool (sheep and lambs), 1852 lbs. 26,916,002
Total imports of Wool (sheep and lambs), 1853 lbs. 40,189,398
Total imports of Hides (tanned), 1852 lbs. 1,075,207
Total imports of Hides (tanned), 1853 lbs. 3,604,769

A decrease is found in cocoa, guano, unrefined sugar, tea, &c.

As to the exports we find:

Those of Cotton Manufactures in 1852 .... £11,386,491
Those of Cotton Manufactures in 1853 .... 13,155,679

As to cotton yarn—and the same remark applies to linen and silk yarn—we find that the exported quantity has decreased, but that the declared value had considerably risen.

Linen Manufactures, 1852 .... £2,006,951
Linen Manufactures, 1853 .... 2,251,260
Silk Manufactures, 1852 .... 467,838
Silk Manufactures, 1853 .... 806,419
Woolen Manufactures, 1852 .... 3,894,506
Woolen Manufactures, 1853 .... 4,941,357
Earthen Ware Manufactures, 1852 .... 590,663
Earthen Ware Manufactures, 1853 .... 627,218
Glass Manufactures, 1852 .... 187,470
Glass Manufactures, 1853 .... 236,797
Haberdashery and Millinery, 1852 .... 884,324
Haberdashery and Millinery, 1853 .... 1,806,007
Hardware and Cutlery, 1852 .... 1,246,639
Hardware and Cutlery, 1853 .... 1,663,302
Machinery, 1852 .... 476,078
Machinery, 1853 .... 760,288
Iron Bars, Bolts and Rods, 1852 .... 1,455,952
Iron Bars, Bolts and Rods, 1853 .... 2,730,479
Wrought Iron, 1852 .... 696,089
Wrought Iron, 1853 .... 1,187,059
Wire, 1852 .... 42,979
Wire, 1853 .... 106,610

With regard to the imports of manufactures, the greatest 
increase is found in shoes, boots and gloves, and the greatest 
decrease in glass manufactures, watches, woolen stuffs, and 
Indian silk manufactures. With regard to exports, the increase is 
greatest in linen, silks, woolens and metals. As to the importations 
of articles of consumption, we find that, with the exception of 
grains and cattle, the increase in nearly all articles bears witness 
that the home consumption of the higher and middle classes has 
advanced in a much larger proportion than that of the working 
classes. While, for instance, the consumption of wine has doubled, 
the consumption of cocoa, unrefined sugar, and tea has decidedly 
retrograded. 

Out of 260 reports on the wheat crops throughout the United 
Kingdom, only 25 speak of the crop as fine and abundant, 30 as 
an average one, and above 200 reports declare it to be bad and 
deficient. Oats, barley and beans are expected to turn out less 
unfavorable, as the wet has benefited them; but the potatoes are 
blighted in all parts of the country. Messrs. J. [and] C. Sturge & Co. 
remark, in their Jast circular on the wheat crop: 

“The wheat crop on the aggregate will probably be the least productive of any 
since 1816, and unless the harvest of 1854 is very early, we may require an 
importation of all kinds of grain and breadstuffs greater even than that of 
1847— probably not less than 15,000,000 quarters—but our present prices are 

sufficient to induce imports to this extent, unless France should compete with us in 
the producing markets.” 

As to a very early crop in 1854, there seems to be no great 
prospect of that, inasmuch as experience has shown that bad 
harvests generally follow in succession just as the good ones; and 
the succession of good harvests since 1848 has already been 
unusually long. That England will obtain a sufficient supply of 
corn from foreign countries is, perhaps, pretty sure; but that the 
exportation of her manufactures will, as Free Traders expect, 
keep pace with the importations of grains, cannot be presumed. 
The probable excess of importation over exportation will, besides, 
be accompanied by a falling off in the home consumption of 
manufactures. Even now the bullion reserve in the Bank of 
England is decreasing week after week, and has sunk to 
£17,739,107. 

The House of Lords in its sitting of Friday last rejected the 
Combination of Workmen Bill, which had passed through the 
Commons. This bill was but a new interpretation of the old 
Combination Act of 1825,7!° and intended, by removing its 
cumbrous and equivocal terminology, to place the workingmen on 

a more equal footing with their employers, as far as the legality of 
combination is concerned. The sentimental lords who _ please 
themselves in treating the workingmen as their humble clients, feel 
exasperated whenever that rabble asks for rights instead of 
sympathies. The so-called Radical papers have, of course, eagerly 
seized on this opportunity to denounce the Lords to the 
proletarians as their “hereditary foes.” I am far from denying it. 
But let us now look at these Radicals, the “natural friends” of the 
workingmen. I told you in a former letter that the Manchester 
master-spinners and manufacturers were getting up an association 
for resisting the demands of their “hands.”* This association calls 
itself “an association for the purpose of aiding the trade in 
regulating the excitement among the operatives in the Manchester 
district.” It purports to have been formed for the following 
purposes: 

“I. The establishment of wages for various operations connected with spinning 
and weaving, similar to those paid in the other districts of the cotton trade. 

“2. The mutual protection of its members in the payment of such wages against 
the resistance offered to them on the part of the operatives employed by them 
respectively. 

“3. The securing to the operatives themselves the advantage of a uniformity of 
adequate wages, to be paid to them throughout town and neighborhood.”” 

In order to effect these purposes they have resolved to set up a 
whole organization, by forming local associations of master- 
spinners and manufacturers, with a central committee. 

“They will resist all demands made by associated bodies of mill-hands, as any 
concession to them would be injurious to employers, operatives, and the trade 
generally.” 

They will not allow the machinery set up by and for themselves 
to be counterbalanced by a similar machinery set up by their men. 
They intend fortifying the monopoly of capital by the monopoly 
of combination. They will dictate terms as an associated body. But 
the laborers shall only dispute them in their individual capacity. 
They will attack in ranged battle, but they will not be resisted, 
except in single fight. This is “fair competition,” as understood by 
the Manchester Radicals and model Free Traders. 

In its sitting of Aug. 9, the House of Lords had to decide on the 
fate of three Ireland Bills, carried through the Commons after ten 
months’ deliberation, viz.: the Landlord and Tenant Bill, removing 

turers” in The People’s Paper, No. 63, July 16, 1853.— Ed. 

the laws concerning mortgages, which form at present an 
insuperable bar to the effective sale of the smaller estates not 
falling under the Encumbered Estates Act; the Leasing Powers 
Bill, amending and consolidating more than sixty acts of Parlia- 
ment which prohibit leases to be entered into for 21 years, 
regulating the tenant’s compensation for improvements in_ all 
instances where contracts exist, and preventing the system of 
sub-letting; lastly, the Tenant’s Improvement Compensation Bill, 
providing compensation for improvements effected by the tenant 
in the absence of any contract with the landlord, and containing a 
clause for the retrospective operation of this provision. The House 
of Lords could, of course, not object to parliamentary interference 
between landlord and tenant, as it has laden the statute book from 
the time of Edward IV to the present day, with acts of legislation 
of landlord and tenant, and as its very existence is founded on 
laws meddling with landed property, as for instance the Law of 
Entail. This time, the noble lords sitting as Judges on their own. 
cause, allowed themselves to run into a passion quite surprising in 
that hospital of invalids. 

“Such a bill,” exclaimed the Earl of Clanricarde, ‘“‘as the Tenants’ Compensation 
Bill, such a total violation and disregard of all contracts, was never before, he 
believed, submitted to Parliament, nor had he ever heard of any government 
having ventured to propose such a measure as was carried out in the retrospective 
clauses of the bill.”’* 

The Lords went as far as to threaten the Crown with the 
withdrawal of their feudal allegiance,?’? and to hold out the 
prospect of a landlord rebellion in Ireland. 

“The question,” remarked the same nobleman, “touched nearly [...] the whole 
question of the loyalty and confidence of the landed proprietors in Ireland in the 
Government of this country.[...] If they saw landed property in Ireland treated in 
such a way, he would like to know what was to secure their attachment to the Crown, 
and their obedience to its supremacy?” 

Gently, my lord, gently! What was to secure their obedience to 
the supremacy of the Crown? One magistrate and two constables. 
A landlord rebellion in Great Britain! Has there ever been uttered 
a more monstrous anachronism? But for a long time the poor 
Lords have only lived upon anachronisms. They naturally 
encourage themselves to resist the House of Commons and public 
opinion. 

August 10, 1853.— Ed. 

“Let not their lordships,” said old Lord St. Leonards, “for the sake of 
preventing what was called a collision with the other House, or for the sake of 
popularity, or on account of a pressure from without, pass imperfect measures like 
these.” “I do not belong to any party,” exclaimed the Earl of Roden, “but I am 
highly interested in the welfare of Ireland.” 

That is to say, his lordship supposes Ireland to be highly 
interested in the welfare of the Earl of Roden. “This is no party 
question, but a Lords’ question,” was the unanimous shout of the 
House; and so it was. But between both parties, Whig Lords and 
Tory Lords, Coalition Lords and Opposition Lords, there has 
existed from the beginning a secret understanding to throw the 
bills out, and the whole impassioned discussion was a mere farce, 
performed for the benefit of the newspaper reporters. 

This will be evident when we remember that the bills which 
formed the subject of so hot a controversy were originated, not by 
the Coalition Cabinet, but by Mr. Napier, the Irish Attorney- 
General under the Derby Ministry, and that the Tories at the last 
elections in Ireland appealed to the testimony of these bills 
introduced by them. The only substantial change made by the 
House of Commons in the measures introduced by the Tory 
Government was the excluding of the growing crops from being 
distrained upon. “The bills are not the same,” exclaimed the Earl 
of Malmesbury, asking the Duke of Newcastle whether he did not 
believe him. “Certainly not,” replied the Duke. “But whose 
assertion would you then believe?” “That of Mr. Napier,” 
answered the Duke. “Now,” said the Earl, “here is a letter of 
Mr. Napier, stating that the bills are not the same.” “There,” 
said the Duke, “is another letter of Mr. Napier, stating that they 
are.” 

If the Tories had remained in, the Coalition Lords would have 
opposed the Ireland Bills. The Coalition being in, on the Tories 
fell the task of opposing their own measures. The Coalition having 
inherited these bills from the Tories and having introduced the 
Irish party into their own cabinet, could, of course, not oppose the 
bills in the House of Commons; but they were sure of their being 
burked in the House of Lords. The Duke of Newcastle made a 
faint resistance, but Lord Aberdeen declared himself contented 
with the bills passing formally through a second reading, and 
being really thrown out for the session. This accordingly was done. 
Lord Derby, the chief of the late Ministry, and Lord Lansdowne, 
the nominal President of the present Ministry, yet at the same 
time one of the largest proprietors of land in Ireland, managed, 
wisely, to be absent from indisposition. 

On the same day the House of Commons carried the Hackney 
Carriages Duties Bill through the third reading, renewing the 
official price-regulations of the 14th century, and accepting the 
clause proposed by Mr. F.Scully, which subjects cab proprietors’ 
strikes to legal penalties. We have not now to settle the question 
of state interference with private concerns. We have only to state that 
this passed in a free-trade House. But, they say, that in the cab 
trade there exists monopoly and not free competition. This is a 
curious sort of logic. First they subject a particular trade to a duty, 
called license, and to special police regulations, and then they 
affirm that, in virtue of these very burdens imposed upon it, the 
trade loses its free-trade character and becomes transformed into a 
state monopoly. 

The Transportation Bill has also passed through Committee. 
Except a small number of convicts who will continue to be 
transported to Western Australia, the penalty of transportation is 
abolished by this bill. After a certain period of preliminary 
imprisonment the offenders will receive tickets of leave in Great 
Britain, liable to be revoked, and then they will be employed on 
the public works at wages to be determined by Government. The 
philanthropic object of the latter clause is the erection of an 
artificial surplus in the labor market, by drawing forced convict- 
labor into competition with free labor; the same philanthropists 
forbidding the workhouse paupers all sort of productive labor 
from fear of creating competition with private capital. 

The London Press, a weekly journal, inspired by Mr. Disraeli, and 
certainly the best informed paper as far as ministerial mysteries 
are concerned, made, on Saturday last, and accordingly before the 
arrival of the Petersburg dispatch, the following curious statement: 

“We are informed, that in their private and confidential circles, the ministers 
declare that there is not only now no danger of war, but that the peril, if it ever 
existed, has long been averted. It seems that the proposition formally forwarded to 
St. Petersburg, [...] had been previously approved by the Emperor; and while the 
British Government assume in public countenance a tone which is exercising a 
deleterious influence on the trade of the country, in private they treat the panic as 
a hoax, scoff off any idea of war having ever been seriously contemplated by any 
power, and speak of the misunderstanding in question ‘as a thing that has been 
settled these three weeks.’ What does all this mean, what is the mystery of all this 
conduct? ... The propositions now at St. Petersburg, and which were approved by 
the Emperor before they were transmitted to St. Petersburg, involve a complete 
concession by Turkey to Russia of allashose demands, a resistance to which brought 
about the present war between these two countries. Those demands were resisted 
by the Porte under the counsel and at the special instigation of England and 
France. By the advice and special instigation of England and France, those 
demands, according to this project, are now to be complied with. [...] There is some 

change of form, [...] but there is nothing material in that change. [...] The Emperor 
of Russia, in virtually establishing the Protectorate over the great bulk of the 
population of European Turkey, is to declare, that in so doing he has no wish to 
impugn the sovereign rights of the Sultan. Magnanimous admission!” “ 

Royalty in Great Britain is supposed to be only a nominal 
power, an assumption which accounts for the peace all parties 
keep with it. If you were to ask a Radical why his party abstained 
from attacking the prerogatives of the Crown, he would answer 
you: It is a mere State decoration which we don’t care about. He 
would tell you that Queen Victoria has only once dared to have a 
will of her own, at the time of the famous bed chambermaid’s 
catastrophe, when she insisted upon retaining her female Whig 
entourage, but was forced to yield to Sir Robert Peel, and dismiss it. 
Various circumstances, however, connected with the Oriental 
question—the inexplicable policy of the Ministry, the denuncia- 
tions of foreign journals, and the successive arrival of Russian 
princes and princesses, at a moment when England was supposed 
to be on the eve of a war with the Autocrat—have accredited the 
rumor that there existed, during the whole epoch of the Eastern 
crisis, a Court conspiracy with Russia, sustaining the good old 
Aberdeen in office, paralyzing the showy alliance with France, and 
counteracting the official resistance to Russian encroachments. 
The Portuguese counter-revolution is hinted at, which was 
enforced by an English fleet, for the sole interest of the Coburg 
family.*’> It is iterated that Lord Palmerston, too, had been 
dismissed from the Foreign Office in consequence of Court 
intrigues. The notorious friendship between the Queen and the 
Duchess of Orleans is alluded to. It is remembered that the Royal 
Consort is a Coburg,” that the Queen’s uncle is another Coburg,‘ 
highly interested as King of Belgium and as the son-in-law of 
Louis Philippe, in the fall of Bonaparte, and officially received 
into the circle of the Holy Alliance, by the marriage of his son“ 
with an Austrian Archduchess.* Lastly, the reception which the 
Russian guests meet with, is contrasted with the imprisonment and 
chicanery English travelers lately met with in Russia. 

The Paris Siecle some weeks ago denounced the English Court. 
A German paper dwelt on the Coburg-Orleans conspiracy, which, 
for the sake of family interests, had, through the medium of King 

: The Press, No. 14, August 6, 1853.— Ed. 

Leopold and Prince Albert, enforced upon the English Ministry a 
line of policy dangerous to the Western nations, and fostering the 
secret intentions of Russia. The Brussels Nation had a long report 
of a Cabinet Council held at London, in which the Queen had 
formally declared that Bonaparte, by his pretensions to the Holy 
Shrines, had been the only cause of the present complications, that 
the Emperor of Russia wished less to humiliate Turkey than his 
French rival, and that she would never give her Royal assent to 
any war against Russia for the interest of a Bonaparte. 

These rumors have been delicately alluded to by The Morning 
Advertiser, and have found a loud echo in the public, and a 
cautious one in the weekly press. 

“Without desiring,” says The Leader,’ “to put constructions too wide, Jet us 

simply observe facts. The Princess Olga has come to England with her husband, 
and her sister,© the Duchess of Leuchtenberg, the Emperor’s most diplomatic 
daughter. She has been received by Baron Brunnow, and [...] she is at once 
welcomed at Court, and surrounded by the representatives of good society in 
England, Lord Aberdeen being among that [...] number.” 

Even The Examiner, the first of the first-rate London weekly 
papers, announces the arrival of these guests under the laconic 
rubric “More Russians.” In one of its leaders we find the remark, 

“No earthly reason now exists why the Peace Society should not reappear 
before the world, in the most approved form, under the patronage of His Royal 
Highness, Prince Albert.” 

A more direct allusion is not allowable in a journal of the 
standing of The Examiner. It concludes the article from which I 
quote by contrasting the English Monarchy with the Transatlantic 
Republic: 

“If the Americans should be ambitious to seize the place we once held in 
Europe, that is no affair of ours. Let them reap the present honor and ultimate 
advantage of enforcing the law of nations, and of being reverenced as the 
protectors of the feeble against the [...] strong. England is content, provided only 

Consols be at par, and her own coasts [...] secure against any immediate attack of a 
foreign army.” 

On a vote of £5,820, to defray the charge of works, repairs, 
furniture, etc., at the residence of the British Ambassador at Paris, 

* The Leader, No. 176, August 6, 1853.— Ed. 
Examiner, No. 2375, August 6, 1853.— Ed. 

for the year ending 31st March, 1854, being proposed, Mr. Wise 
asked what had become of the £1,100 a year, voted for the last 
thirty years, in order to keep in repair the residence of the British 
Ambassador at Paris. Sir William Molesworth was compelled to 
own that the public money had been misapplied, and _ that, 
according to the architect Albano, sent by Government to Paris, 
the residence of the British Ambassador was in a most dilapidated 
state. The verandah around the house had fallen in; the walls 
were in a state of decay; the house had not been painted for 
several years; the staircases were unsafe; the cesspools were 
exhaling a most offensive effluvium; the rooms were full of 
vermin, which were running over the tables, and maggots were in 
every place on the furniture and on the curtains, while the carpets 
were stained by the dirt of dogs and cats. 

Lord Palmerston’s Smoke Nuisance Suppression Bill has passed a 
second reading. This measure once carried, the metropolis will 
assume a new aspect, and there will remain no dirty houses in 
London, except the House of Lords and the House of Commons.