On Friday last, The Morning Chronicle, in its fourth edition, 
communicated a telegraphic despatch, according to which the 
Sultan* had declared war against Russia. The Paris Patrie of 
yesterday evening announces, in a semi-official note, that the 
intelligence received from the East, does not confirm the 
statement of The Morning Chronicle. According to another Minis- 
terial paper, the Constitutionnel, it was on the reiterated representa- 
tions of Mr. de Bruck, the Austrian Internuncio, that the Divan 
assembled on the 25th, with the view to deliberate on the Vienna 
note, when it declared it would abide by the last note of Reshid 
Pasha.*** A Grand Council was convoked on the following day. 
This Council consisting of 120 of the principal Ministers, 
Councillors, Pashas and religious dignitaries, resolved that 

“it would be contrary to the dignity, and subversive of the sovereign authority 
of the Sultan to sign the Vienna note without the modifications suggested by the 
Divan, and that, inasmuch as the Czar” had declared those modifications to be 
totally inadmissible, and refused to abandon his demand for an engagement 
destructive of the independence of the Ottoman Empire, it only remained for the 
Council to advise the Sultan to proceed at once to adopt the measures necessary for 
the preservation of his Empire, and to free his dominions from the presence of the 
invader.” 

As to the formal declaration of war, it has not yet been 
confirmed by any authentic dispatch. This time, at least, the Porte 

1853 and reprinted in Le Constitutionnel, No. 279, October 6, 1853.— Ed. 

has caught the Western diplomats. The English and French 
Governments, not daring to call their fleets home, unable to hold 
any longer their ridiculous position at Besika Bay, unwilling to 
pass the straits in open defiance to the Czar, wanted the Porte to 
send for ships from Besika Bay on the pretext that danger to the 
Christians at Constantinople was to be apprehended during the 
fetes of the Bairam. The Porte refused, observing that there was no 
danger; that if there was, it would protect the Christians without 
foreign aid, and that it did not wish to summon the ships until 
after the fétes. But the vanguard of the united fleets had hardly 
crossed the straits, when the Porte, having now put its vacillating 
and treacherous allies into a fix, declared for war. As to the war 
itself, it commenced three months ago, when the Russian forces 
crossed the Pruth. The first campaign was even brought to a close 
when the Russian legions reached the banks of the Danube. The 
only change that can now take place will be that the war will cease 
to be a one-sided one. 

Not only the Bey of Tunis,* but the Shah of Persia,” 
notwithstanding the intrigues of Russia, has placed at the disposal 
of the Sultan a corps of 60,000 of his best troops. The. Turkish 
army, then, may truly be said to be a mustering of all the available 
forces of Mohammedanism in Europe, Africa, and Western Asia. 
The hosts of the two religions which have long struggled for 
supremacy in the East, the Russo-Greek and the Mohammedan 
are now fronting each other, the one summoned by the arbitrary 
will of a single man—the other by the fatal force of circumstances, 
according to their mutual creeds, as the Russo-Greek Church 
rejects the dogma of predestination, while Mohammedanism 
centers upon fatalism. 

To-day two meetings are to be held, the one in Downing-st.— 
the other at the London Tavern; the one by the Ministers—the 
other against them; the one in favor of the Czar—the other in 
favor of the Sultan. 

From the leaders of The Times and Morning Chronicle, we might 
infer, if there could exist any doubt about the intention of the 
Coalition, that it will try to the utmost to prevent war, to resume 
negotiations, to kill time, to paralyze the Sultan’s army, and to 
support the Czar in the Principalities. 

“The Czar has declared for peace,” The Times is happy to 

state,* upon undoubted authority. The Czar has expressed “pacific 
sentiments at Olmitz?” by his own lips” He will not accept the 
modifications the Porte has proposed; he will abide by the original 
Vienna note, but he will allow the Vienna conference to interpret 
the note in a_ preternatural sense, contradictory to his own 
Nesselrode’s interpretation. He will allow them to occupy them- 
selves with conferences, provided they allow him, meanwhile, to 
occupy the Principalities. 

The Times, in its peace paroxysm, compares the two Emperors 
of Russia and Austria to a couple of savage chiefs in the interior 
of Africa, in order to arrive at the conclusion: 

“After all, what does the world care for the Emperor of Russia, that it should go 
to war out of deference to his political mistakes?” 

The banks of Turin, Paris, Berlin and Warsaw have raised their 
rate of discount. In the bank returns of last week, the bullion 
reserve of the Bank of England was stated to have again decreased 
by £181,615, its total amount now being only £15,680,783. The 
active circulation of notes has decreased to the extent of nearly 
£500,000, while the discount of bills has increased by £400,000,” a 
coincidence which confirms the statement I made in my letter on 
the Peel Act, that the amount of bank notes in circulation does not 
rise and fall in proportion to the amount of banking business 
which is done.‘ 

Mr. Dornbush concludes his monthly commercial circular as 
follows: 

“Political events during the last week have greatly added to the agitation in the 
Corn trade, caused by the increasing reports of a deficient wheat crop, the 
spreading of the potato disease and the scarcity of ship-room. Town flour has 
advanced to 70 shillings per 280 pounds, new wheat to 80 shillings, with a rising 
discount approaching 5 per ct. A great excitement now pervades the corn 
trade—the probability of a war in the East, the prohibition of exporting grain from 
Egypt, the confirmed deficiency in the wheat crop in England, the spreading of the 
potato disease, the falling off in the foreign arrivals (especially from the South of 
Europe), the continued demand for France, Belgium and Holland—these were the 
principal exciting causes that again drove up prices of wheat variously from one 
shilling to six shillings per quarter in the leading provincial markets held last 
week.... Generally, immediately after harvest, the tendency of prices is and remains 

Based on an account of September 24, 1853 in The Economist, No. 527, 
October 1, 1853.—Ed. 

downward till Christmas. This year the movement has been the reverse.... Prices 
have been rising for some months past. At this moment there is no actual want of 
corn in any part of this quarter of the globe; many granaries, barns and rick-yards 
are full to repletion, and in some sea ports store-room is wanting. The late rise in 
price, therefore, has not been caused by a present, but by a prospective scarcity of 
corn, founded on the presumption of a deficiency in the crops, the effects of which 
are expected to be felt as the season advances. The coming winter is likely to prove 
one of great hardship and privation.... The prevailing opinion is still in favor of a 
further advance in prices; and while the bulk of speculators continue ‘buying and 
storing, the tendency is likely to remain upward, probably till next spring.... The 
presumable high range of prices during the next winter is likely to become, in the 
following spring, a great attraction to the importation of corn from distant regions, 
which, in ordinary seasons, cannot be reached on account of the distance and high 
cost of carriage; next spring an accumulation of arrivals from all accessible parts of 
the world is not improbable; and the very cause which now contributes to raise the 
price by the withdrawal of stocks from sale, will, with the setting in of the 
downward tide of prices, tend to depress the value of corn with a force 
commensurate to the then eagerness of holders to dispose of their stocks. Now the 
rule is to buy; then the watchword will be to sell. Next year may prove as dangerous 
and disastrous as 1847.” 

The general depression in the Manchester market continues. In 
proportion as the news from Australia and China, as well as that 
regarding the Eastern complication, are taking a more gloomy 
character, the minds of cotton-spinners, manufacturers and 
merchants, become more unsettled. The fall in prices may now be 
considered in ordinary qualities and Nos. of yarn to be from 7/g 
to 1d. per lb., from the highest point two months ago, which is 
very near twice as much as the fall in the corresponding quality of 
cotton, amounting to no more than '/, to °/s d. And even at the 
extreme reduction of ld., people find it difficult to sell, and stocks, 
the bugbears of our sympathetic school of political economists, go 
on accumulating. Of course it must not be expected that this 
accumulation of stocks will increase very rapidly; at the present 
moment both merchants and manufacturers, on finding several 
markets overstocked, have yet the outlet of sending their goods, 
on consignment, to other markets, and this faculty they very largely 
use just now. But to throw the entire exportable produce of British 
industry, large enough to swamp, at regular intervals, the whole 
world, upon a few more or less confined markets, will necessarily 
excite the same state of plethora, and the revulsions consequent 
upon it, in those very markets which are as yet stated to be 
healthy. Thus it is that the slightly improved news from India, 
according to which there still is no chance of profitable exporta- 
tion to that country, but merely a chance of diminishing loss upon 
fresh exports, has induced a rather considerable business to ‘that 

country, partly on account of the regular India houses, partly on 
account of the Manchester spinners and manufacturers them- 
selves, who, rather than submit to the loss incumbent upon sales in 
a declining market, prefer taking whatever slight chance of a 
better sale there may result from a speculative export to India. 
And here I may add, that it has been ever since 1847 a regular 
practice with the Manchester spinners and manufacturers to send 
out for their own account large shipments to India, etc., and to 
have the returns in Colonial produce, sold equally for their own 
account either in British North America or Continental harbors. 
These speculations do not, certainly, belong to the legitimate 
trading sphere of the manufacturer, who is necessarily not half as 
well informed of the state of the markets as the sea-port merchant, 
but they please the British cotton-spinner who, while directing 
such distant operations, believes that favorite illusion realized, in 
which he imagines himself the supreme director, the ruling mind, 
as it were, of the world’s trade and commercial destinies. And if it 
were not for these speculations which hold fast for a year or 
eighteen months a considerable portion of the industrial surplus 
capital, there is no doubt that the extension of manufactures in 
England would for the last five years have gone on at a still more 
rapid rate. 

In the dry goods market, domestics are the articles suffering 
under the greatest depression; stocks continue to accumulate 
although a great number of looms have been stopped. Yet it 
cannot be said that there is anything doing in other sorts of 
goods. 

A similar stagnation prevails at Leeds and Bradford, at Leices- 
ter and Nottingham. At the latter place the hours of work have 
been reduced to ten and even eight in the lace trade; hosiery 
has been depressed ever since June last, when the production 
was at once reduced in Nottingham by one-third of its amount. 
The only trade that appears to go on in uninterrupted prosperity 
for the present, is the hardware trade of Birmingham and its 
vicinity. 

At London, bankruptcy begins to spread among the small 
shop-keepers. 

In my letter of August 12, I stated that the master spinners and 
manufacturers were getting up “An Association for the purpose of . 
aiding the trade in regulating the excitement among the operatives 
in the Manchester District,” that that Association was to consist of 
local Associations, with a Central Committee, and that it intended 
“resisting all demands made by associated bodies of mill-hands, 

fortifying the monopoly of capital by the monopoly of combina- 
tion, and dictating terms as an Associated body.” * 

Now, is it not a very curious fact, that this scheme, of which I 
informed you about two months ago, has, to this very moment, 
never been alluded to by the London papers, although silently 
carried out in the meantime, and already doing its work at 
Preston, Bolton and Manchester? The London press, it appears, 
was anxious to withhold the fact from the eyes of the world, that 
the Factory Lords were systematically arraying their class against 
the class of Labor, and that the successive steps taken by them, 
instead of being the spontaneous result of circumstances, are the 
premeditated effects of a deep-laid conspiracy of an organized 
Anti-Labor League! This English Capitalist League of the 
nineteenth century is yet to find its historian, as the French 
Catholic League did in the authors of the Satyre Menippée, at the 
end of the sixteenth century.” 

The work-people, in order to succeed in their demands, must 
naturally try to keep the one party in till the strike of the others 
has proved victorious. Where this plan is acted upon, the 
millowners combine to close all their mills, and, thus, to drive their 
hands to extremities. The Preston manufacturers,” as you know,” 
were to begin the game. Thirteen mills are already closed, and, at 
the expiration of another week, every mill is to be shut up, 
throwing out of work more than 24,000 men. The weavers have 
addressed a memorial to the masters, soliciting an interview, or 
offering to refer the matters in dispute to arbitration, but their 
request was rejected. As the Preston weavers are assisted by penny 
collections from the operatives of the surrounding districts, from 
Stalybridge, Oldham, Stockport, Bury, Withnell, Blackburn, 
Church-Parish, Acton, Irwell-Vale, Enfield, Burnley, Colne, 
Bacup, &c.; the men having discovered that the only means of 
resisting the undue influence of capital, was by union among 
themselves; the Preston factory-lords, on their part, have sent out 
secret emissaries to undermine the means of succor for the men 
on strike, and to induce the millowners of Burnley, Colne, Bacup, 
&c., to close their establishments, and to cause a general cessation 
of labor. In certain places, as at Enfield, the overlookers have been 
induced to inform their masters, who had taken a part in 
forwarding the movement, and accordingly a number of penny 
collectors have been discharged. While the Preston men are 

exhorted by the work-people of the surrounding districts to remain 
firm and united, the Preston masters meet with an immense 
applause from the other manufacturers, being extolled as the true 
heroes of the age. 

At Bury, matters are taking a similar turn as at Preston. At 
Bolton, the bedquilt makers having lots cast to decide which of 
them were to begin striking, the masters of the whole trade at 
once closed their mills. 

Besides the simultaneous closing of mills, other means of 
combination are resorted to. At Keighley, for instance, the weavers 
of Mr. Lund struck for an advance of wages, the principal cause 
of their turn-out being his giving less than was received by the 
weavers of Mr. Anderton, at Bingley. A deputation of the weavers 
having asked for an interview with Mr. Lund, and proceeded to 
his lodgings, they had the door politely shut in their faces. But, 
a week afterward, Mr. Anderton’s work-people were informed 
by notice that a reduction would be made in the wages of his 
weavers of 3d. per piece, and of his woolcombers of one farthing per 
pound, Mr. Lund and Mr. Anderton having, in the meantime, 
concluded an alliance offensive and defensive, with a view to fight 
the weavers of the one by pulling down the wages of the other. Thus, 
it is supposed, Mr. Lund’s weavers will be driven to submission or 
Mr. Anderton’s weavers to a turn-out, and the additional weight of 
another turn-out doing away with all chance of support, both sets will 
bend to a general reduction. 

In other instances the masters try to enlist the shop-keep- 
ers against the working men. Thus Mr. Horsfall, the coal 
king of Derby main pit, when, in consequence of a reduction 
of wages, his hands struck, went to all the butchers, bakers 
and provision dealers of the neighborhood the colliers trade 
with, to prevail on them not to let his men have anything on 
credit. 

In all localities where the Association for “regulating the 
excitement among the operatives” exists, the associated masters 
have pledged themselves to heavy fines, in case of any individual 
member violating the status of their League, or yielding to the 
demands of the “hands.” At Manchester these fines amount to 
£5,000, at Preston to £3,000, at Bolton to £2,000, etc. 

There is one feature which, above all, distinguishes the present 
conflict from past ones. At former periods—as in 1832, 1839, 
1840, 1842—a general holiday, as it was called, viz.: a general and 
simultaneous stopping of labor throughout the whole kingdom, 
was a favorite idea with the operatives, and the great object they 

aimed at. This time, it is capital which threatens a general 
withdrawal. It is the masters who endeavor to bring about a 
general closing of mills. Do you not think that, if successful, it may 
prove a very dangerous experiment? Is it their intention to drive 
the English people to an insurrection of June,” in order to break 
their rising spirit, and to lay them prostrate for a series of years to 
come? 

At all events, we cannot too closely watch the symptoms of the 
civil war preparing in England, especially as the London press 
intentionally shuts its eyes to great facts, while it diverts its readers 
with descriptions of such trifles as the banquet given by Mr. Titus 
Salt, one of the factory princes of Yorkshire, at the opening of his 
palace-mill, where not only the local aristocracy were regaled, but 
his hands, too. “Prosperity, health, and happiness to the working 
class,” was the toast proposed by him, as the public is told by the 
Metropolitan press, but it is not told, that, some days afterwards, 
his moreen weavers received notice of another reduction in their 
wages from 2/3 to 2/1. “If this means either health or prosperity 
to the moreen weavers,” writes one of his victims to The People’s 
Paper, “I, for one, do not want it.’”* 

You will perhaps have seen from The Times that a Mrs. 
MacDonnell, of Knoydart, Glengarry, has, in imitation of the 
Duchess of Sutherland, undertaken to clear her estates, in order to 
replace men by sheep.’ The People’s Paper, informed by a 
correspondent on the spot, gives the following graphic description 
of this Malthusian operation! 

“This lady had a number of cottagers on her domains, many of whom were 
unable to pay their rents—some being considerably in arrears, as we are told. She, 
therefore, ordered them all off, and drove them to take refuge in the woods and 
caves, where they have since been lurking, or rather dying, while Mrs. 
MacDonnell’s horses have been warmly bedded in secure and comfortable 
dwellings. She at the same time offered them a free passage to Canada, passage 
money being cheaper than poor rolls, and permission to sell ‘their little stocks,’ they 
having no stock whatever to sell, except the clothes they stand in, a broken table, or 
a rheumatic cat. Finally, she forgave them the arrears—she could not get. This is 
called ‘noble generosity.’” 

Such ejections appear to be again the order of the day, 
throughout the Highlands. Thus, at least, we are informed by Sir 
Charles Forbes, a Highland laird, writing to The Times, 

“that sheep-farms are now becoming so valuable, that it will pay our English 
sheep-farmers to hire sheep at any time, and to pay for the removal of all who 

stand in their way.”*