Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels 
British Politics—Disraeli—The Refugees— 

Mazzini in London—Turkey 

New-York Daily Tribune. 
Nr. 3736, 7. April 1853 

British Politics—Disraeli—The Refugees— 
Mazzini in London—Turkey. 

Correspondence of The N.Y.Tribune. 

London, Tuesday, March 22, 1853. 

The most important event in the cotemporaneous history of parties is Dis- 
raéli's deposition from the leadership of the "great Conservative" minority. 
Disraeli, it has transpired, was himself prepared to throw overboard his 
former allies eight or nine weeks before the dissolution of the Tory Cabinet, 
and desisted from bis resolution only at the urgent instance of Lord Derby. 
He in his turn, is now dismissed and has been formally replaced by Sir John 
Pakington, a safe character, cautious, not altogether wanting in ad- 
ministrative ability, but a mournful man otherwise, the very incarnation of 
the worn-out prejudices and antiquated feelings of the old English squireo- 
cracy. This change in leadership amounts to a complete, and perhaps to the 
final transformation of the Tory party. Disraeli may congratulate himself on 
his emancipation from the landed humbugs. Whatever be our opinion of the 
man, who is said to despise the aristocracy, to hate the bourgeoisie, and not 
to like the people; he is unquestionably the ablest member of the present 
Parliament, while the flexibility of bis character enables him the better to 
accommodate himself to the changing wants of society. 

In reference to the Refugee question I told you in my last, that after Lord 
Palmerston's speech in the House of Commons, the Austrian journals de- 
clared it to be useless to ask for redress from a Cabinet corrupted by Palmer- 
stonian influence. But scarcely was Aberdeen's declaration in the House of 
Lords telegraphed to Vienna when the aspect of things changed again. The 
same journals now assert that "Austria trusts to the honor of the English 
Cabinet," and the semi-official Oesterreichische Correspondenz publishes 
the following from its Paris Correspondent: 

British Politics—Disraeli—The Refugees—Mazzini in London—Turkey 

"Lord Cowley, on his return to Paris, stated to the Emperor ofthe French, 
that the diplomatic representatives of England at the Northern Courts had 
been formally instructed to employ all their efforts to deter the Northern 
Powers from forwarding a collective note to the British Government, and 
to urge, as the ground for such abstention, that that Government would be 
the better enabled to comply with the demand of those powers, the more it 
could keep up, in all eyes of England, the appearance of acting freely and 
voluntarily in the matter... 

The British Ambassador, Lord Cowley, urged the Emperor of the French 
to place implicit confidence on the British Cabinet, the more so as the 
Emperor would always be at liberty to take any steps he might consider 
proper in the event of that confidence not having been justified ... The 
Emperor of the French, while reserving to himself full freedom of action for 
the future, was induced fo put the sincerity of the British Cabinet to the proof, 
and he is now endeavoring to persuade the other powers to follow his exam- 
ple. 

You see what is expected from "ce cher Aberdeen, "as Louis Philippe used 

" 

to call him, and what promises he must have made. These promises are 
actually already followed up by deeds. Last week the English Police drew 
up alist ofthe Continental refugees residing in London. Several detectives, 
in plain clothes, walked from square to square, from streetto street, and from 
house to house, making notes on the personals of the refugees, addressing 
themselves in the majority of cases to the publicans in the neighborhood, 
but entering in some instances, under the pretense of the pursuit of criminals, 
the very domiciles and searching the papers of some exiles. 

While the Continental Police is vainly hunting after Mazzini, while at 
Nuremberg the magistrates have ordered the closure of the gates in order 
to catch him—no man being hanged there before he is caught, according to 
the old German proverb— while the English press publishes reports after 
reports as to his supposed sojourn, Mazzini has for the past few days been 
safe and sound at London. 

Prince Menchikoff, after reviewing the Russian forces stationed in the 
Danubian principalities, and after an inspection of the army and fleet at 
Sebastopol, where he caused manœuvres of embarking and disembarking 

35 troops to be executed under his own eyes, entered Constantinople in the most 

theatrical style on Feb. 28, attended by a suite of 12 persons, including the 
Admiral of the Russian squadron in the Black Sea, a General of Division, 
and several staff officers, with M. de Nesselrode, Jr., as Secretary of the 
Embassy. He met with such a reception from the Greek and Russian in- 
habitants as he were the orthodox Czar himself entering Tsarigradto restore 
it to the true faith. An enormous sensation was created here and at Paris, 

Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels 

by the news that Prince Menchikoff, not satisfied with the dismissal of Fuad 
Effendi, had demanded that the Sultan should abandon to the Emperor of 
Russia, not only the protection of all the Christians in Turkey, but also the 
right of nominating the Greek patriarch; that the Sultan had appealed to the 

protection of England and France ; that Colonel Rose, the British Envoy, had 5 

dispatched the steamer Wasp in haste to Malta to request the immediate 
presence of the English fleet in the Archipelago, and that Russian vessels 
had anchored at Kili, near the Dardanelles. The Paris Moniteur informs us 
that the French squadron at Toulon had been ordered to the Grecian waters. 
Admiral Dundas, however, is still at Malta. From all this, itis evident, that 
the Eastern Question is once more on the European "ordre du jour, "a fact 
not astonishing for those who are acquainted with history. 

Whenever the revolutionary hurricane has subsided for a moment, one 
ever-recurring question is sure to turn up: the eternal "Eastern Question. " 
Thus, when the storms of the first French revolution had passed, and 
Napoleon and Alexander of Russia had divided, after the peace of Tilsit, the 
whole of Continental Europe betwixt themselves, Alexander profited by the 
momentary calm to march an army into Turkey, and to "give a lift" to the 
forces that were breaking up from within that decaying empire. Again, no 
sooner had the revolutionary movements of Western Europe been quelled 
by the Congresses of Laibach and Verona, than Alexander's successor, 
Nicholas, made another dash at Turkey. When a few years later, the revolu- 
tion of July, with its concomitant insurrections in Poland, Italy, Belgium, had 
had its turn, and Europe, as remodeled in 1831, seemed out of the reach of 
domestic squalls, the Eastern question, in 1840, appeared on the point of 
embroiling the "great Powers" in a general war. And now, when the short- 
sightedness of the ruling pigmies prides itself in having successfully freed 
Europe from the dangers of anarchy and revolution, up starts again the 
everlasting topic, the never-failing difficulty: What shall we do with Tur- 
key? 

Turkey is the living sore of European legitimacy. The impotency of legiti- 
mate, monarchical government, ever since the first French Revolution, has 
resumed itself in the one axiom: Keep up the status quo. A testimonium 
paupertatis, an acknowledgment of the universal incompetence of the ruling 
powers, for any purpose of progress or civilization, is seen in this universal 
agreement to stick to things as by chance or accident they happen to be. 
Napoleon could dispose of a whole continent at amoment's notice; aye, and 
dispose of it, too, in a manner that showed both genius and fixedness of 
purpose; the entire "collective wisdom" of European legitimacy, assembled 
in Congress at Vienna, took a couple of years to do the same job, got at 
loggerheads over it, made a very sad mess, indeed, of it, and found it such 

British Politics-Disraeli—The Refugees—Mazzini in London— Turkey 

a dreadful bore that ever since they have had enough of it, and have never 
tried their hands again at parceling out Europe. Myrmidons of mediocrity, 
as Béranger calls them, without historical knowledge or insight into facts, 
without ideas, without initiative, they adore the status quo they themselves 
have bungled together, knowing what a bungling and blundering piece of 
workmanship it is. 

But Turkey no more than the rest of the world remains stationary; and 
just when the reactionary party has succeeded in restoring in civilized 
Europe what they consider to be the status quo ante, it is perceived that in 

the meantime the status quo in Turkey has been very much altered, that new 
questions, new relations, new interests have sprung up, and that the poor 
diplomatists have to begin again where they were interrupted by a general 
earthquake some eight or ten years before. Keep up the status quo in Turkey! 
Why, you might as well try to keep up the precise degree of putridity into 
which the carcass of a dead horse has passed at a given time, before dis- 
solution is complete. Turkey goes on decaying, and will go on decaying as 
long as the present system of "balance of power" and maintenance of the 
"status quo" goes on, and in spite of Congresses, protocols and ultimatums 
it will produce its yearly quota of diplomatic difficulties and international 
squabbles quite as every other putrid body will supply the neighborhood with 
a due allowance of carburetted hydrogen and other well-scented gaseous 
matter. 

Let us look at the question at once. Turkey consists of three entirely 
distinct portions: the vassal principalities of Africa, viz. Egypt and Tunis; 
Asiatic Turkey, and European Turkey. The African possessions, of which 
Egypt alone may be considered as really subject to the Sultan, may be left 
for the moment out of the question; Egypt belongs more to the English than 
to anybody else, and will and must necessarily form their share in any future 
partition of Turkey. Asiatic Turkey is the real seat of whatever strength there 
is inthe Empire; Asia Minor and Armenia, for four hundred years the chief 
abode of the Turks, form the reserved ground from which the Turkish armies 
have been drawn, from those that threatened the ramparts of Vienna, to those 
that dispersed before Diebitsch's not very skillful manceuvers at Kulewsha. 
Turkey in Asia, although thinly populated, yet forms too compact a mass 
of Mussulman fanaticism and Turkish nationality to invite at present any 
attempts at conquest; and in fact whenever the "Eastern Question" is 
mooted, the only portions of this territory taken into consideration, are 
Palestine and the Christian valleys of the Lebanon. 

The real point at issue always is, Turkey in Europe—the great peninsula 
to the south of the Save and Danube. This splendid territory has the mis- 
fortune to be inhabited by a conglomerate of different races and nationalities, 

Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels 

of which itis hard to say which is the least fit for progress and civilization. 
Slavonians, Greeks, Wallachians, Arnauts, twelve millions of men, are all 
held in submission by one million of Turks, and up to a recent period it 
appeared doubtful whether, of all these different races, the Turks were not 

the most competent to hold the supremacy which, in such a mixed population, 5 

could not but accrue to one of these nationalities. But when we see how 
lamentably have failed all the attempts at civilization by Turkish authority- 
how the fanaticism of Islam, supported principally by the Turkish mob in 
a few great cities, has availed itself of the assistance of Austria and Russia 
invariably to regain power and to overturn any progress that might have been 
made; when we see the central, ie. Turkish authority weakened year after 
year by insurrections in the Christian provinces, none of which, thanks to 
the weakness of the Porte and to the intervention of neighboring States, is 
ever completely fruitless; when we see Greece acquire her independence, 
parts of Armenia conquered by Russia—Moldavia, Wallachia, Serbia, sue- 
cessively placed under the protectorate of the latter power,—we shall be 
obliged to admit that the presence of the Turks in Europe is a real obstacle 
to the development of the resources of the Thraco-Ilyrian Peninsula. 

We can hardly describe the Turks as the ruling class of Turkey, because 
the relations of the different classes of society there are as much mixed up 
as those of the various races. The Turk is, according to localities and circum- 
stances, workman, farmer, small freeholder, trader, feudal landlord in the 
lowest and most barbaric stage of feudalism, civil officer, or soldier; but in 
all these different social positions he belongs to the privileged creed and 
nation—he alone has the right to carry arms, and the highest Christian has 
to give up the footpath to the lowest Moslem he meets. In Bosnia and the 
Herzegovina, the nobility, of Slavonian descent, has passed over to Islam, 
while the mass of the people remain Rayahs, i.e. Christians. In this province, 
then, the ruling creed and the ruling class are identified, as of course the 
Moslem Bosnian is upon a level with his co-religionist of Turkish descent. 

The principal power of the Turkish population in Europe, independently 
of the reserve always ready to be drawn from Asia, lies in the mob of 
Constantinople and a few other large towns. It is essentially Turkish, and 
though it finds its principal livelihood by doing jobs for Christian capitalists, 
it maintains with great jealousy the imaginary superiority and real impunity 
for excesses which the privileges of Islam confer upon it as compared with 
Christians. It is well known that this mob in every important coup d'état has 
to be won over by bribes and flattery. Itis this mob alone, with the exception 
of a few colonized districts, which offers a compact and imposing mass of 
Turkish population in Europe. And certainly there will be, sooner or later, 
an absolute necessity of freeing one of the finest parts of this continent from 

British Politics—Disraeli—The Refugees—Mazzini in London— Turkey 

the rule of a mob, compared to which the mob of Imperial Rome was an 
assemblage of sages and heroes. 

Among the other nationalities, we may dispose in a very few words of the 
Arnauts, ahardy aboriginal mountain people, inhabiting the country sloping 
toward the Adriatic, speaking a language of their own, which, however, 
appears to belong to the great Indo-European stock. They are partly Greek 
Christians, partly Moslems, and, according to all we know of them, as yet 
very unprepared for civilization. Their predatory habits will force any neigh- 
boring government to hold them in close military subjection, until industrial 
progress in the surrounding districts shall find them employment as hewers 
of wood and drawers of water, the same as has been the case with the 
Gallegos in Spain, and the inhabitants of mountainous districts generally. 

The Wallachians or Daco-Romans, the chief inhabitants of the district 
between the Lower Danube and the Dniester, are agreatly mixed population, 
belonging to the Greek Church and speaking a language derived from the 
Latin, and in many respects not unlike the Italian. Those of Transylvania 
and the Bukowina belong to the Austrian, those of Bessarabia to the Russian 
Empire; those of Moldavia and Wallachia, the two only principalities where 
the Daco-Roman race has acquired a political existence, have Princes of their 

own, under the nominal suzeraineté of the Porte and the real dominion of 
Russia. Of the Transylvanian Wallachians we heard much during the Hungar- 
ian War; hitherto oppressed by the feudalism of Hungarian landlords who 
were, according to the Austrian system, made at the same time the in- 
struments of all Government exactions, this brutalized mass was in like 
manner as the Ruthenian serfs of Galicia in 1846, won over by Austrian 
promises and bribes, and began that war of devastation which has made a 
desert of Transylvania. The Daco-Romans of the Turkish Principalities have 
at least a native nobility and political institutions ; and in spite of all the efforts 
of Russia, the revolutionary spirit has penetrated among them, as the in- 

30 surrection of 1848 well proved. There can hardly bea doubt that the exactions 

and hardships inflicted upon them during the Russian occupation since 1848 
must have raised this spirit still higher, in spite of the bond of common 
religion and Czaro-Popish superstition which has hitherto led them to look 
upon the imperial chief of the Greek Church as upon their natural protector. 
And if this is the case, the Wallachian nationality may yet play an important 
part in the ultimate disposal of the territories in question. 

The Greeks of Turkey are mostly of Slavonic descent, but have adopted 
the modern Hellenic language; in fact, with the exception of a few noble 
families of Constantinople and Trapezunt, it is now generally admitted that 
very little pure Hellenic blood is to be found even in Greece. The Greeks, 
along with the Jews, are the principal traders in the seaports and many inland 

Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels 

towns. They are also tillers of the sou in some districts. In all cases, neither 
their numbers, compactness, nor spirit of nationality, give them any political 
weight as a nation, except in Thessaly and perhaps Epirus. The influence 
held by a few noble Greek families as dragomans (interpreters) in Con- 
stantinople, is fast declining, since Turks have been educated in Europe and 
European legations have been provided with attachés who speak Turkish. 
We now come to the race that forms the great mass of the population and 
whose blood is preponderant wherever a mixture of races has occurred. In 
fact it may be said to form the principal stock of the Christian population 
from the Morea to the Danube, and from the Black Sea to the Arnaut 
Mountains. This race is the Slavonic race, and more particularly that branch 
of it which is resumed under the name of Ulyrian (Tlirski,) or South Slavonian 
(Jugoslavenski.) After the Western Slavonian (Polish and Bohemian,) and 
Eastern Slavonian (Russian,) it forms the third branch of that numerous 
Slavonic family which for the last twelve hundred years has occupied the 
East of Europe. These southern Slavonians occupy not only the greater part 
of Turkey, but also Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia and the south of Hungary. 
They all speak the same language, which is much akin to the Russian, and 
by far to western ears, the most musical of all Slavonic tongues. The Croa- 
tians and part of the Dalmatians are Roman Catholics, all the remainder 
belong to the Greek Church. The Roman Catholics use the Latin alphabet, 
but the followers of the Greek Church write their language in the Cyrillic 
character, which is also used in the Russian and old Slavonic or Church 
language. This circumstance connected with the difference of religion, has 
contributed to retard any national development embracing the whole south 
Slavonic territory. A man in Belgrade may not be able to read a book printed 
in his own language at Agram or Betch, he may object even to take it up, 
on account of the "heterodox" alphabet and orthography used therein; while 
he will have little difficulty in reading and understanding a book printed at 
Moscow, in the Russian language, because the two idioms, particularly in 
the old Slavonic etymological system of orthography, look very much alike, 
and because the book is printed in the "orthodox" (pravoslavni) alphabet. 
The mass of the Greek Slavonians will not even have their bibles, liturgies 
and prayer books printed in their own country, because they are convinced 
that there is a peculiar correctness and orthodoxy and odor of sanctity about 
anything printed in holy Moscow or in the imperial printing establishment 
of St. Petersburg. In spite of all the panslavistic efforts of Agram and Prague 
enthusiasts, the Serbian, the Bulgarian, the Bosnian Rayah, the Slavonian 
peasant of Macedonia and Thracia, has more national sympathy, more points 

of contact, more means of intellectual intercourse with the Russian than with 40 

the Roman Catholic south Slavonian who speaks the same language. What- 

British Politics—Disraeli—The Refugees—Mazzini in London— Turkey 

ever may happen, he looks to St. Petersburg for the advent of the Messiah 
who is to deliver him from all evil; and if he calls Constantinople his Tsarigrad 
or Imperial City, it is as much in anticipation of the orthodox Tsar coming 
from the north and entering it to restore the true faith, as in recollection of 
the orthodox Tsar who held it before the Turks overran the country. 

Subjected in the greater part of Turkey to the direct rule of the Turk, but 
under local authorities of their own choice, partly (in Bosnia) converted to 
the faith of the conqueror, the Slavonian race has, inthat country, maintained 
or conquered political existence in two localities. The one is Serbia, the valley 

of the Morava, a province with well defined natural lines of frontier, which 

played an important part in the history of these regions six hundred years 
ago. Subdued for a while by the Turks, the Russian war of 1806 gave it a 
chance of obtaining a separate existence, though under the Turkish su- 
premacy. It has remained ever since under the immediate protection of 
Russia. But, as in Moldavia and Wallachia, political existence has brought 
on new wants, and forced upon Serbia an increased intercourse with Western 
Europe. Civilization began to take root, trade extended, new ideas sprang 
up; and thus we find in the very heart and stronghold of Russian influence, 
in Slavonic, orthodox Serbia, an anti-Russian, progressive party, (of course, 
very modest in its demands of reform,) headed by the ex-Minister of Fi- 
nances Garashanin. 

There is no doubt that, should the Greco-Slavonian population ever obtain 
the mastery in the land which it inhabits and where it forms three-fourths 
of the whole population (seven millions,) the same necessities would by and 

by give birth to an anti-Russian, progressive party, the existence of which 
has been hitherto the inevitable consequence of any portion of it having 
become semi-detached from Turkey. 

In Montenegro, we have not afertile valley with comparatively large cities, 
but a barren mountain country of difficult access. Here a set of robbers have 

fixed themselves, scouring the plains and storing the plunder in their moun- 
tain fastnesses. These romantic but rather uncouth gentlemen have long been 
a nuisance in Europe, and it is but in keeping with the policy of Russia and 
Austria that they should stick up for the rights of the Black Mountain people 
(Tsernogorci) to burn down villages, murder the inhabitants and carry off 
the cattle. 

Karl Marx.