The Late Birmingham Conference^[288]

It is a great mistake to judge of the movement in England by the reports in the London press. Take, for instance, the late Birmingham Conference. The majority of the London newspapers did not even notice it, while the remainder contained only the meager intelligence of its having taken place. Yet what was this Conference? It was a public Congress composed of delegates from Birmingham, London, Huddersfield, Newcastle, Halifax, Sheffield, Leeds, Derby, Bradford, Nottingham and other places, convened to take the task of discussing the most important subject of the day—the foreign policy of England—out of the hands of an incapable and collapsing Parliament.

The movement, undoubtedly, had been instigated by the meetings addressed by Mr. Urquhart throughout the factory districts, and the distinguishing feature of the Conference just held at Birmingham was the harmonious working together of men from the middle and the laboring classes. The Conference divided itself into various Committees charged to report on the most prominent questions of British foreign policy. I have been favored with a detailed account of the proceedings and the documents connected therewith, of which I proceed to place the most characteristic before the readers of the Tribune. The first is a correspondence between the Secretary of the Conference and Lord Malmesbury, the Foreign Minister of Lord Derby, concerning the treaty on the Danish succession[289] of May 8, 1852. Lord Malmesbury writes[a]:

"Sir: I have had the honor of receiving your invitation to attend the Birmingham Conference on the 17th, 18th and 19th July. It will not be in my power to do so. As you request me to furnish you with any useful information on the subject of the proposed subjects of inquiry, I do not hesitate to observe that your resolution passed on July 6, respecting the Danish treaty of 8th May, 1852, is founded on a totally erroneous view of the cases and facts. It is not true that the succession to Denmark, the Sound and Schleswig-Holstein, is secured to Russia by that treaty. Russia has obtained no right, present or prospective, that she did not possess before the treaty. There are now four male heirs to the crown of Denmark alive. The treaty prescribes that if their extinction should become universal, the high contracting parties—namely, Austria, Prussia, Russia, England, France and Sweden—shall engage to take into consideration any further proposition made to them by the King of Denmark[b] for securing the succession on the principle of the integrity of the Danish monarchy. Should this remote contingency occur, the contracting powers would therefore meet again to settle the Danish succession, and I leave you to judge whether the Five Powers who signed the treaty of 8th May with Russia are likely in such a case to determine that, as head of the house of Holstein-Gottorp, she should annex to her dominions the whole of the present Danish monarchy.

"I have the honor etc.

Malmesbury."[c]

The following is the answer of the Secretary to Lord Malmesbury's letter:

"My Lord: I am instructed by the Birmingham Conference to thank your lordship for your very important communication on the subject of the Danish Treaty. We gather from it that in the case of the expected failure of the four heirs to the United Monarchy of Denmark, England and Russia are pledged to interfere between the King of Denmark on the one hand, and the several States of Denmark, Schleswig and Holstein on the other. We are at a loss to know by what right such an interference can be justified, and we cannot but think the fact of war with Russia ought to be taken advantage of in order to enable us to abstain from so immoral and illegal action. You give us to understand that you think the character of the six Powers is a security against the admission of Russia to the whole succession in right, first, of Holstein-Gottorp, and secondly, of the principle of the integrity of the monarchy. We are most anxious to learn from your lordship who will come in for the whole if Russia does not, and, if England did not mean Russia to come in for the whole, why did she not make Russia's renunciation of Holstein-Gottorp a condition of the treaty? As your lordship signed the treaty in question, it is to be presumed either that these questions are unanswerable, or that your lordship will be the person of all others, best able to give to them a satisfactory answer. I am, therefore, instructed to request that your lordship will be so kind as to answer these questions, and thus relieve us from a source of great uneasiness. I have the honor to be, etc.,

"Langford."

The correspondence stops here—Lord Malmesbury not having felt inclined to go on. His Lordship's inability to answer those questions is, however, not without an excuse—the noble lord having found all points concerning the Danish Succession so well settled by Lord Palmerston's Protocol of July 4, 1850[d], that the Treaty required indeed his mere signature.

The second document is the report of the committee appointed by the Conference, on the famous Four Points[e][291]. I quote as follows[f]:

"In endeavoring to ascertain the character - of the Four Points as the basis of peace, your Committee have considered the development given to them by the Conference at Vienna, the amount of support or opposition that each proposal for such development has received from the respective Powers, the time and the manner in which the Points were first laid down by the Cabinets of England and France, the source from which they originally sprang, and their relevance to the avowed object of the War—viz., the Independence and Integrity of the Ottoman Empire. We find their source in the following proposition, laid down in the dispatch of Count Nesselrode, of June 29, 1854, and headed, 'Consolidation of the Rights of the Christians in Turkey': 'Setting out from the idea that the civil rights to be obtained for all the Christian subjects of the Porte are inseparable from religious rights, as is stipulated by the Protocol—and would in fact become valueless to our co-religionists if, in acquiring new rights, they should lose their old ones—we have already declared, that, if this were the case, the demands made by the Emperor[g] on the Porte would be fulfilled, the cause of the dispute done away with, and his Majesty would be ready to give his concurrence to a European guaranty for this privilege.'

"This proposal, which is a proposal for the perpetual interference, not of one, but of five Powers, in the internal affairs of Turkey, was accepted on the part of England and France, in the shape of what is now known as the Fourth Point, couched in the following terms by Drouyn de Lhuys, in his dispatch of 22d of July, 1854, which was the reply to Count Nesselrode: 'That no Power shall claim the right to exercise any official protectorate over the subjects of the Sublime Porte, to' whatever rights they may belong, but that France, Austria, Great Britain, Prussia and Russia, shall lend their mutual cooperation in order to obtain from the initiative of the Ottoman Government the consecration and observance of the religious privileges of the various Christian communities, and turn the generous intentions manifested by the Sultan[h] to the account of their various co-religionists, so that there shall not result therefrom any infringement of the dignity and independence of his crown.'

"The effect of the Fourth Point is to destroy the independence of the Ottoman Empire, which it is the avowed object of the war to defend, but its illegality consists in the fact that this proposed surrender has been made by England and France without the consent of Turkey, and persisted in by them in spite of Turkey's refusal to discuss the point at the Conference of Vienna. To use the words of Sidney Herbert, 'the matter is complicated by the fact that we are agreed with our enemy but not with our ally.'

"Had we been beaten in war by Russia and compelled to sue for peace we could not legally have made such a proposal on the part of another Power. In order to remove this illegality it would be necessary first for England and France to go over openly to Russia and to declare war against Turkey. As the Fourth Point is the surrender of the independence of Turkey, so the First Point is the surrender of her integrity; and, as in the Fourth Point, that surrender is made without the consent of the party concerned; such consent to the development of the First Point having been expressly reserved by the Turkish Plenipotentiary.

"We find that the separation of Wallachia, Moldavia and Servia from Turkey is concealed under the statement that they are still to be subject to the Porte.[...] The phrase, 'no exclusive protection shall in future be exercised over those provinces, ' is developed in five succeeding articles, which put the Five Powers in the same condition with the Porte as Joint Suzerain, and receives its finishing stroke from the proposal made by France and England at the sixth meeting of the Conference, that Wallachia and Moldavia should be united in a single State, under a hereditary Prince chosen from one of the reigning families of Europe. But the infamy of this surrender, alike of the avowed purposes of England, and of the rights of our ally—Turkey—is enhanced by the fact that it was made at a time when the armies of Russia were compelled to evacuate the Turkish territory, without the smallest assistance from the forces of England and France. As the surrender of the integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire was thus made before the expedition to Sevastopol, it follows that this expedition must have been intended for the purpose of enforcing that surrender—enforcing it upon Turkey by exhausting her resources, enforcing it upon England by representing it as a triumph over Russia. We find this last view of the matter supported by Mr. Gladstone when he pointed out that Russia refused the Four Points before the expedition to Sevastopol, and accepted them afterward. [...]

"We cannot for a moment suppose that the English Cabinet was not aware that by substituting Austrian for Turkish soldiers in Wallachia and Moldavia they were setting free the Russian army to support Sevastopol, nor is the supposition that this was a concession to Austria, made for the purpose of obtaining her adherence to the Turkish cause, a tenable proposition in the face of the two facts that the nominal objects of our interference [...] were already on the one hand secured by the Turkish victories over the Russians, and on the other hand surrendered by the terms of peace already offered to Russia in the fourth and first points.[i]

"The second point was the free navigation of the Danube. The interruption of the navigation of the Danube dates from the cession by Turkey to Russia, at the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829, of the delta of the Danube—a cession which was contrary to the Treat; of London of July 6, 1827, which bound Russia to acquire no Turkish territory[292]. The acquiescence of England in this violation of public law was defended by her desire for peace—a pretense which is at all instances inconsistent with the existing state of war. The cession of the Danubian delta to Turkey was an indispensable demand in any real war of England against Russia. [...] It has, on the contrary, been made a means of injury to Austria. At the fourth meeting of the Vienna Conference, held March 21, 1855, Baron Prokesch, the Austrian Plenipotentiary, having proposed that Russia should admit the neutrality of the Danubian delta, the Russian Plenipotentiary[j] said 'that they would not consent to an arrangement which had the appearance of an indirect expropriation'. Lord J. Russell did not support the very moderate proposal of Austria, and the question was settled on the 23d of March in favor of the continued possession by Russia of the Danubian delta.[...][k]

"The Third Point is as follows: That the treaty of 1841 293 shall be revised by the high contracting powers in the interest of the European equilibrium, and in the sense of a limitation of Russian power in the Black Sea.

"To give sincerity and reality to the Third Point, it is necessary to divide it into two, and then correct the false terms of the Second Point. These two Points should he: First, the limitation of the power of Russia; second, the restoration of the rights of Turkey in the Straits of the Dardanelles and of the Bosphorus. Russia has not a natural preponderance in the Black Sea: she is not able to descend from Sevastopol and take possession of Constantinople and of Turkey; had she possessed this power she would have used it. [...] She must, therefore, have been withheld in the past, and can only continue to be withheld for the future by the impracticability of the undertaking. As a preparation for such an undertaking, she has robbed Turkey by treaty, not of her fair share of power in the Black Sea, but of the exclusive control of the Straits which command her capital in the Bosphorus, and which secure it at the Dardanelles. [...][l] For the restoration of the Sultan's exclusive control of the Straits, no stipulation was necessary; it reverts to him on the abrogation by the fact of war of the treaties by which it has been temporarily placed in abeyance. This simple view of the case has, however, not even been suggested at the Conference of Vienna. If we read the dispatch of 14th June, 1853, of Lord Clarendon to the Austrian Government, we shall find the reason in the words: the just claims of Russia. If the claims of Russia were just, and if England intended to support them, England should have declared war against Turkey. [...]"[m]

"With regard to the limitation of the power of Russia, your Committee would direct attention to the following memorable words of the Austrian plenipotentiary, Count Buol, in his letter of 20th May, 1855: 'In our opinion the joint efforts of the Allies should be directed to limiting the political power of Russia to such a point as to render the abuse of its material resources if not impossible, at least in the highest degree difficult. The diminution, nay, even the total destruction of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea, would not of itself suffice to deprive Russia of the advantage which she derives from her geographical position with regard to Turkey.'

"Of all the delusions attempted by the English Government upon Parliament, the only one which has failed has been the proposal for limiting the naval power of Russia in the Black Sea.[...] Had the war been intended as announced—to protect the integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire—the terms of peace offered to Russia would have been: 1. Cession to Turkey of the Danubian Delta, which de jure it still has; 2. indemnification by Russia of the expenses of the war. [...]"

The Committee wind up their report as follows:

"Your committee find it impossible to reconcile these facts with the innocence of the British Cabinet[n]. It would be a want of discernment to suppose that all the members of the Cabinet have been thoroughly cognizant of the nature of their conduct. One cannot however overlook the preeminence of the four Foreign Ministers, Lord Clarendon, Lord Aberdeen, Lord John Russell, and above all Lord Palmerston, whose aid in securing the recognition of the Treaty of Adrianople, the payment to Russia, even in time of war, of the Russo-Dutch loan, the Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi and of the Dardanelles, and the Treaty of Balta-Liman[294], and whose perfidy toward Poland, Hungary, Sicily and Italy, no less than his treachery toward France, Persia, Spain, and Denmark, point him out as the implacable enemy—not only of Turkey, but of every nation of Europe, the willing tool of Russia, and the master in the English Cabinet of those whom he has reduced to the condition of accomplices, and compelled previously to assist in the crimes which at first they wanted the intellect to detect, the honesty to resist, the courage to punish. In such punishment dealt out by the highest tribunal in the land, and with all the solemnities with which the ancient law and custom surrounded those impeached of high treason, your committee place their only hope of rescuing the people from the conspirators who have betrayed them to a foreign power."

Notes

At the insistence of the British government, Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia signed a convention in London on July 15, 1840, on military assistance to Turkey in its war against Egypt (1839-41). In the autumn of 1840 British and Austrian warships bombarded Beirut, Saint-Jean-d'Acre and other for-tresses on the Syrian coast, which had been captured by Mehemet Ali, the ruler of Egypt, between 1831 and 1833. Eventually Mehemet Ali was forced to relinquish his possessions outside Egypt and submit to the supreme authority of the Sultan.