[Events in Syria.—
Session of the British Parliament.—
The State of British Commerce]

London, July 28, 1860

The Blue Book on the Syrian disturbances[a] having only just been issued, and Lord Stratford de Redcliffe having announced for Tuesday next his interpellation respecting the Syrian affairs[b][316], I delay entering on this momentous subject, and would only warn your readers to not be carried away by the sentimental declamations of the Decembrist press, the feelings of horror at the atrocious outrages of wild tribes, and the natural sympathy felt for the sufferers. But there are a few points which ought steadily to be fixed upon. In the first instance, the Russian Empire, consequent upon the internal collisions that have arisen out of the serf emancipation movement and the dilapidated state of finances, finds itself in a fix out of which the present Government knows not how to get itself safe by a war on a grand scale. War appears to them the only means of shifting off the impending revolution so confidentially predicted in Prince Dolgoroukow's La vérité sur la Russie. Consequently, it is about three months since Prince Gorchakoff tried to reopen the Oriental question by issuing his circular[c] on the grievances of the Christians in Turkey, but his appeal, reechoed only by a solitary voice from the Tuileries, fell flat on the ears of Europe.

Even from that time Russian and French agents were bestirring themselves to bring about a politico-religious row—the former on the Dalmatian, the latter on the Syrian coast—both movements supporting each other, since the troubles in Montenegro and the Herzegovina compelled the Porte to withdraw almost the whole Turkish army stationed in Syria, so as to leave the arena open to the high-pitched antagonism of the barbarous clans of the Lebanon. The Emperor of the French found himself placed in the same necessity as the orthodox Czar[d], of looking out for some fresh and thrilling crusade, to plunge his Empire again into the Lethe of war-hallucinations. The Italian movement, slipping out of his leading-strings, and taking a course contrary to the direction he wanted to impart to it, had, as was delicately hinted in the Constitutionnel[e], become a bore in the opinion of Paris. His attempts at wheedling the Prince Regent of Prussia[f] into a violent "consolidation of Germany," to be paid by a "moral compensation" for France in the shape of the Rhenish Provinces, turned out a signal failure, and even cast some ridicule on the entrepreneur of the emancipation-of-nationalities dodge. The conflict Louis Napoleon found himself involved in with the Pope[317] damaged the prop on which his sway over the peasantry rests—the Catholic clergy of France.

The Imperial exchequer was reduced for some time to, and continues in a state of, exhaustion, which it was vainly tried to cure by throwing out the hint of the expediency of an emprunt de la paix (a peace-loan). This was too much even for Decembrist France. To eke out one loan contracted on the pretext of war by a subsequent loan contracted on the pretext of peace, was a presumption abhorrent even to the Paris stock-jobbers. Some faint voice in the emasculated Paris press dared to insinuate that the blessings of the second Empire were as great as expensive, the nation having bought them by an increase to the amount of fifty per cent of the public debt. The project of a peace loan of 500,000,000f. was consequently dropped, a retreat that only encouraged Mr. Favre to descant in the Corps Législatif on the impending "financial crash," and to tear to pieces the flowery gauze which the Imperial Budgetmonger had thrown over the State chest. The strictures in the Corps Législatif among the "chiens savants" (the learned dogs) of the mock representation, hazarded by Mr. Favre and Mr. Olivier[g], on the characteristic features of the Decembrist régime, as well as the furious onslaught on the intrigues of the "old parties"[318], with which the official, the semi-official, and officious press of Paris teems, coincided in bearing witness to the stern fact, that the rebellious spirit of Gaul is rekindling from its cinders, and that the continuance of the usurper's rule again depends on the enactment of a grand war-spectacle, as it did two years after the coup d'état, and again two years after the conclusion of. the Crimean episode. It is evident that the Autocrat of France and the Autocrat of Russia[h], laboring both under the same urgent necessity of sounding the war-trumpet, act in common concert. While Bonapartist semi-official pamphlets[i] offered to the Prince Regent of Prussia[j] "German Union," backed by a "moral compensation" for France, the Emperor Alexander, as has just been publicly stated, without a denial on the part of the Berlin governmental press, in the publications of the German "National Association"[319], openly proposed to his uncle [Wiliam] the annexation to Prussia of the whole of Northern Germany up to the main, on the condition of a cession to France of the Rhenish Provinces, and of connivance at the progress of Russia on the Danube. It is this fact simultaneously thrown out by both the Autocrats that has brought about the rendezvous at Teplitz between the Emperor of Austria and the Prince Regent[320]. The conspirators of Petersburg and Paris had, however, in case their temptations of Prussia should fail, kept in reserve the thrilling incident of the Syrian massacres, to be followed by a French intervention which, as it would not do to enter through the main gate, would open the back door of a general European war. In respect to England I will only add, that, in 1841, Lord Palmerston furnished the Druses with the arms they kept ever since, and that, in 1846, by a convention with the Czar Nicholas, he abolished, in point of fact, the Turkish sway that curbed the wild tribes of the Lebanon, and stipulated for them a quasi-independence[321] which, in the run of time, and under the proper management of foreign plotters, could only beget a harvest of blood.

You are aware that the present Parliamentary session stands unrivalled by a startling succession of Government failures. Apart from Mr. Gladstone's abortion of protective duties, not one single important measure has been carried. But while the Government were withdrawing bill after bill, they had contrived to smuggle through the second reading a little resolution[k], consisting of one single little clause, which, if carried, would have brought about the greatest constitutional change witnessed in England ever since 1689[322]. That resolution simply proposed the abolition of the local English army in India, its absorption into the British army, and consequently the transfer of its supreme command from the Governor-General at Calcutta to the London Horse Guards, alias the Duke of Cambridge. Quite apart from the other serious consequences such a change must be fraught with, it would put part of the army out of the control of Parliament, and, on the grandest scale, add to the Royal patronage. It seems that some members of the Indian Council, who unanimously objected to the Government project, but, by virtue of the Indian Act of 1858[323], can occupy no seats in the House of Commons, whispered their protests into the ears of some M.P.s, and so it came that when the Government already considered their dodge to be safe, a sudden Parliamentary émeute[l], led by Mr. Horsman[m], broke through their intrigue in the very nick of time. It is a truly ludicrous spectacle, this perplexity of a Cabinet unexpectedly found out, and the bewilderment of a House of Commons fretting at the snares laid to its own profound ignorance.

The declared value of the exports for last month shows the progress of the downward movement of British commerce. I have singled out in a previous letter[n] [that], compared with the exports of June, 1859, there is a falling off of nearly a million and a half sterling for June, 1860.

The returns for the month of June in the last three years are as follows[o]:

For the half year ending with the 30th June, the declared value of the exports is less by a million than in the same six months of last year:

The falling off of the last month is distributed over the cotton, cotton yarn, linen, hardware, and cutlery, iron and worsted trade. Even in the exports of manufactured woolen goods, the trade in which has hitherto shown a steadily increasing prosperity, this month excepted, "woolen and worsted yarn" shows a decline. The export of cotton goods for the six months to British India has declined from £6,094,430, in the first half of 1859, to £4,738,440 in the first half of 1860, or by [about] £1,360,000 worth of goods.[p]

With regard to the imports the most striking feature is the huge bulk of the cotton arrivals. In June, 1860, 2,102,048 cwts. have been received, as against 1,655,306 cwts. in the June of last year, and 1,339,108 cwts. in June, 1858[q]. The increase for the six months is no less than three millions of hundredweights; so that the half year receipts are greater by more than 60 per cent. The cotton imported in the month of May, 1860, is worth more by £1,800,000 than the import in 1859. No less than six millions and a half sterling have been spent in raw cotton in the first five months of 1860, beyond what was so spent in the same period of the previous year.

If the rapid decrease in the export of cotton goods and yarns be compared with the still more decided increase in the cotton imports, it will be understood that some cotton crisis is approaching, the more so since the new arrivals of the raw material fall upon unusually replete cotton stores.

Notes