London, Aug. 11, 1857 The Oriental question, which some fourteen months ago was said to have been settled by a peace at Paris, is now fairly reopened by a diplomatic strike at Constantinople. There the embassies of France, Russia, Prussia and Sardinia have hauled down their flags, and broken off their relations with the Porte. The Embassadors of England arid Austria. backing the resistance of the Divan against the demands of the Four Powers, simultaneously declared they should not shun any responsibility likely to arise out of the conflict. These events occurred on the 6th of the present month. The story of the drama is the old one, but the dramatis personae have shifted parts, and the plot is made to bear some air of novelty, through the contrivance of a new mise en sc ne. It is now not Russia, but France, that occupies the vanguard. M. Thouvenel, her Embassador at Constantinople, in a somewhat affected, Menchikoff strain, imperiously. called upon the Porte to annul the Moldavian elections, because Vogorides, the Kaimakam of Moldavia, by. unfair interference, and in violation of the treaty of Paris, had contrived to give the Anti-Unionists a majority of representatives. The Porte demurred to this dictation, but declared itself willing to summon the Kaimakam to Constantinople, there to answer the accusations brought forward against his administration. This proposal M. Thouvenel haughtily rejected, insisting on the inquiry into the electoral operations being handed over to the European Commission of reorgariization installed at Bucharest. Since the majority of that Commission is formed of the Commissioners of France, Russia, Prussia and Sardinia, the very parties working for the union of the Danubian Provinces, and charging Vogorides with the crime of illegal interference, the Porte, pushed on by the Embassadors of Great Britain and Austria, of course declined making its avowed antagonists the judges in their own cause. Then the catastrophe took place. The real point in question is evidently the same that gave origin to the Russian war, viz., the virtual separation of the Danubian Provinces from Turkey, this time attempted not in the form of a material guarantee, but in the form of a union of the Principalities under the sway of a European puppet-prince. Russia, in her calm, circumspect, patient way, never swerves from her settled purpose. Already she has succeeded in arraying, in an affair in which she alone is interested, some of her enemies against the rest, and may thus expect to subdue the one by the other . As to Bonaparte, he is actuated by various motives. He hopes to find a safety-valve against disaffection at home by complication abroad. He is immensely flattered that Russia deigns to figure in a French mask, and allows him to lead the dance. His empire of fictions must content itself with theatrical triumphs, arid, in the depths of his soul, he may delude himself with the notion of putting, with the aid of Russia, a Bonaparte on the mock throne of a Roumania extemporized by protocols. Since the famous Warsaw Conference of 1850 and the march of an Austrian army to the northern confines of Germany, Prussia pants for some little revenge to be wreaked on Austria, if it be allowed at the same time to keep out of harm s way. Sardinia rests all her hopes on a conflict with Austria, to be no longer waged by the dangerous alliance with Italian revolutions, but in the rear of the despotic powers of the continent. Austria is as earnest in counteracting the union of the Danubian Principalities as Russia is in forwarding it. She knows the prime motive of that scheme, which is still more immediately aimed at her own power than that of the Porte. Palmerston at last, the principal stock in trade of whose popularity consists of a spurious Anti-Russianism, must of course feign to share the real terrors of Francis Joseph. He, by all means, must appear to side with Austria and the Porte, and not to give way to Russian pressure unless constrained by France. Such is the position of the respective parties. The Rouman people are but a pretext, a thing quite out of the question. Even the most desperate enthusiasts will scarcely be able to muster a sufficient quantity of credulity to believe in Louis Napoleon s sincere zeal for the purity of popular elections, or in Russia s ardent desire to strengthen the Rouman nationality, the destruction of which has never ceased to form an object of her intrigues and her wars since the days of Peter the Great. A paper started at Brussels by certain self-styled Rouman patriots, and called L Etoile du Danube, has just published a series of documents relating to the Moldavian elections, the substantial part of which I propose to translate for The Tribune. It consists of letters addressed to Nicholas Vogorides, the Kaimakam of Moldavia, by Stephen Vogorides, his father; by Musurus, his brother-in-law, and the Turkish Embassador at London; by A. Vogorides, his brother, and the Secretary to the Turkish Embassy at London; by M. Fotiades, another brother-in-law of his, and the Charg d Affaires of the Moldavian Government at Constantinople; and, lastly, by Baron Prokesch, the Austrian Internuncio at the Sublime Porte. This correspondence was some time since stolen from the Jassy Palace of the Kaimakam, and the Etoile du Danube now boasts of the possession of the original letters. The Etoile du Danube considers burglary quite a respectable road to diplomatic information, and in this view of the case seems backed by the whole of the official European press. SECRET CORRESPONDENCE RELATING TO THE MOLDAVIAN ELECTIONS, PUBLISHED BY THE ETOILE DU DANUBE Fragment of a Letter of M. C. Musurus, the Ottoman Embassador at London, to the Kaimakam Vogorides A. Vogorides, Secretary to the Turkish Embassy at London, to the Kaimakam Vogorides The Same to the Same
Marx and Engels. First Indian War of Independence 1857-58