The hollowness of the new pretexts of Russia is apparent, after the Sultan [Abdul Mejid] has granted, in his new firman to the Patriarch of Constantinople [Germanos] more than the Czar himself had asked for -- so far as religion goes. Now was, perhaps, the "pacification of Greece"  a more solid pretext? When M. de Vill le, in order to tranquilize the apprehensions of the Sultan [Mahmud II], and to give a proof of the pure intentions of the Great Powers, proposed "that the allies ought above all things to conclude a Treaty by which the actual status quo of the Ottoman Empire should be guaranteed to it," the Russian Ambassador at Paris [K. O. Pozzo di Borgo] opposed this proposition to the utmost, affirming Russia pretends now to occupy the Danubian principalities, without giving to the Porte the right of considering this step as a casus belli. Russia pretended, in 1827, "to occupy Moldavia and Wallachia in the name of the three Powers." While Russia proclaimed the following in her declaration of war of April 26, 1828: In 1828, when Pozzo di Borgo was interpellated by Charles X about the bad success of the Russian arms in the campaign of that year, he replied, that, not wishing to push the war outrance without absolute necessity, the Emperor had hoped that the Sultan would have profited by his generosity, which experiment had now failed. Shortly before commencing her present quarrel with the Porte Russia sought to bring about a general coalition of the Continental Powers against England, on the Refugee question, and having failed in that experiment, she attempted to bring about a coalition with England against France. Similarly, from 1826 to 1828, she intimidated Austria by the "ambitious projects of Prussia," doing simultaneously all that was in her power to swell the power and pretensions of Prussia, in order to enable her to balance Austria. In her present circular note she indicts Bonaparte as the only disturber of peace by his pretensions respecting the Holy Places ; but, at that time, in the language of Pozzo di Borgo, she attributed There is a facetious story told of two Persian naturalists who were examining a bear; the one who had never seen such an animal before, inquired whether that animal dropped its cubs alive or laid eggs; to which the other, who was better informed, replied: "That animal is capable of anything." The Russian bear is certainly capable of anything, so long as he knows the other animals he has to deal with to be capable of nothing. En passant, I may mention the signal victory Russia has just won in Denmark, the Royal message having passed with a majority of 119 against 28, in the following terms: In January, 1848, the mill-owners of the town made a general reduction of 10 per cent. from all descriptions of factory-workers' wages. This reduction was submitted to upon the condition that when trade revived the 10 per cent. was to be restored. Accordingly the work-people memorialized their employers, early in March, 1853, for the promised advance of 10 per cent.; and as they would not come to arrangements with them, upward of 30,000 hands struck. In the majority of instances, the factory-workmen affirmed distinctly their right to share in the prosperity of the country, and especially in the prosperity of their employers. The distinctive feature of the present strikes is this, that they began in the lower ranks of unskilled labor (not factory labor) actually trained by the direct influence of emigration, according to various strata of artizans, till they reached at last the factory people of the great industrial centers of Great Britain; while at all former periods strikes originated regularly from the heads of the factory-workers, mechanics, spinners, &c., spreading thence to the lower classes of this great industrial hive, and reaching only in the last instance, to the artizans. This phenomenon is to be ascribed solely to emigration. There exists a class of philanthropists, and even of socialists, who consider strikes as very mischievous to the interests of the "workingman himself," and whose great aim consists in finding out a method of securing permanent average wages. Besides, the fact of the industrial cyclus, with its various phases, putting every such average wages out of the question. I am, on the very contrary, convinced that the alternative rise and fall of wages, and the continual conflicts between masters and men resulting therefrom, are, in the present organization of industry, the indispensable means of holding up the spirit of the laboring classes, of combining them into one great association against the encroachments of the ruling class, and of preventing them from becoming apathetic, thoughtless, more or less well-fed instruments of production. In a state of society founded upon the antagonism of classes, if we want to prevent Slavery in fact as well as in name, we must accept war. In order to rightly appreciate the value of strikes and combinations, we must not allow ourselves to be blinded by the apparent insignificance of their economical results, but hold, above all things, in view their moral and political consequences. Without the great alternative phases of dullness, prosperity, over-excitement, crisis and distress, which modern industry traverses in periodically recurring cycles, with the up and down of wages resulting from them, as with the constant warfare between masters and men closely corresponding with those variations in wages and profits, the working-classes of Great Britain, and of all Europe, would be a heart-broken, a weak-minded, a worn-out, unresisting mass, whose self-emancipation would prove as impossible as that of the slaves of Ancient Greece and Rome. We must not forget that strikes and combinations among the serfs were the hot-beds of the mediaeval communes, and that those communes have been in their turn, the source of life of the now ruling bourgeoisie. I observed in one of my last letters, of what importance the present labor-crisis must turn out to the Chartist movement in England, which anticipation I now find realized by the results obtained in the first two weeks of the reopened campaign by Ernest Jones, the Chartist leader. The first great open-air meeting was, as you know, to be held on the mountain of Blackstone-Edge. On the 19th ult., the Lancashire and Yorkshire delegates of the respective Chartist localities congregated there, constituting themselves as Delegate-Council Ernest Jones's petition for the Charter was unanimously adopted as that proposed to emanate from the meetings in the two counties, and the presentation of the Lancashire and Yorkshire petitions was voted to be entrusted to Mr. Apsley Pellatt, M. P. for Southwark, who had agreed to undertake the presentation of all Chartist petitions. As to the general meeting, the most sanguine minds did not anticipate its possibility, the weather being terrific, the storm increasing hourly in violence and the rain pouring without intermission. At first there appeared only a few scattered groups climbing up the hill, but soon larger bodies came into sight, and from an eminence that overlooked the surrounding valleys, thin but steady streams of people could be viewed as far as the eye could carry, through the base pelting of the rain, coming upward along the roads and footpaths leading from the surrounding country. By the time at which the meeting was announced to commence, upward of 3,000 people had met on the spot, far removed from any village or habitation, and during the long speeches, the meeting, notwithstanding the most violent deluge of rain, remained steadfast on the ground Mr. Edward Hooson's resolution: "That the social grievances of the working classes of the country are the result of class-legislation, and that the only remedy for such class-legislation is the adoption of the people's Charter," was supported by Mr. Gammage, of the Chartist Executive,  and Mr. Ernest Jones, from whose speeches I give some extracts. At the meeting of Blackstone-Edge, Ernest Jones had announced the death of Benjamin Ruston, a workingman who seven years before, had presided at the great Chartist meeting held at the same spot ; and he proposed that his funeral should be made a great political demonstration, and be connected with the West Riding meeting for the adoption of the Charter, as the noblest obsequies to be given to that expired veteran. Never before in the annals of British Democracy, has such a demonstration been witnessed, as that which attended the revival of Chartism in the West Riding, and the funeral of Benjamin Ruston, on Sunday last [June 26, 1853], when upward of 200,000 people were assembled at Halifax, a number unprecedented even in the most excited times. To those who know nothing of English society but its dull, apoplectic surface, it should be recommended to assist at these workingmen's meetings and to look into those depths where its destructive elements are at work. The Coalition has gained the preliminary battle on the Indian question, Lord Stanley's motion for delay of legislation having been rejected by a majority of 182 votes [In the House of Commons on June 30, 1853]. Pressure of matter obliges me to delay my comments upon that division. In his work on this article and other reports dealing with the history of international relations, Marx made use of materials and documents usually translated into English and published in The Portfolio; or a Collection of State Papers. His excerpts from this source are contained in Notebook XXII.
Karl Marx in New York Daily Tribune