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MALLAM AI 2

There was no lack of praise for his lectures (see Kosmos). "A Worker" However, even this period of hard-earned pleasure was not to last forever. The Last Judgement on the existing world-order, the democratic day of judgement, namely the much celebrated May 1852 was drawing ever closer. In order to confront this day all booted and spurred Kinkel had to don his political lionskin once more: he had to make contact with the "Emigration". So we come to the London "Emigration", this hotchpotch of former members of the Frankfurt Parliament, the Berlin National Assembly, and Chamber of Deputies, of gentlemen from the Baden Campagne, Gargantuas from the Comedy of the Imperial Constitution, writers without a public, loudmouths from the democratic clubs and congresses, twelfth-rate journalists and so forth. The heroes of the 1848 revolution in Germany had been on the point of coming to a sticky end when the victory of ''tyranny'' rescued them, swept them out of the country and made saints and martyrs of them. They were saved by the counter-revolution. The course of continental politics brought most of them to London which thus became their European centre. It is evident that something had to happen, something had to be arranged to remind the public daily of the existence of these world-liberators. At all costs it must not become obvious that the course of universal history might be able to proceed without the intervention of these mighty men. The more this refuse of mankind found itself hindered by its own impotence as much as by the prevailing situation from undertaking any real action, the more zealously did it indulge in spurious activity whose imagined deeds, imagined parties, imagined struggles and imagined interests have been so noisily trumpeted abroad by those involved. The less able they were to bring about a new revolution the more they discounted the importance of such an eventuality in their minds, while they concentrated on sharing out the plum jobs and enjoying the prospect of future power. The form taken by this self-important activity was that of a mutual insurance club of the heroes-to-be and the reciprocal guarantee of government posts. The circular was the joint production of Messrs. Rudolph Schramm and Gustav Struve, behind whom lay concealed the merry figure of Mr. Arnold Ruge, a corresponding member living in Ostend at the time. Mr. Rudolph Schramm a rowdy, loudmouthed and extremely confused little mannikin whose life-motto came from Rameau's Nephew: I would rather be an impudent windbag than be nothing at all. When at the height of his power, Mr. Camphausen would gladly have given the young forward Crefelder an important post, had it been permissible to elevate a junior official. Thanks to bureaucratic etiquette Mr. Schrarnm found only the career of a democrat open to him. And in this profession he really did advance at one point to the post of President of the Democratic Club in Berlin and with the support of some left-wing Members of Parliament he became the Deputy for Striegau in the Berlin National Assembly. Here the normally so loquacious Schramm distinguished himself by his obstinate silence, which was accompanied, however, by an uninterrupted series of grunts. After the Assembly had been dissolved our democratic man of the people wrote a pamphlet in support of a constitutional monarchy but this did not suffice to get him re-elected. Later, at the time of the Brentano government he appeared momentarily in Baden and there in the Club for Resolute Progress he became acquainted with Struve. On his arrival in London he declared his intention of withdrawing from all political activity for which reason he then published the circular referred to above. Essentially a bureaucrat Mr. Schramm imagined that his family relations qualified him to represent the radical bourgeoisie in exile and he did indeed present a fair caricature of the radical bourgeois. Gustav Struve is one of the more important figures of the emigration. At the very first glimpse of his leathery appearance, his protuberant eyes with their sly, stupid expression, the matt gleam on his bald pate and his half Slav, half Kalmuck [a western mongol people] features one cannot doubt that one is in the presence of an unusual man. And this first impression is confirmed by his low, guttural voice, his oily manner of speaking and the air of solemn gravity he imparts to his gestures. To be just it must be said that faced with the greatly increased difficulties of distinguishing oneself these days, our Gustav at least made the effort to attract attention by using his diverse talents he is part prophet, part speculator, part bunion healer centring his activities on all kinds of peripheral matters and making propaganda for the strangest assortment of causes. For example, he was born a Russian but suddenly took it into his head to enthuse about the cause of German freedom after he had been employed in a minor capacity in the Russian embassy to the Federal Diet and had written a little pamphlet in defence of the Diet. Regarding his own skull as normal he suddenly developed an interest in phrenology and from then on he refused to trust anyone whose skull he had not yet felt and examined. He also gave up eating meat and preached the gospel of strict vegetarianism; he was, moreover, a weather-prophet, he inveighed against tobacco and was prominent in the interest of German Catholicism and water-cures. In harmony with his thoroughgoing hatred of scientific knowledge it was natural that he should be in favour of free universities in which the four faculties would be replaced by the study of phrenology, physiognomy, chiromancy and necromancy. It was also quite in character for him to insist that he must become a great writer simply because his mode of writing was the antithesis of everything that could be held to be stylistically acceptable. In the early Forties Gustav had already invented the Deutscher Zuschauer, a little paper that he published in Mannheim, that he patented and that pursued him everywhere as an id e fixe. He also made the discovery at around this time that Rotteck's History of the World and the Rotteck-Welcker Lexicon of Politics, the two works that had been his Old and New Testaments, were out of date and in need of a new democratic edition. This revision Gustav undertook without delay and published an extract from it in advance under the title The Basic Elements of Political Science. He argued that the revision had become "an undeniable necessity since 1848 as the late-lamented Rotteck had not experienced the events of recent years". In the meantime there broke out in Baden in quick succession the three "popular uprisings" that Gustav has placed in the very centre of the whole modern course of world history. Driven into exile by the very first of these revolts (Hacker's) and occupied with the task of publishing the Deutscher Zuschauer once again, this time from Basel, he was then dealt a hard blow by fate when the Mannheim publisher continued to print the Deutscher Zuschauer under a different editor. The battle between the true and the false Deutscher Zuschauer was so bitterly fought that neither paper survived. To compensate for this Gustav devised a constitution for the German Federal Republic in which Germany was to be divided into 24 republics, each with a president and two chambers; he appended a neat map on which the whole proposal could be clearly seen. In September 1848 the second insurrection began in which our Gustav acted as both Caesar and Socrates. He used the time granted him on German soil to issue serious warnings to the Black Forest Peasantry about the deleterious effects of smoking tobacco. In L rrach he published his Moniteur with the title of Government Organ German Free State Freedom, Prosperity, Education. This publication contained inter alia the following decree: The third member of the alliance, the great Arnold Ruge with his air of a sergeant-major living in hopes of civilian employment outshines in glory the whole of the emigration. It cannot be said that this noble man commends himself by his notably handsome exterior; Paris acquaintances were wont to sum up his Pomeranian-Slav features with the word "ferret-face" (figure de fouine). Arnold Ruge, the son of peasants of the isle of Rugen, had endured seven years in Prussian prisons for democratic agitation. He embraced Hegelian philosophy as soon as he had realised that once he had leafed through Hegel's Encyclopaedia he could dispense with the study of all other science. He also developed the principle (described in a Novelle and which he attempted to practice on his friends poor Georg Herwegh can vouch for the truth of this), of profiting from marriage and he early acquired a "substantial property" in this manner. Despite his Hegelian phrases and his substantial property he did not advance beyond the post of porter to German philosophy. In the Hallische-Jahrb cher [Halle Annals] and the Deutsche-Jahrb cher [German Annals] it was his task to announce and to trumpet the names of the great philosophers of the future and he showed that he was not without talent in exploiting them for his own purposes. Unfortunately, the period of philosophical anarchy soon supervened, that period when science no longer had a universally acknowledged king, when Strauss, Bruno Bauer and Feuerbadh fought among themselves and when the most diverse alien elements began to disrupt the simplicity of classical doctrine. Ruge looked on helplessly, he no longer knew which path to take; his Hegelian categories had always operated in a vacuum, now they ran completely amok and he suddenly felt the need for a mighty movement in which exact thought and writing were not indispensable. Ruge played the same role in the Hallische Jahrb cher as the late bookseller Nicolai had done in the old Berliner Monatsschrft [Berlin Monthly Magazine]. Like the latter his ambition was to print the works of others and in so doing, to derive material advantage and also to quarry literary sustenance for the effusions of his own brain. The only difference was that in this literary digestive process with its inevitable end product Ruge went much further than did his model in rewriting his collaborators' articles. Moreover, Ruge was not the porter of German Enlightenment, he was the Nicolai of modern German philosophy and thus was able to conceal the natural banality of his genius behind a thick hedge of speculative jargon. Like Nicolai he fought valiantly against Romanticism because Hegel had demolished it philosophically in the aesthetics and Heine had done the same thing from the point of view of literature in The Romantic School. Unlike Hegel he agreed with Nicolai in arrogating to himself the right as an anti-Romantic to set up a vulgar Philistinism and above all his own Philistinic self as an ideal of perfection. With this in mind and so as to defeat the enemy on his own ground Ruge went in for making verses. No Dutchman could have achieved the dull flatness of these poems which Ruge hurled so challengingly into the face of Romanticism. And in general our Pomeranian thinker did not really feel at ease in Hegelian philosophy. Able as he was in detecting contradictions he was all the more feeble in resolving them and he had a very understandable horror of dialectics. The upshot was that the crudest possible contradictions dwelt peaceably together in his dogmatic brain and that his powers of understanding, never very agile, were nowhere more at home than in such mixed company. It is not unknown for him to read simultaneously two articles by two different writers and to conflate them into a single new product without noticing that they had been written from two opposing viewpoints. Always riding firmly between his own contradictions he sought to extricate himself from condemnation by the theorists by declaring his faulty theory to be "practical", while at the same time he would disarm the practical by interpreting his practical clumsiness and inconsequentiality as theoretical expertise. He would end by sanctifying his own entanglement in insoluble contradictions, his chaotically uncritical faith in popular slogans by regarding them as proof that he was a man of "principle". Before we go on to concern ourselves with the further career of our Maurice of Saxony, as he liked to style himself in his intimate circle or friends, we would point to two qualities which made their appearance already in the Jahrb cher. [Deutsche Jahrb cher, edited by Ruge] The first is his mania for manifestos. No sooner had someone hatched a novel opinion that Ruge believed to have a future than he would issue a manifesto. As no-one reproaches him with ever having given birth to an original thought of his own, such manifestos were always suitable opportunity to claim this novel idea as his own property in a more or less declamatory fashion. This would be followed by the attempt to form a party, a "mass" which would stand behind him and to whom he could act as sergeant-major. We shall see later to what unbelievable heights of perfection Ruge had developed the art of fabricating manifestos, proclamations and pronunciamentos. The second quality is the particular diligence in which Arnold excels. As he does not care to study overmuch, or as he puts it to transfer ideas from one library into another , he prefers to gain his knowledge fresh from life . He means by this to note down conscientiously every evening all the witty, novel or bright ideas that he has read, heard or just picked up during the day. As opportunity arises these materials are then made to contribute to Ruge's daily stint which he labours at just as conscientiously as at his other bodily needs. It is this that his admirers refer to when they say that he cannot hold his ink. The subject of his daily literary production is a matter of complete indifference; what is vital is that Ruge should be able to immerse every possible topic in that wonderful stylistic sauce that goes with everything just like the English who enjoy their Soyer's relish or Worcester Sauce equally with fish, fowl, cutlets or anything else. This daily stylistic diarrhoea he likes to designate the all-pervading beautiful form and he regards it as adequate grounds for passing himself off as an artist. Contented as Ruge was to be the Swiss guard of German philosophy he still had a secret sorrow gnawing at his innermost vitals. He had not written a single large book and had daily to envy the happy Bruno Bauer who had published 18 fat volumes while still a young man. To reduce the discrepancy Ruge had one and the same essay printed three times in one and the same volume under different titles and then brought out the same volume in a number of different formats. In this way Arnold Ruge's Complete Works came into being and even today he derives much pleasure from counting them every morning volume by volume as they stand there neatly bound in his library, whereupon he exclaims joyfully: And anyway, Bruno Bauer is a man without principles! Even though Arnold did not manage to comprehend the Hegelian system of philosophy, he did succeed in representing one Hegelian category in his own person. He was the very incarnation of the honest consciousness and was strengthened in this when he made the pleasant discovery in the Phenomenology a book that was otherwise closed to him and bound with seven seals that the honest consciousness always has pleasure in itself . Though he wears his integrity on his sleeve the honest consciousness uses it to conceal the petty malice and crotchetiness of the Philistine; he has the right to allow himself every kind of base action because he knows that his baseness springs from honest motives. His very stupidity becomes a virtue because it is an irrefutable proof that he stands up for his principles. Despite every arri re pens e he is firmly convinced of his own integrity and however base or filthy an intended act may be it does not prevent him from appearing sincere and trusting. Beneath the halo of good intentions all the petty meannesses of the citizen become transformed into as many virtues; sordid self-interest appears as an innocent babe when dressed up to look like a piece of self-sacrifice; cowardice appears disguised as a higher form of courage, baseness becomes magnanimity, and the coarse manners of the peasant become ennobled, and indeed transfigured into the signs of decency and good humour. This is the gutter into which the contradictions of philosophy, democracy and the clich industry all pour; such a man is moreover richly endowed with all the vices, the mean and petty qualities, with the slyness and the stupidity, the greed and the clumsiness, the servility and the arrogance, the untrustworthiness and the bonhomie of the emancipated serf, the peasant; Philistine and ideologist, atheist and slogan worshipper, absolute ignoramus and absolute philosopher all in one that is Arnold Ruge as Hegel foretold him in 1806. After the Deutsche Jahrb cher were suppressed Ruge transported his family to Paris in a carriage specially designed for the purpose. Here, his unlucky star brought him into contact with Heine who honoured him as the man who "had translated Hegel into Pomeranian". Heine asked him whether Prutz was not a pseudonym of his which Ruge could deny in good conscience. However, it was not possible to make Heine believe that anyone but Arnold was the author of Prutz's poems. Heine also discovered very soon that even though Ruge had no talent he knew very well how to give the appearance of being a man of character. Thus it came about that Friend Arnold gave Heine the idea for his Atta Troll. If Ruge was not able to immortalise his sojourn in Paris by writing a great work he at least deserves our thanks for the one Heine produced for him. In gratitude the poet wrote for him this well-known epitaph: To overcome an innate social awkwardness Ruge has collected a small number of curious anecdotes that could be used on any occasion. He calls these anecdotes jokes. His preoccupation with these jokes, sustained over many years, finally led to the transformation of all events, situations and circumstances into a series of pleasant or unpleasant, good or bad, important or trivial, interesting or boring jokes. The Paris upheavals, the many new impressions, socialism, politics, the Palais-Royal, the cheapness of the oysters all these things wrought so powerfully on the mind of this unhappy wretch that his head went round and round in a permanent and incurable whirl of jokes and Paris itself became an unlimited storehouse of jokes. One of the brightest of these jokes was the idea of using wood shavings to make coats for the proletariat and in general he had a foible for industrial jokes for which he could never find enough share-holders. When the better known Germans were expelled from France Ruge contrived to avoid this fate by presenting himself to the minister, Duch tel, as a savant s rieux. He evidently had in mind the scholar in Paul de Kock's Amant de la lune, who established himself as a savant by means of an original device for propelling corks through the air. Shortly afterwards Arnold went to Switzerland where he joined forces with a former Dutch NCO, Cologne writer and Prussian tax subinspector, called Heinzen. Both were soon bound together by the bonds of the most intimate friendship. Heinzen learnt philosophy from Ruge, Ruge learnt politics from Heinzen. From this time on we detect in Ruge a growing necessity to appear as a philosopher par excellence only among the coarser elements of the German movement, a fate that led him down and down until at last he was accepted as a philosopher only by non-conformist parsons (Dulon), German catholic parsons (Ronge) and Fanny Lewald. At the same time anarchy was growing apace in German philosophy. Stirner's The Self and its Own, Stein's Socialism, Communism, etc., all recent intruders, drove Ruge's sense of humour to breaking-point: a great leap must be ventured. So Ruge escaped into humanism, the slogan with which all Confusionists in Germany from Reuchlin to Herder have covered up their embarrassment. This slogan seemed all the more appropriate as Feuerbach had only recently "rediscovered man" and Arnold fastened on to it with such desperation that he has not let go of it to this day. But while still in Switzerland Arnold made yet another, incomparably greater discovery. This was that "the ego by appearing frequently before the public proves itself a character". From this point on a new field of activity opened for Arnold. He now erected the most shameless meddling and interfering into a principle. Ruge had to poke his nose into everything. No hen could lay an egg without Ruge "commenting on the reason underlying the event". Contact had to be maintained at all cost with every obscure local paper where there was a chance of making frequent appearances. He wrote no newspaper articles without signing his name and, where possible, mentioning himself. The principle of the frequent appearance had to be extended to every article; an article had first to appear in letter form in the European papers (and after Heinzen's emigration, in the American papers also), it was then reprinted as a pamphlet and appeared again finally in the collected works. Thus equipped Ruge could now return to Leipzig to obtain definitive recognition of his character. But once arrived all was not a bed of roses. His old friend Wigand, the bookseller, had very successfully replaced him in the role of Nicolai and as no other post was vacant Ruge fell into gloomy reflections on the transitoriness of all jokes. This was his situation when the German Revolution broke out. For him too it came in the hour of need. The mighty movement in which even the clumsiest could easily swim with the current had finally got underway and Ruge went to Berlin where he intended to fish in troubled waters. As a revolution had just broken out he felt that it would be appropriate for him to come forward with proposals for reform. So he founded a paper with that name. The pre-revolutionary R forme of Paris had been the most untalented, illiterate and boring paper in France. The Berlin Reform demonstrated that it was possible to surpass its French model and that one need not blush at offering German public such an incredible journal even in the “metropolis of intelligence”. On the assumption that Ruge's defective grasp of style contained the best guarantee for the profound content lying behind and beneath it Arnold was elected to the Frankfurt Parliament as Member for Breslau. Here he saw his chance as editor of the democratic Left-wing to come forward with an absurd manifesto. Apart from that he distinguished himself only by his passion for issuing manifestos for European People's Congresses, and hastened to add his voice to the general wish that Prussia should be absorbed into Germany. Later, on his return to Berlin he demanded that Germany should be swallowed up by Prussia and Frankfurt by Berlin and when he finally decided to become a peer of Saxony he proposed that Prussia and Germany should both be swallowed up by Dresden. His parliamentary activity brought him no laurels other than the fact that his own party despaired at so much folly. At the same time his Reform was going downhill, a situation that could only be remedied, as he thought, by his personal presence in Berlin. As an honest consciousness it goes without saying that he also discovered an urgent political reason for taking such a step and in fact he demanded that the whole of the Left should accompany him there. Naturally, they refused and Ruge went to Berlin alone. Once there, he discovered that modern conflicts can best be resolved by the "Dessau method" as he termed the small state, a model of constitutional democracy. Then during the siege [of Vienna] he again drew up a manifesto in which General Wrangel was exhorted to march against Windischgraetz and free Vienna. He even obtained the approval of the democratic Congress for this curious document by pointing out that the type had been set up and that it was already being printed. Finally, when Berlin itself came under siege, Ruge went to Manteuffel and made proposals concerning the Reform, which were, however, rejected. Manteuffel told him that he wished all opposition papers were like the Reform, the Neue Preussische Zeitung was much more dangerous to him an utterance which the naive Ruge, with a tone of triumphant pride, hastened to report through the length and breadth of Germany. Arnold became an enthusiastic advocate of passive resistance which he himself put into practice by leaving his paper, editors and everything in the lurch and running away. Active flight is evidently the most resolute form of passive resistance. The counter-revolution had arrived and Ruge fled before it all the way from Berlin to London without stopping. At the time of the May uprising in Dresden Arnold placed himself at the head of the movement in Leipzig together with his friend Otto Wigand and the city council. He and his allies issued a vigorous manifesto to the citizens of Dresden urging them to fight bravely; Ruge, Wigand and the city fathers, it went on, were sitting watching in Leipzig and whoever did not desert himself would not be deserted by Heaven. Scarcely had the manifesto been published than our brave Arnold took to his heels and fled to Karlsruhe. In Karlsruhe he felt unsafe even though the Baden troops were standing on the Neckar and hostilities were a long way from breaking out. He asked Brentano to send him to Paris as ambassador. Brentano permitted himself the joke of giving him the post for 12 hours and then revoking it just when Ruge was about to depart. Undaunted, Ruge still went to Paris together with Schutz and Blind, the official representatives of the Brentano government, and once there made such a spectacle of himself that his former editor announced in the official Karlsruhe Zeitung that Mr. Ruge was not in Paris in any official capacity but merely on his own initiative . Having once been taken along by Schutz and Blind to see Ledru-Rollin Ruge suddenly interrupted the diplomatic negotiations with a terrible diatribe against the Germans in the presence of the Frenchmen so that his colleagues finally had to withdraw discomfited and compromised. June 13th came and dealt our Arnold such a severe blow that he took to his heels and did not pause to take breath again until he found himself in London, on free British soil. Referring to this fight later he compared himself to Demosthenes. In London Ruge first attempted to pass himself off as the Baden provisional ambassador. He then tried to gain acceptance in the English press as a great German writer and thinker but was turned away on the grounds that the English were too materialistic ever to understand German philosophy. He was also asked about his works a request which Ruge could answer only with a sigh while the image of Bruno Bauer once again rose up before his eyes. For even his Collected Works, what were they but reprints of pamphlets? And they were not even pamphlets but merely newspaper articles in pamphlet form, and basically they were not even newspaper articles but only the muddled fruits of his reading. Action was necessary and so Ruge wrote two articles for the Leader in which under the pretext of an analysis of German democracy he declared that in Germany "humanism" was the order of the day as represented by Ludwig Feuerbach and Arnold Ruge, the author of the following works: (1) The Religion of our Age, (2)Democracy and Socialism, (3)Philosophy and the Revolution. These three epoch-making works which have not appeared in the bookshops to this day are, it goes without saying, nothing more than new titles arbitrarily applied to old essays of Ruge's. Simultaneously he resumed his daily stints when for his own edification, for the benefit of the German public and to the horror of Mr. Br ggemann he began to retranslate articles into German that had somehow got out of the K lnische Zeitung and into the Morning Advertiser. Not exactly burdened with laurels he withdrew to Ostend where he found the leisure necessary to his preparations for the role of universal sage, the Confucius of the German Emigration. Just as Gustav was the vegetable and Gottfried the sensibility of the German petty-bourgeois Philistine, Arnold is representative of its understanding or rather its non-understanding. Unlike Arnold Winkelried he does not open up a path to freedom [der Freiheit eine Gasse]; he is in his own person the gutter of freedom [der Freiheit eine Gosse]; Ruge stands in the German revolution like the notices seen at the corner of certain streets: It is permitted to pass water here. We return at last to our circular with its covering letter. It fell flat and the first attempt to create a united democratic church came to nought. Schramm and Gustav later declared that failure was due solely to the circumstance chat Ruge could neither speak French nor write German. But then the heroes again set to work.

Heroes of the Exile

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/heroes-exile/ch04.htm

At every turn in the Italian epics of chivalry we encounter mighty, broad-shouldered giants armed with colossal staves who despite the fact that they lash about them wildly and make a frightening din in battle, never manage to kill their foes but only to destroy the trees in the vicinity. Mr. Heinzen is such an Ariostian giant in political literature. Endowed by nature with a churlish figure and huge masses of flesh he interpreted these gifts to mean that he was destined to be a great man. His weighty physical appearance determines his whole literary posture which is physical through and through. His opponents are always small, mere dwarfs, who can barely reach his ankles and whom he can survey with his kneecap. When, however, he should indeed make a physical appearance, our uomo membruto takes refuge in literature or in the courts. Thus scarcely had he reached the safety of English soil than he wrote a tract on moral courage. Or again, our giant allowed a certain Mr. Richter to thrash him so frequently and so thoroughly in New York that the magistrate, who at first only imposed insignificant fines relented and in recognition of Heinzen's doggedness he sentenced the dwarf Richter to pay 200 dollars damages. The natural complement to this great physique so healthy in every fibre is the healthy commonsense which Heinzen ascribes to himself in the highest possible degree. It is inevitable that a man with such commonsense will turn out to be a natural genius who has learnt nothing, a barbarian innocent of literature and science. By virtue of his commonsense (which he also calls his "perspicacity" and which allows him to tell Kossuth that he has "advanced to the extreme frontiers of thought"), he learns only from hearsay or the newspapers. He is therefore always behind the times and always wears the coat that literature has cast off some years previously, while rejecting as immoral and reprehensible the new modern dress he cannot find his way into. But when he has once assimilated a thing his faith in it is unshakable; it transforms itself into something that has grown naturally, that is self-evident, that everyone must immediately agree to and that only malicious, stupid or sophisticated persons will pretend not to believe. Such a robust body and healthy commonsense must of course have also some honest, down-to-earth principles and he even shows to advantage when he takes the craze for principles to extremes. In this field Heinzen is second to none. He draws attention to his principles at every opportunity, every argument is met by an appeal to principle, everyone who fails to understand him or whom he does not understand is demolished by the argument that he has no real principles, his insincerity and pure ill-will are such that he would deny that day was day and night night. To deal with these base disciples of Ahriman [Zoroastrian demon who returns to earth every 1000 years to wreak havoc] he summons up his muse, indignation; he curses, rages, boasts, preaches, and foaming at the mouth he roars out the most tragicomical imprecations. He demonstrates what can be achieved in the field of literary invective by a man to whom B rne s wit and literary talent are equally alien. As the muse is, so is the style. An eternal bludgeon, but a commonplace bludgeon with knots that are not even original or sharp. Only when he encounters science does he feel momentarily at a loss. He is then like that Billingsgate fishwife with whom O'Connell became involved in a shouting match and whom he silenced by replying to a long string of insults: "You are all that and worse: you are an isosceles triangle, you are a parallelepiped". From the earlier history of Mr. Heinzen mention should be made of the fact that he was in the Dutch colonies where he advanced not indeed to the rank of general but to that of NCO, a slight for which he later on always treated the Dutch as a nation without principles. Later we find him back in Cologne as a sub-inspector of taxes and in this capacity he wrote a comedy in which his healthy commonsense vainly strove to satirise the philosophy of Hegel. He was more at home in the gossip columns of the K lnische Zeitung, in the feuilleton where he let fall some weighty words about the quarrels in the Cologne Carnival Club, the institute from which all the great men of Cologne have graduated. His own sufferings and those of his father, a forester, in his conflicts with superiors assumed the proportions of events of universal significance, as easily happens when the man of healthy commonsense contemplates his little personal problems. He gives an account of them in his Prussian Bureaucracy, a book much inferior to Venedey's and containing nothing more than the complaints of a petty official against the higher authorities. The book involved him in a trial and although the worst he had to fear was six months in gaol he thought his head was in danger and fled to Brussels. From here he demanded that the Prussian government should not only grant him a safe conduct but also that they should suspend the whole French legal system and give him a jury trial for an ordinary offence. The Prussian government issued a warrant for his arrest; he replied with a warrant against the Prussian government which contained inter alia a sermon on moral resistance and constitutional monarchy and condemned revolution as immoral and jesuitical. From Brussels he went to Switzerland. Here, as we saw above, he met Friend Arnold and from him he learnt not only his philosophy but also a very useful method of self-enrichment. Just as Arnold sought to assimilate the ideas of his opponents in the course of polemicising against them, so Heinzen learned to acquire ideas new to him by reviling them. Hardly had he become an atheist than with all the zeal of the proselyte he immediately plunged into a furious polemic against poor old Follen [August Follen, German poet who wrote a collection of sonnets aimed against Heinzen and Ruge] because the latter saw no reason to become an atheist in his old age. Having had his nose rubbed in the Swiss Federal Republic our healthy commonsense developed to the point where it desired to introduce the Federal Republic into Germany too. The same commonsense came to the conclusion that this could not be done without a revolution and so Heinzen became a revolutionary. He then began a trade in pamphlets which in the coarsest tones of the Swiss peasant preached immediate revolution and death to the rulers from whom all the evils of the world stem. He sought out committees in Germany who would drum up the cost of printing and distributing these pamphlets and this led naturally to the growth of a begging industry on a large scale in the course of which the party workers were first exploited and then reviled. Old Itzstein could tell a story or two about that. These pamphlets gave Heinzen a great reputation among itinerant German wine salesmen who praised him everywhere as a bonny little fighter. From Switzerland he went to America. Here, although his Swiss rustic style enabled him to pass as a genuine poet he nevertheless managed to ride the New York Schnellpost to death in no time at all Having returned to Europe in the wake of the February revolution he sent despatches to the Mannheimer Zeitung announcing the arrival of the great Heinzen and he also published a pamphlet to revenge himself on Lamartine who together with his whole government had refused to acknowledge him as an official representative of the American Germans. He still did not wish to go to Prussia as he still feared for his head despite the March Revolution and the general amnesty. He would wait until the nation summoned him. As this did not happen he resolved to stand in absentia for the Hamburg constituency to the Frankfurt Parliament: his hope was that he would compensate for being a bad speaker by the loudness of his voice but he lost the election. Arriving in London after the collapse of the Baden uprising he fell into a rage with the young people who knew nothing of this great man of before the revolution and of after the revolution, and who caused him to sink into oblivion. He had always been nothing more than l'homme de la veille or l'homme du lendemain, he was never l'homme du jour or even de la journ e. As the authentic exploding silver had still not been discovered new weapons had to be found to combat the reaction. He called for two million heads so that he could be a dictator and wade up to the ankles in blood shed by others. His real aim was, of course, to create a scandal; the reaction had brought him to London at its own expense, by means of an expulsion order from England it would now, so Heinzen hoped, expedite him gratis to New York. The coup failed and its only consequence was that the radical French papers called him a fool who shouted for two million heads only because he had never risked his own. To complete the picture it should be pointed out that his bloodthirsty article had been published in the Deutsche Londoner Zeitung owned by the ex-Duke of Brunswick in return for a cash payment, of course. Gustav and Heinzen had admired each other for a considerable time. Heinzen praised Gustav as a sage and Gustav praised Heinzen as a fighter. Heinzen had scarcely been able to wait for the end of the European revolution so that he could put an end to the ruinous disunity in the democratic German emigration and to re-open his pre-revolutionary business. He called for discussion of a draft programme of the German Revolutionary Party. This programme was distinguished by the invention of a special ministry to cater for the all-important need for public playgrounds, battlegrounds (minus hail of bullets) and gardens , and was notable also for the article abolishing the privileges of the male sex especially in marriage (and also in thrusting maneuvers [Stosstaktik] in war, see Clausewitz). This programme was actually no more than a diplomatic note from Heinzen to Gustav as no-one else was clamouring for it. And instead of the hoped for unification it brought about the immediate separation of the two warriors. Heinzen had demanded that during the revolutionary transition period there should be a single dictator who would moreover be a Prussian and, to preclude all misunderstandings, he added: No soldier can qualify as dictator. Gustav, on the other hand, argued for a triumvirate comprising two Badeners and himself. Moreover, Gustav found that Heinzen had included in his prematurely published programme an idea stolen from him. This put an end to the second attempt at unification and Heinzen, denied recognition by the whole world, receded into obscurity until, in Autumn 1850, he found English soil too hot for him and sailed off to New York. When the time came for him to sign Mazzini's first manifesto he sadly recalled the days when he had presented himself to Professor Leo in Halle and old Follen in Switzerland as a Trinitarian on one occasion and as a humanist atheist on another. This time he had to declare himself for God and against the princes. However, Arnold's philosophic conscience had been enfeebled by his association with Dulon and other parsons among whom he passed for a philosopher. Even in his best days Arnold could not entirely suppress a certain foible for religion in general and moreover his honest consciousness kept on whispering to him: Sign, Arnold! Paris vaut bien une messe. One does not become fifth wheel on the coach of the provisional govemment of Europe in partibus for nothing. Reflect, Arnold! all you have to do is sign a manifesto every two weeks, and as a member of the German Parliament, in the company of the greatest men in all Europe. And bathed in perspiration Arnold signs. A curious joke, he murmurs. Ce n'est que le premier pas qui co te. He had copied this last sentence into his notebook the previous night. However, Arnold had not come to the end of his trials. The European Central Committee had issued a series of manifestos to Europe, to the French, the Italians, the Poles and the Wallachians and now, following the great battle at Bronzell, it was Germany s turn. In his draft Mazzini attacked the Germans for their lack of cosmopolitan spirit, and in particular, for their arrogant treatment of Italian salami vendors, organ-grinders, confectioners, dormouse tamers and mouse-trap sellers. Taken aback Arnold confessed that it was true. He went further. He declared his readiness to cede the Austrian Tirol and Istria to Mazzini. But this was not enough. He had not only to appeal to the conscience of the German people, but also to attack them where they were most vulnerable. Arnold received instructions that this time he was to have an opinion, as he represented the German element. He felt like the student Jobs. He scratched himself thoughtfully behind his ear and after long reflection he stuttered: Since the age of Tacitus the voices of German bards and baritones can be heard. In winter they kindle fires on all the mountains so as to warm their feet. The bards, the baritones and fires on all the mountains! That will put a bomb under German freedom! thought Mazzini with a grin. The bards, baritones, fires on all the mountains and German freedom to boot went into the manifesto as a sop for the German nation. To his astonishment Arnold had passed the examination and understood for the first time with what little wisdom the world is governed. From that moment on he despised Bruno Bauer more than ever for all his eighteen hefty tomes written while he was still young. While Arnold in the wake of the European Central Committee was signing warlike manifestoes with God, for Mazzini and against the princes, the peace movement was raging not only in England, under the aegis of Cobden, but even beyond the North Sea. So that in Frankfurt/Main the Yankee swindler, Elihu Burritt together with Cobden, Jaup, Girardin and the Red Indian Ka-gi-ga-gi-wa-wa-be-ta organised a Peace Congress. Our Arnold was just itching to be able to make one of his frequent appearances and to give birth to a manifesto. So he proclaimed himself the corresponding member of the Frankfurt Assembly and sent over an extremely confused Peace Manifesto translated out of Cobden's speeches into his own speculative Pomeranian. Various Germans drew Arnold's attention to the contradiction between his warlike attitude in the Central Committee and his peaceful Quakerism. He would reply: Well, there you have the contradictions. That's the dialectic for you. In my youth I studied Hegel. His honest consciousness was eased by the thought that Mazzini knew no German and that it was not hard to pull the wool over his eyes. Moreover, his relationship with Mazzini promised to become even more secure thanks to the protection of Harro Harring who had just landed in Hull. For with Harring a new and highly symptomatic character steps onto the stage. No one was more favoured by circumstances to become the very type of the migr agitator than our friend Harro Harring. And indeed he did become the prototype whom all our heroes of the Exile, all the Arnolds, Gustavs and Gottfrieds strove more or less consciously and with varying success to emulate. They may even equal him if circumstances are not unfavourable, but they will hardly surpass him. Harro who like Caesar has himself described his own great deeds (London 1852) was born on the Cimbrian peninsula and belongs to that visionary North Frisian race which has already been shown by Dr. Clement to have produced all the great nations of the world. Already in early youth he attempted to set the seal of action upon his enthusiasm for the cause of the peoples by going to Greece in 1821. We see how Friend Harro had an early premonition of his mission to be everywhere where confusion reigned. Later on a strange fate led him to the source of absolutism, to the vicinity of the Czar and he had seen through the Jesuitism of constitutional monarchy in Poland . So Harro fought for freedom in Poland also. But the crisis in the history of Europe following the fall of Warsaw greatly perplexed him , and his perplexity led him to the idea of the democracy of nations , which he at once documented in the work: The Nations, Strasbourg, March 1832 . It is worth remarking that this work was almost quoted at the Hambacher Fest. At the same time he published his republican poems: Blutstropfen [Drops of Blood]; The History of King Saul or the Monarchy; Male voices on Germany's Freedom and edited the journal Deutschland in Strasbourg. All these and even his future writings had the unexpected good fortune to be banned by the Federal Diet on November 4, 1831. This was the only thing he still lacked, only now did he achieve real importance and also the martyr's crown. So that he could exclaim My writings were everywhere well received and echoed loudly in the hearts of the people. They were mostly distributed gratis. In the case of some of them I did not even receive enough to cover the Costs of printing. But new honours still awaited him. In 1831 Mr. Welcker had vainly attempted in a long letter to convert him to the vertical horizon of constitutional monarchy . And now, in January 1832, there came a visit from Mr. Malten, a well-known Prussian agent abroad, who proposed that he should enter Prussian service. What double recognition this was and from the enemy too! Enough, Malten's offer triggered off the idea that in the face of this dynastic treachery he should give birth to the concept of Scandinavian nationality , and from that time on at least the word Scandinavia was reborn after having been forgotten for centuries . In this manner our North Frisian from South Jutland who did not know himself whether he was a German or a Dane acquired at least an imaginary nationality whose first consequence was that the men of Hambach would have nothing to do with him. With all these events behind him Harro's fortune was made. Veteran of freedom in Greece and Poland, the inventor of democracy of nations , re-discoverer of the word Scandinavia , poet acknowledged by the ban of the Federal Diet, thinker and journalist, martyr, a great man esteemed even by his enemies, a man whose allegiance constitutionalists, absolutists and republicans vied with each other to possess and, with all that, empty-headed and confused enough to believe in his own greatness what then was needed to make his happiness complete? But Harro was a conscientious man and as his fame grew so did the demands which he made upon himself What was missing was a great work that would present in an entertaining and popular form the great doctrines of freedom, the idea of democracy, and of nationality and all the sublime struggles for freedom on the part of the youthful Europe arising before his very eyes. None but a poet and thinker of the very first rank could produce such a work and none but Harro could be this man. Thus arose the first three plays of the dramatic cycle The People, of which there were twelve parts in all, one of them in Danish, a labour to which the author devoted ten years of his life. Unfortunately eleven of these twelve parts have hitherto remained in manuscript . However, this dallying with the muse was not to last forever. Unfortunately it all came to nothing and Harro had to retire to the depths of France where he wrote his Words of a Man. From there he was summoned to Switzerland by the Poles arming themselves for their march on Savoy. Here he became attached to their General Staff , wrote a further two parts of his dramatic cycle The People, and made the acquaintance of Mazzini in Geneva. The whole band of fire-eaters consisting of Polish, French, German, Italian and Swiss adventurers under the command of the noble Ramorino then made their famous attack on Savoy. In this campaign our Harro "discovered the value of his life and strength". But as the other freedom fighters felt the value of their lives no less than Harro and no doubt had just as few illusions about their strength&lrquo; the exploit ended badly and they returned to Switzerland beaten, dishevelled and in disarray. This campaign was all that was needed to give our band of emigrant knights a complete insight into the terror they inspired in the tyrants. As long as the aftermath of the July Revolution could still be felt in isolated insurrections in France, Germany or Italy, as long as they felt someone or other standing behind them our migr heroes felt themselves to be but atoms in the seething masses more or less privileged, prominent atoms, to be sure, but in the last analysis they were still atoms. But as these insurrections gradually grew feebler, as the great mass of lackeys , of the half-hearted and the men of little faith retired from the putschist swindles and as our knights felt increasingly lonely, so did their self-esteem grow in proportion. If the whole of Europe became craven, stupid and selfish, how could our trusty heroes fail to grow in their own estimation, for were they not the priests who kept the sacred fires of hatred for all tyrants burning in their breasts and who maintained the traditions of virtue and love of freedom for a more vigorous generation yet to come! If they too deserted the flag the tyrants would be safe for ever. So like the democrats of 1848 they saw in every defeat a guarantee of future victory and they gradually transformed themselves more and more into itinerant Don Quixotes with dubious sources of income. Once arrived at this point they could plan their greatest act of heroism, the foundation of Young Europe whose Charter of Brotherhood was drawn up by Mazzini and signed in Berne on 15 April 1834. Harro appears in it as But now began Harro's decline. His first sorrow was that Young Germany split off from Young Europe in 1836 . But Germany was duly punished for that. Because of the split nothing had been prepared for a national movement in Germany early in 1848 and this is why everything ended so miserably. But a much greater sorrow for Harro was the growth of communism. We learn from him that the founder of communism was none other than However, his scrupulous sense of obligation towards Young Europe unfortunately led him to return to the Old World. He hastened to Mazzini in London and soon perceived the danger that threatened the cause of the peoples from communism . New deeds awaited him. The Bandiera brothers were preparing for their expedition to Italy. To support them and to divert the forces of despotism Harro returned to South America where in union with Garibaldi he dedicated himself to furthering the idea of a United States of South America . But the despots had got wind of his mission and Harro took to his heels. He sailed to New York. The news of the February Revolution inspired him to produce a pamphlet in French, La France r veill e and while embarking for Europe I documented my love for my country once again in some poems, Scandinavia . He went to Schleswig-Holstein. Here, after an absence of twentyseven years, he discovered an unheard of conceptual confusion in the sphere of international law, democracy, republicanism socialism and communism, a chaos which lay like rotting hay and straw in the Augean stables of party factions and national hatred . No wonder, for his political writings like his whole striving and activities since 1831 had remained alien and unknown in those frontier provinces of my home country . The Augustenburg Party had suppressed him for eighteen years by means of a conspiracy of silence. To deal with this he girt on a sabre, a rifle, four pistols and six daggers and called for the formation of a free corps, but in vain. After various adventures he finally arrived in Hull. Here he hastened to issue two circulars to the peoples of Schleswig-Holstein, Scandinavia and Germany and even sent a note, as has been reported, to two communists in London with this message: "Five thousand workers in Norway send you fraternal greetings through me. Despite this curious appeal he soon became a sleeping partner of the European Central Committee again, thanks to the Charter of Brotherhood, and he also became nightwatchman and employee of a young firm of brokers in Gravesend on the Thames where my task was to drum up trade among ships captains in nine different languages until I was accused of fraud, a thing which the philosopher Johannes M ller was at least spared in his capacity as swineherd . Harro summarised his action-packed life as follows:

Heroes of the Exile

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/heroes-exile/ch06.htm

At about this time Gottfried Kinkel came to London and together with him or soon afterwards a number of other exiles partly from France, partly from Switzerland and Belgium: Schurz, Strodtmann, Oppenheim, Schimmelpfennig, Techow, etc. These new arrivals some of whom had already tried their hand at forming provisional governments in Switzerland, infused new life into the London emigration and for Arnold the moment seemed more favourable than ever. At the same time Heinzen again took over the Schnellpost in New York and so Arnold could now make his frequent appearances on the other side of the ocean and not just in the local Bremen paper. Should Arnold ever find his Strodtmann the latter would surely declare the monthly numbers of the Schnellpost from the beginning of 1851 on to be a priceless source of information. One has to see this infinitely feeble mixture of gossip, silliness and nastiness, this ant-like self-importance with which Arnold deposits his dung, for otherwise one would not believe it. While Heinzen portrays Arnold as a European Great Power, Arnold treats Heinzen as an American newspaper oracle. He tells him the secrets of European diplomacy and in particular the latest events in the history of world emigration. Arnold sometimes figures as the anonymous correspondent in London and Paris in order to keep the American public informed of some of the great Arnold's fashionable movements. Meanwhile in contrast to the Mazzini Committee a plebeian European Committee was formed with the support of the inferior refugees and the migr dregs of the various European nations. At the time of the battle of Bronzell this committee had issued a manifesto that included the following outstanding German signatories: Gebert, Majer, Dietz, Sch rttner, Schapper, Willich. This document was couched in peculiar French and contained the information that at that moment (10 November 1850) the Holy Alliance of Tyrants had assembled 1,330,000 soldiers backed by another 700,000 armed lackeys in reserve; that the German papers and the Committee s own contacts had revealed the secret intentions of the Warsaw Conferences and that these were to massacre all the republicans of Europe. This was followed by the inevitable call to arms. This manifeste-Faneron-Caperon-Gout as it was described by the Patrie (to whom they sent it) was overwhelmed with ridicule by the reactionary press. The Patrie called it the manifesto of the dii minorum gentium, written without chic, without style and equipped with only the most banal clich s, serpents , sicaires and gorgements . The Ind pendence Belge states that it was written by the most obscure soldiers of democracy, poor devils who had sent it to their correspondent in London even though their paper was conservative. Greatly as they longed to get into print, they would nevertheless not publish the names of the signatories as a punishment. Despite their attempts to beg from the reaction these noble people did not manage to obtain recognition as dangerous conspirators. The establishment of this rival firm spurred Arnold on to even greater efforts. Together with Strave, Kinkel, R. Schramm and Bucher, etc. he tried to found a Volksfreund, or, if Gustav were to insist, a Deutscher Zuschauer. But the plan fell through. Partly because our good-humoured Gottfried demanded payment in cash whereas Arnold shared Hansemann's view that in money matters there is no room for good humour. Arnold's particular aim was to impose a levy on the Reading Circle, a club of German watchmakers, well-paid workers and petty bourgeois, but in this too he was frustrated. But soon there arose another opportunity for Arnold to make one of his frequent appearances . Ledru and his supporters among the French migr s could not let 24 February (1851) pass without celebrating a Fraternal Feast of the nations of Europe. In fact only the French and the Germans attended. Mazzini did not come and excused himself by letter: Gottfried who was present went home fuming because his mute presence failed to produce the magical effect he expected; Arnold lived to see the day when his friend Ledru pretended not to know him and became so confused when he arose to speak that he kept quiet about the French speech he had prepared and which had been approved in high places; he just stammered a few words in German and retreated precipitately, exclaiming: la restauration de la r volution! to the accompaniment of a general shaking of heads. On the same day a rival banquet took place under the auspices of the competing committee referred to above. Annoyed that the Mazzini-Ledru committee had not invited him to join them from the beginning Louis Blanc took himself off to the refugee mob, declaring that the aristocracy of talent must also be abolished . The whole lower emigration was thus assembled. The chivalrous Willich presided. The hall was festooned with flags and the walls were emblazoned with the names of the greatest men of the people: Waldeck between Garibaldi and Kossuth, Jacoby between Blanqui and Cabet, Robert Blum between Barb s and Robespierre. That coquettish ape Louis Blanc read out in a whining voice an address from his old yes men [German: Ja Br der], the future peers of the social republic, the delegates of the Luxemburg of 1848. Willich read out an address from Switzerland the signatures to which had partly been collected under false presences. Later he was indiscreet enough to publish the address, which resulted in the mass expulsion of the signatories. From Germany no message had arrived. Then speeches. Despite the eternal brotherhood boredom could be seen on every face. The banquet gave rise to a highly edifying scandal which like the heroic deeds of the European central mob-committee, unfolded within the pages of the counter-revolutionary press. It had struck observers as very strange that during the banquet a certain Barth lemy should have given an extremely grandiose eulogy of Blanqui in the presence of Louis Blanc. The puzzle was now elucidated. The Patrie printed a toast that Blanqui had sent from Belle- le in response to a request from the orator at the banquet. In the toast he aimed some rough blows at the whole provisional government of 1848 and at Louis Blanc in particular. The Patrie expressed astonishment that this toast had been suppressed in the course of the banquet. Louis Blanc at once wrote to The Times declaring that Blanqui was an abominable intriguer and had never sent such a toast to the Banquet committee. The committee consisting of Messrs, Blanc, Willich, Landolphe, Schapper, Barth lemy and Vidil, announced simultaneously in the Patrie that they had never received the toast. The Patrie, however, did not allow the declaration to be printed until they had made inquiries of M. Antoine, Blanqui's brother-in-law, who had given them the text of the toast. Beneath the declaration of the Banquet committee they printed M. Antoine's reply: he had sent the toast to Barth lemy, one of the signatories of the declaration and had received an acknowledgement from him. Whereupon Mr. Barth lemy was forced to admit that it was true that he had lied. He had indeed received the toast but had thought it unsuitable and so had not informed the committee of it. But before this, behind Barth lemy's back his co-signatory, the French ax-captain Vidil had also written to the Patrie saying that his honour as a soldier and his sense of truth compelled him to confess that not only he but also Louis Blanc, Willich and all the other signatories of the first declaration had lied. The committee had consisted of 13 members and not 6. They had all seen Blanqui's toast, they had discussed it and after a long debate agreed to suppress it by a majority of 7 votes to 6. He had been one who had voted in favour of reading it in public. It is easy to imagine the joy of the Patrie when it received Barth lemy's declaration after Vidil's letter. They printed it with this preface: Hence the Anniversary of the March revolution in Vienna was used to give a German banquet. The chivalrous Willich declined the invitation; as he belonged to citizen Louis Blanc he could not collaborate with citizen Ruge who belonged to citizen&lrquo; Ledru. Likewise the ex-deputies Reichenbach, Schramm, Bucher, etc., recoiled from Ruge s presence. Not counting the silent guests there appeared Mazzini, Ruge, Struve, Tausenau, Haug, Ronge and Kinkel all of whom spoke. Ruge filled the role of the complete fool as even his friends admitted. The German public was however to experience even greater things. Tausenau s clowning, Struve s croaking, Haug s meanderings, Ronge s litanies turned the whole audience to stone and the majority drifted away even before that flower of rhetoric, Jeremiah-Kinkel, who had been saved for the dessert, could begin his speech. In the name of the martyrs for the martyrs, Gottfried spoke as a martyr and uttered lachrymose words of reconciliation to all from the simple defender of the constitution down to the red republican . At the same time as all these republicans, and even red republicans, like Kinkel, groaned away in this fashion, they also knelt down before the English constitution in humble adoration, a contradiction to which the Morning Chronicle politely drew their attention the following morning. The same evening Ruge saw the fulfilment of his desires as can be seen from a proclamation whose most brilliant sections we offer here: Johannes Ronge or Johannes Kurzweg as he likes to be known in his intimate circle, is certainly not the author of the Book of Revelations. There is nothing mysterious about him, he is banal, hackneyed, as insipid as water, luke-warm dish-water. As is well known Johannes became famous when he refused to permit the Holy Mantle in Trier to intercede for him though it is wholly unimportant who intercedes for Johannes. When Johannes first made his appearance the elderly Paulus expressed his regrets that Hegel was dead as he would no longer be able to regard him as shallow were he alive and he added that the late lamented Krug was lucky to be dead as he thereby escaped the danger of acquiring a reputation for profundity. Johannes is one of those phenomena often met with in history who only begin to understand a movement centuries after its rise and fall and who then like children reproduce the content of the movement as if it had just been discovered, regurgitating it in the most feeble, colourless and philistinic manner imaginable. Such craftsmanship does not last very long and soon our Johannes found himself in a daily deteriorating situation in Germany. His watered-down version of the Enlightenment went out of fashion and Johannes made a pilgrimage to England where we see him reappear, without any notable success, as the rival of Padre Gavazzi. The ungainly, sallow, tedious village parson naturally paled by the side of the fiery, histrionic Italian monk and the English bet heavily that this arid Johannes could not be the man who had set the deep-thinking German nation in motion. But he was consoled by Arnold Ruge who found that the German-Catholicism of our Johannes was remarkably similar to his own brand of atheism. Ludwig von Hauck had been a captain of engineers in the Imperial Austrian army, then co-editor of the Constitution in Vienna, later still leader of a battalion in the Viennese National Guard, where he defended the Burgtor against the Imperial army on October 30 with great courage, abandoning his post only after all was lost. He escaped to Hungary, joined up with Bem's army in Siebenburgen where in consequence of his velour he advanced to the rank of colonel in the general staff. After G rgy surrendered at Vilagos Ludwig Hauck was taken prisoner and died like a hero on one of the many gallows that the Austrians erected in Hungary to avenge their repeated defeats and to express their fury at the protection Russia had extended and which they so bitterly resented. In London Haug was long thought to be the incarcerated Hauck, an officer, who had so distinguished himself in the Hungarian campaign. However, it now seems to be established that he is not the late Hauck. Just as he was unable to prevent Mazzini from improvising him into a general after the fall of Rome, so too he could do nothing to stop Arnold Ruge from transforming him into the representative of the Viennese revolution and a member of the strong provisional government. Later he gave aesthetic lectures about the economic foundations of the cosmogony of universal history from a geological standpoint and with musical accompaniment. Among the migr s this melancholic man is known as "the poor wretch", or as the French say, "la bonne b te". Arnold could not believe his good fortune. He had a manifesto, a strong provisional government, a loan of ten million francs and even a homunculus to produce a weekly magazine with the modest title Kosmos, edited by General Haug. The manifesto came and went unread. The Kosmos died of malnutrition in the third number, the money failed to roll in, the provisional government dissolved into its components once more. At first, the Kosmos contained advertisements for Kinkel's lectures, for the worthy Willich's appeals for money for the Schleswig-Holstein refugees and for G hringer's saloon. It contained further a lampoon by Arnold. The old joker invented a certain hospitable friend called M ller in Germany whose guest, Schulze, he pretended to be. M ller expresses astonishment at what he reads in the papers about English hospitality; he fears that all this sybaritism may distract Schulze from his affairs of state but he does not grudge him this as when Schulze returns to Germany he will be so overwhelmed by state affairs that he will have to deny himself the pleasures of M ller's hospitality. Finally, M ller exclaims: Surely it was not the traitor Radowitz, but Mazzini, Ledru-Rollin, Citizen Willich, Kinkel and yourself (Arnold Ruge) "who were invited to Windsor Castle?" If after all this the Kosmos folded up after the third issue the failure could not be put down to lack of publicity, for at every possible English meeting the speakers would find it pressed into their hands with the urgent request to recommend it as they would find their own principles specially represented in it. Scarcely had the subscriptions for the ten-million-Franc loan been opened than the rumour went around that a list of contributors to a fund to dispatch Struve (and Amalia) to America, was circulating in the City. Gustav writes: Arnold was busy broadcasting the virtues of the Kosmos in the journal of his faithful disciple Heinzen, when it failed to appear, and at about the time when the strong provisional government was disintegrating Rodomonte-Heinzen was busy proclaiming military obedience towards it in his journal. Heinzen is famous for his love of the military in peacetime. As for Gottfried, his dramatic lectures for respectable city merchants did not allow him to compromise himself. But on the other hand, it was altogether too evident that the purpose of the manifesto of March 13 was none other than to provide support for the place Arnold had usurped in the European Central Committee. Even Gottfried could not fail to realise this: but it was not in his interest to grant Ruge such recognition. So it came to pass that shortly after the manifesto had been published, the K lnische Zeitung printed a declaration by that dama acerba, Mockel. Her husband, she wrote, had not signed the appeal, he was not interested in public loans and had resigned from the newly-formed committee. Whereupon Arnold gossiped in the New York Schnellpost to the effect that Kinkel had been prevented by illness from signing the manifesto, but he gave his approval, the plan to issue it had been conceived in his room, he had himself taken responsibility for despatching a number of copies to Germany and he only left the committee because it elected General Haug president in preference to himself. Arnold accompanied this declaration with angry attacks on Kinkel's vanity, calling him absolute martyr and the Beckerath of the democrats and affirming his suspicions of Mrs. Johanna Kinkel who had access to such prohibited journals as the K lnische Zeitung. In the meantime, Arnold's seed had not fallen on stony soil. Kinkel's beautiful soul resolved to turn the tables on his rivals and to raise the treasure of revolution alone. Johanna's statement dissociating him from this hare-brained scheme had scarcely appeared in the K lnische Zeitung when Gottfried launched his own appeal in the transatlantic papers with the comment that the money should be sent to the man who inspires the most confidence . And who could this man be but Gottfried Kinkel? For the time being he demanded an advance payment of 500 pounds sterling with which to manufacture revolutionary paper money. Ruge, not to be outdone, had the Schnellpost declare that he was the treasurer of the Democratic Central Committee and that Mazzini notes were already available and could be purchased from him. Whoever wished to lose 500 pounds sterling would do better to take the available notes than to speculate in something that did not even exist. And Rodomonte-Heinzen roared that unless Mr. Kinkel abandoned his manoeuvres he would be branded publicly as an enemy of the revolution . Gottfried had counter-articles published in the New-Yorker Staatszeitung, the direct rival of the Schnellpost. In this way full-scale hostilities were in progress on the other side of the Atlantic while kisses of Judas were still being exchanged in this side. By issuing an appeal for a national loan in his own name Gottfried had shocked the democratic rank and file, as he soon realised. To make good his blunder he now declared that this appeal for money, for a German national loan did not proceed from him. In all likelihood what had happened was that some all too zealous friends in America had made free with his name. This declaration provoked the following answer from Dr. Wiss in the Schnellpost: Thus did Gottfried sway like a reed, now advancing, now retreating, now launching a project, now dissociating himself from it, always tacking to adjust to the wind of popularity. While he officially allowed the aesthetic bourgeoisie to fete and feast him in London as the martyr of the Revolution behind the backs of the same people he indulged in forbidden commerce with the mob of the Emigration as represented by Willich. While living in circumstances that could be described as luxurious in comparison with his modest situation in Bonn, he wrote to St. Louis that he was living as befitted the "representative of poverty". In this way he behaved towards the bourgeoisie as etiquette required, while at the same time he deferred humbly to the taste of the proletariat. But as a man whose imagination far outweighed his understanding he could not help falling into the bad manners and the arrogant postures of the parvenu and this alienated many a pompous bonhomme from him. Wholly characteristic of him was the article on the Great Exhibition that he wrote for Kosmos. He admired nothing so much as the giant mirror that was exhibited in the Crystal Palace. The objective world reduces itself to a mirror, the subjective world to a clich . Under the pretext of seeing only the beautiful side of things he aestheticises everything and this process he designates poetry, self-sacrifice or religion, as the occasion demands. Fundamentally, everything is used to exalt himself. It is inevitable that in practice the ugly side should make its appearance, as imagination turns into lies and enthusiasm into baseness. In any case it was to be expected that Gottfried would soon cast off his lion's skin when he fell into the hands of old, experienced clowns like Gustav and Arnold.

Heroes of the Exile

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/heroes-exile/ch10.htm

The true organisation of the Emigration was in fact this tavern organisation presided over by Silenus-Sch rttner in Long Acre which experienced its heyday thanks to the Exhibition. Here the true Central Committee sat in perpetual session. All other committees, organisations, party-formations were just trimmings, the patriotic arabesques of this primeval German tavern society of idlers. In addition the Emigration was strengthened numerically at the time by the arrival of Messrs. Meyen, Faucher, Sigel, Goegg and Fickler, etc. Meyen was a little porcupine who had come into the world without any quills and who under the name Poinsinet, was once described by Goethe in this way: Conjointly with Meyen we must necessarily consider Oppenheim, his co-editor and co-secretary. It has been claimed that Oppenheim is not so much a man as an allegorical figure: the goddess of boredom it is reported, came down to Frankfurt on Main and assumed the shape of this son of a Jewish jeweller. When Voltaire wrote: Tous les genres vent loons, except legenre ennuyeux , he must have had a premonition of our Heinrich Bernhard Oppenheim. We prefer Oppenheim the writer to Oppenheim the orator. His writings may be avoided, but his spoken delivery c est impossible. The pythagorean metempsychosis may have some foundation in reality but the name borne by Heinrich Bernhard Oppenheim in former ages can no longer be discovered as no man ever made a name for himself through being an unbearable chatterbox. His life may be epitomised by its three climactic moments: Arnold Ruge s editor Brentano s editor Kinkel s editor. The third member of the trio is Mr. Julius Faucher. He is one of those Berlin Huguenots who know how to exploit their minor talent with great commercial adroitness. He made his public debut as the Lieutenant Pistol of the Free Trade Party in which capacity he was employed by Hamburg commercial interests to make propaganda. During the revolutionary disturbances they allowed him to preach free trade in the apparently chaotic form of anarchism. When this ceased to be relevant to the times he was dismissed and, together with Meyen, he became joint editor of the Berlin Abendpost. Under the presence of wishing to abolish the state and introduce anarchy he refrained from dangerous opposition towards the existing government and when, later on, the paper failed because it could no longer afford the deposit, the Neue Preussische Zeitung commiserated with Faucher, the only able writer among the democrats. This cosy relationship with the Neue Preussische Zeitung soon became so intimate that Faucher began to act as its correspondent in London. Faucher s activity in the London Emigration did not last long; his free trade inclined him towards commerce where he found his true calling, to which he returned with great energy and in which he achieved wonders never seen before: namely a price-list that assesses goods according to a completely sliding scale. As is well known, the Breslauer Zeitung was indiscreet enough to inform the general public of this document. This three-star constellation of the Berlin intelligentsia can be contrasted with the three-star constellation of wholesome South German principles: Sigel, Fickler, Goegg. Franz Sigel, whom his friend Goegg describes as a short, beardless man, bearing a strong resemblance to Napoleon, is, again according to Goegg, a hero , a man of the future , above all a genius, intellectually creative and constantly hatching new plans . Between ourselves, General Siegel is a young Baden lieutenant of principle and ambition. He read in an account of the campaigns of the French Revolution that the step from sub-lieutenant to supreme general is mere child's play and from that moment on this little beardless man firmly believed that Franz Sigel must become supreme commander in a revolutionary army. His wish was granted thanks to the Baden insurrection of 1849 and a popularity with the army arising from a confusion of names. The battles he fought on the Neckar and did not fight in the Black Forest are well known; his retreat to Switzerland has been praised even by the enemy as a timely and correct manoeuvre. His military plans here bear witness to his study of the [French] Revolutionary Wars. In order to remain faithful to the revolutionary tradition Hero Sigel, ignoring the enemy and operational and withdrawal lines and similar bagatelles, went conscientiously from one Moreau position to the next. And if he did not manage to parody Moreau's campaigns in every detail, if he crossed the Rhine at Eglichau and not at Paradies, this was the fault of the enemy who was too ignorant to appreciate such a learned manoeuvre. In his orders of the day and in his instructions Sigel emerges as a preacher and if he has an inferior style to Napoleon, he has more principle. Later, he concerned himself with devising a handbook for revolutionary officers in all branches of warfare from which we are in a position to offer the following important extract: His only deeds during the Revolution were firstly his arrest by Mathy after the Vorparlament, and, second, his arrest by Romer in Stuttgart in June 1849. Thanks to these arrests he was happily deprived of the opportunity to compromise himself. The W rttemberg democrats deposited 1000 guilders as bail for him, whereupon Fickler went to Thurgau incognito and to the great distress of his guarantors no more was heard of him. It is undeniable that he successfully translated the feelings and opinions of the lakeside peasants into printers' ink in his Lake Journals; for the rest he shares the opinion of his friend Ruge that much study makes you stupid and for this reason he warned his friend Goegg not to visit the library of the British Museum. Amandus Goegg, lovable, as his name indicates, is no great orator, but an unassuming citizen whose noble and modest bearing earns him the friendship of people everywhere (Westamerikanische Bl tter). From sheer nobility Goegg became a member of the provisional government in Baden, where, as he admits, he could do nothing against Brentano and in all modesty he assumed the title of Dictator. No one denies that his achievements as Finance Minister were modest. In all modesty he proclaimed the Social-democratic Republic in Donaueschingen the day before the final retreat to Switzerland actually took place, although it had been decreed before. In all modesty he later declared (See Janus by Heinzen, 1852) that the Paris proletariat had lost on December 2 because it did not possess his own Franco-Badenese democratic experience nor the insights available elsewhere in the frenchified Germany of the South. Anyone who desires further proofs of Goegg s modesty and of the existence of a Goegg Party will find them in the book The Baden Revolution in Retrospect. Paris 1850, written by himself. A fitting climax to his modesty came in a public meeting in Cincinnati when he declared that reputable men came to him after the bankruptcy of the Baden Revolution and had announced that in that revolution men of all the German tribes had taken an active part. It was therefore to be regarded as a German matter just as the Rome uprising was of concern to the whole of Italy. As he was the man who had held out they said that he must become the German Mazzini. His modesty compelled him to refuse. Why? A man who was once dictator and who to cap it all, is the bosom friend of Napoleon Sigel, could surely also become the German Mazzini . Once the Emigration was augmented by these and similar, less noteworthy arrivals, it could proceed to those mighty battles that the reader shall learn of in the next canto.

Heroes of the Exile

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/heroes-exile/ch12.htm

The newly-arrived South German bonhommes, lacking in any definite commitment, found themselves in an excellent position to mediate between the various cliques and, at the same time, to gather the mass of migr s around the leaders as a kind of chorus. Their sturdy sense of duty impelled them not to forgo this opportunity. At the same time, however, they could already see Ledru-Rollin where he saw himself, namely in the chair of the president of France. As the most important neighbours of France it was vital for them to obtain recognition from the provisional government of France as the provisional overlords of Germany. Sigel especially wished to see his supreme command guaranteed by Ledru. But the way to Ledru led over Arnold s corpse. However, they were still impressed by Arnold s persona and he still passed as the philosophical Northern Light who would illumine their South German twilight. So they turned to Ruge. On the opposing side stood in the first instance Kinkel with his immediate entourage Schurz, Strodtmann, Schimmelpfennig, Techow etc.; then came the former deputies and members of parliament, led by Reichenbach with Meyen and Oppenheim as the representatives of literature; and, lastly, Willich with his host which, however, remained in the background. The roles were distributed as follows: Kinkel playing a passion-flower represented the German Philistines in general; Reichenbach playing a Count represented the bourgeoisie; Willich, playing Willich represented the proletariat. The first thing to say about August Willich is that Gustav always felt secretly mistrustful of him because of his pointed skull signifying that the enormous overgrowth of self-esteem had stunted all other qualities. A German Philistine who once caught sight of ex-Lieutenant Willich in a London pub snatched up his hat and fled exclaiming: My God, he looks just like Jesus Christ! In order to increase the similarity Willich became a carpenter for a while before the Revolution. Later on he emerged as a partisan leader in the campaign in Baden and the Palatinate. The partisan leader, a descendant of the old Italian condottiere is a peculiar phenomenon of more recent wars, especially in Germany. The partisan leader, accustomed to act on his own initiative, is reluctant to subordinate himself to a more general command. His men owe their allegiance only to him, but he is likewise wholly dependent on them. For this reason the discipline in a free corps is somewhat arbitrary; according to circumstances it may be savagely strict, but mostly it is extremely lax. The partisan leader cannot always act the martinet, he must often flatter his men and win them over individually with the aid of physical caresses; the normal military practices are of little use here and boldness must be supplemented by other qualities if the leader is to retain the respect of his subordinates. If he is not noble he must at least have a noble consciousness to be complemented as always by cunning, the talent for intrigue and a covert practical baseness. In this way he not only wins over his soldiers but also bribes the inhabitants, surprises the enemy and contrives matters so that even his opponents acknowledge his strength of character. But all this does not suffice to hold together a free corps whose members either come from the Lumpenproletariat or are soon assimilated into it. What is needed in addition is a higher ideal. The partisan leader must therefore have a nucleus of id es fixes, he must be a man of principle in permanent pursuit of his mission to redeem the world. By means of sermons at the front and sustained didactic propaganda he must impart a consciousness of this higher ideal to every man individually and in this way he will transform the whole troop into sons within the faith. If this higher ideal is tinged with philosophy or mysticism or anything that surpasses normal understanding, if it is something Hegelian by nature (as was the case with the ideas that General Willisen tried to infuse into the Prussian army), then so much the better. For this ensures that the noble consciousness will enter into each and every partisan and the deeds of the whole corps thereby attain to a speculative consecration which exalts them far above the level of ordinary unreflecting courage and in any case the fame of such an army depends less on its achievements than on its messianic calling. The strength of a corps can only be enhanced if all the warriors are made to swear an oath that they will not survive the destruction of the cause for which they are fighting and would prefer to be massacred to the last man beneath the apple tree on the frontier while singing a hymn. Of course, such a corps and such a leader inevitably feel degraded by contact with ordinary profane soldiers and they will make every effort either to keep at a distance from the army or else to shake off the society of the uncircumcised. They hate nothing more than a large army and a large war where their cunning buttressed by spiritual faith can achieve little if the normal rules of war are disregarded. The partisan leader must then be a crusader in the full sense of the word, he must be Peter the Hermit and Walther von Habenichts rolled into one. Faced with the heterogeneous elements and the informal mode of life of his corps he must always uphold virtue. He must not allow his men to drink him under the table and so he must only drink in solitude, for instance at night in bed. If it should happen to him, as it might to any fallible human being, that he find himself returning to barracks late at night after inordinate indulgence in the pleasures of this life, he will take care not to enter through the main gate, but to go round the side and climb over the wall to avoid giving offence. Feminine charms should leave him cold, but it will make a good impression if he, like Cromwell, takes his NCOs or a tailor's apprentice into his bed from time to time. In general he cannot lead too strict and ascetic a life. Behind the cavalieri della ventura in his corps stand the cavalieri del dente who live mainly from requisitions and free quarters to all of which Walther von Habenichts has to turn a blind eye so that Peter the Hermit has always to be at hand with the consolation that such unpleasant measures contribute to the salvation of the nation and so are in the interest of the victims themselves. All the qualities that the partisan leader must possess in wartime reappear in peacetime in a modified form but one that can scarcely be regarded as an improvement. Above all else he must preserve the core of the regiment for later on and hence keep his recruiting officers in a state of constant activity. The core consisting of the remnants of the free corps and the general mob of migr s is put into barracks either at government expense (as in Besan on) or by some other means. The consecration in the service of an ideal must not be lacking and it is provided by a barracks-communism that ascribes a higher significance to the custom of holding ordinary civic actions in contempt. As this communist barracks is no longer subject to the articles of war, but only to the moral authority and the dictates of self-sacrifice, it is inevitable that quarrels should break out over the communal funds. From these disputes moral authority does not always emerge unscathed. If there is an artisan s club anywhere in the vicinity it can be employed as a recruiting base and the artisans are given the prospect of a jolly life full of adventures in exchange for the oppressive work of the present. By pointing to the higher ethical significance of the barracks for the future of the proletariat, it is even possible to induce the club to make financial contributions. In both the barracks and the club the sermonising and the patriarchal and gossipy style of personal relations will not fail to impress. Even in peacetime the partisan does not lose his indispensable assurance and just as in wartime every setback spurred him on to proclaim victory on the morrow, so now he is for ever expounding on the moral certainty and the philosophical inevitability with which "it" will start to happen within the next fortnight. As he must needs have an enemy and as the noble man is necessarily opposed by the ignoble ones he discovers in them a raging hostility towards himself, he imagines that they hate him merely because of his well-deserved popularity and would gladly poison him or stab him. With this in mind he resolves always to conceal a long dagger beneath his pillow. Just as the partisan leader in war will never succeed unless he assumes that the population reveres him, likewise in peace he will not indeed manage to form any lasting political groupings but he will constantly suppose them to exist and from this all sorts of strange mystifications can arise. The talent for requisitioning and obtaining free quarters appears again in the form of a cosy parasitism. By contrast, the strict asceticism of our Orlando, like everything that is good and great, is subject to terrible temptations in times of peace. Boiardo says in Canto 24: In politics the partisan leader will display his superiority in all matters of tactics. In conformity with the notion of a partisan he will go from one party to the next. Petty intrigues, sordid hole-and-corner activities, the occasional lie, morally outraged perfidy will be the natural symptoms of the noble consciousness. His faith in his mission and in the higher meaning of his words and deeds will induce him to declare emphatically: "I never lie!" The id es fixes become a splendid cloak for his secret treachery and cause the simpletons of the Emigration, who have no ideas at all, to conclude that he, the man of fixed ideas, is simply a fool. And our worthy slyboots could desire nothing better. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza rolled into one, as much in love with his knapsack as with his id es fixes, with the free provisions of the itinerant knight as much as with renown, Willich is the man of the duodecimal war and the microscopic intrigue. He conceals his cunning beneath the mask of character. His real future lies in the prairies of the Rio Grande del Norte. Concerning the relations between the two wings of the Emigration we have described, a letter from Mr. Goegg in the Deutsche Schnellpost in New York is very revealing: In order to understand the great struggle that was now waged we must waste a few words on the diplomacy of these two world-shaking parties. Arnold (and his henchmen likewise) was concerned above all to form a closed society with the official appearance of revolutionary activity . This society would then give birth to his beloved Committee for German Affairs and this committee would then propel Ruge into the European Central Committee. Arnold had been indefatigable in his efforts to realise this aim since the summer of 1850. He had hoped that the South Germans would provide that happy medium where he could dominate in comfort . The official establishment of the Emigration and the formation of committees was the necessary policy of Arnold and his allies. Kinkel and his cohorts, on the other hand, had to try and undermine everything that could legitimise the position Ruge had usurped in the European Central Committee. In reply to his appeal for an advance of 500 sterling Kinkel had received the promise of some money from New Orleans, whereupon he had formed a secret finance committee together with Willich, Schimmelpfennig, Reichenbach, Techow and Schurz, etc. They reasoned: once we have the money we shall have the Emigration; once we have the Emigration we shall also have the government in Germany. Their aim, therefore, was to occupy the whole Emigration with formal meetings but to undermine any attempt at setting up an official society that went beyond a loose organisation and above all to undermine all proposals to form committees. This would delay the enemy faction, block their activities and enable them to manoeuvre behind their backs. Both parties, i.e. all the distinguished men had one thing in common: they both led the mass of migr s by the nose, they concealed from them their real objectives, used them as mere tools and dropped them as soon as they had served their purpose. Let us take a look at these democratic Machiavellis, Talleyrands and Metternichs and take note of their actions. Scene 1. July 14, 1851. After a " private understanding with Kinkel to make common cause had fallen through, Ruge, Goegg, Sigel, Fickler and Ronge invited the distinguished men of all shades of opinion to a meeting in Fickler s home on July 14th. Twenty-six people appeared. Fickler proposed that a private circle of German refugees should be formed and this in turn would give birth to a business committee for the advancement of revolutionary objectives . This was opposed mainly by Kinkel and six of his supporters. After a violent debate lasting several hours Fickler s motion was passed (16 votes to 10). Kinkel and the minority declared themselves unable to participate any further and took their departure. Scene 2. July 20th. The above majority constituted itself as a society. Joined, among others, by Tausenau, who had been introduced by Fickler. If Ronge was the Luther and Kinkel the Melanchton then Tausenau is the Abraham a Sancta Clara of the Gemman democrats. If the two augurs in Cicero could not look each other in the face without laughing then Mr. Tausenau cannot catch sight of his own earnest features in the mirror without bursting into laughter. If Ruge had discovered in the Badeners people whom he impressed, Fate now had its revenge when it introduced him to the Austrian Tausenau, a man who impressed him. At the suggestion of Goegg and Tausenau the negotiations were postponed in order to try once again to bring about a union with Kinkel's faction. Scene 3. July 27th. Session in the Cranbourne Hotel. The distinguished Emigration there to a man. Kinkel's group appeared but not with the intention of joining the society already in existence; on the contrary, they pressed for the formation of an open discussion club without a business committee and without definite objectives . Schurz who acted as Kinkel's mentor throughout all these parliamentary negotiations, proposed: In this way, thanks to a general open-mindedness and to the accompaniment of three cheers for the German Republic the great migr Club which was to hold such inspiring meetings and which was to dissolve in satisfaction a few weeks after Kinkel s departure for America, came into being. Its dissolution did not of course prevent it from playing an important part as a living entity in America. Scene 4. August 1st. Second meeting in the Cranbourne Hotel. Kinkel explained: The Club is only a loosely organised society with no other purpose than for people to get to know each other and to have discussions that are open to everyone. It is therefore desirable for visitors to be admitted to the Club in large numbers. Student Schurz attempted to cover up quickly for the Professor s lack of tact by moving an amendment to permit the admission of visitors. Motion passed. Abraham a Sancta Clara Tausenau rose and put the two following motions with a perfectly straight face: Scene 5. August 8th. Third meeting in the Cranbourne Hotel. Discussion of the Tausenau motions. Ignoring the agreement, Kinkel/Willich had brought along the rank and file refugees , le menu peuple, so as to bind their consciences this time. Schurz moved an amendment proposing voluntary lectures on current affairs and in accordance with a previous arrangement Meyen immediately volunteered to speak on Prussia, Schurz on France, Oppenheim on England and Kinkel on America and the future (since his immediate future lay in America). Tausenau's proposals were rejected. He declared movingly that his only wish was to sacrifice his just anger on the altar of the nation and to remain within the bosom of his allies. But the Ruge/Fickler contingent at once assumed the outraged indignation of beautiful souls who have been swindled. Intermezzo. Kinkel had finally received 160 sterling from New Orleans and together with other distinguished heroes he had set about investing it for the revolution. The Ruge/Fickler faction, already embittered by the recent vote, now learned of this. They had no time to lose, action was essential. They founded a new cesspool and concealed its foul stagnation under the name of the Agitation Club. Its members were Tausenau, Frank, Goegg, Sigel, Hertle, Ronge, Haug, Fickler and Ruge. The Club immediately announced in the English press: The coarse Fickler regarded as distinguished only those writings by Ruge which he had not read and did not need to read. Scene 6. August 22nd. The Cranbourne Hotel. Firstly, there was a diplomatic masterstroke (vide Goegg) on the part of Schurz: he proposed the formation of a general refugee committee to comprise six members taken from the different factions together with five co-opted members of the already existing refugee committee of the Willich Artisan Club. (This would have given the Kinkel/Willich wing a permanent majority). Agreed. The elections were carried out but rejected by the members of the Rugean part of the state, which meant the complete collapse of the diplomatic master stroke. How seriously this refugee committee was meant to be taken can be seen from the fact that four days later Willich resigned from the committee of artisans and refugees which had only had a nominal existence for a long time, following upon repeated, wholly disrespectful revolts on the part of the rank and file refugees which had made the dissolution of the committee an inevitability. Interpellation concerning the emergence in public of the Agitation Club. Motion: that the migr Club should have nothing to do with the Agitation Club and should publicly dissociate itself from all its actions. Furious attacks on the Agitators Goegg and Sigel junior (i.e. senior, see below) in their presence. Rudolph Schramm declared that his old friend Ruge was a minion of Mazzini and a gossipy old woman . Tu quoque, Brute! Goegg retorted, not as a great orator but as an honest citizen and he launched a bitter attack on the ambiguous, slack, perfidious, unctuous Kinkel. The motion of the German faction was passed and provoked a declaration from the Agitators that the members of their club could no longer remain within the migr Club. Thus arose the terrible gulf between the migr Club and the Agitators' Club which gapes through the whole history of the modern world. The most curious fact about it is that both creatures only survived until their separation and now they vegetate in the Kaulbachian battle of the ghosts that still rages in German-American meetings and papers and no doubt will continue to rage to the end of time. The whole session was all the more stormy as the undisciplined Schramm went so far as to attack Willich, claiming that the migr Club degraded itself by its connections with that knight. The chairman, who happened to be the timorous Meyen, had already lost control several times in despair. But the debate about the Agitators' Club and the resignation of its members brought the tumult to a climax. To the accompaniment of shouts, drumming, crashes, threats and raging the edifying meeting went on until 2 a.m. when the landlord turned off the gas and so plunged the heated antagonists into darkness. This brought all plans to save the nation to an abrupt end. At the end of August the chivalrous Willich and the cosy Kinkel made an attempt to smash the Agitators' Club by putting a proposal to the worthy Fickler.

Heroes of the Exile

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/heroes-exile/ch13.htm

Agitation. Ruge declared that Kinkel was an agent of the Prince of Prussia . Another agitator discovered that the outstanding men of the migr Club consisted of Pastor Kinkel together with three Prussian lieutenants, two mediocre Berlin literati and one student . Sigel wrote: It cannot be denied that Willich has gained some support. But when a man has been a preacher for three years and only tells people what they wish to hear, he would have to be very stupid not to be able to win some of them over. The Kinkelites are attempting to take these supporters over. The Willich supporters are whoring with the Kinkel supporters. A fourth agitator declared that Kinkel's supporters are idolators . Tausenau gave this description of the migr Club. Emigration Let us take a look at these worthy men who regard everyone else as an immature politician. Sigel, the supreme commander. If anyone ever asks the muse of history how such an insipid nonentity was given the supreme command she will be completely at a loss for a reply. Sigel is only his brother's brother. His brother became a popular officer as a result of his critical remarks about the government, remarks which had been provoked by his frequent arrests for disorderly behaviour. The younger Sigel thought this reason enough in the early confusion prevailing at the outbreak of revolution to proclaim himself supreme commander and minister of war. The Baden artillery which had often proved its worth had plenty of older and more experienced officers who should have taken precedence over this young milksop Lieutenant Sigel, and they were more than a little indignant when they had to obey an unknown man whose inexperience was only matched by his incompetence. But there was Brentano, who was so mindless and treacherous as to permit anything that might ruin the revolution .... The total incapacity that Sigel displayed during the whole Baden campaign .... It is worthy of note that Sigel left the bravest soldiers of the republican army in the lurch in Rastatt and in the Black Forest without the reinforcements he had promised while he himself drove around Zurich with the epaulettes and the carriage of Prince von Furstenberg and paraded as an interesting unfortunate supreme commander. This is the true magnitude of this mature politician who, understandably proud of his earlier heroic deeds, imposed himself as supreme commander for a second time, on this occasion in the Agitators Club. This is the great hero, the brother of his brother. It is really laughable when such people (as the Agitators) reproach others with half-heartedness, for they are political nonentities who are neither half nor whole. Personal ambition is the whole secret of their fundamental position. As a club the Agitators Club has meaning only as a private institution, like a literary circle or a billiard club, and therefore it has no claim to be taken into consideration or given a voice. You have cast the dice! Let the uninitiated be initiated so that they may judge for themselves what kind of people you are! (Baltimore Correspondent.) And now begins that sweet-sounding, strange, magniloquent, fabulous, true and adventurous history of the great battles fought on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean between the migr s and the Agitators. It was a war waged with renewed bitterness and with indefatigable zeal. In it we witness Gottfried's crusade in the course of which he contends with Kossuth and after great labours and indescribable temptations he finally returns home with the Grail in the bag.

Heroes of the Exile

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/heroes-exile/ch14.htm

... And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists, the economic economy of the classes. What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production (historische Entwicklungsphasen der Production), (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society . Ignorant louts like Heinzen, who deny not merely the class struggle but even the existence of classes, only prove that, despite all their blood-curdling yelps and the humanitarian airs they give themselves, they regard the social conditions under which the bourgeoisie rules as the final product, the non plus ultra [highest point attainable] of history, and that they are only the servants of the bourgeoisie. And the less these louts realize the greatness and transient necessity of the bourgeois regime itself the more disgusting is their servitude....

Letters: Marx to J. Weydemeyer in New York [abstract]

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/letters/52_03_05-ab.htm

Dear Marx, The day before yesterday I sent you the translation [of the first chapter of Marx's 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte] and a post office order for a pound. A few more pounds will follow at the beginning of October i.e. in 9-10 days. I should like to send you more at a time because, then even though the total amount is the same in the end, it has the advantage of enabling you to plan your expenditure more methodically, but my own pecuniary circumstances are in such a muddle just now that I never know exactly how much I shall need for the month, and hence pounds only become available singly, so it seems best to send them to you straight away. Next month I shall put things on a business-like footing, after which I shall soon be able to make some rough estimates. From the enclosed memorandum you will see that Pieper has made a number of fairly bad howlers I haven t, of course, enumerated his transgressions against grammar and Donatus, cela n'aurait jamais fini. You may give it to him if you think it would do any good; otherwise, if it might lead him to abandon the translation, you had better keep it. Should he grumble over this or that correction, you can always use it as an opportunity to point out his imperfections. Individual bits are, by the way, almost untranslatable. Incidentally, it might also be advisable for the bookseller to see the last chapter in particular; he would then be vastly more impressed; I suggest that Pieper might translate it and you send it straight on to me; having already looked at it with this in mind, I am not wholly unprepared and progress would therefore be rapid. Even if it can t be published now, the translation must be completed; the chap will soon become Emperor, and that would provide another splendid opportunity for adding a postscript. I am going straight home to finish the article for the Tribune so that it catches the 2nd post and you can send it off by tomorrow s steamer. What prospect is there of a new English article for Dana? I trust the brandy has set your wife on her feet again warm regards to her and your children, also Dronke and Lupus. Massol s letter with the article for Dana by the 2nd post I haven t got it here. Did you see the statistics from Horner, the factory inspector, on the growth of the cotton industry in yesterday s Times and day-before-yesterday s Daily News? and the cotton industry alone. The following particulars reveal that during that period there were factories still under construction which would require some 4,000 horsepower and which will now have been completed. Since that time, work has undoubtedly begun on factories of 3,000-4,000 horsepower, more than half of which might be completed by the end of the year; if we assume that the increase between Jan. 1848 and Oct. 1850, i.e. 2 3/4 years, is no more than 4,000 horsepower, the steam-power of the Lancashire cotton industry will have risen between 1848 and the end of 1852 by 3,700+4,000+1,500+4,000=13,200 horsepower. In 1842 the total steam-power of the cotton industry in Lancashire amounted to 30,000 and in 1845 (end) to 40,000 horsepower; in 1846/47 there was little installed, hence almost 55,000 horsepower, nearly twice that of 1842, will now be in use. On top of that there is hydraulic power about 10,000 horsepower (1842) which has barely increased, hydraulic energy having been fairly well exploited for some time past. From this it may be seen where prosperity s additional capital has gone. For that matter the crisis cannot be very far off, although here excess over-speculation is almost entirely confined to omnibuses. Memorandum on the Translation of the 1st Chapter All these are things which Pieper, if only he paid a little attention, would know as well as I do but, as already mentioned, it is easier to translate difficult things oneself than to correct a translation that is carelessly thrown together and dodges the difficulties. If he tried a little harder, he could translate quite well.

Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1852

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/letters/52_09_23.htm

At present there is manifested a general demand for higher wages, on the part of working-men, especially shipwrights, colliers, factory-operatives and mechanics. This demand is owing to the prevailing prosperity and cannot be considered as a very particular event. A fact which deserves more notice, is a regular strike amongst agricultural laborers, a thing which has never taken place before. The laborers of South Wilts have struck for an advance of 2 shillings, their weekly wages amounting now only to 7s.

Karl Marx in the New York Daily Tribune 1853

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/02/08.htm

The Times of Jan. 25 contains the following observations under the head of Amateur Hanging : Of the several cases which are alleged by The Times in illustration of this remark, one is that of a lunatic at Sheffield, who, after talking with other lunatics respecting the execution of Barbour, put an end to his existence by hanging himself. Another case is that of a boy of 14 years, who also hung himself. The doctrine to which the enumeration of these facts was intended to give its support, is one which no reasonable man would be likely to guess, it being no less than a direct apotheosis of the hangman, while capital punishment is extolled as the ultima ratio of society. This is done in a leading article of the leading journal. The Morning Advertiser, in some very bitter but just strictures on the hanging predilections and bloody logic of The Times, has the following interesting data on 43 days of the year 1849: This table, as The Times concedes, shows not only suicides, but also murders of the most atrocious kind, following closely upon the execution of criminals. It is astonishing that the article in question does not even produce a single argument or pretext for indulging in the savage theory therein propounded; and it would be very difficult, if not altogether impossible, to establish any principle upon which the justice or expediency of capital punishment could be founded, in a society glorying in its civilization. Punishment in general has been defended as a means either of ameliorating or of intimidating. Now what right have you to punish me for the amelioration or intimidation of others? And besides, there is history there is such a thing as statistics which prove with the most complete evidence that since Cain the world has neither been intimidated nor ameliorated by punishment. Quite the contrary. From the point of view of abstract right, there is only one theory of punishment which recognizes human dignity in the abstract, and that is the theory of Kant, especially in the more rigid formula given to it by Hegel. Hegel says: There is no doubt something specious in this formula, inasmuch as Hegel, instead of looking upon the criminal as the mere object, the slave of justice, elevates him to the position of a free and self-determined being. Looking, however, more closely into the matter, we discover that German idealism here, as in most other instances, has but given a transcendental sanction to the rules of existing society. Is it not a delusion to substitute for the individual with his real motives, with multifarious social circumstances pressing upon him, the abstraction of free-will one among the many qualities of man for man himself! This theory, considering punishment as the result of the criminal s own will, is only a metaphysical expression for the old jus talionis [the right of retaliation by inflicting punishment of the same kind] eye against eye, tooth against tooth, blood against blood. Plainly speaking, and dispensing with all paraphrases, punishment is nothing but a means of society to defend itself against the infraction of its vital conditions, whatever may be their character. Now, what a state of society is that, which knows of no better Instrument for its own defense than the hangman, and which proclaims through the leading journal of the world its own brutality as eternal law? Mr. A. Qu telet, in his excellent and learned work, l'Homme et ses Facult s, says: And Mr.Qu telet, in a calculation of the probabilities of crime published in 1829, actually predicted with astonishing certainty, not only the amount but all the different kinds of crimes committed in France in 1830. That it is not so much the particular political institutions of a country as the fundamental conditions of modern bourgeois society in general, which produce an average amount of crime in a given national fraction of society, may be seen from the following table, communicated by Qu telet, for the years 1822-24. We find in a number of one hundred condemned criminals in America and France: Now, if crimes observed on a great scale thus show, in their amount and their classification, the regularity of physical phenomena if as Mr. Qu telet remarks, it would be difficult to decide in respect to which of the two (the physical world and the social system) the acting causes produce their effect with the utmost regularity is there not a necessity for deeply reflecting upon an alteration of the system that breeds these crimes, instead of glorifying the hangman who executes a lot of criminals to make room only for the supply of new ones? One of the topics of the day is the publication of a pamphlet by Mr. Richard Cobden 1793 and 1853, in Three Letters (140 pages). The first part of this pamphlet, treating of the time of, and previous to, the revolution of 1793, has the merit of attacking openly and vigorously the old English prejudices respecting that epoch. Mr. Cobden shows that England was the aggressive party in the revolutionary war. But here he has no claim to originality, as he does but repeat, and in a much less brilliant manner, the statements once given by the greatest pamphleteer England has ever possessed, viz.: the late William Cobbett The other part of the pamphlet, although written from an economical point of view, is of a rather romantic character. Mr. Cobden labors to prove that the idea of Louis Napoleon s having any intention of invading England is a mere absurdity; that the noise about the defenseless state of the country has no material foundation, and is propagated only by persons interested in augmenting the public expenditure. By what arguments does he prove that Louis Napoleon has no hostile intentions toward England? Louis Napoleon, he contends, has no rational ground for quarreling with England. And how does he prove that a foreign invasion of this country is impossible? For 800 years, says Mr. Cobden, England has not been invaded. And what are his arguments to show that the cry about the defenseless state is a mere interested humbug? The highest military authorities have declared that they feel quite safe! Louis Napoleon has never met, even in the Legislative Assembly, with a more credulous believer in his faith and peaceable intentions, than he finds now, rather unexpectedly, in Mr. Richard Cobden. The Morning Herald (in yesterday s number), the habitual defender of Louis Napoleon, publishes a letter addressed to Mr. Cobden, and alleged to have been written under the immediate inspiration of Bonaparte himself, in which the prince-hero of Satory [i.e. Louis Bonaparte] assures us that he will only come over to England, if the Queen [Victoria], threatened by rising Democracy, should want some 200,000 of his d cembraillards [members of the Bonapartist Society of December 10] or bullies. But this Democracy, according to The Herald, is nobody else than Messrs. Cobden & Co. We must confess that, having perused the pamphlet in question, we begin to feel an apprehension of something like an invasion of Great Britain. Mr. Cobden is no very happy prophet. After the repeal of the Corn Laws he made a trip to the Continent, visiting even Russia, and after his return stated that all things were right, that the times of violence had passed, that the nations deeply and eagerly involved in commercial and industrial pursuits, would now develop themselves in a quiet business-like manner, without political storms, without outbreaks and disturbances. His prophecy had scarcely reached the Continent, when the Revolution of 1848 burst forth over all Europe, and gave a somewhat ironical echo to Mr. Cobden s meek predictions. He talked peace, where there was no peace. It would be a great mistake to suppose that the peace doctrine of the Manchester School has a deep philosophical bearing. It only means, that the feudal method of warfare shall be supplanted by the commercial one cannons by capital. The Peace Society yesterday held a meeting at Manchester, where it was almost unanimously declared, that Louis Napoleon could not be supposed as intending anything against the safety of England, if the press would but discontinue its odious censures on his Government, and become mute! Now, with this statement, it appears very singular, that increased army and navy estimates have been voted in the House of Commons without opposition, none of the M. P. s present at the Peace Conference [convened by the Peace Society in Manchester in January 1853] having had anything to say against the proposed addition to the military force. During the political calm, produced by the adjournment of Parliament, there are two principal topics which occupy the press, viz.: The coming Reform Bill and the last Discount Regulations of the Bank of England. The Times of the 24th inst. informs the public that a new Reform Bill is on the stocks. What kind of a Reform Bill it will be, you may infer from Sir Charles Wood s election-speech at Halifax, in which he declared against the principle of equal electoral districts; from Sir James Graham s at Carlisle, where he rejected the ballot; and from the confidentially circulated statement, that even the small Reform pills prescribed in Feb. 1852 by Johnny Russell, are considered as far too strong and dangerous. But there is something which looks yet more suspicious. The mouthpiece of the Coalition Ministry, The Economist, in the number of Jan. 22, states, not only: Thus the MethusaIem Ministry will again begin their political studies, coram Publico. The colleagues of Peel, the colleagues of Melbourne, the subaltern of Canning, the lieutenant of the elder Grey, men who served under Lord Liverpool, others who sat in the cabinet of Lord Grenville, all neophytes of half-a-century back, are unable, from want of experience, to propose to Parliament any decisive measure on Electoral Reform. Thus, the old proverb, that experience comes with age, appears to be refuted. This coyness in a coalition of veteran partisans is something too comical to be easily described, exclaims The Daily News, asking: Where is your Reform Bill? The Morning Advertiser replies: With regard to the late Discount Regulations of the Bank of England, the panic at first called forth by them, has now subsided, and businessmen alike with theorists, have assured themselves that the present prosperity will not be seriously interrupted or checked. But read the following extract from The Economist: Now the crisis, temporarily protracted by the opening of the Californian and Australian markets and mines, will unquestionably become due, in the event of a bad harvest. The Discount Regulations of the Bank are only the first forebodings. In 1847 the Bank of England altered its rate of discount 13 times. In 1853 there will be a full score of such measures. In conclusion, I wish to ask the English Economists, how it happens that modern Political Economy commenced its warfare against the mercantile system by demonstrating that the influx and efflux of gold in a country are indifferent, that products are only exchanged against products, and that gold is a product like all others, while the very same Economy, now at the end of its career, is most anxiously watching the efflux and influx of gold? The real object to be accomplished by the operations of the Bank, says The Economist, is to prevent an exportation of capital, Now, would The Economist prevent an exportation of capital in the shape of cotton, iron, woollen yarns and stuffs? And is gold not a product like all other products? Or has The Economist turned, in his old days, a Mercantilist? And after having set free the importation of foreign capital, does he aim at checking the exportation of British capital? After having freed himself from the civilized system of protection, will he recur to the Turkish one? I am just concluding my letter, as I am informed, that a report is prevalent in political circles, that Mr. Gladstone is at variance with several of the leading members of the Aberdeen Ministry, on the subject of the Income Tax, and that the result of the misunderstanding will probably be the resignation of the Right Hon. gentleman. In that case, Sir Francis Baring, formerly Chancellor of the Exchequer under Lord Melbourne, will probably become his successor.

Karl Marx 1853

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/02/18.htm

In the session of last night Lord John Russell brought before the House of Commons his motion for the removal of some disabilities of Her Majesty s Jewish subjects. The motion was carried by a majority of 29. Thus the question is again settled in the House of Commons, but there is no doubt that it will be once more unsettled in the House of Lords. The exclusion of Jews from the House of Commons,: after the spirit of usury has so long presided. in the British Parliament, is unquestionably an absurd anomaly, the more so as they have already become eligible to all the civil offices of the community. But it remains no less characteristic for the man and for his times, that instead of a Reform Bill which was promised to remove the disabilities of the mass of the English people, a bill. is brought in by Finality John for the exclusive removal of the disabilities of Baron Lionel de Rothschild. How utterly insignificant an interest is taken in this affair by the public at large, may be inferred from the fact that from not a single place in Great Britain a petition in favor of the admission of Jews has been forwarded to Parliament. The whole secret of this miserable reform farce was betrayed by the speech. of the present Sir Robert Peel. The proceedings on election-petitions have commenced. The elections for Canterbury and Lancaster have been declared null and void, under circumstances which proved the habitual venality on the part of a certain class of electors, but it is pretty sure that the majority of cases will be adjusted by way of compromise. On the 21st inst., Lord John Russell resigned the seals of the Foreign Office, and Lord Clarendon was sworn in as his successor. Lord John is the first Member of the House of Commons admitted to a seat in the Cabinet without any official appointment. He is now only a favorite adviser, without a place and without salary. Notice, however, has already been given by Mr. Kelly of a proposition to remedy the latter inconvenience of poor Johnny s situation. The Secretaryship of Foreign Affairs is at the present juncture the more important, as the Germanic Diet has bestirred itself to ask the removal of all political refugees from Great Britain, as the Austrians propose to pack us all up and transport us to some barren island in the South Pacific. Allusion has been made, in a former letter, to the probability of the Irish Tenant Right agitation becoming, in time, an anticlerical movement, notwithstanding the views and intentions of its actual leaders. I alleged the fact, that the higher Clergy was already beginning to take a hostile attitude with regard to the League. Another force has since stepped into the field which presses the movement in the same direction. The landlords of the north of Ireland endeavor to persuade their tenantry that the Tenant League and the Catholic Defense Association are identical, and they labor to get up an opposition to the former under the pretense of resisting the progress of Popery. While we thus see the Irish landlords appealing to their tenants against the Catholic clergy we behold on the other hand the English Protestant clergy appealing to the working classes against the mill-lords. The industrial proletariat of England has renewed with double vigor its old campaign for the Ten-Hours Bill and against the truck and shoppage system. As the demands of this kind shall be brought before the House of Commons, to which numerous petitions on the subject have already been presented, there will be an opportunity for me to dwell in a future letter on the cruel and infamous practices of the factory-despots, who are in the habit of making the press and the tribune resound with their liberal rhetorics. For the present it may suffice to recall to memory that from 1802 there has been a continual strife on the part of the English working people for legislative interference with the duration of factory labor, until in 1847 the celebrated Ten-Hours Act of John Fielden was passed, whereby young persons and females were prohibited to work in any factory longer than ten hours a day. The liberal mill-lords speedily found out that under this act factories might be worked by shifts and relays. In 1849 an action of law was brought before the Court of Exchequer, and the Judge decided, that to work the relay or shift-system, with two sets of children, the adults working the whole space of time during which the machinery was running, was legal. It therefore became necessary to go to Parliament again, and in 1850 the relay and shift-system was condemned there, but the Ten-Hours Act was transformed into a Ten and a Half Hours Act. Now, at this moment, the working classes demand a restitution in integrum of the original Ten-Hours Bill; yet, in order to make it efficient, they add the demand of a restriction of the moving power of machinery. Such is, in short, the exoteric history of the Ten-Hours Act. Its secret history was as follows: The landed aristocracy having suffered a defeat from the bourgeoisie by the passing of the Reform Bill of 1831, and being assailed in their most sacred interests by the cry of the manufacturers for Free Trade and the abolition of the Corn Laws, resolved to resist the middle-class by espousing the cause and claims of the working-men against their masters, and especially by rallying around their demands for the limitation of factory labor. So called philanthropic Lords were then at the head of all Ten-Hours meetings. Lord Ashley has even made a sort of renomm e by his performances in this movement. The landed aristocracy having received a deadly blow by the actual abolition of the Corn Laws in 1846, took their vengeance by forcing the Ten-Hours Bill of 1847 upon Parliament. But the industrial bourgeoisie recovered by judiciary authority, what they had lost by Parliamentary legislation. In 1850, the wrath of the Landlords had gradually subsided, and they made a compromise with the Mill-lords, condemning the shift-system, but imposing, at the same time, as a penalty for the enforcement of the law, half an hour extra work per diem on the working classes. At the present juncture, however, as they feel the approach of their final struggle with the men of the Manchester School, they are again trying to get hold of the short-time movement; but, not daring to come forward themselves, they endeavor to undermine the Cotton-lords by directing the popular force against them through the medium of the State Church Clergymen. In what rude manner these holy men have taken the anti-industrial crusade into their hands, may be seen from the following few instances. At, Crampton a Ten-Hours meeting was held, the Rev. Dr. Brammell [of the State Church], in the chair. At this meeting, Rev. J. R. Stephens, Incumbent of Stalybridge, said: At the great Ten Hours meeting, at Burnley, Rev. E. A. Verity, incumbent of Habbergham Eaves, told his audience among other things: The motive, that has so suddenly metamorphosed the gentlemen of the Established Church, into as many knight-errant of labor s rights, and so fervent knights too, has already been pointed out. They are not only laying in a stock of popularity for the rainy days of approaching democracy, they are not only conscious, that the Established Church is essentially art aristocratic institution, which must either stand or fall with the landed Oligarchy there is something more. The men of the Manchester School are Anti-State Church men, they are Dissenters, they are, above all, so highly enamored of the 13,000,000 annually abstracted from their pockets by the State Church in England and Wales alone, that they are resolved to bring about a separation between those profane millions and the holy orders, the better to qualify the latter for heaven. The reverend gentlemen, therefore, are struggling pro aris et focis. The men of the Manchester School, however, may infer from this diversion, that they will be unable to abstract the political power from the hands of the Aristocracy, unless they consent, with whatever reluctance, to give the people also their full share in it. On the Continent, hanging, shooting and transportation is the order of the day. But the executioners are themselves tangible and hangable beings, and their deeds are recorded in the conscience of the whole civilized world. At the same time there acts in England an invisible, intangible and silent despot. condemning individuals, in extreme cases, to the most cruel of deaths, and driving in its noiseless, every day working, whole races and whole classes of men from the soil of their forefathers, like the angel with the fiery sword who drove Adam from Paradise. In the latter form the work of the unseen social despot calls itself forced emigration, in the former it is called starvation. Some further cases of starvation have occurred in London during the present month. I remember only that of Mary Ann Sandry, aged 43 years, who died in Coal-lane, Shadwell, London. Mr. Thomas Peene, the surgeon, assisting the Coroner s inquest, said the deceased died from starvation and exposure to the cold. The deceased was lying on a small heap of straw, without the slightest covering. The room was completely destitute of furniture, firing and food. Five young children were sitting on the bare flooring, crying from hunger and cold by the side of the mother s dead body. On the working of forced emigration in my next.

Karl Marx in the New York Tribune 1853

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/02/25.htm

The Colonial Emigration Office gives the following return of the emigration from England, Scotland, and Ireland, to all parts of the world, from Jan. 1, 1847, to Jan. 30, 1852: Nearly four-fifths of the whole emigration are, accordingly, to be regarded as belonging to the Celtic population of Ireland and of the Highlands and islands of Scotland. The London Economist says of this emigration: Begin with pauperising the inhabitants of a country, and when there is no more profit to be ground out of them, when they have grown a burden to the revenue, drive them away, and sum up your Net Revenue! Such is the doctrine laid down by Ricardo, in his celebrated work, The Principle of Political Economy. The annual profits of a capitalist amounting to 2,000, what does it matter to him whether he employs 100 men or 1,000 men? Is not, says Ricardo, the real income of a nation similar? The net real income of a nation, rents and profits, remaining the same, it is no subject of consideration whether it is derived from ten millions of people or from twelve millions. Sismondi, in his Nouveaux Principes d'Economie Politique, answers that, according to this view of the matter, the English nation would not be interested at all in the disappearance of the whole population, the King (at that time it was no Queen, but a King) remaining alone in the midst of the island, supposing only that automatic machinery enabled him to procure the amount of net revenue now produced by a population of twenty millions. Indeed that grammatical entity, the national wealth, would in this case not be diminished. But it is not only the pauperised inhabitants of Green Erin [Ireland] and of the Highlands of Scotland that are swept away by agricultural improvements, and by the breaking down of the antiquated system of society. It is not only the able-bodied agricultural labourers from England, Wales, and Lower Scotland, whose passages are paid by the Emigration Commissioners. The wheel of improvement is now seizing another class, the most stationary class in England. A startling emigration movement has sprung up among the smaller English farmers, especially those holding heavy clay soils, who, with bad prospects for the coming harvest, and in want of sufficient capital to make the great improvements on their farms which would enable them to pay their old rents, have no other alternative but to cross the sea in search of a new country and of new lands, I am not speaking now of the emigration caused by the gold mania, but only of the compulsory emigration produced by landlordism, concentration of farms, application of machinery to the soil, and introduction of the modern system of agriculture on a great scale. In the ancient States, in Greece and Rome, compulsory emigration, assuming the shape of the periodical establishment of colonies, formed a regular link in the structure of society. The whole system of those States was founded on certain limits to the numbers of the population, which could not be surpassed without endangering the condition of antique civilisation itself. But why was it so? Because the application of science to material production was utterly unknown to them. To remain civilised they were forced to remain few. Otherwise they would have had to submit to the bodily drudgery which transformed the free citizen into a slave. The want of productive power made citizenship dependent on a certain proportion in numbers not to be disturbed. Forced emigration was the only remedy. It was the same pressure of population on the powers of production. that drove the barbarians from the high plains of Asia to invade the Old World. The same cause acted there, although under a different form. To remain barbarians they were forced to remain few. They were pastoral, hunting, war-waging tribes, whose manners of production required a large space for every individual, as is now the case with the Indian tribes in North-America. By augmenting in numbers they curtailed each other s field of production. Thus the surplus population was forced to undertake those great adventurous migratory movements which laid the foundation of the peoples of ancient and modern Europe. But with modern compulsory emigration the case stands quite opposite. Here it is not the want of productive. power which creates a surplus population; it is the increase of productive power which demands a diminution of population, and drives away the surplus by famine or emigration. It is not population that presses on productive power; it is productive power that presses on population. Now I share neither in the opinions of Ricardo, who regards Net-Revenue as the Moloch to whom entire populations must be sacrificed, without even so much as complaint, nor in the opinion of Sismondi, who, in his hypochondriacal philanthropy, would forcibly retain the superannuated methods of agriculture and proscribe science from industry, as Plato expelled poets from his Republic. Society is undergoing a silent revolution, which must be submitted to, and which takes no more notice of the human existences it breaks down than an earthquake regards the houses it subverts. The classes and the races, too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way. But can there be anything more puerile, more short-sighted, than the views of those Economists who believe in all earnest that this woeful transitory state means nothing but adapting society to the acquisitive propensities of capitalists, both landlords and money-lords? In Great Britain the working of that process is most transparent. The application of modern science to production clears the land of its inhabitants, but it concentrates people in manufacturing towns. The Economist knows very well that they could not emigrate at their own expense, and that the industrial middle-class would not assist them in emigrating. Now, to what does this lead? The rural population, the most stationary and conservative element of modern society, disappears while the industrial proletariat, by the very working of modern production, finds itself gathered in mighty centres, around the great productive forces, whose history of creation has hitherto been the martyrology of the labourers. Who will prevent them from going a step further, and appropriating these forces, to which they have been appropriated before Where will be the power of resisting them? Nowhere! Then, it will be of no use to appeal to the rights of property. The modern changes in the art of production have, according to the Bourgeois Economists themselves, broken down the antiquated system of society and its modes of appropriation. They have expropriated the Scotch clansman. the Irish cottier and tenant, the English yeoman, the hand-loom weaver, numberless handicrafts, whole generations of factory children and women; they will expropriate, in due time, the landlord and the cotton lord.

Karl Marx in the New York Tribune 1853

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/03/04.htm

Has one ever heard of great improvisators being also great poets? They are the same in politics as in poetry. Revolutions are never made to order. After the terrible experience of 48 and 49, it needs something more than paper summonses from distant leaders to evoke national revolutions.

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1893

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/03/08.htm

London, Friday, January 21, 1853 During the present momentary slackness in political affairs, the address of the Stafford House Assembly of Ladies to their sisters in America upon the subject of Negro-Slavery, and the affectionate and Christian address of many thousands of the women of the United States of America to their sisters, the women of England , upon white slavery, have proved a god-send to the press. Not one of the British papers was ever struck by the circumstance that the Stafford House Assembly took place at the palace under the Presidency of the Duchess of Sutherland, and yet the names of Stafford and Sutherland should have been sufficient to class the philanthropy of the British Aristocracy a philanthropy which chooses its objects as far distant from home as possible, and rather on that than on this side of the ocean. The history of the wealth of the Sutherland family is the history of the ruin and of the expropriation of the Scotch-Gaelic population from its native soil. As far back as the 10th century, the Danes had landed in Scotland, conquered the plains of Caithness, and driven back the aborigines into the mountains. Mhoir-Fhear-Chattaibh, as he was called in Gaelic, or the Great Man of Sutherland , had always found his companions-in-arms ready to defend him at risk of their lives against all his enemies, Danes or Scots, foreigners or natives. After the revolution which drove the Stuarts from Britain, private feuds among the petty chieftains of Scotland became less and less frequent, and the British Kings, in order to keep up at least a semblance of dominion in these remote districts, encouraged the levying of family regiments among the chieftains, a system by which these lairds were enabled to combine modern military establishments with the ancient clan system in such a manner as to support one by the other. Now, in order to distinctly appreciate the usurpation subsequently carried out, we must first properly understand what the clan meant. The clan belonged to a form of social existence which, in the scale of historical development, stands a full degree below the feudal state; viz., the patriarchal state of society. Klaen , in Gaelic, means children. Every one of the usages and traditions of the Scottish Gaels reposes upon the supposition that the members of the clan belong to one and the same family. The great man , the chieftain of the clan, is on the one hand quite as arbitrary, on the other quite as confined in his power, by consanguinity, &c., as every father of a family. To the clan, to the family, belonged the district where it had established itself, exactly as in Russia, the land occupied by a community of peasants belongs, not to the individual peasants, but to the community. Thus the district was the common property of the family. There could be no more question, under this system, of private property, in the modern sense of the word, than there could be of comparing the social existence of the members of the clan to that of individuals living in the midst of our modern society. The division and subdivision of the land corresponded to the military functions of the single members of the clan. According to their military abilities, the chieftain entrusted to them the several allotments, cancelled or enlarged according to his pleasure the tenures of the individual officers, and these officers again distributed to their vassals and under-vassals every separate plot of land. But the district at large always remained the property of the clan, and, however the claims of individuals might vary, the tenure remained the same; nor were the contributions for the common defence, or the tribute for the Laird, who at once was leader in battle and chief magistrate in peace, ever increased. Upon the whole, every plot of land was cultivated by the same family, from generation to generation, under fixed imposts. These imposts were insignificant, more a tribute by which the supremacy of the great man and of his officers was acknowledged, than a rent of land in a modern sense, or a source of revenue. The officers directly subordinate to the great man were called Taksmen , and the district entrusted to their care, Tak . Under then were placed inferior officers, at the head of every hamlet, and under these stood the peasantry. Thus you see, the clan is nothing but a family organized in a military manner, quite as little defined by laws, just as closely hemmed in by traditions, as any family. But the land is the property of the family, in the midst of which differences of rank, in spite of consanguinity, do prevail as well as in all the ancient Asiatic family communities. The first usurpation took place, after the expulsion of the Stuarts, by the establishment of the family Regiments. From that moment, pay became the principal source of revenue of the Great Man, the Mhoir-Fhear-Chattaibh. Entangled in the dissipation of the Court of London, he tried to squeeze as much money as possible out of his officers, and they applied the same system of their inferiors. The ancient tribute was transformed into fixed money contracts. In one respect these contracts constituted a progress, by fixing the traditional imposts; in another respect they were a usurpation, inasmuch as the great man now took the position of landlord toward the taksmen who again took toward the peasantry that of farmers. And as the great men now required money no less than the taksmen , a production not only for direct consumption but for export and exchange also became necessary; the system of national production had to be changed, the hands superseded by this change had to be got rid of. Population, therefore, decreased. But that it as yet was kept up in a certain manner, and that man, in the 18th century, was not yet openly sacrificed to net-revenue, we see from a passage in Steuart, a Scotch political economist, whose work was published 10 years before Adam Smith s, where it says (Vol.1, Chap.16): That even in the beginnings of the 19th century the rental imposts were very small, is shown by the work of Mr Loch (1820), the steward of the Countess of Sutherland, who directed the improvements on her estates. He gives for instance the rental of the Kintradawell estate for 1811, from which it appears that up to then, every family was obliged to pay a yearly impost of a few shillings in money, a few fowls, and some days work, at the highest. It was only after 1811 that the ultimate and real usurpation was enacted, the forcible transformation of clan-property into the private property, in the modern sense, of the Chief. The person who stood at the head of this economical revolution was a female Mehemet Ali, who had well digested her Malthus the Countess of Sutherland, alias Marchioness of Stafford. Let us first state that the ancestors of the Marchioness of Stafford were the great men of the most northern part of Scotland, of very near three-quarters of Sutherlandshire. This country is more extensive than many French Departments or small German Principalities. When the Countess of Sutherland inherited these estates, which she afterward brought to her husband, the Marquis of Stafford, afterward Duke of Sutherland, the population of them was already reduced to 15,000. My lady Countess resolved upon a radical economical reform, and determined upon transforming the whole tract of country into sheep-walks. From 1814 to 1820, these 15,000 inhabitants, about 3,000 families, were systematically expelled and exterminated. All their villages were demolished and burned down, and all their fields converted into pasturage. British soldiers were commanded for this execution, and came to blows with the natives. An old woman refusing to quit her hut was burned in the flames of it. Thus my lady Countess appropriated to herself 794,000 acres of land, which from time immemorial had belonged to the clan. In the exuberance of her generosity she allotted to the expelled natives about 6,000 acres two acres per family. These 6,000 acres had been lying waste until then, and brought no revenue to the proprietors. The Countess was generous enough to sell the acre at 2s 6d on an average, to the clan-men who for centuries past had shed their blood for her family. The whole of the unrightfully appropriated clan-land she divided into 29 large sheep farms, each of them inhabited by one single family, mostly English farm-laborers; and in 1821 the 15,000 Gaels had already been superseded by 131,000 sheep. A portion of the aborigines had been thrown upon the sea-shore, and attempted to live by fishing. They became amphibious, and, as an English author says, lived half on land and half on water, and after all did not live upon both. Sismondi, in his Etudes Sociales, observes with regard to this expropriation of the Gaels from Sutherlandshire an example, which, by-the-by, was imitated by other great men of Scotland: Mr Loch, in his defense of the Countess of Sutherland (1820), replies to the above as follows: And why, then, should the slave-holders in the Southern States of North America sacrifice their private interest to the philanthropic grimaces of her Grace, the Duchess of Sutherland? The British aristocracy, who have everywhere superseded man by bullocks and sheep, will, in a future not very distant, be superseded, in turn, by these useful animals. The process of clearing estates, which, in Scotland, we have just now described, was carried out in England in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Thomas Morus already complains of it in the beginning of the 16th century. It was performed in Scotland in the beginning of the 19th, and in Ireland it is now in full progress. The noble Viscount Palmerston, too, some years ago cleared of men his property in Ireland, exactly in the manner described above. If of any property it ever was true that it was robbery, it is literally true of the property of the British aristocracy. Robbery of Church property, robbery of commons, fraudulent transformation, accompanied by murder, of feudal and patriarchal property into private property these are the titles of British aristocrats to their possessions. And what services in this latter process were performed by a servile class of lawyers, you may see from an English lawyer of the last century, Dalrymple, who, in his History of Feudal Property, very naively proves that every law or deed concerning property was interpreted by the lawyers, in England, when the middle class rose in wealth in favor of the middle class in Scotland, where the nobility enriched themselves, in favor of the nobility in either case it was interpreted in a sense hostile to the people. The above Turkish reform by the Countess of Sutherland was justifiable, at least, from a Malthusian point of view. Other Scottish noblemen went further. Having superseded human beings by sheep, they superseded sheep by game, and the pasture grounds by forests. At the head of these was the Duke of Atholl. As for a large number of the human beings expelled to make room for the game of the Duke of Atholl, and the sheep of the Countess of Sutherland, where did they fly to, where did they find a home? In the United States of America. The enemy of British Wage-Slavery has a right to condemn Negro-Slavery; a Duchess of Sutherland, a Duke of Atholl, a Manchester Cotton-lord never!

The Duchess of Sutherland and Slavery by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/03/12.htm

London, Tuesday, May 24, 1853 The charter of the East India Company expires in 1854. Lord John Russell has given notice in the House of Commons, that the Government will be enabled to state, through Sir Charles Wood, their views respecting the future Government of India, on the 3d of June. A hint has been thrown out in some ministerial papers, in support of the already credited public rumor, that the Coalition have found the means of reducing even this colossal Indian question to almost Lilliputian dimensions. The Observer prepares the mind of the English people to undergo a new disenchantment. Much less even than is supposed, will have to be done by my lords Russell and Aberdeen. The leading features of the proposed change appear to consist in two very small items. Firstly, the Board of Directors will be refreshed by some additional members, appointed directly by the Crown, and even this new blood will be infused sparingly at first. The cure of the old directorial system is thus meant to be applied, so that the portion of blood now infused with great caution will have ample time to come to a standstill before another second infusion will be proceeded upon. Secondly, the union of judge and of Exciseman in one and the same person, will be put an end to, and the judges shall be educated men. Does it not seem, on hearing such propositions, as if one were transported back into that earliest period of the Middle Ages, when the feudal lords began to be replaced as judges, by lawyers who were required, at any rate, to have a knowledge of reading and writing? The Sir Charles Wood who, as President of the Board of Control, will bring forward this sensible piece of reform, is the same timber who, under the late Whig Administration, displayed such eminent capacities of mind, that the Coalition were at a dreadful loss what to do with him, till they hit upon the idea of making him over to India. Richard the Third offered a kingdom for a horse; the Coalition offers an ass for a kingdom. Indeed, if the present official idiocy of an Oligarchical Government be the expression of what England can do now, the time of England s ruling the world must have passed away. On former occasions we have seen that the Coalition had invariably some fitting reason for postponing every, even the smaller measure. Now, with respect to India their postponing propensities are supported by the public opinion of two worlds. The people of England and the people of India simultaneously demand the postponement of all the legislation on Indian affairs, until the voice of the natives shall have been heard, the necessary materials collected, the pending inquiries completed. Petitions have already reached Downing-st., from the three Presidencies deprecating precipitate legislation. The Manchester School have formed an Indian Society, which they will put immediately into motion, to get up public meetings in the metropolis and throughout the country, for the purpose of opposing any legislation on the subject for this session. Besides, two Parliamentary Committees are now sitting with a view to report respecting the state of affairs in the Indian Government. But this time the Coalition Ministry is inexorable. It will not wait for the publication of any Committee s advice. It wants to legislate instantly and directly for 150 millions of people, and to legislate for 20 years at once. Sir Charles Wood is anxious to establish his claim as the modern Manu. Whence, of a sudden, this precipitate legislative rush of our cautious political valetudinarians? They want to renew the old Indian Charter for a period of 20 years. They avail themselves of the eternal pretext of Reform. Why? The English oligarchy have a presentiment of the approaching end of their days of glory, and they have a very justifiable desire to conclude such a treaty with English legislation, that even in the case of England s escaping soon from their weak and rapacious hands, they shall still retain for themselves and their associates the privilege of plundering India for the space of 20 years.

Karl Marx in The New-York Tribune 1853

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/06/09.htm

Whether the contact of extremes be such a universal principle or not, a striking illustration of it may be seen in the effect the Chinese revolution seems likely to exercise upon the civilized world. It may seem a very strange, and a very paradoxical assertion that the next uprising of the people of Europe, and their next movement for republican freedom and economy of Government, may depend more probably on what is now passing in the Celestial Empire the very opposite of Europe than on any other political cause that now exists more even than on the menaces of Russia and the consequent likelihood of a general European war. But yet it is no paradox, as all may understand by attentively considering the circumstances of the case. Whatever be the social causes, and whatever religious, dynastic, or national shape they may assume, that have brought about the chronic rebellions subsisting in China for about ten years past, and now gathered together in one formidable revolution the occasion of this outbreak has unquestionably been afforded by the English cannon forcing upon China that soporific drug called opium. Before the British arms the authority of the Manchu dynasty fell to pieces; the superstitious faith in the eternity of the Celestial Empire broke down; the barbarous and hermetic isolation from the civilized world was infringed; and an opening was made for that intercourse which has since proceeded so rapidly under the golden attractions of California and Australia. At the same time the silver coin of the Empire, its lifeblood, began to be drained away to the British East Indies. Up to 1830, the balance of trade being continually in favour of the Chinese, there existed an uninterrupted importation of silver from India, Britain and the United States into China. Since 1833, and especially since 1840, the export of silver from China to India has become almost exhausting for the Celestial Empire. Hence the strong decrees of the Emperor against the opium trade, responded to by still stronger resistance to his measures. Besides this immediate economical consequence, the bribery connected with opium smuggling has entirely demoralized the Chinese State officers in the Southern provinces. Just as the Emperor was wont to be considered the father of all China, so his officers were looked upon as sustaining the paternal relation to their respective districts. But this patriarchal authority, the only moral link embracing the vast machinery of the State, has gradually been corroded by the corruption of those officers, who have made great gains by conniving at opium smuggling. This has occurred principally in the same Southern provinces where the rebellion commenced. It is almost needless to observe that, in the same measure in which opium has obtained the sovereignty over the Chinese, the Emperor and his staff of pedantic mandarins have become dispossessed of their own sovereignty. It would seem as though history had first to make this whole people drunk before it could rouse them out of their hereditary stupidity. Though scarcely existing in former times, the import of English cottons, and to a small extent of English woollens, has rapidly risen since 1833, the epoch when the monopoly of trade with China was transferred from the East India Company to Private commerce, and on a much greater scale since 1840, the epoch when other nations, and especially our own, also obtained a share in the Chinese trade. This introduction of foreign manufactures has had a similar effect on the native industry to that which it formerly had on Asia Minor, Persia and India. In China the spinners and weavers have suffered greatly under this foreign competition, and the community has become unsettled in proportion. The tribute to be paid to England after the unfortunate war of 1840, the great unproductive consumption of opium, the drain of the precious metals by this trade, the destructive influence of foreign competition on native manufactures, the demoralized condition of the public administration, produced two things: the old taxation became more burdensome and harassing, and new taxation was added to the old. Thus in a decree of the Emperor, dated Peking, Jan 5 1853, we find orders given to the viceroys and governors of the southern provinces of Wuchang and Hanyang to remit and defer the payment of taxes, and especially not in any case to exact more than the regular amount; for otherwise, says the decree, how will the poor people be able to bear it? And Thus, perhaps, continues the Emperor, will my people, in a period of general hardship and distress, be exempted from the evils of being pursued and worried by the tax-gatherer. Such language as this, and such concessions we remember to have heard from Austria, the China of Germany, in 1848. All these dissolving agencies acting together on the finances, the morals, the industry, and political structure of China, received their full development under the English cannon in 1840, which broke down the authority of the Emperor, and forced the Celestial Empire into contact with the terrestrial world. Complete isolation was the prime condition of the preservation of Old China. That isolation having come to a violent end by the medium of England, dissolution must follow as surely as that of any mummy carefully preserved in a hermetically sealed coffin, whenever it is brought into contact with the open air. Now, England having brought about the revolution of China, the question is how that revolution will in time react on England, and through England on Europe. This question is not difficult of solution. The attention of our readers has often been called to the unparalleled growth of British manufactures since 1850. Amid the most surprising prosperity, it has not been difficult to point out the clear symptoms of an approaching industrial crisis. Notwithstanding California and Australia, notwithstanding the immense and unprecedented emigration, there must ever, without any particular accident, in due time arrive a moment when the extension of the markets is unable to keep pace with the extension of British manufactures, and this disproportion must bring about a new crisis with the same certainty as it has done in the past. But, if one of the great markets suddenly becomes contracted, the arrival of the crisis is necessarily accelerated thereby. Now, the Chinese rebellion must, for the time being, have precisely this effect upon England. The necessity for opening new markets, or for extending the old ones, was one of the principle causes of the reduction of the British tea-duties, as, with an increased importation of tea, an increased exportation of manufactures to China was expected to take place. Now, the value of the annual exports from the United Kingdom to China amounted, before the repeal in 1834 of the trading monopoly possessed by the East India Company, to only 600,000; in 1836, it reached the sum of 1,326,388; in 1845, it had risen to 2,394,827; in 1852 it amounted to about 3,000,000. The quantity of tea imported from China did not exceed, in 1793, 16,167,331 lbs.; but in 1845, it amounted to 50,714,657 lbs.; in 1846, to 57,584,561 lbs.; it is now above 60,000,000 lbs. The tea crop of the last season will not prove short, as shown already by the export lists from Shanghai, of 2,000,000 lbs. above the preceding year. This excess is to be accounted for by two circumstances. On one hand, the state of the market at the close of 1851 was much depressed, and the large surplus stock left has been thrown into the export of 1852. On the other hand, the recent accounts of the altered British legislation with regard to imports of tea, reaching China, have brought forward all the available teas to a ready market, at greatly enhanced prices. But with respect to the coming crop, the case stands very differently. This is shown by the following extracts from the correspondence of a large tea-firm in London: In many districts losses among the breeding flocks have been considerable. The price of other farm-produce than corn is from 20 to 30, and even 50 per cent. higher than last year. On the Continent, corn has risen comparatively more than in England. Rye has risen in Belgium and Holland a full 100 per cent. Wheat and other grains are following suit. Under these circumstances, as the greater part of the regular commercial circle has already been run through by British trade, it may safely be augured that the Chinese revolution will throw the spark into the overloaded mine of the present industrial system and cause the explosion of the long-prepared general crisis, which, spreading abroad, will be closely followed by political revolutions on the Continent. It would be a curious spectacle, that of China sending disorder into the Western World while the Western Powers, by English, French and American war-steamers, are conveying order to Shanghai, Nanking and the mouths of the Great Canal. Do these order-mongering Powers, which would attempt to support the wavering Manchu dynasty, forget that the hatred against foreigners and their exclusion from the Empire, once the mere result of China s geographical and ethnographical situation, have become a political system only since the conquest of the country by the race of the Manchu Tatars? There can be no doubt that the turbulent dissensions among the European nations who, at the later end of the 17th century, rivalled each other in the trade with China, lent a mighty aid to the exclusive policy adopted by the Manchus. But more than this was done by the fear of the new dynasty, lest the foreigners might favour the discontent existing among a large proportion of the Chinese during the first half-century or thereabouts of their subjection to the Tatars. From these considerations, foreigners were then prohibited from all communication with the Chinese, except through Canton, a town at a great distance from Peking and the tea-districts, and their commerce restricted to intercourse with the Hong merchants, licensed by the Government expressly for the foreign trade, in order to keep the rest of its subjects from all connection with the odious strangers. In any case an interference on the part of the Western Governments at this time can only serve to render the revolution more violent, and protract the stagnation of trade. At the same time it is to be observed with regard to India that the British Government of that country depends for full one seventh of its revenue on the sale of opium to the Chinese while a considerable proportion of the Indian demand for British manufactures depends on the production of that opium in India. The Chinese, it is true, are no more likely to renounce the use of opium than are the Germans to forswear tobacco. But as the new Emperor is understood to be favourable to the culture of the poppy and the preparation of opium in China itself, it is evident that a death-blow is very likely to be struck at once at the business of opium-raising in India, the Indian revenue, and the commercial resources of Hindostan. Though this blow would not immediately be felt by the interests concerned, it would operate effectually in due time, and would come in to intensify and prolong the universal financial crisis whose horoscope we have cast above. Since the commencement of the eighteenth century there has been no serious revolution in Europe which had not been preceded by a commercial and financial crisis. This applies no less to the revolution of 1789 than to that of 1848. It only that we every day behold more threatening s conflict between the ruling powers and their subjects the State and society, between the various classes; conflict of the existing powers among each other reaching that height where the sword must be drawn, and the ultima ratio of princes be recurred to. In the European capitals, every day brings despatches big with universal war, vanishing under the despatches of the following day, bearing the assurance of peace for a week or so. We may be sure, nevertheless, that to whatever height the conflict between the European powers may rise, however threatening the aspect of the diplomatic horizon may appear, whatever movements may be attempted by some enthusiastic fraction in this or that country, the rage of princes and the, fury of the people are alike enervated by the breath of prosperity. Neither wars nor revolutions are likely to put Europe by the ears, unless in consequence of a general commercial and industrial crisis, the signal of which has, as usual, to be given by England, the representative of European industry in the market of the world. It is unnecessary to dwell on the political consequences such a crisis must produce in these times, with the unprecedented extension of factories in England, with the utter dissolution of her official parties, with the whole State machinery of France transformed into one immense swindling and stockjobbing concern, with Austria on the eve of bankruptcy, with wrongs everywhere accumulated to be revenged by the people, with the conflicting interests of the reactionary powers themselves, and with the Russian dream of conquest once more revealed to the world.

Karl Marx in New York Daily Tribune

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/06/14.htm

Supposing the increase to continue at the same rate, the total exports of Great Britain would amount, at the close of 1853, to more than 100,000,000. The Times, in communicating these startling items to its readers, indulged in a kind of dithyrambics, concluding with the words: We are all happy, and all united. This agreeable discovery had no sooner been trumpeted forth, than an almost general system of strikes burst over the whole surface of England, particularly in the industrial North, giving a strange echo to the song of harmony tuned by The Times. These strikes are the necessary consequence of a comparative decrease in the labor-surplus, coinciding with a general rise in the prices of the first necessities. 5,000 hands struck at Liverpool, 35,000 at Stockport, and so on, until at length the very police force was seized by the epidemic, and 250 constables at Manchester offered their resignation. On this occasion the middle-class press, for instance The Globe, lost all countenance, and foreswore its usual philanthropic effusions. It calumniated, injured, threatened, and called loudly upon the magistrates for interference, a thing which has actually been done at Liverpool in all cases where the remotest legal pretext could be invoked. These magistrates, when not themselves manufacturers or traders, as is commonly the case in Lancashire and Yorkshire, are at least intimately connected with, and dependent on, the commercial interest. They have permitted manufacturers to escape from the Ten-Hours Act, to evade the Truck Act, and to infringe with impunity all other acts passed expressly against the unadorned rapacity of the manufacturer, while they interpret the Combination Act always in the most prejudiced and most unfavorable manner for the workingman. These same gallant free-traders, renowned for their indefatigability in denouncing government interference, these apostles of the bourgeois doctrine of laissez-faire, who profess to leave everything and everybody to the struggles of individual interest, are always the first to appeal to the interference of Government as soon as the individual interests of the workingman come into conflict with their own class interests. In such moments of collision they look with open admiration at the Continental States, where despotic governments, though, indeed, not allowing the bourgeoisie to rule, at least prevent the workingmen from resisting.

Karl Marx in the New York Daily Tribune 1853

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/06/17.htm

London, Tuesday, June 7, 1853 The last India Bill of 1783 proved fatal to the Coalition Cabinet of Mr. Fox and Lord North. The new India Bill of 1853 is likely to prove fatal for the Coalition Cabinet of Mr. Gladstone and Lord John Russell. But if the former were thrown overboard, because of their attempt to abolish the Courts of Directors and of Proprietors, the latter are threatened with a similar fate for the opposite reason. On June 3, Sir Charles Wood moved for leave to bring in a bill to provide for the Government of India. Sir Charles commenced by excusing the anomalous length of the speech he was about to deliver, by the magnitude of the subject, and the 150,000,000 of souls he had to deal with. For every 30,000,000 of his fellow-subjects, Sir Charles could do no less than sacrifice one hour s breath. But why this precipitate legislation on that great subject, while you postpone it for even the most trifling matters? Because the Charter of the East India Company expires on the 30th April, 1854. But why not pass a temporary continuance bill, reserving to future discussion more permanent legislation? Because it cannot be expected that we shall ever find again such an opportunity of dealing quietly with this vast and important question i.e., of burking it in a Parliamentary way. Besides, we are fully informed on the matter, the Directors of the East India Company express the opinion that it is necessary to legislate in the course of the present session, and the Governor-General of India, Lord Dalhousie, summons the Government by an express letter by all means to conclude our legislation at once. But the most striking argument wherewith Sir Charles justifies his immediate legislation, is that, prepared as he may appear to speak of a world of questions, not comprised in the bill he proposed to bring in, the After this Introduction Sir Charles delivered himself of an apology for the administration of India for the last twenty years. We must look at India with somewhat of an Indian eye which Indian eye seems to have the particular gift of seeing everything bright on the part of England and everything black on the side of India. (Perhaps there is a Whig Coalition party in India.) With regard to the Public Works, the Government intends to undertake some of the greatest magnitude and importance. With regard to the tenure of lands, Sir Charles proves very successfully that its three existing forms the Zemindari, the Ryotwari, and the Village systems are only so many forms of fiscal exploitation in the hands of the Company , none of which could well be made general, nor deserved to be made so. An idea of establishing another form, of an altogether opposite character, does not in the least preoccupy the mind of Sir Charles. And now, in order to prove the hard labor of providing for the administration of justice in India, Sir Charles relates that already, as early as 1833, a Law Commission was appointed in India. But in what manner did this Commission act, according to Sir Charles Wood s own testimony? The first and last result of the labors of that Commission was a penal code, prepared under the auspices of Mr. Macaulay. This code was sent to the various local authorities in India, which sent it back to Calcutta, from which it was sent to England, to be again returned from England to India. In India, Mr. Macaulay having been replaced as legislative counsel by Mr. Bethune, the code was totally altered, and on this plea the Governor-General, not being then of opinion that delay is a source of weakness and danger, sent it back to England, and from England it was returned to the Governor-General, with authority to pass the code in whatever shape he thought best. But now, Mr. Bethune having died, the Governor-General thought best to submit the code to a third English lawyer, and to a lawyer who knew nothing about the habits and customs of the Hindoos, reserving himself the right of afterward rejecting a code concocted by wholly incompetent authority. Such have been the adventures of that yet unborn code. As to the technical absurdities of the law in India, Sir Charles takes his stand on the no less absurd technicalities of the English law-procedure itself; but while affirming the perfect incorruptibility of the English judges in India, he nevertheless is ready to sacrifice them by an alteration in the manner of nominating them. The general progress of India is demonstrated by a comparison of the present state of Delhi with that under the invasion of Khuli-Khan. The salt-tax is justified by the arguments of the most renowned political economists, all of whom have advised taxation to be laid on some article of first necessity. But Sir Charles does not add what those same economists would have said, on finding that in the two years from 1849-'50, and 185 1252, there had been a decrease in the consumption of salt, of 60,000 tuns, a loss of revenue to the amount of 415,000, the total salt revenue amounting to 2,000,000. The measures proposed by Sir Charles, and comprised in a very small compass, are: The speech and measure of Sir Charles Wood was subjected to a very strong and satirical criticism by Mr. Bright, whose picture of India ruined by the fiscal exertions of the Company and Government did not, of course, receive the supplement of India ruined by Manchester and Free Trade. As to last night s speech of an old East-Indiaman, Sir J. Hogg, Director or ex-Director of the Company, I really suspect that I have met with it already in 1701, 1730, 1743, 1769, 1772, 1781, 1783, 1784, 1793, 1813, etc., and am induced, by way of answer to his directorial panegyric, to quote merely a few facts from the annual Indian accounts published, I believe, under his own superintendence. have been expended on roads, canals, bridges and other works of public necessity.

Karl Marx in The New-York Tribune 1853

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/06/22.htm

Telegraphic dispatches from Vienna announce that the pacific solution of the Turkish, Sardinian and Swiss questions, is regarded there as a certainty. Last night the debate on India was continued in the House of Commons, in the usual dull manner. Mr. Blackett charged the statements of Sir Charles Wood and Sir J. Hogg with bearing the stamp of optimist falsehood. A lot of Ministerial and Directorial advocates rebuked the charge as well as they could, and the inevitable Mr. Hume summed up by calling on Ministers to withdraw their bill. Debate adjourned. Hindostan is an Italy of Asiatic dimensions, the Himalayas for the Alps, the Plains of Bengal for the Plains of Lombardy, the Deccan for the Apennines, and the Isle of Ceylon for the Island of Sicily. The same rich variety in the products of the soil, and the same dismemberment in the political configuration. Just as Italy has, from time to time, been compressed by the conqueror s sword into different national masses, so do we find Hindostan, when not under the pressure of the Mohammedan, or the Mogul, or the Briton, dissolved into as many independent and conflicting States as it numbered towns, or even villages. Yet, in a social point of view, Hindostan is not the Italy, but the Ireland of the East. And this strange combination of Italy and of Ireland, of a world of voluptuousness and of a world of woes, is anticipated in the ancient traditions of the religion of Hindostan. That religion is at once a religion of sensualist exuberance, and a religion of self-torturing asceticism; a religion of the Lingam and of the juggernaut; the religion of the Monk, and of the Bayadere. I share not the opinion of those who believe in a golden age of Hindostan, without recurring, however, like Sir Charles Wood, for the confirmation of my view, to the authority of Khuli-Khan. But take, for example, the times of Aurangzeb; or the epoch, when the Mogul appeared in the North, and the Portuguese in the South; or the age of Mohammedan invasion, and of the Heptarchy in Southern India; or, if you will, go still more back to antiquity, take the mythological chronology of the Brahman himself, who places the commencement of Indian misery in an epoch even more remote than the Christian creation of the world. There cannot, however, remain any doubt but that the misery inflicted by the British on Hindostan is of an essentially different and infinitely more intensive kind than all Hindostan had to suffer before. I do not allude to European despotism, planted upon Asiatic despotism, by the British East India Company, forming a more monstrous combination than any of the divine monsters startling us in the Temple of Salsette. This is no distinctive feature of British Colonial rule, but only an imitation of the Dutch, and so much so that in order to characterise the working of the British East India Company, it is sufficient to literally repeat what Sir Stamford Raffles, the English Governor of Java, said of the old Dutch East India Company: All the civil wars, invasions, revolutions, conquests, famines, strangely complex, rapid, and destructive as the successive action in Hindostan may appear, did not go deeper than its surface. England has broken down the entire framework of Indian society, without any symptoms of reconstitution yet appearing. This loss of his old world, with no gain of a new one, imparts a particular kind of melancholy to the present misery of the Hindoo, and separates Hindostan, ruled by Britain, from all its ancient traditions, and from the whole of its past history. There have been in Asia, generally, from immemorial times, but three departments of Government; that of Finance, or the plunder of the interior; that of War, or the plunder of the exterior; and, finally, the department of Public Works. Climate and territorial conditions, especially the vast tracts of desert, extending from the Sahara, through Arabia, Persia, India, and Tartary, to the most elevated Asiatic highlands, constituted artificial irrigation by canals and water-works the basis of Oriental agriculture. As in Egypt and India, inundations are used for fertilizing the soil in Mesopotamia, Persia, &c.; advantage is taken of a high level for feeding irrigative canals. This prime necessity of an economical and common use of water, which, in the Occident, drove private enterprise to voluntary association, as in Flanders and Italy, necessitated, in the Orient where civilization was too low and the territorial extent too vast to call into life voluntary association, the interference of the centralizing power of Government. Hence an economical function devolved upon all Asiatic Governments, the function of providing public works. This artificial fertilization of the soil, dependent on a Central Government, and immediately decaying with the neglect of irrigation and drainage, explains the otherwise strange fact that we now find whole territories barren and desert that were once brilliantly cultivated, as Palmyra, Petra, the ruins in Yemen, and large provinces of Egypt, Persia, and Hindostan; it also explains how a single war of devastation has been able to depopulate a country for centuries, and to strip it of all its civilization. Now, the British in East India accepted from their predecessors the department of finance and of war, but they have neglected entirely that of public works. Hence the deterioration of an agriculture which is not capable of being conducted on the British principle of free competition, of laissez-faire and laissez-aller. But in Asiatic empires we are quite accustomed to see agriculture deteriorating under one government and reviving again under some other government. There the harvests correspond to good or bad government, as they change in Europe with good or bad seasons. Thus the oppression and neglect of agriculture, bad as it is, could not be looked upon as the final blow dealt to Indian society by the British intruder, had it not been attended by a circumstance of quite different importance, a novelty in the annals of the whole Asiatic world. However changing the political aspect of India s past must appear, its social condition has remained unaltered since its remotest antiquity, until the first decennium of the 19th century. The hand-loom and the spinning-wheel, producing their regular myriads of spinners and weavers, were the pivots of the structure of that society. From immemorial times, Europe received the admirable textures of Indian labor, sending in return for them her precious metals, and furnishing thereby his material to the goldsmith, that indispensable member of Indian society, whose love of finery is so great that even the lowest class, those who go about nearly naked, have commonly a pair of golden ear-rings and a gold ornament of some kind hung round their necks. Rings on the fingers and toes have also been common. Women as well as children frequently wore massive bracelets and anklets of gold or silver, and statuettes of divinities in gold and silver were met with in the households. It was the British intruder who broke up the Indian hand-loom and destroyed the spinning-wheel. England began with driving the Indian cottons from the European market; it then introduced twist into Hindostan, and in the end inundated the very mother country of cotton with cottons. From 1818 to 1836 the export of twist from Great Britain to India rose in the proportion of 1 to 5,200. In 1824 the export of British muslins to India hardly amounted to 1,000,000 yards, while in 1837 it surpassed 64,000,000 of yards. But at the same time the population of Dacca decreased from 150,000 inhabitants to 20,000. This decline of Indian towns celebrated for their fabrics was by no means the worst consequence. British steam and science uprooted, over the whole surface of Hindostan, the union between agriculture and manufacturing industry. These two circumstances the Hindoo, on the one hand, leaving, like all Oriental peoples, to the Central Government the care of the great public works, the prime condition of his agriculture and commerce, dispersed, on the other hand, over the surface of the country, and agglomerated in small centers by the domestic union of agricultural and manufacturing pursuits these two circumstances had brought about, since the remotest times, a social system of particular features the so-called village system, which gave to each of these small unions their independent organization and distinct life. The peculiar character of this system may be judged from the following description, contained in an old official report of the British House of Commons on Indian affairs: These small stereotype forms of social organism have been to the greater part dissolved, and are disappearing, not so much through the brutal interference of the British tax-gatherer and the British soldier, as to the working of English steam and English free trade. Those family-communities were based on domestic industry, in that peculiar combination of hand-weaving, hands-spinning and hand-tilling agriculture which gave them self-supporting power. English interference having placed the spinner in Lancashire and the weaver in Bengal, or sweeping away both Hindoo spinner and weaver, dissolved these small semi-barbarian, semi-civilized communities, by blowing up their economical basis, and thus produced the greatest, and to speak the truth, the only social revolution ever heard of in Asia. Now, sickening as it must be to human feeling to witness those myriads of industrious patriarchal and inoffensive social organizations disorganized and dissolved into their units, thrown into a sea of woes, and their individual members losing at the same time their ancient form of civilization, and their hereditary means of subsistence, we must not forget that these idyllic village-communities, inoffensive though they may appear, had always been the solid foundation of Oriental despotism, that they restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the unresisting tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath traditional rules, depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies. We must not forget the barbarian egotism which, concentrating on some miserable patch of land, had quietly witnessed the ruin of empires, the perpetration of unspeakable cruelties, the massacre of the population of large towns, with no other consideration bestowed upon them than on natural events, itself the helpless prey of any aggressor who deigned to notice it at all. We must not forget that this undignified, stagnatory, and vegetative life, that this passive sort of existence evoked on the other part, in contradistinction, wild, aimless, unbounded forces of destruction and rendered murder itself a religious rite in Hindostan. We must not forget that these little communities were contaminated by distinctions of caste and by slavery, that they subjugated man to external circumstances instead of elevating man the sovereign of circumstances, that they transformed a self-developing social state into never changing natural destiny, and thus brought about a brutalizing worship of nature, exhibiting its degradation in the fact that man, the sovereign of nature, fell down on his knees in adoration of Kanuman, the monkey, and Sabbala, the cow. England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindostan, was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfil its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution. Then, whatever bitterness the spectacle of the crumbling of an ancient world may have for our personal feelings, we have the right, in point of history, to exclaim with Goethe:

The British Rule in India by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/06/25.htm

The debate on Lord Stanley s motion to postpone legislation for India, has been deferred until this evening. For the first time since 1783 the India question has become a ministerial one in England. Why is this? The true commencement of the East India Company cannot be dated from a more remote epoch than the year 1702, when the different societies, claiming the monopoly of the East India trade, united together in one single Company. Till then the very existence of the original East India Company was repeatedly endangered, once suspended for years under the protectorate of Cromwell, and once threatened with utter dissolution by Parliamentary interference under the reign of William III. It was under the ascendancy of that Dutch Prince when the Whigs became the farmers of the revenues of the British Empire, when the Bank of England sprung into life, when the protective system was firmly established in England, and the balance of power in Europe was definitively settled, that the existence of an East India Company was recognized by Parliament. That era of apparent liberty was in reality the era of monopolies not created by Royal grants, as in the times of Elizabeth and Charles I, but authorized and nationalized by the sanction of Parliament. This epoch in the history of England bears, in fact, an extreme likeness to the epoch of Louis Philippe in France, the old landed aristocracy having been defeated, and the bourgeoisie not being able to take its place except under the banner of moneyocracy, or the haute finance. The East India Company excluded the common people from the commerce with India, at the same time that the House of Commons excluded them from Parliamentary representation. In this as well as in other instances, we find the first decisive victory of the bourgeoisie over the feudal aristocracy coinciding with the most pronounced reaction against the people, a phenomenon which has driven more than one popular writer, like Cobbett, to look for popular liberty rather in the past than in the future. The union between the Constitutional Monarchy and the monopolizing monied interest, between the Company of East India and the glorious revolution of 1688 was fostered by the same force by which the liberal interests and a liberal dynasty have at all times and in all countries met and combined, by the force of corruption, that first and last moving power of Constitutional Monarchy, the guardian angel of William III and the fatal demon of Louis Philippe. So early as 1693, it appeared from Parliamentary inquiries, that the annual expenditure of the East India Company, under the head of gifts to men in power, which had rarely amounted to above 1,200 before the revolution, reached the sum of 90,000. The Duke of Leeds was impeached for a bribe of 5,000, and the virtuous King himself convicted of having received 10,000. Besides these direct briberies, rival Companies were thrown out by tempting Government with loans of enormous sums at the lowest interest, and by buying off rival Directors. The power the East India Company had obtained by bribing the Government, as did also the Bank of England, it was forced to maintain by bribing again, as did the Bank of England. At every epoch when its monopoly was expiring, it could only effect a renewal of its Charter by offering fresh loans and by fresh presents made to the Government. The events of the Seven-Years-War transformed the East India Company from a commercial into a military and territorial power. It was then that the foundation was laid of the present British Empire in the East. Then East India stock rose to 263, and dividends were then paid at the rate of 12 1/2 per cent. But then there appeared a new enemy to the Company, no longer in the shape of rival societies, but in the shape of rival ministers and of a rival people. It was alleged that the Company s territory had been conquered by the aid of British fleets and , British armies, and that no British subjects could hold territorial sovereignties independent of the Crown. The ministers of the day and the people of the day claimed their share in the wonderful treasures imagined to have been won by the last conquests. The Company only saved its existence by an agreement made in 1767 that it should annually pay 400,000 into the National Exchequer. But the East India Company, instead of fulfilling its agreement, got into financial difficulties, and, instead of paying a tribute to the English people, appealed to Parliament for pecuniary aid. Serious alterations in the Charter were the consequence of this step. The Company s affairs failing to improve, notwithstanding their new condition, and the English nation having simultaneously lost their colonies in North America, the necessity of elsewhere regaining some great Colonial Empire became more and more universally felt. The illustrious Fox thought the opportune moment had arrived, in 1783, for bringing forward his famous India bill, which proposed to abolish the Courts of Directors and Proprietors, and to vest the whole Indian government in the hands of seven Commissioners appointed by Parliament. By the personal influence of the imbecile King [George III] over the House of Lords, the bill of Mr. Fox was defeated, and made the instrument of breaking down the then Coalition Government of Fox and Lord North, and of placing the famous Pitt at the head of the Government. Pitt carried in 1784 a bill through both Houses, which directed the establishment of the Board of Control, consisting of six members of the Privy Council, who were On this head, Mill, the historian, says: The years of 1783 and 1784 were thus the first, and till now the only years, for the India question to become a ministerial one. The bill of Mr. Pitt having been carried, the Charter of the East India Company was renewed, and the Indian question set aside for twenty years. But in 1813 the Anti-Jacobin war, and in 1833 the newly introduced Reform Bill superseded all other political questions. This, then, is the first reason of the India question s having failed to become a great political question, since and before 1784; that before that time the East India Company had first to conquer existence and importance; that after that time the Oligarchy absorbed all of its power which it could assume without incurring responsibility; and that afterwards the English people in general were at the very epochs of the renewal of the Charter, in 1813 and 1833, absorbed by other questions of overbearing interest. We will now take a different view. The East India Company commenced by attempting merely to establish factories for their agents, and places of deposit for their goods. In order to protect them they erected several forts. Although they had, even as early as 1689, conceived the establishment of a dominion in India, and of making territorial revenue one of their sources of emolument, yet, down to 1744, they had acquired but a few unimportant districts around Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta. The war which subsequently broke out in the Carnatic had the effect of rendering them after various struggles, virtual sovereigns of that part of India. Much more considerable results arose from the war in Bengal and the victories of Clive. These results were the real occupation of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. At the end of the Eighteenth Century, and in the first years of the present one, there supervened the wars with Tippoo Saib, and in consequence of them a great advance of power, and an immense extension of the subsidiary system. In the second decennium of the Nineteenth Century the first convenient frontier, that of India within the desert, had at length been conquered. It was not till then that the British Empire in the East reached those parts of Asia, which had been, at all times, the seat of every great central power in India. But the most vulnerable point of the Empire, from which it had been overrun as often as old conquerors were expelled by new ones, the barriers of the Western frontier, were not in the hands of the British. During the period from 1838 to 1849, in the Sikh and Afghan wars, British rule subjected to definitive possession the ethnographical, political, and military frontiers of the East Indian Continent, by the compulsory annexation of the Punjab and of Scinde. These were possessions indispensable to repulse any invading force issuing from Central Asia, and indispensable against Russia advancing to the frontiers of Persia. During this last decennium there have been added to the British Indian territory 167,000 square miles, with a population of 8,572,630 souls. As to the interior, all the native States now became surrounded by British possessions, subjected to British suzerainet under various forms, and cut off from the sea-coast, with the sole exception of Guzerat and Scinde. As to its exterior, India was now finished. It is only since 1849, that the one great Anglo-Indian Empire has existed. Thus the British Government has been fighting, under the Company s name, for two centuries, till at last the natural limits of India were reached. We understand now, why during ail this time all parties in England have connived in silence, even those which had resolved to become the loudest with their hypocritical peace-cant, after the arrondissement of the one Indian Empire should have been completed. Firstly, of course, they had to get it, in order to subject it afterward to their sharp philanthropy. From this view we understand the altered position of the Indian question in the present year, 1853, compared with all former periods of Charter renewal. Again, let us take a different view. We shall still better understand the peculiar crisis in Indian legislation, on reviewing the course of British commercial intercourse with India through its different phases. At the commencement of the East India Company s operations, under the reign of Elizabeth, the Company was permitted for the purpose of profitably carrying on its trade with India, fo export an annual value of 30,000 in silver, gold, and foreign coin. This was an infraction against all the prejudices of the age, and Thomas Mun was forced to lay down in A Discourse on Trade from England to the East Indies, the foundation of the mercantile system, admitting that the precious metals were the only real wealth a country could possess, but contending at the same time that their exportation might be safely allowed, provided the balance of payments was in favor of the exporting nation. In this sense, he contended that the commodities imported from East India were chiefly re-exported to other countries, from which a much greater quantity of bullion was obtained than had been required to pay for them in India. In the same spirit, Sir Josiah Child wrote A Treatise wherein It Is Demonstrated That the East India Trade Is the Most National Trade of All Trades. By-and-by the partisans of the East India Company grew more audacious, and it may be noticed as a curiosity, in this strange Indian history, that the Indian monopolises were the first preachers of free trade in England. Parliamentary intervention, with regard to the East India Company, was again claimed, not by the commercial, but by the industrial class, at the latter end of the 17th century, and during the greater part of the 18th, when the importation of East Indian cotton and silk stuffs was declared to ruin the poor British manufacturers, an opinion put forward in John Pollexfen: England and India Inconsistent in Their Manufactures, London, 1697, a title strangely verified a century and a half later, but in a very different sense. Parliament did then interfere. By the Act 11 and 12 William III, cap. 10, it was enacted that the wearing of wrought silks and of printed or dyed calicoes from India, Persia and China should be prohibited, and a penalty of 200 imposed on all persons having or selling the same. Similar laws were enacted under George I, II and III, in consequence of the repeated lamentations of the afterward so enlightened British manufacturers. And thus, during the greater part of the 18th century, Indian manufactures were generally imported into England in order to he sold on the Continent, and to remain excluded from the English market itself. Besides this Parliamentary interference with East India, solicited by the greedy home manufacturer, efforts were made at every epoch of the renewal of the Charter, by the merchants of London, Liverpool and Bristol, to break down the commercial monopoly of the Company, and to participate in that commerce, estimated to be a true mine of gold. In consequence of these efforts, a provision was made in the Act of 1773 prolonging the Company s Charter till March 1, 1814, by which private British individuals were authorized to export from, and the Company s Indian servants permitted to import into England, almost all sorts of commodities. But this concession was surrounded with conditions annihilating its effects, in respect to the exports to British India by private merchants. In 1813 the Company was unable to further withstand the pressure of general commerce, and except the monopoly of the Chinese trade, the trade to India was opened, under certain conditions, to private competition. At the renewal of the Charter in 1833, these last restrictions were at length superseded, the Company forbidden to carry on any trade at all their commercial character destroyed, and their privilege of excluding British subjects from the Indian territories withdrawn. Meanwhile the East India trade had undergone very serious revolutions, altogether altering the position of the different class interests in England with regard to it. During the whole course of the 18th century the treasures transported from India to England were gained much less by comparatively insignificant commerce, than by the direct exploitation of that country, and by the colossal fortunes there extorted and transmitted to England. After the opening of the trade in 1813 the commerce with India more than trebled in a very short time. But this was not all. The whole character of the trade was changed. Till 1813 India had been chiefly an exporting country, while it now became an importing one; and in such a quick progression, that already in 1823 the rate of exchange, which had generally been 2/6 per rupee, sunk down to 2/ per rupee. India, the great workshop of cotton manufacture for the world, since immemorial times, became now inundated with English twists and cotton stuffs. After its own produce had been excluded from England, or only admitted on the most cruel terms, British manufactures were poured into it at a small and merely nominal duty, to the ruin of the native cotton fabrics once so celebrated. In 1780 the value of British produce and manufactures amounted only to 386;152, the bullion exported during the same year to 15,041, the total value of exports during 1780 being 12,648,616, so that the India trade amounted to only 1-32 of the entire foreign trade. In 1850 the total exports to India from Great Britain and Ireland were 8,024,000, of which cotton goods alone amounted to 5,220,000, so that it reached more than /s of the whole export, and more than 1/4 of the foreign cotton trade. But the cotton manufacture also employed now 1/8 of the population of Britain, and contributed 1/12th of the whole national revenue. After each commercial crisis the East Indian trade grew of more paramount importance for the British cotton manufacturers, and the East India Continent became actually their best market. At the same rate at which the cotton manufactures became of vital interest for the whole social frame of Great Britain, East India became of vital interest for the British cotton manufacture. Till then the interests of the moneyocracy which had converted India into its landed estates, of the oligarchy who had conquered it by their armies, and of the millocracy who had inundated it with their fabrics, had gone hand in hand. But the more the industrial interest became dependent on the Indian market, the more it fell the necessity of creating fresh productive powers in India, after having ruined her native industry. You cannot continue to inundate a country with your manufactures, unless you enable it to give you some produce in return. The industrial interest found that their trade declined instead of increasing. For the four years ending with 1846, the imports to India from Great Britain were to the amount of 261 million rupees; for the four years ending 1850 they were only 253 millions, while the exports for the former period 274 millions of rupees, and for the latter period 254 millions. They found out that the power of consuming their goods was contracted in India to the lowest possible point, that the consumption of their manufactures by the British West Indies, was of the value of about 14s. per head of the population per annum, by Chile, of 9s. 3d., by Brazil, of 6s. 5d., by Cuba, of 6s. 2d., by Peru, of 5s. 7d., by Central America, of 10d., while it amounted in India only to about 9d. Then came the short cotton crop in the United States, which caused them a loss of 11,000,000 in 1850, and they were exasperated at depending on America, instead of deriving a sufficiency of raw cotton from the East Indies. Besides, they found that in all attempts to apply capital to India they met with impediments and chicanery on the part of the India authorities. Thus India became the battle-field in the contest of the industrial interest on the one side, and of the moneyocracy and oligarchy on the other. The manufacturers, conscious of their ascendancy in England, ask now for the annihilation of these antagonistic powers in India, for the destruction of the whole ancient fabric of Indian government, and for the final eclipse of the East India Company. And now to the fourth and last point of view, from which the Indian question must be judged. Since 1784 Indian finances have got more and more deeply into difficulty. There exists now a national debt of 50 million pounds, a continual decrease in the resources of the revenue, and a corresponding increase in the expenditure, dubiously balanced by the gambling income of the opium tax, now threatened. with extinction by the Chinese beginning themselves to cultivate the poppy, and aggravated by the expenses to be anticipated from the senseless Burmese war. I have shown thus, how the Indian question has become for the first time since 1783, an English question, and a ministerial question.

The East India Company - Its History and Results by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/07/11.htm

As the Coalition Ministry depends on the support of the Irish party, and as all the other parties composing the House of Commons so nicely balance each other that the Irish may at any moment turn the scales which way they please, some concessions are at last about to be made to the Irish tenants. The Leasing powers (Ireland) Bill, which passed the House of Commons on Friday last, contains a provision that for the improvements made on the soil and separable from the soil, the tenant shall have, at the termination of his lease, a compensation in money, the incoming tenant being at liberty take them at the valuation, while with respect to improvements in the soil, compensation for them shall be arranged by contract between the landlord and the tenant. A tenant having incorporated his capital, in one form or another, in the land, and having thus effected an improvement of the soil, either directly by irrigation, drainage, manure, or indirectly by construction of buildings for agricultural purposes, in steps the landlord with demand for increased rent. If the tenant concede, he has to pay the interest for his own money to the landlord. If he resist, he will be very unceremoniously ejected, and supplanted by a new tenant, the latter being enabled to pay a higher rent by the very expenses incurred by his predecessors, until he also, in his turn, has become an improver of the land, and is replaced in the same way, or put on worse terms. In this easy way a class of absentee landlords has been enabled to pocket, not merely the labour, but also the capital, of whole generations, each generation of Irish peasants sinking a grade lower in the social scale, exactly in proportion to the exertions and sacrifices made for the raising of their condition and that of their families. If the tenant was industrious and enterprising, he became taxed in consequence of his very industry and enterprise. If, on the contrary, he grew inert and negligent, he was reproached with the aboriginal faults of the Celtic race. He had, accordingly, no other alternative left but to become a pauper to pauperise himself by industry, or to pauperise by negligence. In order to oppose this state of things, Tenant Right was proclaimed in Ireland a right of the tenant, not in the soil but in the improvements of the soil effected at his cost and charges. Let us see in what manner The Times, in its Saturday s leader, attempts to break down this Irish Tenant Right : Where the landlords have to deal with a class of large capitalists who may, as they please, invest their stock in commerce, in manufactures or in farming, there can be no doubt but that these capitalist farmers, whether they take long leases or no time leases at all, know how to secure the proper return of their outlays. But with regard to Ireland the supposition is quite fictitious. On the one side you have there a small class of land monopolists, on the other, a very large class of tenants with very petty fortunes, which they have no chance to invest in different ways, no other field of production opening to them, except the soil. They are, therefore, forced to become tenants-at-will. Being once tenants-at-will, they naturally run the risk of losing their revenue, provided they do not invest their small capital. Investing it, in order to secure their revenue, they run the risk of losing their capital, also. Indeed, under proper conditions of society, we should want no more Parliamentary interference with the Irish land-tenant, as we should not want, under proper conditions of society, the interference of the soldier, of the policeman, and of the hangman. Legislature, magistracy and armed force, are all of them but the offspring of improper conditions of society, preventing those arrangements among men which would make useless the compulsory intervention of a third supreme power. Has, perhaps, The Times been converted into a social revolutionist? Does it want a social revolution, reorganising the conditions of society, and the arrangements emanating from them, instead of Parliamentary enactments"? England has subverted the conditions of Irish society. At first it confiscated the land, then it suppressed the industry by Parliamentary enactments, and lastly, it broke the active energy by armed force. And thus England created those abominable conditions of society which enable a small caste of rapacious lordlings to dictate to the Irish people the terms on which they shall be allowed to hold the land and to live upon it. Too weak yet for revolutionising those social conditions, the people appeal to Parliament, demanding at least their mitigation and regulation. But No, says The Times; if you don t live under proper conditions of society, Parliament can t mend that. And if the Irish people, on the advice of The Times, tried tomorrow to mend their conditions of society, The Times would be the first to appeal to bayonets, and to pour out sanguinary denunciations of the aboriginal faults of the Celtic race, wanting the Anglo-Saxon taste for pacific progress and legal amelioration. The case stands rather differently in Ireland. The more a landlord injures one tenant, the easier he will find it to oppress another. The tenant who comes in, is the means of injuring the ejected one, and the ejected one is the means of keeping down the new occupant. That, in due course of time, the landlord, beside injuring the tenant, will injure himself and ruin himself, is not only a probability, but the very fact, in Ireland a fact affording, however, a very precarious source of comfort to the ruined tenant. This is precisely the petitio principii which pervades the whole leader of The Times. The needy Irish tenant belongs to the soil, while the soil belongs to the English lord. As well you might call the relation between the robber who presents his pistol, and the traveller who presents his purse, a relation between two traders. Here, at least, The Times has the truth. British Parliament does not interfere at a moment when the worked-out old system is terminating in the common ruin, both of the thrifty landlord and the needy tenant, the former being knocked down by the hammer of the Encumbered Estates Commission, and the latter expelled by compulsory emigration. This reminds us of the old Sultan of Morocco. Whenever there was a case pending between two parties, he knew of no more potent agency for settling their controversy, than by killing both parties. The Times seems to have been the sleeping Epimenides of the past half century, and never to have heard of the hot controversy going on during all that time upon the claims of the landlord, not among social reformers and Communists, but among the very political economists of the British middle class. Ricardo, the creator of modern political economy in Great Britain, did not controvert the right of the landlords, as he was quite convinced that their claims were based upon fact, and not on right, and that political economy in general had nothing to do with questions of right; but he attacked the land-monopoly in a more unassuming, yet more scientific, and therefore more dangerous manner. He proved that private proprietorship in land, as distinguished from the respective claims of the labourer, and of the farmer, was a relation quite superfluous in, and incoherent with, the whole framework of modern production; that the economical expression of that relationship and the rent of land, might, with great advantage, be appropriated by the State; and finally that the interest of the landlord was opposed to the interest of all other classes of modern society. It would be tedious to enumerate all the conclusions drawn from these premises by the Ricardo School against the landed monopoly. For my end, it will suffice to quote three of the most recent economical authorities of Great Britain. The London Economist, whose chief editor, Mr. J. Wilson, is not only a Free Trade oracle , but a Whig one, too, and not only a Whig, but also an inevitable Treasury-appendage in every Whig or composite ministry, has contended in different articles that exactly speaking there can exist no title authorising any individual, or any number of individuals, to claim the exclusive proprietorship in the soil of a nation. Mr. Newman, in his Lectures on Political Economy, London, 1851, professedly written for the purpose of refuting socialism, tells us: This is exactly the case in Ireland, and Mr. Newman expressly confirms the claims of the Irish tenantry, and in lectures held before the most select audiences of the British aristocracy. In conclusion let me quote some passages from Mr. Herbert Spencer s work, Social Statics, London, 1851, also, purporting to be a complete refutation of communism, and acknowledged as the most elaborate development of the Free Trade doctrines of modern England. Thus, from the very point of view of modern English political economists, it is not the usurping English landlord but the Irish tenants and labourers, who have the only right in the soil of their native country, and The Times, in opposing the demands of the Irish people, places itself into direct antagonism to British middle-class science.

Karl Marx in The New-York Daily Tribune 1853

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/07/11a.htm

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

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/07/14.htm

London, Tuesday, 5th July, 1853 Mr. Halliday, one of the officials of the East India Company, when examined before a Committee of Inquiry, stated: This time at least, the Charter has not been renewed for a definite period, but is revokable at will by Parliament. The Company, therefore, will come down from the respectable situation of hereditary farmers, to the precarious condition of tenants-at-will. This is so much gain for the natives. The Coalition Ministry has succeeded in transforming the Indian Government, like all other questions, into an open question. The House of Commons, on the other hand, has given itself a new testimonial of poverty, in confessing by the same division, its impotency for legislating, and its unwillingness to delay legislating. Since the days of Aristotle the world has been inundated with a frightful quantity of dissertations, ingenious or absurd, as it might happen, on that question: Who shall be the governing power? But for the first time in the annals of history, the Senate of a people ruling over another people numbering 156 millions of human beings and spreading over a surface of 1,368,113 square miles, have put their heads together in solemn and public congregation, in order to answer the irregular question: Who among us is the actual governing power over that foreign people of 150 millions of souls? There was no Oedipus in the British Senate capable of extricating this riddle. The whole debate exclusively twined around it, as although a division took place, no definition of the Indian Government was arrived at. That there is in India a permanent financial deficit, a regular over-supply of wars, and no supply at all of public works, an abominable system of taxation, and a no less abominable state of justice and law, that these five items constitute, as it were, the five points of the East Indian Charter, was settled beyond all doubt in the debates of 1853, as it had been in the debates of 1833, and in the debates of 1813, and in all former debates on India. The only thing never found out, was the party responsible for all this. There exists, unquestionably, a Governor-General of India, holding the supreme power, but that Governor is governed in his turn by a home government. Who is that home government? Is it the Indian Minister, disguised under the modest title of President of the Board of Control, or is it the twenty-four Directors of the East India Company? On the threshold of the Indian religion we find a divine trinity, and thus we find a profane trinity on the threshold of the Indian Government. Leaving, for a while, the Governor-General altogether one side, the question at issue resolves itself into that of the double Government, in which form it is familiar to the English mind. The Ministers in their bill, and the House in its division, cling to this dualism. When the Company of English merchant adventurers, who conquered India to make money out of it, began to enlarge their factories into an empire, when their competition with the Dutch and French private merchants assumed the character of national rivalry, then, of course, the British Government commenced meddling with the affairs of the East India Company, and the double Government of India sprung up in fact if not in name. Pitt s act of 1784, by entering into a compromise with the Company, by subjecting it to the superintendence of the Board of Control, and by making the Board of Control an appendage to the Ministry, accepted, regulated and settled that double Government arisen, from circumstances in name as well as in fact. The act of 1833 strengthened the Board of Control, changed the proprietors of the East India Company into mere mortgagees of the East India revenues, ordered the Company to sell off its stock, dissolved its commercial existence, transformed it; as far as it existed politically, into a mere trustee of the Crown, and did thus with the East India Company, what the Company had been in the habit of doing with the East India Princes. After having superseded them, it continued, for a while, still to govern in their name. So far, the East India Company has, since 1833, no longer existed but in name and on sufferance. While thus on one hand, there seems to be no difficulty in getting rid of the Company altogether, it is, on the other hand, very indifferent whether the English nation rules over India under the personal name of Queen Victoria, or under the traditional firm of an anonymous society. The whole question, therefore, appears to turn about a technicality of very questionable importance. Still, the thing is not quite so plain. It is to be remarked, in the first instance, that the Ministerial Board of Control, residing in Cannon-row, is as much a fiction as the East India Company, supposed to reside in Leadenhall-st. The members composing the Board of Control are a mere cloak for the supreme rule of the President of the Board. The President is himself but a subordinate though independent member of the Imperial Ministry. In India it seems to be assumed that if a man is fit for nothing it is best to make him a Judge, and get rid of him. In Great Britain, when a party comes into office and finds itself encumbered with a tenth-rate statesman, it is considered best to make him President of the Board of Control, successor of the Great Mogul, and in that way to get rid of him- teste Carolo Wood. The letter of the law entrusts the Board of Control, which is but another name for its President, with Directors are prohibited Directors are ordered to The Board is authorized to inspect all correspondence and dispatches to and from India, and the proceedings of the Courts of Proprietors and Directors. Lastly, the Court of Directors has to appoint a Secret Committee, consisting of their Chairman, their Deputy Chairman and their senior member, who are sworn to secrecy, and through whom, in all political and military matters, the President of the Board may transmit his personal orders to India, while the Committee acts as a mere channel of his communications. The orders respecting the Afghan and Burmese wars, and as to the occupation of Scinde were transmitted through this Secret Committee, without the Court of Directors being any more informed of them than the general public or Parliament. So far, therefore, the President of the Board of Control would appear to be the real Mogul, and, under all circumstances, he retains an unlimited power for doing mischief, as, for instance, for causing the most ruinous wars, all the while being hidden under the name of the irresponsible Court of Directors. On the other hand, the Court of Directors is not without real power. As they generally exercise the initiative in administrative measures, as they form, when compared with the Board of Control, a more permanent and steady body, with traditional rules for action and a certain knowledge of details, the whole of the ordinary internal administration necessarily falls to their share. They appoint, too, under sanction of the Crown, the Supreme Government of India, the Governor-General and his Councils; possessing, besides, the unrestricted power to recall the highest servants, and even the Governor-General, as they did under Sir Robert Peel, with Lord Ellenborough. But this is still not their most important privilege. Receiving only 300 per annum, they are really paid in patronage, distributing all the writerships and cadetships, from whose number the Governor-General of India and the Provincial Governors are obliged to fill up all the higher places withheld from the natives. When the number of appointments for the year is ascertained, the whole are divided into 28 equal parts of which two are allotted to the Chairman and Deputy Chairman, two to the President of the Board of Control, and one to each of the Directors. The annual value of each share of patronage seldom falls short of 14,000. Now, it is evident that the spirit of the Court of Directors must pervade the whole of the Indian Upper Administration, trained, as it is, at schools of Addiscombe and Haileybury, and appointed, as it is, by their patronage. It is no less evident that this Court of Directors, who have to distribute, year after year, appointments of the value of nearly 400,000 among the upper classes of Great Britain, will find little or no check from the public opinion directed by those very classes. What the spirit of the Court of Directors is, I will show in a following letter on the actual state of India. For the present it may suffice to say that Mr. Macaulay, in the course of the pending debates, defended the Court by the particular plea, that it was impotent to effect all the evils it might intend, so much so, that all improvements had been effected in opposition to it, and against it by individual Governors who had acted on their own responsibility. Thus with regard to the suppression of the Suttee, the abolition of the abominable transit duties, and the emancipation of the East India press. The President of the Board of Control accordingly involves India in ruinous wars under cover of the Court of Directors, while the Court of Directors corrupt the Indian Administration under the cloak of the Board of Control. On looking deeper into the framework of this anomalous government we find at its bottom a third power, more supreme than either the Board or the Court, more irresponsible, and more concealed from and guarded against the superintendence of public opinion. The transient President of the Board depends on the permanent clerks of his establishment in Cannon-row, and for those clerks India exists not in India, but in Leadenhall-st. Now, who is the master at Leadenhall-st.? Two thousand persons, elderly ladies and valetudinarian gentlemen, possessing Indian stock, having no other interest in India except to be paid their dividends out of Indian revenue, elect twenty-four Directors, whose only qualification is the holding of 1,000 stock. Merchants, bankers and directors of companies incur great trouble in order to get into the Court for the interest of their private concerns. Hence the Court of Directors is nothing but a succursal to the English moneyocracy. The so-elected Court forms, in its turn, besides the above-mentioned Secret Committee, three other Committees, which are 1. Political and Military. 2. Finance and Home. 3. Revenue, judicial and Legislative. These Committees are every year appointed by rotation, so that a financier is one year on the judicial and the next year on the Military Committee, and no one has any chance of a continued supervision over a particular department. The mode of election having brought in men utterly unfit for their duties, the system of rotation gives to whatever fitness they might perchance retain, the final blow. Who, then, govern in fact under the name of the Direction? A large stuff of irresponsible secretaries, examiners and clerks at the India House, of whom, as Mr. Campbell observes, in his Scheme for the Government of India, only one individual has ever been in India, and he only by accident. Apart from the trade in patronage, it is therefore a mere fiction to speak of the politics, the principles, and the system of the Court of Directors. The real Court of Directors and the real Home Government, &c., of India are the permanent and irresponsible bureaucracy, the creatures of the desk and the creatures of favor residing in Leadenhall-st. We have thus a Corporation ruling over an immense Empire, not formed, as in Venice, by eminent patricians, but by old obstinate clerks, and the like odd fellows. No wonder, then, that there exists no government by which so much is written and so little done, as the Government of India. When the East India Company was only a commercial association, they, of course, requested a most detailed report on every item from the managers of their Indian factories, as is done by every trading concern. When the factories grew into an Empire, the commercial items into ship loads of correspondence and documents, the Leadenhall clerks went on in their system, which made the Directors and the Board their dependents; and they succeeded in transforming the Indian Government into one immense writing-machine. Lord Broughton stated in his evidence before the Official Salaries Committee, that with one single dispatch 45,000 pages of collection were sent. In order to give you some idea of the time-killing manner in which business is transacted at the India House, I will quote a passage from Mr. Dickinson: The close and abject spirit of this bureaucracy deserves to he stigmatised in the celebrated words of Burke: The clerical establishments of Leadenhall-st. and Cannon-row cost the Indian people the trifle of 160,000 annually. The oligarchy involves India in wars, in order to find employment for their younger sons; the moneyocracy consigns it to the highest bidder; and a subordinate Bureaucracy paralyse its administration and perpetuate its abuses as the vital condition of their own perpetuation. Sir Charles Wood s bill alters nothing in the existing system. It enlarges the power of the Ministry, without adding to its responsibility.

Karl Marx in The New-York Tribune 1853

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/07/20.htm

How came it that English supremacy was established in India? The paramount power of the Great Mogul was broken by the Mogul Viceroys. The power of the Viceroys was broken by the Mahrattas. The power of the Mahrattas was broken by the Afghans, and while all were struggling against all, the Briton rushed in and was enabled to subdue them all. A country not only divided between Mahommedan and Hindoo, but between tribe and tribe, between caste and caste; a society whose framework was based on a sort of equilibrium, resulting from a. general repulsion and constitutional exclusiveness between all its members. Such a country and such a society, were they not the predestined prey of conquest? If we knew nothing of the past history of Hindostan, would there not be the one great and incontestable fact, that even at this moment India is held in English thraldom by an Indian army maintained at the cost of India? India, then, could not escape the fate of being conquered, and the whole of her past history, if it be anything, is the history of the successive conquests she has undergone. Indian society has no history at all, at least no known history. What we call its history, is but the history of the successive intruders who founded their empires on the passive basis of that unresisting and unchanging society. The question, therefore, is not whether the English had a right to conquer India, but whether we are to prefer India conquered by the Turk, by the Persian, by the Russian, to India conquered by the Briton. England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying the material foundations of Western society in Asia. Arabs, Turks, Tartars, Moguls, who had successively overrun India, soon became Hindooized, the barbarian conquerors being, by an eternal law of history, conquered themselves by the superior civilization of their subjects. The British were the first conquerors superior, and therefore, inaccessible to Hindoo civilization. They destroyed it by breaking up the native communities, by uprooting the native industry, and by levelling all that was great and elevated in the native society. The historic pages of their rule in India report hardly anything beyond that destruction. The work of regeneration hardly transpires through a heap of ruins. Nevertheless it has begun. The political unity of India, more consolidated, and extending farther than it ever did under the Great Moguls, was the first condition of its regeneration. That unity, imposed by the British sword, will now be strengthened and perpetuated by the electric telegraph. The native army, organized and trained by the British drill-sergeant, was the sine qua non of Indian self-emancipation, and of India ceasing to be the prey of the first foreign intruder. The free press, introduced for the first time into Asiatic society, and managed principally by the common offspring of Hindoos and Europeans, is a new and powerful agent of reconstruction. The Zemindari and Ryotwar themselves, abominable as they are, involve two distinct forms of private property in land the great desideratum of Asiatic society. From the Indian natives, reluctantly and sparingly educated at Calcutta, under English superintendence, a fresh class is springing up, endowed with the requirements for government and imbued with European science. Steam has brought India into regular and rapid communication with Europe, has connected its chief ports with those of the whole south-eastern ocean, and has revindicated it from the isolated position which was the prime law of its stagnation. The day is not far distant when, by a combination of railways and steam-vessels, the distance between England and India, measured by time, will be shortened to eight days, and when that once fabulous country will thus be actually annexed to the Western world. The ruling classes of Great Britain have had, till now, but an accidental, transitory and exceptional interest in the progress of India. The aristocracy wanted to conquer it, the moneyocracy to plunder it, and the millocracy to undersell it. But now the tables are turned. The millocracy have discovered that the transformation of India into a reproductive country has become of vital importance to them, and that, to that end, it is necessary, above all, to gift her with means of irrigation and of internal communication. They intend now drawing a net of railroads over India. And they will do it. The results must be inappreciable. It is notorious that the productive powers of India are paralysed by the utter want of means for conveying and exchanging its various produce. Nowhere, more than in India, do we meet with social destitution in the midst of natural plenty, for want of the means of exchange. It was proved before a Committee of the British House of Commons, which sat in 1848, that The introduction of railroads may be easily made to subserve agricultural purposes by the formation of tanks, where ground is required for embankment, and by the conveyance of water along the different lines. Thus irrigation, the sine qua non of farming in the East, might be greatly extended, and the frequently recurring local famines, arising from the want of water, would be averted. The general importance of railways, viewed under this head, must become evident, when we remember that irrigated lands, even in the districts near Ghauts, pay three times as much in taxes, afford ten or twelve times as much employment, and yield twelve or fifteen times as much profit, as the same area without irrigation. Railways will afford the means of diminishing the amount and the cost of the military establishments. Col. Warren, Town Major of the Fort St. William, stated before a Select Committee of the House of Commons: We know that the municipal organization and the economical basis of the village communities has been broken up, but their worst feature, the dissolution of society into stereotype and disconnected atoms, has survived their vitality. The village isolation produced the absence of roads in India, and the absence of roads perpetuated the village isolation. On this plan a community existed with a given scale of low conveniences, almost without intercourse with other villages, without the desires and efforts indispensable to social advance. The British having broken up this self-sufficient inertia of the villages, railways will provide the new want of communication and intercourse. Besides, I know that the English millocracy intend to endow India with railways with the exclusive view of extracting at diminished expenses the cotton and other raw materials for their manufactures. But when you have once introduced machinery into the locomotion of a country, which possesses iron and coals, you are unable to withhold it from its fabrication. You cannot maintain a net of railways over an immense country without introducing all those industrial processes necessary to meet the immediate and current wants of railway locomotion, and out of which there must grow the application of machinery to those branches of industry not immediately connected with railways. The railway-system will therefore become, in India, truly the forerunner of modern industry. This is the more certain as the Hindoos are allowed by British authorities themselves to possess particular aptitude. for accommodating themselves to entirely new labor, and acquiring the requisite knowledge of machinery. Ample proof of this fact is afforded by the capacities and expertness of the native engineers in the Calcutta mint, where they have been for years employed in working the steam machinery, by the natives attached to the several steam engines in the Burdwan coal districts, and by other instances. Mr. Campbell himself, greatly influenced as he is by the prejudices of the East India Company, is obliged to avow Modern industry, resulting from the railway system, will dissolve the hereditary divisions of labor, upon which rest the Indian castes, those decisive impediments to Indian progress and Indian power. All the English bourgeoisie may be forced to do will neither emancipate nor materially mend the social condition of the mass of the people, depending not only on the development of the productive powers, but on their appropriation by the people. But what they will not fail to do is to lay down the material premises for both. Has the bourgeoisie ever done more? Has it ever effected a progress without dragging individuals and people through blood and dirt, through misery and degradation? The Indians will not reap the fruits of the new elements of society scattered among them by the British bourgeoisie, till in Great Britain itself the now ruling classes shall have been supplanted by the industrial proletariat, or till the Hindoos themselves shall have grown strong enough to throw off the English yoke altogether. At all events, we may safely expect to see, at a more or less remote period, the regeneration of that great and interesting country, whose gentle natives are, to use the expression of Prince Soltykov, even in the most inferior classes, plus fins et plus adroits que les Italiens [more subtle and adroit than the Italians], a whose submission even is counterbalanced by a certain calm nobility, who, notwithstanding their natural langor, have astonished the British officers by their bravery, whose country has been the source of our languages, our religions, and who represent the type of the ancient German in the Jat, and the type of the ancient Greek in the Brahmin. I cannot part with the subject of India without some concluding remarks. The profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois civilization lies unveiled before our eyes, turning from its home, where it assumes respectable forms, to the colonies, where it goes naked. They are the defenders of property, but did any revolutionary party ever originate agrarian revolutions like those in Bengal, in Madras, and in Bombay? Did they not, in India, to borrow an expression of. that great robber, Lord Clive himself, resort to atrocious extortion, when simple corruption could not keep pace with their rapacity? While they prated in Europe about the inviolable sanctity of the national debt, did they not confiscate in India the dividends of the rajahs, 171 who had invested their private savings in the Company s own funds? While they combatted the French revolution under the pretext of defending our holy religion, did they not forbid, at the same time, Christianity to be propagated in India, and did they not, in order to make money out of the pilgrims streaming to the temples of Orissa and Bengal, take up the trade in the murder and prostitution perpetrated in the temple of juggernaut? These are the men of Property, Order, Family, and Religion. The devastating effects of English industry, when contemplated with regard to India, a country as vast as Europe, and containing 150 millions of acres, are palpable and confounding. But we must not forget that they are only the organic results of the whole system of production as it is now constituted. That production rests on the supreme rule of capital. The centralization of capital is essential to the existence of capital as an independent power. The destructive influence of that centralization upon the markets of the world does but reveal, in the most gigantic dimensions, the inherent organic laws of political economy now at work in every civilized town. The bourgeois period of history has to create the material basis of the new world on the one hand universal intercourse founded upon the mutual dependency of mankind, and the means of that intercourse; on the other hand the development of the productive powers of man and the transformation of material production into a scientific domination of natural agencies. Bourgeois industry and commerce create these material conditions of a new world in the same way as geological revolutions have created the surface of the earth. When a great social revolution shall have mastered the results of the bourgeois epoch, the market of the world and the modern powers of production, and subjected them to the common control of the most advanced peoples, then only will human progress cease to resemble that hideous, pagan idol, who would not drink the nectar but from the skulls of the slain.

The Future Results of British Rule in India by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/07/22.htm

The present Mr. Cobbett, by continuing under altered circumstances the politics of his father, has necessarily sunk into the class of liberal Tories.

Works of Karl Marx 1853

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London, Tuesday, July 12, 1853 The clauses of the India Bill are passing one by one, the debate scarcely offering any remarkable features, except the inconsistency of the so-called India Reformers. There is, for instance, my Lord Jocelyn, M. P. who has made a kind of political livelihood by his periodical denunciation of Indian wrongs, and of the maladministration of the East India Company. What do you think his amendment amounted to? To give the East India Company a lease for 10 years. Happily, it compromised no one but himself. There is another professional Reformer, Mr. Jos. Hume, who, during his long Parliamentary life, has succeeded in transforming opposition itself into a particular manner of supporting the ministry. He proposed not to reduce the number of East India Directors from 24 to 18. The only amendment of common sense, yet agreed to, was that of Mr. Bright, exempting Directors nominated by the Government from the qualification in East India Stock, imposed by the Directors elected by the Court of Proprietors. Go through the pamphlets published by the East Indian Reform Association, and you will feel a similar sensation as when, hearing of one great act of accusation against Bonaparte, devised in common by Legitimists, Orleanists, Blue and Red Republicans, and even disappointed Bonapartists. Their only merit until now has been to draw public attention to Indian affairs in general, and further they cannot go in their present form of eclectic opposition. For instance, while they attack the doings of the English aristocracy in India, they protest against the destruction of the Indian aristocracy of native princes. After the British intruders had once put their feet on India, and made up their mind to hold it, there remained no alternative but to break the power of the native princes by force or by intrigue. Placed with regard to them in similar circumstances as the ancient Romans with regard to their allies, they followed in the track of Roman politics. It was, says an English writer, a system of fattening allies, as we fatten oxen, till they were worthy of being devoured. After having won over their allies in the way of ancient Rome, the East India Company executed them in the modern manner of Change-Alley. In order to discharge the engagements they had entered into with the Company, the native princes were forced to borrow enormous sums from Englishmen at usurious interest. When their embarrassment had reached the highest pitch, the creditor got inexorable, the screw was turned and the princes were compelled either to concede their territories amicably to the Company, or to begin war; to become pensioners on their usurpers in one case, or to be deposed as traitors in the other. At this moment the native States occupy an area of 699,961 square miles, with a population of 52,941,263 souls, being, however, no longer the allies, but only the dependents of the British Government, upon multifarious conditions, and under the various forms of the subsidiary and of the protective systems. These systems have in common the relinquishment, by the native States of the right of self-defense, of maintaining diplomatic relations, and of settling the disputes among themselves without the interference of the Governor-General. All of them have to pay a tribute, either in hard cash, or in a contingent of armed forces commanded by British officers. The final absorption or annexation of these native States is at present eagerly controverted between the Reformers who denounce it as a crime, and the men of business who excuse it as a necessity. In my opinion the question itself is altogether improperly put. As to the native States they virtually ceased to exist from the moment they became subsidiary to or protected by the Company. If you divide the revenue of a country between two governments, you are sure to cripple the resources of the one and the administration of both. Under the present system the native States succumb under the double incubus of their native Administration and the tributes and inordinate military establishments imposed upon them by the Company. The conditions under which they are allowed to retain their apparent independence are at the same time the conditions of a permanent decay, and of an utter inability of improvement. Organic weakness is the constitutional law of their existence, as of all existences living upon sufferance. It is, therefore, not the native States, but the native Princes and Courts about whose maintenance the question revolves. Now, is it not a strange thing that the same men who denounce the barbarous splendors of the Crown and Aristocracy of England are shedding tears at the downfall of Indian Nabobs, Rajahs, and Jagheerdars, the great majority of whom possess not even the prestige of antiquity, being generally usurpers of very recent date, set up by English intrigue! There exists in the whole world no despotism more ridiculous, absurd and childish than that of those Schazenans and Schariars of the Arabian Nights. The Duke of Wellington, Sir J. Malcolm, Sir Henry Russell, Lord Ellenborough, General Briggs, and other authorities, have pronounced in favor of the status quo; but on what grounds? Because the native troops under English rule want employment in the petty warfares with their own countrymen, in order to prevent them from turning their strength against their own European masters. Because the existence of independent States gives occasional employment to the English troops. Because the hereditary princes are the most servile tools of English despotism, and check the rise of those bold military adventurers with whom India has and ever will abound. Because the independent territories afford a refuge to all discontented and enterprising native spirits. Leaving aside all these arguments, which state in so many words that the native princes are the strongholds of the present abominable English system and the greatest obstacles to Indian progress, I come to Sir Thomas Munro and Lord Elphinstone, who were at least men of superior genius, and of real sympathy for the Indian people. They think that without a native aristocracy there can be no energy in any other class of the community, and that the subversion of that aristocracy will not raise but debase a whole people. They may be right as long as the natives, under direct English rule, are systematically excluded from all superior offices, military and civil. Where there can be no great men by their own exertion, there must be great men by birth, to leave to a conquered people some greatness of their own. That exclusion, however, of the native people from the English territory, has been effected only by the maintenance of the hereditary princes in the so-called independent territories. And one of these two concessions had to be made to the native army, on whose strength all British rule in India depends. I think we may trust the assertion of Mr. Campbell, that the native Indian Aristocracy are the least enabled to fill higher offices; that for all fresh requirements it is necessary to create a fresh class; and that The native princes themselves are fast disappearing by, the extinction of their houses; but, since the commencement of this century, the British Government has observed the policy of allowing them to make heirs by adoption, or of filling up their vacant seats with puppets of English creation. The great Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie, was the first to protest openly, against this system. Were not the natural course of things artificially resisted, there would be wanted neither wars nor expenses to do away with the native princes. As to the pensioned princes, the 2,468,969 assigned to them by the British Government on the Indian revenue is a most heavy charge upon a people living on rice, and deprived of the first necessaries of life. If they are good for anything, it is for exhibiting Royalty in its lowest stage of degradation and ridicule. Take, for instance, the Great Mogul, the descendant of Timour Tamerlane: He is allowed 120,000 a year. His authority does not extend beyond the walls of his palace, within which the Royal idiotic race, left to itself, propagates as freely as rabbits. Even the police of Delhi is held by Englishmen above his control. There he sits on his throne, a little shriveled yellow old man, trimmed in a theatrical dress, embroidered with gold, much like that of the dancing girls of Hindostan. On certain State occasions, the tinsel-covered puppet issues forth to gladden the hearts of the loyal. On his days of reception strangers have to pay a fee, in the form of guineas, as to any other saltimbanque exhibiting himself in public; while he, in his turn, presents them with turbans, diamonds, etc. On looking nearer at them, they find that the Royal diamonds are, like so many pieces of ordinary glass, grossly painted and imitating as roughly as possible the precious stones, and jointed so wretchedly, that they break in the hand like gingerbread. The English money-lenders, combined with the English Aristocracy, understand, we must own, the art of degrading Royalty, reducing it to the nullity of constitutionalism at home, and to the seclusion of etiquette abroad. And now, here are the Radicals, exasperated at this spectacle!

Karl Marx in The New-York Tribune 1853

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Strike is the order of the day. During the present week 5,000 miners have struck in the northern coal district; 400 to 500 journeymen corkcutters in London; about 2,000 laborers employed by the different wharfingers on the Thames; the police force at Hull, similar attempts being made by the City and general Metropolitan Police; and finally the bricklayers employed at St. Stephens, under the very nose of Parliament. The world is becoming a very paradise for laborers. Men are becoming valuable, exclaims The Times, In order to reduce that paradise to terrestrial dimensions, the mill-lords of Lancashire have formed an association, for mutually assisting and supporting each other against the demands of the people. But not content with opposing combination to combination, the bourgeoisie threaten to appeal to the interference of law of law dictated by themselves. In what manner this is done may be inferred from the following expectorations of The Morning Post, the organ of the liberal and amiable Palmerston. If there is a piece of wickedness which pre-eminently deserves to be punished with an iron hand, it is the system of strikes.... What is wanted is some stringent and summary mode of punishing the leaders and chief men of these combinations.[...] it would be no interference with the freedom of the labor market to treat these fellows to a flogging.... It is idle to say that this would interfere with the labor market. As long as those who supply the labor market refrain from jeopardizing the interests of the country, they may be left to make their own terms with the employers. Within a certain conventional limit, the laborers shall be allowed to imagine themselves to be free agents of production, and that their contracts with their masters are settled by mutual convention; but that limit passed, labor is to be openly enforced upon them on conditions prescribed by Parliament, that permanent Combination Committee of the ruling classes against the people. And this is the same country in which the celebrated Swift, the founder of the first Lunatic Asylum in Ireland, doubted whether 90 madmen could be found.

Karl Marx in the New York Daily Tribune 1853

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London, Tuesday, July 19, 1853 The progress of the India bill through the Committee has little interest. It is significant, that all amendments are thrown out now by the Coalition coalescing with the Tories against their own allies of the Manchester School. The actual state of India may be illustrated by a few facts. The Home Establishment absorbs 3 per cent. of the net revenue, and the annual interest for Home Debt and Dividends 14 per cent-together 17 per cent. If we deduct these annual remittances from India to England, the military charges amount to about two-thirds of the whole expenditure available for India, or to 66 per cent., while the charges for Public Works do not amount to more than 2 3/4 per cent. of the general revenue, or for Bengal 1 per cent., Agra 7 3/4, Punjab 1/8, Madras 1/2, and Bombay 1 per cent. of their respective revenues. These figures are the official ones of the Company itself. On the other hand nearly three-fifths of the whole net revenue are derived from the land, about one-seventh from opium, and upward of one-ninth from salt. These resources together yield 85 per cent. of the whole receipts. As to minor items of receipts and charges, it may suffice to state that the Moturpha revenue maintained in the Presidency of Madras, and levied on shops, looms, sheep, cattle, sundry professions, &c., yields somewhat about 50,000, while the yearly dinners of the East India House cost about the same sum. The great bulk of the revenue is derived from the land. As the various kinds of Indian land-tenure have recently been described in so many places, and in popular style, too, I propose to limit my observations on the subject to a few general remarks on the Zemindari and Ryotwar systems. The Zemindari and the Ryotwar were both of them agrarian revolutions, effected by British ukases, and opposed to each other, the one aristocratic, the other democratic; the one a caricature of English landlordism, the other of French peasant-proprietorship; but pernicious, both combining the most contradictory character both made not for the people, who cultivate the soil, nor for the holder, who owns it, but for the Government that taxes it. By the Zemindari system, the people of the Presidency of Bengal were depossessed at once of their hereditary claims to the soil, in favor of the native tax gatherers called Zemindars. By the Ryotwar system introduced into the Presidencies of Madras and Bombay, the native nobility, with their territorial claims, meras sees, jagheers, &c., were reduced with the common people to the holding of minute fields, cultivated by themselves in favor of the Collector of the East India Company." But a curious sort of English landlord was the Zemindar, receiving only one-tenth of the rent, while he had to make over nine-tenths of it to the Government. A curious sort of French peasant was the Ryot, without any permanent title in the soil, and with the taxation changing every year in proportion to his harvest. The original class of Zemindars, notwithstanding their unmitigated and uncontrolled rapacity against the depossessed mass of the ex-hereditary landholders, soon melted away under the pressure of the Company, in order to be replaced by mercantile speculators who now hold all the land of Bengal, with exception of the estates returned under the direct management of the Government. These speculators have introduced a variety of the Zemindari tenure called patnee. Not content to be placed with regard to the British Government in the situation of middlemen, they have created in their turn a class of hereditary middlemen called patnetas, who created again their sub-patnetas, &c., so that a perfect scale of hierarchy of middlemen has sprung up, which presses with its entire weight on the unfortunate cultivator. As to the Ryots in Madras and Bombay, the system soon degenerated into one of forced cultivation, and the land lost all its value. Thus, in Bengal, we have a combination of English landlordism, of the Irish middlemen system, of the Austrian system, transforming the landlord into the tax-gatherer, and of the Asiatic system making the State the real landlord. In Madras and Bombay we have a French peasant proprietor who is at the same time a serf, and a m tayer of the State. The drawbacks of all these various systems accumulate upon him without his enjoying any of their redeeming features. The Ryot is subject, like the French peasant, to the extortion of the private usurer; but he has no hereditary, no permanent title in his land, like the French peasant. Like the serf he is forced to cultivation, but he is not secured against want like the serf. Like the m tayer he has to divide his produce with the State, but the State is not obliged, with regard to him, to advance the funds and the stock, as it is obliged to do with regard to the m tayer. In Bengal, as in Madras and Bombay, under the Zemindari as under the Ryotwar, the Ryots-and they form 11-12ths of the whole Indian population have been wretchedly pauperized; and if they are, morally speaking, not sunk as low as the Irish cottiers, they owe it to their climate, the men of the South being possessed of less wants, and of more imagination than the men of the North. Conjointly with the land-tax we have to consider the salt-tax. Notoriously the Company retain the monopoly of that article which they sell at three times its mercantile value and this in a country where it is furnished by the sea, by the lakes, by the mountains and the earth itself. The practical working of this monopoly was described by the Earl of Albemarle in the following words: As an in stance of English bourgeois morals, I may allege, that Mr. Campbell defends the Opium monopoly because it prevents the Chinese from consuming too much of the drug, and that he defends the Brandy monopoly (licenses for spirit-selling in India) because it has wonderfully increased the consumption of Brandy in India. The Zemindar tenure, the Ryotwar, and the salt tax, combined with the Indian climate, were the hotbeds of the cholera India s ravages upon the Western World a striking and severe example of the solidarity of human woes and wrongs.

Karl Marx in The New-York Tribune 1853

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/08/05.htm

And this is the same country in which the celebrated Swift, the founder of the first Lunatic Asylum in Ireland, doubted whether 90 madmen could be found.

Karl Marx in New York Tribune 1853

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/08/12.htm

London, Tuesday, Aug. 2, 1853 The India bill has passed on Friday through its last stage, after the Ministerial propositions for raising the Directors and Chairmen s salaries had been rejected, and the latter reduced to 900 and 1,000 respectively. The Special Court of East India Proprietors which met on Friday last, offered a most lugubrious spectacle, the desponding cries and speeches clearly betraying the apprehensions of the worthy proprietors, that the Indian Empire might have been their property for the better time. One right honorable gentleman gave notice of his intention to move resolutions in the House of Commons rejecting the present bill, and on the part of the Proprietors and Directors declining to accept the part assigned to them by the Ministerial measure. A strike of the honorable East India Proprietors and Directors. Very striking, indeed! The Abolition of the Company s Salt-monopoly by the British House of Commons was the first step to bringing the finances of India under its direct management.

Karl Marx in The New-York Tribune 1853

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/08/16.htm

The great colliers strikes in South Wales not only continue, but out of them have arisen new strikes among the men employed at the iron mines. A general strike among the British sailors is anticipated for the moment when the Merchant Shipping bill will come into operation, the foreigners being, as they say, admitted only for the purpose of lowering their wages. The importance of the present strikes, to which I have repeatedly called the attention of your readers, begins now to be understood even by the London middle-class press. Thus, the Weekly Times of last Saturday remarks: The relations between employer and employed have been violently disturbed. Labor throughout the length and breadth of the land has bearded capital, and it may safely be asserted that the quarrel thus evoked has only just commenced. The working classes have been putting forth strong feelers to try their position.[...] The agitation at present is limited to a series of independent skirmishes, but there are indications that the period is not very distant when this desultory warfare will be turned into a systematic and universal combination against capital. ...

Karl Marx in the New York Daily Tribune 1853

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/08/23.htm

From the Constantinople journals which have just arrived, we learn that the Sultan s [Abdul Mejid] manifesto to his subjects appeared on the 1st August, that the Russian Consul at Adrianople has received orders from St. Petersburg to withdraw from Turkey, that the other Russian Consuls expect similar orders, and that the Constantinople papers have been prohibited in the Principalities. The Impartial of Smyrna, of Aug. 1, has the following communication with regard to Persia: The decrease of population, resulting from emigration, coincides with an unprecedented increase in the powers of production and capital. When we remember Parson Malthus denying emigration any such influence, and imagining he had established, by the most elaborate calculations, that the united navies of the world could never suffice for an emigration of such dimensions as were likely to affect in any way the overstocking of human beings, the whole mystery of modern political economy is unraveled to our eyes. It consists simply in transforming transitory social relations belonging to a determined epoch of history and corresponding with a given state of material production, into eternal, general, never-changing laws, natural laws, as they call them. The thorough transformation of the social relations resulting from the revolutions and evolutions in the process of material production, is viewed by the political economists as a mere Utopia. They see the economical limits of a given epoch, but they do not understand how these limits are limited themselves, and must disappear through the working of history, as they have been created by it. The accounts relating to Trade and Navigation for the six months ending July 5, 1853, as published by the Board of Trade, show in general a great increase when compared with the exports, imports, and shipping in the corresponding period of the year 1852. [Below the figures are quoted from Accounts Relating to Trade and Navigation and other material published in The Economist, No. 519, August 6, 1853. Ed.] The import of oxen, bulls, cows, calves, sheep and lambs has considerably increased. Out of 260 reports on the wheat crops throughout the United Kingdom, only 25 speak of the crop as fine and abundant, 30 as an average one, and above 200 reports declare it to be bad and deficient. Oats, barley and beans are expected to turn out less unfavorable, as the wet has benefited them, but the potatoes are blighted in all parts of the country. Messrs. J. [and] C. Sturge & Co. remark, in their last circular on the wheat crop: In its sitting of Aug. 9, the House of Lords had to decide on the fate of three Ireland Bills, carried through the Commons after ten months deliberation, viz.: the Landlord and Tenant Bill, removing the laws concerning mortgages, which form at present an insuperable bar to the effective sale of the smaller estates not falling under the Encumbered Estates Act ; the Leasing Powers Bill, amending and consolidating more than sixty acts of Parliament which prohibit leases to be entered into for 21 years regulating the tenant s compensation for improvements in all instances where contracts exist, and preventing the system of sub-letting; lastly, the Tenant s Improvement Compensation Bill, providing compensation for improvements effected by the tenant in the absence of any contract with the landlord, and containing a clause for the retrospective operation of this provision. The House of Lords could, of course, not object to parliamentary interference between landlord and tenant, as it has laden the statute book from the time of Edward IV to the present day, with acts of legislation of landlord and tenant, and as its very existence is founded on laws meddling with landed property, as for instance the Law of Entail. This time, the noble lords sitting as Judges on their own. cause, allowed themselves to run into a passion quite surprising in that hospital of invalids. This will be evident when we remember that the bills which formed the subject of so hot a controversy were originated, not by the Coalition Cabinet, but by Mr. Napier, the Irish Attorney-General under the Derby Ministry, and that the Tories at the last elections in Ireland appealed to the testimony of these bills introduced by them. The only substantial change made by the House of Commons in the measures introduced by the Tory Government was the excluding of the growing crops from being distrained upon. The bills are not the same, exclaimed the Earl of Malmesbury, asking the Duke of Newcastle whether he did not believe him. Certainly not, replied the Duke. But whose assertion would you then believe? That of Mr. Napier, answered the Duke. Now, said the Earl, here is a letter of Mr. Napier, stating that the bills are not the same. There, said the Duke, is another letter of Mr. Napier, stating that they are. On the same day the House of Commons carried the Hackney Carriages Duties Bill through the third reading, renewing the official price-regulations of the 14th century, and accepting the clause proposed by Mr. F. Scully, which subjects cab proprietors strikes to legal penalties. We have not now to settle the question of state interference with private concerns. We have only to state that this passed in a free-trade House. But, they say, that in the cab trade there exists monopoly and not free competition. This is a curious sort of logic. First they subject a particular trade to a duty, called license, and to special police regulations, and then they affirm that, in virtue of these very burdens imposed upon it, the trade loses its free-trade character and becomes transformed into a state monopoly. The Transportation Bill has also passed through Committee. Except a small number of convicts who will continue to be transported to Western Australia, the penalty of transportation is abolished by this bill. After a certain period of preliminary imprisonment the offenders will receive tickets of leave in Great Britain, liable to be revoked, and then they will be employed on the public works at wages to be determined by Government. The philanthropic object of the latter clause is the erection of an artificial surplus in the labor market, by drawing forced convict-labor into competition with free labor; the same philanthropists forbidding the workhouse paupers all sort of productive labor from fear of creating competition with private capital. The London Press a weekly journal, inspired by Mr. Disraeli, and certainly the best informed paper as far as ministerial mysteries are concerned, made, on Saturday last, and accordingly before the arrival of the Petersburg dispatch, the following curious statement: The Paris Si cle some weeks ago denounced the English Court. A German paper dwelt on the Coburg-Orleans conspiracy, which, for the sake of family interests, had, through the medium of King Leopold and Prince Albert, enforced upon the English Ministry a line of policy dangerous to the Western nations, and fostering the secret intentions of Russia. The Brussels Nation had a long report of a Cabinet Council held at London, in which the Queen had formally declared that Bonaparte, by his pretensions to the Holy Shrines, had been the only cause of the present complications, that the Emperor of Russia wished less to humiliate Turkey than his French rival, and that she would never give her Royal assent to any war against Russia for the interest of a Bonaparte. These rumors have been delicately alluded to by The Morning Advertiser, and have found a loud echo in the public, and a cautious one in the weekly press. Lord Palmerston s Smoke Nuisance Suppression Bill has passed a second reading. This measure once carried, the metropolis will assume a new aspect, and there will remain no dirty houses in London, except the House of Lords and the House of Commons.

Karl Marx in New York Daily Tribune

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/08/24.htm

The battle between labor and capital, between wages and profits, continues. There have been new strikes in London on the part of the coal-heavers, of the barbers, of the tailors, ladies boot and shoe makers, umbrella and parasol coverers, shirtmakers and makers of underclothing generally, and of other working people employed by slop-sellers and wholesale export-houses. Yesterday, a strike was announced from several bricklayers, and from the Thames lightermen, employed in the transit of goods between the wharfs and ships in the river. The strikes of the colliers and iron-workers in South Wales continue, and a new strike of colliers in Resolven has to be added to the list, etc., etc. It would be tedious to go on enumerating, letter after letter, the different strikes which come to my knowledge week after week. I shall therefore merely dwell occasionally on such as offer peculiar features of interest. ... The most important incident in this history of strikes is the declaration of the Seamen s United Friendly Association, calling itself the Anglo-Saxon Sailor s Bill of Rights. This declaration refers to the Merchant Shipping Bill, which repeals the clause of the Navigation Act, rendering it imperative on British owners to carry at least three-fourths of British subjects on board their ships; which bill now throws open the coasting trade to foreign seamen even where foreign ships are excluded. The men declare this bill to be, not a Seamen s bill but an Owners bill.

Karl Marx in the New York Daily Tribune 1853

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/08/30.htm

While thus the bright sunshine of commercial and industrial prosperity is hidden by gloomy prospects, strikes are still forming, and will for some time yet form, an important feature of our industrial condition, only they are beginning to change their character contemporary with the change that is now going on in the general condition of the country. At Bury a new advance of 2d. per 1,000 hanks has been asked on the part of the spinners. Masters refusing, they left work, and the weavers will do so as soon as they have worked up the yarn on hand. At Preston, while the weavers still demand an advance of 10 per cent, being supported by the operatives of the surrounding districts, six masters have already locked up their mills and the others are likely to follow them. Two thousand operatives have thus been thrown out of work. At Blackburn the mechanics of Mr. Dickinson, iron-founder, still remain out. At Wigan the capreelers of one mill have struck for an advance of Id. per score, and the throstle-spinners of another mill refused to commence work until their wages were advanced. The mills were closed. At the same place the coalminers strike, embracing about 5,000 hands, is going on. The Earl of Crawford, and other extensive [coal-mine owners] in the neighborhood, dismissed their hands on Wednesday evening. A numerous meeting of the colliers was then held in Scales Orchard. At Manchester 5,000 looms stand still, besides the minor strikes going forward, such as that of the fustian-dyers, the skein-dyers, felt-hat makers, etc. At Bolton, meetings of the operative cotton-spinners are being held for an advance of wages. There are shoemakers strikes at Trenton, Bridgewater, etc.; cab-drivers strikes at Glasgow; masons strikes at Kilmarnock, threatened turn-outs of the police at Oldham, etc. At Birmingham, nailers demand an advance of 10 per cent, at Wolverhampton, the carpenters one of 6d. per day; the London carpenters ditto, and so on. While through the principal manufacturing towns of Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, etc., the operatives are holding public meetings, to decide upon measures for the support of their suffering brethren, the masters on the other hand are resolved to close their establishments for an indefinite period, with the design of starving their hands into submission. We find, says the Sunday Times, that generally speaking, the demand for an advance of wages has not exceeded 6d. a day; and, looking at the present price of provisions, [...] it can hardly be said [...] that the demand is an unreasonable one. We know it has been said that one aim of the present strikers is to obtain a sort of communistic share of the real or supposed profits of the manufacturer; but the comparison between the increased demand for wages and the enhanced value of the prime necessaries of life, furnishes an ample refutation of the charge. When the working people ask for more than the prime necessaries of life, when they pretend to share in the profits resulting from their own industry, then they are accused of communistic tendencies. What has the price of provisions to do with the eternal and supreme law of supply and demand"? In 1839, 1840, 1841, and 1842, while there was a continued rise in the price of provisions, wages were sinking until they reached the starvation point. Wages, said then the same manufacturers, don t depend upon the price of provisions, but upon the eternal law of supply and demand. What has respect to do with the eternal law of supply and demand"? Has any one ever heard of the price of coffee rising at Mincing-lane when urged in a respectful manner"? The trade in human flesh and blood being carried on in the same manner as that of any other commodity, give it at least the chances of any other. The wages-movement has been going on now for a period of six months. Let us judge it by the test acknowledged on the part of the masters themselves, by the eternal laws of supply and demand, or are we, perhaps, to understand, that the eternal laws of political economy must be interpreted in the same manner as the eternal peace treaties Russia has concluded with Turkey? Six months ago the work-people, had they even found their position not strengthened by the great demand for their labor, by constant and enormous emigration to the gold fields and to America, must have inferred the enhancement of industrial profits from the general prosperity-cry uttered by the middle-class press exulting at the blessings of Free Trade. The workmen, of course, demanded their share of that so loudly proclaimed prosperity, but the masters fought hard against them. Then, the workmen combine, threaten to strike, enforce their demands in a more or less amicable manner. Wherever a strike occurs, the whole of the masters and their organs in pulpit, platform and press, break out into immoderate vituperation of the impudence and stupidity of such attempts at dictation. Now, what did the strikes prove, if not that the workmen preferred applying a mode of their own of testing the proportion of the supply to the demand rather than to trust to the interested assurances of their employers? Under certain circumstances, there is for the workman no other means of ascertaining whether he is or not paid the actual market value of his labor, but to strike or to threaten to do so. In 1852, on an average, the margin between the cost of the raw material and the price of the finished goods for instance, the margin between the cost of raw cotton and that of yarn, between the price of yarn and that of cotton goods, was greater, consequently the profit of the spinner and the manufacturer was undoubtedly larger than it has been in 1853. Neither yarn not goods have, until very lately, risen in the same proportion as cotton. Why, then, did the manufacturers not advance wages at once in 1852? There was no cause, they say, in the relative position of supply and demand justifying such a rise of wages in 1852. Indeed? Hands were not quite as short a year ago as they are now, but the difference is out of proportion to the sudden and repeated rise of wages forced out of the manufacturers since then, by virtue of the law of supply and demand, as expounded by turnouts. There are, certainly, more factories at work than last year, and more able-bodied workmen have emigrated since then, but at the same time never has there been such a supply of factory labor poured into our hives of industry from agricultural and other pursuits, as during the last twelve months. The fact is that the hands, as usual, perceived only too late, that the value of their labor had risen 30 per cent many a month ago, and then in the summer of this year only then they began to strike, first for 10 per cent, then for another 10 per cent, and so on, for as much, of course, as they could get. The constant success of these strikes, while it generalized them all over the country, was the best proof of their legitimacy, and their rapid succession in the same branch of trade, by the same hands claiming fresh advances, fully proved that according to supply and demand the work-people had long been entitled to a rise of wages, which was merely kept from them on account of their being ignorant of the state of the labor market. When they at last became acquainted with it, the manufacturers, who had all the while preached the eternal law of supply and demand, fell back on the doctrine of enlightened despotism, claiming the right to do as they liked with their own, and propounding as their angry ultimatum that the work-people don t know what is good for them. The change in the general commercial prospects must change the relative position of the work-people and their employers. Sudden as it came on, it found many strikes begun, still more in preparation. No doubt, there will be more, in spite of the depression, and, also, for a rise of wages, for as to the argument of the manufacturer, that he cannot afford to advance, the workmen will reply, that provisions are dearer, both arguments being equally powerful. However, should, as I suppose, the depression prove lasting, the work-people will soon get the worst of it, and have to struggle very unsuccessfully against reduction. But then their activity will soon be carried over to the political field, and the new organization of trades, gained in the strikes, will be of immense value to them.

Karl Marx in the New York Daily Tribune 1853

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/09/27.htm

Not only the Bey of Tunis [Ahmed], but the Shah of Persia [Nasr-ed-Din], notwithstanding the intrigues of Russia, has placed at the disposal of the Sultan a corps of 60,000 of his best troops. The Turkish army, then, may truly be said to be a mustering of all the available forces of Mohammedanism in Europe, Africa, and Western Asia. The hosts of the two religions which have long struggled for supremacy in the East, the Russo-Greek and the Mohammedan are now fronting each other, the one summoned by the arbitrary will of a single man -- the other by the fatal force of circumstances, according to their mutual creeds, as the Russo-Greek Church rejects the dogma of predestination, while Mohammedanism centers upon fatalism. To-day two meetings are to be held, the one in Downing-st. -- the other at the London Tavern; the one by the Ministers -- the other against them; the one in favor of the Czar -- the other in favor of the Sultan. From the leaders of The Times and Morning Chronicle, we might infer, if there could exist any doubt about the intention of the Coalition, that it will try to the utmost to prevent war, to resume negotiations, to kill time, to paralyze the Sultan's army, and to support the Czar in the Principalities. "The Czar has declared for peace," The Times is happy to state [here and below Marx quotes from the leaders in The Times No. 21552, October 6, 1853. -- Ed.], upon undoubted authority. The Czar has expressed "pacific sentiments at Olm tz by his own lips." He will not accept the modifications the Porte has proposed; he will abide by the original Vienna note, but he will allow the Vienna conference to interpret the note in a preternatural sense, contradictory to his own Nesselrode's interpretation. He will allow them to occupy themselves with conferences, provided they allow him, meanwhile, to occupy the Principalities. The Times, in its peace paroxysm, compares the two Emperors of Russia and Austria to a couple of savage chiefs in the interior of Africa, in order to arrive at the conclusion: Mr. Dornbush concludes his monthly commercial circular as follows: In the dry goods market, domestics are the articles suffering under the greatest depression; stocks continue to accumulate although a great number of looms have been stopped. Yet it cannot be said that there is anything doing in other sorts of goods. A similar stagnation prevails at Leeds and Bradford, at Leicester and Nottingham. At the latter place the hours of work have been reduced to ten and even eight in the lace trade; hosiery has been depressed ever since June last, when the production was at once reduced in Nottingham by one-third of its amount. The only trade that appears to go on in uninterrupted prosperity for the present, is the hardware trade of Birmingham and its vicinity. At London, bankruptcy begins to spread among the small shop-keepers. Now, is it not a very curious fact, that this scheme, of which informed you about two months ago, has, to this very moment, never been alluded to by the London papers, although silently carried out in the meantime, and already doing its work at Preston, Bolton and Manchester? The London press, it appears, was anxious to withhold the fact from the eyes of the world, that the Factory Lords were systematically arraying their class against the class of Labor, and that the successive steps taken by them, instead of being the spontaneous result of circumstances, are the premeditated effects of a deep-laid conspiracy of an organized Anti-Labor League! This English Capitalist League of the nineteenth century is yet to find its historian, as the French Catholic League did in the authors of the Satyre Menipp e, at the end of the sixteenth century. The work-people, in order to succeed in their demands, must naturally try to keep the one party in till the strike of the others has proved victorious. Where this plan is acted upon, the mill-owners combine to close all their mills, and, thus, to drive their hands to extremities. The Preston manufacturers , as you know, were to begin the game. Thirteen mills are already closed, and, at the expiration of another week, every mill is to be shut up, throwing out of work more than 24,000 men. The weavers have addressed a memorial to the masters, soliciting an interview, or offering to refer the matters in dispute to arbitration, but their request was rejected. As the Preston weavers are assisted by penny collections from the operatives of the surrounding districts, from Stalybridge, Oldham, Stockport, Bury, Withnell, Blackburn, Church-Parish, Acton, Irwell-Vale, Enfield, Burnley, Colne, Bacup, &c.; the men having discovered that the only means of resisting the undue influence of capital, was by union among themselves; the Preston factory-lords, on their part, have sent out secret emissaries to undermine the means of succor for the men on strike, and to induce the mill-owners of Burnley, Colne, Bacup, &c., to close their establishments, and to cause a general cessation of labor. In certain places, as at Enfield, the overlookers have been induced to inform their masters, who had taken a part in forwarding the movement, and accordingly a number of penny collectors have been discharged. While the Preston men are exhorted by the work-people of the surrounding districts to remain firm and united, the Preston masters meet with an immense applause from the other manufacturers, being extolled as the true heroes of the age. At Bury, matters are taking a similar turn as at Preston. At Bolton, the bed-quilt makers having lots cast to decide which of them were to begin striking, the masters of the whole trade at once closed their mills. Besides the simultaneous closing of mills, other means of combination are resorted to. At Keighley, for instance, the weavers of Mr. Lund struck for an advance of wages, the principal cause of their turn-out being his giving less than was received by the weavers of Mr. Anderton, at Bingley. A deputation of the weavers having asked for an interview with Mr. Lund, and proceeded to his lodgings, they had the door politely shut in their faces. But, a week afterward, Mr. Anderton's work-people were informed by notice that a reduction would be made in the wages of his weavers of 3d. per piece, and of his woolcombers of one farthing per pound, Mr. Lund and Mr. Anderton having, in the meantime, concluded an alliance offensive and defensive, with a view to fight the weavers of the one by pulling down the wages of the other. Thus, it is supposed, Mr. Lund's weavers will be driven to submission or Mr. Anderton's weavers to a turn-out, and the additional weight of another turn-out doing away with all chance of support, both sets will bend to a general reduction. In other instances the masters try to enlist the shop-keepers against the working men. Thus Mr. Horsfall, the coal king of Derby main pit, when, in consequence of a reduction of wages, his hands struck, went to all the butchers, bakers and provision dealers of the neighborhood the colliers trade with, to prevail on them not to let his men have anything on credit. In all localities where the Association for "regulating the excitement among the operatives" exists, the associated masters have pledged themselves to heavy fines, in case of any individual member violating the status of their League, or yielding to the demands of the "hands." At Manchester these fines amount to 5,000, at Preston to 3,000, at Bolton to 2,000, etc. There is one feature which, above all, distinguishes the present conflict from past ones. At former periods -- as in 1832, 1839, 1840, 1842 -- a general holiday, as it was called, viz.: a general and simultaneous stopping of labor throughout the whole kingdom, was a favorite idea with the operatives, and the great object they aimed at. This time, it is capital which threatens a general withdrawal. It is the masters who endeavor to bring about a general closing of mills. Do you not think that, if successful, it may prove a very dangerous experiment? Is it their intention to drive the English people to an insurrection of June , in order to break their rising spirit, and to lay them prostrate for a series of years to come? At all events, we cannot too closely watch the symptoms of the civil war preparing in England, especially as the London press intentionally shuts its eyes to great facts, while it diverts its readers with descriptions of such trifles as the banquet given by Mr. Titus Salt, one of the factory princes of Yorkshire, at the opening of his palace-mill, where not only the local aristocracy were regaled, but his hands, too. "Prosperity, health, and happiness to the working class," was the toast proposed by him, as the public is told by the Metropolitan press, but it is not told, that, some days afterwards, his moreen weavers received notice of another reduction in their wages from 2/3 to 2/1. "If this means either health or prosperity to the moreen weavers," writes one of his victims to The People's Paper, "I, for one, do not want it." You will perhaps have seen from The Times that a Mrs. MacDonnell, of Knoydart, Glengarry, has, in imitation of the Duchess of Sutherland, undertaken to clear her estates, in order to replace men by sheep. The People's Paper, informed by a correspondent on the spot, gives the following graphic description of this Malthusian operation! The article, entitled "Die Lage England," was published in an abridged form in the New York newspaper Die Reform. The first section of this article was published under the title "The War Question" in The Eastern Question. In his reports to the New-York Daily Tribune, Marx wrote about different episodes of the strike; at the end of March 1854, he devoted a whole article to this event, "British Finances. -- The Troubles at Preston."

Karl Marx in New York Daily Tribune

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/10/21.htm

While the first cannon bullets have been exchanged in the war of the Russians against Europe, the first blood has been spilt in the war now raging in the manufacturing districts, of capital against labor. On Friday night a riot took place at Wigan, arising out of the contest between the colliers and the coal kings; on Saturday the town was stated to be perfectly quiet, but today we are informed by electric telegraph that at the colliery of Lord Crawford or of the Earl Balcarres, an attack was made by the colliers; that the armed force was called out; that the soldiers fired, and that one of the workmen was killed. As I am to receive private information from the spot, I adjourn my report on this event. ... Thus, one by one, step by step, the industrial bourgeoisie have removed, with their own hands, all the carefully propagated delusions that could be conjured up at the hour of danger, in order to deturn the indignation of the working classes from their real antagonist, and to direct it against the antagonists of the millocracy, against the landed aristocracy. in 1853, there have waned away the false pretenses on the part of the masters and the silly illusions on the part of the men. The war between those two classes has become unmitigated, undisguised, openly avowed and plainly understood. The question, exclaim the masters themselves in one of their recent manifestoes is no longer one of wages but one of mastership. The Manchester liberals, then, have at last thrown off the lion s skin. What they pretend at is mastership for capital and slavery for labor. Lock-out vs. Turn-out, is the great lawsuit now pending in the industrial districts, and bayonets are likely to give judgement in the case. A whole industrial army, more than 70,000 working-men are disbanded and cast upon the streets. To the mills closed at Preston and Wigan there have been added those of the district of Bacup, which includes the townships of Bacup, Newchurch, Rawtenstall, Sharnford, and Stanford. At Burnley the mills stopped last Friday; at Padiham on Saturday. at Accrington the masters are contemplating a lock-out; at Bury, where about 1,000 men are already out of work, the masters have given notice to their hands of a lock-out unless they discontinued their contributions to those out of work in their own town and at Preston. and at Kindley, three large mills were closed on Saturday afternoon, and more than a thousand additional persons thrown out of employment. While the hypocritical, phrase-mongering, squint-eyed set of Manchester humbugs spoke peace to the Czar at Edinburgh, they acted war with their own countrymen at Manchester. While they preached arbitration between Russia and Europe, they were rejecting scornfully all appeals to arbitration from their own fellow-citizens. The workmen of Preston had carried in an open air meeting the resolution that the delegates of the factory operatives recommend the Mayor to call a public meeting of the manufacturers and the operatives to agree to an amicable settlement of the dispute now pending. But the masters do not want arbitration. What they pretend at is dictation. While, at the very moment of a European struggle, those Russian propagandists cry for reduction of the army, they are at the same time augmenting the army of civil war, the police force, in Lancashire and Yorkshire. To the workmen we can only say with The People s Paper. If they close all the mills of Lancashire do you send delegates to Yorkshire and enlist the support of the gallant men of the West Riding. If the mills of the West Riding are closed, appeal to Nottingham and Derby, to Birmingham and Leicester, to Bristol and Norwich, to Glasgow and Kidderminster, to Edinburgh and Ipswich. Further and further, wider and wider, extend your appeals and rally your class through every town and trade. If the employers choose to array all their order against you, do you array your entire class against them. If they will have the vast class struggle, let them have it, and we will abide the issue of that tremendous trial.

Karl Marx in the New York Daily Tribune 1853

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/11/01.htm

With regard to the Wigan riots, Mr. Cowell, the leader of the laborers at Preston, has declared in a public meeting that he very much regretted what had occurred in Wigan. He was sorry the people of Wigan had no more sense than to have recourse to a system of leveling. There was no sense in working people collecting together and destroying the property they had produced. The property itself never did them any injury it was the men that held the property that were the tyrants. Let them respect property and life, and by proceeding in a peaceable, orderly and quiet manner, they might rely on the struggle terminating in their favor. Now I am far from defending the aimless acts of violence committed by the Wigan colliers, who have paid for them with the blood of seven men. But, on the other hand, I understand that there is a great difficulty, especially for the inferior elements of the working classes, to which the colliers undoubtedly belong, in proceeding peaceably, orderly and quietly, when they are driven to acts of frenzy by utter destitution and by the cool insolence of their masters. The riots are provoked by the latter in order to enable themselves to appeal to the armed force and to put down, as they have done in Wigan, all meetings of the workingmen by order of the magistrates. The riot which occurred in the town of Wigan, on Friday afternoon, was occasioned by the coal kings of the district meeting in large numbers at Whiteside s Royal Hotel, in order to deliberate on the demands of the colliers, and by their coming to the resolution to repudiate all compromise with the men. The attack on the saw-mills at Haigh, near Wigan, which occurred on Monday, was directed against the foreign colliers, brought over from Wales ... in order to replace the turnouts of the coal pits. The colliers were certainly not right in preventing their fellow-laborers, by violence, from doing the work they had abandoned themselves. But when we see the masters pledging each other by heavy fines, with a view to enforce their lock-out, can we be astonished at the more rude and less hypocritical manner in which the men attempt to enforce their turn-out?

Karl Marx in the New York Daily Tribune 1853

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/11/04.htm

It is rumored that the Turkish army had crossed the Danube at Widin and Matchin, viz.: at the north-eastern and north-western frontiers of Bulgaria. The accuracy of this dispatch appears very doubtful. According to the Paris Presse of to-day, it was resolved by a military council held in the Seraskirat [War Ministry of the Ottoman Empire Ed.] on the 15th or 16th Oct., that as soon as the refusal of Prince Gorchakoff to evacuate the Principalities would be officially known, the hostilities were to commence in Asia, on two different points: against the fortress of Poti, at the Black Sea, and on the frontier of Georgia. The same paper informs us, that Gen. Baraguay d'Hilliers, the newly appointed French Ambassador at Constantinople, has set out accompanied by a staff composed of officers of the g nie and of the artillerie. Mr. Baraguay is known as a bad General and a good intriguer. I remind you of his exploits at the famous Club of the Rue de Poitiers. In 1842, when the Manchester School, under the banner of free trade, enticed the industrial proletariat into insurrectionary movements, and, in the time of peril , treacherously abandoned them, as Sir Robert Peel plainly told the Cobdens in the House of Commons at that epoch their watchword was: Cheap food and dear wages. The Corn Laws having been abrogated and free trade, as they do understand it, realized, their battle-cry has been changed into: Cheap wages and dear food. With the adoption of the Manchester commercial system by Government, the millocracy had imposed upon themselves a problem impossible to be resolved under their regime: the securing of an uninterrupted continuance of brisk trade and commercial prosperity. For the hour of adversity, they had cut off any position to fall back upon. There was no more deluding the masses with Parliamentary reform, as in 1831; the legislative influence, conquered by that movement for the middle classes, having been exclusively employed against the working classes; and the latter having, in the meantime, got up a political movement of their own Chartism. There is no more charging the aristocratic protectionists with all the anomalies of the industrial system and the deadly conflicts springing up from its very bowels, as free trade has worked for about eight years under wonderfully fortunate circumstances with a California and an Australia two worlds of gold, extemporized, as it were, by the imaginative powers of the modern demiurge. Thus, one by one, step by step, the industrial bourgeoisie have removed, with their own hands, all the carefully propagated delusions that could be conjured up at the hour of danger, in order to deturn the indignation of the working classes from their real antagonist, and to direct it against the antagonists of the millocracy, against the landed aristocracy. In 1853, there have waned away the false pretenses on the part of the masters and the silly illusions on the part of the men. The war between those two classes has become unmitigated, undisguised, openly avowed and plainly understood. "The question," exclaim the masters themselves in one of their recent manifestoes "is no longer one of wages but one of mastership." [Here and below Marx quotes from the article "As They've Made Their Bed Se They Must Lie", published in The People's Paper, No. 78, October 29, 1853. Ed.] The Manchester liberals, then, have at last thrown off the lion's skin. What they pretend at is mastership for capital and slavery for labor. Lock-out vs. Turn-out, is the great lawsuit now pending in the industrial districts, and bayonets are likely to give judgment in the case. A whole industrial army, more than 70,000 working-men are disbanded and cast upon the streets. To the mills closed at Preston and Wigan there have been added those of the district of Bacup which includes the townships of Bacup, Newchurch, Rawtenstall, Sharnford, and Stanford. At Burnley the mills stopped last Friday; at Padiham on Saturday; at Accrington the masters are contemplating a lock-out; at Bury, where about 1,000 men are already out of work, the masters have given notice to their hands of a "lock-out unless they discontinued their contributions to those out of work in their own town and at Preston;" and at Kindley, three large mills were closed on Saturday afternoon, and more than a thousand additional persons thrown out of employment. While the hypocritical, phrase-mongering, squint-eyed set of Manchester humbugs spoke peace to the Czar at Edinburgh, they acted war with their own countrymen at Manchester. While they preached arbitration between Russia and Europe, they were rejecting scornfully all appeals to arbitration from their own fellow-citizens. The workmen of Preston had carried in an open air meeting the resolution At a very early period of the Chinese revolution, I drew the attention of your readers to the disastrous influences it was likely to exercise on the social condition of Great Britain. We can then not be surprised at the commercial circulars continuing to record dullness and declining prices in the markets of the industrial districts. Thus we read in the circulars of Messrs. Fraser, Son & Co., dated Manchester, Oct. 21: From Oxfordshire it is reported as follows: The Economist, in order to allay the apprehensions of the city merchants, draws the following conclusions from the foregoing table: The Weekly Times, from its point of view, sums up the situation in the following terms:

Karl Marx in New York Daily Tribune

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/11/15.htm

I have repeatedly stated that the turn-outs of the men, by beginning at too late an epoch, when the opportunities afforded by unprecedented prosperity were already vanishing away, could not prove successful in an economical point of view, or as far as their immediate end was concerned. But they have done their work. They have revolutionized the industrial proletariat, and, stirred up by dear food and cheap labor, the political consequences will show themselves in due time. Already the idea of a Parliament of Labor which, in fact, means nothing but a general reassembling of the workingmen under the banners of Chartism, evokes the fears of the middle-class press.

Karl Marx in the New York Daily Tribune 1853

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/12/02.htm

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything, and the knight-errant cannot withstand falling in love anew with her whom he knows to have transmuted all her former adorers into asses and other beasts. The English public is another Ruggiero and Palmerston is another Alcine. Although a septuagenarian, and since 1807 occupying the public stage almost without interruption, he contrives to remain a novelty, and to evoke all the hopes that used to centre on an untried and promising youth. With one foot in the grave, he is supposed not yet to have begun his true career. If he were to die to-morrow, all England would be surprised to learn that he had been a Secretary of State half this century. If not a good statesman of all work, he is at least a good actor of all work. He succeeds in the comic as in the heroic in pathos as in familiarity in tragedy as in farce; although the latter may be more congenial to his feelings. He is not a first-class orator, but an accomplished debater. Possessed of a wonderful memory, of great experience, of consummate tact, of never-failing presence of mind, of gentlemanlike versatility, of the most minute knowledge of Parliamentary tricks, intrigues, parties, and men, he handles difficult cases in an admirable manner and with a pleasant volatility, sticking to the prejudices and susceptibilities of his public, secured from any surprise by his cynical impudence, from any self-confession by his selfish dexterity, from running into a passion by his profound frivolity, his perfect indifference, and his aristocratic contempt. Being an exceedingly happy joker, he ingratiates himself with everybody. Never losing his temper, he imposes on an impassioned antagonist. When unable to master a subject, he knows how to play with it. If wanting in general views, he is always ready to weave a web of elegant generalities. Endowed with a restless and indefatigable spirit, he abhors inactivity and pines for agitation, if not for action. A country like England allows him, of course, to busy himself in every corner of the earth. What he aims at is not the substance, but the mere appearance of success. If he can do nothing, he will devise anything. Where he dares not interfere, he intermeddles. When unable to vie with a strong enemy, he improvises a weak one. Being no man of deep designs, pondering on no combinations of long standing, pursuing no great object, he embarks on difficulties with a view to disentangle himself from them in a showy manner. He wants complications to feed his activity, and when he finds them not ready, he will create them. He exults in show conflicts, show battles, show enemies, diplomatical notes to be exchanged, ships to be ordered to sail, the whole ending in violent Parliamentary debates, which are sure to prepare him an ephemeral success, the constant and the only object of all his exertions. He manages international conflicts like an artist, driving matters to a certain point, retreating when they threaten to become serious, but having got, at all events, the dramatic excitement he wants. In his eyes, the movement of history itself is nothing but a pastime, expressly invented for the private satisfaction of the noble Viscount Palmerston of Palmerston. Yielding to foreign influence in fact, he opposes it in words. Having inherited from Canning England's mission to propagate Constitutionalism on the Continent, he is never in need of a theme to pique the national prejudices, to counteract revolution abroad, and, at the same time, to keep awake the suspicious jealousy of foreign powers. Having succeeded in this easy manner in becoming the bete noire of the continental courts, he could not fail to be set up as the truly English minister at home. Although a Tory by origin he has contrived to introduce into the management of foreign affairs all the shams and contradictions that form the essence of Whiggism. He knows how to conciliate a democratic phraseology with oligarchic views, how to cover the peace-mongering policy of the middle classes with the haughty language of England's aristocratic past how to appear as the aggressor where he connives, and as the defender where he betrays how to manage an apparent enemy, and how to exasperate a pretended ally how to find himself, at the opportune moment of the dispute, on the side of the stronger against the weak, and how to utter brave words in the act of running away. Accused by the one party of being in the pay of Russia, he is suspected by the other of Carbonarism. If, in 1848, he had to defend himself against the motion of impeachment for having acted as the minister of Nicholas, he had, in 1850, the satisfaction of being persecuted by a conspiracy of foreign ambassadors, which was successful in the House of Lords, but baffled in the House of Commons. If he betrayed foreign peoples, he did it with great politeness politeness being the small coin of the devil, which he gives in change for the life-blood of his dupes. If the oppressors were always sure of his active support, the oppressed never wanted a great ostentation of rhetorical generosity. Poles, Italians, Hungarians, Germans, found him in office whenever they were crushed, but their despots always suspected him of secret conspiracy with the victims he had allowed them to make. Till now, in all instances, it was a probable chance of success to have him for one's adversary, and a sure chance of ruin to have him for one's friend. But, if his art of diplomacy does not shine in the actual results of his foreign negotiations, it shines the more brilliantly in the construction he has induced the English people to put upon them, by accepting phrases for facts, phantasies for realities, and high-sounding pretexts for shabby motives. Henry John Temple, Viscount Palmerston, deriving his title from a peerage of Ireland, was nominated Lord of the Admiralty, in 1807, on the formation of the Duke of Portland's Administration. In 1809, he became Secretary for War, and continued to hold this office till May, 1828. In 1830, he went over, very skilfully too, to the Whigs, who made him their permanent Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Excepting the intervals of Tory administration, from November, 1834, to April, 1835, and from 1841 to 1846, he is responsible for the whole foreign policy England has pursued from the revolution of 1830 to December, 1851. Is it not a very curious thing to find, at first view, this Quixote of free institutions, and this Pindar of the glories of the constitutional system, a permanent and an eminent member of the Tory administrations of Mr. Percival, the Earl of Liverpool, Mr. Canning, Lord Goderich, and the Duke of Wellington, during the long epoch when the Anti-Jacobin war was carried on, the monster debt contracted, the corn laws promulgated, foreign mercenaries stationed on the English soil, the people to borrow an expression from his colleague, Lord Sidmouth "bled from time to time, the press gagged, meetings suppressed, the mass of the nation disarmed, individual liberty suspended together with regular jurisdiction, the whole country placed as it were under a state of siege in one word, during the most infamous and most reactionary epoch of English history? His debut in Parliamentary life is a characteristic one. On February 3, 1808, he rose to defend what? secrecy in diplomatic negotiations, and the most disgraceful act ever committed by one nation against another nation, viz., the bombardment of Copenhagen, and the capture of the Danish fleet, at the time when England professed to be in profound peace with Denmark. As to the former point, he stated that, in this particular case, his Majesty's ministers are pledged by whom? to secrecy but he went further: I also object generally to making public the working of diplomacy, because it is the tendency of disclosures in that department to shut up future sources of information. Vidocq [French Criminal, turned father of modern criminology and first private detective ] would have defended the identical cause in the identical terms. As to the act of piracy, while admitting that Denmark had evinced no hostility whatever towards Great Britain, he contended that they were right in bombarding its capital and stealing its fleet, because they had to prevent Danish neutrality from being, perhaps, converted into open hostility by the compulsion of France. This was the new law of nations, proclaimed by my Lord Palmerston. When again speechifying, we find this English minister par excellence engaged in the defence of foreign troops, called over from the Continent to England, with the express mission of maintaining forcibly the oligarchic rule, to establish which William had, in 1688, come over from Holland with his Dutch troops. Palmerston answered to the well-founded apprehensions for the liberties of the country, originating from the presence of the King's German Legion, in a very flippant manner. Why should we not have 16,000 of those foreigners at home, while you know that we employ a far larger proportion of foreigners abroad ? (House of Commons, March 10, 1812.) When similar apprehensions for the Constitution arose from the large standing army, maintained since 1815, he found a sufficient protection of the Constitution in the very Constitution of our army", a large proportion of its officers being men of property and connections." (House of Commons, March 8, 1816.) When a large standing army was attacked from a financial point of view, he made the curious discovery that much of our financial embarrassments has been caused by our former low peace establishment. (House of Commons, March 8, 1816.) When the burdens of the country and the misery of the people were contrasted with the lavish military expenditure, he reminded Parliament that those burdens and that misery were the price which we (viz., the English oligarchy) agreed to pay for our freedom and independence. (House of Commons, May 16, 1821.) In his eyes, military despotism was not to be apprehended except from the exertions of those self-called, but misled reformers, who demand that sort of reform in the country, which, according to every first principle of government, must end, if it were acceded to, in a military despotism." (House of Commons, June 14, 1820.) While large standing armies were thus his panacea for maintaining the Constitution of the country, flogging was his panacea for maintaining the Constitution of the army. He defended flogging in the debates on the Mutiny Bill, on the 5th of March, 1824; he declared it to be absolutely indispensable on March 11, 1825; he recommended it again on March 10, 1828; he stood by it in the debates of April, 1833, and he has proved a fan of flogging on every subsequent occasion. There existed no abuse in the army he did not find plausible reasons for, if it happened to foster the interests of aristocratic parasites. Thus, for instance, in the debates on the Sale of Commissions. (House of Commons, March 12, 1828.) Lord Palmerston likes to parade his constant exertions for the establishment of religious liberty. Now, he voted against Lord John Russell's motion for the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. Why? Because he was a warm and zealous friend to religious liberty, and could, therefore, not allow the dissenters to be relieved from imaginary grievances, while real afflictions pressed upon the Catholics." (House of Commons, February 26, 1828.) In proof of his zeal for religious liberty, he informs us of his regret to see the increasing numbers of the dissenters. It is my wish that the established church should be the predominant church in this country, and from pure love and zeal for religious liberty he wants the established church to be fed at the expense of the misbelievers. His jocose lordship accuses the rich dissenters of satisfying the ecclesiastical wants of the poorer ones, while, with the Church of England, it is the poor alone who feel the want of church accommodation. ... It would be preposterous to say that the poor ought to subscribe for churches out of their small earnings." (House of Commons, March 11, 1825.) It would be, of course, more preposterous yet to say, that the rich members of the established church ought to subscribe for the church out of their large earnings. Let us now look at his exertions for Catholic Emancipation, one of his great claims on the gratitude of the Irish people. I shall not dwell upon the circumstances, that, having declared himself for Catholic Emancipation when a member of the Canning Ministry, he entered, nevertheless, the Wellington Ministry, avowedly hostile to that emancipation. Did Lord Palmerston consider religious liberty as one of the rights of man, not to be intermeddled with by legislature? He may answer for himself: There you have the most cynical confession ever made, that the mass of the people have no rights at all, but that they may be allowed that amount of immunities the legislature or, in other words, the ruling class may deem fit to grant them. Accordingly Lord Palmerston declared, in plain words, Catholic Emancipation to be a measure of grace and favour. (House of Commons, February 10, 1829.) It was then entirely upon the ground of expediency that he condescended to discontinue the Catholic disabilities. And what was lurking behind this expediency? Being himself one of the great Irish landed proprietors, he wanted to entertain the delusion that other remedies for Irish evils than Catholic Emancipation are impossible", that it would cure absenteeism, and prove a cheap substitute for Poor-laws. (House of Commons, March 19, 1829.) The great philanthropist, who afterwards cleared his Irish estates of their Irish natives, could not allow Irish misery to darken, even for a moment, with its inauspicious clouds, the bright sky of the landlords and moneylords. As to the extortions of Irish landlords, he deals with them in as pleasant a way as with the comforts of the Irish peasantry. Are we then to be surprised that this man, so deeply initiated into the mysteries of the glories of the English Constitution, and the comforts of her free institutions, should aspire to spread them all over the Continent?

The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/palmerston/ch01.htm

When the Reform Movement had grown irresistible, Lord Palmerston deserted the Tories, and slipped into the Whiggery camp. Although he had apprehended the danger of military despotism springing up, not from the presence of the King's German Legion on English soil, nor from keeping large standing armies, but only from the self-called reformers , he patronised, nevertheless, already in 1828, the extension of the franchise to such large industrial places as Birmingham, Leeds, and Manchester. But why? Not because I am a friend to Reform, but because I am its decided enemy. He had persuaded himself that some timely concessions made to the overgrown manufacturing interest might be the surest means of escaping the introduction of general Reform. (House of Commons, June 17, 1828.) Once allied with the Whigs, he did not even pretend that their Reform Bill aimed at breaking through the narrow trammels of the Venetian Constitution, but, on the contrary, at the increase of its strength and solidity, by severing the middle classes from the people's Opposition. The feelings of the middle classes will be changed, and their dissatisfaction will be converted into that attachment to the Constitution which will give to it a vast increase of strength and solidity. He consoled the peers by telling them that the Reform Bill would neither weaken the influence of the House of Lords , nor put a stop to its interfering in elections. He told the aristocracy that the Constitution was not to lose its feudal character, the landed interest being the great foundation upon which rests the fabric of society and the institutions of the country. He allayed their fears by throwing out ironical hints that we have been charged with not being in earnest or sincere in our desire to give the people a real representation, that it was said we only proposed to give a different kind of influence to the aristocracy and the landed interest. He went even so far as to own that, besides the inevitable concessions to be made to the middle classes, disfranchisement, viz., the disfranchisement of the old Tory rotten boroughs for the benefit of new Whig boroughs, was the chief and leading principle of the Reform Bill. (House of Commons, March 24, 1831, and March 14, 1832.) It is now time to return to the performances of the noble lord in the foreign branch of policy. In 1823, when, in consequence of the resolutions of the Congress of Vienna, a French army was marched into Spain, in order to overturn the Constitution of that country, and to deliver it up to the merciless revenge of the Bourbon idiot and his suite of bigot monks, Lord Palmerston disclaimed any Quixotic crusades for abstract principles, any intervention in favour of the people, whose heroic resistance had saved England from the sway of Napoleon. The words he addressed on that occasion to his Whig adversaries are a true and lively picture of his own foreign policy, after he had become their permanent Minister for Foreign Affairs. He said: At last we arrive at the Greco-Turkish debates, which afforded Lord Palmerston the first opportunity of displaying publicly his unrivalled talents, as the unflinching and persevering advocate of Russian interests, in the Cabinet and in the House of Commons. One by one, he re-echoed all the watch-words given by Russia of Turkish monstrosities, Greek civilisation, religious liberty, Christianity, and so forth. At first we meet him repudiating, as the Minister for War, any intention of passing a censure upon the meritorious conduct of Admiral Codrington, which has caused the destruction of the Turkish fleet at Navarino, although he admits that this battle took place against a power with which we are not at war, and that it was an untoward event. (House of Commons, January 31, 1828.) Then, having retired from office, he opened the long series of his attacks upon Lord Aberdeen, by reproaching him with having been too slow in executing the orders of Russia. Prince Metternich was, as is generally known, at that time opposing the encroachments of Russia, and accordingly her diplomatic agents I remind you of the despatches of Pozzo di Borgo and Prince Lieven had been advised to represent Austria as the great enemy of Grecian emancipation and of European civilisation, the furtherance of which was the exclusive object of Russian diplomacy. The noble lord follows, of course, in the beaten track. By the narrowness of her views, the unfortunate prejudices of her policy, Austria has almost reduced herself to the level of a second-rate power ; and in consequence of the temporising policy of Aberdeen, England is represented as the keystone of that arch of which Miguel and Spain, Austria and Mahmoud are the component parts. ... People see in the delay in executing the treaty of July not so much fear of Turkish resistance, as invincible repugnance to Grecian freedom. (House of Commons, June 11, 1829.) For half a century one phrase has stood between Russia and Constantinople the phrase of the integrity of the Turkish Empire being necessary to the balance of power. I object, exclaims Palmerston on February 5, 1830, to the policy of making the integrity of the Turkish dominion in Europe an object essentially necessary to the interests of Christian and civilised Europe. Again he assails Aberdeen because of his anti-Russian diplomacy : Arrived at this point, I must recall to memory some few historical facts, in order to leave no doubt about the meaning of the noble lord's philo-Hellenic feelings. Russia having seized upon Gokcha, a strip of land bordering on the Lake of Sevan (the undisputed possession of Persia), demanded as the price of its evacuation the abandonment of Persia's claims to another portion of her own territory, the lands of Kapan. Persia not yielding, was overrun, vanquished, and forced to subscribe to the treaty of Turcomanchai, in February, 1828. According to this treaty, Persia had to pay an indemnity of two millions sterling to Russia, to cede the provinces of Erivan and Nakhitchevan, including the fortresses of Erivan and Abbassabad, the exclusive purpose of this arrangement being, as Nicholas stated, to define the common frontier by the Araxes, the only means, he pretended, of preventing any future disputes between the two empires. But at the same time he refused to give back Talish and Mogan, which are situated on the Persian bank of the Araxes. Finally, Persia pledged herself to maintain no navy on the Caspian Sea. Such were the origin and the results of the Russo-Persian war. As to the religion and the liberty of Greece, Russia cared at that epoch as much about them as the God of the Russians cares now about the keys of the Holy Sepulchre, and the famous Cupola. It was the traditional policy of Russia to excite the Greeks to revolt, and, then, to abandon them to the revenge of the Sultan. So deep was her sympathy for the regeneration of Hellas, that she treated them as rebels at the Congress of Verona, acknowledging the right of the Sultan to exclude all foreign intervention between himself and his Christian subjects. In fact, the Czar offered to aid the Porte in suppressing the rebellion ; a proposition which was, of course, rejected. Having failed in that attempt, he turned round upon the Great Powers with the opposite proposition, To march an army into Turkey, for the purpose of dictating peace under the walls of the Seraglio. In order to hold his hands bound by a sort of common action, the other Great Powers concluded a treaty with him at London, July 6, 1827, by which they mutually engaged to enforce, if need be by arms, the adjustment of the differences between the Sultan and the Greeks. A few months after she had signed that treaty, Russia concluded another treaty with Turkey, the treaty of Akerman, by which she bound herself to renounce all interference with Grecian affairs. This treaty was brought about after Russia had induced the Crown Prince of Persia to invade the Ottoman dominions, and after she had inflicted the injuries on the Porte in order to drive it to a rupture. After all this had taken place, the resolutions of the London treaty of July 6, 1827, were presented to the Porte by the English Ambassador, or in the name of Russia and the other powers. By virtue of the complications resulting from these frauds and lies Russia found at last the pretext for beginning the war of 1828 and 1829. That war terminated with the treaty of Adrianople, whose contents are summed up in the following quotations from O Neill s [Sir John O Neill, British diplomat] celebrated pamphlet on the Progress of Russia in the East : These are the facts. Now look at the picture drawn of them by the master hand of Lord Palmerston: When he became the Whig-incarnation of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, he improved upon this statement: My readers will now understand Sir Robert Peel's telling the noble lord, in a public session of the House, that he did not know whose representative he was.

The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/palmerston/ch02.htm

At a recent meeting in London to protest against the action of the British Embassy in the present controversy between Russia and Turkey, a gentleman who presumed to find special fault with Lord Palmerston was saluted and silenced by a storm of indignant hisses. The meeting evidently thought that if Russia had a friend in the ministry, it was not the noble viscount, and would no doubt have rent the air with cheers had some one been able to announce that his lordship had become prime minister. This astonishing confidence in a man so false and hollow is another proof of the ease with which people are imposed on by brilliant abilities, and a new evidence of the necessity of taking off the mask from this wily enemy to the progress of human freedom. Accordingly, with the history of the last 25 years and the debates of Parliament for guides, we proceed with the task of exposing the real part which this accomplished actor has performed in the drama of modern Europe. The noble viscount is generally known as the chivalrous protector of the Poles, and never fails to give vent to his painful feelings with regard to Poland, before the deputations which are once every year presented to him by dear, dull, deadly Dudley Stuart, a worthy who makes speeches, passes resolutions, votes addresses, goes up with deputations, has at all times the necessary quantity of confidence in the necessary individual, and can also, if necessary, give three cheers for the Queen. The Poles had been in arms for about a month, when Lord Palmerston came into office in November, 1830. As early as August 8, 1831, Mr. Hunt presented to the House a petition from the Westminster Union in favour of the Poles, and for the dismissal of Lord Palmerston from his Majesty's Councils. Mr. Hume stated on the same day he concluded from the silence of the noble lord that the Government intended to do nothing for the Poles, but allow them to remain at the mercy of Russia. To this Lord Palmerston replied, that whatever obligations existing treaties imposed, would at all times receive the attention of the Government. Now, what sort of obligations were, in his opinion, imposed on England by existing treaties? The claims of Russia, he tells us himself, to the possession of Poland bear the date of the treaty of Vienna (House of Commons, July 9 1833), and that treaty makes this possession dependent upon the observance of the Polish Constitution by the Czar. But from a subsequent speech we learn that the mere fact of this country being a party to the treaty of Vienna, was not synonymous with England s guaranteeing that there would be no infraction of that treaty by Russia. (House of Commons, March 26, 1834) That is to say, you may guarantee a treaty without guaranteeing that it should be observed. This is the principle on which the Milanese said to the Emperor Barbarossa: "You have had our oath, but remember we did not swear to keep it." In one respect the treaty of Vienna was good enough. It gave to the British Government, as one of the contracting parties, He had quietly anticipated the downfall of Poland, and had availed himself of this opportunity to entertain and express an opinion on certain articles of the treaty of Vienna, persuaded as he was that the magnanimous Czar was merely waiting till he had crushed the Polish people by armed force to do homage to a Constitution he had trampled upon when they were yet possessed of unbounded means of resistance. At the same time the noble lord charged the Poles with having taken the uncalled for, and in his opinion, unjustifiable, step of the dethronement of the Emperor. (House of Commons, July 9, 1832) "He could also say that the Poles were the aggressors, for they commenced the contest." (House of Commons, August 7, 1832.) When the apprehensions that Poland would be extinguished became universal and troublesome, he declared that to exterminate Poland, either morally or politically, is so perfectly impracticable that I think there need be no apprehension of its being attempted. (House of Commons, June 28, 1832.) When reminded afterwards of the vague expectations thus held out, he averred that he had been misunderstood, that he had said so not in the political but the Pickwickian [i.e., naively idealistic, after the Dickens character] sense of the word, meaning that the Emperor of Russia was unable to exterminate nominally or physically so many millions of men as the Polish kingdom in its divided state contained, (House of Commons, April 20, 1836.) When the House threatened to interfere during the struggle of the Poles, he appealed to his ministerial responsibility. When the thing was done, he coolly told them that no vote of this House would have the slightest effect in reversing the decision of Russia. (House of Commons, July 9, 1833) When the atrocities committed by the Russians, after the fall of Warsaw, were denounced, he recommended to the House great tenderness towards the Emperor of Russia, declaring that no person could regret more than he did the expressions which had been uttered (House of Commons, June 28, 1832 that the present Emperor of Russia was a man of high and generous feelings that where cases of undue severity on the part of the Russian Government to the Poles have occurred, we may set this down as a proof that the power of the Emperor of Russia is practically limited, and we may take it for granted that the Emperor has, in those instances, yielded to the influence of others, rather than followed the dictates of his spontaneous feelings. (House of Commons, July 9, 1833) When the doom of Poland was sealed on the one hand, and on the other the dissolution of the Turkish Empire became imminent, from the rebellion of Mehemet Ali, he assured the House that affairs in general were proceeding in a satisfactory train. (House of Commons, January 26, 1832.) A motion for granting subsidies to the Polish refugees having been made, it was exceedingly painful to him to oppose the grant of any money to those individuals, which the natural and spontaneous feelings of every generous man would lead him to acquiesce in; but it was not consistent with his duty to propose any grant of money to those unfortunate persons. (House of Commons, March 25, 1834) This same tender-hearted man had secretly defrayed, as we shall see by and by, the cost of Poland's fall, to a great extent, out of the pockets of the British people. The noble lord took good care to withhold all State papers about the Polish catastrophe from Parliament. But statements made in the House of Commons which he never so much as attempted to controvert, leave no doubt as to the game he played at that fatal epoch. After the Polish revolution had broken out, the Consul of Austria did not quit Warsaw, and the Austrian Government went so far as to send a Polish agent, M. Walewski, to Paris, with the mission of negotiating with the Governments of France and England about the re-establishment of a Polish kingdom. The Court of the Tuileries declared it was ready to join England in case of her consenting to the project. Lord Palmerston rejected the offer. In 1831, M. de Talleyrand, the Ambassador of France at the Court of St. James, proposed a plan of combined action on the part of France and England, but met with a distinct refusal and with a note from the noble lord, stating that an amicable intermediation on the Polish question would be declined by Russia; that the Powers had just declined a similar offer on the part of France; that the intervention of the two Courts of France and England could only be by force in case of a refusal on the part of Russia; and the amicable and satisfactory relations between the Cabinet of St. James and the Cabinet of St. Petersburg, would not allow his British Majesty to undertake such an interference. The time was NOT YET come to undertake such a plan with success against the will of a sovereign whose rights were indisputable. This was not all. On February 23, 1848, Mr. Anstey made the following declaration in the House of Commons: To Colonel Evans, asking for the production of papers with regard to Prussia's violation of her pretended neutrality in the Russo-Polish war, Lord Palmerston replied, that the ministers of this country could not have witnessed that contest without the deepest regret, and it would be most satisfactory for them to see it terminated. (House of Commons, August 16, 1831.) Certainly he wished to see it terminated as soon as possible, and Prussia shared in his feelings. On a subsequent occasion, Mr. H. Gally Knight thus summed up the whole proceedings of the noble lord with regard to the Polish revolution: The so-called kingdom of Poland having disappeared from the map of Europe, there remained still, in the free town of Cracow, a fantastic remnant of Polish nationality. The Czar Alexander, during the general anarchy resulting from the fall of the French Empire, had not conquered the Duchy of Warsaw but simply seized it, and wished, of course, to keep it, together with Cracow, which had been incorporated with the Duchy by Bonaparte. Austria, once possessed of Cracow, wished to have it back. The Czar being unable to obtain it himself, and unwilling to cede it to Austria, proposed to constitute it a free town. Accordingly the Treaty of Vienna stipulated in Article VI, the town of Cracow with its territory is to be for ever a free, independent and strictly neutral city, under the protection of Austria, Russia, and Prussia ; and in Article IX, the courts of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, engage to respect, and to cause to be always respected, the neutrality of the free town of Cracow and its territory. No armed force shall be introduced on any pretence whatever. Immediately after the close of the Polish insurrection of 1830-31, the Russian troops suddenly entered Cracow, the occupation of which lasted two months. This, however, was considered as a transitory necessity of war, and in the turmoil of that time was soon forgotten. In 1836, Cracow was again occupied by the troops of Austria, Russia, and Prussia, on the pretext of forcing the authorities of Cracow to deliver up the individuals concerned in the Polish revolution five years before. On this occasion the noble lord refrained from all remonstrance, on the ground, as he stated in 1836 and 1840, that it was difficult to give effect to our remonstrances. As soon, however, as Cracow was definitely confiscated by Austria, a simple remonstrance appeared to him to be the only effectual means. When the three northern Powers occupied Cracow in 1836, its Constitution was abrogated, the three consular residences assumed the highest authority the police was entrusted to Austrian spies the senate overthrown the tribunals suspended the university put down by prohibiting the students of the neighbouring provinces from frequenting it and the commerce of the free city, with the surrounding countries, destroyed. In March, 1836, when interpellated on the occupation of Cracow, Lord Palmerston declared that occupation to be of a merely transitory character. Of so palliative and apologetic a kind was the construction he put on the doings of his three northern allies, that he felt himself obliged suddenly to stop and interrupt the even tenor of his speech by the solemn declaration, I stand not up here to defend the measure, which on the contrary, I MUST censure and condemn. I have merely stated those circumstances which, though they do not excuse the forcible occupation of Cracow, might yet afford a justification, etc.... He admitted that the Treaty of Vienna bound the three Powers to abstain from any step without the previous consent of England, but they may be justly said to have paid an involuntary homage to the justice and plain dealing of this country, by supposing that we would never give our assent to such a proceeding . Mr. Patrick Stewart having, however, found out that there existed better means for the preservation of Cracow than the abstention from remonstrance, moved on April 20, 1836, that the Government should be ordered to send a representative to the free town of Cracow as consul, there being three consuls there from the three other powers, Austria, Russia, and Prussia . The joint arrival of an English and French consul at Cracow would prove an event and must, in any case, have prevented the noble lord from afterwards declaring himself unaware of the intrigues pursued at Cracow by the Austrians, Russians, and Prussians. The noble viscount seeing that the majority of the House was favourable to the motion, induced Mr. Stewart to withdraw it, by solemnly promising that the Government intended to send a consular agent to Cracow . On March 22, 1837, being interpellated by Lord Dudley Stuart with regard to his promise, the noble lord answered that he had altered his intention, and had not sent a consular agent to Cracow, and it was not at present his intention to do so. Lord D. Stuart having given notice that he should move for papers to elucidate this singular transaction, the noble viscount succeeded in defeating the motion by the simple process of being absent, and causing the House to be counted out. He never stated why or wherefore he had not fulfilled his pledge, and withstood all attempts to squeeze out of him any papers on the subject. In 1840, the temporary occupation still continued, and the people of Cracow addressed a memorandum to the Governments of France and England, which says, amongst other things: Being interrogated on July 13, 1840, about this petition from Cracow, Palmerston declared that between Austria and the British Government the question of the evacuation of Cracow remained only a question of time . As to the violation of the Treaty of Vienna there were no means of enforcing the opinions of England, supposing that this country was disposed to do so by arms, because Cracow was evidently a place where no English action could possibly take place. Be it remarked, that two days after this declaration, July 15, 1840, the noble lord concluded a treaty with Russia, Austria, and Prussia, for closing the Black Sea to the English navy, probably in order that no English action could take place in those quarters. It was at the very same time that the noble lord renewed the Holy Alliance with those Powers against France. As to the commercial loss sustained by England, consequent upon the occupation of Cracow, the noble lord demonstrated that the amount of general exports to Germany had not fallen off , which, as Sir Robert Peel justly remarked, had nothing to do with Cracow, considerable quantities of English merchandise being sent thither by the Black Sea, Moldavia, and Galicia and closely pressed to state his real intentions on the subject and as to the consular agent to be sent to Cracow, he thought that his experience of the manner in which his unfortunate assertion [made by the noble lord in 1836, in order to escape from the censure of a hostile House] of an intention to appoint a British consul at Cracow, had been taken up by honourable gentlemen opposite, justified him in positively refusing to give any answer to such a question, which might expose him to similar unjustifiable attacks. On August 16, 1846, he stated that whether the treaty of Vienna is or is not executed and fulfilled by the great Powers of Europe, depends not upon the presence of a consular agent at Cracow. On January, 28, 1847, Cracow was doomed, and when the noble lord was again asked for the production of papers relative to the non-appointment of a British consul at Cracow, he declared that the subject had no necessary connection with the discussion on the incorporation of Cracow, and he saw no advantage in reviving an angry discussion on a subject which had only a passing interest. He proved true to his opinion on the production of State papers, as expressed on March 7, 1837: If the papers are upon the questions now under consideration, their production would be dangerous; if they refer to questions that are gone by, they can obviously be of no use. The British Government was, however, very exactly informed of the importance of Cracow, not only from a political but also from a commercial point of view, their consul at Warsaw, Colonel Du Flat, having reported to them that Lord Palmerston himself was obliged to confess to the House that the Cracow insurrection of 1846 had been intentionally provoked by the three Powers. I believe the original entrance of the Austrian troops into the territory of Cracow was in consequence of an application from the Government. But, then, those Austrian troops retired. Why they retired has never yet been explained. With them retired the Government and the authorities of Cracow; the immediate, at least the early, consequence of that retirement, was the establishment of a Provisional Government at Cracow. (House of Commons, August 17, 1846.) On the 22nd of February, 1846, the forces of Austria, and afterwards those of Russia and Prussia, took possession of Cracow. On the 26th of the same month, the Prefect of Tarnow issued his proclamation calling upon the peasants to murder their landlords, promising them a sufficient recompense in money, which proclamation was followed by the Galician atrocities, and the massacre of about 2,000 landed proprietors. On the 12th appeared the Austrian proclamation to the faithful Galicians who have aroused themselves for the maintenance of order and law, and destroyed the enemies of order. In the official Gazette of April 28th, Prince Frederick of Schwarzenberg stated officially that the acts that had taken place had been authorised by the Austrian Government, which, of course, acted on a common plan with Russia and with Prussia, the lackey of the Czar. Now, after all these abominations had passed, Lord Palmerston thought fit to declare in the House: For the noble lord the only business then in hand was to get rid of Parliament, whose session was drawing to a close. He assured the Commons that on the part of the British Government everything shall be done to ensure a due respect being paid to the provisions of the treaty of Vienna. Mr. Hume giving vent to his doubts about Lord Palmerston s intention to cause the Austro-Russian troops to retire from Cracow, the noble lord begged of the House not to give credence to the statements made by Mr. Hume, as he was in possession of better information, and was convinced that the occupation of Cracow was only a TEMPORARY one. The Parliament of 1846 having been got rid of, in the same manner as that of 1843, out came the Austrian proclamation of November 11, 1846, incorporating Cracow with the Austrian dominions. When Parliament re-assembled on January 19, 1847, it was informed by the Queen's speech that Cracow was gone, but that there remained in its place a protest on the part of the brave Lord Palmerston. In order to deprive this protest of even the appearance of a meaning the noble lord contrived, at that very epoch, to engage England in a quarrel with France on the occasion of the Spanish marriages, very nearly setting the two countries by the ears; a performance which was sharply overhauled by Mr. Smith O Brien in the House of Commons, on April 18, 1847. The French Government having applied to Palmerston for his co-operation in a joint protest against the incorporation of Cracow, Lord Normanby, under instructions from the noble viscount, answered that the outrage of which Austria had been guilty in annexing Cracow was not greater than that of France in effecting a marriage between the Duke of Montpensier and the Spanish Infanta the one being a violation of the Treaty of Vienna, and the other of the Treaty of Utrecht. Now, the Treaty of Utrecht, renewed in 1782, was definitely abrogated by the Anti-Jacobin war; and had, therefore, ever since 1792, ceased to be operative. There was no man in the House better informed of this circumstance than the noble lord, as he had himself stated to the House on the occasion of the debates on the blockades of Mexico and Buenos Ayres, that We have not yet done with the exertions of the noble lord in resisting the encroachments of Russia upon Poland. There once existed a curious convention between England, Holland, and Russia the so-called Russian Dutch loan. During the Anti-Jacobin war the Czar, Alexander, contracted a loan with Messrs. Hope & Co., at Amsterdam; and after the fall of Bonaparte, the King of the Netherlands, desirous to make a suitable return to the Allied Powers for having delivered his territory, and for having annexed to it Belgium, to which he had no claim whatever, engaged himself the other Powers waiving their common claims in favour of Russia, then in great need of money to execute a convention with Russia agreeing to pay her by successive instalments the twenty-five million florins she owed to Messrs. Hope & Co. England, in order to cover the robbery she had committed on Holland, of her colonies at the Cape of Good Hope, Demerara, Essequibo, and Berbice, became a party to this convention, and bound herself to pay a certain proportion of the subsidies granted to Russia. This stipulation became part of the Treaty of Vienna, but upon the express condition that the payment should cease if the union between Holland and Belgium were broken prior to the liquidation of the debt. When Belgium separated herself from Holland by a revolution, the latter, of course, refused to pay her portion to Russia on the ground that the loan had been contracted to continue her in the undivided possession of the Belgian provinces, and that she no longer had the sovereignty of that country. On the other hand, there remained, as Mr. Herries stated in Parliament, not the smallest iota of a claim on the part of Russia for the continuance of debt by England. (House of Commons, January 26, 1832.) Lord Palmerston, however, found it quite natural that at one time Russia is paid for supporting the union of Belgium with Holland, and that at another time she is paid for supporting the separation of these countries. (House of Commons, July 16, 1832.) He appealed in a very tragic manner for the faithful observance of treaties and above all, of the Treaty of Vienna; and he contrived to carry a new convention with Russia, dated November 16, 1831, the preamble of which expressly stated that it was contracted in consideration of the general arrangements of the Congress of Vienna which remain in full force. When the convention relating to the Russian Dutch loan had been inserted in the Treaty of Vienna, the Duke of Wellington exclaimed: This is a master-stroke of diplomacy on the part of Lord Castlereagh; for Russia has been tied down to the observance of the Vienna treaty by a pecuniary obligation. When Russia, therefore, withdrew her observance of the Vienna treaty by the Cracow confiscation, Mr. Hume moved to stop any further annual payment to Russia from the British treasury. The noble viscount, however, thought that although Russia had a right to violate the treaty of Vienna, with regard to Poland, England must remain bound by that very treaty with regard to Russia. But this is not the most extraordinary incident in the noble lord's proceedings. After the Belgian revolution had broken out, and before Parliament had sanctioned the new loan to Russia, the noble lord defrayed the costs of the Russian war against Poland, under the false pretext of paying off the old debt contracted by England in 1815, although we can state, on the authority of the greatest English lawyer, Sir E. Sugden, now Lord St. Leonards, that there was not a single debatable point in that question and the Government had no power whatever to pay a shilling of the money (House of Commons, June 26, 1832); and, on the authority of Sir Robert Peel, that Lord Palmerston was not warranted by law in advancing the money. (House of Commons, July 12, 1832.) Now we understand why the noble lord reiterates on every occasion that nothing can be more painful to a man of proper feeling, than discussions upon the subject of Poland. We can also appreciate the degree of earnestness he is now likely to exhibit in resisting the encroachments of the Power he has so uniformly served.

The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/palmerston/ch03.htm

The great and eternal themes of the noble viscount s self-glorification are the services he has rendered to the cause of constitutional liberty all over the Continent. The world owes him, indeed, the inventions of the constitutional kingdoms of Portugal, Spain, and Greece, three political phantoms, only to be compared with the homunculus of Wagner in "Faust". Portugal, under the yoke of that huge hill of flesh, Donna Maria da Gloria, backed by a Coburg, must be looked upon as one of the substantive Powers of Europe. (House of Commons, March 10, 1835) At the very time the noble viscount uttered these words, six British ships of the line anchored at Lisbon, in order to defend the substantive daughter of Don Pedro from the Portuguese people, and to help her to destroy the constitution she had sworn to defend. Spain, at the disposition of another Maria, who, although a notorious sinner, has never become a Magdalen, holds out to us a fair, a flourishing, and even a formidable power among the European kingdoms. (Lord Palmerston, House of Commons, March 10, 1837) Formidable, indeed, to the holders of Spanish Bonds. The noble lord has even his reasons ready for having delivered the native country of Pericles and Sophocles to the nominal sway of an idiot Bavarian boy. King Otho belongs to a country where there exists a free constitution." (House of Commons, August 8, 1832.) A free constitution in Bavaria, the German Bastia! This passes the licentia poetica of rhetorical flourish, the legitimate hopes held out by Spain, and the substantive power of Portugal. As to Belgium, all Lord Palmerston did for her was burdening her with a part of the Dutch debt, reducing it by the Province of Luxemburg, and saddling her with a Coburg dynasty. As to the entente cordiale with France, waning from the moment he pretended to give it the finishing touch by the Quadruple alliance of 1834, we have already seen how well the noble lord understood how to manage it in the instance of Poland, and we shall hear, by and by, what became of it in his hands. One of those facts, hardly adverted to by contemporaries, but broadly marking the boundaries of historical epochs, was the military occupation of Constantinopie by the Russians, in 1833. The eternal dream of Russia was at last realized. The barbarian from the icy banks of the Neva held in his grasp luxurious Byzantium, and the sunlit shores of the Bosphorus. The self-styled heir to the Greek Emperors occupied however temporarily the Rome of the East. In consequence of the unfortunate war of 1828-29 and the Treaty of Adrianople, the Porte had lost its prestige in the eyes of its own subjects. As usual with Oriental empires, when the paramount power is weakened, successful revolts of Pashas broke out. As early as October, 1831, commenced the conflict between the Sultan and Mehemet Ali, the Pasha of Egypt, who had supported the Porte during the Greek insurrection. In the spring of 1832, Ibrahim Pasha, his son, marched his army into Syria, conquered that province by the battle of Homs, crossed the Taurus, annihilated the Turkish army at the battle of Konieh, and moved on the way to Stamboul. The Sultan was forced to apply to St. Petersburg on February 2, 1833. On February 17, the French Admiral Roussin arrived at Constantinople, remonstrated with the Porte two days afterwards, and engaged for the retreat of the Pasha on certain terms, including the refusal of Russian assistance; but, unassisted, he was, of course, unable to cope with Russia. You have asked for me, and you shall have me. On February 20, a Russian squadron suddenly sailed from Sebastopol, disembarked a large force of Russian troops on the shores of the Bosphorus, and laid siege to the capital. So eager was Russia for the protection of Turkey, that a Russian officer was simultaneously despatched to the Pashas of Erzerum and Trebizond, to inform them that, in the event of Ibrahim's army marching towards Erzerum, both that place and Trebizond should be immediately protected by a Russian army. At the end of May, 1833, Count Orloff arrived from St. Petersburg, and intimated to the Sultan that he had brought with him a little bit of paper, which the Sultan was to subscribe to, without the concurrence of any minister, and without the knowledge of any diplomatic agent at the Porte. In this manner the famous treaty of Unkiar Skelessi was brought about; it was concluded for eight years to come. By virtue of it the Porte entered into an alliance, offensive and defensive, with Russia; resigned the right of entering into any new treaties with other powers, except with the concurrence of Russia, and confirmed the former Russo-Turkish treaties, especially that of Adrianople. By a secret article, appended to the treaty, the Porte obliged itself in favour of the Imperial Court of Russia to close the Straits of the Dardanelles viz., not to allow any foreign man-of-war to enter it under any pretext whatever. To whom was the Czar indebted for occupying Constantinople by his troops and for transferring, by virtue of the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, the supreme seat of the Ottoman empire from Constantinople to St. Petersburg? To nobody else but to the Right Honourable Henry John Viscount Palmerston, Baron Temple, a Peer of Ireland, a Member of His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, Knight of the Grand Cross of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, a Member of Parliament, and His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. The treaty of Unkiar Skelessi was concluded on July 8, 1833 On July 11, 1833, Mr H. L. Bulwer moved for the production of papers with respect to the Turco-Syrian affairs. The noble lord opposed the motion Accused by Mr. Bulwer of not having interfered for the defence of the Sultan against Mehemet Ali, and thus prevented the advance of the Russian army, he began that curious system of defence and of confession, developed on later occasions, the membra disjecta of which I shall now gather together. No, not in August. The request of the Porte for naval assistance had been in the month of October, 1832. (House of Commons, August 28, 1833) No, it was not in October. Its assistance was asked by the Porte in November, 1832. (House of Commons, March 17, 1834) The noble lord is as uncertain of the day when the Porte implored his aid, as Falstaff was of the number of rogues in buckram suits, who came at his back in Kendal green. He is not prepared, however, to deny that the armed assistance offered by Russia was rejected by the Porte, and that he, Lord Palmerston, was applied to. He refused to comply with its demands. The Porte again applied to the noble lord. First it sent M. Maurageni to London; then sent Namic Pasha, who entreated the assistance of a naval squadron on condition of the Sultan undertaking to defray all the expenses of that squadron, and promising in requital for such succour the grant of new commercial privileges and advantages to British subjects in Turkey. So sure was Russia of the noble lord's refusal, that she joined the Turkish envoy in praying his lordship to afford the succour demanded. He tells us himself: The noble lord remained, however, inexorable to the demand of the Porte, although backed by disinterested Russia herself. Then, of course, the Porte knew what it was expected to do. It understood that it was doomed to make the wolf shepherd. Still it hesitated, and did not accept Russian assistance till three months later. At whatever epoch the Porte may have implored the aid of Lord Palmerston, he cannot but own that Why then did he not think fit to interfere and to keep the Russians out? First he pleads want of time. According to his own statement the conflict between the Porte and Mehemet Ali arose as early as October, 1831, while the decisive battle of Konieh was not fought till December 21, 1832. Could be find no time during all this period? A great battle was won by Ibrahim Pasha, in July, 1832, and again he could find no time from July to December. But he was all that time waiting for a formal application on the part of the Porte which, according to his last version, was not made till the 3rd of November. Was he then, asks Sir Robert Peel, so ignorant of what was passing in the Levant, that he must wait for a formal application? (House of Commons, March 17, 1834.) And from November, when the formal application was made, to the latter part of February, there elapsed again four long months, and Russia did not arrive until February 20, 1833. Why did not he? But he has better reasons in reserve. The Pasha of Egypt was but a rebellious subject, and the Sultan was the Suzerain. Etiquette prevented the noble lord from stopping Ibrahim s armies. Etiquette forbade his giving instructions to his consul at Alexandria to use his influence with Mehemet Ali. Like the Spanish grandee, the noble lord would rather let the Queen burn to ashes than infringe on etiquette, and interfere with her petticoats. As it happens the noble lord had already, in 1832, accredited consuls and diplomatic agents to the subject of the Sultan without the consent of the Sultan; he had entered into treaties with Mehemet, altering existing regulations and arrangements touching matters of trade and revenue, and establishing other ones in their stead; and he did so without having the consent of the Porte beforehand, or caring for its approbation afterwards (House of Commons, February 23, 1848.) Accordingly, we are told by Earl Grey, the then chief of the noble viscount, that they had at the moment extensive commercial relations with Mehemet Ali which it would not have been their interest to disturb. (House of Commons, February 4, 1834) What, commercial relations with the rebellious subject ? But the noble viscount's fleets were occupied in the Douro, and the Tagus, and blockading the Scheldt, and doing the services of midwife at the birth of the constitutional empires of Portugal, Spain, and Belgium, and he was, therefore, not in a position to spare one single ship (House of Commons, July 11, 1833, and March 17, 1834) But what the Sultan insisted on was precisely naval assistance. For argument's sake, we will grant the noble lord to have been unable to dispose of one single vessel. But there are great authorities assuring us that what was wanted was not a single vessel, but only a single word on the part of the noble lord. There is Lord Mahon, who had just been employed at the Foreign Office under Sir Robert Peel, when he made this statement. There is Admiral Codrington, the destroyer of the Turkish fleet at Navarino. There is the Duke of Wellington. But there are still better authorities. There is the noble lord himself. There is Lord Derby, then Mr. Stanley and a member of the Palmerston Cabinet, who Thus then, according to Lord Derby and to Lord Palmerston himself, it was not the Russian squadron and army at Constantinople, but it was a distinct declaration on the part of the British consular agent at Alexandria, that stopped Ibrahim's victorious march upon Constantinople, and brought about the arrangement of Kiutayah, by virtue of which Mehemet Ali obtained, besides Egypt, the Pashalic of Syria, of Adana and other places, added as an appendage. But the noble lord thought fit not to allow his consul at Alexandria to make this distinct declaration till after the Turkish army was annihilated, Constantinople overrun by the Cossack, the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi signed by the Sultan, and pocketed by the Czar. If want of time and want of fleets forbade the noble lord to assist the Sultan, and a superfluity of etiquette to check the Pasha, did he at least employ his ambassador at Constantinople to guard against excessive influence on the part of Russia, and to keep her insuence confined within narrow bounds? Quite the contrary. In order not to clog the movements of Russia, the lord took good care to have no ambassador at all at Constantinople during the most fatal period of the crisis. Lord Palmerston tells us, that the British ambassador, Sir Stratford, left Constantinople in September, 1832 that Lord Ponsonby, then at Naples, was appointed in his place in November, and that difficulties experienced in making the necessary arrangements for his conveyance, although a man-of-war was in waiting for him, and the unfavourable state of the weather prevented his getting to Constantinople until the end of May, 1833. (House of Commons, March 17, 1834.) The Russian was not yet in, and Lord Ponsonby was accordingly ordered to require seven months for sailing from Naples to Constantinople. But why should the noble lord prevent the Russians from occupying Constantinople? He, for his part, had great doubts that any intention to partition the Ottoman empire at all entered into the policy of the Russian Government. (House of Commons, February 14 1839.) Certainly not. Russia wants not to partition the empire, but to keep the whole of it. Besides the security Lord Palmerston possessed in this doubt, he had another security Besides these negative arguments, the noble lord had an affirmative one: So inaccessible, indestructible, integral, imperishable, inexpugnable, incalculable, incommensurable, and irremediable, so boundless, dauntless, and matchless was the noble lord's confidence, that still on March 17, 1834, when the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi had become a fait accompli, he went on declaring that, in their confidence ministers were not deceived. Not his is the fault if nature has developed his bump of confidence to altogether anomalous dimensions.

The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/palmerston/ch04.htm

The contents of the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi were published in the Morning Herald of August 21, 1833 On August 24, Sir Robert Inglis asked Lord Palmerston, in the House of Commons, Seven months afterwards, he assures the House that He did know of the treaty, in August, but not officially. Yes, the noble lord was in possession of the treaty before it had been concluded. But the noble viscount had obtained all he cared for. He was interrogated with respect to the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, of whose existence he was not sure, on August 24, 1833. On August 29, Parliament was prorogued, receiving from the throne the consolatory assurance “that the hostilities which had disturbed the peace of Turkey had been terminated, and they might be assured that the King's attention would be carefully directed to any events which might affect the present state or the future independence of that Empire. Here, then, we have the key to the famous Russian Treaties of July. In July they are concluded; in August something about them is transpiring through the public press. Lord Palmerston is interrogated in the Commons. He, of course, is aware of nothing. Parliament is prorogued, and, when it reassembles, the treaty has grown old, or, as in 1841, has already been executed, in spite of public opinion. Parliament was prorogued on August 29, 1833, and it reassembled on February 5, 1834. The interval between the prorogation and its reassembling was marked by two incidents intimately interwoven with each other. On the one hand, the united French and English fleets proceeded to the Dardanelles, displayed there the tricolour and the Union Jack, sailed on their way to Smyrna, and returned from thence to Malta. On the other hand, a new treaty was concluded between the Porte and Russia on January 29, 1834, the Treaty of St. Petersburg. This treaty was hardly signed when the united fleet was withdrawn. This combined manoeuvre was intended to stultify the British people and Europe into the belief that the hostile demonstration on the Turkish seas and coasts, directed against the Porte, for having concluded the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, had enforced upon Russia the new Treaty of St. Petersburg. This treaty, by promising the evacuation of the Principalities, and reducing the Turkish payments to one-third of the stipulated amount, apparently relieved the Porte from some engagements enforced on it by the Treaty of Adrianople. In all other instances it was a simple ratification of the Treaty of Adrianople, not at all relating to the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, nor dropping a single word about the passage of the Dardanelles. On the contrary, the small alleviations it granted to Turkey were the purchase money for the exclusion of Europe, by the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, from the Dardanelles. After the Treaty of St. Petersburg had been ratified, the noble lord expressed his satisfaction with the moderation of the terms imposed by Russia. When Parliament had reassembled, there appeared in the Globe, the organ of the Foreign Office, a paragraph stating that Thus, on the one hand, the Treaty of Adrianople, protested against by Lord Aberdeen and the Duke of Wellington, was surreptitiously to be recognised on the part of England by Lord Palmerston officially expressing his satisfaction with the Treaty of St. Petersburg, which was but a ratification of that treaty; on the other hand, public attention was to be diverted from the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, and the animosity it had aroused in Europe against Russia was to be soothed down. Artful as the dodging was, it would not do. On March 17, 1834, Mr. Sheil brought in a motion for the copies of any treaties between Turkey and Russia, and of any correspondence between the English, Russian, and Turkish Governments, respecting those treaties, to be laid before the House. The noble lord resisted this resolution to his utmost, and succeeded in baffling it by assuring the House that peace could be preserved only by the House reposing confidence in the Government, and refusing to accede to the motion. So grossly contradictory were the reasons which he stated prevented him from producing the papers, that Sir Robert Peel called him, in his parliamentary language, a very inconclusive reasoner , and his own Colonel Evans could not help exclaiming: The speech of the noble lord appeared to him the most unsatisfactory he had ever heard from him. Lord Palmerston strove to convince the House that, according to the assurances of Russia, the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi was to be looked upon as one of reciprocity, that reciprocity being, that if the Dardanelles should be closed against England in the event of war, they should be closed against Russia also. The statement was altogether false, but if true, this certainly would have been Irish reciprocity, for it was all on one side. To cross the Dardanelles is for Russia not the means to get at the Black Sea, but, on the contrary, to leave it. So far from refuting Mr. Sheil's statement that the consequence [of the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi] was precisely the same as if the Porte surrendered to Russia the possession of the Dardanelles, Lord Palmerston owned that the treaty closed the Dardanelles to British men-of-war,... and that under its provision even merchant vessels might,... in effect, be practically excluded from the Black Sea, in the case of a war between England and Russia. But if the Government acted with temper, if it showed no unnecessary distrust, that is to say, if it quietly submitted to all further encroachments of Russia, he was inclined to think that the case might not arise in which that treaty would be called into operation; and that, therefore, it would in practice remain a dead letter. (House of Commons, March 17, 1834.) Besides, the assurances and explanations which the British Government had received from the contracting parties to that treaty greatly tended to remove its objections to it. Thus, then it was not the articles of the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, but the assurances Russia gave with respect to them, not the acts of Russia, but her language, he had, in his opinion, to look upon. Yet, as on the same day his attention was called to the protest of the French Charge d'Affaires, M. Le Grenee, against the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, and the offensive and contumelious language of Count Nesselrode, answering in the St. Petersburg Gazette, that the Emperor of Russia would act as if the declaration contained in the note of Le Grenee had no existence the noble lord, eating his own words, propounded the opposite doctrine that it was on all occasions the duty of the English Government to look to the acts of a foreign Power, rather than to the language which the Power might hold, on any particular subject or occasion. One moment he appealed from the acts of Russia to her language, and the other from her language to her acts. In 1837 he still assured the House that the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi was a treaty between two independent Powers. (House of Commons, December 14, 1837) Ten years later, the treaty having long since lapsed, and the noble lord being just about to act the play of the truly English minister, and the civis Romanus sum, he told the House plainly, the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi was no doubt to a certain degree forced upon Turkey by Count Orloff the Russian envoy, under circumstances [created by the noble lord himself] which rendered it difficult for Turkey to refuse acceding to it.... It gave practically to the Russian Government a power of interference and dictation in Turkey, not consistent with the independence of that state. (House of Commons, March 1, 1848.) During the whole course of the debates about the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, the noble lord, like the clown in the comedy, had an answer of most monstrous size, that must fit all demands and serve all questions the Anglo-French Alliance. When his connivance with Russia was pointed at in sneers, he gravely retorted: When the production of the papers relating to the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi was demanded, he answered that England and France had now cemented a friendship which had only grown stronger. (House of Commons, March 17, 1834) Simultaneously the noble lord took good care not to quench the suspicions of his Tory opponents, that he had been compelled to connive at the aggression upon Turkey by Mehemet Ali, because France had directly encouraged it. At that time, then, the ostensible entente with France was to cover the secret infeoffment to Russia, as in 1840 the clamorous rupture with France was to cover the official alliance with Russia. While the noble lord fatigued the world with ponderous folios of printed negotiations on the affairs of the constitutional kingdom of Belgium and with ample explanations, verbal and documentary, with regard to the substantive power of Portugal, to this moment it has proved quite impossible to wrest out of him any document whatever relating to the first Syrio-Turkish War, and to the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi. When the production of the papers was first demanded, on July 11, 1833, the motion was premature,... the transactions incomplete,...and the results not yet known. On August 24, 1833, the treaty was not officially signed, and he was not in possession of it. On March 17, 1834, communications were still carrying on ... the discussions, if he might so call them, were not yet completed. Still in 1848, when Mr. Anstey told him that in asking for papers he did not ask for the proof of the noble lord s collusion with the Czar, the chivalrous minister preferred killing time by a five hours speech, to killing suspicion by self-speaking documents. Notwithstanding all this, he had the cynical impudence to assure Mr. T. Attwood, on December 14, 1837, that t he papers connected with that treaty [viz., the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi] were laid before the House three years ago, that is to say in 1834, when peace could be preserved only by withholding them from the House. In 1834, he enjoined the House not to press him, as peace could be preserved only by the House reposing confidence in the Government, which, if left alone, would certainly protect the interests of England from encroachment. Now in 1837, in a thin House, composed almost entirely of his retainers, he told Mr. Attwood, that it had never been the intention of the Government to have recourse to hostile measures to compel Russia and Turkey, two independent Powers, to cancel the treaty made between them. On the same day, he told Mr. Attwood that this treaty was a matter which had gone by, it was entered into for a, limited period,... and that period having expired, its introduction by the honourable member....was wholly unnecessary and uncalled for. According to the original stipulation, the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi was to expire on July 8, 1841 Lord Palmerston tells Mr. Attwood that it had already expired on December 14, 1837. What trick, what device, what starting hole, canst thou now find to hide thee from this open and apparent shame? Come, let's hear, Jack what trick hast thou now?

The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/palmerston/ch05.htm

There is no such word in the Russian vocabulary as "honour." As to the thing itself, it is considered to be a French delusion. "Schto takoe honneur? Eto Fransusski chimere," is a Russian proverb. For the invention of Russian honour the world is exclusively indebted to my Lord Palmerston, who, during a quarter of a century, used at every critical moment to pledge himself in the most emphatic manner, for the honour of the Czar. He did so at the close of the session of 1853, as at the close of the session of 1833. Now, it happens that the noble lord, while he expressed his most implicit confidence in the honour and good faith of the Czar, had just got into possession of documents, concealed from the rest of the world, and leaving no doubt, if any existed, about the nature of Russian honour and good faith. He had not even to scratch the Muscovite in order to find the Tartar. He had found the Tartar in his naked hideousness. He found himself possessed of the self-confessions of the leading Russian ministers and diplomatists, throwing off their cloaks, opening out their most secret thoughts, unfolding, without constraint, their plans of conquest and subjugation, scornfully railing at the imbecile credulity of European courts and ministers, mocking the Villeles, the Metternichs, the Aberdeens, the Cannings, and the Wellingtons; and devising in common, with the savage cynicism of the barbarian, mitigated by the cruel irony of the courtier, how to sow distrust against England at Paris, and against Austria at London, and against London at Vienna, how to set them all by the ears, and how to make all of them the mere tools of Russia. At the time of the insurrection in Warsaw, the vice-royal archives kept in the palace of Prince Constantine, and containing the secret correspondence of Russian ministers and ambassadors from the beginning of this century down to 1830, fell into the hands of the victorious Poles. Polish refugees brought these papers over first to France, and, at a later period, Count Zamoyski, the nephew of Prince Czartoryski, placed them in the hands of Lord Palmerston, who buried them in Christian oblivion. With these papers in his pocket, the noble viscount was the more eager to proclaim in the British Senate and to the world, his most implicit confidence in the honour and good faith of the Emperor of Russia. It was not the fault of the noble viscount, that those startling papers were at length published at the end of 1835, through the famousPortfolio. King William IV, whatsoever he was in other respects, was a most decided enemy of Russia. His private secretary, Sir Herbert Taylor, was intimately connected with David Urquhart, introducing this gentleman to the King himself, and from that moment Royalty was conspiring with these two friends against the policy of the truly English minister. After the death of the King, Lord Palmerston refused to pay the printer of the Portfolio, disclaimed publicly and solemnly all connection on the part of the Foreign Office with it, and induced, in what manner is not known, Mr. Backhouse, his under-secretary, to set his name to these denials. We read in The Times of January 30, 1839: In consequence of her financial distress, resulting from the exhaustion of the treasury by the unfortunate war of 1828-29, and the debt to Russia stipulated by the Treaty of Adrianople, Turkey found herself compelled to extend that obnoxious system of monopolies, by which the sale of almost all articles was granted only to those who had paid Government licenses. Thus a few usurers were enabled to seize upon the entire commerce of the country. Mr. Urquhart proposed to King William IV a commercial treaty to be concluded with the Sultan, which treaty, while guaranteeing great advantages to British commerce, intended at the same time to develop the productive resources of Turkey, to restore her exchequer to health, and thus to emancipate her from the Russian yoke. The curious history of this treaty cannot be better related than in the words of Mr. Anstey: So favourable to Russia, and so obnoxious to Great Britain, was the treaty as altered by the noble lord, that some English merchants in the Levant resolved to trade henceforth under the protection of Russian firms, and others, as Mr. Urquhart states, were only prevented from doing so by a sort of national pride. With regard to the secret relations between the noble lord and William IV, Mr. Anstey stated to the House: It is one of the most astonishing facts that, while the King was vainly struggling against the Russian policy of the noble lord, the noble lord and his Whig allies succeeded in keeping alive the public suspicion that the King who was known as a Tory was paralysing the anti-Russian efforts of the truly English Minister. The pretended Tory predilection of the monarch for the despotic principles of the Russian Court, was, of course, made to explain the otherwise inexplicable policy of Lord Palmerston. The Whig oligarchs smiled mysteriously when Mr. H. L. Bulwer informed the House, that no longer ago than last Christmas Count Apponyi, the Austrian Ambassador at Paris, stated, in speaking of the affairs of the East, that this Court had a greater apprehension of French principles than of Russian ambition. (House of Commons, July 11, 1833) They smiled again, when Mr. T. Attwood interrogated the noble lord: what reception Count Orloff, having been sent over to England, after the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, had met with at his Majesty's Court? (House of Commons, August 28, 1833) The papers entrusted by the dying King and his secretary, the late Sir Herbert Taylor, to Mr. Urquhart, for the purpose of vindicating, upon the fitting opportunity, the memory of William IV, will, when published, throw a new light upon the past career of the noble lord and the Whig oligarchy, of which the public generally know little more than the history of their pretensions, their phrases, and their so-called principles in a word, the theatrical and fictitious part the mask. This is a fitting occasion to give his due to Mr. David Urquhart, the indefatigable antagonist for twenty years of Lord Palmerston, to whom he proved a real adversary one not to be intimidated into silence, bribed into connivance, charmed into suitorship, while, what with cajoleries, what with seductions, Alcine Palmerston contrived to change all other foes into fools. We have just heard the fierce denunciation of his lordship by Mr. Anstey: On February 23, 1848, the same Mr. Anstey had compared the noble viscount to the infamous Marquis of Carmarthen, Secretary of State to William III, whom, during his visit to his Court, the Czar, Peter I, found means to corrupt to his interests with the gold of British merchants. (House of Commons, February 23, 1848.) Who defended Lord Palmerston on that occasion against the accusations of Mr. Anstey? Mr. Sheil; the same Mr. Sheil who had, on the conclusion of the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, in 1833, acted the same part of accuser against his lordship as Mr. Anstey in 1848. Mr. Roebuck, once his strong anatagonist, procured him the vote of confidence in 1850. Sir Stratford Canning, having denounced during a decennium, the noble lord's connivance with the Czar, was content to be got rid of as ambassador to Constantinople. The noble lord's own dear Dudley Stuart was intrigued out of Parliament for some years, for having opposed the noble lord. When returned back to it, he had become the me damn e [french: a willing tool] of the truly English Minister. Kossuth, who might have known from the Blue Books that Hungary had been betrayed by the noble viscount, called him the dear friend of his bosom, when landing at Southampton.

The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/palmerston/ch06.htm

One glance at the map of Europe will show you on the western littoral of the Black Sea the outlets of the Danube, the only river which, springing up in the very heart of Europe, may be said to form a natural highway to Asia. Exactly opposite on the eastern side, to the south of the river Kuban, begins the mountain-range of the Caucasus, stretching from the Black Sea to the Caspian in a south-easterly direction for some seven hundred miles, and separating Europe from Asia. If you hold the outlets of the Danube, you hold the Danube, and with it the highway to Asia, and a great part of the commerce of Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, Turkey, and above all, of Moldo-Wallachia. If you hold the Caucasus too, the Black Sea becomes your property, and to shut up its door, you only want Constantinople and the Dardanelles. The possession of the Caucasus mountains makes you at once master of Trebizond, and through their domination of the Caspian Sea, of the northern seaboard of Persia. The greedy eyes of Russia embraced at once the outlets of the Danube and the mountain-range of the Caucasus. There, the business in hand was to conquer supremacy, here to maintain it. The chain of the Caucasus separates southern Russia from the luxurious provinces of Georgia, Mingrelia, Imertia, and Giuriel, wrested by the Muscovite from the Mussulman. Thus the foot of the monster empire is cut off from its main body. The only military road, deserving to be called such, winds from Mozdok to Tiflis, through the eyry-pass of Dariel, fortified by a continuous line of entrenched places, but exposed on both sides to the never-ceasing attacks from the Caucasian tribes. The union of these tribes under one military chief might even endanger the bordering country of the Cossacks. The thought of the dreadful consequences which a union of the hostile Circassians under one head would produce in the south of Russia, fills one with terror, exclaims Mr. Kapffer, a German who presided over the scientific commission which, in 1829, accompanied the expedition of General Etronnel to Elbruz. At this very moment our attention is directed with equal anxiety to the banks of the Danube, where Russia has seized the two corn magazines of Europe, and to the Caucasus, where she is menaced in the possession of Georgia. It was the Treaty of Adrianople that prepared Russia s usurpation of Moldo-Wallachia, and recognised her claims to the Caucasus. Article IV of that treaty stipulates: With regard to the Danube the same treaty stipulates: Both these paragraphs, inasmuch as they secure to Russia an extension of territory and exclusive commercial advantages, openly infringed on the protocol of April 4, 1846, drawn up by the Duke of Wellington at St. Petersburg, and on the treaty of July 6, 1827, concluded between Russia and the other great Powers at London. The English Government, therefore, refused to recognise the Treaty of Adrianople. The Duke of Wellington protested against it. (Lord Dudley Stuart, House of Commons, March 17, 1837.) Lord Aberdeen protested: Earl Grey declared that the independence of the Porte would be sacrificed, and the peace of Europe endangered, by this treaty being agreed to. (Earl Grey, House of Lords, February 4, 1834.) Lord Palmerston himself informs us: The eastern littoral of the Black Sea, by blockading which and cutting off supplies of arms and gunpowder to the northwestern districts of the Caucasus, Russia could alone hope to realise her nominal claim to these countries this littoral of the Black Sea and the outlets of the Danube are certainly no places where an English action could possibly take place, as was lamented by the noble lord in the case of Cracow. By what mysterious contrivance, then, has the Muscovite succeeded in blockading the Danube, in blocking up the littoral of the Euxine, and in forcing Great Britain to submit not only to the Treaty of Adrianople, but at the same time to the violation by Russia herself of that identical treaty? These questions were put to the noble viscount in the House of Commons on April 20, 1836, numerous petitions having poured in from the merchants of London, of Glasgow, and other commercial towns, against the fiscal regulations of Russia in the Black Sea, and her enactments and restrictions tending to intercert English commerce on the Danube. There had appeared on February 7, 1836, a Russian ukase, which, by virtue of the Treaty of Adrianople, established a quarantine on one of the islands formed by the mouths of the Danube. In order to execute that quarantine, Russia claimed a right of boarding and search, of levying fees and seizing and marching off to Odessa refractory ships proceeding on their voyage up the Danube. Before the quarantine was established, or rather before a custom-house and fort were erected, under the false pretence of a quarantine, the Russian authorities threw out their feelers, to ascertain the risk they might run with the British Government. Lord Durham acting upon instructions received from England, remonstrated with the Russian Cabinet for the hindrance which had been given to British trade. The formal ukase of February 7, 1836, aroused, however, the general attention of British commerce. Russia required the marshy islands of the Danube, by virtue of the clause of the Treaty of Adrianople, which clause itself was a violation of the treaty she had previously contracted with England and the other Powers, in 1827. The bristling the gates of the Danube with fortifications, and these fortifications with guns, was a violation of the Treaty of Adrianople itself, which expressly prohibits any fortifications being erected within six miles of the river. The exaction of tolls, and the obstruction of the navigation, were a violation of the Treaty of Vienna, declaring that the navigation of rivers along their whole course, from the point where each of them becomes navigable to its mouth, shall be entirely free, that the duties shall in no case exceed those nowthe amount of the duties shall in no case exceed those now (1815) paid and that shall take place, except with the common consent of the states no increase shall take place, except with the common consent of the states bordering on the river. Thus, then, all the argument on which Russia could plead not guilty was the Treaty of 1827, violated by the Treaty of Adrianople, the Treaty of Adrianople violated by herself, the whole backed up by a violation of the Treaty of Vienna. It proved quite impossible to wring out of the noble lord any declaration whether he did or did not recognise the Treaty of Adrianople. As to the violation of the Treaty of Vienna, he had By the Treaty of Adrianople, Art. V, Russia guarantees the prosperity of the Danubian Principalities, and full liberty of trade for them. Now, Mr. Stewart proved that the Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia were objects of deadly jealousy to Russia, as their trade had taken a sudden development since 1834 as they vied with Russia s own staple production, as Galatz was becoming the great depot of all the grain of the Danube, and driving Odessa out of the market. If, answered the noble lord, In lieu of such an occurrence, Russia obstructs the Danube navigation, because the trade of the Principalities is growing important, says Mr. Stewart. But she did not do so when the trade was next to nothing, retorts Lord Palmerston. You neglect to oppose the recent encroachments of Russia on the Danube, says Mr. Stewart. We did not do so at the epoch these encroachments were not yet ventured upon, replies the noble lord. What circumstances have therefore occurred against which the Government are not likely to guard unless driven thereto by the direct interference of this House? He prevented the Commons from passing a resolution by assuring them that there is no disposition of His Majesty s Government to submit to aggression on the part of any Power, be that Power what it may, and be it more or less strong, and by warning them that we should also cautiously abstain from anything which might be construed by other Powers, and reasonably so, as being a provocation on our part. A week after these debates had taken place in the House of Commons, a British merchant addressed a letter to the Foreign Office with regard to the Russian ukase. I am directed by Viscount Palmerston, answered the Under Secretary at the Foreign Office, to The merchant acted according to this letter. He is abandoned to Russia by the noble lord; a Russian toll is, as Mr. Urquhart states, now exacted in London and Liverpool by Russian Consuls, on every English ship sailing for the Turkish ports of the Danube; and the quarantine still stands on the island of Leti . Russia did not limit her invasion of the Danube to a quarantine established, to fortifications erected, and to tolls exacted. The only mouth of the Danube remaining still navigable, the Sulina mouth, was acquired by her through the Treaty of Adrianople. As long as it was possessed by the Turks, there was kept a depth of water in the channel of from fourteen to sixteen feet. Since in the possession of Russia, the water became reduced to eight feet, a depth wholly inadequate to the conveyance of the vessels employed in the corn trade. Now Russia is a party to the Treaty of Vienna, and that treaty stipulates, in Article CXIII, that each State shall be at the expense of keeping in good repair the towing paths, and shall maintain the necessary work in order that no obstructions shall be experienced by the navigation . For keeping the channel in a navigable state, Russia found no better means than gradually reducing the depth of the water, paving it with wrecks, and choking up its bar with an accumulation of sand and mud. To this systematic and protracted infraction of the Treaty of Vienna, she added another violation of the Treaty of Adrianople, which forbids any establishment at the mouth of the Sulina, except for quarantine and light-house purposes, while at her dictation, a small Russian fort has there sprung up, living by extortions upon the vessels, the occasion for which is afforded by the delays and expenses for lighterage, consequent upon the obstruction of the channel. According to his own maxim, the noble viscount was contented to dwell upon abstract principles with the despotic Government of Russia; but he went further. While he assured the House on July 6, 1840, that the freedom of the Danube navigation was guaranteed by the Treaty of Vienna, while he lamented on July 13, 1840, that the occupation of Cracow being a violation of the Treaty of Vienna, there were no means of enforcing the opinions of England, because Cracow was evidently a place where no English action could possibly take place ; two days later he concluded a Russian treaty, closing the Dardanelles to England during times of peace with Turkey, and thus depriving England of the only means of enforcing the Treaty of Vienna, and transforming the Euxine into a place where no English action could possibly take place. This point once obtained, he contrived to give a sham satisfaction to public opinion by firing off a whole battery of papers, reminding the despotic Government, which measures right by power, and rules its conduct by expediency and not by justice, in a sententious and sentimental manner, that Russia, when she compelled Turkey to cede to her the outlet of a great European river, which forms the commercial highway for the mutual intercourse of many nations, undertook duties and responsibilities to other States which she should take a pride in making good. To this dwelling upon abstract principles, Count Nesselrode kept giving the inevitable answer that the subject should be carefully examined, and expressing from time to time, a feeling of soreness on the part of the Imperial Government at the mistrust manifested as to their intentions. Thus, through the management of the noble lord, in 1853, things arrived at the point where the navigation of the Danube was declared impossible, and corn was rotting at the mouth of the Sulina, while famine threatened to invade England, France, and the south of Europe. Thus, Russia was not only adding, as The Times says, to her other important possessions that of an iron gate between the Danube and the Euxine, she possessed herself of the key to the Danube, of a bread-screw which she can put on whenever the policy of Western Europe becomes obnoxious to punishment.

The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/palmerston/ch07.htm

The petitions presented to the House of Commons on April 26, 1836, and the resolution moved by Mr. Patrick Stewart in reference to them, referred not only to the Danube, but to Circassia too, the rumour having spread through the commercial world that the Russian Government, on the plea of blockading the coast of Circassia, claimed to exclude English ships from landing goods and merchandise in certain ports of the eastern littoral of the Black Sea. On that occasion Lord Palmerston solemnly declared: Some months afterwards, on October 29, 1836, the Vixen a trading vessel belonging to Mr. George Bell and laden with a cargo of salt, set out from London on a direct voyage for Circassia. On November 25, she was seized in the Circassian Bay of Soudjouk-Kale by a Russian man-of-war, for having been employed on a blockaded coast. (Letter of the Russian Admiral Lazareff to the English Consul, Mr. Childs, December 24, 1836.) The vessel, her cargo, and her crew were sent to the port of Sebastopol, where the condemnatory decision of the Russians was received on January 27, 1837. This time, however, no mention was made of a blockade, but the Vixen was simply declared a lawful prize, because it was guilty of smuggling, the importation of salt being prohibited, and the Bay of Soudjouk-Kale, a Russian port, not provided with a customhouse. The condemnation was executed in an exquisitely ignominious and insulting manner. The Russians who effected the seizure were publicly rewarded with decorations. The British flag was hoisted, then hauled down, and the Russian flag hoisted in its stead. The master and crew, put as captives on board the Ajax the captor were despatched from Sebastopol to Odessa, and from Odessa to Constantinople, whence they were allowed to return to England. As to the vessel itself, a German traveller, who visited Sebastopol a few years after this event, wrote in a letter addressed to the Augsburg Gazette: After all the Russian ships of the line which I visited, no vessel excited my curiosity more than the Soudjouk-Kale, formerly the Vixen, under the Russian colours. She has now changed her appearance. This little vessel is now the best sailer in the Russian fleet, and is generally employed in transports between Sebastopol and the coast of Circassia. The capture of the Vixen certainly afforded Lord Palmerston a great occasion for fulfilling his promise to protect the interests and to uphold the honour of the country. Besides the honour of the British flag, and the interests of British commerce, there was another question at stake the independence of Circassia. At first, Russia justified the seizure of the Vixen on the plea of an infraction of the blockade proclaimed by her, but the ship was condemned on the opposite plea of a contravention against her custom-house regulations. By proclaiming a blockade, Russia declared Circassia a hostile foreign country, and the question was whether the British Government had ever recognised that blockade? By the establishment of custom-house regulations, Circassia was, on the contrary, treated as a Russian dependency, and the question was whether the British Government had ever recognised the Russian claims to Circassia? Before proceeding, let it be remembered that Russia was at that epoch far from having completed her fortification of Sebastopol. Any Russian claim to the possession of Circassia could only be derived from the Treaty of Adrianople, as explained in a previous article. But the treaty of July 6, 1827, bound Russia to not attempting any territorial aggrandisement, nor securing any exclusive commercial advantage from her war with Turkey. Any extension, therefore, of the Russian frontier, attendant on the Treaty of Adrianople, openly infringed the treaty of 1827, and was, as shown by the protest of Wellington and Aberdeen, not to be recognised on the part of Great Britain. Russia, then, had no right to receive Circassia from Turkey. On the other hand, Turkey could not cede to Russia what she never possessed, and Circassia had always remained so independent of the Porte, that, at the time when a Turkish Pasha yet resided at Anapa, Russia herself had concluded several conventions with the Circassian chieftains as to the coast trade, the Turkish trade being exclusively and legally restricted to the port of Anapa. Circassia being an independent country, the municipal, sanitary or customs' regulations with which the Muscovite might think fit to provide her were as binding as his regulations for the port of Tampico. On the other hand, if Circassia was a foreign country, hostile to Russia, the latter had only a right to blockade, if that blockade was no paper blockade if Russia had the naval squadron present to enforce it, and really dominated the coast. Now, on a coast extending 200 miles, Russia possessed but three isolated forts, all the rest of Circassia remaining in the hands of the Circassian tribes. There existed no Russian fort in the Bay of Soudjouk-Kale. There was, in fact, no blockade, because no maritime force was employed. There was the offer of the distinct testimony of the crews of two British vessels who had visited the bay the one in September, 1834, the other, that of the Vixen confirmed subsequently by the public statements of two British travellers who visited the harbour in the years 1837 and 1838, that there was no Russian occupation whatever of the coast. (Portfolio, VIII, March 1, 1844.) When the Vixen entered the harbour of Soudjouk-Kale But need we give further proofs of the St. Petersburg Cabinet itself seizing the Vixen under pretext of blockade and confiscating it under pretext of custom-house regulations? The Circassians thus appeared the more favoured by accident, as the question of their independence coincided with the question of the free navigation of the Black Sea, the protection of British commerce, and an insolent act of piracy committed by Russia on a British merchant ship. Their chance of obtaining protection from the mistress of the seas seemed less doubtful, as Will it then be believed that the noble and chivalrous viscount knew how to handle the case in so masterly a way, that the very act of piracy committed by Russia against British property afforded him the long-sought-for occasion of formally recognising the Treaty of Adrianople, and the extinction of Circassian independence? On March 17, 1837, Mr Roebuck moved, with reference to the confiscation of the Vixen, for a copy of all correspondence between the Government of this country and the Governments of Russia and Turkey, relating to the Treaty of Adrianople, as well as all transactions or negotiations connected with the port and territories on the shores of the Black Sea by Russia since the Treaty of Adrianople. Mr. Roebuck, from fear of being suspected of humanitarian tendencies and of defending Circassia, on the ground of abstract principles, plainly declared: Russia may endeavour to obtain possession of all the world, and I regard her efforts with indifference; but the moment she interferes with our commerce, I call upon the Government of this country [which country exists in appearance somewhat beyond the limits of all the world] to punish the aggression. Accordingly, he wanted to know if the British Government had acknowledged the Treaty of Adrianople? The noble lord, although pressed very hard, had ingenuity enough to make a long speech, and Mr. Roebuck states that, before allowing the Vixen to proceed to Circassia, Mr. Bell had applied to the noble lord, in order to ascertain whether there was any impropriety or danger to be apprehended in a vessel landing goods in any part of Circassia, and that the Foreign Office answered in the negative. Thus, Lord Palmerston found himself obliged to read to the House the correspondence exchanged between himself and Mr. Bell. Reading these letters one would fancy he was reading a Spanish comedy of the cloak and sword rather than an official correspondence between a minister and a merchant. When he heard the noble lord had read the letters respecting the seizure of the Vixen, Daniel O'Connell exclaimed, He could not keep calling to his mind the expression of Talleyrand, that language had been invented to conceal thoughts. For instance, Mr Bell asks whether there were any restrictions on trade recognised by His Majesty's Government? as, if not, he intended to send thither a vessel with a cargo of salt. You ask me, answers Lord Palmerston, whether it would be for your advantage to engage in a speculation in salt and inform him or commercial firms to judge for themselves whether they shall enthat it is for commercial firms to judge for themselves whether they shall enter or decline a speculation. By no means, replies Mr. Bell; all I want to know is, whether or not His Majesty's Government recognises the Russian blockade on the Black Sea to the south of the river Kuban? You must look at the London Gazette, retorts the noble lord, in which all the notifications, such as those alluded to by you, are made. The London Gazette was indeed the quarter to which a British merchant had to refer for such information, instead of the ukases of the Emperor of Russia. Mr. Bell, finding no indication whatever in the Gazette of the acknowledgement of the blockade, or of other restrictions, despatched his vessel. The result was, that some time after he was himself placed in the Gazette. I referred Mr. Bell, says Lord Palmerston, to theGazette, where he would find no blockade had been communicated or declared to this country by the Russian Government consequently, none was acknowledged. By referring Mr. Bell to the Gazette, Lord Palmerston did not only deny the acknowledgment on the part of Great Britain of the Russian blockade, but simultaneously affirmed that, in his opinion, the coast of Circassia formed no part of the Russian territory, because blockades of their own territories by foreign States as, for instance, against revolted subjects are not to be notified in the Gazette. Circassia, forming no part of the Russian territory, could not, of course, be included in Russian custom-house regulations. Thus, according to his own statement, Lord Palmerston denied, in his letters to Mr. Bell, Russia's right to blockade the Circassian coast, or to subject it to commercial restrictions. It is true that, throughout his speech, he showed a desire to induce the House to infer that Russia had possession of Circassia. But, on the other hand, he stated plainly, As far as the extension of the Russian frontier is concerned, on the south of the Caucasus and the shores of the Black Sea, it is certainly not consistent with the solemn declaration made by Russia in the face of Europe, previous to the commencement of the Turkish war. When he sat down, pledging himself ever to protect the interests and uphold the honour of the country, he seemed to labour beneath the accumulated miseries of his past policy, rather than to be hatching treacherous designs for the future. On that day he met with the following cruel apostrophe: Who was it that thus mercilessly branded the truly English Minister? Nobody else than Lord Dudley Stuart. On November 25, 1836, the Vixen was confiscated. The stormy debates of the House of Commons, just quoted, took place on March 17, 1837. It was not till April 19, 1837, that the noble lord requested the Russian Government to state the reason on account of which it had thought itself warranted to seize in time of peace a merchant vessel belonging to British subjects. On May 17, 1837, the noble lord received the following despatch from the Earl of Durham, the British Ambassador at St. Petersburg: It need hardly be remarked that the fort Alexandrovsky had not even the reality of the pasteboard towns, exhibited by Potemkin before the Empress Catherine II on her visit to the Crimea. Five days after the receipt of this despatch, Lord Palmerston returns the following answer to St. Petersburg: There are some very curious circumstances connected with the negotiation. Lord Palmerston requires six months of premeditation for opening, and hardly one to close it. His last despatch of May 23, 1837, suddenly and abruptly cuts off any further transactions. It quotes the date before the Treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardji, not after the Gregorian but after the Greek chronology. Besides, between April 19 and May 23, as Sir Robert Peel said, "a remarkable change from official declaration to satisfaction occurred apparently induced by the assurance received from Count Nesselrode that Turkey had ceded the coast in question to Russia by the Treaty of Adrianople. Why did he not protest against this ukase? (House of Commons, June 21, 1838.) Why all this? The reason is very simple. King William IV had secretly instigated Mr. Bell to despatch the Vixen to the coast of Circassia. When the noble lord delayed negotiations, the king was still in full health. When he suddenly closed the negotiations, William IV was in the agonies of death, and Lord Palmerston disposed as absolutely of the Foreign Office, as if he was himself the autocrat of Great Britain. Was it not a master-stroke on the part of his jocose lordship to formally acknowledge by one dash of the pen the Treaty of Adrianople, Russia's possession of Circassia, and the confiscation of the Vixen, in the name of the dying king, who had despatched that saucy Vixen with the express view to mortify the Czar, to disregard the Treaty of Adrianople, and to affirm the independence of Circassia? Mr. Bell, as we stated, went into the Gazette, and Mr. Urquhart, then the first secretary of the Embassy at Constantinople, was recalled, for having persuaded Mr. Bell to carry his Vixen expedition into execution. As long as King William IV was alive, Lord Palmerston dared not openly countermand the Vixen expedition, as is proved by the Circassian Declaration of Independence, published in the Portfolio; by the Circassian map revised by his lordship; by his uncertain correspondence with Mr. Bell; by his vague declarations in the House; by the supercargo of the Vixen; Mr. Bell's brother receiving, when setting out, despatches from the Foreign Office, for the Embassy at Constantinople, and direct encouragement from Lord Ponsonby, the British Ambassador to the Sublime Porte. In the earlier times of Queen Victoria the Whig ascendency seemed to be safer than ever, and accordingly the language of the chivalrous viscount suddenly changed. From defence and cajolery, it became at once haughty and contemptuous. Interrogated by Mr. T. H. Attwood, on December 14, 1837, with regard to the Vixen and Circassia: As to the Vixen Russia had given such explanations of her conduct as ought to satisfy the Government of this country. That ship was not taken during a blockade. It was captured because those who had the management of it contravened the municipal and customs regulations of Russia. As to Mr. Attwood s apprehension of Russia's encroachment I say that Russia gives to the world quite as much security for the preservation of peace as England. (Lord Palmerston, House of Commons, December 14, 1837) At the close of the session the noble lord laid before the House the correspondence with the Russian Government, the two most important parts of which we have already quoted. In 1838 party aspects had again changed, and the Tories recovered an influence. On June 21 they gave Lord Palmerston a round charge. Sir Stratford Canning, the present Ambassador at Constantinople, moved for a Select Committee to inquire into the allegations made by Mr. George Bell against the noble lord, and in his claims of indemnification. At first his lordship was highly astonished that Sir Stratford's motion should be of so trifling a character. You, exclaimed Sir Robert Peel, are the first English minister who dares to call trifles the protection of the British property and commerce. No individual merchant, said Lord Palmerston, was entitled to ask Her Majesty's Government to give an opinion on questions of such sort as the right of Russia to the sovereignty of Circassia, or to establish those customs and sanitary regulations she was enforcing by the power of her arms. If that be not your duty, what is the use of the Foreign Office at all? asked Mr. Hume. It is said, resumed the noble lord, that Mr. Bell, this innocent Mr. Bell, was led into a trap by me, by the answers I gave him. The trap, if there was one, was laid, not for Mr. Bell, but by Mr. Bell, namely, by the questions he put to innocent Lord Palmerston. In the course of these debates (June 21, 1838), out came at length the great secret. Had he been willing to resist in 1836 the claims of Russia, the noble lord had been unable to do so for the very simple reason that already, in 1831, his first act on coming into office was to acknowledge the Russian usurpation of the Caucasus, and thus, in a surreptitious way, the Treaty of Adrianople. Lord Stanley (now Lord Derby) stated that, on August 8, 1831, the Russian Cabinet informed its representative at Constantinople of its intention to subject to sanitary regulations the communications which freely exist between the inhabitants of the Caucasus and the neighbouring Turkish provinces, and that he was to communicate the above-mentioned regulations to the foreign missions at Constantinople, as well as to the Ottoman Government. By allowing Russia the establishment of so-called sanitary and custom-house regulations on the coast of Circassia, although existing nowhere except in the above letter, Russian claims to the Caucasus were acknowledged and consequently the Treaty of Adrianople, on which they were grounded. Those instructions, said Lord Stanley, had been communicated in the most formal manner to Mr. Mandeville (Secretary to the Embassy) at Constantinople, expressly for the information of the British merchants, and transmitted to the noble Lord Palmerston. Neither did he, nor dared he, according to the practice of former Governments, communicate to the committee at Lloyd s the fact of such a notification having been received. The noble lord made himself guilty of a six years concealment, exclaimed Sir Robert Peel. On that day his jocose lordship escaped from condemnation by a majority of sixteen: 184 votes being against, and 200 for him. Those sixteen votes will neither out-voice history nor silence the mountaineers, the clashing of whose arms proves to the world that the Caucasus does not now belong to Russia, as stated by Count Nesselrode, and as echoed by Lord Palmerston.

The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/palmerston/ch08.htm

Ruggiero, a character in Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto, 1474-1533 Tempted by the witch Alcine. Canning, George, 1770-1827. Foreign Secretary 1807-9 and 1822-27. Prime Minister 1827 Carbonarism. The Carbonari, the charcoal-burners, a middle-class secret insurrectionary society in the early nineteenth century. Active in revolts in Spain, Piedmont, Naples and France. Played an important part in the Italian Risorgimento. The German Legion. Hessian and Hanoverian troops maintained in Britain by the Hanoverian kings. They were often used for garrison duties abroad. The Test Act, 1673, was intended to keep Roman Catholics and other non-conformists out of public office. All crown officers had to accept the Anglican creed. Repealed 1828. The Corporation Act, 1661,was intended to weaken the power of non-conformists in towns. All members of a corporation had to be Anglicans. Repealed 1828. Catholic Emancipation Act passed in 1829 after a long and bitter struggle. Former penal legislation was repealed and Catholics permitted to hold office under the crown and to sit in Parliament. The Reform Bill finally passed in 1832 in spite of strong Tory opposition. Rotten and pocket boroughs abolished and the franchise given to the new industrial towns. The right to vote restricted by property qualifications. Aberdeen, George Hamilton Gordon, 4th Earl of, 1784-1860, Tory and Peelite minister. Foreign secretary 1828-30, 1841-46. Prime Minister 1852-55 Metternich, Clemens Wenzel Lothar, Prince, 1773-1859 Austrian Foreign Minister and Chancellor, 1809-48. Extreme conservative, relying on censorship, espionage and armed force to repress nationalist and liberal movements. The Porte, more properly the Sublime Porte, was the name given to the Government of the Ottoman Empire in Constantinople. The name arose from a high gateway in the central government building. Stuart, Lord Dudley Coutts, 1803-54 M.P. for Arundel 1830-37, for Marylebone 1847-54. Hume, Joseph, 1777-1855, M.P. 1818-41, and 1842-55 Mehemet Ali, 1769-1849, Pasha of Egypt. Former Albanian tobacco-seller, destroyed power of Mamelukes in 1811. Supported the Sultan in Greek War of Independence, when his fleet was destroyed by Admiral Codrington at Navarino. Rebelled twice (1833 and 1839) against Sultan. His pashalik made hereditary. Egyptian royal family descended from him. Talleyrand, Charles Maurice de, 1754-1838. Bishop of Autun, 1788. Excommunicated by pope, 1791. Foreign Minister under the Directory and under Napoleon. As Foreign Minister of Louis XVIII wielded great influence at the Congress of Vienna. Ambassador to London, 1830-34 Anstey, Thomas Chisholm, 1816-73. Lawyer and politician. M.P. for Youghal. Severe critic of Palmerston's foreign policy which he declared encouraged the despots and destroyed the liberties of Europe. Peel, Sir Robert, 1788-1850. Leader of Tory Opposition in Commons, 1830-34. Prime Minister, 1834-35, 1841-46. The Spanish Marriages. King Louis-Philippe wished to marry his son, the Duc de Montpensier, to the young Queen of Spain, Isabella II. Foiled in this by British protests, he arranged for Isabella to marry her cousin, Don Francisco, believed to be impotent, while the Duc de Montpensier married her sister, the heir to the throne. In this way, Louis-Philippe hoped eventually to unite the crowns of France and Spain in violation of the Treaty of Utrecht. Normanby, Constantine Henry Phipps, 2nd Earl of Mulgrave, 1797-1863 British ambassador in Paris, 1846-52. Castlereagh, Robert Stewart, and Viscount, 1769-1822. Foreign Secretary, 1812-22. Committed suicide. Sugden, Edward Burtenshaw, Sir, afterwards Ist Baron St. Leonards, 1781-1875. Lord Chancellor. Donna Maria II da Gloria, 1819-53, Queen of Portugal. Daughter of Dom Pedro, 1798-1832. King of Portugal and Emperor of Brazil. Maria Cristina, 1806-78, Queen-Regent of Spain. Otho of Bavaria, 1815-67, first King of Greece. Deposed 1862. Saxe-Coburg, duchy of. The ducal dynasty produced Leopold I, King of the Belgians, and Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria. Duchy abolished in 1918. Treaty of Adrianople, 1829, ended Russo-Turkish War of 1828-29. Turkey ceded to Russia territory on the Black Sea, allowed Russian occupation of Moldavia and Wallachia, recognised the Czar as protector of all the Sultan's Christian subjects. Dardanelles opened to all merchant shipping. Autonomy given to Serbia and promised to Greece. Orloff (Orlov), Alexis Feodorovitch, Count, 1787-1862. Russian diplomat. Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi, 1833. Russia undertook to protect the Sultan against Mehemet Ali of Egypt in return for the closing of the Dardanelles to all warships except Russian. Bulwer, Sir Henry Lytton Earle, 1801-72. British envoy successively to Madrid, Washington, Florence, the Porte. Created 1st Baron Dalling and Bulwer. Ibrahim Pasha, 1789-1848, son and heir of Mehemet Ali and commander of Egyptian forces in Syria and Asia Minor. Codrington, Sir Edward, admiral, 1770-1851. In command of the combined fleets of France, Russia and Britain at the battle of Navarino, 1827. Canning, Sir Stratford, Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe, 1786-1880. British diplomat. Nephew of George Canning. Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I, Act II, Scene IV. Urquhart, David, 1805-77 British diplomat. Secretary at the British Embassy at Constantinople, 1836. Dismissed by Palmerston while negotiating commercial treaty with Turkey. Founded in 1835 the diplomatic journal Portfolio. Attacked Palmerston as a Russian agent. M.P. for Stafford, 1847 Moved for the impeachment of Palmerston. Kossuth, Louis, 1802-94. Hungarian patriot. President of Hungarian Republic, 1849. After destruction of Republic by the Russians spent the rest of his life in exile. Circassia, region between Black Sea, the Kuban River and Greater Caucasus, now in Krasnadar and Stavropol Territories. Ceded by Turkey to Russia by the Treaty of Adrianople, 1829, Circassia resisted Russian conquest until 1864. Durham, John George Lambton, Earl of, 1792-1840. British ambassador to St. Petersburg. Nesselrode, Karl Robert, Count, 1780-1862. Russian minister. Controlled Russian foreign policy from 1816 to 1856. Treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardji, 1774. Crimea declared independent of Turkey, thus preparing annexation by Russia in 1783.

The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/palmerston/notes.htm

When Nothjung and B rgers were arrested the police discovered copies of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, the Rules of the Communist League (a communist propaganda society), two Addresses of the Central Authority of this League as well as a number of addresses and other publications. A week after Nothjung s arrest had become public knowledge there were house-searches and arrests in Cologne. So if there had still been something to discover it would certainly have disappeared by then. And in fact the haul yielded only a few irrelevant letters. A year and a half later when the accused finally appeared before the jury, the bona fide material in the possession of the prosecution had not been augmented by a single document. Nevertheless as we are assured by the Public Prosecutor s office (represented by von Seckendorf and Saedt) all government departments of the Prussian state had undertaken the most strenuous and many-sided activity. What then had they been doing? Nous verrons! The unusually long period of pre-trial detention was explained in the most ingenious way. At first it was claimed that the Saxon government refused to extradite B rgers and Nothjung to Prussia. The court in Cologne appealed in vain to the ministry in Berlin, which appealed in vain to the authorities in Saxony. The Saxon authorities however relented. B rgers and Nothjung were handed over. By October 1851 enough progress had been made at last for the files to be presented to the indictment board of the Cologne Court of Appeal. The board ruled that there was no factual evidence of an indictable offence and ... the investigation must therefore start again from the beginning . Meanwhile the zeal of the courts had been kindled by a recently approved disciplinary law which enabled the Prussian government to dismiss any official of the judiciary who incurred its displeasure. Accordingly the case was dismissed on this occasion because there was no evidence of an indictable offence. At the following quarterly session of the assizes it had to be postponed because there was too much evidence. The mass of documents was said to be so huge that the prosecutor was unable to digest it. Gradually he did digest it, the bill of indictment was presented to the prisoners and the action was due to be heard on July 28. But in the meantime the great driving wheel of the government s case, Chief of Police Schulz, fell ill. The accused had to sit in gaol for another three months awaiting an improvement in Schulz s health. Fortunately Schulz died, the public became impatient and the government had to bring up the curtain. Throughout this whole period the police authorities in Cologne, the police headquarters in Berlin and the Ministries of Justice and of the Interior had continually intervened in the investigations, just as Stieber, their worthy representative, was to intervene later on as witness in the public court proceedings in Cologne. The government succeeded in assembling a jury that is quite unprecedented in the annals of the Rhine Province. In addition to members of the upper bourgeoisie (Herstadt, Leiden, Joest), there were city patricians (von Bianca, vom Rath), country squires (H bling von Lanzenauer, Freiherr [i.e. baron] von F rstenberg, etc.), two Prussian government officials, one of them a royal chamberlain (von M nch-Bellinghausen) and finally a Prussian professor (Kr usler). Thus in this jury every one of the ruling classes in Germany was represented and only these classes were represented. With this jury the Prussian government, it seems, could stop beating about the bush and make the case into a political trial pure and simple. The documents seized from Nothjung, B rgers and the others and admitted by them to be genuine did not indeed prove the existence of a plot; in fact they did not prove the existence of any action provided for in the Code p nal. But they showed conclusively the hostility of the accused to the existing government and the existing social order. However, what the intelligence of the legislators had failed to achieve might well be made good by the conscience of the jury. Was it not a stratagem of the accused that they should have conducted their hostile activities directed against the existing social order in such a way that they did not violate any article of the Code? Does a disease cease to be infectious because it is not listed in the Police Medical Register? If the Prussian government had restricted itself to using the material actually available to prove the harmfulness of the accused and if the jury had confined itself to rendering them harmless by its verdict of guilty, who could censure either government or jury? Who indeed but the foolish dreamer who imagines that the Prussian government and the ruling classes in Prussia are strong enough to give even their opponents a free rein as long as they confine themselves to discussion and propaganda. However the Prussian government had deprived itself of the opportunity of using this broad highway of political trials. Owing to the unusual delay in bringing the case before the court, the Ministry s direct intervention in the proceedings, the mysterious hints about unheard-of horrors, the rodomontade about a conspiracy ensnaring the whole of Europe and, finally, the signally brutal treatment of the prisoners, the trial was swollen into a proc s monstre, the eyes of the European press were upon it and the curiosity and suspicions of the public were fully aroused. The Prussian government had put itself in a position in which for decency s sake the prosecution was simply obliged to produce evidence and the jury to demand it. The jury itself had to face another jury, the jury of public opinion. To rectify its first blunder, the government was forced into a second one. The police, who acted as examining magistrates during the preliminary investigation, had to appear as witnesses during the trial. By the side of the ordinary Public Prosecutor the government had to put an extraordinary one, beside the Public Prosecutor s office the police, beside a Saedt and Seckendorf a Stieber together with his Wermuth, his griffin Greif and his little Goldheim. It was inevitable that yet another government department should intervene in court and, by virtue of the miraculous powers of the police, should continuously supply the facts whose shadows the legal prosecution had pursued in vain. The court was so thoroughly aware of the position that with the most laudable resignation the President, the judge and the prosecutor abandoned their functions to Stieber the Police Superintendent and the witness and continually disappeared behind him. Before we proceed to elucidate these revelations made by the police, revelations which form the basis of the indictable offence that the indictment board was unable to discover, one more preliminary observation remains to be made. It became evident from the papers seized from the accused, as well as from their own statements, that a German communist society had existed with a central authority originally based in London. On September 15, 1850, the Central Authority split. The majority referred to in the indictment as the Marx party moved the seat of the Central Authority to Cologne. The minority, which was later expelled from the League by the group in Cologne, established itself as an independent central authority in London and founded a separate league in London and on the continent. The indictment refers to this minority and its supporters as the Willich-Schapper party . Saedt-Seckendorf claim that the split in the London Central Authority had its origin solely in personal disagreements. Long before Saedt-Seckendorf the chivalrous Willich had spread the most vicious rumours among the London migr s about the causes of the split and had found in Herr Arnold Ruge, that fifth wheel on the state coach of European Central Democracy, and in others of the same sort, people who were willing to act as channels leading to the German and American press. The democrats realised that they could gain an easy victory over the Communists by making the chivalrous Willich the impromptu representative of the Communists. The chivalrous Willich for his part realised that the Marx party could not reveal the causes of the split without betraying the existence of a secret society in Germany and in particular exposing the Central Authority in Cologne to the paternal attention of the Prussian police. This situation no longer obtains and so we may cite a few passages from the minutes of the last session of the London Central Authority, dated September 15, 1850. In support of his motion calling for separation, Marx said inter alia the following which is given here verbatim: It is obvious that it was not for personal reasons that the Central Authority was divided. But it would be just as wrong to speak of a difference of principle. The Schapper-Willich party have never laid claim to the dignity of having their own ideas. Their own contribution is the peculiar misunderstanding of other people s ideas which they set up as dogmas and, reducing these to a phrase, they imagine to have made them their own. It would be no less incorrect to agree with the prosecution in describing the Willich-Schapper party as the party of action , unless by action one understands indolence concealed behind beerhouse bluster, simulated conspiracies and meaningless pseudo-alliances.

Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/revelations/ch01.htm

The reply to Stieber drafted by Marx was in all probability sent over the signature of another editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, most likely Wilhelm Wolff, who may have been well aware of Stieber s activity in Silesia.

Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/revelations/footnote.htm

Mr. I. Butt, in yesterday s sitting of the Commons, gave notice Why Mr. Butt is indignant only at the trafficking for money will be understood by those who remember that the legality of any other mode of trafficking was settled during last session. Since 1830 Downing-st. has been placed at the mercy of the Irish Brigade. It is the Irish members who have created and kept in place the Ministers to their mind. In 1834 they drove from the Cabinet Sir J. Graham and Lord Stanley. In 1835 they compelled William IV to dismiss the Peel Ministry and to restore the Melbourne Administration. From the general election of 1837 down to that of 1841, while there was a British majority in the Lower House opposed to that Administration, the votes of the Irish Brigade were strong enough to turn the scale and keep it in office. It was the Irish Brigade again who installed the Coalition Cabinet. With all this power of Cabinet-making, the Brigade have never prevented any infamies against their own country nor any injustice to the English people. The period of their greatest power was at the time of O'Connell, from 1834-1841. To what account was it turned? The Irish agitation was never anything but a cry for the Whigs against the Tories, in order to extort places from the Whigs. Nobody who knows anything about the so-called Lichfield-House Contract, will differ from this opinion that contract by which O'Connell was to vote for, but licensed to spout against, the Whigs on condition that he should nominate his own Magistrates in Ireland. It is time for the Irish Brigade to put off their patriotic airs. It is time for the Irish people to put off their dumb hatred of the English and call their own representatives to an account for their wrongs.

Karl Marx in New York Tribune 1854

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1854/02/21.htm

I regret deeply to be unable, for the moment at least, to leave London, and thus to be prevented from expressing verbally my feelings of pride and gratitude on receiving the invitation to sit as Honorary Delegate at the Labour Parliament. The mere assembling of such a Parliament marks a new epoch in the history of the world. The news of this great fact will arouse the hopes of the working-classes throughout Europe and America. Great Britain, of all other countries, has been developed on the greatest scale, the despotism of Capital and the slavery of Labour. In no other country have the intermediate stations between the millionaire commanding whole industrial armies and the wages-slave living only from hand to mouth so gradually been swept away from the soil. There exist here no longer, as in continental countries, large classes of peasants and artisan, almost equally dependent on their own property and their own labour. A complete divorce of property from labour has been effected in Great Britain. In no other country, therefore, the war between the two classes that constitute modern society has assumed so colossal dimensions and features so distinct and palpable. But it is precisely from these facts that the working-classes of Great Britain, before all others, are competent and called for to act as leaders in the great movement that must finally result in the absolute emancipation of Labour. Such they are from the conscious clearness of their position, the vast superiority of their numbers, the disastrous struggles of their past, and the moral strength of their present. It is the working millions of Great Britain who first have laid down the real basis of a new society modern industry, which transformed the destructive agencies of nature into the, productive power of man. The English working-classes, with invincible energies, by the sweat of their brows and brains, have called into life the material means of ennobling labour itself, and of multiplying its fruits to such a degree as to make general abundance possible. By creating the inexhaustible productive powers of modern industry they have fulfilled the first condition of the emancipation of Labour. They have now to realise its other condition. They have to free those wealth-producing powers from the infamous shackles of monopoly, and subject them to the joint control of the producers, who, till now, allowed the very products of their hands to turn against them and be transformed into as many instruments of their own subjugation. The labouring classes have conquered nature; they have now to conquer man. To succeed in this attempt they do not want strength, but the organisation of their common strength, organisation of the labouring classes on a national scale such, I suppose, is the great and glorious end aimed at by the Labour Parliament. If the Labour Parliament proves true to the idea that called it into life, some future historian will have to record that there existed in the year 1854 two Parliaments in England, a Parliament at London, and a Parliament at Manchester a Parliament of the rich, and a Parliament of the poor but that men sat only in the Parliament of the men and not in the Parliament of the masters.

Works of Karl Marx 1854

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1854/03/09.htm

A singularity of English tragedy, so repulsive to French feelings that Voltaire used to call Shakespeare a drunken savage, is its peculiar mixture of the sublime and the base, the terrible and the ridiculous, the heroic and the burlesque. But nowhere does Shakespeare devolve upon the down the task of speaking the prologue of a heroic drama. This invention was reserved for the Coalition Ministry. Mylord Aberdeen has performed, if not the English Clown, at least the Italian Pantaloon. All great historical movements appear, to the superficial observer, finally to subside into the farce, or at least the common-place. But to commence with this is a feature peculiar alone to the tragedy entitled, War with Russia, the prologue of which was recited on Friday evening in both Houses of Parliament, where the Ministry s address in answer to the Ministry s message was simultaneously discussed and unanimously adopted, to be handed over to the Queen yesterday afternoon, sitting upon her throne in Buckingham Palace.

Marx Engels on Art and Literature

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1854/03/17.htm

Simultaneously with the English declaration, Louis Napoleon has communicated a similar message to his Senate and Corps L gislatif. The declaration of war against Russia could no longer be delayed, after Captain Blackwood, the bearer of the Anglo-French ultimatissimum to the Czar, had returned, on Saturday last, with the answer that Russia would give to that paper no answer at all. The mission of Capt. Blackwood, however, has not been altogether a gratuitous one. It has afforded to Russia the month of March, that most dangerous epoch of the year, to Russian arms. The publication of the secret correspondence between the Czar and the English Government, instead of provoking a burst of public indignation against the latter, has incredibile dictu the signal for the press, both weekly and daily, for congratulating England on the possession of so truly national a Ministry. I understand, however, that a meeting will be called together for the purpose of opening the eyes of a blinded British public on the real conduct of the Government. It is to be held on Thursday next in the Music Hall, Store-st.; and Lord Ponsonby, Mr. Layard, Mr. Urquhart, etc., are expected to take part in the proceedings. The Hamburger Correspondent has the following: It is a curious fact that the same evening on which the Royal Message was delivered in the Commons, the Government suffered their first defeat in the present session; the second reading of the Poor-Settlement and Removal bill having, notwithstanding the efforts of the Government, been adjourned to the 28th of April, by a division of 209 to 183. The person to whom the Government is indebted for this defeat, is no other than my Lord Palmerston. We are informed that on the 12th inst. a treaty of triple alliance was signed between France, England and Turkey, but that, notwithstanding the personal application of the Sultan to the Grand Mufti, the latter supported by the corps of the Ulemas, refused to issue his fetva sanctioning the stipulation about the changes in the situation of the Christians in Turkey, as being in contradiction with the precepts of the Koran. This intelligence must be looked upon as being the more important, as it caused Lord Derby to make the following observation: The Times of to-day, while declaring that the policy of the Government is directly opposed to that of Lord Derby adds: In order to understand both the nature of the relations between the Turkish Government and the spiritual authorities of Turkey, and the difficulties in which the former is at present involved, with respect to the question of a protectorate over the Christian subjects of the Porte, that question which ostensibly lies at the bottom of all the actual complications in the East, it is necessary to cast a retrospective glance at its past history and development. The Koran and the Mussulman legislation emanating from it reduce the geography and ethnography of the various people to the simple and convenient distinction of two nations and of two countries; those of the Faithful and of the Infidels. The Infidel is harby, i.e. the enemy. Islamism proscribes the nation of the Infidels, constituting a state of permanent hostility between the Mussulman and the unbeliever. In that sense the corsair-ships of the Berber States were the holy fleet of Islam. How, then, is the existence of Christian subjects of the Porte to be reconciled with the Koran? Constantinople having surrendered by capitulation, as in like manner has the greater portion of European Turkey, the Christians there enjoy the privilege of living as rayahs, under the Turkish Government. This privilege they have exclusively by virtue of their agreeing to accept the Mussulman protection. It is, therefore, owing to this circumstance alone, that the Christians submit to be governed by the Mussulmans according to Mussulman law, that the patriarch of Constantinople, their spiritual chief, is at the same time their political representative and their Chief Justice. Wherever, in the Ottoman Empire, we find an agglomeration of Greek rayahs; the Archbishops and Bishops are by law members of the Municipal Councils, and, under the direction of the patriarch, [watch] over the repartition of the taxes imposed upon the Greeks. The patriarch is responsible to the Porte as to the conduct of his co-religionists. Invested with the right of judging the rayahs of his Church, he delegates this right to the metropolitans and bishops, in the limits of their dioceses, their sentences being obligatory for the executive officers, kadis, etc., of the Porte to carry out. The punishments which they have the right to pronounce are fines, imprisonment, the bastinade, and exile. Besides, their own church gives them the power of excommunication. Independent of the produce of the fines, they receive variable taxes on the civil and commercial law-suits. Every hierarchic scale among the clergy has its moneyed price. The patriarch pays to the Divan a heavy tribute in order to obtain his investiture, but he sells, in his turn, the archbishoprics and bishoprics to the clergy of his worship. The latter indemnify themselves by the sale of subaltern dignities and the tribute exacted from the popes. These, again, sell by retail the power they have bought from their superiors, and traffic in all acts of their ministry, such as baptisms, marriages, divorces, and testaments. It is evident from this expos that this fabric of theocracy over the Greek Christians of Turkey, and the whole structure of their society, has its keystone in the subjection of the rayah under the Koran, which, in its turn, by treating them as infidels i.e., as a nation only in a religious sense sanctioned the combined spiritual and temporal power of their priests. Then, if you abolish their subjection under the Koran by a civil emancipation, you cancel at the same time their subjection to the clergy, and provoke a revolution in their social, political and religious relations, which, in the first instance, must inevitably hand them over to Russia. If you supplant the Koran by a code civil, you must occidentalize the entire structure of Byzantine society. Having described the relations between the Mussulman and his Christian subject, the question arises, what are the relations between the Mussulman and the unbelieving foreigner? As the Koran treats all foreigners as foes, nobody will dare to present himself in a Mussulman country without having taken his precautions. The first European merchants, therefore, who risked the chances of commerce with such a people, contrived to secure themselves an exceptional treatment and privileges originally personal, but afterward extended to their whole nation. Hence the origin of capitulations. Capitulations are imperial diplomas, letters of privilege, octroyed by the Porte to different European nations, and authorizing their subjects to freely enter Mohammedan countries, and there to pursue in tranquillity their affairs, and to practice their worship. They differ from treaties in this essential point, that they are not reciprocal acts contradictorily debated between the contracting parties, and accepted by them on the condition of mutual advantages and concessions. On the contrary, the capitulations are one-sided concessions on the part of the Government granting them, in consequence of which they may be revoked at its pleasure. The Porte has, indeed, at several times nullified the privileges granted to one nation, by extending them to others; or repealed them altogether by refusing to continue their application. This precarious character of the capitulations made them an eternal source of disputes, of complaints on the part of Embassadors, and of a prodigious exchange of contradictory notes and firmans revived at the commencement of every new reign. It was from these capitulations that arose the right of a protectorate of foreign powers, not over the Christian subjects of the Porte the rayahs but over their co-religionists visiting Turkey or residing there as foreigners. The first power that obtained such a protectorate was France. The capitulations between France and the Ottoman Porte made in 1535, under Soliman the Great and Francis I; in 1604 under Ahmed I and Henry IV; and in 1673 under Mohammed IV and Louis XIV, were renewed, confirmed, recapitulated, and augmented in the compilation of 1740, called ancient and recent capitulations and treaties between the Court of France and the Ottoman Porte, renewed and augmented in the year 1740, A.D., and 1153 of the Hegira, translated (the first official translation sanctioned by the Porte) at Constantinople by M. Deval; Secretary Interpreter of the King, and his first Dragoman at the Ottoman Porte. Art. 32 of this agreement constitutes the right of France to a protectorate over all monasteries professing the Frank religion to whatever nation they may belong, and of the Frank visitors of the Holy Places. Russia was the first power that, in 1774, inserted the capitulation, imitated after the example of France, into a treaty the treaty of Kainardji. Thus, in 1802, Napoleon thought fit to make the existence and maintenance of the capitulation the subject of an article of treaty, and to give it the character of synallagmatic contract. In what relation then does the question of the Holy Places stand with the protectorate? The question of the Holy Shrines is the question of a protectorate over the religious Greek Christian communities settled at Jerusalem, and over the buildings possessed by them on the holy ground, and especially over the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It is to be understood that possession here does not mean proprietorship, which is denied to the Christians by the Koran, but only the right of usufruct. This right of usufruct excludes by no means the other communities from worshipping in the same place; the possessors having no other privilege besides that of keeping the keys, of repairing and entering the edifices, of kindling the holy lamp, of cleaning the rooms with the broom, and of spreading the carpets, which is an Oriental symbol of possession. In the same manner now, in which Christianity culminates at the Holy Place, the question of the protectorate is there found to have its highest ascension. Parts of the Holy Places and of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher are possessed by the Latins, the Greeks, the Armenians, the Abyssinians, the Syrians, and the Copts. Between all these diverse pretendents there originated a conflict. The sovereigns of Europe who saw, in this religious quarrel, a question of their respective influences in the Orient, addressed themselves in the first instance to the masters of the soil, to fanatic and greedy Pashas, who abused their position. The Ottoman Porte and its agents adopting a most troublesome syst me de basculea gave judgment in turns favorable to the Latins, Greeks, and Armenians, asking and receiving gold from all hands, and laughing at each of them. Hardly had the Turks granted a firman, acknowledging the right of the Latins to the possession of a contested place, when the Armenians presented themselves with a heavier purse, and instantly obtained a contradictory firman. Same tactics with respect to the Greeks, who knew, besides, as officially recorded in different firmans of the Porte and hudjets (judgments) of its agents, how to procure false and apocryph titles. On other occasions the decisions of the Sultan s Government were frustrated by the cupidity and ill-will of the Pashas and subaltern agents in Syria. Then it became necessary to resume negotiations, to appoint fresh commissaries, and to make new sacrifices of money. What the Porte formerly did from pecuniary considerations, in our days it has done from fear, with a view to obtain protection and favor. Having done justice to the reclamations of France and the Latins, it hastened to make the same conditions to Russia and the Greeks, thus attempting to escape from a storm which it felt powerless to encounter. There is no sanctuary, no chapel, no stone of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, that had been left unturned for the purpose of constituting a quarrel between the different Christian communities. Around the Holy Sepulcher we find an assemblage of all the various sects of Christianity, behind the religious pretensions of whom are concealed as many political and national rivalries. Jerusalem and the Holy Places are inhabited by nations professing religions: the Latins, the Greeks, Armenians, Copts, Abyssinians, and Syrians. There are 2,000 Greeks, 1,000 Latins, 350 Armenians, 100 Copts, 20 Syrians, and 20 Abyssinians = 3,490. In the Ottoman Empire we find 13,730,000 Greeks, 2,400,000 Armenians, and 900,000 Latins. Each of these is again subdivided. The Greek Church, of which I treated above, the one acknowledging the Patriarch of Constantinople, essentially differs from the Greco-Russian, whose chief spiritual authority is the Czar; and from the Hellens, of whom the King and the Synod of Athens are the chief authorities. Similarly, the Latins are subdivided into the Roman Catholics, United Greeks, and Maronites; and the Armenians into Gregorian and Latin Armenians the same distinctions holding good with the Copts and Abyssinians. The three prevailing religious nationalities at the Holy Places are the Greeks, the Latins, and the Armenians. The Latin Church may be said to represent principally Latin races, the Greek Church, Slav, Turko-Slav, and Hellenic races; and the other churches, Asiatic and African races. Imagine all these conflicting peoples beleaguering the Holy Sepulcher, the battle conducted by the monks, and the ostensible object of their rivalry being a star from the grotto of Bethlehem, a tapestry, a key of a sanctuary, an altar, a shrine, a chair, a cushion any ridiculous precedence! In order to understand such a monastical crusade it is indispensable to consider firstly the manner of their living, and secondly, the mode of their habitation. Besides their monasteries and sanctuaries, the Christian nations possess at Jerusalem small habitations or cells, annexed to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and occupied by the monks, who have to watch day and night that holy abode. At certain periods these monks are relieved in their duty by their brethren. These cells have but one door, opening into the interior of the Temple, while the monk guardians receive their food from without, through some wicket. The doors of the Church are closed, and guarded by Turks, who don t open them except for money, and close it according to their caprice or cupidity. The quarrels between churchmen are the most venomous, said Mazarin. Now fancy these churchmen, who not only have to live upon, but live in, these sanctuaries together! To finish the picture, be it remembered that the fathers of the Latin Church, almost exclusively composed of Romans, Sardinians, Neapolitans, Spaniards and Austrians, are all of them jealous of the French protectorate, and would like to substitute that of Austria, Sardinia or Naples, the Kings of the two latter countries both assuming the title of King of Jerusalem; and that the sedentary population of Jerusalem numbers about 15,500 souls, of whom 4,000 are Mussulmans and 8,000 Jews. The Mussulmans, forming about a fourth part of the whole, and consisting of Turks, Arabs and Moors, are, of course, the masters in every respect, as they are in no way affected with the weakness of their Government at Constantinople. Nothing equals the misery and the sufferings of the Jews at Jerusalem, inhabiting the most filthy quarter of the town, called hareth-el-yahoud, the quarter of dirt, between the Zion and the Moriah, where their synagogues are situated the constant objects of Mussulman oppression and intolerance, insulted by the Greeks, persecuted by the Latins, and living only upon the scanty alms transmitted by their European brethren. The Jews, however, are not natives, but from different and distant countries, and are only attracted to Jerusalem by the desire of inhabiting the Valley of Jehosaphat, and to die in the very places where the redemptor is to be expected. To make these Jews more miserable, England and Prussia appointed, in 1840, an Anglican bishop at Jerusalem, whose avowed object is their conversion. He was dreadfully thrashed in 1845, and sneered at alike by Jews, Christians and Turks. He may, in fact, be stated to have been the first and only cause of a union between all the religions at Jerusalem. It will now be understood why the common worship of the Christians at the Holy Places resolves itself into a continuance of desperate Irish rows between the diverse sections of the faithful; but that, on the other hand, these sacred rows merely conceal a profane battle, not only of nations but of races; and that the Protectorate of the Holy Places which appears ridiculous to the Occident but all important to the Orientals is one of the phases of the Oriental question incessantly reproduced, constantly stifled, but never solved.

Karl Marx in New-York Herald Tribune 1854

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1854/03/28.htm

The agitators of Preston, the great fomentors of the strike the men who pretended to form a new estate of the realm, and to be the nursing fathers of the Labor Parliament, have at length received a check. Some dozen of them have been arrested and examined before the local magistrates on a charge of conspiracy, released on bail and sent before the Liverpool assizes. Such are the words in which The Morning Post announces an event which I was prevented from writing about earlier by the pressure of other matter. The charge against the leaders rests upon the fact that the masters had sent to Manchester and induced men to come down to Preston. They were mostly Irishmen. The people met them at the railway station, where they presented a scene of misery and wretchedness. About fifty-four of them were persuaded to go to the Farmer s Arms where they were regaled all day, and, having consented to return, were escorted in the evening to the railway station amidst the exclamations of 15,000 persons. The employers got hold of seven of these people and brought them back to Preston to convict Mr. Cowell and his colleagues of conspiracy. Now, if we consider the [real facts] of the case, there remains no doubt on the question who are the real conspirators. In 1847 the Preston cotton lords reduced wages on a solemn promise to restore them as soon as trade should have become brisk. In 1853, the year of prosperity, they refused to keep their word. The working men of four mills struck, and were supported by the contributions of the remaining at work. The masters now conspired together that they would lock their mills, and entered each into a 5,000 bond to enforce their conspiracy. The operatives then appealed for support to the other towns of Lancashire, and that support was given. The employers had sent emissaries to persuade and incite the cotton lords of other towns to lock out their hands, and succeeded in their endeavor. Not content with this, a vast subs[cription was] opened among them to counterbalance the [subscription] of the operatives. When they found that all these efforts were of no avail, they sent their agents far and near to induce laborers and their families, needlewomen, and paupers from the work-houses of England and Ir[eland to come] to Preston. Finding the surplus did not flow in fast enough for their wishes, they tried to provoke the people to a breach of the peace. They aggravated them by their insolence. They forbade meetings in the Marsh, but the people held meetings in Blackstone Edge and other interdicted localities. They introduced one hundred new police, they swore in special constables, they turned out the fire-brigade, they kept troops under arms, and went so far as to read the riot act in order to provoke a riot. Such was the conspiracy of the masters [but] they were defeated in each of their attempts. Notwithstanding these facts, an indictment of conspiracy is charged, not against the masters, but against the men. Besides, there is a special case bringing the masters under the law of conspiracy. The men of a certain factory resumed the work. The masters committee and the men s committee alike called for explanations. The men published a placard to the effect that they had gone to work on condition of payment at a certain rate. The masters committee threatened proceedings against the master of that mill to recover 5,000 as penalty on a bond given to support the masters strike. The mill-owner thereupon said something which, being a flat contradiction of [the] men s statement, occasioned them all to withdraw. If [making] of this bond of 5,000 was a conspiracy in the terms of the law, the menace to enforce it was still more so. But this is not all. The very indictment of the men s leaders was brought about by a conspiracy committed by the magisterial benches at Preston. According to The Times itself, the magistrates got up evidence, sought for it, brought up their surplus slaves in cabs to their council chamber, dreading the publicity of the town hall, there to arrange their evidence, and there, in the dead of night to pounce on their intended victims. The expectations of these little Napoleons of Lancashire [were,] however, set at naught by the good sense of the working people, who neither allowed themselves to be provoked into a breach of peace, nor to be frightened into [submission] to the dictates of the Preston parvenus. A public meeting was held in London on Wednesday night in St. Martin s Hall, Long Acre, for the purpose of affording the working classes of the metropolis an opportunity of expressing their opinion of the conduct of the Preston masters. The following two resolutions were unanimously accepted:

Karl Marx in the New York Daily Tribune 1854

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1854/03/31.htm

The eyes of the working classes are now fully opened: they begin to cry: Our St. Petersburg is at Preston! Indeed, the last eight months have seen a strange spectacle in the town a standing army of 14,000 men and women subsidized by the trades unions and workshops of all parts of the United Kingdom, to fight out a grand social battle for mastery with the capitalists, and the capitalists of Preston, on their side, held up by the capitalists of Lancashire. Whatever other shapes this social struggle may hereafter assume, we have seen only the beginning of it. It seems destined to nationalize itself and present phases never before seen in history; for it must be borne in mind that though temporary defeat may await the working classes, great social and economical laws are in operation which must eventually insure their triumph.

Karl Marx in the New York Daily Tribune 1854

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1854/08/01a.htm

The revolution in Spain has now so far taken on the appearance of a permanent condition that, as our correspondent at London [A. Pulszky] has informed us, the wealthy and conservative classes have begun to emigrate and to seek security in France. This is not surprising; Spain has never adopted the modern French fashion, so generally in vogue in 1848, of beginning and accomplishing a revolution in three days. Her efforts in that line are complex and more prolonged. Three years seems to be the shortest limit to which she restricts herself, while her revolutionary cycle sometimes expands to nine. Thus her first revolution in the present century extended from 1808 to 1814; the second from 1820 to 1823; and the third from 1834 to 1843. How long the present one will continue, or in what it will result, it is impossible for the keenest politician to foretell; but it is not much to say that there is no other part of Europe, not even Turkey and the Russian war, which offers so profound an interest to the thoughtful observer, as does Spain at this instant. Insurrectionary risings are as old in Spain as that sway of court favorites against which they are usually directed. Thus in the middle of the fifteenth century the aristocracy revolted against King Juan II and his favorite, Don Alvaro de Luna. In the fifteenth century still more serious commotions took place against King Henry IV and the head of his camatilla, Don Juan de Pacheco, Marquis de Villena. In the seventeenth century the people at Lisbon tore to pieces Vasconcellos, the Sartorius of the Spanish Viceroy in Portugal, as they did at Catalonia with Santa Coloma, the favorite of Philip IV. At the end of the same century, under the reign of Carlos II, the people of Madrid rose against the Queen s camarilla, composed of the Countess de Berlepsch and the Counts Oropesa and Melgar, who had imposed on all provisions entering the capital an oppressive duty, which they shared among themselves. The people marched to the royal palace, forced the King to appear on the balcony, and himself to denounce the Queen s camarilla. They then marched to the palaces of the Counts Oropesa and Melgar, plundered them, destroyed them by fire, and tried to lay hold of their owners, who, however, had the good luck to escape, at the cost of perpetual exile. The event which occasioned the insurrectionary rising in the fifteenth century was the treacherous treaty which the favorite of Henry IV, the Marquis de Villena, had concluded with the King of France, according to which Catalonia was to be surrendered to Louis XI. Three centuries later, the treaty of Fontainebleau, concluded on October 27, 1807, by which the favorite of Carlos IV and the minion of his Queen, Don Manuel Godoy, the Prince of Peace, contracted with Bonaparte for the partition of Portugal and the entrance of the French armies into Spain, caused a popular insurrection at Madrid against Godoy, the abdication of Carlos IV, the assumption of the throne by Ferdinand VII, his son, the entrance of the French army into Spain, and the following war of independence. Thus the Spanish war of independence commenced with a popular insurrection against the camarilla, then personified in Don Manuel Godoy, just as the civil war of the fifteenth century commenced with the rising against the camarilla, then personified in the Marquis de Villena. So, too, the revolution of 1854 commenced with the rising against the camarilla, personified in the Count San Luis. Notwithstanding these ever-recurring insurrections, there has been in Spain, up to the present century, no serious revolution, except the war of the Holy League in the times of Carlos I, or Charles V, as the Germans call him. The immediate pretext, as usual, was then furnished by the clique who, under the auspices of Cardinal Adrian, the Viceroy, himself a Fleming, exasperated the Castilians by their rapacious insolence, by selling the public offices to the highest bidder, and by open traffic in law-suits. The opposition against the Flemish camarilla was only at the surface of the movement. At its bottom was the defense of the liberties of medieval Spain against the encroachments of modern absolutism. The material basis of the Spanish monarchy having been laid by the, union of Aragon, Castile and Granada, under Ferdinand the Catholic, and Isabella I, Charles I attempted to transform that still feudal monarchy into an absolute one. Simultaneously he attacked the two pillars of Spanish liberty, the Cortes and the Ayuntamientos the former a modification of the ancient Gothic concilia, and the latter transmitted almost without interruption from the Roman times, the Ayuntamientos exhibiting the mixture of the hereditary and elective character proper to the Roman municipalities. As to municipal self-government, the towns of Italy, of Provence, Northern Gaul, Great Britain, and part of Germany, offer a fair similitude to the then state of the Spanish towns; but neither the French States General, nor the British Parliaments of the Middle Ages, are to be compared with the Spanish Cortes. There were circumstances in the formation of the Spanish kingdom peculiarly favorable to the limitation of royal power. On the one side, small parts of the Peninsula were recovered at a time, and formed into separate kingdoms, during the long struggles with the Arabs. Popular laws and customs were engendered in these struggles. The successive conquests, being principally effected by the nobles, rendered their power excessive, while they diminished the royal power. On the other hand, the inland towns and cities rose to great consequence, from the necessity people found themselves under of residing together in places of strength, as a security against the continual irruptions of the Moors; while the peninsular formation of the country, and constant intercourse with Provence and Italy, created first-rate commercial and maritime cities on the coast. As early as the fourteenth century, the cities formed the most powerful part in the Cortes, which were composed of their representatives, with those of the clergy and the nobility. It is also worthy of remark, that the slow recovery from Moorish dominion through an obstinate struggle of almost eight hundred years, gave the Peninsula, when wholly emancipated, a character altogether different from that of cotemporaneous Europe, Spain finding itself, at the epoch of European resurrection, with the manners of the Goths and the Vandals in the North, and with those of the Arabs in the South. Charles I having returned from Germany, where the imperial dignity had been bestowed upon him, the Cortes assembled at Valladolid, in order to receive his oath to the ancient laws and to invest him with the crown. Charles, declining to appear, sent commissioners who, he pretended, were to receive the oath of allegiance on the part of the Cortes. The Cortes refused to admit these commissioners to their presence, notifying the monarch that, if he did not appear and swear to the laws of the country, he should never be acknowledged as King of Spain. Charles thereupon yielded; he appeared before the Cortes and took the oath as historians say, with a very bad grace. The Cortes on this occasion told him: You must know, Se or, that the King is but the paid servant of the nation. Such was the beginning of the hostilities between Charles I and the towns. In consequence of his intrigues, numerous insurrections broke out in Castile, the Holy League of Avila was formed, and the united towns convoked the assembly of the Cortes at Tordesillas, whence, on October 20, 1520, a protest against the abuses was addressed to the King, in return for which he deprived all the deputies assembled at Tordesillas of their personal rights. Thus civil war had become inevitable; the commoners appealed to arms; their soldiers under the command of Padilla seized the fortress of Torre Lobaton, but were ultimately defeated by superior forces at the battle of Villalar on April 23, 1521. The heads of the principal conspirators rolled on the scaffold, and the ancient liberties of Spain disappeared. Several circumstances conspired in favor of the rising power of absolutism. The want of union between the different provinces deprived their efforts of the necessary strength; but it was, above all, the bitter antagonism between the classes of the nobles and the citizens of the towns which Charles employed for the degradation of both. We have already mentioned that since the fourteenth century the influence of the towns was prominent in the Cortes, and since Ferdinand the Catholic, the Holy Brotherhood (Santa Hermandad) had proved a powerful instrument in the hands of the towns against the Castilian nobles, who accused them of encroachments on their ancient privileges and jurisdiction. The nobility, therefore, were eager to assist Carlos I in his project of suppressing the Holy League. Having crushed their armed resistance, Carlos occupied himself with the reduction of the municipal privileges of the towns, which, rapidly declining in population, wealth and importance, soon lost their influence in the Cortes. Carlos now turned round upon the nobles, who had assisted him in putting down the liberties of the towns, but who themselves retained a considerable political importance. Mutiny in his army for want of pay obliged him, in 1539, to assemble the Cortes, in order to obtain a grant of money. Indignant at the misapplication of former subsidies to operations foreign to the interests of Spain, the Cortes refused all supplies. Carlos dismissed them in a rage; and, the nobles having insisted on a privilege of exemption from taxes, he declared that those who claimed such a right could have no claim to appear in the Cortes, and consequently excluded them from that assembly. This was the death-blow of the Cortes, and their meetings were henceforth reduced to the performance of a mere court ceremony. The third element in the ancient constitution of the Cortes, viz: the clergy, enlisted since Ferdinand the Catholic under the banner of the Inquisition, had long ceased to identify its interests with those of feudal Spain. On the contrary, by the Inquisition, the Church was transformed into the most formidable tool of absolutism. If after the reign of Carlos I the decline of Spain, both in a political and social aspect, exhibited all those symptoms of inglorious and protracted putrefaction so repulsive in the worst times of the Turkish Empire, under the Emperor at least the ancient liberties were buried in a magnificent tomb. This was the time when Vasco N es de Balboa planted the banner of Castile upon the shores of Darien, Cort s in Mexico, and Pizarro in Peru; when Spanish influence reigned supreme in Europe, and the Southern imagination of the Iberians was bewildered with visions of Eldorados, chivalrous adventures, and universal monarchy. Then Spanish liberty disappeared under the clash of arms, showers of gold, and the terrible illuminations of the auto-da-fe. But how are we to account for the singular phenomenon that, after almost three centuries of a Habsburg dynasty, followed by a Bourbon dynasty either of them quite sufficient to crush a people the municipal liberties of Spain more or less survive? that in the very country where of all the feudal states absolute monarchy first arose in its most unmitigated form, centralization has never succeeded in taking root? The answer is not difficult. It was in the sixteenth century that were formed the great monarchies which established themselves everywhere on the downfall of the conflicting feudal classes the aristocracy and the towns. But in the other great States of Europe absolute monarchy presents itself as a civilizing center, as the initiator of social unity. There it was the laboratory in which the various elements of society were so mixed and worked, as to allow the towns to change the local independence and sovereignty of the Middle Ages for the general rule of the middle classes, and the common sway of civil society. In Spain, on the contrary, while the aristocracy sunk into degradation without losing their worst privilege, the towns lost their medieval power without gaining modern importance. Since the establishment of absolute monarchy they have vegetated in a state of continuous decay. We have not here to state the circumstances, political or economical, which destroyed Spanish commerce, industry, navigation and agriculture. For the present purpose it is sufficient to simply recall the fact. As the commercial and industrial life of the towns declined, internal exchanges became rare, the mingling of the inhabitants of different provinces less frequent, the means of communication neglected, and the great roads gradually deserted. Thus the local life of Spain, the independence of its provinces and communes, the diversified state of society originally based on the physical configuration of the country, and historically developed by the detached manner in which the several provinces emancipated themselves from the Moorish rule, and formed little independent commonwealths was now finally strengthened and confirmed by the economical revolution which dried up the sources of national activity. And while the absolute monarchy found in Spain material in its very nature repulsive to centralization, it did all in its power to prevent the growth of common interests arising out of a national division of labor and the multiplicity of internal exchanges the very basis on which alone a uniform system of administration and the rule of general laws can he created. Thus the absolute monarchy in Spain, bearing but a superficial resemblance to the absolute monarchies of Europe in general, is rather to he ranged in a class with Asiatic forms of government. Spain, like Turkey, remained an agglomeration of mismanaged republics with a nominal sovereign at their head.. Despotism changed character in the different provinces with the arbitrary interpretation of the general laws by viceroys and governors; but despotic as was the government it did not prevent the provinces from subsisting with different laws and customs, different coins, military banners of different colors, and with their respective systems of taxation. The oriental despotism attacks municipal self-government only when opposed to its direct interests, but is very glad to allow those institutions to continue so long as they take off its shoulders the duty of doing something and spare it the trouble of regular administration. Thus it happened that Napoleon, who, like all his cotemporaries, considered Spain as an inanimate corpse, was fatally surprised at the discovery that when the Spanish State was dead, Spanish society was full of life, and every part of it overflowing with powers of resistance. By the treaty of Fontainebleau he had got his troops to Madrid; by alluring the royal family into an interview at Bayonne he had forced Carlos IV to retract his abdication, and then to make over to him his dominions; and he had intimidated Ferdinand VII into a similar declaration. Carlos IV, his Queen and the Prince of Peace conveyed to Compi gne, Ferdinand VII and his brothers imprisoned in the castle of Valen ay, Bonaparte conferred the throne of Spain on his brother Joseph, assembled a Spanish junta at Bayonne, and provided them with one of his ready-made constitutions. Seeing nothing alive in the Spanish monarchy except the miserable dynasty which he had safely locked up, he felt quite sure of this confiscation of Spain. But, only a few days after his coup de main he received the news of an insurrection at Madrid. Murat, it is true, quelled that tumult by killing about 1,000 people; but when this massacre became known, an insurrection broke out in Asturias, and soon afterward embraced the whole monarchy. It is to be remarked that this first spontaneous rising originated with the people, while the better classes had quietly submitted to the foreign yoke. Thus it is that Spain was prepared for her more recent revolutionary career, and launched into the struggles which have marked her development in the present century. The facts and influences we have thus succinctly detailed still act in forming her destinies and directing the impulses of her people. We have presented them as necessary not only to an appreciation of the present crisis, but of all she has done and suffered since the Napoleonic usurpation a period now of nearly fifty years not without tragic episodes and heroic efforts, indeed, one of the most touching and instructive chapters in all modern history.

Revolutionary Spain by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1854/revolutionary-spain/ch01.htm

We have already laid before our readers a survey of the earlier revolutionary history of Spain, as a means of understanding and appreciating the developments which that nation is now offering to the observation of the world. Still more interesting, and perhaps equally valuable as a source of present instruction, is the great national movement that attended the expulsion of the Bonapartes, and restored the Spanish Crown to the family in whose possession it yet remains. But to rightly estimate that movement, with its heroic episodes and memorable exhibition of vitality in a people supposed to be moribund, we must go back to the beginning of the Napoleonic assault on the nation. The efficient cause of the whole was perhaps first stated in the treaty of Tilsit. which was concluded on July 7, 1807, and is said to have received its complement through a secret convention, signed by Prince Kurakin and Talleyrand. It was published in the Madrid Gaceta on August 25, 1812, containing, among other things, the following stipulations: Supposing this treaty to be authentic, and its authenticity is scarcely disputed, even in the recently published memoirs of King Joseph Bonaparte, it formed the true reason for the French invasion of Spain in 1808, while the Spanish commotions of that time would seem to be linked by secret threads with the destinies of Turkey. When, consequent upon the Madrid massacre and the transactions at Bayonne, simultaneous insurrections broke out in Asturias, Galicia, Andalusia and Valencia, and a French army occupied Madrid, the four northern fortresses of Pamplona, San Sebastian, Figueras and Barcelona had been seized by Bonaparte under false pretenses; part of the Spanish army had been removed to the island of F nen, destined for an attack upon Sweden; lastly, all the constituted authorities, military, ecclesiastic, judicial and administrative, as well as the aristocracy, exhorted the people to submit to the foreign intruder. But there was one circumstance to compensate for all the difficulties of the situation. Thanks to Napoleon, the country was rid of its King, its royal family, and its government. Thus the shackles were broken which might else have prevented the Spanish people from displaying their native energies. How little they were able to resist the French under the command of their Kings and under ordinary circumstances, had been proved by the disgraceful campaigns of 1794 and 1795. Napoleon had summoned the most distinguished persons in Spain to meet him at Bayonne, and to receive from his hands a King and a Constitution. With very few exceptions, they appeared there. On June 7, 1808, King Joseph received at Bayonne a deputation of the grandees of Spain, in whose name the Duke of Infantado, Ferdinand VII s most intimate friend, addressed him as follows: The royal Council of Castile assured poor Joseph that he was the principal branch of a family destined by Heaven to reign. Not less abject was the congratulation of the Duke del Parque, at the head of a deputation representing the army. On the following day the same persons published a proclamation, enjoining general submission to the Bonaparte dynasty. On July 7, 1808, the new Constitution was signed by 91 Spaniards of the highest distinction; among them Dukes, Counts and Marquises, as well as several heads of the religious orders. During the discussions on that Constitution, all they found cause to remonstrate against was the repeal of their old privileges and exemptions. The first Ministry and the first royal household of Joseph were the same persons who had formed the ministry and the royal household of Ferdinand VII. Some of the upper classes considered Napoleon as the providential regenerator of Spain; others as the only bulwark against revolution; none believing in the chances of national resistance. Thus from the very beginning of the Spanish War of Independence the high nobility and the old Administration lost all hold upon the middle classes and upon the people, because of their having deserted them at the commencement of the struggle. On the one side stood the Afrancesados (the Frenchified), and on the other the nation. At Valladolid, Cartagena, Granada, Jaen, San Lucar, Carolina, Ciudad Rodrigo, Cadiz and Valencia, the most prominent members of the old Administration governors, generals, and other marked personages presumed to be French agents and obstacles to the national movement fell victims to the infuriated people. Everywhere the existing authorities were displaced. Some months previous to the rising, on March 19, 1808, the popular commotions that had taken place at Madrid, intended to remove from their posts El Choricero (the sausage-maker, a nickname of Godoy) and his obnoxious satellites. This object was now gained on a national scale, and with it the internal revolution was accomplished so far as contemplated by the masses, and as not connected with resistance to the foreign intruder. On the whole, the movement appeared to be directed rather against revolution than for it. National by proclaiming the independence of Spain from France, it was at the same time dynastic by opposing the beloved Ferdinand VII to Joseph Bonaparte; reactionary by opposing the old institutions, customs, and laws to the rational innovations of Napoleon; superstitious and fanatical by opposing holy religion, against what was called French Atheism, or the destruction of the special privileges of the Roman Church. The priests, terrified by the fate that had fallen upon their brethren in France, fostered the popular passions in the interest of self-preservation. All the wars of independence waged against France bear in common the stamp of regeneration, mixed up with reaction; but nowhere to such a degree as in Spain. The King appeared in the imagination of the people in the light of a romantic prince, forcibly abused and locked up by a giant robber. The most fascinating and popular epochs of their past were encircled with the holy and miraculous traditions of the war of the cross against the crescent; and a great portion of the lower classes were accustomed to wear the livery of mendicants and live upon the sanctified patrimony of the Church. A Spanish author, Don Jos Clemente Carnicero, published in the years 1814 and 16, the following series of works: Napoleon, the True Don Quixote of Europe; Principal Events of the Glorious Revolution of Spain; The Inquisition Rightly Re-established; it is sufficient to note the titles of these books to understand this one aspect of the Spanish revolution which we meet with in the several manifestoes of the provincial juntas, all of them proclaiming the King, their holy religion, and the country, and some even telling the people that However, if the peasantry, the inhabitants of small inland cities, and the numerous army of the mendicants, frocked and unfrocked, all of them deeply imbued with religious and political prejudices, formed the great majority of the national party, it contained on the other hand an active and influential minority which considered the popular rising against the French invasion as the signal given for the political and social regeneration of Spain. This minority was composed of the inhabitants of the seaports, commercial towns, and part of the provincial capitals, where, under the reign of Charles V the material conditions of modern society had developed themselves to a certain degree. They were strengthened by the more cultivated portion of the upper and middle classes, authors, physicians, lawyers, and even priests, for whom the Pyrenees had formed no sufficient barrier against the invasion of the philosophy of the XVIIIth century. As a true manifesto of this faction may be considered the famous memorandum of Jovellanos on the improvements of agriculture and the agrarian law, published in 1795, and drawn up by order of the royal Council of Castile. There was, finally, the youth of the middle classes, such as the students of the University, who had eagerly adopted the aspirations and principles of the French Revolution, and who, for a moment, even expected to see their country regenerated by the assistance of France. So long as the common defense of the country alone was concerned, the two great elements composing the national party remained in perfect union. Their antagonism did not appear till they met together in the Cortes, on the battleground of a new Constitution there to be drawn up. The revolutionary minority, in order to foment the patriotic spirit of the people, had not hesitated themselves to appeal to the national prejudices of the old popular faith. Favorable to the immediate objects of national resistance, as these tactics might have appeared, they could not fail to prove fatal to this minority when the time had arrived for the conservative interests of the old society to intrench themselves behind these very prejudices and popular passions, with a view of defending themselves against the proper and ulterior plans of the revolutionists. When Ferdinand left Madrid upon the summons of Bonaparte, he had established a Supreme Junta of government under the Presidency of the Infante Don Antonio. But in May this junta had already disappeared. There existed then no central government, and the insurgent towns formed juntas of their own, presided over by those of the provincial capitals. These provincial juntas constituted, as it were, so many independent governments, each of which set on foot an army of its own. The Junta of Representatives at Oviedo declared that the entire sovereignty had devolved into their hands, proclaimed war against Bonaparte, and sent deputies to England to conclude an armistice. The same was done afterward by the Junta of Seville. It is a curious fact that by the mere force of circumstances these exalted Catholics were driven to an alliance with England, a power which the Spaniards were accustomed to look upon as the incarnation of the most damnable heresy, and little better than the Grand Turk himself. Attacked by French Atheism, they were thrown into the arms of British Protestantism. No wonder that Ferdinand VII, on his return to Spain, declared, in a decree re-establishing the Holy Inquisition, that one of the causes The provincial juntas which had so suddenly sprung into life, altogether independent of each other, conceded a certain, but very slight and undefined degree of ascendancy to the Supreme Junta of Seville, that city being regarded as the capital of Spain while Madrid was in the hands of the foreigner. Thus a very anarchical kind of federal government was established, which the shock of opposite interests, local jealousies, and rival influences made a rather bad instrument for bringing unity into the military command, and to combine the operations of a campaign. The addresses to the people issued by these several juntas, while displaying all the heroic vigor of a people suddenly awakened from a long lethargy and roused by an electric shock into a feverish state of activity, are not free from that pompous exaggeration, that style of mingled buffoonery and bombast, and that redundant grandiloquence which caused Sismondi to put upon Spanish literature the epithet of Oriental. They exhibit no less the childish vanity of the Spanish character, the members of the juntas for instance assuming the title of Highness and loading themselves with gaudy uniforms. There are two circumstances connected with these juntas the one showing the low standard of the people at the time of their rising, while the other was detrimental to the progress of the revolution. The juntas were named by general suffrage; but the very zeal of the lower classes displayed itself in obedience. They generally elected only their natural superiors, the provincial nobility and gentry backed by clergymen and very few notabilities of the middle class. So conscious were the people of their own weakness that they limited their initiative to forcing the higher classes into resistance against the invader, without pretending to share in the direction of that resistance. At Seville, for instance, the first thought of the people was that the parochial clergy and the heads of the Convents should assemble to choose the members of the junta. Thus the juntas were filled with persons chosen on account of their previous station, and very far from being revolutionary leaders. On the other hand, the people when appointing these authorities did not think either of limiting their power or of fixing a term to their duration. The juntas, of course, thought only of extending the one and of perpetuating the other. Thus these first creations of the popular impulse at the commencement of the revolution remained during its whole course as so many dykes against the revolutionary current when threatening to overflow. On July 20, 1808, when Joseph Bonaparte entered Madrid, 14,000 French, under Generals Dupont and Vedel, were forced by Casta os to lay down their arms at Bail n, and Joseph a few days afterward had to retire from Madrid to Burgos. There were two events besides which greatly encouraged the Spaniards; the one being the expulsion of Lefebvre from Saragossa by General Palafox, and the other the arrival of the army of the Marquis de la Romana, at Coru a, with 7,000 men, who had embarked from the island of F nen in spite of the French, in order to come to the assistance of their country. It was after the battle of Bail n that the revolution came to a head, and that part of the high nobility who had accepted the Bonaparte dynasty or wisely kept back, came forward to join the popular cause an advantage to that cause of a very doubtful character.

Revolutionary Spain by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1854/revolutionary-spain/ch02.htm

The division of power among the provincial juntas had saved Spain from the first shock of the French invasion under Napoleon, not only by multiplying the resources of the country, but also by putting the invader at a loss for a mark whereat to strike; the French being quite amazed at the discovery that the center of Spanish resistance was nowhere and everywhere. Nevertheless, shortly after the capitulation of Bail n and the evacuation of Madrid by Joseph, the necessity of establishing some kind of central government became generally felt. After the first successes, the dissensions between the provincial juntas had grown so violent that Seville, for instance, was barely prevented by General Casta os from marching against Granada. The French army which, with the exception of the forces under Marshal Bessi res, had withdrawn to the line of the Ebro in the greatest confusion, so that, if vigorously harassed, it would then have easily been dispersed, or at least compelled to repass the frontier, was thus allowed to recover and to take up a strong position. But it was, above all, the bloody suppression of the Bilbao insurrection by General Merlin, which evoked a national cry against the jealousies of the juntas and the easy laissez-faire of the commanders. The urgency of combining military movements; the certainty that Napoleon would soon reappear at the head of a victorious army, collected from the banks of the Niemen, the Oder, and the shores of the Baltic; the want of a general authority for concluding treaties of alliance with Great Britain or other foreign powers, and for keeping up the connection with, and receiving tribute from Spanish America; the existence at Burgos of a French central power, and the necessity of setting up altar against altar all these circumstances conspired to force the Seville junta to resign, however reluctantly, its ill-defined and rather nominal supremacy, and to propose to the several provincial juntas to select each from its own body two deputies, the assembling of whom was to constitute a Central Junta, while the provincial juntas were to remain invested with the internal management of their respective districts, but under due subordination to the General Government. Thus the Central Junta, composed of 35 deputies from provincial juntas (34 for the Spanish juntas, and one for the Canary Islands), met at Aranjuez on September 26, 1808, just one day before the potentates of Russia and Germany prostrated themselves before Napoleon at Erfurt. Under revolutionary, still more than under ordinary circumstances, the destinies of armies reflect the true nature of the civil government. The Central Junta, charged with the expulsion of the invaders from the Spanish soil, was driven by the success of the hostile arms from Madrid to Seville, and from Seville to Cadiz, there to expire ignominiously. Its reign was marked by a disgraceful succession of defeats, by the annihilation of the Spanish armies, and lastly by the dissolution of regular warfare into guerrilla exploits. As said Urquijo, a Spanish nobleman, to Cuesta, the Captain-General of Castile, on April 3, 1808: If then, the actual state of Spain at the epoch of the French invasion threw the greatest possible difficulties in the way of creating a revolutionary center, the very composition of the Central Junta incapacitated it from proving a match for the terrible crisis in which the country found itself placed. Being too numerous and too fortuitously mixed for an executive government, they were too few to pretend to the authority of National Convention. The mere fact of their power having been delegated from the provincial juntas rendered them unfit for overcoming the ambitious propensities, the ill will, and the capricious egotism of those bodies. These juntas the members of which, as we have shown in a former article, were elected on the whole in consideration of the situation they occupied in the old society, rather than of their capacity to inaugurate a new one sent in their turn to the Central Spanish grandees, prelates, titularies of Castile, ancient ministers, high civil and military officials, instead of revolutionary upstarts. At the outset the Spanish revolution failed by its endeavor to remain legitimate and respectable. The two most marked members of the Central Junta, under whose banners its two great parties ranged themselves, were Floridablanca and Jovellanos, both of them martyrs of Godoy s persecution, former ministers, valetudinarians, and grown old in the regular and pedantic habits of the procrastinating Spanish regime, the solemn and circumstantial slowness of which had become proverbial even at the time of Bacon, who once exclaimed, May death reach me from Spain: it will then arrive at a late hour! Floridablanca and Jovellanos represented an antagonism, but an antagonism belonging to that part of the eighteenth century which preceded the era of the French Revolution; the former a plebeian bureaucrat, the latter an aristocratic philanthropist; Floridablanca, a partisan and a practicer of the enlightened despotism represented by Pombal, Frederick II and Joseph II; Jovellanos, a friend of the people , hoping to raise them to liberty by an anxiously wise succession of economic laws, and by the literary propaganda of generous doctrines; both opposed to the traditions of feudalism, the one by trying to disentangle the monarchical power, the other by seeking to rid civil society of its shackles. The part acted by either in the history of their country corresponded with the diversity of their opinions. Floridablanca ruled supreme as the Prime Minister of Charles III, and his rule grew despotic according to the measure in which he met with resistance. Jovellanos, whose ministerial career under Charles IV was but short-lived, gained his influence over the Spanish people, not as a minister, but as a scholar; not by decrees, but by essays. Floridablanca, when the storm of the times carried him to the head of a revolutionary Government, was an octogenarian, unshaken only in his belief in despotism, and his distrust of popular spontaneity. When delegated to Madrid he left with the Municipality of Murcia a secret protest, declaring that he had only ceded to force and to the fear of popular assassinations, and that he signed this protocol with the express view to prevent King Joseph from ever finding fault with his acceptance of the people s mandate. Not satisfied with returning to the traditions of his manhood, he retraced such steps of his ministerial past as he now judged to have been too rash. Thus, he who had expelled the Jesuits from Spain was hardly installed in the Central Junta, when he caused it to grant leave for their return in a private capacity. If he acknowledged any change to have occurred since his time, it was simply this: that Godoy, who had banished him, and had dispossessed the great Count of Floridablanca of his governmental omnipotence, was now again replaced by that same Count of Floridablanca, and driven out in his turn. This was the man whom the Central Junta chose as its President, and whom its majority recognized as an infallible leader. Jovellanos, who commanded the influential minority of the Central Junta, had also grown old, and lost much of his energy in a long and painful imprisonment inflicted upon him by Godoy. But even in his best times he was not a man of revolutionary action, but rather a well-intentioned reformer, who, from over-niceness as to the means, would never have dared to accomplish an end. In France, he would perhaps have gone the length of Mounier or Lally-Tollendal, but not a step further. In England, he would have figured as a popular member of the House of Lords. In insurrectionized Spain, he was fit to supply the aspiring youth with ideas, but practically no match even for the servile tenacity of a Floridablanca. Not altogether free from aristocratic prejudices, and therefore with a strong leaning toward the Anglomania of Montesquieu, this fair character seemed to prove that if Spain had exceptionally begot a generalizing mind, she was unable to do it except at the cost of individual energy, which she could only possess for local affairs. It is true that the Central Junta included a few men headed by Don Lorenzo Calvo de Rosas, the delegate of Saragossa who, while adopting the reform views of Jovellanos, spurred on at the same time to revolutionary action. But their numbers were too few and their names too unknown to allow them to push the slow State-coach of the Junta out of the beaten track of Spanish ceremonial. This power, so clumsily composed, so nervelessly constituted, with such outlived reminiscences at its head, was called upon to accomplish a revolution and to beat Napoleon. If its proclamations were as vigorous as its deeds were weak, it was due to Don Manuel Quintana, a Spanish poet, whom the Junta had the taste to appoint as their secretary and to intrust with the writing of their manifestoes. Like Calder n s pompous heroes who, confounding conventional distinction with genuine greatness, used to announce themselves by a tedious enumeration of all their titles, the Junta occupied itself in the first place with decreeing the honors and decorations due to its exalted position. Their President received the predicate of Highness, the other members that of Excellency, while to the Junta in corpore was reserved the tide of Majesty. They adopted a species of fancy uniform resembling that of a general, adorned their breasts with badges representing the two worlds, and voted themselves a yearly salary of 120,000 reals. It was a true idea of the old Spanish school, that, in order to make a great and dignified entrance upon the historical stage of Europe, the chiefs of insurgent Spain ought to wrap themselves in theatrical costumes. We should transgress the limits of these sketches by entering into the internal history of the Junta and the details of its administration. For our end it will suffice to answer two questions. What was its influence on the development of the Spanish revolutionary movement? What on the defense of the country? These two questions answered, much that until now has appeared mysterious and unaccountable in the Spanish revolutions of the nineteenth century will have found its explanation. At the outset, the majority of the Central Junta thought it their main duty to suppress the first revolutionary transports. Accordingly they tightened anew the old trammels of the press and appointed a new Grand Inquisitor, who was happily prevented by the French from resuming his functions. Although the greater part of the real property of Spain was then locked up in mortmain in the entailed estates of the nobility, and the unalienable estates of the Church the Junta ordered the selling of the mortmains, which had already begun, to be suspended, threatening even to amend the private contracts affecting the ecclesiastical estates that had already been sold. They acknowledged the national debt, but took no financial measure to free the civil list from a world of burdens, with which a secular succession of corrupt governments had encumbered it, to reform their proverbially unjust, absurd and vexatious fiscal system, or to open to the nation new productive resources, by breaking through the shackles of feudalism.

Revolutionary Spain by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1854/revolutionary-spain/ch03.htm

Already at the time of Philip V, Francisco Benito la Soledad had said: All the evils of Spain are derived from the abogados (lawyers). At the head of the mischievous magisterial hierarchy of Spain was placed the Consejo Real of Castile. Sprung up in the turbulent times of the Don Juans and the Enriques, strengthened by Philip II, who discovered in it a worthy complement of the Santo Oficio [the Holy Office of the Inquisition], it had improved by the calamities of the times and the weakness of the later kings to usurp and accumulate in its hands the most heterogeneous attributes, and to add to its functions of Highest Tribunal those of a legislator and of an administrative superintendent of all the kingdoms of Spain. Thus it surpassed in power even the French Parliament which it resembled in many points, except that it was never to be found on the side of the people. Having been the most powerful authority in ancient Spain, the Consejo Real was, of course, the most implacable foe to a new Spain, and to all the recent popular authorities threatening to cripple its supreme influence. Being the great dignitary of the order of the lawyers and the incarnate guaranty of all its abuses and privileges, the Consejo naturally disposed of all the numerous and influential interests vested in Spanish jurisprudence. It was therefore a power with which the revolution could enter into no compromise, but which had to be swept away unless it should be allowed to sweep away the revolution in its turn. As we have seen in a former article, the Consejo had prostituted itself before Napoleon, and by that act of treason had lost all hold upon the people. But on the day of their assumption of office the Central Junta were foolish enough to communicate to the Consejo their constitution, and to ask for its oath of fidelity, after having received which they declared they would dispatch the formula of the same oath to all the other authorities of the kingdom. By this inconsiderate step, loudly disapproved by all the revolutionary party, the Consejo became convinced that the Central Junta wanted its support; it thus recovered from its despondency, and, after an affected hesitation of some days, tendered a malevolent submission to the Junta, backing its oath by an expression of its own reactionary scruples exhibited in its advice to the Junta to dissolve, by reducing its number to three or five members, according to Ley 3, Partida 2, Titulo 15; and to order the forcible extinction of the provincial juntas. After the French had returned to Madrid and dispersed the Consejo Real, the Central Junta, not contented with their first blunder, had the fatuity to resuscitate the Consejo by creating the Consejo Reunido a reunion of the Consejo Real with all the other wrecks of the ancient royal councils. Thus the Junta spontaneously created for the counter-revolution a central power, which, rivalling their own power, never ceased to harass and counteract them with its intrigues and conspiracies, seeking to drive them to the most unpopular steps, and then, with a show of virtuous indignation to denounce them to the impassioned contempt of the people. It hardly need be mentioned that, having first acknowledged and then re-established the Consejo Real, the Central Junta was unable to reform anything, either in the organization of Spanish tribunals, or in their most vicious civil and criminal legislation. That, notwithstanding the predominance in the Spanish rising of the national and religious elements, there existed, in the two first years, a most decided tendency to social and political reforms, is proved by all the manifestations of the provincial juntas of that time, which, though composed as they mostly were of the privileged classes, never neglected to denounce the ancient r gime and to hold out promises of radical reform. The fact is further proved by the manifestoes of the Central Junta. In their first address to the nation, dated 26th October, 1808, they say: In their address dated Seville, 28th October, 1809, they say: There seems to have existed in the Central Junta a most original division of labor the Jovellanos party being allowed to proclaim and to protocol the revolutionary aspirations of the nation, and the Floridablanca party reserving to themselves the pleasure of giving them the lie direct, and of opposing to revolutionary fiction counter-revolutionary fact. For us, however, the important point is to prove from the very confessions of the provincial juntas deposited with the Central, the often-denied fact of the existence of revolutionary aspirations at the epoch of the first Spanish rising. The manner in which the Central Junta made use of the opportunities for reforms afforded by the good will of the nation, the pressure of events, and the presence of immediate danger, may be inferred from the influence exercised by their Commissioners in the several provinces they were sent to. One Spanish author candidly tells us that the Central Junta, not overflowing with capacities, took good care to retain the eminent members at the center, and to dispatch those who were good for nothing to the circumference. These Commissioners were invested with the power of presiding over the provincial juntas, and of representing the Central in the plenitude of its attributes. To quote only some instances of their doings: General Romana, whom the Spanish soldiers used to call Marquis de las Romerias, from his perpetual marches and counter-marches fighting never taking place except when he happened to be out of the way this Romana, when beaten by Soult out of Galicia, entered Asturias, and as a Commissioner of the Central. His first business was to pick a quarrel with the provincial Junta of Oviedo, whose energetic and revolutionary measures had drawn down upon them the hatred of the privileged classes. He went the length of dissolving and replacing it by persons of his own invention. General Ney, informed of these dissensions, in a province where the resistance against the French had been general and unanimous, instantly marched his forces into Asturias, expelled the Marquis de las Romerias, entered Oviedo and sacked it during three days. The French having evacuated Galicia at the end of 1809, our Marquis and Commissioner of the Central Junta entered Coru a, united in his person all public authority, suppressed the district juntas, which had multiplied with the insurrection, and in their places appointed military governors, threatening the members of those juntas with persecution, actually persecuting the patriots, affecting a supreme benignity toward all who had embraced the cause of the invader, and proving in all other respects a mischievous, impotent, capricious blockhead. And what had been the shortcomings of the district and provincial juntas of Galicia? They had ordered a general recruitment without exemption of classes or persons; they had levied taxes upon the capitalists and proprietors; they had lowered the salaries of public functionaries; they had commanded the ecclesiastical corporations to keep at their disposition the revenues existing in their chests. In one word, they had taken revolutionary measures. From the time of the glorious Marquis de las Romerias, Asturias and Galicia, the two provinces most distinguished by their general resistance to the French, withheld from partaking in the war of independence, whenever released from immediate danger of invasion. In Valencia, where new prospects appeared to open as long as the people were left to themselves and to chiefs of their own choosing, the revolutionary spirit was broken down by the influence of the Central Government. Not contented to place that province under the generalship of one Don Jos Caro, the Central Junta dispatched as their own Commissioner, the Baron Labazora. This Baron found fault with the provincial junta because it had resisted certain superior orders, and cancelled their decree by which the appointments to vacant canonship, ecclesiastical benefices, and commandries had been judiciously suspended and the revenues destined for the benefit of the military hospitals. Hence bitter contests between the Central Junta and that of Valencia; hence, at a later epoch, the sleep of Valencia under the liberal administration of Marshal Suchet; hence its eagerness to proclaim Ferdinand VII on his return against the then revolutionary Government. At Cadiz, the most revolutionary place in Spain at the epoch, the presence of a commissioner of the Central Junta, the stupid and conceited Marquis de Viliel, caused an insurrection to break out on the 22nd and 23rd of February, 1809, which, if not timely shifted to the war of independence, would have had the most disastrous consequences. There exists no better sample of the discretion exhibited by the Central Junta in the appointment of their own Commissioners, than that of the delegate to Wellington, Senor Lozano de Torres, who, while humbling himself in servile adulation before the English General, secretly informed the Junta that the General s complaints on his want of provisions were altogether groundless. Wellington, having found out the double-tongued wretch, chased him ignominiously from his camp. The Central Junta were placed in the most fortunate circumstances for realizing what they had proclaimed in one of their addresses to the Spanish nation. At the commencement of their reign the French had not yet obtained possession of one-third of Spain. The ancient authorities they found either absent or prostrated by their connivance with the intruder, or dispersed at his bidding. There was no measure of social reform, transferring property and influence from the Church and the aristocracy to the middle class and the peasants, which the cause of defending the common country could not have enabled them to carry. They had the same good luck as the French Comit du salut public that the convulsion within was backed by the necessities of defense against aggressions from without; moreover they had before them the example of the bold initiative which certain provinces had already been forced into by the pressure of circumstances. But not satisfied with hanging as a dead-weight on the Spanish revolution they actually worked in the sense of the counter-revolution, by re-establishing the ancient authorities, by forging anew the chains which had been broken, by stifling the revolutionary fire wherever it broke out, by themselves doing nothing and by preventing others from doing anything. During their stay at Seville, on July 20, 1809, even the English Tory Government thought necessary to address them a note strongly protesting against their counter-revolutionary course apprehending that they were likely to suffocate the public enthusiasm. It has been remarked somewhere that Spain endured all the evils of revolution without acquiring revolutionary strength. If there be any truth in this remark, it is a sweeping condemnation passed upon the Central Junta. We have thought it the more necessary to dwell upon this point, as its decisive importance has never been understood by any European historian. Exclusively under the reign of the Central Junta, it was possible to blend with the actualities and exigencies of national defense the transformation of Spanish society, and the emancipation of the native spirit, without which any political constitution must dissolve like a phantom at the slightest combat with real life. The Cortes were placed in quite opposite circumstances they themselves driven back to an insulated spot of the Peninsula, cut off from the main body of the monarchy during two years by a besieging French army, and representing ideal Spain while real Spain was conquered or fighting. At the time of the Cortes Spain was divided into two parts. At the Isla de Leon, ideas without action in the rest of Spain, action without ideas. At the time of the Central Junta, on the contrary, particular weakness, incapacity and ill will were required on the part of the Supreme Government to draw a line of distinction between the Spanish war and the Spanish revolution. The Cortes, therefore, failed, not, as French and English writers assert, because they were revolutionaries, but because their predecessors had been reactionists and had missed the proper season of revolutionary action. Modern Spanish writers, offended by the Anglo-French critics, have nevertheless proved unable to refute them, and still wince under the bon mot of the Abb de Pradt: The Spanish people resemble the wife of Sganarelle who wanted to be beaten.

Revolutionary Spain by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1854/revolutionary-spain/ch04.htm

The Central Junta failed in the defense of their country, because they failed in their revolutionary mission. Conscious of their own weakness, of the unstable tenor of their power, and of their extreme unpopularity, how could they have attempted to answer the rivalries, jealousies, and overbearing pretensions of their generals common to all revolutionary epochs, but by unworthy tricks and petty intrigues? Kept, as they were, in constant fear and suspicion of their own military chiefs, we may give full credit to Wellington when writing to his brother, the Marquis of Wellesley, on September 1, 1809: In revolutionary times, when all ties of subordination are loosened, military discipline can only be restored by civil discipline sternly weighing upon the generals. As the Central Junta, from its incongruous complexion, never succeeded in controlling the generals, the generals always failed in controlling the soldiers, and to the end of the war the Spanish army never reached an average degree of discipline and subordination. This insubordination was kept up by the want of food, clothing, and all the other material requisites of an army for the morale of an army, as Napoleon called it, depends altogether on its material condition. The Central Junta was unable regularly to provide for the army, because the poor poet Quintana s manifestoes would not do in this instance, and to add coercion to their decrees they must have recurred to the same revolutionary measures which they had condemned in the provinces. Even the general enlistment without respect to privilege and exemptions, and the facility granted to all Spaniards to obtain every grade in the army, was the work of the provincial juntas, and not of the Central Junta. If the defeats of the Spanish armies were thus produced by the counter-revolutionary incapacities of the Central Junta, these disasters in their turn still more depressed that Government, and by making it the object of popular contempt and suspicion, increased its dependence upon presumptuous but incapable military chiefs. The Spanish standing army, if everywhere defeated, nevertheless presented itself at all points. More than twenty times dispersed, it was always ready again to show front to the enemy, and frequently reappeared with increased strength after a defeat. It was of no use to beat them, because, quick to flee, their loss in men was generally small, and as to the loss of the field, they did not care about it. Retiring disorderly to the sierras, they were sure to reassemble and reappear when least expected, strengthened by new reinforcements, and able, if not to resist the French armies, at least to keep them in continual movement, and to oblige them to scatter their forces. More fortunate than the Russians, they did not even need to die in order to rise from the dead. The disastrous battle at Oca a, November 19, 1809, was the last great pitched battle which the Spaniards fought; from that time they confined themselves to guerrilla warfare. The mere fact of the abandonment of regular warfare proves the disappearance of the national before the local centers of Government. When the disasters of the standing army became regular, the rising of the guerrillas became general, and the body of the people, hardly thinking of the national defeats, exulted in the local successes of their heroes. In this point at least the Central Junta shared the popular delusion. Fuller accounts were given in the Gaceta of an affair of guerrillas than of the battle of Oca a. As Don Quixote had protested with his lance against gunpowder, so the guerrillas protested against Napoleon, only with different success. There are three periods to be distinguished in the history of the guerrilla warfare. In the first period the population of whole provinces took up arms and made a partisan warfare, as in Galicia and Asturias. In the second period, guerrilla bands formed of the wrecks of the Spanish armies, of Spanish deserters from the French armies, of smugglers, etc., carried on the war as their own cause, independently of all foreign influence and agreeably to their immediate interest. Fortunate events and circumstances frequently brought whole districts under their colors. As long as the guerrillas were thus constituted, they made no formidable appearance as a body, but were nevertheless extremely dangerous to the French. They formed the basis of an actual armament of the people. As soon as an opportunity for a capture offered itself, or a combined enterprise was meditated, the most active and daring among the people came out and joined the guerrillas. They rushed with the utmost rapidity upon their booty, or placed themselves in order of battle, according to the object of their undertaking. It was not uncommon to see them standing out a whole day in sight of a vigilant enemy, in order to intercept a carrier or to capture supplies. It was in this way that the younger Mina captured the Viceroy of Navarra, appointed by Joseph Bonaparte, and that Julian made a prisoner of the Commandant of Ciudad Rodrigo. As soon as the enterprise was completed, everybody went his own way, and armed men were seen scattering in all directions; but the associated peasants quietly returned to their common occupation without as much as their absence having been noticed. Thus the communication on all the roads was closed. Thousands of enemies were on the spot, though not one could be discovered. No courier could be dispatched without being taken; no supplies could set out without being intercepted; in short, no movement could be effected without being observed by a hundred eyes. At the same time, there existed no means of striking at the root of a combination of this kind. The French were obliged to be constantly armed against an enemy who, continually flying, always reappeared, and was everywhere without being actually seen, the mountains serving as so many curtains. In their third period, the guerrillas aped the regularity of the standing army, swelled their corps to the number of from 3,000 to 6,000 men, ceased to be the concern of whole districts, and fell into the hands of a few leaders, who made such use of them as best suited their own purposes. This change in the system of the guerrillas gave the French, in their contests with them, considerable advantage. Rendered incapable by their great numbers to conceal themselves, and to suddenly disappear without being forced into battle, as they had formerly done, the guerrilleros were now frequently overtaken, defeated, dispersed, and disabled for a length of time from offering any further molestation. By comparing the three periods of guerrilla warfare with the political history of Spain, it is found that they represent the respective degrees into which the counter-revolutionary spirit of the Government had succeeded in cooling the spirit of the people. Beginning with the rise of whole populations, the partisan war was next carried on by guerrilla bands, of which whole districts formed the reserve and terminated in corps francs continually on the point of dwindling into banditti, or sinking down to the level of standing regiments. Estrangement from the Supreme Government, relaxed discipline, continual disasters, constant formation, decomposition, and recomposition during six years of the cadrez must have necessarily stamped upon the body of the Spanish army the character of praetorianism, making them equally ready to become the tools or the scourges of their chiefs. The generals themselves had necessarily participated in, quarrelled with, or conspired against the Central Government, and always thrown the weight of their sword into the political balance. Thus Cuesta, who afterwards seemed to win the confidence of the Central Junta at the same rate that he lost the battles of the country, had begun by conspiring with the Consejo Real and by arresting the Leonese deputies to the Central Junta. General Morla himself, a member of the Central Junta, went over into the Bonapartist camp, after he had surrendered Madrid to the French. The coxcombical Marquis de las Romerias, also a member of the Junta, conspired with the vainglorious Francisco Palafox, the wretched Montijo, and the turbulent Junta of Seville against it. The Generals Casta os, Blake, La Bisbal (an O'Donnell) figured and intrigued successively at the times of the Cortes as regents, and the Captain-General of Valencia, Don Javier El o, surrendered Spain finally to the mercies of Ferdinand VII. The praetorian element was certainly more developed with the generals than with their troops. On the other hand, the army and guerrilleros which received during the war part of their chiefs, like Porlier, Lacy, Eroles and Villacampa, from the ranks of distinguished officers of the line, while the line in its turn afterward received guerrilla chiefs, like Mina, Empecinado, etc. were the most revolutionized portion of Spanish society, recruited as they were from all ranks, including the whole of the fiery, aspiring and patriotic youth, inaccessible to the soporific influence of the Central Government; emancipated from the shackles of the ancient regime; part of them, like Riego, returning after some years captivity in France. We are, then, not to be surprised at the influence exercised by the Spanish army in subsequent commotions; neither when taking the revolutionary initiative, nor when spoiling the revolution by praetorianism. As to the guerrillas, it is evident that, having for some years figured upon the theater of sanguinary contests, taken to roving habits, freely indulged all their passions of hatred, revenge, and love of plunder, they must, in times of peace, form a most dangerous mob, always ready at a nod, in the name of any party or principle, to step forward for him who is able to give them good pay or to afford them a pretext for plundering excursions.

Revolutionary Spain by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1854/revolutionary-spain/ch05.htm

On September 24, 1810, the Extraordinary Cortes assembled on the Island of Leon; on February 20, 1811, they removed their sittings thence to Cadiz; on March 19, 1812, they promulgated the new Constitution; and on September 20, 1813, they closed their sittings, three years from the period of their opening. The circumstances under which this Congress met are without parallel in history. While no legislative body had ever before gathered its members from such various parts of the globe, or pretended to control such immense territories in Europe, America and Asia, such a diversity of races and such a complexity of interests nearly the whole of Spain was occupied by the French, and the Congress itself, actually cut off from Spain by hostile armies, and relegated to a small neck of land, had to legislate in the sight of a surrounding and besieging army. From the remote angle of the Isla Gaditana they undertook to lay the foundation of a new Spain, as their forefathers had done from the mountains of Covadonga and Sobrarbe. How are we to account for the curious phenomenon of the Constitution of 1812, afterward branded by the crowned heads of Europe, assembled at Verona, as the most incendiary invention of Jacobinism, having sprung up from the head of old monastic and absolutionist Spain at the very epoch when she seemed totally absorbed in waging a holy war against the Revolution? How, on the other hand, are we to account for the sudden disappearance of this same Constitution, vanishing like a shadow like la sombra de un sue o," say the Spanish historians when brought into contact with a living Bourbon? If the birth of that Constitution is a riddle, its death is no less so. To solve the enigma, we propose to commence with a short review of this same Constitution of 1812, which the Spaniards tried again to realize at two subsequent epochs, first during the period from 1820-23, and then in 1836. The Constitution of 1812 consists of 384 articles and comprehends the following 10 divisions: 1. On the Spanish nation and the Spaniards. 2. On the territory of Spain; its religion, government, and on Spanish citizens. 3. On the Cortes. 4. On the King. 5. On the tribunals and administration of justice in civil and criminal matters. 6. On the interior government of the provinces and communes. 7. On the taxes. 8. On the national military forces. 9. On public education. 10. On the observance of the Constitution, and mode of proceeding to make alterations therein. Proceeding from the principle that the Constitution, nevertheless, proclaims a division of powers, according to which: The basis of the national representation is mere population, one deputy for every 70,000 souls. The Cortes consists of one house, viz: the commons, the election of the deputies being by universal suffrage. The elective franchise is enjoyed by all Spaniards, with the exception of menial servants, bankrupts and criminals. After the year 1830, no citizen can enjoy this right who cannot read and write. The election is, however, indirect, having to pass through the three degrees of parochial, district and provincial elections. There is no defined property qualification for a deputy. It is true that according to Art. 92, it is necessary, in order to be eligible as a deputy to the Cortes, to possess a proportionate annual income, proceeding from real personal property, but Art. 93 suspends the preceding article, until the Cortes in their future meetings declare the period to have arrived in which it shall take effect. The King has neither the right to dissolve nor prorogue the Cortes, who annually meet at the capital on the first of March, without being convoked, and sit at least three months consecutively. A new Cortes is elected every second year, and no deputy can sit in two Cortes consecutively; i.e., one can only be re-elected after an intervening Cortes of two years. No deputy can ask or accept rewards, pensions, or honors from the King. The secretaries of state, the councillors of state, and those fulfilling offices of the royal household, are ineligible as deputies to the Cortes. No public officer employed by Government shall be elected deputy to the Cortes from the province in which he discharges his trust. To indemnify the deputies for their expenses, the respective provinces shall contribute such daily allowances as the Cortes, in the second year of every general deputation, shall point out for the deputation that is to succeed it. The Cortes cannot deliberate in the presence of the King. In those cases where the ministers have any communication to make to the Cortes in the name of the King, they may attend the debates when, and in such manner as, the Cortes may think fit, and may speak therein, but they cannot be present at a vote. The King, the Prince of Asturias, and the Regents have to swear to the Constitution before the Cortes, who determine any question of fact or right that may occur in the order of the succession to the Crown, and elect a Regency if necessary. The Cortes are to approve, previous to ratification, all treaties of offensive alliances, or of subsidies and commerce, to permit or refuse the admission of foreign troops into the kingdom, to decree the creation and suppression of offices in the tribunals established by the Constitution, and also the creation or abolition of public offices; to determine every year, at the recommendation of the King, the land and sea forces in peace and in war, to issue ordinances to the army, the fleet, and the national militia, in all their branches; to fix the expenses of the public administration; to establish annually the taxes, to take property on loan, in cases of necessity, upon the credit of the public funds, to decide on all matters respecting money, weights and measures; to establish a general plan of public education, to protect the political liberty of the press, to render real and effective the responsibility of the ministers, etc. The King enjoys only a suspensive veto, which he may exercise during two consecutive sessions, but if the same project of new law should be proposed a third time, and approved by the Cortes of the following year, the King is understood to have given his assent, and has actually to give it. Before the Cortes terminate a session, they appoint a permanent committee, consisting of seven of their members, sitting in the capital until the meeting of the next Cortes, endowed with powers to watch over the strict observance of the Constitution and administration of the laws; reporting to the next Cortes any infraction it may have observed, and empowered to convoke an extraordinary Cortes in critical times. The King cannot quit the kingdom without the consent of the Cortes. He requires the consent of the Cortes for contracting a marriage. The Cortes fix the annual revenue of the King s household. The only Privy Council of the King is the Council of State, in which the ministers have no seat, and which consists of forty persons, four ecclesiastics, four grandees of Spain, and the rest formed by distinguished administrators, all of them chosen by the King from a list of one hundred and twenty persons nominated by the Cortes; but no actual deputy can be a councilor, and no councilor can accept offices, honors, or employment from the King. The councilors of state cannot be removed without sufficient reasons, proved before the Supreme Court of justice. The Cortes fix the salary of these councilors whose opinion the King will hear upon all important matters, and who nominate the candidates for ecclesiastical and judicial places. In the sections respecting the judicature, all the old consejos are abolished, a new organization of tribunals is introduced, a Supreme Court of Justice is established to try the ministers when impeached, to take cognizance of all cases of dismissal and suspension from office of councilors of state, and the officers of courts of justice, etc. Without proof that reconciliation has been attempted, no law-suit can be commenced. Torture, compulsion, confiscation of property are suppressed. All exceptional tribunals are abolished but the military and ecclesiastic, against the decisions of which appeals to the Supreme Court are however permitted. For the interior government of towns and communes (communes, where they do not exist, to be formed from districts with a population of 1,000 souls), Ayuntamientos shall be formed of one or more magistrates, aldermen and public councilors, to be presided over by the political chief (corregidor) and to be chosen by general election. No public officer actually employed and appointed by the King can be eligible as a magistrate, alderman or public councilor. The municipal employments shall be public duty, from which no person can be exempt without lawful reason. The municipal corporations shall discharge all their duties under the inspection of the provincial deputation. The political government of the provinces shall be placed in the governor (jefe politico) appointed by the King. This governor is connected with a deputation, over which he presides, and which is elected by the districts when assembled for the general election of the members for a new Cortes. These provincial deputations consist of seven members, assisted by a secretary paid by the Cortes. These deputations shall hold sessions for ninety days at most in every year. From the powers and duties assigned to them, they may be considered as permanent committees of the Cortes. All members of the Ayuntamientos and provincial deputations, in entering office, swear fidelity to the Constitution. With regard to the taxes, all Spaniards are bound, without any distinction whatever, to contribute, in proportion to their means, to the expenses of the State. All custom-houses shall be suppressed, except in the seaports and on the frontier. All Spaniards are likewise bound to military service, and, beside the standing army, there shall be formed corps of national militia in each province, consisting of the inhabitants of the same, in proportion to its population and circumstances. Lastly, the Constitution of 1812 cannot be altered, augmented, or corrected in any of its details, until eight years have elapsed after its having been carried into practice. When the Cortes drew up this new plan of the Spanish State, they were of course aware that such a modern political Constitution would be altogether incompatible with the old social system, and consequently, they promulgated a series of decrees, with a view to organic changes in civil society. Thus they abolished the Inquisition. They suppressed the seignorial jurisdictions; with their exclusive, prohibitive, and privative feudal privileges, i.e., those of the chase, fishery, forests, mills, etc., excepting such as had been acquired on an onerous title, and which were to be reimbursed. They abolished the tithes throughout the monarchy, suspended the nominations to all ecclesiastic prebends not necessary for the performance of divine service, and took steps for the suppression of the monasteries and the sequestration of their property. They intended to transform the immense wastelands, royal domains and commons of Spain into private property, by selling one half of them for the extinction of the public debt, distributing another part by lot as a patriotic remuneration for the disbanded soldiers of the war of independence and granting a third part, gratuitously, and also by lot, to the poor peasantry who should desire to possess but not be able to buy them. They allowed the inclosure of pastures and other real property, formerly forbidden. They repealed the absurd laws which prevented pastures from being converted into arable land or arable land converted into pasture, and generally freed agriculture from the old arbitrary and ridiculous rules. They revoked all feudal laws with respect to farming contracts, and the law according to which the successor of an entailed estate was not obliged to confirm the leases granted by his predecessor, the leases expiring with him who had granted them. They abolished the voto de Santiago, under which name was understood an ancient tribute of a certain measure of the best bread and the best wine to be paid by the laborers of certain provinces principally for the maintenance of the Archbishop and Chapter of Santiago. They decreed the introduction of a large progressive tax, etc. It being one of their principal aims to hold possession of the American colonies, which had already begun to revolt, they acknowledged the full political equality of the American and European Spaniards, proclaimed a general amnesty without any exception, issued decrees against the oppression weighing upon the original natives of America and Asia, cancelled the mitas, the repartimientos, etc., abolished the monopoly of quicksilver, and took the lead of Europe in suppressing the slave-trade. The Constitution of 1812 has been accused on the one hand for instance, by Ferdinand VII himself (see his decree of May 4, 1814) of being a mere imitation of the French Constitution of 1791 transplanted on the Spanish soil by visionaries, regardless of the historical traditions of Spain. On the other hand, it has been contended for instance, by the Abb de Pradt (De la R volution actuelle de 1'Espagne) that the Cortes unreasonably clung to antiquated formulas, borrowed from the ancient fueros, and belonging to feudal times, when the royal authority was checked by the exorbitant privileges of the grandees. The truth is that the Constitution of 1812 is a reproduction of the ancient fueros, but read in the light of the French Revolution, and adapted to the wants of modern society. The right of insurrection, for instance, is generally regarded as one of the boldest innovations of the Jacobin Constitution of 1793, but you meet this same right in the ancient Fueros of Sobrarbe, where it is called the Privilegio de la Union. You find it also in the ancient Constitution of Castile. According to the Fueros of Sobrarbe, the King cannot make peace nor declare war, nor conclude treaties, without the previous consent of the Cortes. The Permanent Committee, consisting of seven members of the Cortes, who are to watch over the strict observance of the Constitution during the prorogation of the legislative body, was of old established in Aragon, and was introduced into Castile at the time when the principal Cortes of the monarchy were united in one single body. To the period of the French invasion a similar institution still existed in the kingdom of Navarre. Touching the formation of a State Council from a list of 120 persons presented to the King by the Cortes and paid by them this singular creation of the Constitution of 1812 was suggested by the remembrance of the fatal influence exercised by the camarillas at all epochs of the Spanish monarchy. The State Council was intended to supersede the camarilla. Besides, there existed analogous institutions in the past. At the time of Ferdinand IV, for instance, the King was always surrounded by twelve commoners, designated by the cities of Castile, to serve as his privy councilors; and, in 1419, the delegates of the cities complained that their commissioners were no longer admitted into the King s Council. The exclusion of the highest functionaries and the members of the King s household from the Cortes, as well as the prohibition to the deputies to accept honors or offices on the part of the King, seems, at first view, to be borrowed from the Constitution of 1791, and naturally to flow from the modern division of powers, sanctioned by the Constitution of 1812. But, in fact, we meet not only in the ancient Constitution of Castile with precedents, but we know that the people, at different times, rose and assassinated the deputies who had accepted honors or offices from the Crown. As to the right of the Cortes to appoint regencies in case of minority, it had continually been exercised by the ancient Cortes of Castile during the long minorities of the fourteenth century. It is true that the Cadiz Cortes deprived the King of the power he had always exercised of convoking, dissolving, or proroguing the Cortes; but as the Cortes had fallen into disuse by the very manner in which the Kings improved their privileges, there was nothing more evident than the necessity of cancelling it. The alleged facts may suffice to show that the anxious limitation of the royal power the most striking feature of the Constitution of 1812 otherwise fully explained by the recent and revolting souvenirs of Godoy s contemptible despotism, derived its origin from the ancient Fueros of Spain. The Cadiz Cortes but transferred the control from the privileged estates to the national representation. How much the Spanish kings stood in awe of the ancient Fueros may be seen from the fact that when a new collection of the Spanish laws had become necessary, in 1805, a royal ordinance ordered the removal from it of all the remains of feudalism contained in the last collection of laws, and belonging to a time when the weakness of the monarchy forced the kings to enter with their vassals into compromises derogatory to the sovereign power. If the election of the deputies by general suffrage was an innovation, it must not be forgotten that the Cortes of 1812 were themselves elected by general suffrage, that all the juntas had been elected by it; that a limitation of it would, therefore, have been an infraction of a right already conquered by the people; and, lastly, that a property qualification, at a time when almost all the real property of Spain was locked up in mortmain, would have excluded the greater part of the population. The meeting of the representatives in one single house was by no means copied from the French Constitution of 1791, as the morose English Tories will have it. Our readers know already that since Charles I (the Emperor Charles V) the aristocracy and the clergy had lost their seats in the Cortes of Castile. But even at the time when the Cortes were divided into brazos (arms, branches), representing the different estates, they assembled in one single hall, separated only by their seats, and voting in common. From the provinces, in which alone the Cortes still possessed real power at the epoch of the French invasion, Navarre continued the old custom of convoking the Cortes by estates; but in the Vascongadas the altogether democratic assemblies admitted not even the clergy. Besides, if the clergy and aristocracy had saved their obnoxious privileges, they had long since ceased to form independent political bodies, the existence of which constituted the basis of the composition of the ancient Cortes. The separation of the judiciary from the executive power, decreed by the Cadiz Cortes, was demanded as early as the eighteenth century, by the most enlightened statesmen of Spain; and the general odium which the Consejo Real, from the beginning of the revolution, had concentrated upon itself, made the necessity of reducing the tribunals to their proper sphere of action universally felt. The section of the Constitution which refers to the municipal government of the communes, is a genuine Spanish offspring, as we have shown in a former article. The Cortes only re-established the old municipal system, while they stripped off its medieval character. As to the provincial deputations, invested with the same powers for the internal government of the provinces as the ayuntamientos for the administration of the communes, the Cortes modelled them in imitation of similar institutions still existing at the time of the invasion in Navarre, Biscay and Asturias. In abolishing the exemptions from the military service, the Cortes sanctioned only what had become the general practice during the war of independence. The abolition of the Inquisition was also but the sanction of a fact, as the Holy Office, although re-established by the Central junta, had not dared to resume its functions, its holy members being content with pocketing their salaries, and prudently waiting for better times. As to the suppression of feudal abuses, the Cortes went not even the length of the reforms insisted upon in the famous memorial of Jovellanos, presented in 1795 to the Consejo Real in the name of the economical society of Madrid. The ministers of the enlightened despotism of the latter part of the eighteenth century, Floridablanca and Campomanes, had already begun to take steps in this direction. Besides, it must not be forgotten that simultaneously with the Cortes, there sat a French Government at Madrid, which, in all the provinces overrun by the armies of Napoleon, had swept away from the soil all monastic and feudal institutions, and introduced the modern system of administration. The Bonapartist papers denounced the insurrection as entirely produced by the artifices and bribes of England, assisted by the monks and the Inquisition. How far the rivalry with the intruding government must have exercised a salutary influence upon the decisions of the Cortes, may be inferred from the fact that the Central Junta itself, in its decree dated September, 1809, wherein the convocation of the Cortes is announced, addressed the Spaniards in the following terms: On the other hand, we may trace in the Constitution of 1812 symptoms not to be mistaken of a compromise entered into between the liberal ideas of the eighteenth century and the dark traditions of priestcraft. It suffices to quote Art. 12, according to which or Art. 173, ordering the King to take, on his accession to the throne, the following oath before the Cortes: On a closer analysis, then, of the Constitution of 1812, we arrive at the conclusion that, so far from being a servile copy of the French Constitution of 1791, it was a genuine and original offspring of Spanish intellectual life, regenerating the ancient and national institutions, introducing the measures of reform loudly demanded by the most celebrated authors and statesmen of the eighteenth century, making inevitable concessions to popular prejudice.

Revolutionary Spain by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1854/revolutionary-spain/ch06.htm

There were some circumstances favorable to the assembling at Cadiz of the most progressive men of Spain. When the elections took place, the movement had not yet subsided, and the very disfavor which the Central Junta had incurred recommended its antagonists, who, to a great extent, belonged to the revolutionary minority of the nation. At the first meeting of the Cortes, the most democratic provinces, Catalonia and Galicia, were almost exclusively represented; the deputies from Leon, Valencia, Murcia and the Islas Baleares, not arriving till three months later. The most reactionary provinces, those of the interior, were not allowed, except in some few localities, to proceed with the elections for the Cortes. For the different kingdoms, cities and towns of old Spain, which the French armies prevented from choosing deputies, as well as for the ultramarine provinces of New Spain, whose deputies could not arrive in due time, supplementary representatives were elected from the many individuals whom the troubles of the war had driven from the provinces to Cadiz, and the numerous South Americans, merchants, natives and others, whose curiosity or the state of affairs had likewise assembled at that place. Thus it happened that those provinces were represented by men more fond of innovation, and more impregnated with the ideas of the eighteenth century, than would have been the case if they had been enabled to choose for themselves. Lastly, the circumstance of the Cortes meeting at Cadiz was of decisive influence, that city being then known as the most radical of the kingdom, more resembling an American than a Spanish town. Its population filled the galleries in the Hall of the Cortes and domineered the reactionists, when their opposition grew too obnoxious, by a system of intimidation and pressure from without. It would, however, be a great mistake to suppose that the majority of the Cortes consisted of reformers. The Cortes were divided into three parties the Serviles, the Liberales (these party denominations spread from Spain through the whole of Europe), and the Americanos, the latter voting alternately with the one or the other party, according to their particular interests. The Serviles, far superior in numbers, were carried away by the activity, zeal and enthusiasm of the Liberal minority. The ecclesiastic deputies, who formed the majority of the Servile party, were always ready to sacrifice the royal prerogative, partly from the remembrance of the antagonism of the Church to the State, partly with a view to courting popularity, in order thus to save the privileges and abuses of their caste. During the debates on the general suffrage, the one-chamber system, the no-property qualification and the suspensive veto the ecclesiastic party always combined with the more democratic part of the Liberals against the partisans of the English Constitution. One of them, the Canon Ca edo, afterward Archbishop of Burgos, and an implacable persecutor of the Liberals, addressed Se or Mufioz Torrero, also a Canon, but belonging to the Liberal party, in these terms: Into these compromises with the Church party the Liberals were forced to enter, as we have already seen from some articles of the Constitution of 1812. When the liberty of the press was discussed, the parsons denounced it as contrary to religion. After the most stormy debates, and after having declared that all persons were at liberty to publish their sentiments without special license, the Cortes unanimously admitted an amendment, which, by inserting the word political, curtailed this liberty of half its extent, and left all writings upon religious matters subject to the censure of the ecclesiastic authorities, according to the decrees of the Council of Trent. On August 18, 1813, after a decree passed against all who should conspire against the Constitution, another decree was passed, declaring that whoever should conspire to make the Spanish nation cease to profess the Catholic Roman religion should be prosecuted as a traitor, and suffer death. When the Voto de Santiago was abolished, a compensatory resolution was carried, declaring Saint Teresa de Jesus the patroness of Spain. The Liberals also took care not to propose and carry the decrees about the abolition of the Inquisition, the tithes, the monasteries, etc., till after the Constitution had been proclaimed. But from that very moment the opposition of the Serviles within the Cortes, and the clergy without, became inexorable. Having now explained the circumstances which account for the origin and the characteristic features of the Constitution of 1812, there still remains the problem to be solved of its sudden and resistless disappearance at the return of Ferdinand VII. A more humiliating spectacle has seldom been witnessed by the world. When Ferdinand entered Valencia, on April 16, 1814, In all the large towns, the Plaza Mayor, or Great Square, had been named Plaza de la Constituci n, and a stone with these words engraved on it, erected there. In Valencia this stone was removed, and a provisional stone of wood set up in its place with the inscription: Real Plaza de Fernando VII. The populace of Seville deposed all the existing authorities, elected others in their stead to all the offices which had existed under the old regime, and then required those authorities to re-establish the Inquisition. From Aranjuez to Madrid Ferdinand s carriage was drawn by the people. When the King alighted, the mob took him up in their arms, triumphantly showed him to the immense concourse assembled in front of the palace, and in their arms conveyed him to his apartments. The word Liberty appeared in large bronze letters over the entrance of the Hall of the Cortes in Madrid; the rabble hurried thither to remove it; they set up ladders, forced out letter by letter from the stone, and as each was thrown into the street, the spectators renewed their shouts of exultation. They collected as many of the journals of the Cortes and of the papers and pamphlets of the Liberals as could be got together, formed a procession in which the religious fraternities and the clergy, regular and secular, took the lead, piled up these papers in one of the public squares, and sacrificed them there as a political auto-da-fe, after which high mass was performed and the Te Deum sung as a thanksgiving for their triumph. More important perhaps since these shameless demonstrations of the town mob, partly paid for their performances, and like the Lazzaroni of Naples, preferring the wanton rule of kings and monks to the sober regime of the middle classes is the fact that the second general elections resulted in a decisive victory of the Serviles; the Constituent Cortes being replaced by the ordinary Cortes on September 20, 1813, who transferred their sittings from Cadiz to Madrid on January 15, 1814. We have shown in former articles how the revolutionary party itself had participated in rousing and strengthening the old popular prejudices, with a view to turn them into so many weapons against Napoleon. We have then seen how the Central Junta, at the only period when social changes were to be blended with measures of national defense, did all in their power to prevent them, and to suppress the revolutionary aspirations of the provinces. The Cadiz Cortes, on the contrary, cut off, during the greater part of their existence, from all connection with Spain, were not even enabled to make their Constitution and their organic decrees known, except as the French armies retired. The Cortes arrived, as it were, post factum. They found society fatigued, exhausted, suffering; the necessary product of so protracted a war, entirely carried on upon the Spanish soil; a war in which the armies, being always on the move, the Government of today was seldom that of tomorrow, while bloodshed did not cease one single day during almost six years throughout the whole surface of Spain, from Cadiz to Pamplona, and from Granada to Salamanca. It was not to be expected that such a society should be very sensible of the abstract beauties of any political constitution whatever. Nevertheless, when the Constitution was first proclaimed at Madrid, and the other provinces evacuated by the French, it was received with exultant delight, the masses being generally expecting a sudden disappearance of their social sufferings from mere change of Government. When they discovered that the Constitution was not possessed of such miraculous powers, the very overstrained expectations which had welcomed it turned into disappointment, and with these passionate Southern peoples there is but one step from disappointment to hatred. There were some particular circumstances which principally contributed to estrange the popular sympathies from the constitutional regime. The Cortes had published the severest decrees against the Afrancesados or the Josephites. The Cortes were partly driven to these decrees by the vindictive clamor of the populace and the reactionists, who at once turned against the Cortes as soon as the decrees they had wrung from them were put to execution. Upwards of 10,000 families became thus exiled. A lot of petty tyrants let loose on the provinces evacuated by the French, established their proconsular authority, and began by inquiries, prosecution, prison, inquisitorial proceedings against those compromised through adherence to the French, by having accepted offices from them, bought national property from them, etc. The Regency, instead of trying to effect the transition from the French to the national regime in a conciliatory and discreet way, did all in their power to aggravate the evils and exasperate the passions, inseparable from such changes of dominion. But why did they do so? In order to be able to ask from the Cortes a suspension of the Constitution of 1812, which, they told them, worked so very offensively. Be it remarked, en passant, that all the Regencies, these supreme executive authorities appointed by the Cortes, were regularly composed of the most decided enemies of the Cortes and their Constitution. This curious fact is simply explained by the Americans always combining with the Serviles in the appointment of the executive power, the weakening of which they considered necessary for the attainment of American independence from the mother country, since they were sure that an executive simply at variance with the sovereign Cortes would prove insufficient. The introduction by the Cortes of a single direct tax upon the rental of land, as well as upon industrial and commercial produce, excited also great discontent among the people, and still more so the absurd decrees forbidding the circulation of all Spanish specie coined by Joseph Bonaparte, and ordering its possessors to exchange it for national coin, simultaneously interdicting the circulation of French money, and proclaiming a tariff at which it was to be exchanged at the national mint. As this tariff greatly differed from that proclaimed by the French in 1808, for the relative value of French and Spanish coins, many private individuals were involved in great losses. This absurd measure also contributed to raise the price of the first necessaries, already highly above the average rates. The classes most interested in the overthrow of the Constitution of 1812 and the restoration of the old regime the grandees, the clergy, the friars and the lawyers did not fail to excite to the highest pitch the popular discontent created by the unfortunate circumstances which had marked the introduction on the Spanish soil of the constitutional regime. Hence the victory of the Serviles in the general elections of 1813. Only on the part of the army could the King apprehend any serious resistance, but General Elio and his officers, breaking the oath they had sworn to the Constitution, proclaimed Ferdinand VII at Valencia, without mentioning the Constitution. El o was soon followed by the other military chiefs. In his decree, dated May 4, 1814, in which Ferdinand VII dissolved the Madrid Cortes and cancelled the Constitution of 1812, he simultaneously proclaimed his hatred of despotism, promised to convene the Cortes under the old legal forms, to establish a rational liberty of the press, etc. He redeemed his pledge in the only manner which the reception he had met on the part of the Spanish people deserved by rescinding all the acts emanating from the Cortes, by restoring everything to its ancient footing, by re-establishing the Holy Inquisition by recalling the Jesuits banished by his grandsire, by consigning the most prominent members of the juntas, the Cortes and their adherents to the galleys, African prisons, or to exile; and, finally, by ordering the most illustrious guerrilla chiefs, Porlier and de Lacy, to be shot.

Revolutionary Spain by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1854/revolutionary-spain/ch07.htm

During the year 1819 an expeditionary army was assembled in the environs of Cadiz for the purpose of reconquering the revolted American colonies. Enrique O'Donnell, Count La Bisbal, the uncle of Leopoldo O'Donnell, the present Spanish Minister, was intrusted with the command. The former expeditions against Spanish America having swallowed up 14,000 men since 1814, and being carried out in the most disgusting and reckless manner, had grown most odious to the army, and were generally considered a malicious means of getting rid of the dissatisfied regiments. Several officers, among them Quiroga, L pez Ba os, San Miguel (the present Spanish La Fayette), O'Daly, and Arco Ag ero, determined to improve the discontent of the soldiers, to shake off the yoke, and to proclaim the Constitution of 1812. La Bisbal, when initiated into the plot, promised to put himself at the head of the movement. The chiefs of the conspiracy, in conjunction with him, fixed on July 9, 1819, as the day on which a general review of the expeditionary troops was to take place, in the midst of which act the grand blow was to be struck. At the hour of the review La Bisbal appeared, indeed, but instead of keeping his word, ordered the conspiring regiments to be disarmed, sent Quiroga and the other chiefs to prison, and dispatched a courier to Madrid, boasting that he had prevented the most alarming of catastrophes. He was rewarded with promotion and decorations, but the Court having obtained more accurate information, afterward deprived him of his command, and ordered him to withdraw to the capital. This is the same La Bisbal who, in 1814, at the time of the King s return to Spain, sent an officer of his staff with two letters to Ferdinand. Too great a distance from the spot rendering it impossible for him to observe the King s movements, and to regulate his conduct according to that of the Monarch in one letter La Bisbal made a pompous eulogy of the Constitution of 1812, on the supposition that the King would take the oath to support it. In the other, on the contrary, he represented the constitutional system as a scheme of anarchy and confusion, congratulated Ferdinand on his exterminating it, and offered himself and his army to oppose the rebels, demagogues, and enemies of the throne and altar. The officer delivered this second dispatch, which was cordially received by the Bourbon. Notwithstanding the symptoms of rebellion which had shown themselves among the expeditionary army, the Madrid Government, at the head of which was placed the Duke of San Fernando, then Foreign Minister and President of the Cabinet, persisted in a state of inexplicable apathy and inactivity, and did nothing to accelerate the expedition, or to scatter the army in different seaport towns. Meanwhile a simultaneous movement was agreed upon between Don Rafael de Riego, commanding the second battalion of Asturias, then stationed at Las Cabezas de San Juan, and Quiroga, San Miguel, and other military chiefs of the Isla de Leon, who had contrived to get out of prison. Riego s position was far the most difficult. The commune of Las Cabezas was in the center of three of the headquarters of the expeditionary army that of the cavalry at Utrera, the second division of infantry at Lebrija, and a battalion of guides at Arcos, where the commander-in-chief and the staff were established. He nevertheless succeeded, on January 1, 1820, in surprising and capturing the commander and the staff, although the battalion cantoned at Arcos was double the strength of that of Asturias. On the same day he proclaimed in that very commune the Constitution of 1812, elected a provisional alcalde, and, not content with having executed the task devolved upon him, seduced the guides to his cause, surprised the battalion of Aragon lying at Bornos, marched from Bornos on Jerez, and from Jerez on Port St. Marie, everywhere proclaiming the Constitution, till he reached the Isla de Leon, on the 7th January, where he deposited the military prisoners he had made in the fort of St. Petri. Contrary to their previous agreement Quiroga and his followers had not possessed themselves by a coup de main of the bridge of Suazo, and then of the Isla de Leon, but remained tranquil to the 2d of January, after Oltra, Riego s messenger, had conveyed to them official intelligence of the surprise of Arcos and the capture of the staff. The whole forces of the revolutionary army, the supreme command of which was given to Quiroga, did not exceed 5,000 men, and their attacks upon the gates of Cadiz having been repulsed, they were themselves shut up in the Isla de Leon. The provinces seemed rocked into lethargic slumber. During the whole month of January, at the end of which Riego, apprehending the flame of revolution might be extinguished in the Isla de Leon, formed, against the counsels of Quiroga and the other chiefs, a movable column of 1,500 men, and marched over a part of Andalusia, in presence of and pursued by a ten times stronger force than his own, proclaiming the Constitution at Algeciras, Ronda, Malaga, Cordova, etc., everywhere received by the inhabitants in a friendly way, but nowhere provoking a serious pronunciamento. Meanwhile his pursuers, consuming a whole month in fruitless marches and countermarches, seemed to desire nothing but to avoid, as much as possible, coming to close quarters with his little army. The conduct of the Government troops was altogether inexplicable. Riego s expedition, which began on January 27, 1820, terminated on March 11, he being then forced to disband the few men that still followed him. His small corps was not dispersed through a decisive battle, but disappeared from fatigue, from continual petty encounters with the enemy, from sickness and desertion. Meanwhile the situation of the insurrectionists in the Isla was by no means promising. They continued to be blocked up by sea and land, and within the town of Cadiz every declaration for their cause was suppressed by the garrison. How, then, did it happen that, Riego having disbanded in the Sierra Morena the constitutional troops on the 11th of March, Ferdinand VII was forced to swear to the Constitution, at Madrid, on the 9th of March, so that Riego really gained his end just two days before he finally despaired of his cause? The march of Riego s column had riveted anew the general attention; the provinces were all expectation, and eagerly watched every movement. Men s minds, struck by the boldness of Riego s sally, the rapidity of his march, his vigorous repulses of the enemy, imagined triumphs never gained, and aggregations and re-enforcements never obtained. When the tidings of Riego s enterprise reached the more distant provinces, they were magnified in no small degree, and those most remote from the spot were the first to declare themselves for the Constitution of 1812. So far was Spain matured for a revolution, that even false news sufficed to produce it. So, too, it was false news that produced the hurricane of 1848. In Galicia, Valencia, Saragossa, Barcelona and Pamplona, successive insurrections broke out. Enrique O'Donnell, alias the Count La Bisbal, being summoned by the King to oppose the expedition of Riego, not only offered to take arms against him, but to annihilate his little army and seize on his person. He only demanded the command of the troops cantoned in the Province of La Mancha, and money for his personal necessities. The King himself gave him a purse of gold and the requisite orders for the troops of La Mancha. But on his arrival at Oca a, La Bisbal put himself at the head of the troops and proclaimed the Constitution of 1812. The news of this defection roused the public spirit of Madrid where the revolution burst forth immediately on the intelligence of this event. The Government began then to negotiate with the revolution. In a decree, dated March 6, the King offered to convoke the ancient Cortes, assembled in Estamentos (Estates), a decree suiting no party, neither that of the old monarchy nor that of the revolution. On his return from France, he had held out the same promise and failed to redeem his pledge. During the night of the 7th, revolutionary demonstrations having taken place in Madrid, the Gaceta of the 8th published a decree by which Ferdinand VII promised to swear to the Constitution of 1812. The people having got possession of the palace on the 9th, he saved himself only by re-establishing the Madrid Ayuntamiento of 1814, before which he swore to the Constitution. He, for his part, did not care for false oaths, having always at hand a confessor ready to grant him full remission of all possible sins. Simultaneously a consultative junta was established, the first decree of which set free the political prisoners and recalled the political refugees. The prisons, now opened, sent the first constitutional Ministry to the royal palace. Castro, Herreros, and A. Arg elles who formed the first Ministry were martyrs of 1814, and deputies of 1812. The true source of the enthusiasm which had appeared on the accession of Ferdinand to the throne, was joy at the removal of Charles IV, his father. And thus the source of the general exultation at the proclamation of the Constitution of 1812, was joy at the removal of Ferdinand VII. As to the Constitution itself, we know that, when finished, there were no territories in which to proclaim it. For the majority of the Spanish people, it was like the unknown god worshipped by the ancient Athenians. In our days it has been affirmed by English writers, with an express allusion to the present Spanish revolution, on the one hand that the movement of 1820 was but a military conspiracy, and on the other that it was but a Russian intrigue. Both assertions are equally ridiculous. As to the military insurrection, we have seen that, notwithstanding its failure, the revolution proved victorious; and, besides, the riddle to be solved would not be conspiracy of 5,000 soldiers, but the sanction of that conspiracy by an army of 35,000 men, and by a most loyal nation of twelve millions. That the revolution first acted through the ranks of the army is easily explained by the fact that, of all the bodies of the Spanish monarchy, the army was the only one thoroughly transformed and revolutionized during the war of independence. As to Russian intrigue, it is not to be denied that Russia had her hands in the business of the Spanish revolution; that, of all the European powers, Russia first acknowledged the Constitution of 1812, by the treaty concluded in Veliki Luki, on July 20, 1812; that she first kindled the revolution of 1820, first denounced it to Ferdinand VII, first lighted the torch of counter-revolution on several points of the Peninsula, first solemnly protested against it before Europe, and finally forced France into an armed intervention against it. Monsieur de Tatischeff, the Russian Embassador, was certainly the most prominent character at the Court of Madrid the invisible head of the camarilla. He had succeeded in introducing Antonio Ugarte, a wretch of low station, at Court, and making him the head of the friars and footmen who, in their back-staircase council, swayed the scepter in the name of Ferdinand VII. By Tatischeff, Ugarte was made Director-General of the expeditions against South America, and by Ugarte the Duke of San Fernando was appointed Foreign Minister and President of the Cabinet. Ugarte effected from Russia the purchase of rotten ships, destined for the South American Expedition, for which the order of St. Arm was bestowed upon him. Ugarte prevented Ferdinand and his brother Don Carlos from presenting themselves to the army at the first moment of the crisis. He was the mysterious author of the Duke of San Fernando s unaccountable apathy, and of the measures which led a Spanish Liberal to say at Paris in 1836: If we add the curious fact that the President of the United States praised Russia in his message for her having promised him not to suffer Spain to meddle with the South American colonies, there can remain but little doubt as to the part acted by Russia in the Spanish revolution. But what does all this prove? That Russia produced the revolution of 1820? By no means, but only that she prevented the Spanish Government from resisting it. That the revolution would have earlier or later overturned the absolute and monastic monarchy of Ferdinand VII is proved: 1. By the series of conspiracies which since 1814 had followed each other; 2. By the testimony of M. de Martignac, the French Commissary who accompanied the Duke of Angoul me at the time of the. Legitimist invasion of Spain; 3. By testimony not to be rejected that of Ferdinand himself. In 1814 Mina intended a rising in Navarre, gave the first signal for. resistance by an appeal to arms, entered the fortress of Pamplona, but distrusting his own followers, fled to France. In 1815 General Porlier, one of the most renowned guerrilleros of the War of Independence, proclaimed the Constitution at Coru a. He was beheaded. In 1816, Richard intended capturing the King at Madrid. He was hanged. In 1817, Navarro, a lawyer, with four of his accomplices, expired on the scaffold at Valencia for having proclaimed the Constitution of 1812. In the same year the intrepid General Lacy was shot at Majorca for having committed the same crime. In 1818, Colonel Vidal, Captain Sola, and others, who had proclaimed the Constitution at Valencia, were defeated and put to the sword. The Isla de Leon conspiracy then was but the last link in a chain formed by the bloody heads of so many valiant men from 1808 to 1814. M. de Martignac who, in 1832, shortly before his death, published his work: L'Espagne et ses R volutions, makes the following statement: Such are the confessions of a dying man who was mainly instrumental in subverting that new system. Ferdinand VII, in his decrees of June 1, 1817, March 1, 1817, April 11, 1817, November 24, 1819, etc., literally confirms the assertions of M. de Martignac, and resumes his lamentations in these words: This shows that no Tatischeff was needed to bring about a Spanish revolution.

Revolutionary Spain by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1854/revolutionary-spain/ch08.htm

M. de Chateaubriand, in his Congr s de V rone, accuses the Spanish Revolution of 1820-23 of having been nothing but a servile parody of the first French Revolution, performed on the Madrid stage, and in Castilian costumes. He forgets that the struggles of different peoples emerging from the feudal state of society, and moving toward middle class civilization, cannot be supposed to differ in anything but the peculiar coloring derived from race, nationality, language, stage customs and costumes. His censure reminds us of the foolish old woman who strongly suspected all enamored girls of mimicking her own better days. A whole library has been written pro and con upon the Constitution of 1812, the proclamation of which, in 1820, gave rise to a three years struggle between the prejudices and interests of the old society and the wants and aspirations of the new one. The Constitution of 1812 had strongly impressed upon it that same stamp of impracticability which characterizes all charters originally drawn up by modern nations at the epoch of their regeneration. At the revolutionary epoch, to which they owe their origin, they are impracticable, not in consequence of this or that paragraph, but simply because of their constitutional nature. At the Constitutional epoch they are out of place, because of their being impregnated with the generous delusions, inseparable from the dawn of social regeneration. The French Constitution of 1791, for instance, at its own time justly considered to be reactionary, would have been found guilty of Jacobinism in 1830. Why so? In 1791 the royal power and the ruling forces of the ancient society it represented, had not yet undergone those transformations which were to enable them to enter into combination with, and to take place within the elements of the new society. What was then wanted was revolutionary action to break down the resistance of the old society, and not a Constitution sanctioning an impossible compromise with it. In 1830, on the contrary, when limited monarchy had become possible, it was generally understood that it meant the rule of the bourgeoisie instead of the emancipation of the people. The Constitution of 1791 must then have appeared an incendiary anachronism. The same argument holds good for the Spanish Constitution of 1812, but there is still that distinction to be drawn between France in 1791, and Spain in 1820, that the Constitution of 1791 only pretended to make a halt, in a two years revolutionary march, while the Constitution of 1812 was to supersede revolution altogether. Spain, the day before an Oriental despotism, was to be a day later a democracy with a monarch at its head. Such sudden changes belong exclusively to Spanish history. Ferdinand VII, when restored to absolute power, in 1823, as well as in 1814, expunged, by one stroke of the pen, all that had been done in the revolutionary interregnum. The Revolutionists, on their part, acted in the same manner. In 1854, the Spanish people began with Espartero, with whom they ended in 1843. In 1814 the revolution was terminated by Ferdinand s refusing to swear to the Cadiz Constitution. In 1820, it began with forcing upon him the oath to that same Constitution. He reassembled the same Cortes he had dissolved two years before, and made the very men Ministers he had banished or imprisoned in 1814. All parties in Spain, with equal obstinacy, tear out all those leaves from the book of their national history which they have not written themselves. Hence these sudden changes, these monstrous exactions, this endless, uninterrupted series of contests. Hence, also, that indelible perseverance which may be defeated, but can never be disheartened or discouraged. The first Constitutional Ministry, as the chief of which Don Augustin Arguelles may he considered, was, as we have seen, formed of the martyrs of 1814. Martyrs are, on the whole, very dangerous political characters, deflowered, as it were, by the consciousness of their past failures; inflated by exaggerated notions of their past merits; inclined to attribute to themselves the greater capacities because of their damped courage; prone to declare the era of revolution closed with their arrival in the government; from the very fact of their restoration likely to assume the character of revolutionary legitimists or of legitimate revolutionaries; overjealous of the new men whom they are astonished to find their rivals; constantly vacillating between the fear of counter-revolution and the apprehension of anarchy; by the very force of circumstances induced to compromise with the former, in order not to be swept away by the latter, or to see overthrown what they used to call the true boundaries of progress. Such was the Ministry of Arguelles. During the four months which elapsed from its formation till the meeting of the Cortes, all public authority was, in fact, suspended. juntas in the provinces and in the capital, public clubs backed by secret societies, for the first time a popular and unbridled press, stormy petitions, patriotic songs, the erection of constitutional monuments, demonstrations of effervescence natural with a nation on the recovery of its liberty, but yet no acts of vengeance, no crimes committed, and a magnanimity displayed which was not to be expected from southern natures wont to abandon themselves to the impetuosity of their passions. The Cortes at last opened their first session on July 9, 1820. They made Don Jos Espiga, Archbishop of Seville, their president. Ferdinand VII swore before them, as he had done before the Ayuntamientos, on the Gospel, to observe the Cadiz Constitution. Ferdinand VII, a despotic coward, a tiger with the heart of a hare, a man as greedy of authority as unfit to exercise it, a prince pretending to absolute power in order to be enabled to renounce it into the hands of his footmen, proud, however, of one thing, namely, his perfect mastery in hypocrisy. He enjoyed a sort of satisfaction in exaggerating his own self-humiliation before a victorious enemy, resolved, as he was, to avenge, at the opportune moment, his objection by still more astounding perfidy. When a prisoner of Napoleon, he humbly thanked him for the refuge he had afforded him, and begged for the hand of a princess of the Bonaparte family. When Bonaparte negotiated with him for his restoration to the Spanish throne, he protested, in an adulatory letter, that he should be the meanest of mortals, and become a byword in Europe, if he ever proved ungrateful to his imperial benefactor, simultaneously writing a secret letter to the Regency at Madrid, informing them that, once set at liberty, his first act would be to betray the French Emperor. When, on July 9, 1820, he swore anew to the Constitution, declaring that his resolution was free and voluntary, the Count of Espagne and Mr. Pons were already negotiating in his name, at Paris, with the Pavillon Marsan viz., the Count of Artois (afterward Charles X) and his coterie on the means of subverting that same Constitution. There were some moments in his political life, as for instance the decree of September 30, 1823, when he made false promises in the most solemn manner, for no other possible purpose than the mere pleasure of breaking them. The serious work of counter-revolution, he committed entirely to the partisans of the ancient r gime, reserving to himself to encourage their efforts in every possible way, but with the mental reservation of disowning them if unfortunate, and quietly delivering them to the resentment of their enemies if beaten. No mortal ever bore others sufferings with more stoical apathy. For his own official part he limited himself to showing his disgust at the Constitution by playing the fool with it. One night, for instance, he writes to the head of the Cabinet, a letter to the effect that he had appointed Gen. Contador as War Minister. The Ministers, at a loss to find a Contador in the army list, are astonished at discovering at length that Contador was the ex-chief of a squadron, 84 years old, long since disabled for any kind of service. The Ministers so insolently mocked, tendered their resignation. Ferdinand, having succeeded in composing the difference, proposes to replace Contador by Gen. Martinez Rodriguez, as unknown as his predecessor. New troublesome researches having taken place, it appears that Martinez had been dangerously hurt in the head at Badajoz, by the explosion of a powder barrel, and had never recovered his senses since that accident. A sort of virtuoso in the art of passive audacity and active cowardice, Ferdinand VII never shrunk from provoking a catastrophe, resolved, as he was, to be beforehand with the danger. The majority of the Cortes was composed of deputies to the Cadiz Cortes, the authors of the Constitution and their adherents, while the minority consisted of men who had conspired to re-establish the Constitution. The majority considering the proclamation of the Constitution as the final term of the revolution, while the minority considered it as its beginning; the former having laid hold of the Government, while the latter were still striving to seize it; a schism between the Liberals of 1812 and the Liberals of 1820, between the Moderados and the Exaltados, became inevitable. If the influence of the Liberals of 1812 was preponderant in the Cortes, the Liberals of 1820 were the stronger in the clubs the press, and the streets. If the former disposed of the Administration, the latter relied upon the army of the Isla, which, strengthened by some regiments that had not participated in the military revolt, was still concentrated in Andalusia, and placed under the supreme command of Riego, Quiroga having been sent as a deputy to the Cortes. In order to break the stronghold of the Exaltados, the Marquis de Las Amarillas, Minister-of-War, disbanded the army of the Isla, Riego having before been removed from his troops on the pretext of being installed as Captain-General of Galicia. Hardly was the army of the Isla disbanded the only military corps in Spain that deserved the name of an army when the first Bands of the Faith were seen to appear in Castile and in the North of Spain. Riego, secretly summoned by his partisans, on the 31st August suddenly appeared at Madrid, where he became the idol of the people, who received him with turbulent ovations and with an overflow of enthusiasm, which the Ministry viewed as a general calamity. They resolved upon exiling him to Oviedo several other Isla officers being also banished to different places. Although Riego did not resist this arbitrary act of proscription, the Ministers, apprehending an insurrection as likely to break out upon his nocturnal departure from Madrid, called the garrison to arms, occupied the principal places, filled the streets of Madrid with artillery, while on the following day, Arguelles proposed in the Cortes that measures should be taken against popular assemblies, which was warmly supported by Toreno and Martinez de la Rosa. From this day, (Sept. 7, 1820), is to be dated the open rupture between the two Liberal fractions and the retrogression of the revolutionary movement. The same fanaticism of order, the same complaints of incessant agitation, and the same angry impatience at every symptom of popular effervescence, which Europe witnessed during the first weeks after the Revolution of 1848, now possessed at once the Liberal aristocracy and the higher ranks of the middle classes in the Peninsula. The first session of the Cortes being closed on November 9, 1820, Ferdinand VII, who had retired to the Escorial, with Victor S ez, his confessor, thought the moment opportune for putting out his feelers. In spite of the Constitution, he nominated, by a royal decree, without the counter-signature of a responsible minister, Gen. Carvajal as Captain-General of New-Castile and Commandant of Madrid, in the place of Gen. Vigodet, who, however, refused to resign his place into the hands of Carvajal. The Ministry, believing themselves lost, now appealed to the very party they had commenced by persecuting. They applied to the directors of the Clubs, and received, in the most gracious manner, the violent address of the Madrid Ayuntamiento, which insisted upon the King s return to Madrid. A similar address was drawn up by the permanent Commission, who represented the Cortes during their absence. The garrison and the militia were put under arms; the sittings of the Clubs became permanent; the populace burst forth into insulting menaces against the King; insurrection was openly preached by the daily papers, and a mass expedition to the Escorial, to fetch the King, seemed imminent. Bending before the storm, Ferdinand revoked his offensive decree, dismissed his anti-liberal confessor, and returned, with his whole family, to Madrid, where he arrived on Nov. 21, 1820. His entry resembled that of Louis XVI, and his family, on their forced return from Versailles to Paris on October 6, 1789. The Ministry had not obtained the support of the Liberals of 1820 without giving them due reparation, by removing the Marqu s de las Amarillas, who afterward openly professed himself a zealous partisan of absolute monarchy, from the War Ministry, and by raising the Isia officers to separate commands. Riego was appointed Captain-General of Aragon, Mina, Captain-General of Galicia, and Velasco, Captain-General of Estremadura. The Ministry of the Martyrs, irresolutely floating between fear of reaction and alarm at anarchy, contrived to become equally discredited with all parties. As to the royal family, its position-to quote the words of a thorough Legitimist continued precarious, owing to the indiscreet zeal of the Royalists, which it became impossible to control. At the opening of the second session, (March 1, 1821), the King acted his part quite in the tone and with the gestures of a stump-orator. Not content with simply reciting the speech drawn up by his Cabinet, he puzzled the ministers, by altering their text in a revolutionary sense, and laying higher colors upon the most decisive passages, such as that relating to the invasion of Naples by Austria. For a moment they fancied they had made a convert of him, but were soon disabused. Ferdinand terminated his speech with a fulminant accusation of his own ministers, who had suffered him to be exposed to menace and insults, which would not have taken place, if the Government had displayed that energy and vigor required by the Constitution and desired by the Cortes. The King s constitutional speech was only the forerunner of the dismissal of the Ministry, and the nomination of a Cabinet which, to the great astonishment of the nation, contained not a single individual attached to the new institutions, or who had not figured as an agent of despotism in the former Government. The chief of the new Cabinet, M. Felix, formerly a sublieutenant in a militia regiment of Lima, and Deputy to the Cortes of 1812 for Peru, was, even at the epoch of the Cadiz Cortes, known as a venal and subtle intriguer. Bardaji, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, was a former diplomatist connected with the heads of the absolutist Cabinets, and Pelegrin, formerly a member of the Council of Castile, boasted that he was entirely devoted to the Holy Alliance. The avowed aim of this Ministry, which could not even pretend to any influence in the Cortes, was to restore order and suppress anarchy. Accordingly, the Exaltados were again removed from their commands, and full sway was given to the servile party; the most important places were intrusted to men known for their hatred of the prevailing system, a vail being cast upon all the royalist conspiracies that had burst forth in the Peninsula, and their authors, nearly all imprisoned by the people, being set at liberty by the Government. Gen. Morillo, Count of Carthagena, had just arrived from Terra Firma, where he had rendered himself notorious for his ferocity, dictatorial manners, want of probity, and a six years fratricidal war, which he carried on with fanatical enthusiasm. On his return, he staid a few days at Paris, where he connected himself with the intrigues of the Pavilion Marsan, the ultra journals at Paris signalizing. him as the man who was to restore the King to his ancient rights, and destroy the influence of the Cortes. When he arrived at Madrid, the Ministry lavished on him the strongest expressions of deference and respect, and appointed him Commander of the City and Province of Madrid. It was apparently this nomination which the servile party waited for to execute a coup d' tat. The Brigadier Don Jos Martinez San Martin, a man of inflexible energy and strong Legitimist opinions, was joined to Morillo in the quality of Jefe Politico of the capital. While Madrid seemed overawed by the terror of Morillo s name, Catalonia and Galicia became the scenes of passionate contests. Cadiz, Seville and Badajoz broke out in open revolt, refused to admit the Government officers, and disclaimed acknowledging any royal orders unless the Ministry were dismissed. In a message dated Nov. 25, 1821, the King summoned the Cortes to check these disorders. The Cortes, in their answer, drawn up by Don Jos Maria Calatrava, blamed the conduct of Cadiz and Seville, but insisted upon the dismissal of the Ministry, who had lost the confidence of the country, and the moral force to carry on Government. Notwithstanding this vote of distrust, Ferdinand did not think fit to appoint another Ministry till forty-eight hours before the opening of the new Cortes on March 1, 1822. The elections to the new Cortes having taken place at the moment when the popular passions were exaggerated by the counter revolutionary course of the Government, by the news of Austria s armed interference to suppress the Spanish Constitution proclaimed at Naples, and by the plundering expeditions of the Bands of the Faith at different points of the Peninsula, the Liberals of 1820, then called Exaltados, had, of course, a large majority. The large majority of the new Legislature, says a Moderado being possessed of nothing, had nothing to lose. They belonged almost exclusively to the plebeian ranks of the middle-class and the army. The difference between them and their predecessors may be understood from the single fact that, while the latter had appointed the Archbishop of Seville as their President, they, on their part, called to the presidential chair the hero of Las Cabezas Don Rafael del Riego. The new Ministry, consisting of Ex-Deputies to the Cortes of 1820, was formed by Martinez de la Rosa, who accepted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Martinez de la Rosa who has since acted an important part under the reign of the innocent Isabella; formerly a Deputy to the short-lived Madrid Cortes of 1814; persecuted during the period of reaction; a Moderado par excellence., one of the most elegant Spanish poets and prosewriters has proved at all epochs a true partisan of the doctrinaire school of the Guizots, the moderation of which gentlemen consists in their fixed notion that concessions to the mass of mankind can never be of too moderate a character. They exult in the erection of a liberal Aristocracy and the supreme rule of the Bourgeoisie, blended with the greatest possible amount of the abuses and traditions of the ancient r gime. Martinez de la Rosa overwhelmed with politeness, courted and flattered by the successive French Embassadors at Madrid-the Prince Laval de Montmorency and the Count Lagarde aimed to modify the Constitution of 1812, by establishing a House of Peers giving the King an absolute veto, introducing a property qualification for the Lower House, and laying restrictions upon the press. From 1834 to 1836 this incorrigible doctrinaire had the pleasure of witnessing the introduction and the downfall of the abortive Constitution he had hatched in 1822, The French diplomatists made him understand that the Court of the Tuileries would approve of institutions similar to those which then existed in France, while he flattered himself that the King would not be averse to a charter which had enabled Louis XVIII to do what he liked.> The King, on his part, cajoled the self-conceited Moderado, whom he intended, as was afterward proved, to send directly from the palace to the scaffold. According to the plan concocted between the Camarilla and the Ministry, all conspiracies were to be winked at, and confusion was to be suffered to reign, so as, afterward, by the assistance of France, to introduce order, and give the nation a moderate Charter, capable of perpetuating power and influence in its original promoters, and winning over the privileged classes to the new system. Consequently, in opposition to the secret societies of the Liberals, a secret society was founded on moderate principles the Society of the Anillo, the members of which were to act conjointly with the Ministry. Money was plentifully scattered among the Royal Life Guards, but these distributions being denounced to the Ministry by members of the municipal police, they ridiculed them, treating the information as a symptom of radicalism and republicanism. The regiment of the Royal Cuirassiers, cantoned in Andalusia, was completely seduced; alarming reports were spread in the different provinces whither were sent, as Political Chiefs, members of the Society of the Anillo. At the same time the tribunals received secret instructions to treat with great indulgence all conspiracies that might fall under their judicial powers. The object of these proceedings was to excite an explosion at Madrid, which was to coincide with another at Valencia. Gen. Elio, the traitor of 1814, then a prisoner in that town, was to put himself at the head of the counter-revolution in the eastern part of Spain, the garrison of Valencia being composed of only one regiment, greatly attached to Elio, and hostile, therefore, to the Constitutional system. The Deputy Bertr n de Lys, in the Assembly of the Cortes, entreated the Ministers to withdraw this body of soldiers from Valencia, and when they remained inflexible, brought in a motion of impeachment. The day appointed for the explosion was the last day of May (1822), the feast of St. Ferdinand. The Court was then at Aranjuez. On a given signal the guards rushed into the streets and, backed by the Aranjuez mob, assembled in the front of the palace, shouting cries of Long live our absolute monarch! Down with the Constitution. This riot was, however, instantly suppressed by Gen. Zayas, and the simultaneous revolt of the regiment of Valencia proved, after a bloody combat between the militia and the soldiers, no more successful. The failures of Aranjuez and Valencia served only to exasperate the Liberals. On all sides parties prepared for self-defense. The agitation becoming universal, the Ministers alone remained passive spectators in the midst of the confusion that announced an approaching storm.

Revolutionary Spain by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1854/revolutionary-spain/ch09.htm

London, February 16. The latest news from India is important because it describes the deplorable state of business in Calcutta and Bombay. In the manufacturing districts the crisis is slowly but surely advancing. The owners of spinning-mills of fine yarn in Manchester decided at a meeting held the day before yesterday only to open their factories four days a week from February 26 and in the meantime to call on the manufacturers in the surrounding area to follow their example. In the factories in Blackburn, Preston and Bolton notice has already been given to the workers that there will henceforth only be short time. The fact that in the past year many manufacturers have tried to force the markets by circumventing the commission-houses and taking their export business into their own hands means that bankruptcies will be all the larger in number and in size. The Manchester Guardian admitted last Wednesday that there was overproduction not only of manufactured goods but also of factories. Marked with the sign

Karl Marx in The New-York Tribune 1853

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1855/02/20.htm

The latest news from Australia adds a new element to the general discomfort, unrest and insecurity. We must distinguish between the riot in Ballarat (near Melbourne) and the general revolutionary movement in the State of Victoria. The former will by this time have been suppressed; the latter can only be suppressed by far-reaching concessions. The former is merely a symptom and an incidental outbreak of the latter. Concerning the Ballarat riot, the facts are simply these: A certain Bentley, owner of the Eureka Hotel at the Ballarat goldfields, had got into all sorts of conflicts with the gold diggers. A murder which occurred at his house increased the hatred of him. At the coroner s inquest Bentley was discharged as innocent. Ten of the twelve jurymen, who functioned at the inquest, however, published a protest against the partiality of the coroner, who had attempted to suppress witnesses evidence disadvantageous to the prisoner. At the demand of the people a second inquest was held. Bentley was again discharged despite very suspicious evidence by some witnesses. It became known, however, that one of the judges had financial interests in the hotel. Many earlier and later complaints show the dubious character of the government officials of the Ballarat district. On the day Bentley was discharged for the second time, the gold diggers held a tremendous demonstration, set his hotel on fire and then withdrew. Three of the ringleaders were arrested on a warrant issued by Sir Charles Hotham, the Governor-General of Victoria State. On November 27 a deputation of gold diggers demanded their release. Hotham rejected the demand. The gold diggers held a monster meeting. The Governor sent police and troops from Melbourne. It came to a clash, several dead remained on the scene, and according to the latest news, up to December 1, the gold diggers have hoisted the flag of independence. Even this story, which is in the main taken from a government paper, does not put the English judges and government officials in a favourable light. It shows the prevailing distrust. There are actually two big issues around which the revolutionary movement in Victoria State is revolving. The gold diggers are demanding the abolition of the gold digging licences, i.e. of a tax directly imposed on labour; secondly, they demand the abolition of the property qualification for Members of the Chamber of Representatives, in order themselves to obtain control over taxes and legislation. Here we see, in essence, motives similar to those which led to the Declaration of Independence of the United States, except that in Australia the conflict is initiated by the workers against the monopolists linked with the colonial bureaucracy. In the Melbourne Argus we read of big reform meetings and, on the other hand, of large-scale military preparations on the part of the Government. It says among other things:

Karl Marx in The Neue-Oder Zeitung 1855

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1855/03/07.htm

The Irish Brigade had overthrown the Derby ministry and had obtained a scat, even though a minor one, in the coalition government. How did it use its position? It helped the coalition to burke measures designed to reform landed ownership in Ireland. The Tories themselves, having taken the patriotism of the Irish Brigade for granted, had decided to propose these measures in order to gain the support of the Irish M.P.s Palmerston, who is an Irishman by birth and knows his Irish quarter, has renewed the Lichfield-House Contract of 1835 on an all-embracing basis. He has appointed Keogh, the chief of the Brigade, Attorney-General of Ireland, Fitzgerald, also a liberal Catholic M.P. for Ireland, has been made Solicitor-General, and a third member of the Brigade has become legal counsel to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, so that the juridical general staff of the Irish government is now composed entirely of Catholics and Irishmen. Monsell, the Clerk of Ordnance in the coalition government, has been reappointed by Palmerston after some hesitation, although as Muntz, deputy for Birmingham and an arms manufacturer, rightly observed Monsell cannot distinguish a musket from a needle-gun. Palmerston has advised the lieutenants of the counties always to give preference to the proteges of Irish priests close to the Irish Brigade when nominating colonels and other high-ranking officers in the Irish militia. That Palmerston s policy is already exerting an influence is evident from the fact that Sergeant Shee has gone over to the government side, and also from the fact that the Catholic Bishop of Athlone has pushed through the re-election of Keogh and that moreover the Catholic clergy has promoted the re-election of Fitzgerald. Wherever the lower ranks of the Catholic clergy have taken their Irish patriotism seriously and have stood up to those members of the Irish Brigade who deserted to the government, they have been rebuked by their bishops who are well aware of the diplomatic secret. A protestant Tory newspaper bemoans the complete congruity existing between Lord Palmerston and the Irish clergy. When Palmerston hands over Ireland to the priests, the priests will elect M.P.s who will hand over England to Lord Palmerston. The Whigs use the Irish Brigade to dominate the English Parliament and they toss posts and salaries to the Brigade; the Catholic clergy permits the one to buy and the other to sell on condition that both acknowledge the power of the clergy and help to extend and strengthen it. It is, however, a very remarkable phenomenon that in the same measure as the Irish influence in the political sphere grows in England, the Celtic influence in the social sphere decreases in Ireland. Both the Irish quarter in Parliament and the Irish clergy seem to be equally unaware of the fact that behind their back the Irish society is being radically transformed by an Anglo-Saxon revolution. In the course of this revolution the Irish agricultural system is being replaced by the English system, the system of small tenures by big tenures, and the modern capitalist is taking the place of the old landowner. The chief factors which prepared the ground for this transformation are: 1847, the year of famine, which killed nearly one million Irishmen; emigration to America and Australia, which removed another million from the land and still carries off thousands; the unsuccessful insurrection of 1848, which finally destroyed Ireland s faith in herself; and lastly the Act of Parliament which exposed the estates of the debt-ridden old Irish aristocrats to the hammer of the auctioneer or bailiff, thus driving them from the land just as starvation drove away their small tenants, subtenants and cottagers.

Karl Marx in Neue Oder-Zeitung 1855

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1855/03/16.htm

We have been assured by the best sources that the present Russian Tsar has sent a telegram to certain Courts wherein, among other things, it is stated that: This declaration of Alexander s if authentic is the first plain-spoken word since the war began; it is the first step towards giving the war, frankly and openly, that European character which has hitherto been lurking behind all sorts of pretexts and pretences, protocols and treaties, Vatel phrases and Puffendorf quotations. Turkey s independence and existence is thrown into the background. Who is to rule in Constantinople is no longer the question, but who is to command all Europe. The Slavic race long divided by internal contests, repelled towards the East by Germans, subjugated, in part, by Turks, Germans, Hungarians, quietly reuniting its branches, after 1815, by the gradual rise of Panslavism, for the first time asserts its unity, and, in doing so, declares war to the knife against the Romano-Celtic and Germanic races which have hitherto ruled Europe. Panslavism is not a movement which merely strives after national independence; it is a movement which aims to undo what a thousand years of history have created; which cannot realise itself without sweeping from the map of Europe Hungary, Turkey and a large part of Germany. Moreover, it must subjugate Europe in order to secure the stability of these results, if they are ever obtained. Panslavism is now, from a creed, turned into a political programme, with 800,000 bayonets to support it. It leaves Europe only one alternative: submission to the Slavic yoke or destruction forever of the centre of its offensive strength Russia. The next question to be answered is: How will Austria be affected by Russian-equipped Panslavism? Of the seventy million Slavs living east of the Bohemian forest and the Carinthian Alps, about fifteen million are subject to the Austrian Emperor, comprising representatives of almost every variety of Slavic speech. The Bohemian or Czech branch (six million) falls exclusively within the Austrian dominions; the Polish branch is represented by about three million Galicians; the Russian by three million Malo-Russians (Red Russians, Ruthenes) in Galicia and North-eastern Hungary the only Russian tribe outside the pale of the Russian Empire; the South Slavic branch by about three million Slovenes (Carinthians and Croats) and Serbians, including some scattered Bulgarians. These Austrian Slavs are of two different kinds. One part of them consists of the remnants of tribes whose history belongs to the past, and whose present historical development is attached to that of nations of different race and speech; and to complete their unfortunate position, these hapless relics of former greatness have not even a national organisation within Austria, but, on the contrary, are divided among different provinces. Thus the Slovenes, although scarcely 1,500,000 in number, are scattered over the different provinces of Carniola, Carinthia, Styria, Croatia and South-western Hungary. The Bohemians, though the most numerous group of Austrian Slavs, are settled partly in Bohemia, partly in Moravia, and partly (the Slovak branch) in North-western Hungary. These peoples, therefore, though living exclusively on Austrian soil, are far from being recognised as constituting separate nations. They are considered as appendages, either to the German or the Hungarian nations, and in reality they are nothing else. The second portion of Austrian Slavs is composed of fragments of different tribes, which in the course of history have become separated from the great body of their nation, and which, therefore, have their centre of gravity outside of Austria. Thus, the Austrian Poles have their natural centre of gravity in Russian Poland; the Ruthenes in the other Malo-Russian provinces united with Russia; the Serbs in the Serbian Principality under Turkish rule. That these fragments, torn from their respective nationalities, will continue to gravitate, each towards its natural centre, is a matter of course, and becomes more and more evident as civilisation, and with it the want of historical, national, activity is spread among them. In either case, the Austrian Slavs are only disjecta membra, seeking their reunion either among each other, or with the main body of their separate nationalities. This is the reason why Panslavism is not a Russian but an Austrian discovery. In order to secure the restoration of each Slavic nationality, the different Slavic tribes in Austria are beginning to work for a union of all the Slavic tribes in Europe. Russia was strong in itself; Poland proved itself in the sense of the indestructible toughness of its national life and at the same time in its open enmity towards Slavic Russia. Both these nations were obviously not called upon to invent Panslavism. The Serbs and Bulgarians in Turkey were, however, too barbaric to conceive such an idea. The Bulgarians quietly subordinated themselves to the Turks; the Serbs had enough to do with the fight for their own independence.

Panslavism and the Crimean War - I by Frederick Engels 1855

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1855/04/21.htm

The first form of Austrian Panslavism was literary. Dobrovsky, a Bohemian, the founder of the scientific philology of the Slavic dialects, and Kolar, a Slovak poet from the Hungarian Carpathians, were its originators. With Dobrovsky it was the enthusiasm of a scientific discoverer; with Kolar, political ideas soon became predominant. But, as yet, Panslavism was satisfied to wallow only in elegiac moods; the greatness of the past, the disgrace, the misfortune and foreign oppression of the present, were the themes of this poetry. Is there, oh God, no man on earth, who will render the Slavs their due? The dream of a Panslavic empire dictating laws to Europe was at that time hardly hinted at. But the lamenting period soon passed away, and with it the cry merely for Justice for the Slavs! . Historical research on the political, literary and linguistic development of the Slavonic race made great progress in Austria. Schafarik, Kopitar and Miklosich as linguists, Palacky as an historian, took the lead, followed by a host of men with little or no scientific talent like Hanka and Gaj and others. The glorious epochs of Bohemian and Serbian history were depicted in glowing colours in contrast to the present degraded and broken state of those nations. Just as in Germany philosophy formed the pretext under the protection of which politics or theology were subjected to critical analysis, in Austria, and under the very nose of Metternich, philological science was used by the Panslavists as a cloak to preach the doctrine of Slavic unity, and to create a political party with the unmistakable aim of upsetting the relations of all nationalities in Austria, and instituting a vast Slavic empire in its place. The linguistic confusion which reigns east of Bohemia and Carinthia to the Black Sea is truly astonishing. The process of denationalisation among the Slavs bordering on Germany, the slow but uninterrupted advance of the Germans, the invasion of the Magyars, which separated the North Slavs from the South Slavs by a compact mass of seven million people of Finnish race, the intermixing of Turks, Tatars, Wallachians among the Slavic tribes, produced a linguistic Babel. The language varies from village to village, almost from estate to estate. Out of five million inhabitants, Bohemia alone numbers two million Germans alongside three million Slavs, surrounded, moreover, on three sides by Germans. The same is the case with all Austrian-Slavic tribes. To restore all originally Slavic soil and territory to the Slavs, to convert Austria, with the exception of the Tirol and Lombardy, into a Slavic Empire the goal of the Panslavists is to declare null and void the historical development of the last thousand years, is to cut off a third of Germany and all of Hungary, and to change Vienna and Budapest into Slavic cities a process with which the Germans and Hungarians who own these districts cannot exactly sympathise. Moreover, the difference between the Slavic dialects is so great that, with few exceptions, they are mutually unintelligible. This was demonstrated in a comical fashion at the Slavic Congress in Prague in 1848, where, after various vain attempts to find a language intelligible to all members, they were finally obliged to use the tongue most hated by all of them the German. Thus we see that Austrian Panslavism was lacking the most essential elements of success: mass support and unity. It wanted mass support because the Panslavic party consisted only of a portion of the educated classes, and had no hold upon the masses, and hence no strength capable of resisting both the Austrian government and the German and Hungarian nationalities against which it entered the lists. It lacked unity, because its uniting principle was a mere ideal one, which, at the very first attempt at realisation, was broken up by the fact of diversity of language. In fact, so long as Panslavism was a movement limited to Austria it offered no great danger, but that very centre of unity and mass support which it wanted was very soon found for it. The national uprising of the Turkish Serbs, in the beginning of this century, had called the attention of the Russian government to the fact that there were some seven million Slavs in Turkey, whose speech, of all other Slavic dialects, most resembled the Russian. Their religion too, and their sacred language old Slavonic or Church Slavonic were exactly the same as in Russia. It was among these Serbs and Bulgarians that the Tsar for the first time began a Panslavist agitation supported by appeals to his position as the head and protector of the Greek Orthodox Church. It was, therefore, only natural that as soon as this Panslavist movement in Austria had gained consistency, Russia should extend thither on the soil of its ally the ramifications of its agencies. Where Roman Catholic Slavs were met with, the religious side of the question was dropped; Russia was merely held up as the centre of gravity of the Slavic race, as the core around which the regenerated Slavic tribes would range themselves, as the strong and united people which was to realise the great Slavic empire from the Elbe to China, and from the Adriatic to the Polar sea. Precisely here the lacking power and unity were found. Panslavism fell into the trap immediately. It thus pronounced its own judgement on itself. In order newly to restore imaginary nationalities, the Panslavists declared themselves ready to sacrifice 800 years of actual participation in civilisation to Russian-Mongolian barbarism. Was not this the natural result of a movement which began as a decided reaction against the main stream of European civilisation and continued by seeking to reverse the course of world history? Metternich, in the years of his greatest power, very well recognised the danger and saw through the Russian intrigues. He opposed the movement with all the means in his power. But all the means known to him can be summarised in one word: suppression. But the only proper means general freedom, of expansion of the German and Hungarian spirit, more than sufficient to scare away the Slavic spectre did not fit in to his system of petty policy. Accordingly, on Metternich s downfall in 1848, the Slavic movement broke out stronger than ever, and embraced a larger proportion of the population than ever before. But here its thoroughly reactionary character at once came to light. While the German and Hungarian movements in Austria were decidedly progressive, the Slavs saved the old system from destruction, enabled Radetzky to advance on the Mincio, and Windischgraetz to conquer Vienna. And to complete the drama, and the dependence of Austria on the Slavic race, the Russian army, that great Slavic reserve, had to descend into Hungary in 1849 and settle the war for Austria there by a dictated peace. But if the adherence of the Panslavic movement to Russia was its own self-condemnation, Austria acknowledged its lack of vitality no less through the acceptance, even the provocation, of this Slavic assistance against the only three nations within its dominions which do possess and show historic vitality the Germans, Italians and Hungarians. Since 1848 this debt to Panslavism has always held Austria down, and the awareness of it has been the mainspring of Austrian policy. Austria s first move was to react against the Slavs in its own territory but this required the adoption of an at least partially progressive policy. The special privileges of all provinces were abolished; a centralised administration took the place of a federal one; and, instead of all the different nationalities, an artificial Austrian nationality was alone to be acknowledged. Though these changes were directed in some degree also against the German, Italian and Hungarian nationalities, they yet fell with far greater weight on the less compact Slavic tribes, and gave the German element a considerable preponderance. The dependence on the Slavs within the realm having been removed, there remained the dependence on Russia; and with it the necessity, at least for a moment and to a certain degree, to break this direct and humiliating dependence. That was the real reason for the wavering, but at least openly professed anti-Russian policy of Austria with respect to the Eastern Question. On the other hand, Panslavism has not disappeared; it has been deeply wounded, it grumbles, pauses, and since the intervention in Hungary looks to the Russian Tsar as its predestined Messiah. It is not our province to determine whether Austria can reply with concessions in Hungary and Poland without endangering its existence if Russia should openly step forward as the head of Panslavism. This much is certain; it is no longer Russia alone, but the Panslavist conspiracy which threatens to build its realm on the ruins of Europe. Through the undeniable strength it possesses and can maintain, the union of all Slavs will soon compel the side which opposes it to appear in a totally different form than theretofore. On this occasion we have spoken neither of Poland (to her honour usually an enemy of Panslavism) nor of the so-called democratic or socialist form of Panslavism, which differs basically only in its phraseology and hypocrisy from the ordinary genuine openly Russian variety. We have said equally little of abstract German speculation, which in sublime ignorance has sunk to becoming an organ of the Russian conspiracy. We shall return in detail to these and other questions relating to Panslavism.

Panslavism and the Crimean War - II by Frederick Engels 1855

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1855/04/24.htm

It is an old and historically established maxim that obsolete social forces, nominally still in possession of all the attributes of power and continuing to vegetate long after the basis of their existence has rotted away, inasmuch as the heirs are quarrelling among themselves over the inheritance even before the obituary notice has been printed and the testament read -- that these forces once more summon all their strength before their agony of death, pass from the defensive to the offensive, challenge instead of giving way, and seek to draw the most extreme conclusions from premises which have not only been put in question but already condemned. Such is today the English oligarchy. Such is the Church, its twin sister. Countless attempts at reorganization have been made within the Established Church, both the High and the Low, attempts to come to an understanding with the Dissenters and thus to set up a compact force to oppose the profane mass of the nation. There has been a rapid succession of measures of religious coercion. The pious Earl of Shaftesbury, formerly known as Lord Ashley, bewailed the fact in the House of Lords that in England alone five millions had become wholly alienated not only from the Church but from Christianity altogether. Compelle intrare, replies the Established Church. It leaves it to Lord Ashley and similar dissenting, sectarian and hysterical pietists to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for it. The first measure of Religious coercion was the Beer Bill, which shut down all places of public entertainment on Sundays, except between 6 and 10 p. m. This bill was smuggled through the House at the end of a sparsely attended sitting, after the pietists had bought the support of the big public-house owners of London by guaranteeing them that the license system would continue, that is, that big capital would retain its monopoly. Then came the Sunday Trading Bill, which has now passed its third reading in the Commons and separate clauses of which have just been discussed by commissions in both Houses. This new coercive measure top was ensured the vote of big capital, because only small shopkeepers keep open on Sunday and the proprietors of the big shops are quite willing to do away with the Sunday competition of the small fry by parliamentary means. In both cases there is a conspiracy of the Church with monopoly capital, but in both cases there are religious penal laws against the lower classes to set the consciences of the privileged classes at rest. The Beer Bill was as far from hitting the aristocratic clubs as the Sunday Trading Bill is from hitting the Sunday occupations of genteel society. The workers get their wages late on Saturday; they are the only ones for whom shops open on Sundays. They are the only ones compelled to make their purchases, small as they are, on Sundays. The new bill is therefore directed against them alone. In the eighteenth century the French aristocracy said: For us, Voltaire; for the people, the mass and the tithes. In the nineteenth century the English aristocracy says: For us, pious phrases; for the people, Christian practice. The classical saint of Christianity mortified his body for the salvation of the souls of the masses; the modern, educated saint mortifies the bodies of the masses for the salvation of his own soul. This alliance of a dissipated, degenerating and pleasure-seeking aristocracy with a church propped up by the filthy profits calculated upon by the big brewers and monopolizing wholesalers was the occasion yesterday of a mass demonstration in Hyde Park, the like of which London has not seen since the death of George IV, the first gentleman of Europe. We were spectators from beginning to end and do not think we are exaggerating in saying that the English Revolution began yesterday in Hyde Park. The latest news from the Crimea acted as an effective ferment upon this unparliamentary, extra-parliamentary and anti-parliamentary demonstration. Lord Robert Grosvenor, who fathered the Sunday Trading Bill, when reproached on the score of this measure being directed solely against the poor and not against the rich classes, retorted that the aristocracy was largely refraining from employing its servants and horses on Sundays. The last few days of the past week the following poster, put out by the Chartists and affixed to all the walls of London, announced in huge letters: It should be borne in mind, of course, that what Longchamps [Ed. -- A hippodrome in the outskirts of Paris] means to the Parisians, the road along the Serpentine in Hyde Park means to English high society -- the place where of an afternoon, particularly on Sunday, they parade their magnificent horses and carriages with all their trappings, followed by swarms of lackeys. It will be realized from the above placard that the struggle against clericalism assumes the same character in England as every other serious struggle there -- the character of a class struggle waged by the poor against the rich, the people against the aristocracy, the lower orders against their betters. At three o'clock approximately 50,000 people had gathered at the spot announced on the right bank of the Serpentine in Hyde Park s immense meadows. Gradually the assembled multitude swelled to a total of at least 200,000 due to additions from the other bank. Milling groups of people could be seen shoved about from place to place. The police, who were present in force, were obviously endeavouring to deprive the organizers of the meeting of what Archimedes had asked for to move the earth, namely, a place to stand upon. Finally a rather large crowd made a firm stand and Bligh the Chartist constituted himself chairman on a small eminence in the midst of the throng. No sooner had he begun his harangue than Police Inspector Banks at the head of 40 truncheon-swinging constables explained to him that the Park was the private property of the Crown and that no meeting might be held in it. After some pourparlers in which Bligh sought to demonstrate to him that parks were public property and in which Banks rejoined he had strict orders to arrest him if he should insist on carrying out his intention, Bligh shouted amidst the bellowing of the masses surrounding him: With the ironical cry: God save the Queen! the throng broke up to journey to Oxford Market. But meanwhile, Finlen, a member of the Chartist executive, rushed to a tree some distance away followed by a crowd who in a twinkle formed so close and compact a circle around him that the police abandoned their attempt to get at him. We left this group to approach another where a speaker stretched out on the ground addressed his audience from this horizontal position. Suddenly shouts could be heard on all sides: Let s go to the road, to the carriages! The heaping of insults upon horse riders and occupants of carriages had meanwhile already begun. The constables, who constantly received reinforcements from the city, drove the promenading pedestrians off the carriage road. They thus helped to bring it about that either side of it was tined deep with people, from Apsley House up Rotten-Row along the Serpentine as far as Kensington Gardens -- a distance of more than a quarter of an hour. The spectators consisted of about two-thirds workers and one-third members of the middle class, all with women and children. The procession of elegant ladies and gentlemen; commoners and Lords, in their high coaches-and-four with liveried lackeys in front and behind, joined, to be sure, by a few mounted venerables slightly under the weather from the effects of wine, did not this time pass by in review but played the role of involuntary actors who were made to run the gauntlet. A babel of jeering, taunting, discordant ejaculations, in which no language is as rich as English, soon bore down upon them from both sides. As it was an improvised concert, instruments were lacking. The chorus therefore had only its own organs at its disposal and was compelled to confine itself to vocal music. And what a devil s concert it was: a cacophony of grunting, hissing, whistling, squeaking, snarling, growling, croaking, shrieking, groaning, rattling, howling, gnashing sounds! A music that could drive one mad and move a stone. To this must be added outbursts of genuine old-English humour peculiarly mixed with long-contained seething wrath. Go to church! were the only articulate sounds that could be distinguished. One lady soothingly offered a prayer-book in Orthodox binding from her carriage in her outstretched hand. Give it to your horses to read! came the thundering reply, echoing a thousand voices. When the horses started to shy, rear, buck and finally run away, jeopardizing the lives of their genteel burdens, the contemptuous din grew louder, more menacing, more ruthless. Noble lords and ladies, among them Lady Granville, the wife of a minister and President of the Privy Council, were forced to alight and use their own legs. When elderly gentlemen rode past wearing broad-brimmed hats and otherwise so apparelled as to betray their special claim to perfectitude in matters of belief, the strident outbursts of fury were extinguished, as if in obedience, to a command, by inextinguishable laughter. One of these gentlemen lost his patience. Like Mephistopheles he made an impolite gesture, sticking out his tongue at the enemy. He is a windbag, a parliamentary man! He fights with his own weapons! someone shouted on one side of the road. He is a psalm-singing saint! was the antistrophe from the opposite side. Meanwhile the metropolitan electric telegraph had informed all police stations that a riot was about to break out in Hyde Park and the police were ordered to the theatre of military operations. Soon one detachment of them after another marched at short intervals through the double file of people, from Apsley House to Kensington Gardens, each received with the popular ditty: This was a hint at a notorious theft of geese recently committed by a constable in Clerkenwell. The spectacle lasted three hours. Only English lungs could perform such a feat. During the performance opinions such as, This is only the beginning! That is the first step! We hate them! and the like were voiced by the various groups. While rage was inscribed on the faces of the workers, such smiles of blissful self-satisfaction covered the physiognomies of the middle classes as we had never seen there before. Shortly before the end the demonstration increased in violence. Canes were raised in menace of the carriages and through the welter of discordant noises could be heard the cry of you rascals! During the three hours zealous Chartists, men and women, ploughed their way through the throng distributing leaflets which stated in big type: Most of the London papers carry today only a brief account of the events in Hyde Park. No leading articles as yet, except in Lord Palmerston s Morning Post. It claims that a spectacle both disgraceful and dangerous in the extreme has taken place in Hyde Park, an open violation of law and decency -- an illegal interference by physical force in the free action of the Legislature. It urges that this scene must not be allowed to be repeated the following Sunday, as was threatened. At the same time, however, it declares that the fanatical Lord Grosvenor is solely responsible for this mischief, being the man who provoked the just indignation of the people. As if Parliament had not adopted Lord Grosvenor s bill in three readings! Or perhaps he too brought his influence to bear by physical force on the free action of the Legislature"?

Anti-Church Movement by Karl Marx

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1855/06/25.htm

That social revolution, it is true, was no novelty invented in 1848. Steam, electricity, and the self-acting mule were revolutionists of a rather more dangerous character than even citizens Barb s, Raspail and Blanqui. But, although the atmosphere in which we live, weighs upon every one with a 20,000 lb. force, do you feel it? No more than European society before 1848 felt the revolutionary atmosphere enveloping and pressing it from all sides. There is one great fact, characteristic of this our 19th century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces, which no epoch of the former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman Empire. In our days, everything seems pregnant with its contrary: Machinery, gifted with the wonderful power of shortening and fructifying human labour, we behold starving and overworking it; The newfangled sources of wealth, by some strange weird spell, are turned into sources of want; The victories of art seem bought by the loss of character. At the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on the dark background of ignorance. All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force. This antagonism between modern industry and science on the one hand, modern misery and dissolution on the other hand; this antagonism between the productive powers and the social relations of our epoch is a fact, palpable, overwhelming, and not to be controverted. Some parties may wail over it; others may wish to get rid of modern arts, in order to get rid of modern conflicts. Or they may imagine that so signal a progress in industry wants to be completed by as signal a regress in politics. On our part, we do not mistake the shape of the shrewd spirit that continues to mark all these contradictions. We know that to work well the newfangled forces of society, they only want to be mastered by newfangled men and such are the working men. They are as much the invention of modern time as machinery itself. In the signs that bewilder the middle class, the aristocracy and the poor prophets of regression, we do recognise our brave friend, Robin Goodfellow, the old mole that can work in the earth so fast, that worthy pioneer the Revolution. The English working men are the firstborn sons of modern industry. They will then, certainly, not be the last in aiding the social revolution produced by that industry, a revolution, which means the emancipation of their own class all over the world, which is as universal as capital-rule and wages-slavery. I know the heroic struggles the English working class have gone through since the middle of the last century struggles less glorious, because they are shrouded in obscurity, and burked by the middleclass historian. To revenge the misdeeds of the ruling class, there existed in the middle ages, in Germany, a secret tribunal, called the Vehmgericht. If a red cross was seen marked on a house, people knew that its owner was doomed by the Vehm. All the houses of Europe are now marked with the mysterious red cross. History is the judge its executioner, the proletarian.

Speech at anniversary of The People's Paper

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1856/04/14.htm

What distinguishes the present period of speculation in Europe is the universality of the rage. There have been gambling manias before corn manias, railway manias, mining manias, banking manias, cotton-spinning manias in short, manias of every possible description; but at the epochs of the great commercial crises of 1817, 1825, 1836, 1846- 47, although every branch of industrial and commercial enterprise was affected, one leading mania gave to each epoch its distinct tone and character. Every department being invaded by the spirit of speculation, every speculator still confined himself within his department. On the contrary, the ruling principle of the Cr dit Mobilier, the representative of the present mania, is not to speculate in a given line, but to speculate in speculation , and to universalize swindling at the same rate that it centralizes it. There is, besides, this further difference in the origin and growth of the present mania, that it did not begin in England, but in France. The present race of French speculators stand in the same relation to the English speculators of the above-mentioned epochs as the French Deists of the Eighteenth to the English Deists of the Seventeenth Century. The one furnished the materials, while the other produced the generalizing form which enabled deism to be propagated over the whole civilized world of the eighteenth century. The British are prone to congratulate themselves upon the removal of the focus of speculation from their free and sober island to the muddled and despot-ridden Continent; but then they forget the intense anxiety with which they watch the monthly statement of the Bank of France as influencing the heap of bullion in the sanctum of the Bank of England; they forget that it is English capital, to a great extent, which supplies the great arteries of the European Credits Mobiliers with the heavenly moisture; they forget that the sound over-trading and over-production in England, which they are now extolling as having reached the figure of nearly 110,000,000 of exports, Is the direct offspring of the unsound speculation they denounce on the Continent, as much as their liberal policy of 1854 and 1856 is the offspring of the coup d tat of Bonaparte. Yet it cannot be denied that they are innocent of the breeding of that curious mixture of Imperial Socialism, St. Simonistic stock-jobbing and philosophical swindling which makes up what is called the Cr dit Mobilier. In strong contradistinction to this continental refinement, English speculation has gone back to its coarsest and most primitive form of fraud, plain, unvarnished and unmitigated. Fraud was the mystery of Paul, Strahan & Bates; of the Tipperary Bank of Sadleir memory; of the great City operations of Cole, Davidson & Gordon; and fraud is the sad but simple tale of the Royal British Bank of London. For a set of directors to eat up a company s capital, while cheering on its shareholders by, high dividends, and inveigling depositors and fresh shareholders by fraudulent accounts, no high degree of refinement is necessary. Nothing is wanted but English law. The case of the Royal British Bank has caused a sensation, not so much on account of the capital as on account of the number of small people involved, both among the shareholders and depositors. The division of labor in this concern appears to have been very simple, indeed. There were two sets of directors, the one content to pocket their salary of 10,000 a year for knowing nothing of the affairs of the Bank and keeping then, consciences clear, the other intent upon the real direction of the Bank, only to be its first customers or rather plunderers. The latter class being dependent for accommodation upon the manager at once begin with letting the manager accommodate himself . Beside the manager they must take into the secret the auditor and solicitor of the Company, who consequently receive bribes in the shape of advances. In addition to advances made to themselves and relatives in their own names, the directors and manager proceed to set tip a number of men of straw, in whose names they pocket further advances. The whole paid-up capital amounts now to 150,000, of which 121,840 were swallowed directly and indirectly by the directors. The founder of the Company, Mr. McGregor, M.P. for Glasgow, the celebrated statistical writer, saddled the Company with L7,362; another director and Member of Parliament, Mt.. Humphrey Brown of Tewkesbury, who used the bank to pay his electioneering expenses, incurred at one time a liability to it of 70,000, and appears to be still in its debt to the tune of 50,000. Mr. Cameron, the manager, had advances to the amount of 30,000. Every Year since the bank went in operation, it had been losing 50,000, and yet the directors came forward every year to congratulate the shareholders upon their prosperity. Dividends of six per cent. were paid quarterly, although by the declaration of the official accountant, Mr. Coleman, the shareholders ought never to have had a dividend at all. Only last Summer, fallacious accounts to the extent of over 370,006 were presented to the shareholders, the advances made to McGregor, Humphrey Brown, Cameron & Co., figuring under the abstract head of Convertible Securities. When the bank was completely insolvent, new shares were issued, amid glowing reports of its progress and a vote of confidence in the directors. This issue of new shares was by, no means contemplated as a desperate means of relieving the position of the bank, but simply to furnish fresh material for directorial fraud. Although it was one of the rules of the charter that the bank was not to traffic in its own shares, it appears to have been the constant practice to saddle it, by way of security , with its own shares whenever they had become depreciated in the directors hands. The way, in which the honest portion of the directors pretend to have been duped, was told by one of them, Mr. Owen, at a meeting of shareholders, as follows: It is due to Mr. Cameron to say that, without waiting for the consequences of these discoveries, he, with great prudence and promptitude, expatriated himself from England. One of the most extraordinary and characteristic transactions of the Royal British Bank was its connection with some Welsh Iron Works. At a time when the paid-up capital of the Company amounted to but 50,000, the advances made to these Iron Works alone reached the sum of 70,000 to 80,000. When the Company first got possession of this iron establishment it was an unworkable concern. Having become workable after an investment of something like 50,000, we find the property in the hands of a Mr. Clarke, who, after having worked it for some time, threw it back upon the bank, while expressing his conviction that he was throwing up a large fortune, leaving the bank, however, to bear an additional debt of 20,000 upon the property. Thus, this concern kept going out of the hands of the bank whenever profits seemed likely to come in, and kept coming back to the bank when fresh advances were required to go out. This practical joke the Directors were endeavoring to continue even at the last moment of their confession, still holding up the profitable capacities of the works, which they say might yield 16,000 per annum, forgetting that they have cost the shareholders 17,742 during every year of the Company s existence. The affairs of the Company are now to be wound up in the Court of Chancery. Long before that can be done, however, the whole adventures of the Royal British Bank will have been drowned amid the deluge of the general European crisis.

The Economic Crisis in Europe by Karl Marx 1856

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1856/10/09.htm

Europe, just now, is interested in only one great question that of Neuenburg. That is to say, if we are to credit the Prussian newspapers. The principality of Neuenburg, even if we include the county of Valangin, covers the modest area of about 220 square miles, but the royal philosophers of Berlin maintain that not quantity but quality is the determining factor in the greatness and smallness of things, which stamps them as sublime or ridiculous. The Neuenburg question, to them, embodies the eternal dispute between Revolution and Divine Right, and this antagonism is influenced by geographical dimensions as little as the law of gravitation by the difference between the sun and a tennis-ball. Let us see of what the Divine Right consists to which the Hohenzollern dynasty lays claim. It is based, in the case before us, on a London protocol under date of May 24, 1852, in which the plenipotentiaries of France, Great Britain and Russia "recognize the rights over the principality of Neuenburg and the county of Valangin belonging to the King of Prussia according to the stipulations of Articles 22 and 76 of the Vienna agreement, and which from 1815 to 1848 existed simultaneously with those rights which are allowed to Switzerland by Article 73 of the same agreement. By this "diplomatic intervention" the divine right of the kings of Prussia is determined within the limits of the Vienna treaty. This treaty, however, refers back to the claims which Prussia acquired in 1707. What was the situation in 1707? The principality of Neuenburg and the county of Valangin, which in the middle ages belonged to the Kingdom of Burgundy, became members of the Swiss Confederation after the defeat of Charles the Bold, and continued in that capacity under the direct protectorate of Berne, even in the course of subsequent changes that occurred in its feudal "sovereignty" up to the time of the Vienna agreement which made it sovereign member of the Confederacy. The sovereignty over Neuenburg was conveyed first to the house of Chalons-Orange, then through the mediation of Switzerland to the house of Longueville, and finally, at the extinction of this line, to the widowed sister of the Prince, the Countess of Nemours. When she tried to assume power, William III., King of England and Duke of Nassau-Orange, entered a protest and conveyed his right and title to Neuenburg and Valangin to his cousin Frederick I. of Prussia; this agreement was hardly given any notice during the lifetime of William III. But upon the death of the Duchess Marie of Nemours, Frederick set up his claim. As fourteen other candidates came forward, however, to assert their claims, he, with wise moderation, submitted his claim to the local nobility, not, however, without first having assured himself of the support of the judges by bribery. Thus by bribery the King of Prussia became Prince of Neuenburg and Count of Valangin. The French Revolution annulled these titles, the treaty of Vienna restored them, and the Revolution of 1848 removed them again. Over against the revolutionary right of the people the King of Prussia set up his Divine Right of the Hohenzollern, amounting to nothing more than the divine right of bribery. All feudal conflicts are characterized by pettiness. In spite of this there are distinctions among them. History is always willing to occupy itself with the innumerable petty intrigues, quarrels and betrayals by means of which the Kings of France managed to overcome their feudal vassals, for they enable us to study the origin and development of a great nation. This is not the case in Germany. On the contrary, it is most tiresome and monotonous to trace how one vassal after another managed to gobble up greater or smaller portions of the German Empire for private gain. Unless some particular set of circumstances happen to enliven the scene, as is the case for instance in the history of Austria. In the case of the latter we see one and the same prince as chosen head of the empire, and as feudal lord of a province of the same empire, by descent, intriguing against the empire in the interest of the province. His intrigues are successful, for his successes towards the south seem to revive the inherited conflict between Germany and Italy, whereas his expansion to the east leads to a continuation of the bitter fight between the German and Slavic race, and the resistance of Christian Europe against the Mohammedan Orient. Finally, by shrewd family alliances his personal power attains such an eminence that for a time it not only threatens to engulf the whole empire, which he managed to surround with an artificial glamor, but to bury the whole world under the domination of a universal monarchy. In the annals of the Margraviate of Brandenburg (now a province of Prussia and originally the home and possession of the Hohenzollern family) we do not meet with such gigantic characteristics. Whereas the history of her rival appeals to us as a mephistophelian epic, that of Brandenburg creates the impression of a dirty family squabble in comparison. Even where, in view of the identity of interests, we would be led to expect similar tendencies, there is a tremendous difference. The original importance of the two border states Brandenburg and Austria (Eastern Margraviate) is traceable to the fact that they were the advance guard of Germany against the neighboring Slavs, whether for defensive or offensive purposes. But even from this point of view the history of Brandenburg lacks color, life and dramatic action, for it comprises only actions on a small scale with unknown Slavic races scattered over a comparatively small strip of territory between the Elbe and the Oder, none of which ever attained historical importance. The Margraviate of Brandenburg never subdued or Germanized a single Slavic race of historical importance, and in fact succeeded only once in reaching out as far as the confines of Brandenburg. Even Pomerania, whose feudal lords were the margraves of Brandenburg from the time of the 12th century, had not been entirely incorporated in the kingdom of Prussia in the year 1815, and by the time the electors of Brandenburg tried to appropriate it piecemeal, it had long since ceased to be a slavic state. Even the Credit for having transformed the southern and southeastern seaboard of the Baltic sea was due partly to the mercantile enterprise of the German trader, and partly to the sword of the German knight, and belongs to the history of Germany and Poland, not to that of Brandenburg, which came only to reap where it had not sown. We may be so bold as to claim that among the numerous readers who are interested in the importance of the classic names Achilles, Cicero, Nestor, and Hector, very few will have come across the fact that the sandy soil of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, which today produces only sheep and potatoes, gave birth to four electors who enjoyed the proud titles At brecht Achilles, John Cicero, Joachim I. Nestor, and Joachim II. Hector. The same glorious mediocrity which is responsible for the fact that the Electorate of Brandenburg matured so slowly to what we will politely call a European power, shielded its internal history from any indiscreet curiosity on the part of the outside world. Based on this, Prussian statesmen and historians have tried their utmost to get the world to accept and understand that Prussia is the military state par excellence, from which it follows that the Divine Right of the Hohenzollern is the right of the sword, the right of conquest. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is possible to assert, on the contrary, with perfect accuracy, that of all the provinces which the Hohenzollern possess today, only one was conquered Silesia. This fact is so isolated in the annals of the history of the house that it earned for Frederick II. the surname of "Peerless." The Prussian monarchy comprises 107,578 square miles; the Province of Brandenburg at present contains 15,514, and Silesia 15,748 square miles. How, then, did she manage to acquire Prussia with 25,035, Posen with 11,391, Pomerania with 12,050, Saxony with 9,776, Westphalia with 7,778, Rhenish Prussia with 10,180 square miles? By the divine right of bribery, of open purchase, of petty thievery, of legacy hunting, and traitorous partition agreements. In the beginning of the 15th century the Margraviate of Brandenburg belonged to the house of Luxemburg, at the head of which was Sigismund, who at the same time wielded the scepter of Imperial Germany. Sigismund was always in financial difficulties, and was hard pressed by his creditors. He found in Count Frederick of Nuremburg, of Hohenzollern descent, a friend who was both agreeable and helpful. At the same time, as security for the sums loaned to the Emperor at various times, the administration of Brandenburg was conveyed to Frederick by the Emperor in 1411. After the shrewd creditor had managed to secure temporary possession of the property of the spendthrift, he continued always to involve Sigismund in new debts; in the year 1415 upon final accounting between creditor and debtor, Frederick was invested with the hereditary title of Elector of Brandenburg. In order that there should be no doubt as to the nature of the agreement, two clauses were inserted: the one contained the condition that the house of Luxemburg had the right to buy back the Electorate for 400,000 florins, and in the other, Frederick and his heirs bound themselves in the case of all subsequent elections in Germany to cast their vote for the house of Luxemburg. The first clause shows that the agreement was a bit of bargaining, the second that it was pure bribery. In order now to acquire complete possession of the Electorate, it was merely necessary for the avaricious friend of Sigismund to get rid of the option to repurchase, and it did not take long before a favorable opportunity for undertaking this operation presented itself. At the Council of Constance, when Sigismund was once again unable to raise the necessary funds to defray the expense of Imperial attendance, Frederick hurried to the Swiss border and bought with his purse the cancellation of the fatal clause. Such is the nature of the methods employed by the Divine Right, by virtue of which the ruling dynasty of Hohenzollern acquired possession of the Margraviate of Brandenburg. That is the origin of the Prussian monarchy. Frederick's successor, a weakling, who was given the surname "iron" because he had a preference for going about in armor, bought an additional section from the Order of Teutonic Knights, just as his father had done before him. Just as the Roman senate had once been accustomed to serve as arbitrator in the internal disputes of neighboring countries, so a policy of acquiring by purchase the lands of principalities overloaded by indebtedness, became the customary method of the Hohenzollern princes. We shall not dwell further on these dirty details, but shall proceed to the time of the Reformation. It would be absolutely wrong to suppose that, because the Reformation proved to be the mainstay of the Hohenzollern, the Hohenzollern were the mainstay of the Reformation. Quite the contrary. Frederick I., the founder of the dynasty, at the very outset of his reign, led the armies of Sigismund against the Hussites, who rewarded him for his trouble by giving him a sound thrashing. Joachim I. Nestor (1493-1535) was an adherent of the Reformation until he died. Joachim II. Hector, while he was an adherent of Lutheran protestantism, refused to draw the sword in defense of the new creed, and this at a time when it was in danger of being overcome by the overwhelming power of Emperor Charles V. Not alone did he refuse to participate in the armed resistance of the Smalcaldic League, but he offered his services to the Emperor surreptitiously. The German Reformation therefore met with open animosity on the part of the Hohenzollern at the time of its origin, false neutrality during the period of its initial struggles, and at its terrible conclusion through the ThirtyYears War, weak vascillation, cowardly inactivity, and base perfidy. It is a known fact that the Elector Georg Wilheltn tried to block the way of the liberating army of Gustavus Adolphus so that the latter had to drive him by force into the Protestant camp from which he afterwards tried to steal away by means of a separate peace with Austria. But even if the Hohenzollern were not the saviors of the Reformation, they certainly were its beneficiaries. Even though they hadn't the least ambition to fight for the cause of the Reformation, they were only too willing, and in fact eager, to commit plunder in its name. The Reformation, to them, was merely a religious pretext for secularizing church property, and the greatest part of their conquests in the 16th and 17th centuries can be traced back to a single great source: the blunder of the church, a further curious emanation of Divine Right. In the genesis of the Hohenzollern monarchy, three events stand out prominently: the acquisition of the Electorate of Brandenburg, the addition of the Dukedom of Prussia, and finally the elevation from a Duchy to a Monarchy. We have seen how the acquisition of the electorate was accomplished. The Dukedom of Prussia was acquired by the following three measures: first, through secularisation; secondly, by marriage, and moreover, in an equivocal manner: the Elector Joachim Frederick married the younger daughter, and his son, John Sigismund, married the older daughter of the insane Duke Albrecht of Prussia, who had no male heirs. The third measure was bribery. And, moreover, he bribed the court of the Polish king on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the parliament of the Polish republic. The corruption was full of complications and lasted a number of years. A similar method was used to convert the Prussian Dukedom into a monarchy. In order to obtain the royal title, the Elector Frederick II., who subsequently became King Frederick I., had to secure the consent of the Emperor, whose Catholic conscience, however, was an obstruction. Frederick thereupon bribed the Jesuit father Wolf, the confessor of Leopold I, and added in trade 30,000 sons of Brandenburg who were slaughtered in the Austro-Spanish war of the Succession. The Hohenzollern Elector went back to the old Germanic institution of employing living beings as money, save for the difference that the Germans of old paid with cattle, and he with human beings. Thus it was that the Kingdom of the Hohenzollern was founded by the grace of God. From the beginning of the 18th century, as the power of the Hohenzollern grew, they improved their methods of expansion; in addition to bribing and bargaining, they also used the system of division of spoils by partnership with confederates, against countries which they themselves had not defeated, but which they plundered after defeat. Thus we see them, together with Peter the Great, partitioning the Swedish provinces, and with Catharine II taking part in the partition of Poland, and with Alexander I. in that of Germany. Whoever, therefore, opposes the claims of Prussia to Neuenburg by contending that the Hohenzollern acquired them by bribery, commits a grievous error. He quite forgets that Brandenburg as well, and Prussia, and the royal title were obtained purely by bribery. No doubt they possess Neuenburg by the same Divine Right as their other territory, and they cannot waive the former without risking the latter.

The Divine Right of the Hohenzollern

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1856/12/13.htm

... In Mieroslawski you will notice yourself: 1) that the same person who considers a diplomatic kingdom in Poland impossible wanted to make there a diplomatic revolution , that is, under the auspices of Louis Bonaparte and Palmerston; 2) that the fate of the democratic Lechitic community was inevitable. The dominium proper is usurped by the crown, the aristocracy, etc; the patriarchal relations between the dominium and the peasant communities lead to serfdom; optional parcellation creates a sort of peasant middle class, the Equestrian Order, to which the peasant can rise only so long as war of conquest and colonisation continue, both of which, however, are also conditions which accelerate his downfall. As soon as the limit has been reached this Equestrian Order, incapable of playing the role of a real middle class, is transformed into the lumpen-proletariat of the aristocracy. The dominium and the peasants among the Latin population of Moldavia, Walachia, etc, have a similar fate. This kind of development is interesting because here serfdom can be shown to have arisen in a purely economic way, without the intermediate link of conquest and racial dualism...

Marx-Engels Correspondence 1856

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1856/letters/56_10_30.htm

It seems that the Chinese on board the lorcha were seized by the Chinese officers because the latter had been informed that some of the crew had participated in a piracy committed against a Chinese merchantman. The British Consul accuses the Chinese Governor-General of seizing the crew, of hauling down the British flag, of declining to offer any apology, and of retaining the men seized in his custody. The Chinese Governor, in a letter addressed to Admiral Seymour, affirms that, having ascertained that nine of the captives were innocent, he directed, on Oct. 10, an officer to put them on board of their vessel again, but that Consul Parkes refused to receive them. As to the lorcha itself, he states that when the Chinese on board were seized, she was supposed to be a Chinese vessel, and rightly so, because she was built by a Chinese, and belonged to a Chinese, who had fraudulently obtained possession of a British ensign, by entering his vessel on the colonial British registers method, it seems, habitual with Chinese smugglers. As to the question of the insult to the flag, the Governor remarks: From these premises the Chinese Governor concludes that no breach of any treaty has been committed. On Oct. 12, nevertheless, the British Plenipotentiary demanded not only the surrender of the whole of the arrested crew, but also an apology. The Governor thus replies: Parkes might, therefore, have now got back the whole of his twelve men, together with what was most probably an apology, contained in a letter which he did not open. In the evening of the same day, Governor Yeh again made inquiry why the prisoners tendered by him were not received, and why he received no answer to, his letter. No notice was taken of this step, but on the 24th fire was opened on the forts, and several of them were taken; and it was not until Nov. 1 that Admiral Seymour explained the apparently incomprehensible conduct of Consul Parkes in a message to the Governor. The men, he says, had been restored to the Consul, but "not publicly restored to their vessel, nor had the required apology been made for the violation of the Consular jurisdiction." To this quibble, then, of not restoring in state a set of men numbering three convicted criminals, the whole case is reduced. To this the Governor of Canton answers, first, that the twelve men had been actually handed over to the Consul, and that there had not been "any refusal to return the men to their vessel." What was still the matter with this British Consul, the Chinese Governor only learned after the city had been bombarded for six days. As to an apology, Governor Yeh insists that none could be given, as no fault had been committed. We quote his words: Indeed, the force of this Chinaman's dialectics disposes so effectually of the whole question and there is no other apparent case that Admiral Seymour at last has no resource left him but a declaration like the following: But after having taken the forts, breached the walls of the city, and bombarded Canton for six days, the Admiral suddenly discovers quite a new object for his measures, as we find him writing to the Chinese Governor on Oct. 30: The Chinese Governor answers that according to the Convention of 1849, he had no right to ask for such a consultation. He further says: Admiral Seymour now makes a clean breast of it, declaring that he does not care for the Convention of Mr. Bonham: Governor Yeh retorts by again entering into the details of the Convention of 1849: Impatient of argument, the British Admiral hereupon forces his way into the City of Canton to the residence of the Governor, at the same time destroying the Imperial fleet in the river. Thus there are two distinct acts in this diplomatic and military drama the first introducing the bombardment of Canton on the pretext of a breach of the Treaty Of 1842 committed by the Chinese Governor, and the second, continuing that bombardment on an enlarged scale, on the pretext that the Governor clung stubbornly to the Convention of 1849. First Canton is bombarded for breaking a treaty, and next it is bombarded for observing a treaty. Besides, it is not even pretended that redress was not given in the first instance, but only that redress was not given in the orthodox manner. The view of the case put forth by the London Times would do no discredit even to General William Walker of Nicaragua. In other words, "we" have commenced hostilities in order to break an existing treaty and to enforce a claim which "we" have waived by an express convention! We are happy to say, however, that another prominent organ of British opinion expresses itself in a more humane and becoming tone. It is, says the Daily News, a "monstrous fact, that in order to avenge the irritated pride of a British official, and punish the folly of an Asiatic governor, we prostitute our strength to the wicked work of carrying fire and sword, and desolation and death, into the peaceful homes of unoffending men, on whose shores we were originally intruders. Whatever may be the issue of this Canton bombardment, the deed itself is a bad and a base one a reckless and wanton waste of human life at the shrine of a false etiquette and a mistaken policy." It is, perhaps, a question whether the civilized nations of the world will approve this mode of invading a peaceful country, without previous declaration of war, for an alleged infringement of the fanciful code of diplomatic etiquette. If the first Chinese war, in spite of its infamous pretext, was patiently looked upon by other Powers, because it held out the prospect of opening the trade with China, is not this second war likely to obstruct that trade for an indefinite period? Its first result must be the cutting off of Canton from the tea-growing districts, as yet, for the most part, in the hands of the imperialists a circumstance which cannot profit anybody but the Russian overland tea-traders. With regard to the reported destruction of a Chinese fort by the American frigate Portsmouth, we are not yet sufficiently informed to express a decided opinion.

Karl Marx in New York Daily Tribune

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/01/23.htm

The recent possibility, not yet entirely removed, of an invasion of Switzerland, has naturally revived the public interest not only concerning the defensive resources of the mountain Republic, but with regard to mountain warfare in general. People generally incline to regard Switzerland as impregnable, and think of an invading force as of those Roman gladiators whose Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant [Hail Caesar; those who are about to die salute you] has become so famous. We are reminded of Sempach and Morgarten, Murten and Granson and we are told that it may he easy enough for a foreign army to get into Switzerland, but that, as the fool of Albert of Austria said, it will be difficult to get out again. Even military men will recite the names of a dozen mountain passes and defiles, where a handful of men might easily and successfully oppose a couple of thousands of the best soldiers. This traditional impregnability of the so-called mountain-fortress of Switzerland dates from the time of the wars with Austria and Burgundy, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. in the former the armor-clad cavalry of the chivalry was the chief arm of the invaders; its strength lay in the irresistible charge against armies undefended by firearms. Now, this charge was impossible in a country like Switzerland, where cavalry, except of the lightest kind, and in small numbers, is even now useless. How much more so were the knights of the fourteenth century, encumbered with nearly a hundred weight of iron. They had to dismount and fight on foot; thus, their last remnant of mobility was lost; and the invaders were reduced to the defensive, and when caught in a defile were defenseless even against clubs and .sticks. During the Burgundian wars, infantry, armed with pikes, had become a more important portion of an army, and firearms had been introduced, but the infantry was still cramped by the weight of defensive armor, the cannon were heavy, and small arms clumsy and comparatively useless. The whole equipment of the troops was still so cumbersome as to unfit them completely for mountain warfare, and especially at a time when roads can scarcely he said to have existed. The consequence was that, as soon as these slow-moving armies were once entangled in difficult ground, they stuck fast, while the lightly-armed Swiss peasants were enabled to act on the offensive, to out-maneuver, to surround, and finally to defeat their opponents. For three centuries after the Burgundian wars, Switzerland was never seriously invaded. The tradition of Swiss invincibility grew venerable, until the French Revolution, an event which tore into shreds so many venerable traditions, destroyed this one too, at least for those acquainted with military history. Times had changed. The iron-clad cavalry and the heavy pikemen had passed away; tactics had been revolutionized a dozen times over; mobility was becoming the chief quality of armies; the line tactics of Marlborough, Eugene and Frederick the Great were being upset by the columns and skirmishers of the revolutionary armies; and from the day that General Bonaparte passed, in 1796, the Col di Cadibone, threw himself between the scattered Austrian and Sardinian columns, defeated them in front, while at the same time intercepting their retreat in the narrow valleys of the Maritime Alps, making the most of his opponents prisoners-from that day dates the new science of mountain warfare which has put an end to the impregnability of Switzerland. During the period of line tactics, which immediately preceded that of modern warfare, all difficult ground was studiously avoided by either adversary. The more level the plain, the better it was deemed for a battle-field, if it only afforded some obstacle to support one or both wings. But with the French revolutionary armies, a different system began. An obstacle before the front, covering ground for skirmishers, as well as for the reserves, was anxiously sought for in any defensive position. Difficult ground, upon the whole, was preferred by thein; their troops were far lighter in their movements; and their formations, extended order and columns, admitted not only of rapid movements in all directions, but even made it advantageous to them to profit by the shelter afforded by broken ground, at the same time that their opponents were quite lost in it. In fact, the. term impracticable ground was all but erased from the military terminology. The Swiss were made to feel this in 1798, when four French divisions, in spite of the obstinate resistance of part of the inhabitants, and of a three times repeated insurrection of the old forest cantons, made themselves masters of the country which, for the next three years, became one of the most important theaters of the war between the French Republic and the Coalition. How little the French were afraid of the inaccessible mountains and narrow gorges of Switzerland, they showed as early as March, 1798, when Mass na at once marched upon the roughest and most mountainous canton, the Grisons, then occupied by the Austrians. The latter held the upper valley of the Rhine. In concentric columns Mass na s troops marched into that valley through mountain passes hardly passable to horses, occupied all the outlets, and after a short resistance forced the Austrians to lay down their arms. The Austrians very soon profited by this lesson; under Hotze, a General who gained considerable proficiency in mountain warfare, they returned to the charge, repeated the same maneuver, and drove out the French. Then came the retreat of Mass na to the defensive position of Zurich, where he defeated Korsakoff s Russians, the invasion of Switzerland over the St. Gotthard by Souwaroff, his disastrous retreat, and finally another advance of the French through the Grisons into Tyrol, where Macdonald in the depth of winter passed over three mountain ridges then scarcely thought passable in single file. The great Napoleonic campaigns which then followed were fought out in the great river-basins of the Danube and the Po; the grand strategical conceptions on which they were based, all tending to cut off the hostile army from the center of its resources, to destroy that army, and then to occupy the center itself, implied a less intercepted ground and the concentration of masses for decisive battles not to be obtained in Alpine countries. But from the first Alpine campaign of Napoleon in 1796, and his march across the Julian Alps to Vienna in 1797, up to 1801, the whole history of warfare proves that Alpine ridges and valleys have completely lost their terror for modern troops; nor have the Alps ever since, up to 1815, offered any defensive positions worth speaking of to either France or the Coalition. When you pass through one of these deep ravines which wind up the roads that lead from the northern slope of the Alps to their southern declivity, you find the most formidable defensive positions at every turn of the road. Take the well-known Via Mala, for instance. There is not an officer but will tell you he might hold that defile with a battalion against an enemy, if he was sure of not being turned. But that is precisely the point. There is no mountain pass, even in the highest ridge of the Alps, but can he turned. Napoleon s maxim for mountain warfare was: Where a goat can pass, a man can pass; where a man, a battalion; where a battalion, an army. And Souwaroff had to do it, when he was closely shut up in the valley of the Reuss, and had to march his army along shepherds tracks, where but one man could pass at a time, while Lecourbe, the best French General for mountain warfare, was at his heels. It is this facility of turning an enemy which makes up and more for the strength of defensive positions, to attack which in front would often be perfect madness. To guard all roads by which a position can be turned would imply, in the defending party, such a dissemination of forces as must insure immediate defeat. They can, at best, be observed only, and the repulse of the turning movement must depend upon the judicious use of reserves and on the judgment and rapidity of the commanders of single detachments; and yet, if of three or four turning columns one only is successful, the defending party is placed in as bad a condition as if they had all succeeded. Thus, strategically speaking, the attack in mountain warfare is decidedly superior to the defense. It is the same when we come to look at the subject in a purely tactical light. The defensive positions will always be narrow mountain-gorges, occupied by strong columns in the valley and protected by skirmishers on the hights. These positions may be turned either from the front, by skirmishing parties climbing up the sides of the valley and outflanking the sharp-shooters of the defense, or by parties marching along the top of the ridge where this is practicable, or by a parallel valley the turning body profiting by a pass to fall on flank or rear of the defending post. In all these cases the turning parties have the advantage of command; they occupy the higher ground and overlook the valley occupied by their opponents. They may roll rocks and trees down upon them; for now-a-days no column is so foolish as to enter into a deep gorge before its sides are cleared; so that this late favorite mode of defense is now turned against the defenders. Another disadvantage of the defense is that the effect of firearms, on which it mainly rests, is very much reduced on mountainous ground. Artillery is either all but useless, or, where it is seriously used, is generally lost on a retreat. The so-called mountain artillery, consisting of light howitzers carried on the backs of mules, is of scarcely any effect, as the experience of the French in Algeria amply proves. As to musketry and rifles, the cover offering itself everywhere in such ground deprives the defense of a very great advantage that of having in front of the position open ground which the enemy must pass under fire. Tactically, then, as well as strategically, we arrive at the conclusion of the Archduke Charles of Austria, one of the best generals in mountain warfare and one of the most classical writers on that subject, that in this kind of war the attack is vastly superior to the defense. Is it then perfectly useless to defend a mountainous country? Certainly not. It only follows that the defense must not be a merely passive one, that it must seek its strength in mobility, and act, wherever opportunity offers, on the offensive. In alpine countries battles can hardly occur; the whole war is one continuous s eries of small actions, of attempts, by the attacking party, to drive the thin end of the wedge in one point or the other of the enemy s position, and then to press forward. Both armies are necessarily scattered; both must expose themselves at every step to an advantageous attack; both must trust to the chapter of accidents. Now, the only advantage the defending army can take is to seek out these feeble points of the enemy and to throw itself between his divided columns. In that case the strong defensive positions on which a merely passive defense would alone rely, become so many traps for the enemy where he may be allured into taking the bull by the horns, while the main efforts of the defense are directed against the turning columns, each of which may in its turn be turned and brought into the same helpless condition into which it intended to bring the defending party. It is, however, at once evident that such an active defense presupposes active, experienced and skillful generals, highly disciplined and mobile troops, and above all very skillful and reliable leaders of brigades, battalions, and even companies; for, on the prompt, judicious action of detachments, everything depends in this case. There is still another form of defensive mountain warfare which has become celebrated in modern times; it is that of national insurrection and the war of partisans, for which a mountainous country, at least in Europe, is absolutely required. We have four examples of it: the Tyrolese insurrection, the Spanish guerrilla war against Napoleon, the Carlist Basque insurrection, and the war of the Caucasian tribes against Russia. Though they have caused great trouble to the invaders, none of them, considered by itself, has proved successful. The Tyrolese insurrection was formidable only as long as it was supported, in 1809, by Austrian regular troops. The Spanish guerrillas, though they had the immense advantage of a very extensive country, owed the long continuance of their resistance chiefly to the Anglo-Portuguese army, against which the principal efforts of the French had always to be directed. The long duration of the Carlist war is explained by the degraded state to which the Spanish regular army had then been reduced, and by the constant negotiations between the Carlist and the Christina generals; and it cannot be taken as a fair specimen. Finally, in the Caucasian struggle, the most glorious of all to the mountaineers, their relative success has been due to the offensive tactics predominant in the defense of their ground. Wherever the Russians they and the British being of all troops the least fit for mountain warfare attacked the Caucasians, the latter have generally been defeated, their villages destroyed, and their mountain-passes secured by Russian fortified posts. But their strength lay in continued sallies from their hills into the plains, in surprises of Russian stations or outposts, in rapid excursions far to the rear of the Russian advanced line, in ambushes laid for Russian columns on the march. In other words, they were lighter and more movable than the Russians, and profited by this advantage. In fact, in every instance, then, of even temporarily successful insurrections of mountaineers, this success has been owing to offensive operations. In this they totally differ from the Swiss insurrections of 1798 and 1799, where we find the insurgents taking up some apparently strong defensive position and there awaiting the French, who in every instance cut them to pieces. The history of modern mountain warfare, of which we gave a short abstract in a previous article, most clearly proves that the mobility of the armies of our day is perfectly capable to overcome or to turn all the natural obstacle which an alpine country like Switzerland may oppose to their manoeuvres. Suppose, then, a war actually to break out between the king of Prussia and Switzerland, the Swiss must certainly look to other defences beside their much vaunted mountain-fortresses for the security of their country. In the case supposed above, the line on which Switzerland could be attacked, would extend from Constance along the Rhine to Basel: for we must consider both Austria and France as neutrals, as the active interference of either of them would secure such a crushing force to the attack that any strategical combinations against it would be useless. The northern frontier, therefore, is alone supposed to he open to invasion. It is protected in the first line by the Rhine, an obstacle of no great importance. This river runs along the attacked frontier for some 70 miles, and though deep and rapid, offers many favourable places for a passage. In the French revolutionary wars. Its possession has never been seriously contested, and indeed, a strong attacking army may always force the passage of any river on a portion of its course 70 miles long. False alarms, feigned attacks, followed up by sudden concentration of troops on the real points of passage are sure to succeed in each case. There are, besides, several stone bridges across it which the Swiss would scarcely attempt to destroy so seriously as to make them useless for the period of a campaign; and lastly, Constance being a German town situated on the southern bank of the Rhine, offers a convenient bridge-head for the Prussians to turn the whole of the line. But there is another obstacle at a short distance behind the Rhine, which heightens its indirect defensibility in a similar way as the Balkans, in Bulgaria, heighten the defensibility of the Danube. Three affluents of the Rhine, the Aare from the Southwest, the Reuss and Limmat from the Southeast, unite near Brugg, the two latter forming a right angle to the Aare, and then run due north towards the Rhine which they join at Coblenz (this Coblenz on the Aare and Rhine is of course not to be confounded with the fortress of that name on the Moselle and Rhine) about 10 miles from their unction. Thus the Aare from Brugg to the Rhine cuts in two the country covered by this latter stream, so that an invading army, having passed the Rhine, either above or below Coblenz, has before its front either the Limmat or the Aare, and is therefore stopped again by a defensible river. The salient angle, formed by the junction of the Aare and the Limmat (the Reuss forming but a strong second line to that of the Limmat) thus offers an important second position for defence. Its flanks are covered, to the left (west) by the lakes of Zurich, Wallenstadt, Zug and of the Four Cantons; neither of which a Prussian army, under the above-supposed circumstances, darest venture to turn. The position of the Aare and Limmat, with the Rhine in the rear of any army that came to attack it, therefore forms the principal strategical defence of Switzerland against an invasion from the North. Suppose the Swiss repulsed an attack on it, and followed up the victory by a countercharge and active pursuit, the beaten army would be lost, broken up, cut off, and ruined before it could retreat over the few bridges it might have on the Rhine. On the other hand, if the line of the lower Aare and Limmat were once forced, what would remain for the Swiss? Here again we must consult the configuration of the ground. Large armies cannot live in the high mountains, nor can they establish their chief bases of operations or magazines there. That some of the reasons why campaigns in alpine countries, if entered upon with considerable forces, have always been of very short duration. The Swiss could not, therefore, think of retreating in force into the high mountains; they must keep as long as possible to the more level territory where they find towns with all their resources and roads to facilitate transport. Now if a line is drawn from the point where the Rh ne enters the lake of Geneva at Villeneuve, to the point where the Rhine enters the Lake of Constance near Rheineck, this line will cut Switzerland in two portions the north-western of which (leaving the Jura out of consideration) will comprise the Swiss Lowlands, while the South Eastern comprises the Highlands or Alpine country. The strategy of the Swiss is thereby clearly defined. Their main body will have to retreat on the line Zurich Berne Lausanne Geneva, defending the open country inch by inch, and leaving the South-eastern mountains to the protection of such portions of the army as may have been cut off, and to the irregular warfare fire of the mountaineer Landsturm and free corps. The main body would be supported in this line of retreat by all the Southern affluents of the Aare, all of which run parallel to the Reuss and Limmat, and at Berne by the Aare itself which in its upper course also runs from the East to the North-west. The upper Aare once forced and Berne taken, there would remain but little chance to the Swiss to bring the war to a successful issue, unless the mountaineers and the new formed bodies from the South East succeeded in again occupying part of the plain and menacing the Prussian rear so seriously that a general retreat had to follow. But that chance may well be left out of consideration altogether. Thus the Swiss would have several good lines bf defence: first, the Aare and Limmat, then the Aare and Reuss, third the Aare and Emme (not to mention the intervening smaller affluents of the Aare) and fourthly the upper Aare, the left wing behind the morass extending from the lake of NeuchAtel to that river. The attack has its strategy equally as well prescribed by the configuration of the country as the defence. If the Prussians were to send their main body across the Rhine above Coblenz, and attack the position of the Limmat, they would take the bull by the horns; they would not only have to storm the position which Mass na in 1799 so successfully defended against the Austrians and Russians, but after taking it, find 5 miles further on the position of the Reuss, fully as strong; and then, from 2, 3, or 5 miles, another mountain-current would bar their path, until at last, after a succession of delays, combats, and losses, they would again find the Swiss posted behind the Emme, which river forms as serious an obstacle nearly as the Limmat. Unless political reasons. which we leave entirely beside, induced the Prussians to remain at a respectful distance from the French frontier, this way of attack would, therefore, he absolutely faulty. The real road into Switzerland crosses the Rhine between Basel and Coblenz; or, if part of the army should cross above Coblenz, a communication across the Aare between Brugg and Coblenz would have to be established at once so as to concentrate the main body on the left bank of the latter river. The direct attack on the line of the Aare turns the lines both of the Limmat and the Reuss, and may he made to turn the lines, too, of all the minor southern affluents of the Aare, almost as far as the Emme river. The line of the Limmat, too, is short, extending on its attackable front, from Zurich to Brugg, not more than 20 miles while the line of the Aare, from Brugg to Solothurn, offers to the attack an extent of 36 miles, and is not even absolutely secure from front attack above Solothurn. The left of the position, between Solothurn and Aarberg, is its weak point; once forced there, the line is not only lost to the Swiss, but they are cut off from Berne, Lausanne and Geneva, and have no retreat left but to the Southeastern highlands. The defence, however, is here supported by tactical obstacles. The more you ascend the Aare towards Solothurn, the more the higher ridges of the Jura approach the river, and obstruct military operations by their peculiar longitudinal valleys running all parallel to the Aare. The intervening ridges are far from being impassable, but yet the concentration of a large corps in such ground would presuppose very complicated manoeuvres always unpleasant in the face of the enemy and not easily undertaken by a general unless he has plenty of confidence in himself and his troops. The latter quality not being very common in the old Prussian generals who scarcely can be said to have seen active service since 1815, it is not likely that they would risk such a manoeuvre, but rather stick to half-measures on the flanks and concentrate their chief efforts on the lower. The Battle of Morgarten between Swiss volunteers and the troops of Leopold of Habsburg on November 15, 1315 ended in victory for the volunteers. At Murten (Canton of Freiburg) on June 22, 1476 and at Granson (Canton Vaud) on March 2, 1476, the Swiss defeated the troops of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy.

Mountain Warfare in the Past and Present by Frederick Engels

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/01/mountain-warfare.htm

The only law authority on the part of the Government, the Lord Chancellor, remarked that "unless England had a good case with regard to the Arrow, all proceedings from the last to first were wrong." Derby and Lyndhurst proved beyond doubt that England had no case at all with regard to that lorcha. The line of argument followed by them coincides so much with that taken up in the columns of The Tribune on the first publication of the English dispatches that I am able to condense it here into a very small compass. What is the charge against the Chinese Government upon which the Canton massacres are pretended to rest? The infringement of Art. 9 of the Supplemental Treaty Of 1843. That article prescribes that any Chinese offenders, being in the colony of Hong Kong, or on board a British man-of-war, or on board a British merchant ship, are not to be seized by the Chinese authorities themselves, but should be demanded from the British Consul, and by him be handed over to the native authorities. Chinese pirates were seized in the river of Canton on board the lorcha Arrow, by Chinese officers, without the intervention of the British Consul. The question arises, therefore, was the Arrow a British vessel? It was, as Lord Derby shows, "a vessel Chinese built, Chinese captured, Chinese sold, Chinese bought and manned, and Chinese owned." By what means, then, was this Chinese vessel converted into a British merchantman? By purchasing at Hong Kong a British register or sailing licence. The legality of this register relies upon an ordinance of the local legislation of Hong-Kong, passed in March, 1855. That ordinance not only infringed the treaty existing between England and China, but annulled the law of England herself. It was, therefore, void and null. Some semblance of English legality it could but receive from the Merchant Shipping Act, which, however, was passed only two months after the issue of the ordinance. And even with the legal provisions of that Act it had never been brought into consonance. The ordinance, therefore, under which the lorcha Arrow received its register, was so much waste paper. But even according to this worthless paper the Arrow had forfeited its protection by the infringement of the provisions prescribed, and the expiration of its licence. This point is conceded by Sir J. Bowring himself. But then, it is said, whether or not the Arrow was an English vessel, it had, at all events, hoisted the English flag, and that flag was insulted. Firstly, if the flag was flying, it was not legally flying. But was it flying at all? On this point there exists discrepancy between the English and Chinese declarations. The latter have, however, been corroborated by depositions, forwarded by the Consuls, of the master and crew of the Portuguese lorcha No. 83 With reference to these depositions, The Friend of China of Nov. 13 states that "it is now notorious at Canton that the British flag had not been flying on board the lorcha for six days previous to its seizure." Thus falls to the ground the punctilio of honour together with the legal case. Lord Derby had in this speech the good taste altogether to forbear from his habitual waggishness, and thus to give his argument a strictly judicial character. No efforts, however, on his part were wanted to impregnate his speech with a deep current of irony. The Earl of Derby, the chief of the hereditary aristocracy of England, pleading against the late Doctor, now Sir John Bowring, the pet disciple of Bentham; pleading for humanity against the professional humanitarian; defending the real interests of nations against the systematic utilitarian insisting upon a punctilio of diplomatic etiquette; appealing to the vox populi vox dei against the greatest-benefit-of the-greatest-number man; the descendant of the conquerors preaching peace where a member of the Peace Society preached red-hot shell; a Derby branding the acts of the British navy as "miserable proceedings" and "inglorious operations," where a Bowring congratulates it upon cowardly outrages which met with no resistance, upon "its brilliant achievements, unparalleled bravery, and splendid union of military skill and valour" such contrasts were the more keenly satirical the less the Earl of Derby seemed to be aware of them. He had the advantage of that great historical irony which does not flow from the wit of individuals, but from the humour of situations. The whole Parliamentary history of England has, perhaps, never exhibited such an intellectual victory of the aristocrat over the parvenu. Lord Derby declared at the outset that he "should have to rely upon statements and documents exclusively furnished by the very parties whose conduct he was about to impugn," and that he was content "to rest his case upon these documents." Now it has been justly remarked that those documents as laid before the public by the Government, would have allowed the latter to shift the whole responsibility upon its subordinates. So much is this the case that the attacks made by the parliamentary adversaries of the Government were exclusively directed to Bowring & Co., and could have been endorsed by the home Government itself, without at all impairing its own position. I quote from his Lordship: Next came Lord Lyndhurst: And lastly, Lord Grey: Sir J. Bowring met with similar treatment at the hands of the Commons, and Mr. Cobden even opened his speech with a solemn repudiation of his "friend of twenty years' standing." The literal quotations from the speeches of Lords Derby, Lyndhurst and Grey prove that, to parry the attack, Lord Palmerston's Administration had only to drop Sir J. Bowring instead of identifying itself with that "distinguished humanitarian." That it owed this facility of escape neither to the indulgence nor the tactics of his adversaries, but exclusively to the papers laid before Parliament, will become evident from the slightest glance at the papers themselves as well as the debates founded upon them. Can there remain any doubt as to Sir J. Bowring's CC monomania " with respect to his entrance into Canton? It is not proved that that individual, as the London Times says, "has taken a course entirely out of his own head, without either advice from his superiors at home or any reference to their politics?" Why, then, should Lord Palmerston, at a moment when his Government is tottering, when his way is beset with difficulties of all sorts financial difficulties, Persian war difficulties, secret-treaty difficulties, electoral reform difficulties, coalition difficulties when he is conscious that the eyes of the House are " upon him more earnestly but less admiringly than ever before," why should he single out just that moment to exhibit, for the first time in his political life, an unflinching fidelity to another man and to a subaltern, too at the hazard of not only impairing still more his own position, but of completely breaking it up? Why should he push his newfangled enthusiasm to such a point as to offer himself as the expiatory sacrifice for the sins of a Dr. Bowring? Of course no man in his senses thinks the noble Viscount capable of any such romantic aberrations. The line of policy he has followed up in this Chinese difficulty affords conclusive evidence of the defective character of the papers he has laid before Parliament. Apart from published papers there must exist secret papers and secret instructions which would go far to show that if Dr. Bowring was possessed of the "monomania" of entering into Canton, there stood behind him the cool-headed chief of Whitehall working upon his monomania and driving it, for purposes of his own, from the state of latent warmth into that of consuming fire.

Karl Marx in New York Daily Tribune

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/03/16.htm

The immense excitement prevailing on the last night of the debates, within the walls of the House as well as among the masses who had gathered in the adjoining streets, was due not only to the greatness of the interests at stake, but still more to the character of the party on trial. Palmerston's administration was not that of an ordinary Cabinet. It was a dictatorship. Since the commencement of the war with Russia, Parliament had almost abdicated its constitutional functions; nor had it, after the conclusion of peace, ever dared to reassert them. By a gradual and almost imperceptible declension, it had reached the position of a Corps Legislatif, distinguished from the genuine, Bonapartish article by false pretences and high-sounding pretensions only. The mere formation of the Coalition Cabinet denoted the fact that the old parties, on the friction of which the movement of the Parliamentary machine depends, had become extinct. This impotence of parties, first expressed by the Coalition Cabinet, the war helped to incarnate in the omnipotence of a single individual, who, during half a century of political life, had never belonged to any party, but always used all parties. If the war with Russia had not intervened, the very exhaustion of the old official parties would have led to transformation. New life would have been poured into the Parliamentary body by the infusion of new blood, by the admission to political rights of at least some fractions of the masses of the people who are still deprived of votes and representatives. The war cut short this natural process. Preventing the neutralization of old Parliamentary antagonisms from turning to the benefit of the masses, the war turned it to the exclusive profit of a single man. Instead of the political emancipation of the British people, we have had the dictatorship of Palmerston. War was the powerful engine by which this result was brought about, and war was the only means of insuring it. War had therefore become the vital condition of Palmerston's dictatorship. The Russian war was more popular with the British people than the Paris peace. Why, then, did the British Achilles, under whose auspices the Redan disgrace and the Kars surrender had occurred, not improve this opportunity? Evidently because the alternative lay beyond his control. Hence his Paris treaty, backed by his misunderstandings with the United States, his expedition to Naples, his ostensible squabbles with Bonaparte, his Persian invasion, and his Chinese massacres. In passing a vote of censure upon the latter, the House of Commons cut off the means of his usurped power. Its vote was, therefore, not a simple Parliamentary vote, but a rebellion, a forcible attempt at the resumption of the constitutional attributes of Parliament. This was the feeling which pervaded the House, and whatever may have been the peculiar motives actuating the several fractions of the heterogeneous majority composed of Derbyites, Peelites, Manchester men, Russellites, and so-called Independents all of them were sincere in asserting that it was no vulgar anti-Ministerial conspiracy which united them in the same lobby. Such, however, was the gist of Palmerston's defence. He covered the weakness of his case by an argumenturn ad misericordiam, by presenting himself as the victim of an unprincipled conspiracy. Nothing could be more happy than Mr. Disraeli's rebuke of this plea, so common to Old Bailey prisoners. It would, however, be quite a mistake to presume that the debates were interesting because such passionate interests hinged upon them. There was one night's debate after another night's debate, and still no division. During the greater part of the battle the voices of the gladiators were drowned in the hum and hubbub of private conversation. Night after night the placemen spoke against time to win another twenty-four hours for intrigue and underground action. The first night Mr. Cobden made a clever speech. So did Bulwer and Lord John Russell; but the Attorney-General was certainly right in telling them that "he could not for one moment compare their deliberations or their arguments on such a subject as this with the arguments that had been delivered in another place." The second night was encumbered by the heavy special pleadings of the attorneys on both sides, the Lord-Advocate, Mr. Whiteside and the Attorney-General. Sir James Graham, indeed, made an attempt to raise the debate, but he failed. When this man, the virtual murderer of the Bandiera, sanctimoniously exclaimed that "he would wash his hands of the innocent blood which had been shed," a half-suppressed ironical laugh re-echoed his pathos. The third night was still duller. There was Sir F. Thesiger, the Attorney-General in spe, answering the Attorney-General in re, and Sergeant Shee endeavouring to answer Sir F. Thesiger. There was the agricultural eloquence of Sir John Pakington. There was General Williams of Kars, listened to with silence only for a few minutes, but after those few minutes spontaneously dropped by the House and fully understood not to be the man they had taken him for. There was, lastly, Sir Sidney Herbert. This elegant scion of Peelite statesmanship made a speech which was, indeed, terse, pointed, antithetical, but girding at the arguments of the placemen rather than producing new arguments of his own. But the last night the debate rose to a height compatible with the natural measure of the Commons. Roebuck, Gladstone, Palmerston and Disraeli were great, each in his own way. The difficult point was to get rid of the stalking-horse of the debate, Sir J. Bowring, and to bring home the question to Lord Palmerston himself, by making him personally responsible for the "massacre of the innocents." This was at last done. As the impending general election in England will in the main revolve upon this point, it may not be amiss to condense, in as short a compass as possible, the results of the discussion. The day after the defeat of the Ministry, and the day before the ministerial announcement of the dissolution of the House of Commons, the London Times ventured upon the following assertions: (It was at Christmas when Ministers heard of the matter, and they were at that time as ignorant as everybody else). To this impudent rodomontade of a FaFer which has all along vindicated the Canton massacre as a supreme stroke of Palmerstonian diplomacy, we can oppose a few facts painfully elicited during a protracted debate, and not once controverted by Palmerston or his subordinates. In 1847, when at the head of the Foreign Office, Lord Palmerston's first dispatch on the admission of the British Hong-Kong authorities into Canton was couched in menacing terms. However, his ardours were damped by Earl Grey, his colleague, the then Secretary for the Colonies, who sent out a most peremptory prohibition to the officers commanding the naval forces, not only at Hong Kong, but at Ceylon, ordering them, under no circumstances, to allow any offensive movement against the Chinese without express authority from England. On the 18th August, 1849, however, shortly before his dismissal from the Russell Cabinet, Lord Palmerston wrote the following dispatch to the British Plenipotentiary at Hong Kong: Thus the bombardment of Canton occurring in 1856, under Lord Palmerston as Premier, was foreshadowed in 1849 by the last missive sent to Hong-Kong by Lord Palmerston, as Foreign Secretary of the Russell Cabinet. All the intervening Governments have refused to allow any relaxation of the prohibition put upon the British representatives at Hong-Kong against pressing their admission into Canton. This was the case with the Earl of Granville under the Russell Ministry, the Earl of Malmesbury under the Derby Ministry, and the Duke of Newcastle under the Aberdeen Ministry. At last, in 1852, Dr. Bowring, till then Consul at Canton, was appointed Plenipotentiary. His appointment, as Mr. Gladstone states, was made by Lord Clarendon, Palmerston's tool, without the knowledge or consent of the Aberdeen Cabinet. When Bowring first mooted the question now at issue, Clarendon, in a dispatch dated July 5, 1854, told him that he was right, but that he should wait till there were naval forces available for his purpose. England was then at war with Russia. When the question of the Arrow arose, Bowring had just heard that peace had been established, and in fact naval forces were being sent out to him. Then the quarrel with Yeh was picked. On the 10th of January, after having received an account of all that had passed, Clarendon informed Bowring that "Her Majesty's Government entirely approved the course which has been adopted by Sir M. Seymour and yourself." This approbation, couched in these few words, was not accompanied by any further instructions. On the contrary, Mr. Hammond, writing to the Secretary of the Admiralty, was directed by Lord Clarendon to express to Admiral Seymour the Government's admiration of "the moderation with which he had acted, and the respect which he had shown for the lives and properties of the Chinese." There can, then, exist no doubt that the Chinese massacre was planned by Lord Palmerston himself. Under what colours he now hopes to rally the electors of the United Kingdom is a question which I hope you will allow me to answer in another letter, as this has already exceeded the proper limits.

Karl Marx in New York Daily Tribune

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/03/25.htm

The relations of Russia to the Chinese Empire are altogether peculiar. While the English and ourselves for in the matter of the pending hostilities the French are but little more than amateurs, as they really have no trade with China are not allowed the privilege of a direct communication even with the Viceroy of Canton, the Russians enjoy the advantage of maintaining an Embassy at Peking. It is said, indeed, that this advantage is purchased only by submitting to allow Russia to be reckoned at the Celestial Court as one of the tributary dependencies of the Chinese Empire. Nevertheless it enables Russian diplomacy, as in Europe, to establish an influence for itself in China which is by no means limited to purely diplomatic operations. Being excluded from the maritime trade with China, the Russians are free from any interest or involvement in past or pending disputes on that subject; and they also escape that antipathy with which from time immemorial the Chinese have regarded all foreigners approaching their country by sea, confounding them, and not entirely without reason, with the piratical adventurers by whom the Chinese coasts seem ever to have been infested. But as an indemnity for this exclusion from the maritime trade, the Russians enjoy an inland and overland trade peculiar to themselves, and in which it seems impossible for them to have any rival. This traffic, regulated by a treaty made in 1787, during the reign of Catharine H., has for its principal, if not indeed its sole seat of operations, Kiachta, situate on the frontiers of southern Siberia and of Chinese Tartary, on a tributary of the Lake Baikal, and about a hundred miles south of the city of Irkutsk. This trade, conducted at a sort of annual fair, is managed by twelve factors, of whom six are Russians and six Chinese, who meet at Kiachta, and fix the rates since the trade is entirely by barter at which the merchandise supplied by either party shall be exchanged. The principal articles of trade are, on the part of the Chinese, tea, and on the part of the Russians, cotton and woollen cloths. This trade, of late years, seems to have attained a considerable increase. The quantity f tea sold to the Russians at Kiachta, did not, ten or twelve years ago, exceed an average of forty thousand chests; but in 1852 it amounted to a hundred and seventy-five thousand chests, of which the larger part was of that superior quality well known to continental consumers as caravan tea, in contradistinction from the inferior article imported by sea. The other articles sold by the Chinese were some small quantities of sugar, cotton, raw silk and silk goods, but all to very limited amounts. The Russians paid about equally in cotton and woollen goods, with the addition of small quantities of Russian leather, wrought metals, furs and even opium. The whole amount of goods bought and sold which seem in the published accounts to be stated at very moderate prices-reached the large sum of upward of fifteen millions of dollars. In 1857 owing to the internal troubles of China and the occupation of the road from the tea provinces by bands of marauding rebels, the quantity of tea sent to Kiachta fell off to fifty thousand chests, and the whole value of the trade of that year was but about six millions of dollars. In the two following years, however, this commerce revived, and the tea sent to Kiachta for the fair Of 1855 did not fall short of a hundred and twelve thousand chests. In consequence of the increase of this trade, Kiachta, which is situated within the Russian frontier, from a mere fort and fair-ground, has grown up into a considerable city. It has been selected as the capital of that part of the frontier region, and is to be dignified by having a military commandant and a civil governor. At the same time a direct and regular postal communication for the transmission of official dispatches has lately been established between Kiachta and Peking, which is distant from it about nine hundred miles. It is evident that, should the pending hostilities result in suppression of the maritime trade, Europe might receive it entire supply of tea by this route. Indeed, it is suggested that even with the maritime trade open, Russia, may, upon the completion of her system of railroads, become a powerful competitor with the maritime nations for supplying the European markets with tea. These railroads will supply direct communication between the ports of Cronstadt and Libau and the ancient city of Nijni Novgorod in the interior of Russia, the residence of the merchants by whom the trade at Kiachta is carried on. The supply of Europe with tea by this overland route is certainly more probable than the employment of our projected Pacific Railroad for that purpose Silk, too, the other chief export of China, is an article of such small bulk in comparison to its cost, as to make its transportation by land by no means impossible; while this Chines traffic opens an outlet for Russian manufactures, such as it cannot elsewhere attain. We may observe, however, that the efforts of Russia are by no means limited to the development of this inland trade. It is several years since she took possession of the banks of the River Amur, the native country of the present ruling race in China. Her efforts in this direction received some check an interruption during the late war, but will doubtless be revive and pushed with energy. She has possession of the Kuril Islands and the neighbouring coasts of Kamchatka. Already she maintains a fleet in those seas, and will doubtless improve any opportunity that may offer to obtain a participation in the maritime trade with China. This, however, is of little consequence to her compared with the extension of that overland trade of which she possesses the monopoly.

Karl Marx in New York Daily Tribune

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/04/07.htm

Now, however much the people of England and the world at large may be deceived by such plausible statements, his Lordship himself certainly does not believe them to be true, of if he does, he has betrayed a wilful ignorance almost as unjustifiable as "criminal knowledge." Ever since the first report reached us of English hostilities in China, the Government journals of England and a portion of the American Press have been heaping wholesale denunciations upon the Chinese sweeping charges of violation of treaty obligations insults to the English flag degradation of foreigners residing on their soil, and the like; yet not one single distinct charge has been made or a single fact instanced in support of these denunciations, save the case of the lorcha Arrow, and, with respect to this case, the circumstances have been so misrepresented and glossed over by Parliamentary rhetoric as utterly to mislead those who really desire to understand the merits of the question. The lorcha Arrow was a small Chinese vessel, manned by Chinese, but employed by some Englishmen. A licence to carry the English flag had been temporarily granted to her, which licence had expired prior to the alleged "insult". She is said to have been used to smuggle salt, and had on board of her some very bad characters Chinese pirates and smugglers whom, being old offenders against the laws, the authorities had long been trying to arrest. While lying at anchor in front of Canton with sails furled, and no flag whatever displayed the police became aware of the presence on board of these offenders, and arrested them precisely such an act as would have taken place here had the police along our wharves known that river-thieves and smugglers were secreted in a native or foreign vessel near by. But, as this arrest interfered with the business of the owners, the captain went to the English Consul and complained. The Consul, a young man recently appointed, and, as we are informed, a person of a quick and irritable disposition, rushes on board in propria persona, gets into an excited parley with the police, who have only discharged their simple duty, and consequently fails in obtaining satisfaction. Thence he rushes back to the Consulate, writes an imperative demand for restitution and apology to the Governor-General of the Kwangtung Province, and a note to Sir John Bowring and Admiral Seymour at Hong Kong, representing that he and his country's flag have been insulted beyond endurance, and intimating in pretty broad terms that now is the time for a demonstration against Canton, such as had long been waited for. Gov. Yeh politely and calmly responds to the arrogant demands of the excited young British Consul'. He states the reason of the arrest, and regrets that there should have been any misunderstanding in the matter; at the same time he unqualifiedly denies the slightest intention of insulting the English flag, and sends back the men, whom, although lawfully arrested, he desired not to detain at the expense of so serious a misunderstanding. But this is not satisfactory to Mr. Consul Parkes-he must have an official apology, and a more formal restitution, or Gov. Yeh must abide the consequences. Next arrives Admiral Seymour with the British fleet, and then commences another correspondence, dogmatic and threatening on the side of the Admiral; cool, unimpassioned, polite, on the side of the Chinese official. Admiral Seymour demands a personal interview within the walls of Canton. Gov. Yeh says this is contrary to all precedent, and that Sir George Bonham had agreed that it should not be required. He would readily consent to an interview, as usual, outside the walled town if necessary, or meet the Admiral's wishes in any other way not contrary to Chinese usage and hereditary etiquette. But this did not suit the bellicose representative of British power in the East. Upon the grounds thus briefly stated and the official accounts now before the people of England fully bear out the statement this most unrighteous war has been waged. The unoffending citizens and peaceful tradesmen of Canton have been slaughtered, their habitations battered it to the ground, and the claims of humanity violated, on the flimsy pretence that "English life and property are endangered by the aggressive acts of the Chinese!" The British Government and the British people at least, those who have chosen to examine the question know how false and hollow are such charges. An attempt has been made to divert investigation from the main issue, and to impress the public mind with the idea that a long series of injuries, preceding the case of the lorcha Arrow, form of themselves a sufficient causus belli. But these sweeping assertions are baseless. The Chinese have at least ninety-nine injuries to complain of to one on the part of the English. How silent is the press of England upon the outrageous violations of the treaty daily practiced by foreigners living in China under British protection! We hear nothing of the illicit opium trade, which yearly feeds the British treasury at the expense of human life and morality. We hear nothing of the constant bribery of sub-officials, by means of which the Chinese Government is defrauded of its rightful revenue on incoming and outgoing merchandise. We hear nothing of the wrongs inflicted "even unto death" upon misguided and bonded emigrants sold to worse than Slavery on the coast of Peru, and into Cuban bondage. We hear nothing of the bullying spirit often exercised against the timid nature of the Chinese, or of the vice introduced by foreigners at the ports open to their trade. We hear nothing of all this and of much more, first, because the majority of people out of China care little about the social and moral condition of that country; and secondly, because it is the part of policy and prudence not to agitate topics where no pecuniary advantage would result. Thus, the English people at home, who look no further than the grocer's where they buy their tea, are prepared to swallow all the misrepresentations which the Ministry and the Press choose to thrust down the public throat. Meanwhile, in China, the smothered fires of hatred kindled against the English during the opium war have burst into a flame of animosity which no tenders of peace and friendship will be very likely to quench. For the sake of Christian and commercial intercourse with China, it is in the highest degree desirable that we should keep out of this quarrel, and that the Chinese should not be led to regard all the nations of the Western World as united in a conspiracy against them.

Karl Marx in New York Daily Tribune

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/04/10.htm

Nothing could be better put than the suggestion we have placed in italics, that Dr. Parker and his countrymen would do much better to mind their own business than to be mixing themselves up in the quarrel which the English had picked. Instead, however, of falling in with this piece of good advice, Dr. Parker must needs write a letter to Yeh, in which he undertakes to justify himself and the American authorities for siding with the English Of this letter the following is an extract: Yeh's answer is not given, but it can hardly be supposed that he failed to make the retort to which the Doctor had exposed himself. The Doctor knows perfectly well, nobody better, that the true cause of the present and former difficulties between the Chinese and the English was and is, not as he pretends "the unwillingness of China to acknowledge England, France, America and other great nations of the West as her equals," but the unwillingness of the Chinese authorities to allow their subjects to be poisoned with opium for the pecuniary benefit of the British East India Company and a few unprincipled British, American and French traders. How is it possible for the Chinese to regard these "great nations of the West" "as their true friends, and to treat them accordingly," when they find that the principal business of these great nations in China has been and is to sell and spread the use of opium, a poisonous drug introduced by these foreigners within a century past-before which time it was utterly unknown to the Chinese and the use of which increases with a frightful rapidity, fatal at once to the morals, the pecuniary welfare and the health of the Flowery Empire? When these "great nations" shall have first proved themselves "true friends" by joining with the Chinese authorities to put an end to this wicked traffic, it will be quite time to complain that the Chinese are unwilling to recognize them in that character. Other Chinese officials seem not inferior to Ych in the matter of diplomatic correspondence. On the 9th of December Sir John Bowring sent to the Viceroy of Fukien, etc., a statement of his complaints against Yeh, requesting that the Court of Peking be advised of the same. In his reply the Viceroy says: The Viceroy of another province, to whom a similar letter was sent, replied as follows: The following Imperial edict of the 27th December does not evince any present disposition on the part of the Emperor to give way to the demands of the English:

Karl Marx in New York Daily Tribune

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/06/02.htm

Persia was in a state similar to that of Turkey during the war of 1828-9 against Russia. English, French, Russian officers had in turns tried their hands at the organization of the Persian army. One system had succeeded another, and each in its turn had been thwarted by thejealousy, the intrigues, the ignorance, the cupidity and corruption of the Orientals whom it was to form into European officers and soldiers. The new regular army had never had an opportunity of trying its organization and strength in the field. Its only exploits had been confined to a few campaigns against Kurds, Turcomans and Afghans, where it served as a sort of nucleus or reserve to the numerous irregular cavalry of Persia. The latter did most of the actual fighting; the regulars had generally but to impose upon the enemy by the demonstrative effect of their seemingly formidable arrays. At last, the war with England broke out. The English attacked Bushire, and met with a gallant though ineffective resistance. But the men who fought at Bushire were not regulars; they were composed of the irregular levies of the Persian and Arab inhabitants of the coast. The regulars were only concentrating, some sixty miles off, in the hills. At last they advanced. The Anglo-Indian army met them half way; and, though the Persians used their artillery with credit to themselves, and formed their squares on the most approved principles, a single charge of one single Indian cavalry regiment swept the whole Persian army, guards and line, from the field. And to know what these Indian regular cavalry are considered to be worth in their own service, we have only to refer to Capt. Nolan's book on the subject. They are, among Anglo-Indian officers, considered worse than useless, and far inferior to the irregular Anglo-Indian cavalry. Not a single action can Capt. Nolan find where they were creditably engaged. And yet, these were the men, six hundred of whom drove ten thousand Persians before them! Such was the terror spread among the Persian regulars that never since have they made a stand anywhere-the artillery alone excepted. At Moharnmerah, they kept out of harm's way, leaving the artillery to defend the batteries, and retired as soon as these were silenced; and when, on a reconnaissance, the British landed three hundred riflemen and fifty irregular horse, the whole of the Persian host marched off, leaving baggage, stores and guns in the possession of the victors you cannot call them the invaders. All this, however, neither brands the Persians as a nation of cowards, nor condemns the introduction of European tactics among Orientals. The Russo-Turkish wars of 1809-12 and 1828-9 offer plenty of such examples. The principal resistance offered to the Russians was made by the irregular levies both from the fortified towns and from the mountain provinces. The regulars, wherever they showed themselves in the open field, were at once upset by the Russians, and very often ran away at the first shot; while a single company of Arnaut irregulars, in a ravine at Varna, successfully opposed the Russian siege operations for weeks together. Yet, during the late war the Turkish regular army have defeated the Russians in every single engagement from Oltenitza and Citate to Kars and to Ingur. The fact is that the introduction of European military organization with barbaric nations is far from being completed when the new anny has been subdivided, equipped and drilled after the European fashion. That is merely the first step towards it. Nor will the enactment of some European military code suffice; it will no more ensure European discipline than a European set of drill-regulations will produce, by itself, European tactics and strategy. The main point, and at the same time the main difficulty, is the creation of a body of officers and sergeants, educated on the modern European system, totally freed from the old national prejudices and reminiscences in military matters, and fit to inspire life into the new formation. This requires a long time, and is sure to meet with the most obstinate opposition from Oriental ignorance, impatience, prejudice, and the vicissitudes of fortune and favour inherent to Eastern courts. A Sultan or Shah is but too apt to consider his army equal to anything as soon as the men can defile in parade, wheel, deploy and form column without getting into hopeless disorder. And as to military schools, their fruits are so slow in ripening that under the instabilities of Eastern Governments they can scarcely ever be expected to show any. Even in Turkey, the supply of educated officers is but scanty, and the Turkish army could not have done at all, during the late war, without the great number of renegades and the European officers in its ranks. The only arm which everywhere forms an exception is the artillery. Here the Orientals are so much at fault and so helpless that they have to leave the whole management to their European instructors. The consequence is that, as in Turkey so in Persia, the artillery was far ahead of the infantry and cavalry. That under these circumstances the Anglo-Indian army, the oldest of all Eastern armies organized on the European system, the only one that is subject not to an Eastern, but an exclusively European government, and officered almost entirely by Europeans-that this army, supported by a strong reserve of British troops and a powerful navy, should easily disperse the Persian regulars, is but a matter of course. The reverse will do the Persians the more good the more signal it was. They will now see, as the Turks have seen before, that European dress and parade-drill is no talisman in itself, and, maybe, twenty years hence, the Persians will turn out as respectable as the Turks did in their late victories. The troops which conquered Bushire and Mohammerah will, it is understood, be at once sent to China. There they will find a different enemy. No attempts at European evolutions, but the irregular array of Asiatic masses, will oppose them there. Of these they no doubt will easily dispose; but what if the Chinese wage against them a national war, and if barbarism be unscrupulous enough to use the only weapons which it knows how to wield? There is evidently a different spirit among the Chinese now to what they showed in the war of 1840 to '42. Then, the people were quiet; they left the Emperor's soldiers to fight the invaders, and submitted after a defeat with Eastern fatalism to the power of the enemy. But now, at least in the southern provinces, to which the contest has so far been confined, the mass of the people take an active, nay, a fanatical part in the struggle against the foreigners. They poison the bread of the European community at Hong Kong by wholesale, and with the coolest premeditation. (A few loaves have been sent to Liebig for examination. He found large quantities of arsenic pervading all parts of them, showing that it had already been worked into the dough. The dose, however, was so strong that it must have acted as an emetic, and thereby counteracted the effects of the poison). They go with hidden arms on board trading steamers, and, when on the journey, massacre the crew and European passengers and seize the boat. They kidnap and kill every foreigner within their reach. The very coolies emigrating to foreign countries rise in mutiny, and as if by concert, on board every emigrant ship, and fight for its possession, and, rather than surrender, go down to the bottom with it, or perish in its flames. Even out of China, the Chinese colonists, the most submissive and meek of subjects hitherto, conspire and suddenly rise in nightly insurrection, as at Sarawak; or, as at Singapore, are held down by main force and vigilance only. The piratical policy of the British Government has caused this universal outbreak of all Chinese against all foreigners, and marked it as a war of extermination. What is an army to do against a people resorting to such means of warfare? Where, how far, is it to penetrate into the enemy's country, how to maintain itself there? Civilizationmongers who throw hot shells on a defenceless city and add rape to murder, may call the system cowardly, barbarous, atrocious; but what matters it to the Chinese if it be only successful? Since the British treat them as barbarians, they cannot deny to them the full benefit of their barbarism. If their kidnappings, surprises, midnight massacres are what we call cowardly, the civilization-mongers should not forget that according to their own showing they could not stand against European means of destruction with their ordinary means of warfare. In short, instead of moralizing on the horrible atrocities of the Chinese, as the chivalrous English press does, we had better recognize that this is a war pro aris et focis, a popular war for the maintenance of Chinese nationality, with all its overbearing prejudice, stupidity, learned ignorance and pedantic barbarism if you like, but yet a popular war. And in a popular war the means used by the insurgent nation cannot be measured by the commonly recognized rules of regular warfare, nor by any other abstract standard, but by the degree of civilization only attained by that insurgent nation. The English are this time placed in a difficult position. Thus far, the national Chinese fanaticism seems to extend no farther than over those southern provinces which have not adhered to the great rebellion. Is the war to be confined to these? Then it would certainly lead to no result, no vital point of the empire being menaced. At the same time, it would be a very dangerous war for the English if the fanaticism extends to the people of the interior. Canton may be totally destroyed and the coasts nibbled at in all possible points, but all the forces the British could bring together would not suffice to conquer and hold the two provinces of Kwangtung and Kwang-si. What, then, can they do further? The country north of Canton, as far as Shanghai and Nanking, is in the hands of the Chinese insurgents, whom it would be bad policy to offend; and north of Nanking the only point of attack on which might lead to a decisive result is Peking. But where is the army to form a fortified and garrisoned base of operations on the shore, to overcome every obstacle on the road, to leave detachments to secure the communications with the shore, and to appear in anything like formidable strength before the walls of a town the size of London, a hundred miles from its landing place? On the other side, a successful demonstration against the capital would shake to its ground works the very existence of the Chinese Empire accelerate the upsetting of the Manchu dynasty and pave the way, not for British, but for Russian progress. The new Anglo-Chinese war presents so many complications that it is utterly impossible to guess the turn it may take. For some months the want of troops, and for a still longer time the want of decision, will keep the British pretty inactive except, perhaps, on some unimportant point, to which under actual circumstances Canton too may be said to belong. One thing is certain, that the death-hour of Old China is rapidly drawing nigh. Civil war has already divided the South from the North of the Empire, and the RebelKing seems to be as secure from the Imperialists (if not from the intrigues of his own followers) at Nanking, as the Heavenly Emperor from the rebels at Peking. Canton carries on, so far, a sort of independent war with the English, and all foreigners in general; and while British and French fleets and troops flock to Hong Kong, slowly but steadily the Siberian-line Cossacks advance their stanitzas from the Daurian mountains to the banks of the Amur, and the Russian marines close in by fortifications the splendid harbours of Manchuria. The very fanaticism of the southern Chinese in their struggle against foreigners seems to mark a consciousness of the supreme danger in which Old China is placed; and before many years pass away we shall have to witness the death struggles of the oldest empire in the world, and the opening day of a new era for all Asia.

Engels in New York Daily Tribune

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/06/05.htm

The Roman Divide et impera was the great rule by which Great Britain, for about one hundred and fifty years, contrived to retain the tenure of her Indian empire. The antagonism of the various races, tribes, castes, creeds and sovereignties, the aggregate of which forms the geographical unity of what is called India, continued to be the vital principle of British supremacy. In later times, however, the conditions of that supremacy have undergone a change. With the conquest of Scinde and the Punjaub, the Anglo-Indian empire had not only reached its natural limits, but it had trampled out the last vestiges of independent Indian States. All warlike native tribes were subdued, all serious internal conflicts were at an end, and the late incorporation of Oude proved satisfactorily that the remnants of the so-called independent Indian principalities exist on sufferance only. Hence a great change in the position of the East Indian Company. It no longer attacked one part of India by the help of another part, but found itself placed at the head, and the whole of India at its feet. No longer conquering, it had become the conqueror. The armies at its disposition no longer had to extend its dominion, but only to. maintain it. From soldiers they were converted into policemen, 200,000,000 natives being curbed by a native army of 200,000 men, officered by Englishmen, and that native army, in its turn, being kept in check by an English army numbering 40,000 only. On first view, it is evident that the allegiance of the Indian people rests on the fidelity of the native army, in creating which the British rule simultaneously organized the first general center of resistance which the Indian people was ever possessed of. How far that native army may be relied upon is clearly shown by its recent mutinies, breaking out as soon as the war with Persia had almost denuded the Presidency of Bengal of its European soldiers. Before this there had been mutinies in the Indian army, but the present revolt is distinguished by characteristic and fatal features. It is the first time that sepoy regiments have murdered their European officers; that Mussulmans and Hindoos, renouncing their mutual antipathies, have combined against their common masters; that that the mutiny, has not been confined to a few localities; and lastly, that the revolt in the Anglo-Indian army has coincided with a general disaffection exhibited against English supremacy on the part of the great. Asiatic nations, the revolt of the Bengal army being, beyond doubt, intimately connected with the Persian and Chinese wars. The alleged cause of the dissatisfaction which began to spread four months ago in the Bengal army was the apprehension on the part of the natives lest the Government should interfere with their religion. The serving cut of cartridges, the paper of which was said to have been greased with the fat of bullocks and pigs, and the compulsory biting of which was, therefore, considered by the natives as an infringement of their religious prescriptions, gave the signal for local disturbances. On the 22nd of January, an incendiary fire broke out in cantonments a short distance from Calcutta. On the 25th of February the 19th native regiment mutinied at Berhampore the men objecting to the cartridges served out to them On the 31st of March that regiment was disbanded; at the end of March the 34th sepoy regiment, stationed at Barrackpore, allowed one of its men to advance with a loaded musket upon the parade-ground in front of the line, and, after having called his comrades to mutiny, he was permitted to attack and wound the Adjutant and Sergeant-Major of his regiment. During the hand-to-hand conflict, that ensued, hundreds of sepoys looked passively on, while others participated in the struggle, and attacked the officers with the butt ends of their muskets. Subsequently that regiment was also disbanded. The month of April was signalized by incendiary fires in several cantonments of the Bengal army at Allahabad, Agra, Umballah, by a mutiny of the 3d regiment of light cavalry at Meerut, and by similar appearances of disaffection in the Madras and Bombay armies. At the beginning of May an emeute was preparing at Lucknow, the capital of Oude, which was, however, prevented by the promptitude of Sit. H. Lawrence. On the 9th of May the mutineers of the 3d light cavalry of Meerut were marched off to jail, to undergo the various terms of imprisonment to which they were sentenced. On the evening of the following day the troopers of the 3d cavalry, together with the two native regiments, the 11th and 20th, assembled upon the parade-ground, killed the officers endeavoring to pacify them, set fire to the cantonments, and slew all the Englishmen they were able to lay hands on. Although the British part of the brigade mustered a regiment of infantry, another of cavalry, and an overwhelming force of horse and foot artillery, they were not able to move until nightfall. Having inflicted but little harm on the mutineers, they, allowed them to betake themselves to the open field and to throw themselves into Delhi, some forty miles distant from Meerut. There they were joined by the native garrison, consisting of the 38th, 54th and 74th regiments of infantry, and a company of native artillery. The British officers were attacked, all Englishmen within reach of the rebels were murdered. and the heir of the late Mogul of Delhi proclaimed King of India. Of the troops sent to the rescue of Meerut, where order had been re-established, six companies of 15th of May, native sappers and miners, who arrived on the murdered their commanding officer, Major Frazer, and made at once for the open country, pursued by troops of horse artillery and several of the 6th dragoon guards. Fifty or sixty of the mutineers were shot, but the rest contrived to escape to Delhi. At Ferozepore, in the Punjaub, the 57th and 45th native infantry regiments mutinied, but were put down by force. Private letters from Lahore state the whole of the native troops to be in an undisguised state of mutiny. On the 19th of May, unsuccessful efforts were made by the sepoys stationed at Calcutta to get possession of Fort St. William. Three regiments arrived from Bushire at Bombay were at once dispatched to Calcutta. In reviewing these events, one is startled by, the conduct of the British commander at Meerut his late appearance on the field of battle being still less incomprehensible than the weak manner in which he pursued the mutineers. As Delhi is situated on the right and Meerut on the left bank of the Jumna-the two banks being joined at Delhi by one bridge only nothing could have been easier than to cut off the retreat of the fugitives. Meanwhile, martial law has been proclaimed in all the disaffected districts; forces, consisting of natives mainly, are concentrating against Delhi from the north, the east and the south; the neighboring princes are said to have pronounced for the English; letters have been sent to Ceylon to stop Lord Elgin and Gen. Ashburnham s forces, on their way to China; and finally, 14,000 British troops were to be dispatched from England to India in about a fortnight. Whatever obstacles the climate of India at the present season, and the total want of means of transportation, may oppose to the movements of the British forces, the rebels at Delhi are very likely to succumb without any prolonged resistance. Yet, even then, it is only the prologue of a most terrible tragedy that will have to be enacted.

Marx and Engels. First Indian War of Independence 1857-58

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/07/15.htm

London, July 17, 1857 On the 8th of June, just a month had passed since Delhi fell into the hands of the revolted Sepoys and the proclamation by them of a Mogul Emperor. Any notion, however, of the mutineers being able to keep the ancient capital of India against the British forces would be preposterous. Delhi is fortified only by a wall and a simple ditch, while the hights surrounding and commanding it are already in the possession of the English, who, even without battering the walls, might enforce its surrender in a very short period by the easy process of cutting off its supply of water. Moreover, a motley crew of mutineering soldiers who have murdered their own officers, torn asunder the ties of discipline, and not succeeded in discovering a man upon whom to bestow the supreme command, are certainly the body least likely to organize a serious and protracted resistance. To make confusion more confused, the checkered Delhi ranks are daily swelling from the fresh arrivals of new contingents of mutineers from all parts of the Bengal Presidency, who, as if on a preconcerted plan, are throwing themselves into the doomed city. The two sallies which, on the 30th and 31st of May, the mutineers risked without the walls, and in both of which they were repulsed with heavy losses seem to have proceeded from despair rather than from any feeling of self-reliance or strength. The only thing to be wondered at is the slowness of the British operations, which to some degree, however, may be accounted for by the horrors of the season and the want of means of transport. Apart from Gen. Anson, the commander-in-chief, French letters state that about 4,000 European troops have already fallen victims of the deathly heat, and even the English papers confess that in the engagements before Delhi the men suffered more from the sun than from the shot of the enemy. In consequence of its scanty means of conveyance, the main British force stationed at Umballah consumed about twenty-seven days in its march upon Delhi, so that it moved at the rate of about one and a half hours per day. A further delay was caused by the absence of heavy artillery at Umballah, and the consequent necessity of bringing over a siege-train from the nearest arsenal, which was as far off as Phillour, on the further side of the Sutlej. With all that, the news of the fall of Delhi may be daily expected; but what next? If the uncontested possession by the rebels during a month, of the traditionary center of the Indian Empire acted perhaps as the most powerful ferment in completely breaking up the Bengal army, in spreading mutiny and desertion from Calcutta to the Punjaub in the north, and to Rajpootana in the west, and in shaking the British authority from one end of India to the other, no greater mistake could be committed than to suppose that the fall of Delhi, though it may throw consternation among the ranks of the Sepoys, should suffice either to quench the rebellion, to stop its progress, or to restore the British rule. Of the whole native Bengal army, mustering about 80,000 men composed of about 28,000 Rajpoots, 23,000 Brahmins, 13,000 Mahometans, 5,000 Hindoos of inferior castes, and the rest Europeans 30,000 have disappeared in consequence of mutiny, desertion, or dismission from the ranks. As to the rest of that army, several of the regiments have openly declared that they will remain faithful and support the British authority, excepting in the matter in which the native troops are now engaged: they will not aid the authorities against the mutineers of the native regiments, and will, on the contrary, assist their bhaies (brothers). The truth of this has been exemplified in almost every station from Calcutta. The native regiments remained passive for a time; but, as soon as they fancied themselves strong enough, they mutinied. An Indian correspondent of The London Times leaves no doubt as to the loyalty of the regiments which have not yet pronounced, and the native inhabitants who have not yet made common cause with the rebels. In the Punjaub, open rebellion has only been prevented by disbanding the native troops. In Oude, the English can only be said to keep Lucknow, the residency while everywhere else the native regiments have revolted, escaped with their ammunition, burned all the bungalows to the ground, and joined with the inhabitants who have taken up arms. Now, the real position of the English army is best demonstrated by the fact that it was thought necessary, in the Punjaub as well as the Rajpootana, to establish flying corps. This means that the English cannot depend either on their Sepoy troops or on the natives to keep the communication open between their scattered forces. Like the French during the Peninsular war, they command only the spot of ground held by their own troops, and the next neighborhood domineered by that spot; while for communication between the disjoined members of their army they depend on flying corps, the action of which, most precarious in itself, loses naturally in intensity in the same measure that it spreads oiler a greater extent of space. The actual insufficiency of the British forces is further proved by, the fact that, for removing treasures from disaffected stations, they, were constrained to have them conveyed by Sepoys themselves, who, without any exception, broke out in rebellion on the march, and absconded with the treasures confided to them. All the troops sent from England will, in the best case, not arrive before November, and as it would be still more dangerous to draw off European troops from the presidencies of Madras and Bombay the Tenth regiment of Madras Sepoys, having already shown symptoms of disaffection any idea of collecting the regular taxes throughout the Bengal presidency must be abandoned, and the process of decomposition be allowed to go on. Even if we suppose that the Burmese will not improve the occasion, that the Maharajah of Gwalior will continue supporting the English, and the Ruler of Nepaul, commanding the finest Indian army, remain quiet; that disaffected Peshawur will not combine with the restless Hill tribes, and that the Shah of Persia will not be silly enough to evacuate Herat still, the whole Bengal presidency must be reconquered, and the whole Anglo-Indian army remade. The cost of this enormous enterprise will altogether fall upon the British people. As to the notion put forward by Lord Granville in. the House of Lords, of the East India Company being able to raise, by Indian loans, the necessary means, its soundness may be judged from the effects produced by the disturbed state of the north-western provinces on the Bombay money market. An immediate panic seized the native capitalists, very large sums were withdrawn from the banks, Government securities proved almost unsalable, and hoarding to a great extent commenced, not only in Bombay but in its environs also.

Marx and Engels. First Indian War of Independence 1857-58

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/07/17.htm

London, July, 28 1857 The three hours speech delivered last night in The Dead House, by Mr. Disraeli, will gain rather than lose by being read instead of being listened to. For some time, Mr. Disraeli affects an awful solemnity of speech, an elaborate slowness of utterance and a passionless method of formality, which, however consistent they may be with his peculiar notions of the dignity becoming a Minister in expectance, are really distressing to his tortured audience. Once he succeeded in giving even commonplaces the pointed appearance of epigrams. Now he contrives to bury even epigrams in the conventional dullness of respectability. An orator who, like Mr. Disraeli, excels in handling the dagger rather than in wielding the sword, should have been the last to forget Voltaire s warning, that Tous les genres sont bons except le genre ennuyeux. Beside these technical peculiarities which characterize Mr. Disraeli s present manner of eloquence, he, since Palmerston s accession to power, has taken good care to deprive his parliamentary exhibitions of every possible interest of actuality. His speeches are not intended to carry his motions, but his motions are intended to prepare for his speeches. They might be called self-denying motions, since they are so constructed as neither to harm the adversary, if carried, nor to damage the proposer, if lost. They mean, in fact, to be neither carried nor lost, but simply to be dropped. They belong neither to the acids nor to the alkalis, but are born neutrals. The speech is not the vehicle of action, but the hypocrisy of action affords the opportunity for a speech. Such, indeed, may be the classical and final form of parliamentary eloquence; but then, at all events, the final form of parliamentary eloquence must not demur to sharing the fate of all final forms of parliamentarism that of being ranged under the category of nuisances. Action, as Aristotle said, is the ruling law of the drama. So it is of political oratory. Mr. Disraeli s speech on the Indian revolt might be published in the tracts of the Society for the Propagation of Useful Knowledge, or it might be delivered to a mechanics institution, or tendered as a prize essay to the Academy of Berlin. This curious impartiality of his speech as to the place where, and the time when, and the occasion on which it was delivered, goes far to prove that it fitted neither place, time, nor occasion. A chapter on the decline of the Roman Empire which might read exceedingly well in Montesquieu or Gibbon would prove an enormous blunder if put in the mouth of a Roman Senator, whose peculiar business it was to stop that very decline. It is true that in our modern parliaments, a part lacking neither dignity nor interest might be imagined of an independent orator who, while despairing of influencing the actual course of events, should content himself to assume a position of ironical neutrality. Such a part was more or less successfully played by the laic M. Garnier Pages not the Garnier Pages of Provisional Government memory in Louis Philippe s Chamber of Deputies; but Mt.. Disraeli, the avowed leader of an obsolete faction, would consider even success in this line as a supreme failure. The revolt of the Indian army afforded certainly a magnificent opportunity for oratorical display. But, apart front his dreary manner of treating the subject, what was the gist of the motion which he made the pretext for his speech? It was no motion at all. He feigned to be anxious for becoming acquainted with two official papers, the one of which he was not quite sure to exist, and the other of which he was sure not immediately to bear on the subject in question. Consequently his speech and his motion lacked any point of contact save this, that the motion heralded a speech without an object, and that the object confessed itself not worth a speech. Still, as the highly elaborated opinion of the most distinguished out-of-office statesman of England, Mr. Disraeli s speech ought to attract the attention of foreign countries. I shall content myself with giving in his ipsissima verba a short analysis of his considerations on the decline of the Anglo-Indian Empire. Upon these points Mr. Disraeli asserts the whole question to hinge. Until the last ten years, he affirmed, the British empire in India was founded on the old principle of divide et impera but that principle was put into action by respecting the different nationalities of which India consisted, by avoiding to tamper with their religion, and by protecting their landed property. The Sepoy army served as a safety-valve to absorb the turbulent spirits of the country. But of late years a new principle has been adopted in the government of India the principle of destroying nationality. The principle has been realized by the forcible destruction of native princes, the disturbance of the settlement of property, and the tampering with the religion of the people. In 1848 the financial difficulties of the East India Company had reached that point that it became necessary to augment its revenues one way or the other. Then a minute in Council was published, in which was laid down the principle, almost without disguise, that the only mode by which an increased revenue could be obtained was by enlarging the British territories at the expense of the native princes. Accordingly, on the death of the Rajah of Sattara, his adoptive heir was not acknowledged by the East India Company, but the Raj absorbed in its own dominions. From that moment the system of annexation was acted upon whenever a native prince died without natural heirs. The principle of adoption the very corner-stone of Indian society-was systematically set aside by the Government. Thus were forcibly annexed to the British Empire the Rajs of more than a dozen independent princes from 1848-54. In 1854 the Raj of Berar, which comprised 80,000 square miles of land, a population from 4,000,000 to 5,000,000, and enormous treasures, was forcibly seized. Mr. Disraeli ends the list of forcible annexations with Oude, which brought the East India Government in collision not only with the Hindoos, but also with the Mohammedans. Mr. Disraeli then goes on showing how the settlement of property in India was disturbed by the new system of government during the last ten years. The principle of the law of adoption, he says, is not the prerogative of princes and principalities in India, it applies to every man in Hindostan who has landed property, and who professes the Hindoo religion. I quote a passage: On the pretext of fraudulent claims of exemption, the British Governor General took upon himself to examine the titles of the Indian landed estates. Under the new system, established in 1848, Mr. Disraeli computes that the resumption of estates from their proprietors is not less than 500,000 a year in the Presidency of Bengal; 370,000 in the Presidency of Bombay; 200,000 in the Punjaub, &c. Not content with this one method of seizing upon the property of the natives, the British Government discontinued the pensions to the native grandees, to pay which it was bound by treaty. Mr. Disraeli then treats the tampering with the religion of the natives, a point upon which we need not dwell. From all his premises he arrives at the conclusion that the present Indian disturbance is not a military mutiny, but a national revolt, of which the Sepoys are the acting instruments only. He ends his harangue by advising the Government to turn their attention to the internal improvement of India, instead of pursuing its present course of aggression.

Marx and Engels. First Indian War of Independence 1857-58

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/08/14.htm

London, July 31, 1857 The last Indian mail, conveying news from Delhi up to the 17th June, and from Bombay up to the 1st of July, realizes the most gloomy anticipations. When Mr. Vernon Smith, the President of the Board of Control, first informed the House of Commons of the Indian revolt, he confidently stated that the next mail would bring the news that Delhi had been razed to the ground. The mail arrived, but Delhi was not yet wiped out of the pages of history. It was then said that the battery train could not be brought up before the 9th of June, and that the attack on the doomed city must consequently be delayed to that date. The 9th of June passed away without being distinguished by ally remarkable incident. On the 12th and 15th June some events occurred, but rather ill the opposite direction, Delhi being not stormed by the English, but the English being attacked by the insurgents, the repeated sorties of whom were, however, repulsed. The fall of Delhi is thus again postponed, the alleged cause being now no longer the sole want of siege-artillery, but General Barnard s resolution to wait upon re-enforcements, as his forces about 3,000 men were totally inadequate to the capture of the ancient capital defended by 30,000 Sepoys, and possessed of all the military stores. The rebels had even established a camp outside the Ajmer gate. Until now, all military writers were unanimous ill considering an English force of 3,000 men quite sufficient for crushing a Sepoy army of 30,000 or 40,000 men; and if such was not the case, how could England to use an expression of The London Times ever be able to reconquer India? The British army in India amounts actually to 30,000 men. The utmost number they can dispatch from England within the next half year cannot exceed 20,000 or 25,000 men, of whom 6,000 men are to fill up vacancies among the European ranks in India, and of whom the additional force of 18,000 or 19,000 men will be reduced by loss from the voyage, by loss from the climate, and by other casualties to about 14,000 troops able to appear on the theater of war. The British army must resolve upon meeting the mutineers in very disproportionate numbers, or it must renounce meeting them at all. Still we are at a loss to understand the slowness of the concentration of their forces around Delhi. If at this season of the year, the heat proves an invincible obstacle, which it did not in the days of Sir Charles Napier, some months later, on the arrival of the European troops, the rains will afford a still more conclusive pretext for a standstill. It should never be forgotten that the present mutiny had, in fact, already begun in the month of January, and that the British Government had thus received ample warning for keeping its powder dry and its forces ready. The prolonged hold of Delhi by the Sepoys in it) face of an English besieging army has, of course, produced its natural result. The mutiny was spreading to the very gates of Calcutta, fifty Bengal regiments had ceased to exist, the Bengal arms, itself had become a myth of the past, and the Europeans, dispersed over an immense extent of land, and blocked up in insulated spots, were either butchered by the rebels, or had taken up position of desperate defense. At Calcutta itself the Christian inhabitants formed a volunteer guard, after a plot, said to have been most complete in its detail, for surprising the seat of the Government, had been discovered, and the native troops there stationed had been disbanded. At Benares, an attempt at disarming a native regiment was resisted by a body of Sikhs and the Thirteenth irregular cavalry. This fact is very important, as it shows that the Sikhs, like the Mohammedans, were making common cause with the Brahmins, and that thus a general union against the British rule, of all the different tribes, was rapidly progressing. It had been an article of faith with the English people, that the Sepoy army constituted their whole strength in India. Now, all at once, they feel quite satisfied that that very army, constitutes their sole danger. During the last Indian debates, Mr. Vernon Smith, the President of the Board of Control, still declared that Two days later the same Vernon Smith had to publish a dispatch containing this ominous paragraph: By and by there will ooze out other facts able to convince even John Bull himself that what he considers a military mutiny is in truth a national revolt. The English press feigns to derive great comfort from the conviction that the revolt had not yet spread beyond the boundaries of the Bengal Presidency, and that not the least doubt was entertained of the loyalty of the Bombay and Madras armies. However, this pleasant view of the case seems singularly to clash with the fact conveyed by the last mail of a mutiny of the Nizam s cavalry having broken out at Aurungabad. Aurungabad being the capital of the district of the same name which belongs to the Bombay Presidency, the truth is that the last mail announces a commencement of revolt of the Bombay army. The Aurungabad mutiny is, indeed, said to have been at once put down by General Woodburn. But was not the Meerut mutiny said to have been put down at once? Did not the Lucknow mutiny, after having been quenched by Sir H. Lawrence, make a more formidable reappearance a fortnight later? Will it not be recollected that the very first announcement of mutiny in the Indian army was accompanied with the announcement of restored order? Although the bulk of the Bombay and Madras armies is composed of low caste men, there are still mixed to every regiment some hundred Rajpoots, a number quite sufficient to form the connecting links with the high caste rebels of the Bengal army. The Punjaub is declared to he quiet, but at the same time we are informed that at Ferozepore, on the 13th of June, military executions had taken place, while Vaughan s corps 5th Punjaub Infantry is praised for having behaved admirably in pursuit of the 55th Native Infantry. This, it must be confessed, is a very queer sort of quiet.

Marx and Engels. First Indian War of Independence 1857-58

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/08/14a.htm

London, August 4, 1857 On the arrival at London of the voluminous reports conveyed by the last Indian mail, the meagre outlines of which had been anticipated by the electric telegraph, the rumor of the capture of Delhi was rapidly spreading and winning so much consistency as to influence the transactions of the Stock Exchange. It was another edition of the capture of Sevastopol hoax, on a reduced scale. The slightest examination of the dates and contents of the Madras papers, from which the favorable news was avowedly derived, would have sufficed to dispel the delusion. The Madras information professed to rest upon private letters from Agra dated June 17, but an official notification, issued at Lahore, on the 17th of June, announces that up to 4 o clock in the afternoon of the 16th, all was quiet before Delhi, while The Bombay Times, dated July 1, states that This much, as to the date of the Madras information. As to its contents, these are evidently made up of General Barnard s bulletin, dated June 8, on his forcible occupation of the bights of Delhi, and of some private reports relating to the sallies of the besieged on the 12th and 14th June. A military plan of Delhi and its cantonments has at last been compiled by Captain Lawrence, from the unpublished plans of the East India Company. Hence we see that Delhi is not quite so weakly fortified as was at first asserted, nor quite so strongly as is now pretended. It possesses a citadel, to be taken by escalade or by regular approaches. The walls, being more than seven miles in extent, are built of solid masonry, but of no great bight. The ditch is narrow and not very deep, and the flanking works do not properly enfilade the curtain. Martello towers exist at intervals. They are semi-circular in form, and loopholed for musketry. Spiral staircases lead from the top of the walls down through the towers to chambers, on a level with the ditch, and those are loopholed for infantry fire, which may prove very annoying to an escalading party crossing the ditch. The bastion s defending the curtains are also furnished with banquettes for riflemen, but these may be kept down by shelling. When the insurrection broke out, the arsenal in the interior of the city contained 900,000 cartridges, two complete siege trains, a large number of field guns and 10,000 muskets. The powder-magazine had been long since removed, at the desire of the inhabitants, from the city to the cantonments outside Delhi, and contained not less than 10,000 barrels. The commanding bights occupied by, Gen. Barnard on the 8th of June are situated in a north-westerly direction from Delhi, where the cantonments outside the walls were also established. From the description, resting on authentic plans, It will be understood that the stronghold of the revolt must have succumbed before a single coup de main, if the British force now before Delhi bad been there on the 26th of May, and they could have been there if supplied with sufficient carriage. A review of the list published in The Bombay Times, and republished in the London papers, of the number of regiments that had revolted, to the end of June, and of the dates on which they revolted, proves conclusively that, on the 26th of May, Delhi was yet occupied by 4,000 to 5,000 men only; a force which could riot one moment have thought of defending a wall seven miles in extent. Meerut being only forts, miles distant from Delhi, and having, since the commencement of 1853, always served as the headquarters of the Bengal artillery, possessed the principal laboratory for military scientific purposes, and afforded the parade ground for exercise in the use of field and siege ordnance; it becomes the more incomprehensible that the British commander was in want of the means necessary for the execution of one of those coups de main by which the British forces in India always know how to secure their supremacy over the natives. First we were informed that the siege train was waited for; then that re-enforcements were wanted; and now The Press, one of the best informed London papers, tells us, From General Barnard s own bulletin on the occupation of the bights of Delhi, which is dated the 8th of June, we see that he originally intended assailing Delhi on the following day. Instead of being able to follow up this plan, he was, by one accident or the other, confined to taking up the defensive against the besieged. At this very moment it is extremely difficult to compute the forces on either part. The statements of the Indian press are altogether self-contradictory; but we think some reliance may be put upon an Indian correspondence of the Bonapartist Pays, which seems to emanate from the French Consul at Calcutta. According to his statement, the army of Gen. Barnard was, on the 14th of June, composed of about 5,700 men, which was expected to be doubled (?) by the re-enforcements expected on the 20th of the same month. His train was composed of 30 heavy siege guns, while the forces of the insurgents were estimated at 40,000 men, badly organized, but richly furnished with all the means of attack and defense. We remark en passant, that the, 3,000 insurgents encamped without the Ajmer gate, probably in the Gazee Khan s tombs, are not, as some London papers imagine, fronting the English force, but, on the contrary, separated from them by the whole breadth of Delhi; the Ajmer gate being situated on one extremity of the south-western part of modern Delhi to the north of the ruins of ancient Delhi. On that side the town nothing can prevent the insurgents from establishing some more such camps. On the north-eastern, or river side of the city, they command the ship bridge, and remain in continued connection with their countrymen, able to receive uninterrupted supplies of men and stores. On a smaller scale Delhi offers the image of a fortress, keeping (like Sevastopol) open its lines of communication with the interior of its own country. The delay in the British operations has not only allowed the besieged to concentrate large numbers for the defense, but the sentiment of having held Delhi during many weeks, harassed the European forces through repeated sallies, together with the news daily pouring in of fresh revolts of the entire army, has, of course, strengthened the morale of the Sepoys. The English, with their small forces, can, of course, not think of investing the town, but must storm it. However, if the next regular mail bring not the news of the capture of Delhi, we may almost be sure that, for some months, all serious operations on the part of the British will have to be suspended. The rainy season will have set in in real earnest, and protect the north-eastern face of the city by filling the ditch with the deep and rapid current of the Jumna, while a thermometer ranging from 75 to 102, combined with an average fall of nine inches of rain, would scourge the Europeans with the genuine Asiatic cholera. Then would be verified the words of Lord Ellenborough, Everything, then, as far as Delhi is concerned, depends on the question whether or not Gen. Barnard found himself sufficiently provided with men and ammunition to undertake the assault of Delhi during the last weeks of June. On the other hand, a retreat on. his part would immensely strengthen the moral force of the insurrection, and perhaps decide the Bombay and Madras armies upon openly joining it.

Marx and Engels. First Indian War of Independence 1857-58

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/08/18.htm

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

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/08/27.htm

London, Aug. 14, 1857 When the Indian news, conveyed by the Trieste telegraph on the 30th of July, and by the Indian mail on the 1st of August, first arrived, we showed at once, from their contents and their dates, that the capture of Delhi was a miserable hoax, and a very inferior imitation of the never-to-be-forgotten fall of Sevastopol. Yet such is the unfathomable depth of John Bull s gullibility, that his ministers, his stock-jobbers and his press had, in fact, contrived to persuade him that the very news which laid bare General Barnard s merely defensive position contained evidence of the complete extermination of his enemies. From day to day this hallucination grew stronger, till it assumed at last such consistency as to induce even a veteran hand at similar matters, General Sir de Lacy Evans, to proclaim on the night of the 12th of August, amid the cheering echoes of the House of Commons, his belief in the truth of the rumor of the capture of Delhi. After this ridiculous exhibition, however, the bubble was ripe for bursting, and the following day, the 13th of August, brought successive telegraphic dispatches from Trieste and Marseilles, anticipating the Indian mails, and leaving no doubt as to the fact that on the 27th of June Delhi still stood where it had stood before, and that General Barnard, still confined to the defensive, but harassed by frequent furious sorties of the besieged, was very glad to have been able to hold his ground to that time. In our opinion the next mail is likely to impart the news of the retreat of the English army, or at least facts foreshadowing such a retrograde movement. It is certain that the extent of the walls of Delhi forbids the belief that the whole of them can be effectively manned, and, on the contrary,. invites to coups de main to be executed by concentration and surprise. But Gen. Barnard seems imbued with European notions of fortified towns and sieges and bombardments, rather than prone to those bold eccentricities by which Sir Charles Napier knew how to thunderstrike Asiatic minds. His forces are, indeed, said to have been increased to about 12,000 men, 7,000 Europeans and 5,000 faithful natives ; but on the other hand, it is not denied that the rebels were daily receiving new reinforcements, so that we may fairly assume that the numerical disproportion between besiegers and besieged has remained the same. Moreover, the only point by the surprise of which General Barnard might insure certain success is the Mogul s Palace, which occupies a commanding position, but the access to which from the river side must become impracticable from the effect of the rainy season, which will have set in, while an attack on the palace between the Cashmere gate and the river would inflict on the assailants the greatest risk in case of failure. Finally, the setting in of the rains is sure to make the securing of his line of communication and retreat the principal object of the General s operations. In one word, we see no reason to believe that he, with his still inadequate forces, should venture upon risking, at the most impracticable period of the year, what he shrunk from undertaking at a more seasonable time. That in spite of the judicial blindness by which the London press contrives to fool itself, there are entertained serious misgivings in the highest quarters, may be seen from Lord Palmerston s organ, The Morning Post The venal gentlemen of that paper inform us: It is evident that, by dint of weakness, vacillation, and direct blunders, the British generals have contrived to raise Delhi to the dignity of the political and military center of the Indian revolt. A retreat of the English army, after a prolonged siege, or a mere staying on the defensive, will be regarded as a positive defeat, and give the signal to a general outbreak. It would moreover expose the British troops to a fearful mortality, from which till now they have been protected by the great excitement inherent to a siege full of sorties, encounters, and a hope of soon wreaking a bloody vengeance on their enemies. As to the talk about the apathy of the Hindoos, or even their sympathy with British rule, it is all nonsense. The princes, like true Asiatics, are watching their opportunity. The people in the whole Presidency of Bengal, where not kept in check by a handful of Europeans, are enjoying a blessed anarchy; but there is nobody there against whom they could rise. It is a curious quid pro quo to expect an Indian revolt to assume the features of a European revolution. In the Presidencies of Madras and Bombay, the army having not yet pronounced, the people of course do not stir. The Punjaub, at last, is to this moment the principal central station of the European forces, while its native army is disarmed. To rouse it, the neighboring semi-independent princes must throw their weight into the scale. But that such a ramification of conspiracy as exhibited by the Bengal army could not have been carried on on such an immense scale without the secret connivance and support of the natives, seems as certain as that the great difficulties the English meet with in obtaining supplies and transports the principal cause of the slow concentration of their troops do not witness to the good feelings of the peasantry. The other news conveyed by the telegraphic dispatches are so far important as they show us the revolt rising on the extreme confines of the Punjaub, in Peshawur, and on the other hand striding in a southern direction from Delhi to the Presidency of Bombay, through the stations of Jhansi, Saugor, Indore, Mhow, till we arrive at last at Aurungabad, only 180 miles north-east of Bombay. With respect to Jhansi in Bundelcund, we may remark that it is fortified and may thus become another center of armed rebellion. On the other hand, it is stated that Gen. Van Cortlandt has defeated the mutineers at Sirsab, on his road from the north-west to join Gen. Barnard s force before Delhi, from which he was still 170 miles distant. He had to pass by Jhansi, where he would again encounter the rebels. As to the preparations made by the Home Government, Lord Palmerston seems to think that the most circuitous line is the shortest, and consequently sends his troops round the Cape, instead of through Egypt. The fact that some thousand men destined for China have been intercepted at Ceylon and directed to Calcutta, where the Fifth Fusileers actually arrived on the 2d of July, has afforded him the occasion for breaking a bad joke on those of his obedient Commons who still dared doubt that his Chinese war was quite a windfall.

Marx and Engels. First Indian War of Independence 1857-58

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/08/29.htm

The last sitting but one of the Commons before their prorogation was seized upon by Lord Palmerston to allow them to take some faint glimpses at the entertainments he keeps in store for the English public during the interregnum between the session that has passed away and the session that is to come. The first item of his programme is the announcement of the revival of the Persian war, which as he had stated some months ago, was definitely terminated by a peace concluded on the 4th of March. General Sir de Lacy Evans having expressed the hope that Col. Jacob was ordered back to India with his forces now stationed on the Persian Gulf, Lord Palmerston stated plainly that until Persia had executed the engagements contracted by the treaty, Col. Jacob s troops could not be withdrawn. Herat, however, had not yet been evacuated. There were, on the contrary, rumors afloat affirming that additional forces had been sent by Persia to Herat. This, indeed, had been denied by the Persian Embassador at Paris; but great doubts were justly entertained of the good faith of Persia, and consequently the British forces under Col. Jacob would continue to occupy Bushire. On the day following Lord Palmerston s statement, the news was conveyed by telegraphic dispatch of the categorical demand pressed upon the Persian Government by Mr. Murray for the evacuation of Herat a demand which may be fairly considered the forerunner of a new declaration of war. Such is the first international effect of the Indian revolt. The second item of Lord Palmerston s programme makes good for its want of details by the wide perspective it unrolls. When he first announced the withdrawal of large military forces from England to be dispatched to India, he answered his opponents, accusing him of denuding Great Britain of her defensive power, and thus affording foreign countries an opportunity to take advantage of her weakened position, that Now, on the eve of the prorogation of Parliament, he speaks in quite a different strain. To the advice of Gen. de Lacy Evans to send out to India the troops in screw line-of-battle ships, he did not reply, as he had done before, by asserting the superiority of the sail to the screw-propeller, but on the contrary, admitted that the General s plan appeared in the first instance highly advantageous. Yet, the House ought to bear in mind, that Lord Palmerston, it will not be denied plants John Bull on the horns of a very fine dilemma. If he uses the adequate means for a decisive suppression of the Indian revolt, he will be attacked at home; and if he allows the Indian revolt to consolidate, he will, as Mr. Disraeli said, Before casting a glance at the European circumstances so mysteriously alluded to, it may not be amiss to gather up the confessions made during the same sitting of the Commons in regard to the actual position of the British forces in India. First, then, all sanguine hopes of a sudden capture of Delhi were dropped as if by mutual agreement, and the highflying expectations of former days came down to the more rational view that they ought to congratulate themselves, if the English were able to maintain their posts until November, when the advance of the re-enforcements sent from home was to take place. In the second instance, misgivings oozed out as to the probability of their losing the most important of those posts, Cawnpore, on the fate of which, as Mr. Disraeli said, everything must depend, and the relief of which he considered of even greater import than the capture of Delhi. From its central position on the Ganges, its bearing on Oude, Rohilcund, Gwalior, and Bundelcund, and its serving as an advanced fort to Delhi, Cawnpore is, in fact, in the present circumstances, a place of prime importance. Lastly, Sir F. Smith, one of the military members of the House, called its attention to the fact that, actually, there were no engineers and sappers with their Indian army, as all of them had deserted, and were likely to make Delhi a second Saragossa. On the other hand, Lord Palmerston had neglected to forward from England either any officers or men of the engineer corps. Returning now to the European events said to be looming in the future, we are at once astonished at the comment The London Times makes on Lord Palmerston s allusions. The French Constitution, it says, might be overthrown, or Napoleon disappear from the scene of life, and then there would be an end to the French alliance, upon which the present security rests. In other words, The Times, the great organ of the British Cabinet, while considering a revolution in France an event not unlikely to occur any day, simultaneously proclaims the present alliance to be founded not on the sympathies of the French people, but on mere conspiracy with the French usurper. Beside a revolution in France, there is the Danubian quarrel. By the annulling of the Moldavian elections, it has not been made to subside, but only to enter on a new phase. There is, above all, the Scandinavian North, which, at a period not distant, is sure to become the theater of great agitation, and, perhaps, may give the signal to an international conflict in Europe. Peace is still kept in the North, because two events are anxiously waited for the death of the King of Sweden and the abdication of his throne by the present King of Denmark. At a late meeting of naturalists at Christiania, the hereditary Prince of Sweden declared emphatically in favor of a Scandinavian union. Being a man in the prime of life, of a resolute and energetic character, the Scandinavian party, mustering in its ranks the ardent youth of Sweden, Norway and Denmark, will consider his accession to the throne as the opportune moment for taking up arms. On the other hand, the weak and imbecile King of Denmark, Frederick VII., is said to have been at last allowed by the Countess Danner, his morganatic consort, to withdraw to private life, a permission hitherto refused him. It was on her account that Prince Ferdinand, the King s uncle, and the presumptive heir of the Danish throne, was induced to retire from State affairs, to which he afterward returned in consequence of an arrangement brought about by the other members of the royal family. Now, at this moment, the Countess Danner is said to be disposed to change her residence at Copenhagen for one at Paris, and even to prompt the King to bid farewell to the storms of political life by resigning his scepter into the hands of Prince Ferdinand. This Prince Ferdinand, a man about 65 years of age, has always occupied the same position toward the Court of Copenhagen, which the Count of Artois afterward Charles X. held toward the Court of the Tuileries. Obstinate, severe and ardent in his conservative faith, he has never condescended to feign adherence to the Constitutional system. Yet the first condition of his accession to the throne would be the acceptance on oath of a Constitution he openly detests. Hence the probability of international troubles, which the Scandinavian party, both in Sweden and Denmark, are firmly resolved upon turning to their own profit. On, the other hand, the conflict between Denmark and the German Duchies of Holstein and Schleswig, supported in their claims by Prussia and Austria, would still more embroil matters, and entangle Germany in the agitations of the North; while the London treaty of 1852, guaranteeing the throne of Denmark to Prince Ferdinand, would involve Russia, France and England.

Marx and Engels. First Indian War of Independence 1857-58

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/09/05.htm

The mail of the Baltic reports no new events in India, but has a mass of highly interesting details, which we proceed to condense for the instruction of our readers. The first point to be noticed is that so late as the 15th of July the English had not got into Delhi. At the same time, the cholera had made its appearance in their camp, the heavy rains were setting in, and the raising of the siege and the withdrawal of the besiegers appeared to be a question of time only. The British press would fain make its believe that the pest, while carrying off Gen. Sir H. Barnard, had spared his worse fed and harder worked men. It is, therefore, riot from explicit statements, communicated to the public, but only by way of inference from avowed facts, that we can arrive at some idea of the ravages of this terrible disease in the ranks of the besieging army. An officer in the camp before Delhi, writes, July 14: Now this proves that. the forces arriving from the Punjaub found the great northern line of communication from Jullindur down to Meerut in a state of rebellion, and were consequently obliged to diminish their numbers by leaving detachments at the main posts. This accounts for the arrivals from the Punjab not mustering their anticipated strength. but it does not explain the reduction of the European force to 2,000 men. The Bombay correspondent of The London Times, writing on July 30, attempts to explain in another way the passive attitude of the besiegers. He says: Here another secret is revealed. The camp before Delhi, it seems, bears some likeness to the camp of Agramante and the English have to struggle not only with the enemy in their front, but also with the ally in their lines. Still, this fact affords no sufficient cause for there being only 2,000 Europeans to be spared for offensive operations. A third writer, the Bombay correspondent of The Daily News, gives an explicit enumeration of the forces assembled under Gen. Read, Barnard s successor, which seems trustworthy, as he reckons up singly the different elements of which they are composed. According to his statement, about 1,200 Europeans and 1,600 Sikhs, irregular horse, etc., say altogether about 3,000 men, headed by Brigadier-Gen. Chamberlain, reached the camp before Delhi from the Punjaub between June 23 and July 3. On the other hand, he estimates the whole of the forces now assembled under Gen. Read at 7,000 men, artillery and siege-train included, so that the army of Delhi, before the arrival of the Punjaub re-enforcements, could not have exceeded 4,000 men. The London Times of August 13 stated that Sir H. Barnard had collected an army of 7,000 British and 5,000 natives. Although this was a flagrant exaggeration, there is every reason to believe that the European forces then amounted to about 4,000 men, backed by a somewhat smaller number of natives. The original force, then., under Gen. Barnard, was as strong as the force now collected under Gen. Read. Consequently, the Punjaub re-enforcements have only made up for the wear and tear which have reduced the strength of the besiegers almost one-half, an enormous loss, proceeding partly from the incessant sorties of the rebels, partly from the ravages of the cholera. Thus we understand why the British can muster only 2,000 Europeans for any effective attack. So much for the strength of the British forces before Delhi. Now for their operations. That they were not of a very brilliant character may be fairly inferred from the simple fact that, since June 8, when Gen. Barnard made his report on the capture of the hight opposite Delhi, no bulletin whatever has been issued from headquarters. The operations, with a single exception, consist of sallies made by the besieged and repulsed by the besiegers. The besiegers were attacked now in front and then in the flanks, but mostly in the right rear. The sorties took place on the 27th and 30th of June, on the 3d, 4th, 9th and 14th of July. On the 27th of June, fighting was confined to outpost skirmishes, lasting, some hours, but toward the afternoon was interrupted by a heavy fall of rain, the first of the season. On the 30th of June, the insurgents showed themselves in force among the inclosures on the right of the besiegers, harassing their pickets and supports. On the 3d of July, the besieged made early in the morning a feint attack on the right rear of the English position, then advanced several miles to that rear along the Kurnaul road as far as Alipore, in order to intercept a train of supplies and treasure under convoy to the camp. On their way, they encountered an outpost of the 2d Punjaub irregular horse, which gave way at once. On their return to the city, on the 4th, the rebels were attacked by a body of 1,000 infantry and two squadrons of cavalry dispatched from the English camp to intercept them. They contrived, however, to effect their retreat with little or no loss and saving all their guns. On the 8th of July, a party was sent from the British camp to destroy a canal bridge at the village of Bussy, some six miles from Delhi, which in the former sallies had afforded the insurgents facilities for attacking the extreme British rear, and interfering with the British communications with Kurnaul and Meerut. The bridge was destroyed. On the 9th of July, the insurgents came out again in force and attacked the right rear of the British position. In the official accounts telegraphed to Lahore on the same day, the loss of the assailants is estimated at about one thousand killed; but this account seems much exaggerated, since we read in a letter of July 13 from the camp: The same letter, published in The Daily News, does not pretend that the British forced back the Sepoys, but, on the contrary, that the Sepoys forced back all our working parties and then retired. The loss of the besiegers was considerable, amounting, as it did, to two hundred and twelve, killed and wounded. On the 14th of July, in consequence of another sortie, another fierce fight took place, the details of which have not yet arrived. The besieged had, meanwhile, received strong re-enforcements. On the 1st of July, the Rohilcund mutineers from Bareily, Muradabat and Shahjehanpore, consisting of four regiments of infantry, one of irregular cavalry, and one battery of artillery, had contrived to effect their junction with their comrades at Delhi. This successful march of the insurgents through the whole breadth of Rohilcund proves all the country cast of the Jumna tip to the bills of Rohilcund to be closed against the English forces, while the untroubled march of the insurgents from Neemuch to Agra, if connected with the revolts at Indore and Mhow, proves the same fact for all the country south-west of the Jumna and up to the Vindhya Mountains. The only, successful in fact, the only operation of the English in regard to Delhi is the pacification of the country to its north and its north-west by Gen. Van Cortlandt s Punjaub Sikh forces. Throughout the district between Loodhiana and Sirsah, he had mainly to encounter the robber-tribes inhabiting villages sparsely scattered over a wild and sandy desert. On the 11th of July, lie is said to have left Sirsah for Futtehabad, thence to march on Hissar, thus opening up the country in the rear of the besieging force. Beside Delhi, three other points in the North-Western Provinces Agra, Cawnpore and Lucknow had become centers of the struggle between the natives and the English. The affair of Agra bears this peculiar aspect, that it shows for the first time the mutineers setting out on a deliberate expedition over about 300 miles of ground with the intention of attacking a distant English military station. According to The Mofussilite, a journal printed at Agra, the Sepoy regiments of Nusserabad and Neemuch, about 10,000 strong, (say 7,000 infantry, 1,500 cavalry and 8 guns), approached Agra at the end of June, encamped in the beginning of July on a plain in the rear of the village of Sussia, about 20 miles from Agra, and on the 4th of July seemed preparing an attack on the city. On this news, the European residents in the cantonments before Agra took refuge in the fort. The Commander at Agra dispatched at first the Kotah contingent of horse, foot and artillery to serve as an advanced post against the enemy, but, having reached their place of destination, one and all bolted to join the ranks of the rebels. On July 5, the Agra garrison, consisting of the 3d Bengal Europeans, a battery of artillery and a corps of European volunteers, marched out to attack the mutineers, and are said to have driven them out of the village into the plain behind it, but were evidently themselves in their turn forced back, and, after a loss of 49 killed and 92 wounded, of a total force of 500 men engaged, had to retire, being harassed and threatened by the cavalry of the enemy with such activity as to prevent their getting a shot at them, as The Mofussilite says. In other words, the English took to downright flight and shut themselves up in their fort, while the Sepoys, advancing to Agra, destroyed nearly all the houses in the cantonment. On the following day, July 6, they proceeded to Bhurtpore, on the way to Delhi. The important result of this affair is the interruption by the mutineers of the English line of communication between Agra and Delhi, and their probable appearance before the old city of the Moguls. At Cawnpore, as was known from the last mail, a force of about 200 Europeans, under the command of Gen. Wheeler, having with them the wives and children of the 32d foot, was shut up in a fortified work and surrounded by an overwhelming mass of rebels, headed by Nena Sahib of Bithoor. Different assaults on the fort took place on the 17th and between the 24th and 28th of June, in the last of which, Gen. Wheeler was shot through the leg and died of his wounds. On June 28, Nena Sahib invited the English to surrender on the condition of being allowed to depart on boats down the Ganges to Allahabad. These terms were accepted, but the British had hardly put out into the middle of the stream when guns opened upon them from the right bank of the Ganges. The people in the boats that tried to escape to the opposite bank were caught and cut down by a body of cavalry. The women and children were made captives. Messengers having been dispatched several times from Cawnpore to Allahabad with pressing demands for relief, on July 1 a column of Madras fusiliers and Sikhs started, under Major Renaud, on the way to Cawnpore. Within four miles of Futteypore it was joined, on July 13 at daybreak, by Brig.-Gen. Havelock, who, at the head of about 1,300 Europeans of the 84th and 64th, the 13th irregular horse, and the remnant of Oude Irregulars, reached Allahabad from Benares, July 3, and then followed up Major Renaud by forced marches. On the very day of his junction with Renaud, he was forced to accept battle before Futteypore, whither Nena Sahib had led his native forces. After an obstinate engagement, Gen. Havelock, by a move in the flank of the enemy, succeeded in driving him out of Futteypore in the direction of Cawnpore, where twice he had to encounter him again on the 15th and 16th of July. At the latter date, Cawnpore was recaptured by the English, Nena Sahib retreating to Bithoor, situated on the Ganges, twelve miles distant from Cawnpore, and said to be strongly fortified. Before undertaking his expedition to Futteypore, Nena Sahib had murdered all the captive English women and children. The recapture of Cawnpore was of the highest importance to the English, as it secured their Ganges line of communication. At Lucknow, the capital of Oude, the British garrison found themselves nearly in the same plight which had proved fatal to their comrades at Cawnpore shut up in a fort, surrounded by overwhelming forces, straitened for provisions, and deprived of their leader. The latter, Sir H. Lawrence, died July 4, of tetanus, from a wound in the leg, received on the 2d, during a sortie. On the 18th and 19th of July, Lucknow was still holding out. Its only hope of relief rested on Gen. Havelock s pushing forward his forces from Cawnpore. The question is whether he would dare to do so with Nena Sahib in his rear. Any delay, however, must prove fatal to Lucknow, since the periodical rains would soon render field operations impossible. The examination of these events forces the conclusion upon us that., in the north-west provinces of Bengal, the British forces were gradually drifting into the position of small posts planted on insulated rocks amid a sea of revolution. In lower Bengal, there had occurred only partial acts of insubordination at Mirzapore, Dinapore and Patna, beside an unsuccessful attempt made by the roving Brahmins of the neighborhood to recapture the holy city of Benares. In the Punjaub, the spirit of rebellion was forcibly kept down, a mutiny being suppressed at Sealkote, another at Jelum, and the disaffection of Peshawur successfully checked. Emeutes had already been attempted in Gujerat, at Punderpoor in Sattara, at Nagpore and Saugor in the Nagpore territory, at Hyderabad in the Nizam s territory, and, lastly, as far south as Mysore, so that the calm of the Bombay and Madras Presidencies must be understood as by no means perfectly secure.

Marx and Engels. First Indian War of Independence 1857-58

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/09/15.htm

London, Sept. 4, 1857 The outrages committed by the revolted Sepoys in India are indeed appalling, hideous, ineffable such as one is prepared to meet only in wars of insurrection, of nationalities, of races, and above all of religion; in one word, such as respectable England used to applaud when perpetrated by the Vendeans on the Blues, by the Spanish guerrillas on the infidel Frenchmen, by Servians on their German and Hungarian neighbors, by Croats on Viennese rebels, by Cavaignac s Garde Mobile or Bonaparte s Decembrists on the sons and daughters of proletarian France. However infamous the conduct of the Sepoys, it is only the reflex, in a concentrated form, of England s own conduct in India, not only during the epoch of the foundation of her Eastern Empire, but even during the last ten years of a long-settled rule. To characterize that rule, it suffices to say that torture formed ail organic institution of its financial policy. There is something in human history like retribution: and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instrument be forged not by the offended, but by the offender himself. The first blow dealt to the French monarchy proceeded from the nobility, not from the peasants. The Indian revolt does not commence with the Ryots, tortured, dishonored and stripped naked by the British, but with the Sepoys, clad, fed, petted, fatted and pampered by them. To find parallels to the Sepoy atrocities, we need not, as some London papers pretend, fall back on the middle ages, not, even wander beyond the history of contemporary England. All we want is to study the first Chinese war, an event, so to say, of yesterday. The English soldiery then committed abominations for the mere fun of it; their passions being neither sanctified by religious fanaticism nor exacerbated by hatred against an overbearing and conquering race, nor provoked by the stern resistance of a heroic enemy. The violations of women, the spittings of children, the roastings of whole villages, were then mere wanton sports, not recorded by Mandarins, but by British officers themselves. Even at the present catastrophe it would be an unmitigated mistake to suppose that all the cruelty is on the side of the Sepoys, and all the milk of human kindness flows on the side of the English. The letters of the British officers are redolent of malignity. An officer writing from Peshawur gives a description of the disarming of the 10th irregular cavalry for not charging the 55th native infantry when ordered to do so. He exults in the fact that they were not only disarmed, but stripped of their coats and boots, and after having received 12d. per man, were marched down to the river side, and there embarked in boats and sent down the Indus, where the writer is delighted to expect every mother s son will have a chance of being drowned in the rapids. Another writer informs us that, some inhabitants of Peshawur having caused a night alarm by exploding little mines of gunpowder in honor of a wedding (a national custom), the persons concerned were tied up next morning, and News arrived from Pindee that three native chiefs were plotting. Sir John Lawrence replied by a message ordering a spy to attend to the meeting. On the spy s report, Sir John sent a second message, Hang them. The chiefs were hanged. An officer in the civil service, from Allahabad, writes: Another, from the same place: One exulting officer writes: Another, in allusion to the summary hanging of a large body of the natives: A third: From Benares we are informed that thirty Zemindars were hanged or) the mere suspicion of sympathizing with their own countrymen, and whole villages were burned down on the same plea. An officer from Benares, whose letter is printed in The London Times, says: And then it should not be forgotten that, while the cruelties of the English are related as acts of martial vigor, told simply, rapidly, without dwelling on disgusting details, the outrages of the natives, shocking as they are, are still deliberately exaggerated. For instance, the circumstantial account first appearing in The Times, and then going the round of the London press, of the atrocities perpetrated at Delhi and Meerut, from whom did it proceed? From a cowardly parson residing at Bangalore, Mysore, more than a thousand miles, as the bird flies, distant from the scene of action. Actual accounts of Delhi evince the imagination of an English parson to be capable of breeding greater horrors than even the wild fancy of a Hindoo mutineer. The cutting of noses, breasts, &c., in one word, the horrid mutilations committed by the Sepoys, are of course more revolting to European feeling than the throwing of red-hot shell on Canton dwellings by a Secretary of the Manchester Peace Society, or the roasting of Arabs pent up in a cave by a French Marshal, or the flaying alive of British soldiers by the cat-o -nine-tails under drum-head court-martial, or any other of the philanthropical appliances used in British penitentiary colonies. Cruelty, like every other thing, has its fashion, changing according to time and place. Caesar, the accomplished scholar, candidly narrates how he ordered many thousand Gallic warriors to have their right hands cut off. Napoleon would have been ashamed to do this. He preferred dispatching his own French regiments, suspected of republicanism, to St. Domingo, there to die of the blacks and the plague. The infamous mutilations committed by the Sepoys remind one of the practices of the Christian Byzantine Empire, or the prescriptions of Emperor Charles V. s criminal law, or the English punishments for high treason, as still recorded by Judge Blackstone. With Hindoos, whom their religion has made virtuosi in the art of self-torturing, these tortures inflicted on the enemies of their race and creed appear quite natural, and must appear still more so to the English, who, only some years since, still used to draw revenues from the Juggernaut festivals, protecting and assisting the bloody rites of a religion of cruelty. The frantic roars of the bloody old Times, as Cobbett used to call it its, playing the part of a furious character in one of Mozart s operas, who indulges in most melodious strains in the idea of first hanging his enemy, then roasting him, then quartering him, then spitting him, and then flaying him alive its tearing the passion of revenge to tatters and to rags all this would appear but silly if under the pathos of tragedy there were not distinctly perceptible the tricks of comedy. The London Times overdoes its part, not only from panic. It supplies comedy with a subject even missed by Moli re, the Tartuffe of Revenge. What it simply wants is to write up the funds and to screen the Government. As Delhi has not, like the walls of Jericho, fallen before mere puffs of wind, Jolin Bull is to be steeped in cries for revenge up to his very ears, to make him forget that his Government is responsible for the mischief hatched and the colossal dimensions it has been allowed to assume.

Marx and Engels. First Indian War of Independence 1857-58

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/09/16.htm

Our London correspondent, whose letter with regard to the Indian revolt we published yesterday, very properly referred to some of the antecedents which prepared the way for this violent outbreak. We propose to-day to devote a moment to continuing that line of reflections, and to showing that the British rulers of India are by no means such mild and spotless benefactors of the Indian people as they would have the world believe. For this purpose, we shall resort to the official Blue Books... on the subject of East-Indian torture, which were laid before the House of Commons during the sessions of 1856 and 1857. The evidence, it will be seen, is of a sort which cannot be gainsayed. We have first the report of the Torture Commission at Madras, which states its belief in the general existence of torture for revenue purposes. It doubts whether It declares that there was The reasons for this difficulty given by the Commissioners are: 1. The distances which those who wish to make complaints personally to the Collector have to travel, involving expense and loss of time in attending upon his office: 2. The fear that applications by letter the district police and revenue officer that is, to the very man who, either in his person or through his petty police subordinates, has wronged him; 3. The inefficient means of procedure and punishment provided by law for officers of Government, even when formally accused or convicted of these practices. It seems that if a charge of this nature were proved before a magistrate, he could only punish by a fine of fifty rupees, or a month s imprisonment. The alternative consisted of handing over the accused The report adds that A police or revenue officer, who is the same person, as the revenue is collected by the police, when charged with extorting money, is first tried by the Assistant Collector; he then can appeal to the Collector; then to the Revenue Board. This Board may refer him to the Government or to the civil courts. Further, this extorting of money applies only to taking the public money, or forcing a further contribution from the ryot for the officer to put into his own pocket. There is, therefore, no legal means of punishment whatever for the employment of force in collecting the public revenue. The report from which these quotations are made applies only to the Presidency of Madras: but Lord Dalbousie himself, writing, in September, 1855, to the Directors says that The universal existence of torture as a financial institution of British India is thus officially admitted, but the admission is made in such a manner as to shield the British Government itself. In fact, the conclusion arrived at by the Madras commission is that the practice of torture is entirely the fault of the lower Hindoo officials, while the European servants of the Government had always, however unsuccessfully, done their best to prevent it. In answer to this assertion, the Madras Native Association presented, in January, 1856, a petition to Parliament, complaining of the torture investigation on the following grounds: 1. That there was scarcely any investigation at all, the Commission sitting only in the City of Madras, and for but three months, while it was impossible, except in very few cases, for the natives who had complaints to make to leave their homes; 2. That the Commissioners did not endeavor to trace the evil to its source; had they done so, it would have been discovered to be in the very system of collecting the revenue; 3. That no inquiry was made of the accused native officials as to what extent their superiors were acquainted with the practice. Indeed, a few extracts from the evidence on which the Madras Report professes to be founded, will suffice to refute its assertion that no blame is due to Englishmen. Thus, Mr. W. D. Kohlhoff, a merchant, says: Among the cases of complaint from natives, we find the following: A native Christian states in reply to questions put by the Commissioners: There follows the case of a Brahmin, in which he, with others of his own village and of the neighboring villages, was called on by the Tahsildars to furnish planks, charcoal, firewood, &c., gratis, that he might carry on the Coleroon bridge work: on refusing, he is seized by twelve men and maltreated in various ways. He adds: The light in which illegal practices, carried to the last degree of extortion and violence, were looked upon by the highest authority, is best shown by the case of Mr. Brereton, the Commissioner in charge of the Loodhiana District in the Punjaub in 1855. According to the Report of the Chief Commissioner for the Punjaub, it was proved that In his minute on the case, Lord Dalhousie says: Lord Dalhousie proposes to make a great public example, and, consequently, is of opinion that These extracts from the Blue Books may be concluded with the petition from the inhabitants of Talook in Canara, on the Malabar coast, who, after stating that they had presented several petitions to the Government to no purpose, thus contrast their former and present condition: We have here given but a brief and mildly-colored chapter from the real history of British rule in India. In view of such facts, dispassionate and thoughtful men may perhaps be led to ask whether a people are not justified in attempting to expel the foreign conquerors who have so abused their subjects. And if the English could do these things in cold blood, is it surprising that the insurgent Hindoos should be guilty, in the fury of revolt and conflict, of the crimes and cruelties alleged against them?

Marx and Engels. First Indian War of Independence 1857-58

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/09/17.htm

The present state of affairs in Asia suggests the inquiry, What is the real value of their Indian dominion to the British nation and people? Directly, that is in the shape of tribute, of surplus of Indian receipts over Indian expenditures, nothing whatever reaches the British Treasury. On the contrary, the annual outgo is very large. From the moment that the East India Company entered extensively on the career of conquest now just about a century ago their finances fell into an embarrassed condition, and they were repeatedly compelled to apply to Parliament, not only for military aid to assist them in holding the conquered territories, but for financial aid to save them from bankruptcy. And so things have continued down to the present moment, at which so large a call is made for troops on the British nation, to be followed, no doubt, by corresponding calls for money. In prosecuting its conquests hitherto, and building up its establishments, the East India Company has contracted a debt of upward of 50,000,000 sterling, while the British Government has been at the expense, for years past, of transporting to and front and keeping up in India, in addition to the forces, native and European, of the East India Company, a standing army of thirty thousand men. Such being the case, it is evident that the advantage to Great Britain from her Indian empire must he limited to the profits and benefits which accrue to individual British subjects. These profits and benefits, it must be confessed, are very considerable. First, we have the stockholders in the East India Company, to the number of about 3,000 persons, to whom tinder the recent charter there is guaranteed, upon a paid-up capital of six millions of pounds sterling, an annual dividend of ten and a half per cent, amounting to 630,000 annually. As the East India stock is held in transferable shares, anybody may become a stockholder who has money enough to buy the stock, which, under the existing charter, commands a premium of from 125 to 150 per cent. Stock to the amount of 500, costing say $6,000, entitles the holder to speak at the Proprietors meetings, but to vote he must have 1,000 of stock. Holders of 3,000 have two votes, of 6,000 three votes, and of 10,000 or upward four votes. The proprietors, however, have but little voice, except in the election of the Board of Directors, of whom they choose twelve, while the Crown appoints six; but these appointees of the Crown must be qualified by having resided for ten years or more in India. One third of the Directors go out of office each year, but may be re-elected or reappointed. To be a Director, one must be a proprietor of 2,000 of stock. The Directors have a salary of 500 each, and their Chairman and Deputy Chairman twice as much; but the chief inducement to accept the office is the great patronage attached to it in the appointment of all Indian officers, civil and military a patronage, however, largely shared, and, as to the most important offices, engrossed substantially, by the Board of Control. This Board consists of six members, all Privy Councilors, and in general two or three of them Cabinet Ministers the President of the Board being always so, in fact a Secretary of State for India. Next come the recipients of this patronage, divided into five classes civil, clerical, medical, military and naval. For service in India, at least in the civil line, some knowledge of the languages spoken there is necessary, and to prepare young men to enter their civil service, the East India Company has a college at Haileybury. A corresponding college for the military service, in which, however, the rudiments of military science are the principal branches taught, has been established at Addiscombe, near London. Admission to these colleges was formerly a matter of favor on the part of the Directors of the Company, but under the latest modifications of the charter it has been opened to competition in the way of a public examination of candidates. On first reaching India, a civilian is allowed about $150 a month, till having passed a necessary examination in one or more of the native languages (which must be within twelve months after his arrival), he is attached to the service with emoluments which vary from $2,500 to near $50,000 per annum. The latter is the pay of the members of the Bengal Council; the members of the Bombay and Madras Councils ... receive about $30,000 per annum. No person not a member of Council can receive more than about $25,000 per annum, and, to obtain an appointment worth $20,000 or over, he must have been a resident in India for twelve years. Nine years residence qualifies for salaries of from $15,000 to $20,000, and three years residence for salaries of from $7,000 to $15,000. Appointments in the civil service go nominally by seniority and merit, but really to a great extent by favor. As they are the best paid, there is great competition to get them, the military officers leaving their regiments for this purpose whenever they can get a chance. The average of all the salaries in the civil service is stated at about $8,000, but this does not include perquisites and extra allowances, which are often very considerable. These civil servants are employed as Governors, Councilors, judges, Embassadors, Secretaries, Collectors of the Revenue, &c. the number in the whole being generally about 800. The salary of the Governor-General of India is $125,000, but the extra allowances often amount to a still larger sum. The Church service includes three bishops and about one hundred and sixty chaplains. The Bishop of Calcutta has $25,000 a year; those of Madras and Bombay half as much; the chaplains from $2,500 to $7,000, beside fees. The medical service includes some 800 physicians and surgeons, with salaries of from $1,500 to $10,000. The European military officers employed in India, including those of the contingents which the dependent princes are obliged to furnish, number about 8,000. The fixed pay in the infantry is, for ensigns, $1,080; lieutenants, $1,344; captains, $2,226; majors, $3,810; lieutenant colonels, $5,520; colonels, $7,680. This is the pay in cantonment. In active service, it is more. The pay in the cavalry, artillery and engineers, is somewhat higher. By obtaining staff situations or employments in the civil service, many officers double their pay. Here are about ten thousand British subjects holding lucrative situations in India, and drawing their pay from the Indian service. To these must be added a considerable number living in England, whither they have retired upon pensions, which in all the services are payable after serving a certain number of years. These pensions, with the dividends and interest on debts due in England, consume some fifteen to twenty millions of dollars drawn annually from India, and which may in fact be regarded as so much tribute paid to the English Government indirectly through its subjects. Those who annually retire from the several services carry with them very considerable amounts of savings from their salaries, which is so much more added to the annual drain on India. Beside those Europeans actually employed in the service of the Government, there are other European residents in India, to the number of 6,000 or more, employed in trade or private speculation. Except a few indigo, sugar and coffee planters in the rural districts. they are principally merchants, agents and manufacturers, who reside in the cities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, or their immediate vicinity. The foreign trade of India, including imports and exports to the amount of about fifty millions of dollars of each, is almost entirely in their hands, and their profits are no doubt very considerable. It is thus evident that individuals gain largely by the English connection with India, and of course their gain goes to increase the sum of the national wealth. But against all this a very large offset is to be made. The military and naval expenses paid out of the pockets of the people of England on Indian account have been constantly increasing with the extent of the Indian dominion. To this must be added the expense of Burmese, Affghan, Chinese and Persian wars. In fact, the whole cost of the late Russian war may fairly be charged to the Indian account, since the fear and dread of Russia, which led to that war, grew entirely out of jealousy as to her designs on India. Add to this the career of endless conquest and perpetual aggression in which the English are involved by the possession of India, and it may well be doubted whether, on the whole, this dominion does not threaten to cost quite as Much as it can ever be expected to come to.

Marx and Engels. First Indian War of Independence 1857-58

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/09/21.htm

The news from India, which reached us yesterday, wears a very disastrous and threatening aspect for the English, though, as may be seen in another column, our intelligent London correspondent regards it differently. From Delhi we have details to July 29, and a later report, to the effect that, in consequence of the ravages of the cholera, the besieging forces were compelled to retire from before Delhi and take up their quarters at Agra. It is true, this report is admitted by none of the London journals, but we can, at the very utmost, only regard it as somewhat premature. As we know from all the Indian correspondence, the besieging army had suffered severely in sorties made on the 14th, 18th and 23rd of July. On those occasions the rebels fought with more, reckless vehemence than ever, and with a great advantage from the superiority of their cannon. Of re-enforcements all that could be expected was a body of Sikhs under Gen. Van Cortlandt. Gen. Havelock, after fighting several successful battles, was forced to fall back on Cawnpore, abandoning, for the time, the relief of Lucknow. At the same time, the rains had set in heavily before Delhi, necessarily adding to the virulence of the cholera. The dispatch which announces the retreat to Agra and the abandonment, for the moment, at least, of the attempt to reduce the capital of the Great Mogul, must, then, soon prove true, if it is not so already. On the line of the Ganges the main interest rests on the operations of Gen. Havelock, whose exploits at Futteypore, Cawnpore and Bithoor have naturally been rather extravagantly praised by our London contemporaries. As we have stated above, after having advanced twenty-five miles from Cawnpore, he found himself obliged to fall back upon that place in order not only to deposit his sick, but to wait for re-enforcements. This is a cause for deep regret, for it indicates that the attempt at a rescue of Lucknow has been baffled. The only hope for the British garrison of the place is now in the force of 3,000 Goorkas sent from Nepaul to their relief by Jung Bahadoor. Should they fail to raise the siege, then the Cawnpore butchery will be re-enacted at Lucknow. This will not be all. The capture by the rebels of the fortress of Lucknow, and the consequent consolidation of their power in Oude, would threaten in the flank all British operations against Delhi, and decide the balance of the contending forces at Benares, and the whole district of Bihar. Cawnpore would be stripped of half its importance and menaced in its communications with Delhi on the one side, and with Benares on the other, by the rebels holding the fortress of Lucknow. This contingency adds to the painful interest with which news from that locality must be looked for. On the 16th of June the garrison estimated their powers of endurance at six weeks on famine allowance. Up to the last date of the dispatches, five of these weeks had already elapsed. Everything there now depends on the reported, but not yet certain re-enforcements from Nepaul. If we pass lower down the Ganges, from Cawnpore to Benares and the district of Bihar, the British prospect is still darker. A letter in The Bengal Gazette, dated Benares, August 3, states Arrah, in the British district of Shahabad, Presidency of Bengal, is a town on the road from Dinapore to Ghazepore, twenty-five miles west of the former, seventy-five cast of the latter. Benares itself was threatened. This place has a fort constructed upon European principles, and would become another Delhi if it fell into the hands of the rebels. At Mirzapore, situated to the south of Benares, and on the opposite bank of the Ganges, a Mussulman conspiracy has been detected; while at Berhampore, on the Ganges, some eighteen miles distant from Calcutta, the 63rd Native Infantry had been disarmed. In one word, disaffection on the one side and panic on the other were spreading throughout the whole Presidency of Bengal, even to the gates of Calcutta, where painful apprehensions prevailed of the great fast of the Mohurran, when the followers of Islam, wrought up into a fanatical frenzy, go about with swords ready to fight on the smallest provocation, being likely to result in a general attack upon the English, and where the Governor-General has felt himself compelled to disarm his own body-guard. The reader will, then, understand at once that the principal British line of communications, the Ganges line, is in danger of being interrupted, intersected and cut off. This would bear on the progress of the re-enforcements to arrive in November, and would isolate the British line of operations on the Jumna. In the Bombay Presidency, also, affairs are assuming a very serious aspect. The mutiny at Kolapore of the 27th Bombay Native Infantry is a fact, but their defeat by the British troops is a rumor only. The Bombay native army has broken out into successive mutinies at Nagpore, Aurungabad, Hyderabad, and, finally, at Kolapore. The actual strength of the Bombay native army is 43,048 men, while there are, in fact, only two European regiments in that Presidency. The native army was relied upon not only to preserve order within the limits of the Bombay Presidency, but to send re-enforcements up to Scinde in the Punjaub, and to form the columns moved on Mhow and Indore, to recover and hold those places, to establish communications with Agra, and relieve the garrison at that place. The column of Brigadier Stuart, charged with this operation, was composed of 300 men of the 3d Bombay European Regiment, 250 men of the 5th Bombay Native Infantry, 1,000 of the 25th Bombay Native Infantry, 200 of the 19th Bombay Native Infantry, 800 of the 3d Cavalry Regiment of the Hyderabad Contingent. There are with this force, amounting to 2,250 native soldiers, about 700 Europeans, composed chiefly of the Queen s 86th Foot and the 14th Queen s Light Dragoons. The English had, moreover, assembled a column of the native army at Aurungabad to intimidate the disaffected territories of Khandeish and Nagpore, and at the same time form a support for the flying columns acting in Central India. In that part of India we are told that tranquillity is restored, but on this result we cannot altogether rely. In fact it is not the occupation of Mhow which decides that question, but the course pursued by the Holkar and Scindiah, the two Mahratta princes. The same dispatch which informs us of Stuart s arrival at Mhow adds that, although the Holkar still remained staunch, his troops had become unmanageable. As to the Scindiah s policy, not a word is dropped. He is young, popular, full of fire, and would be regarded as the natural head and rallying point for the whole Mahratta nation. He has 10,000 well disciplined troops of his own. His defection from the British would pot only cost them Central India, but give immense strength and consistency to the revolutionary league. The retreat of the forces before Delhi, the menaces and solicitations of the malcontents may at length induce him to side with his countrymen. The main influence, however, on the Holkar as well as the Scindiah, will be exercised by the Mahrattas of the Deccan, where, as we have already stated the rebellion has at last decidedly raised its head. It is here, too, that the festival of the Mohurran is particularly dangerous. There is, then, some reason to anticipate a general revolt of the Bombay army. The Madras army, too, amounting to 60,555 native troops, and recruited from Hyderabad, Nagpore, Malwa, the most bigoted Mohammedan districts, would not be long in following the example. Thus, then, if it be considered that the rainy season during August and September will paralyze the movements of the British troops and interrupt their communications, the supposition seems rational that in spite of their apparent strength, the re-enforcements sent from Europe, arriving too late, and in driblets only, will prove inadequate to the task imposed upon them. We may almost expect, during the following campaign, a rehearsal of the Affghanistan disasters.

Marx and Engels. First Indian War of Independence 1857-58

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/10/03.htm

The news received from India by the Atlantic yesterday has two prominent points, namely, the failure of Gen. Havelock to advance to the relief of Lucknow, and the persistence of the English at Delhi. This latter fact finds a parallel only in British annals, and in the Walcheren expedition. The failure of that expedition having become certain toward the middle of August, 1809, they delayed re-embarking until November. Napoleon, when he learned that an English army had landed at that place, recommended that it should not be attacked, and that the French should leave its destruction to the disease sure to do them more injury than the cannon, without its costing one centime to France. The present Great Mogul, even more favored than Napoleon, finds himself able to back the disease by his sallies and his sallies by the disease. A British Government dispatch, dated Cagliari, Sept. 27, tells its that If Delhi is not taken till Wilson and Nicholson attack it with their present strength, its walls will stand till they fall of themselves. Nicholson s considerable forces amount to about 4,000 Sikhs a re-enforcement absurdly disproportionate for an attack upon Delhi, but just large enough to afford a new suicidal pretext for not breaking up the camp before the city. After Gen. Hewitt had committed the fault, and one may even in a military point of view say the crime, of permitting the Meerut rebels to make their way to Delhi, and after the two first weeks had been wasted, allowing an irregular surprise of that city, the planning of the siege of Delhi appears an almost incomprehensible blunder. An authority which we shall take the liberty of placing even above the military oracles of The London Times, Napoleon, lays down two rules of warfare looking almost like commonplaces: 1st. That only what can be supported ought to be undertaken, and only what presents the greatest number of chances of success; and 2dly. That the main forces should be employed only where the main object of war, the destruction of the enemy, lies. In planning the siege of Delhi, these rudimental rules have been violated. The authorities in England must have been aware that the Indian Government itself had recently repaired the fortifications of Delhi so far that that city could be captured by a regular siege only, requiring a besieging force of at least 15,000 to 20,000 men, and much more, if the defense was conducted in an average style. Now, 15,000 to 20,000 men being requisite for this enterprise, it was downright folly to undertake it with 6,000 or 7,000. The English were further aware that a prolonged siege, a matter of course in consequence of their numerical weakness, would expose their forces in that locality, in that climate, and at that season, to the attacks of an invulnerable and invisible enemy, spreading the seeds of destruction among their ranks. The chances of success, therefore, were all against a siege of Delhi. As to the object of the war, it was beyond doubt the maintenance of English rule in India. To attain that object, Delhi was a point of no strategical significance at all. Historical tradition, in truth, endowed it in the eyes of the natives with a superstitious importance, clashing with its real influence, and this was sufficient reason for the mutinous Sepoys to single it out as their general place of rendezvous. But if, instead of forming their military plans according to the native prejudices, the English had left Delhi alone and isolated it, they would have divested it of its fancied influence; while, by pitching their tents before it, running their heads against it, and concentrating upon it their main force and the attention of the world, they cut themselves off from even the chances of retreat, or rather gave to a retreat all the effects of a signal defeat. They have thus simply played into the hands of the mutineers who wanted to make Delhi the object of the campaign. But this is not all. No great ingenuity was required to convince the English that for them it was of prime importance to create an active field army, whose operations might stifle the sparks of disaffection, keep open the communications between their own military stations, throw the enemy upon some few points, and isolate Delhi. Instead of acting upon this simple and self-evident plan, they immobilize the only active army at their disposal by concentrating it before Delhi, leave the open field to the mutineers, while their own garrisons hold scattered spots, disconnected, far distant from each other, and blocked up by overwhelming hostile forces allowed to take their own time. By fixing their main mobile column before Delhi, the English have not choked up the rebels, but petrified their own garrisons. But, apart from this fundamental blunder at Delhi, there is hardly anything in the annals of war to equal the stupidity which directed the operations of these garrisons, acting independently, irrespectively of each other, lacking all supreme leadership, and acting not like members of one army, but like bodies belonging to different and even hostile nations. Take, for instance, the case of Cawnpore and Lucknow. There were two adjacent places, and two separate bodies of troops, both very small and disproportionate to the occasion, placed under separate commands, though they were only forty miles apart, and with as little unity of action between them as if situated at the opposite poles. The simplest rules of strategy would have required that Sir Hugh Wheeler, the military commander at Cawnpore, should be empowered to call Sir H. Lawrence, the chief Commissioner of Oude, with his troops, back to Cawnpore, thus to strengthen his own position while momentarily evacuating Lucknow. By this operation, both garrisons would have been saved, and by the subsequent junction of Havelock s troops with them, a little army been created able to check Oude and to relieve Agra. Instead of this, by the independent action of the two places, the garrison of Cawnpore is butchered, the garrison of Lucknow is sure to fall with its fortress, and even the wonderful exertions of Havelock, marching his troops 126 miles in eight days, sustaining as many fights as his march numbered days, and performing all this in an Indian climate at the hight of the Summer season even his heroic exertions are baffled. Having still more exhausted his overworked troops in vain attempts at the rescue of Lucknow, and being sure to be forced to fresh useless sacrifices by repeated expeditions from Cawnpore, executed on a constantly decreasing radius, he will, in all probability, have at last to retire upon Allahabad, with hardly any men at his back. The operations of his troops, better than anything else, show what even the small English army before Delhi would have been able to do if concentrated for action in the field, instead of being caught alive in the pestilential camp. Concentration is the secret of strategy. Decentralization is the plan adopted by the English in India. What they had to do was to reduce their garrisons to the smallest possible number, disencumber them at once of women and children, evacuate all stations not of strategical importance, and thus collect the greatest possible army in the field. Now, even the driblets of re-enforcements, sent up the Ganges from Calcutta, have been so completely absorbed by the numerous isolated garrisons that not one detachment has reached Allahabad. As for Lucknow, the most gloomy previsions inspired by the recent previous mails a are now confirmed. Havelock has again been forced to fall back on Cawnpore; there is no possibility of relief from the allied Nepaulese force; and we must now expect to hear of the capture of the place by starvation, and the massacre of its brave defenders with their wives and children.

Marx and Engels. First Indian War of Independence 1857-58

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/10/13.htm

We yesterday received files of London journals up the 7th inst. In discussing the State of the Indian revolt they are full of the same optimism which they have cultivated from the beginning. We are not only told that a successful attack upon Delhi was to take place, but that it was to take place on the 20th of August. The first thing to ascertain is, of course, the present strength of the besieging force. An artillery officer, writing from the camp before Delhi on the 13th of August, gives the following detailed statement of the effective British forces on the 10th of that month: The total effective British force in the camp before Delhi amounted, therefore, on the 10th of August to exactly 5,641 men. From these we must deduct 120 men (112 soldiers and 8 officers), who, according to the English reports, fell on the 12th of August during the attack upon a new battery which the rebels had opened outside the walls, in front of the English left. There remained, then, the number of 5,521 fighting men when Brigadier Nicholson joined the besieging army with the following forces from Ferozepore, escorting a second-class siege train: the 52d light infantry (say 900 men), a wing of the 61st (say 4 companies, 360 men), Bourchier s field battery, a wing of the 6th Punjaub regiment (say 540 men), and some Moultan horse and foot; altogether a force of about 2,000 men, of whom somewhat more than 1,200 were Europeans. Now, If we add this force to the 5,521 fighting men who were in the camp on the junction of Nicholson s forces, we obtain a total of 7,521 men. Further re-enforcements are said to have been dispatched by Sir John Lawrence, the Governor of the Punjaub, consisting of the remaining wing of the 8th foot, three companies of the 24th, with three horse-artillery guns of Captain Paton s troops from Peshawur, the 2d Punjaub infantry, the 4th Punjaub infantry, and the other wing of the 6th Punjaub. This force, however, which we may estimate at 3,000 men, at the utmost, and the bulk of which consists altogether of Sikhs, had not yet arrived. If the reader can recall the arrival of the Punjaub re-enforcements under Chamberlain about a month earlier, he will understand that, as the latter were only sufficient to bring Gen. Reed s army up to the original number of Sir H. Barnard s forces, so the new re-enforcements are only sufficient to bring Brigadier Wilson s army up to the original strength of Gen. Reed; the only real fact in favor of the English being the arrival, at last, of a siege train. But suppose even the expected 3,000 men to have joined the camp, and the total English force to have reached the number of 10,000, the loyalty of one-third of which is more than doubtful, what are they to do? They will invest Delhi, we are told. But leaving aside the ludicrous idea of investing with 10,000 men a strongly-fortified city, more than seven miles in extent, the English must first turn the Jumna from its regular course before they can think of investing Delhi. If the English entered Delhi in the morning, the rebels might leave it in the evening, either by crossing the Jumna and making for Rohilcund and Oude, or by marching down the Jumna in the direction of Mattra and Agra. At all events, the investment of a square, one of whose sides is inaccessible to the besieging forces, while affording a line of communication and retreat to the besieged, is a problem not yet solved. He informs us, at the same time, what is really expected in the camp, viz: Now, this officer himself adds that, If the desperate obstinacy with which Mussulmans are accustomed to fight behind walls be considered, it becomes a great question indeed whether the small British army, having rushed in through a decent breach, would be allowed to rush out again. In fact, there remains only one chance for a successful attack upon Delhi by the present British forces that of internal dissensions breaking out among the rebels, their ammunition being spent, their forces being demoralized, and their spirit of self-reliance giving way. But we must confess that their uninterrupted fighting from the 31st of July to the 12th of August seems hardly to warrant such a supposition. At the same time, a Calcutta letter gives us a broad hint why the English generals had resolved, in the teeth of all military rules, upon keeping their ground before Delhi. Denuded as it has been by Sir John Lawrence, the Punjaub itself may now rise in rebellion, while the troops in the cantonments before Delhi are likely to be laid on their backs and decimated by the pestilential effluvia rising from the soil at the close of the rainy season. Of Gen. Van Cortlandt s forces, reported four weeks ago to have reached Hissar, and to be pushing forward to Delhi, no more is heard. They must, then, have encountered serious obstacles, or have been disbanded on their route. The position of the English on the Upper Ganges is, in fact, desperate. Gen. Havelock is threatened by the operations of the Oude rebels, moving from Lucknow via Bithoor and trying at Futteypore, to the south of Cawnpore, to cut off his retreat; while simultaneously the Gwalior contingent is marching on Cawnpore from Calpee, a town situated on the right bank of the Jumna. This concentric movement, perhaps directed by Nena Sahib, who is said to wield the supreme command at Lucknow, betrays for the first time some notion of strategy on the part of the rebels, while the English seem anxious only to exaggerate their own foolish method of centrifugal warfare. Thus we are told that the 90th foot and the 5th fusileers dispatched from Calcutta to re-enforce Gen. Havelock have been intercepted at Dinapore by Sir James Outram, who has taken it into his head to lead them via Fyrzabad to Lucknow. This plan of operation is hailed by The Morning Advertiser of London as the stroke of a master mind, because, it says, Lucknow will thus have been placed between two fires, being threatened on its right from Cawnpore and on its left from Fyrzabad. According to the ordinary rules of war, the immensely weaker army, which, instead of trying to concentrate its scattered members, cuts itself up into two portions, separated by the whole breadth of the hostile army, has spared the enemy the pains of annihilating it. For Gen. Havelock, the question, in fact, is no longer to save Lucknow, but to save the remainder of his own and Gen. Neill s little corps. He will very likely have to fall back upon Allahabad. Allahabad is indeed a position of decisive importance, forming, as it does, the point of junction between the Ganges and the Jumna, and the key to the Doab, situated between the two rivers. On the first glance at the map, it will be seen that the main line of operations for an English army attempting the reconquest of the North-Western provinces runs along the valley of the lower Ganges. The positions of Dinapore, Benares, Mirzapore, and, above all, of Allahabad, from which the real operations must commence, will therefore have to be strengthened by the withdrawal to them of the garrisons of all the smaller and strategically indifferent stations in the province of Bengal Proper. That this main line of operations itself is seriously threatened at this moment may be seen from the following extract from a Bombay letter addressed to The London Daily News: The minor lines of operation, as long as Agra holds out, are those for the Bombay army, via Indore and Gwalior to Agra, and for the Madras army, via Saugor and Gwalior to Agra, with which latter place the Punjaub army, as well as the corps holding Allahabad, require to have their lines of communication restored. If, however, the wavering princes of Central India should openly declare against the English, and the mutiny among the Bombay army assume a serious aspect, all military calculation is at an end for the present, and nothing will remain certain but an immense butchery from Cashmere to Cape Comorin. In the best case, all that can be done is to delay decisive events until the arrival in November of the. European forces. Whether even this be effected will depend upon the brains of Sir Colin Campbell of whom, till now, nothing is known but his personal bravery. If he is the man for his place, he will, at any expense, whether Delhi fall or not, create a disposable force, however small, with which to take the field. Yet, the ultimate decision, we must repeat, lies with the Bombay army.

Marx and Engels. First Indian War of Independence 1857-58

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/10/23.htm

The mail of the Arabia brings us the important intelligence of the fall of Delhi. This event, so far ;is we can judge from the meager details at hand, appears to have resulted upon the simultaneous occurrence of bitter dissensions among the rebels, a change in the numerical proportions of the contending parties, and the arrival on Sept. 5 of the siege train which was expected as long ago as June 8. After the arrival of Nicholson s re-enforcements, we had estimated the army before Delhi at a total of 7,521 men, an estimate fully confirmed since. After the subsequent accession of 3,000 Cashmere troops, lent to the English by the Rajah Ranbeer Singh, the British forces are stated by The Friend of India to have amounted in all to about 11,000 men. On the other hand, The Military Spectator of London affirms that the rebel forces had diminished in numbers to about 17,000 men, of whom 5,000 were cavalry; while The Friend of India computes their forces at about 13,000, including 1,000 irregular cavalry. As the horse became quite useless after the breach was once effected and the struggle within the town had begun, and, consequently, on the very entrance of the English they made their escape, the total forces of the Sepoys, whether we accept the computation of The Military Spectator or of The Friend of India, could, not be estimated beyond 11,000 or 12,000 men. The English forces, less from increase on their side than from a decrease on the opposite one, had, therefore, become almost equal to those of the mutineers; their slight numerical inferiority being more than made up by the moral effect of a successful bombardment and the advantages of the offensive enabling them to choose the points on which to throw their main strength, while the defenders were obliged to disperse their inadequate forces over all the points of the menaced circumference. The decrease on the part of the rebel forces was caused still more by the withdrawal of whole contingents in consequence of internal dissensions than by the heavy losses they suffered in their incessant sorties for a period of about ten days. While the Mogul specter himself, like the merchants of Delhi, had become averse to the rule of the Sepoys, who plundered them of every rupee they had amassed, the religious dissensions between the Hindoo and Mohammedan Sepoys, and the quarrels between the old garrison and the new re-enforcements, sufficed to break up their superficial organization and to insure their downfall. Still, as the English had to cope with a force but slightly superior to their own, without unity of command, enfeebled and dispirited by dissensions in their own ranks, but who yet, after 84 hours bombardment, stood a six days cannonade and street-fight within the walls, and then quietly crossed the Jumna on the bridge of boats, it must he confessed that the rebels at last, with their main forces, made the best of a bad position. The facts of the capture appear to be, that on Sept. 8 the English batteries were opened much in advance of the original position of their forces and within 700 yards of the walls. Between the 8th and the 11th the British heavy ordnance guns and mortars were pushed forward still nearer to the works, a lodgment being effected and batteries established with little loss, considering that the Delhi garrison made two sorties on the 10th and 11th, and made repeated attempts to open fresh batteries, and kept up an annoying fire from rifle-pits. On the 12th the English sustained a loss of about 56 killed and wounded. On the morning of the 13th the enemy s magazine, on one bastion, was blown up, as also the wagon of a light gun, which enfiladed the British batteries from the Talwara suburbs; and the British batteries effected a practicable breach near the Cashmere gate. On the 14th the assault was made on the city. The troops entered at the breach near the Cashmere gate without serious opposition, gained possession of the large buildings in its neighborhood, and advanced along the ramparts to the Moree bastion and Cabul gate, when the resistance grew very obstinate, and the loss was consequently severe. Preparations were being made to turn the guns from the captured bastions on the city, and to bring up other guns and mortars to commanding points. On the 15th the Burn bastions and Lahore bastions were played upon by the captured guns, on the Moree and Cabul bastions, while a breach was made in the magazine and the palace began to be shelled. The magazine was stormed at daylight, Sept. 16, while on the 17th the mortars a continued to play upon the palace from the magazine inclosure. At this date, owing, it is said by The Bombay Courier, to the plunder of the Punjaub and Lahore mails on the Scinde frontier, the official accounts of the storm break off. In a private communication addressed to the Governor of Bombay, it is stated that the entire city of Delhi was occupied on Sunday, the 20th, the main forces of the mutineers leaving the city at 3 a.m. on the same day, and escaping over the bridges of boats in the direction of Rohilcund. Since a pursuit on the part of the English was impracticable until after the occupation of Selimgurh, situated on the river front, it is evident that the rebels, slowly fighting their way from the extreme north end of the city to its south-eastern extremity, kept, until the 20th, the position necessary for covering their retreat. As to the probable effect of the capture of Delhi, a competent authority, The Friend of India, remarks that Meanwhile, the insurrection is said to be spreading north-east from Calcutta, through Central India up to the north-west; while on the Assam frontier, two strong regiments of Poorbeahs, openly proposing the restoration of the ex-Rajah Parandur Singh, had revolted; the Dinapore and Ranghur mutineers, led by Kooer Singh, were marching by Banda and Nagode in the direction of Subbulpore, and had forced, through his own troops, the Rajah of Rewah to join them. At Subbulpore itself the 52d Bengal Native Regiment had left their cantonments, taking with them a British officer as a hostage for their comrades left behind. The Gwalior mutineers are reported to have crossed the Chumbul, and are encamped somewhere between the river and Dhalapore. The most serious items of intelligence remain to be noticed. The Todhpore Legion has, it appears, taken service with the rebel Rajah of Arwah, a place 90 miles south-west of Beawar. They have defeated considerable force which the Rajah of Todhpore had sent against them, killing the General and Captain Monck Mason, and capturing three guns. Gen. G. St. P. Lawrence made an advance against them with some of the Nusserabad force, and compelled them to retreat into a town, against which, however, his further attempts proved unavailing. The denuding of Scinde of its European troops had resulted in a widely extended conspiracy, attempts at insurrection being made at no less than five different places, among which figure Hyderabad, Kurrachee and Sikarpore. There is also an untoward symptom in the Punjaub, the communication between Moultan and Lahore having been cut off for eight days. In another place our readers will find a tabular statement of the forces dispatched from England since June 18; the days of arrival of the respective vessels being calculated by us on official statements, and therefore in favor of the British Government. From that list it will be seen that, apart from the small detachments of artillery and engineers sent by the overland route, the whole of the army embarked amounts to 30,899 men, of whom 24,739 belong to the infantry, 3,826 to the cavalry, and 2,334 to the artillery. It will also be seen that before the end of October no considerable re-enforcements were to be expected.

Marx and Engels. First Indian War of Independence 1857-58

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/11/14.htm

We will not join in the noisy chorus which, in Great Britain, is now extolling to the skies the bravery of the troops that took Delhi by storm. No people, not even the French, can equal the English in self-laudation, especially when bravery is the point in question. The analysis of the facts, however, very soon, reduces, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the grandeur of this heroism to very commonplace proportions; and every man of common sense must be disgusted at this overtrading in other people s courage, by which the English paterfamilias who lives quietly at home, and is uncommonly averse to anything that threatens him with the remotest chance of obtaining military glory, attempts to pass himself off as a participator in the undoubted, but certainly not so very extraordinary, bravery shown in the assault on Delhi. If we compare Delhi with Sevastopol, we of course agree that the Sepoys were no Russians; that none of their sallies against the British cantonment was anything like Inkermann; that there was no Todtleben in Delhi, and that the Sepoys, bravely as every individual man and company fought in most instances, were utterly without leadership, not only for brigades and divisions, but almost for battalions; that their cohesion did not therefore extend beyond the companies; that they entirely lacked the scientific element without which an army is now-a-days helpless, and the defense of a town utterly hopeless. Still, the disproportion of numbers and means of action, the superiority of the Sepoys over the Europeans in withstanding the climate, the extreme weakness to which the force before Delhi was at times reduced, make up for many of these differences, and render a fair parallel between the two sieges (to call these operations sieges) possible. Again we do not consider the storming of Delhi as an act of uncommon or extra-heroic bravery, although as in every battle individual acts of high spirit no doubt occurred on either side, but we maintain that the Anglo-Indian army before Delhi has shown more perseverance, force of character, judgment and skill, than the English army when on its trial between Sevastopol and Balaklava. The latter, after Inkermann, was ready and willing to re-embark, and no doubt would have done so if it had not been for the French. The former, when the season of the year, the deadly maladies consequent upon it, the interruption of the communications, the absence of all chance of speedy re-enforcements, the condition of all Upper India, invited a withdrawal, did indeed consider the advisability of this step, but for all that, held out at its post. When the insurrection was at its highest point, a movable column in Upper India was the first thing required. There were only two forces that could be thus employed the small force of Havelock, which soon proved inadequate, and the force before Delhi. That it was, under these circumstances, a military mistake to stay before Delhi, consuming the available strength in useless fights with an unassailable enemy; that the army in motion would have been worth four times its value when at rest; that the clearing of Upper India, with the exception of Delhi, the re-establishing of the communications, the crushing of every attempt of the insurgents to concentrate a force, would have been obtained, and with it the fall of Delhi as a natural and easy consequence, are indisputable facts. But political reasons commanded that the camp before Delhi should not he raised. It is the wiseacres at headquarters who sent the army to Delhi that should be blamed not the perseverance of the army in holding out when once there. At the same time we must not omit to state that the effect of the rainy season on this army was far milder than was to be anticipated, and that with anything like an average amount of the consequent upon active operations at such a period, the withdrawal or the dissolution of the army would have been unavoidable. The dangerous position of the army lasted till the end of August. The re-enforcements began to come in, while dissensions continued to weaken the rebel camp. In the beginning of September the siege train arrived, and the defensive position was changed into an offensive one. On the 7th of September the first battery opened its fire, and on the evening of the 13th two practicable breaches were opened. Let us now examine what took place during this interval. If we were to rely, for this purpose, on the official dispatch of Gen. Wilson, we should be very badly off indeed. This report is quite as confused as the documents issued from the English headquarters in the Crimea ever were. No man living could make out from that report the position of the two breaches, or the relative position and order in which the storming columns were arranged. As to the private reports, they are, of course, still more hopelessly confused. Fortunately one of those skillful scientific officers who deserve nearly, the whole credit of the success, a member of the Bengal Engineers and Artillery, has given a report of what occurred, in The Bombay Gazette, as clear and business-like as it is simple and unpretending. During the whole of the Crimean war not one English officer was found able to write a report as sensible as this. Unfortunately he got wounded on the first day of the assault, and then his letter stops. As to later transactions, we are, therefore, still quite in the dark. The English had strengthened the defenses of Delhi so far that they could resist a siege by an Asiatic army. According to our modern notions, Delhi was scarcely to be called a fortress, but merely a place secured against the forcible assault of a field force. Its masonry wall, 16 feet high and 12 feet thick, crowned by a parapet of 3 feet thickness and 8 feet hight, offered 6 feet of masonry beside the parapet, uncovered by the glacis and exposed to the direct fire of the attack. The narrowness of this masonry rampart put it out of the question to, place cannon anywhere, except in the bastions and martello towers. These latter flanked the curtain but very imperfectly, and a masonry parapet of three feet thickness being easily battered down by siege guns (field pieces could do it), to silence the fire of the defense, and particularly the guns flanking the ditch, was very easy. Between wall and ditch there was a wide berm or level road, facilitating the formation of a practicable breach, and the ditch, under these circumstances, instead of being a coupe-gorge for any force that got entangled in it, became a resting place to re-form those columns that had into disorder while advancing on the glacis. To advance against such a place, with regular trenches, according to the rules of sieges, would have been insane, even if the first condition had not been wanting, viz, a for cc sufficient to invest the place on all sides. The state of the defenses, the disorganization and sinking spirit of the defenders, would have rendered every other mode of attack than the one pursued an absolute fault. This mode is very well known to military men under the name of the forcible attack (attaque de vive force). The defenses, being such only as to render an open attack impossible without heavy guns, are dealt with summarily by the artillery; the interior of the place is all the while shelled, and as soon as the breaches are practicable the troops advance to the assault. The front under attack was the northern one, directly opposite to the English camp. This front is composed of two curtains and three bastions, forming a slightly re-entering angle at the central (the Cashmere) bastion. The eastern position, from the Cashmere to the Water bastion, is the shorter one, and projects a little in front of the western position, between the Cashmere and the Moree bastions. The ground in front of the Cashmere and Water bastions was covered with low jungle, gardens, houses, &c., which had not been leveled down by the Sepoys, and afforded shelter to the attack. (This circumstance explains how it was possible that the English could so often follow the Sepoys under the very guns of the place, which was at that time considered extremely heroic, but was in fact a matter of little danger so long as they had this cover.) Besides, at about 400 or 500 yards from this front, a deep ravine ran in the same direction as the wall, so as to form a natural parallel for the attack. The river, besides, giving a capital basis to the English left, the slight salient formed by the Cashmere and Water bastions was selected very properly as the main point of attack. The western curtain and bastions were simultaneously subjected to a simulated attack, and this maneuver succeeded so well that the main force of the Sepoys was directed against it. They assembled a strong body in the suburbs outside the Cabool gate, so as to menace the English right. This maneuver would have been perfectly correct and very effective, if the western curtain between the Moree and Cashmere bastions had been the most in danger. The flanking position of the Sepoys would have been capital as a means of active defense, every column of assault being at once taken in flank by a movement of this force in advance. But the effect of this position could not reach as far eastward as the curtain between the Cashmere and Water bastions; and thus its occupation drew away the best part of the defending force from the decisive point. The selection of the places for the batteries, their construction and arming, and the way in which they were served, deserve the greatest praise. The English had about 50 guns and mortars, concentrated in powerful batteries, behind good solid parapets. The Sepoys had, according to official statements, 55 guns on the attacked front, but scattered over small bastions and martello towers, incapable of concentrated action, and scarcely sheltered by the miserable three-feet parapet. No doubt a couple of hours must have sufficed to silence the fire of the defense, and then there remained little to be done. On the 8th, No. 1 battery, 10 guns, opened fire at 700 yards from the wall. During the following night the ravine aforesaid was worked out into a sort of trench. On the 9th, the broken ground and houses in front of this ravine were seized without resistance; and on the 10th, No. 2 battery, 8 guns, was unmasked. This latter was 500 or 600 yards from the wall. On the 11th, No. 3 battery, built very boldly and cleverly at 200 yards from the Water bastion in some broken ground, opened fire with six guns, while ten heavy mortars shelled the town. On the evening of the 13th the breaches one in the curtain adjoining the right flank of the Cashmere bastion, and the other in the left face and flank of the Water bastion were reported practicable for escalade, and the assault was ordered. The Sepoys on the 11 th had made a counter-approach on the glacis between the two menaced bastions, and threw out a trench for skirmishers about three hundred and fifty yards in front of the English batteries. They also advanced from this position outside the Cabool gate to flank attacks. But these attempts at active defense were carried out without unity, connection or spirit, and led to no result. At daylight on the 14th five British columns advanced to the attack. One, on the right, to occupy the force outside the Cabool gate and attack, in case of success, the Lahore gate. One against each breach, one against the Cashmere gate, which was to be blown up, and one to act as a reserve. With the exception of the first, all these columns were successful. The breaches were but slightly defended, but the resistance in the houses near the wall was very obstinate. The heroism of an officer and three sergeants of the Engineers (for here there was heroism) succeeded in blowing open the Cashmere gate, and thus this column entered also. By evening the whole northern front was in the possession of the English. Here Gen. Wilson, however, stopped. The indiscriminate assault was arrested, guns brought up and directed against every strong position in the town. With the exception of the storming of the magazine, there seems to have been very little actual fighting. The insurgents were dispirited and left the town in masses. Wilson advanced cautiously into the town, found scarcely any resistance after the 17th, and occupied it completely on the 20th. Our opinion on the conduct of the attack has been stated. As to the defense the attempt at offensive counter movements, the flanking position at the Cabool gate, the counter-approaches, the rifle-pits, all show that some notions of scientific warfare had penetrated among the Sepoys; but either they were not clear enough, or not powerful enough, to be carried out with any effect. Whether they originated with Indians, or with some of the Europeans that are with them, is of course difficult to decide; but one thing is certain: that those attempts, though imperfect in execution, bear a close resemblance in their ground-work to the active defense of Sevastopol and that their execution looks as if a correct plan had been made for the Sepoys by some European officer, but that they had not been able to understand the idea fully, or that disorganization and want of command turned practical projects into weak and powerless attempts.

Marx and Engels. First Indian War of Independence 1857-58

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/12/05.htm