PEACE OR "WAR.
16th April 1855. Sirs—I am rejoiced to learn from the first page of your current number, that "many, including some who are in a position to possess high influence and to exercise it, are becoming tired of the war." May they have the good luck speedily to communicate their weariness to the rest of the nation !
Since the last letter with which I troubled you, I have definitively arrived at the conclusion to which I was then rapidly tending, that the war has teen tinjust from tile beginning. To continue it after the conciliatory offers of the Russian Court, appears to me to be the height of wickedness. Fearful indeed will be the responsibility of those who, from adherence to some an- tiquated diplomatic tradition, some chimera of national honour or the balance of power, prolong for one moment the Beene of misery and blemished.
I was formerly induced to justify the war, notwithstanding its a priori aspect of being waged against Christianity, liberty, and civilization, on several grounds, which I then thought were suffitieht to counterbalance the fact that we were fighting on behalf of an infidel despot, holding several Christian nations in bondage. I believed—
First, that some treaty or other bound us to support " the integrity and independence of the Ottoman empire ": Secondly, that it was desirable, on general European grounds, tb resist the further advance of Russia : Thirdly, that, for the sake of the Christians of the countries held in bondage by the Turks, it was desirable to keep things for a while as they are, because the weak despotism of the Turk could be more easily destroyed than the strong despotism of the Muscovite : Fourthly, that, according to the principles of technical writers like Vattel, the war was evidently just : Fifthly, that it must have been at least acquiesced in by men, like Mr. Gladstone, for whose judgment I have a great reverence.
Of these five reasons the first and last may be easily disposed of. The first, I find, from official statements in Parliament, to be simply a delusion, though I fancy it was shared by many people besides myself. With our pre- cious system of secret oligarchic diplomacy, it is impossible to know to what the nation is or is not bound. I certainly believed that our national faith was pledged to the Sultan ; and of course I hold that faith is to be kept with every man, even with the barbarian oppressor. But where no such oblige, tion already exists, I can see no occasion for voluntarily incurring it. On the other hand, the argumentum ad reverentiam, from the opinion of Mr. Gladstone or any other man, affords of course a mere presumption, which the smallest positive argument may overset. With this last may go the judgment of Vattel and similar writers. In- ternational law is not, like the statute law of one's own country, something obligatory, which the citizen must obey while it is in force, though he may be using his best efforts to obtain its abrogation. It is rather a collection of moral maxims, which derive a certain weight of authority from the eminent men who deliver them, but which are not, strictly speaking, law. Of course I am not alluding to points ruled by the common moral sense of Mankind,— the treatment of ambassadors, prisoners, and the like,—but to the mere tech- nical principles of this particular jurisprudence. According to Alters prim- ciples, we were clearly justified in assisting Turkey, but, even according to his principles, we were under no obligation to do so. And surely the mere opinion of any man, especially of one belonging to an age when wars were undertaken on the slightest pretexts—when Europe was deluged with blood about a Polish election or an Austrian succession—is not to be tied round the neck of another generation, which certainly has in many respects advanced on its predecessor in humanity and general civilization. I am reduced, then, to my second and third arguments. Now as to the third, I fully believe,as I have often said in your pages, that it is not for the advantage of the Wallachians, Slavonisne, Bulgarians, and Greeks, now under Ottoman bondage, to exchange the Ottoman for a Russian despot. Could I bidder such a result by giving a vote or writing an article, I would so hinder it. But I am not clear that the difference between the two tyren- ties 18 so great, or that it is so much our affair, as to justify-us in throwing away the lives of thousands of Englishmen to keep things as they are. And have we any right to intermeddle ? If the Bulgarians consulted me, I should say, Stick to your present tyrant, whom you will soon be able to aliske,off,_- don't bring in a new one, who will keep you down more perma-
nently. But if the Bulgarians think otherwise, it is their affair and not mine. It cannot be seriously argued that they owe any duty to their har- t arian masters : if they prefer submission to Russia to trying the chances of u new Drageshan and Meaolonghi, they have a perfect right to do so. The question, then, is reduced to my second argument, which involves the general question of nonintervention. Now, before the war began, I, like probably very many other people, thought far more lightly of war than I do now. Two years ago, war was a thing of which I had read in books or heard of at a distance, but the horrors of which I had never realized. In- dividually, I believe the war touches me as little as any man. There is not -a man in the British army whose death could cause me personally a mo- ment's sorrow; and I suspect that I am quite as likely to be richer as to be poorer by its continuance. But I can feel for others, and for my country. Such awful scenes of bloodshed and misery, such waste of life and health, such desolation of households, ought not to be inflicted without some very weighty cause. Nor is it a light matter to kindle in a nation the savage spirit of warfare, to concentrate the national mind on scenes of slaughter, to postpone indefinitely almost all thoughts of internal progress. Instead of a Reform Bill, we get the siege of Sebastopol! Now, it seems to me that war is so prodigious an evil, so fearful a respon- sibility, that I can conceive no evil greater, except the loss of national liberty. Fight when that is threatened, but not till then. If I made any exception, it would be to aid some oppressed people fighting for their liberty. I admire Morgarten and Idstedt ; I cannot condemn Zutphen and Navarino. But can any purely political or commercial advantage be worth so tremen- dous a sacrifice ? It is not gold we squander, but blood : have we a right to throw away men's lives for the sake of the " balance of power" ? People begin to say that the taking of Sebastopol is hopeless, but that " honour," " prestige,' I know not what, forbids retreat. I cannot conceive of more appalling wickedness than to prolong such a scene of horror for the sake of phantoms of this kind. Sacrifice men's lives for " honour " ! It is the very language of the duellist, the vilest species of the genus murderer. But, I shall be asked, Would you have England give up her " European position," cease to be a "great power," and so forth ? Undoubtedly, if such crime and misery is the necessary price of its retention. After all, I cannot see that a nation's dignity or happiness consists in perpetual meddling with other people's affairs. So long as we can keep trial by jury and a free press, I am perfectly indifferent whether England is " a great power " or not. I suppose everybody with a soul above a gentleman-usher or a lady-in-waiting would rather be a free citizen of Norway or Switzerland than a French or Austrian slave. Whatever my Lord Mayor may think, I had rather be free at Gersau or San Marino than bask in the Imperial favour of Francis Joseph or Louis Napoleon.
Now from the cry raised about this war, one would think it was one purely defensive on our side. I don't know what language people used in 1066, but really people could not say more now if Prince Menschikoff had landed at Pevensey, instead of Lord Raglan landing at Eupatoria. Colonels tell their militiamen to fight for their Queen and country, whom nobody ever threaten- ed • clergymen pray that we may be saved from the hands of our enemies, that their pride may be assuaged and their malice abated. Yet I am not aware that, till we went and invaded their territory, the Czar or his people ever showed a particle of malice towards us. We have of our own accord made a great and friendly nation our enemies, and then we turn about and talk as if they were attacking us, instead of we them. No one can show any evidence of any malevolent intention towards England on the part of Muscovy. But we assume that Muscovy designs gradually to conquer all Europe, and that our turn will come sooner or later. Now I very much doubt whether the politic house of Romanoff will ever covet so very troublesome an acquisition. And at any rate our turn will not come for some centuries. At the pace at which the Russian frontier has advanced, it will be long indeed before it engulfs the whole continent ; and we have the unspeakable advantage of dwelling in an island. And can such an empire last ? Will it not split up long before it reaches us ? If the Czar entered Constantinople, would not a generation or two suffice to separate the Russian and Byzantine empires ? At all events, is it just to plunge into enormous present evils and dangers to avoid evils and dangers so very distant and contingent ? My old Grecian parallel, exact as it otherwise is, breaks down from mere difference of scale. A Macedonian garrison at Ela- teia threatened the very existence of Thebes and Athens; a Russian garrison at Constantinople in nowise threatens the existence of France or England, but only some diplomatic chimera about their influence in the Mediterranean, which it surely is not worth the shedding of man's blood to maintain. Russia now offers to surrender everything except her national existence and her sovereignty over her own territory. She resigns all exclusive rights over other nations ; but she will not destroy her fortresses ; she will not, in all probability, consent to diminish her fleet. Are we to go on with this horrible bloodshed because a great nation chooses to maintain the common attributes of independence and sovereignty ? As for the late Turkish mani- festo, which some Pseudartabas or other is to take to Vienna, one can only say that its author evidently looks back with wistful eyes to the days when he could have sent Prince Menschikoff to the Seven Towers and summoned Lord Stratford to his presence with his hands behind his back. There is a grotesque insolence about the document, and yet at the same time one must confess that the barbarian has outwitted alike his civilized foes and his civilized friends. People talk about the "independence of the Ottoman em- pire," while none of them really wish to make it independent. The only question is, On whom shall it be dependent P Shall it be the private pos- session of Russia ? or shall it be what a Swiss politician would call a "com- mon bailiwick" of all the "Great Powers" ? The plain English of our dealings with the Sultan is, that beggars must not be choosers ; that, if he can't help himself, he must be content for us to help him on whatever terms we think good. But we tell him of his "independence" ; we recognize the conquered nations as his "subjects" ; and he very naturally, asks to be "in- dependent" and to be allowed to govern his "subjects" as he pleases. Commonjustice requires a guarantee for the security of the Christians in Turkey ; but common justice and Ottoman independence are contrary one to the other. It was an enormous omission, even granting the general justice of the war, to make war on behalf of the oppressor without a single stipula- tion on behalf of his victims. It would be monstrous to make peace without resting their "rights and privileges" on the surest possible ground. In fact, we have got into a mess, and do not know how to get out of it. We go about to patch up a rotten tyranny for our own supposed advantage, while we retain enough of moral feeling not to follow up the act to its logi- cal consequences. We do not maintain Ottoman independence, because we cannot for very shame. Some settlement must be made, whether the Sultan will or not The common guarantee utterly destroys Ottoman independence, and will be the probable source of disputes between the powers who are parties to it. But diplomatists tell us it is better than converting all the Christiana of South-eastern Europe into subjects of the Czar. I am quite sure that it is better than handing them over to the unconverted mercies of the Grand Turk.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant, E. A. F.
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