MEMOIRS OF BARON BRUCK.*

TIII8 small volume invites notice rather for collateral reasons than from any special novelty in its contents. It is one of those pub- lications which hardly ever fail to appear in critical conjunctures, and then bespeak attention from an apparent connection between Mernoiren des Baron Dyad, aus der Zeit des Krim Kriege,. Herausgegeben von Giessen Privatoccrets,ir, Isidor Holler. Wien: A. Hartleben. 1077. their matter and particular influences, which it is felt are in a con- dition to tell on the issues of the hour. In this country, Baron, Bruck's name is not so well remembered to make the ordinary reader understand why at this moment the announcement of Memoirs by him should awaken curiosity. He figured prominently amongst the politicians who in the decade after 1848 sought to reconstruct the Austrian State on a reactionary basis. Brought up to trade, he had acquired much reputation for business aptitudes as the manager, during many years at Trieste, of the great steamship• association known under the title of Lloyds. So high was the character Bruck had established for himself as a practical man of finance, that ultimately he was singled out to have entrusted to him the direction of the most delicate branch in the Austrian Administration, that of the Treasury. His management thereof was attended with an apparent success that reflected on Bruck ,a halo of brilliancy, when the sunshine of his eminence was. darkened by a sinister eloud. The prosperous regenerator of Austrian credit was found killed by his own hand, and this catastrophe was followed by the discovery of financial scandals which, though partially left in the dark, were yet sufficiently investigated to blacken his memory with an enduring tarnish. From that time no attempt has been made to clear his fame, until this fragment of a memoir has been publiehed, in a rather singular form. The volume is edited by a gentleman once Baron Bruck's private secretary, during a great portion of his career. To that connection, however, his public life has not been restricted. Herr Heller's name has long been familiar to the Austrian public as the author of occasional writings, which, have been ascribed to ministerial inspirations. The question,.

irresistibly suggests itself, if the ex-private secretary's sole motive was to raise a memorial to his patron, why he should never have- tried to do so during the fifteen years which have elapsed since his decease, a question that cannot but gain in cogency from the- character of this publication, and the tone of the observa- tions contributed by the editor. There is something about the book which unavoidably suggests an under - on

of particular intention in its publication at the present season. Whether Bruck wrote memoirs of his whole life does not appear. What we have here is merelyseanrteaesoradmboaf ambassador oertscTonnurkeoeyteddnwirinthg- a mission on which he was

itemediateoloymaronteenctsedeonnt ptlairet Cofritmheao ondiwtoarr:

the complications

arenfdertrihnisgifsraecule;ItnoPatnhieedinbteyrests of Austria at stake in the con- flict going on now in Turkey, and abounding in direct allusions to the policy that is being pursued by Count Andrassy. There- is such marked absence of reticence in these passages on the part of an experienced journalist, that the Vienna public has very naturally been induced to surmise an inspired intention in this pointed language. We confess ourselves, however, unable to evolve out of Herr Heller's words a clue which could be of practical value in forecasting the mind of the Austrian.

diplomatic draw attention Government at this conjuncture. It is not as a contribu-

tion o Question into

that the we atic haze over to our lights in peering banging the Eastern this publication, but as containing, amidst much that is common- place, certain data, which, as written down so long ago as the Crimean war, are not without i importance, in testimony to the-

nature of the elements at play n those Eastern regions, as they were viewed by one who certainly was an acute observer. Bruck's early training in the Lloyds Association had imbued him The with decided prejudices. Though an energetic, he was not a liberal-minded director. Th spirit of monopoly and of cons- mercial jealousy permeated his nature and influenced his appre- ciation of men and things. The Levant was, in his eyes, the natural trading-ground for Austrian commerce, as embodied in the Lloyd Company ; and he regarded England as a rival in those parts, actuated by Macchiavelhan cunning, and whom it must be the natural duty of an Austrian with a due sense of his country's interests to oust from those regions. At the same- time, though in general politics a reactionary Conservative, Bruck was by no means a partisan of Russia, precisely because from his spirit of grasping monopoly he dreaded its advance in the Levant, as trenching on a field he coveted for the exclusive occupation by Austria. Accordingly, throughout the complications immediately antecedent to the Crimean war, Bruck advocated a spirited policy little to the taste of Count BuoPs timid nature, with the view of

i giving Austria a preponderating influence in the Levant. This. influence, again, lie was not at all disposed to exert in out-and- out support of the Porte, for amongst the results of his practical acquaintance with the commercial conditions of the Levant, was: to have inspired him with anything but a passion in favour of Turkish rule, and to have given him an insight into the feelings of the subject races which has found expression in the most interesting passages in these memoirs.

Baron Bruck landed in Constantinople three weeks after Prince Mentschikoff's departure, just in the very throes of the crisis. His ideas of what Austria's action should have been, are thus stated :—" A Power like Austria, able to throw a decisive weight into the scales, and which, by placing a small force at Peterward- .ein, had already produced not a little alarm at Constantinople, was entitled to go its own way in pending matters, without letting itself be led astray by considerations for the Western Powers. Austria had just concluded with Germany an alliance based on

common interests and one could therefore confidently reckon on the support of all Germany, when it came to be a case -of asserting common material interests on an important commer- cial area, and of exhibiting the strength as well as independence of central Europe in a question hitherto treated by other coun- tries as their exclusive property." His programme consisted in securing through Austrian agency these points, " (1) Effective protection of the Christians against the Mahommedan ascendancy; <2), no one preponderating foreign influence in the councils of 'the Porte ; (3), maintenance of the Turkish Empire as a means for the preservation of European balance, of European peace, and of our own chief interests in the East." These ends Bruck considered to be menaced by both England and Russia. The action of Lord Stratford was, in his eyes, one which aimed at doing in one way for the special behoof of England what Prince Menschikoff sought to do in another way for that of Russia,—namely, make Turkey practically a vassal to foreign influence. Bruck's dislike .of the English diplomatist was so great as to lead him into the afloat exaggerated suspicion. It is more interesting to note the steps he advocated as proper for his own State to adopt :—"As Austria neither shared the ultimate object of England, nor was bound by the considerations which determined France, she .ought to have taken prominently in hand the direction of Eastern natters, and decided their course. The error of Austria seems to sus to have lain in a kind of fixed idea of peace she absolutely wanted peace, and nothing but peace, then she -ought to have enforced it, and that at the beginning of Prince Menschikoff's presence at Constantinople, when the quarrel was still capable of being healed." But such a peace, to be durable, Bruck felt, could be secured only on a basis of rights conceded to the Christians. "History," he writes, "shows the Conservative principles nowhere more enduring and full of life than amongst -the Christians of the Ottoman Empire, who, during four -centuries of civic outlawry, of cruel oppression and outrage, crave yet maintained their faith, although it alone was the source of their temporal sufferings." As regards the feelings of the Greek population towards Russia, the remarks 'of Baron Bruck are perhaps the most instructive in the volume. The time when they were written must be remembered, in order -to grasp their value as impartial testimony on a point which, in -the present conjuncture, deservedly attracts attention :— "The Patriarchate anti higher Greek clergy dreaded nothing more -than a fusion of the Eastern with the Russian Church, and hence the uproar which was afterwards caused by the clumsy and untoward term .Groxo-Russian, as the definition of the Greek Church in a Russian Circular. Against encroachment by the Porto on the rights of the 'Greek clergy, tho latter felt itself adequately protected through the 'Sultan's Patent accorded to the Patriarch, as well as through England .and the spirit of the age. For the personal and not unselfish interests of the Greek clergy, a Mahommedan Sovereignty and a Pro- testant Protectorate were more agreeable than any other. As for the hidden woof of selfish aims, the Turkish Government had little knowledge thereof, and indeed concerned itself about this only in so far as tin connection therewith it might flnd a source of money, specially for the benefit of particular dignitaries of the Porte. Besides, it suited the anti- Russian policy of the Porto to countenance the Greek clergy, to connive et its lax discipline, and so indispose it against all interference from an .effective power like that of the St. Petersburg Cabinet. Virtually the Porte and Patriarchate, however, through such an intrigue had put dangerous weapons into the bands of the Russian Government. It would not have been difficult to propel the inferior clergy and the Greek -congregations, whose rights were infringed by their superiors, into an insurrection which would have overthrown both the temporal and the -hierarchical government, and so have opened a breach for both the 'Sceptre and the Patriarchate of St. Petersburg."

And, again, at another place, Bruck adds this criticism on the 'damping effect produced on the Greek populations by the tone of _Menschikoff's diplomacy :-

"It was practically impossible to foregather the course which the movement would have taken, and the phase that political sore called the Eastern Question might not have passed into, if Russia in the then temper of the Greek population [at the time of Menschikoff's arrival], had in act exercised the rights, which it laid a claim to, in virtue of the Kainardji treaty. If Russia, contenting herself with the restoration of

but if

I the status quo in behalf of the Greek Church, as regards tho sanctuaries, had thou reckoned up in a long catalogue the sufferings of the Christians under the rule of the Crescent, had brought to public view the abuses in the Eastern Church, and the corruption in the Greek clergy, as the only protection conceded by the Porto to the Christians, and had insisted on the removal of all this by definite demands, then the Mussulman and the Christian would have been separated in the Levant into two sharply defined parties, the one of which would have wholly thrown itself into the arms of Russia, while no one in Europe could possibly have stood by Islam in its exclusive religious tyranny. This advantage for Christendom, but also this inseparable great political danger, was put aside through the errors of Russian diplomacy. In lieu of a complete exercise of an existing right, Prince Monschikoff had spent his time in trying to obtain in a roundabout form the same right, in a manner little beneficial to his designs. Such action had sobered the Greek population. It remembered how the Kainardji Treaty, which Russia now desired to east in a new mould, had in no degree advanced their religious concerns during its eighty years' duration, and therefore ascribed every possible motive to this initiative, because of its unmeaningness, except that of solicitude for the relief of its sufferings. The Greek Patriarchate, anyhow, unfavourable to Russian intervention from selfish and ecclesiastical grounds, was thus enabled to divert the change in public opinion to public manifestations, which, in the notorious addressee to the Sultan, to the amazement of Western Europe, desig- nated the Russian intentions as purely political and treasonable."

We, too, have recently heard of loyal addresses to the Porte from dignitaries of the Greek Church, and this voice out of the past as to the nature of exactly similar manifestations cannot but strike a reader at the present sealson with a telling ring. Here we must conclude. The volume is not one that is likely to be long remembered, but still it is worthy of perusal at this conjuncture, and the English reader will find, amidst a good deal which is visibly the reflex of a warped vision, not a little which is pregnant with instructive hints.