4 MAY 1861, Page 15

THE STATES OF THE DANUBE. T HE most prominent, and perhaps

the greatest misfortune of our position in Turkey is that it offers no alterna- tives. According to diplomatists, we must either support the Sultan against the world, his oppressed subjects included, or submit to see Turkey dismembered for the benefit of any one except the subjects in whose wrongs consists the Euro- pean right to interfere. No middle course between upholding a Mussulman despotism in all its destructive imbecility, and admitting the _Russians to Constantinople is so much as suggested. We are to "maintain Turkey," and wait on, hoping feebly that a dynasty whose vices are stereotyped at once by its faith and its Asiatic weakness, will one day rise to civilization and to power. If half the population of Syria murders the other half because their fathers always did murder each other, we must prohibit interference, be- cause it would menace the Sultan. If the Bosnian rayahs, worn out with suffering, attack their Turkish garrison, we must approve the retributive atrocities of the Bashi Bazouks, because that gang of savages is officially part of the soldiery of the Porte. If, as occurred this week, all Europe asks for inquiry into Montenegrin complaints, we must advise the Sultan to issue a commission of his own, sure to be abortive, lest a European commission should demand reforms incon- sistent with the "cardinal point of our policy in the East." Bosnia, Servia, Bulgaria, and the Principalities, European provinces equal to a kingdom, and with a population equal to that of Prussia, with the widest corn-growing plains of the world, the command of a mighty river, and access to two seas, must be retained in barbarism for fear of injuring a power which derives from them no benefit. The position is unpleasant, even if tenable, but the public, like statesmen, have been hitherto weighed down by the apparent hopeless- ness of finding an alternative. French interference is out of the question with Great Britain ; English interference is out of the question with France; Russian interference would be an immediate easus belli with both. Austria is too much hated just beyond her border to be useful, and as for those Bengalees of Europe, whom we persist in believing the heirs of the ancient Greeks, they have as yet shown no one capacity, except for gambling in Consols and regrating corn. Every argument seems only to drive us back more sternly on the one open course, the maintenance of this un- teachable Ottoman House.

We are grateful, therefore, to the writer in Fraser w.ho brings forward so clearly and ably a practical alternative. The conditions of success are many and complicated, but we are bound to say his suggestion appears at first sight to fulfil them all. It is absolutely necessary, to begin with, that any reform suggested should be efficient, and be one endurable to the Sultan. The Government of Great Britain will not dstroy the influence acquired by fifty years of friendly mediation, by forcing on the reluctant Porte a policy inconsistent with its security. The new organization must also be one too strong for Russia to upset, either by a coup de main or by intrigue. It must be one decently satisfactory to the population in- volved, and it must finally be endurable to such of the Powers of Europe as can actively interfere. These conditions seem to be fulfilled, if not wholly, at least in so reasonable al degree as to raise the plan suggested to the level of a policy. The writer would unite Moldavia, Wallachia, Servia, and Montenegro, the line of States which stretches from the Adriactic to the Black Sea, with Hungary, thereby creating a kingdom of twenty-three millions, with a noble territory, commanding the first of European rivers, and occupied by a race substantially homogeneous. Such a state, aristocratic in constitution, with the active Magyar for its dominant race, studded with natural fortresses, and tilled by a population accustomed to rely upon their military strength, would be too powerful even for Russia to attack ; while holding the whole of the frontier line between St. Petersburg and Turkey, and with both flanks defensible by a British fleet, it would until conquered, present an insuperable barrier to Russian advance towards the South. Sheltered under an arm so powerful and so ready, the over-tasked Empire would have time to breathe, time to try at least one more experiment for the reorganiza- tion of its dominion. The terrible strain on the conscience of Europe would be at an end, and the Western Powers, aware that the dominion of the Porte was at least not ruinous beyond its frontiers, might accord with heartiness the tolerance they are now grudgingly compelled to yield. But the conditions ? They are many, as we have said, but the first, an efficient defence of Turkey, is secured, and the remainder are not, we venture to believe, wholly unat- tainable. The consent of Turkey is, perhaps, the easiest of all. The States we have named have long since ceased to be provinces. They are merely appanages involving little dig- nity, no revenue, and an unbearable responsibility. The slight tie which now binds them to the Porte would be wil- lingly severed, if the new State would consent to adopt something more than its just share of the Turkish debt, a burden which, with or without the assistance of the Powers, would be far from unendurable. Finance is the rock all Turkish statesmen apprehend, and any sacrifice short of territory in the actual possession of the Sultan would seem alight in comparison with serious relief. We apprehend little resistance from the Turks, who, though powerless to reor- ganize, are not devoid of statesmanlike foresight, and who would see in the new security of their dangerous border, relief at once from the dangerous Rouman intrigues, and the unrelaxing compression of St. Petersburg. , The arrangement could not be unacceptable to the popu- lations involved. They would gain a final release from their bete noire the Turkish dominion, which they detest, not as radicals detest despotism, but with the feeling of slaves just escaped from a master at once imbecile and cruel. They would acquire hi their union with a powerful nationality that place in Europe for which they long, without surrender- ing the local privileges and peculiarities to which some of them are perhaps unreasonably attached. They would avert the risk of being swallowed up by Russia without a struggle, and would acquire in a national Diet that power of self- government which in the best of the border States is still almost nominal. The only substantial objection to such a union at present is the keen dislike of the men of the Princi- palities for Austrian dominion. They have, however, no such dislike for Hungary, and though we do not believe, with the writer in Fraser, in the immediate break up of the Austrian Empire, we cannot be blind to the fact that its union with Hungary may be henceforth federal. Of such a union the Wallachians may form a portion without distrust, for their adhesion would enormously increase the resisting force of the Hungarian kingdom. A strict alliance with a great State is no injury to men wielding power which ensures equality in her councils.

There remain the European powers, and in practice the only one among them whose vote is doubtful is the Emperor Napoleon. That Russia will oppose to the uttermost a plan which throws her back upon Asia, it is impossible to doubt; but Russia will scarcely risk the alliance of united Poland with the newly erected kingdom. The German powers are direct gainers by the transaction. England would forward with pleasure any scheme which, while acceptable to Turkey, would lighten her onerous guardianship of an impracticable ward. France alone remains, and if France has one fear stronger than her thirst for aggrandisement, it is of the pre- sence of Russia in the Mediterrariean. Her own designs, if she have any on Syria, remain unembarrassed, or rather for- warded by the exclusion of Russian opposition. The Egyp- tian question remains as before the source of a not unpleas- ing, but deeply-rooted jealousy. The Southern shore of the Mediterranean is no better protected than of old, while the one danger which strikes as strongly at French as at Eng- lish independence, the advance of Russia to the Bosphorus is rendered, if not hopeless, at least the most difficult of enterprises. The proposal may be impeded by difficulties of which the West knows little, but absorption of the Eas- tern Danube into Hungary, seems to offer at least a new alternative in the ever recurring Eastern question. We have omitted deliberately any allusion to the vote of Italy in this matter, for the time to consider the general influence of Italy has scarcely yet arrived. We need not, however, forget that Italy is the one first class power which possesses the sympathies of the Greeks, the only one which could despatch a great land force to support our right of veto in the East, the only one whose appearance in Constantinople clothed with the power Venice strove for a century to retain, would not disturb the balance of the world.