The Press. — London, England, 1855-06-02 00:00:00

JUNE 2, 1855. THE BALTIC FLEET. (From a Correspondent.) OFF REVEL. MAY 18.—A mysterious rumour has been spreading in the fleet, during the last two or three days, that the smallpox existed on board two or three ships, and this morning all doubt on the subject was put a atop to by the Duke of Wellington getting under weigh, and it being publicly given out that the admiral was going to take his ship to Faro, there to land the sick (amounting to forty smallpox cases, including the commander and two or three officers), and clean his ship thoroughly. The other ships which are infected are Edinburgh and, as I think I mentioned before, Arrogant. In the last-named vessel there is a great improvement, there being fewer cases, and those of a less virulent form. Imph-ieuce sailed to-day for England, calling at Faro. Admiral Seymour takes temporary command of the fleet. MAY 17.—Dragon arrived to-day, with four gun boats in tow. These latter vessels are anchored in shore of the fleet. The garrison at Revel are con stantly firing at a target; I presume to show us that they are perfectly ready for us. MAY 19.—Bulldog has arrived, with three more gun-boats. Vulture has also made her appearance. A great cricket-match was played on shore today, which, although in rather a rustic style, was a source of much amusement. The adventure I mentioned in my last, undertaken by Magicienne and Merlin, proved, as I thought at the time, a myth, the person who gave the information regarding a Russian camp having taken a patch of snow far a position of the enemy ; and, as it was no lose shelling so cool a customer as it would probably have proved, the above-named vessels returned to their anchorage. MAY 20.—Duke of Wellington has just come in from Faro, where she has got rid of her smallpox cases, and reports a decided improvement in the health of her crew : she landed about fifty cases. We are anxiously waiting for the arrival of the mail from Dantzic. MAY 21.—Driver hag arrived with the mails. Much complaint is made that several letters are missing. All sick reports are on a more favorable scale to-day : no fresh cases of smallpox. The gun boats, eight in number, have been manoeuvring all day, their performance of different evolutions being exceedingly interesting. I think it is clear, how ever, that unless the water is perfectly smooth they could not work the heavy guns they are armed with. We are to have a grand muster of gun-boats and the boats of the fleet, manned and armed, to-morrow or the next day. What a pity it is that all this arming comes to nothing, so far as the enemy is concerned. But this is clearly not a naval war; and, great as is our impatience, we must not risk England's great protection (her wooden walls) by unequal engage ments with stone walls. The Russian fleet are daily becoming more formidable, and, if the war continues, in a year or so will be perhaps tempted to try what they can do. They have already two screw liners, and are fast building others. Amphion is to be ac companied by Firefly (surveying vessel), to recon noitre the Aland Islands, to look into Ledsund, Bomarsund, Magicienne, Euryalus, and Merlin have been as far up the gulf as Hogland, and it is expected, with the whole fleet, will make a move in a day or two in that direction. We are on the move for somewhere, but where it is impossible to say for certain. Vulture goes this evening to Dantzic with the mails. Captain Nugent, of the Royal Engineers, has joined us for service in the Baltic, which of course gives rise to numberless conjectures as to what he is sent up here for. Orion (90), a magnifi cent ship, has arrived from England. The French squadron of three screw liners are hourly expected, under Admiral Penaud, a man justly most highly spoken of by all who know him. Certainly the admirals this year are a grand improvement on our last dear old gentlemen. MAY 22.—Nothing new to-day. Smallpox nearly disappeared. I must close this, as Vulture is just off. There is a court-martial to-morrow, so we shall not sail before Thursday. A NEW SEE FOR BORNEO has been constructed, and the Rev. Dr. Francis T. M'Dougall, who has been for some time the chief missionary in the island, has been appointed the first bishop, with the title of "the Bishop of Labuan," and will be consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the course of a few days. The bishop designate is a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, and practised for many years as a medical man. When Dr. M'Dougall is conse crated there will be thirty colonial bishops in con nection with the Established Church of England. THE HON. Mr. FILLMORE, lately President of the united States, arrived in England by the AtUatio on Sunday% THE PRESS. THE VIENNA CONFERENCES.-FRENC H CIRCULAR NOTE. AN official note from the new Minister for Foreign Affairs in Paris has appeared iu the Moniteur, con taining a formal reply to the Nesselrode circular which was published on the 19th ult., and explaining also the views of the French Government in relation to the late conferences and the war. It had been proposed, says Count Walewski, to postpone all judgment on the ensemble of the negotiations until they had been actually closed, but as the Cabinet of St. Petersburg has thought proper to appeal to public opinion, the French Administration have con sidered it expedient to follow in the same path. The following extracts comprise the points of chief interest in this able document, which occupies several columns of the official journal : The treaty of the 2nd December having been concluded, the Western powers, from deference for their new ally ( Austria ), consented to make one last effort at conciliation, founded on the possibility of inducing Russia to accept the bases which, for the general interests of Europe, they had assigned for the re-establishment of peace. It is known that when for the first time Prince Gortachakoff was called on, after he had obtained an official knowledge of the common intentions of France, England, Austria, and Turkey, to explain himself on those of his Court, he cate gorically refused to adhere to the conditions which were proposed to him. It was only on the 7th January, after a reference to St. Petersburg, that he accepted, without any reserve, the different principles known under the name of the four guarantees. It remains, then, established that Russia cannot accuse us of having acted towards it by Bur prim) ; it knew that one of the indispensable conditions of peace consisted in the cessation of its preponderance in the Euzine, and time was not wanting to it to ascertain the extent of the sacrifices which the engagement taken on that subject was necessarily calculated to impose on her. In the conferences, the Russian plenipotentiaries during the discussion of the first guarantee relative, in their opinion, to the consecration of the immunities of Moldavia, Wallachia, and Servia, and, in our opinion, to the abolition of the unfair influence exercised by the Cabinet of St. Petersburg in those three vassal provinces of the Sublime Porte, bad appeared to misunderstand the true position of the debate. Count Nesselrode develops the same thesis; I shall answer it by some questions. When, since the last wars, have the immunities of the Danubian principalities received the slightest infringement on the part of the suzerain power? When has the Sultan ever thought of revoking any of the concessions made by his predecessor? When have France, England, and Austria evinced any other desire save that of maintaining, while ameliorating, the independent sway of the administration, which, as has been but too much lost sight of, was neither in Wallachia nor in Moldavia a recent conquest, but the result of an agreement freely concluded ages ago, and only modified from that day when the Hospodars began, during the wars of the eighteenth century, to depend more on the Court of Russia than on the Sublime Porte? It is thus Moldavia lost half the territory that had been guaranteed to her by the Sultans ; thus it was that this province and Wallachia, instead of remaining what they ought to be, a respected barrier between the Ottoman empire and Russia, have, ever since the treaty of Adrianople, that seemed to recog nise in their behalf rights better defined, been governed rather by agents from the Cabinet of St. Petersbinthan by their own chiefs, and that in the midst of profound peace, just as if they were merely a prolongation of the Russian soil, they saw themselves unexpectedly occupied by a foreign army. Such are the true evils that have afflicted the Danubian principalities, such the dangers that have incessantly menaced them. It is to both that the first of the four guarantees was intended to put an end I pass to the second guarantee : the bases of its regula tion are good. I shall content myself with observing, that, should the navigation of the Danube, hampered as it has been for the last twenty-five years, recover its liberty, a war has been requisite to induce Russia not to leave useless in her hands one of the finest outlets in the world. Should Germany acquire this immense boon for its commerce, it will owe it to the blood shed by France and England. Before addressing myself to the chief point I have to reply to a reproach addressed by Count Nesselrode to the plenipotentiaries of the Western powers. He accuses them of having delayed the discussion, at the Conference, of a question bearing on toleration and humanity, and which ought to have occupied the first place in the delibe ratione—or, to speak more appropriately, of not having taken into consideration with so much zeal aa they ought the lot of the Christian subjects of the Sublime Porte. There is no discussion without regularity, and it had been agreed to examine in their order the four guarantees. Now, if the debate stopped at the third, the obstacle did not proceed from us; it was the Russian plenipotentiaries who raised it, and ours merely conformed to a programme settled beforehand. A religious question, envenomed by the pretensions of Russia, had been the cause of the war. The Cabinet of St. Petersburg had required a formal en gagement which, seemingly applicable to religious immuni ties alone, would not the less have humiliated the Porte, fettered its administrative action, and have paralysed in the civil order all efficacious reform. France and England openly declared that the Turkish Government was bound to refuse its submission to such conditions, which would have entailed ruin on its independence. Count Nesselrode says enough on the subject to permit us to doubt whether the Russian plenipotentiaries would have confined them selves to these limits. They would probably, as in the dis cussion about the Danubian principalities, bare mistaken the motives of the fourth guarantee, and would have for gotten that there was still debateable anything save the requirement of Russia to which Europe could not sub ' scribe. The latest reforms effected in Turkey, and the 515 eagerness the Sublime Porte has shown in listening to our counsels, prove that the heart of the Sultan is open to the most generous inspirations. What is essential is that these inspirations should be carried out without troublesome in terference, that he who conceives them may have the merit of them in the eves of his subjects and the world. And to the end that this result may be obtained, it is indispen sable that Russia for the future should abandon the arms she has made use of in turns, either for stopping useful reforms or for alienating the populations from their sovereign. Such is the meaning of the fourth guarantee, and when we read the despatch of Count Nesseleode we might suppose that it is not vie Red in this light at St. Petersburg. I now come to the question of the Black Sea. Struck, on the one hand, with the inadequacy of the treaty of July 13, IM4I, to insure in the European family an invariable place for the Turkish empire ; and, on the other hand, with the dangers to whioh Turkey was exposed by the increase of the Russian forces in the Euxine, France, Eng land, and Austria have declared, that the convention of the straits ought to be revised, or in still better words to be completed, and that it was necessary, by putting an end to Russian preponderance in the Black Sea, to re-establish between her and the other power having territory on that sea the equilibrium that had been deranged by a series of disastrous events. Prince Gortschakoff, after some hesita tion at first, adhered at the preliminary conference of January 7 to the two terms of this proposition, which ex• plains itself, which contains nothing ambiguous ; and it was on the faith of that adhesion that the representatives of France and England at Vieuna were furnished with their full powers. The Government of the Emperor and that of her Britannic Majesty were bound to suppose that the Cabinet of St. Petersburg had made up its mind to the sacrifices dictated by the situation, and in this expectation the Russian plenipotentiaries had been invited to make the initiative, the object being to preserve the dignity of their Court. On the refusal of the Cabinet of St. l'etersburg to be the first to announce the concessions to which it would be disposed to consent, the allies of the Sublime Porte, in accordance with it, brought forward the conditions, which are specified in one of the annexes to the eleventh protocol. I shall make no attempt to justify our demands ; for their moderation is self-evident. Nor shall I enter into details that have now become futile. I prefer defining the interests of Europe in the Black Sea, and then examining whether the double solution proposed by Russia gives to those interests the satisfaction which it is our object to obtain for them. Exclusively bordered by the coasts of the two neighbour ing States, closed against the other maritime powers, the Entine had become, as it were, an arena, where adversaries of unequal strength found themselves alone confronting each other—the weaker of the two being delivered up to the discretion of the more powerful. A formidable fortress contained within its citadels and roadstead an army always ready to embark and a fleet always ready to take them on board and put to sea. This warlike display, unnecessary for defence, had but one possible destination, It consti tuted a permanent menace against theoapitul of Turkey, and the mystery which surrounded it increased a peril which at the slightest symptom of a crisis alarmed the whole of Europe. Constrained in spite or efforts, which history will appreciate, to have recourse to arms, France and England owe it to themselves, and also to Europe, not to lay them down until their work shall be accomplished. It is necessary that the peace which they shall have ob; tamed shall be followed b 3 a secure repose. Would such security be the consequence of either of the two combinations recommended by Count Nesselrode ? In a word, would these two systems p - ut an end to the prepon derance of Russia in the Black Sea ? The first, that based on the principle of the complete and reciprocal opening of the passages of the Bosphorus and of the Darda nelles, involves the abolition of a rule which the Ottoman empire has always considered as its safeguard, and which since 1841 has become part of the public law of Europe. At present, Russia, who refuses to reduce the number of her vessels, in alleging the exigencies of her honour and the prerogative of her sovereignty, does not hesitate to apply to the Sublime Porte for the abdication of its independence in its internal waters—in the great artery which passes through its capital. She claims a new passage into the Mediterra nean, that is to say, the means and the pretext of augment• ing in vast proportions her maritime development ; and, in compensation for these advantages, she confines herself to giving her consent, that foreign squadrons may in future enter a sea where they would find neither a port of refuge nor an arsenal of supply. In order to exercise the surveillance the right of which would be indirectly conceded to them, France and England would be obliged to impose on themselves for ever the most onerous sacrifices. I will add that this consideration is of great weight, that peace, if concluded on such condi tions, would be exposed to the hazard of the first incident that might occur, and that the very object of the presence, necessarily intermittent, of the French and English fleets in the Euxine would already intimate a peril which would be a menace of war. That would, in fact, be a proof that Russia would require to be again kept within bounds, so that her preponderance would not have ceased to exist, and the object of the third guarantee would have been frustrated. Would that object be better attained by the adoption of the system developed as the second alternative by Prince Gortschakoff and M. de Titoff? The straits, it is true, would remain clotted ; but the status quo which existed be fore the war would be re established, the Russian navy would be repaired without control behind the fortifications of her ports ; and, when the Sultan might regard an sggre►: sion as imminent, then only would he be authorised to give the alarm to his allies. The reply to that appeal would be another war, which would exhibit at the same time the want of foresight of the Western powers, and the regene rated strength of the enemy whom they are combating at present. Could they, without imprudence, consent to an 1. uiLeu atittea, arnyea In nngtena D t y UM a HaiWIG uu requirement 111 nuorns It/ ••111C11 E.I U. ‘,IIV te• 6 Undaa% scribe. The latest reforms effeeted in Turkey, and the present. Could they, without imprudence, consent Wan