The Press.
London, England, 1854-08-26 00:00:00

MR. GLADSTONE'S FINANCE.

THE session is now over, and for six months
the casuistry and misrepresentations of Mr.
GLADSTONE will not be called forth to gloss
over his financial failures. It is true they
have been exposed in the House of Commons
from time to time, and the exposure, under
any other circumstances, would have necessi-
tated the retirement of the Minister; but Par
liament was too full of the war to care even
for financial failures. In the City, and among
those whose practical business is finance, the
character of the Right Honourable Gentleman
as Chancellor of the Exchequer is rightly ap-
preciated. By no one was it more truly
described than by a gentleman whose autho-
rity cannot be questioned, whose practical ex-
perience in the operations of finance exceeds
that of any other Person of the present day,
and whose political opinions place him among
the moderate Conservatives. It cannot, there-
fore, be asserted that we select an incompe
tent or a hostile judge. Mr. THOMAS BARING,
on the 22nd of May last, after describing the
transactions of Mr. G LADSTONE, thus expressed•
himself :

Financial mistakes were national misfortunes; financial
failures were national calamities, and a series of failures
were fraught with danger to the credit of this country.
Under the guidance of a careful, •judicious, a prudent, an
experienced band, national credit could defy, uncrushed
and uninjured, the heaviest assaults that could be made
against it. But, if beneath the touch of • meddling,
fidgetting, irritating pressure, it might sink into impo-
tence, and close itself against its employment for purposes
of national utility.
These are the terms in which Mr. THOMAS
BARING characterises Mr. GLADSTONE and his
transactions as Chancellor of the Exchequer,
and the force and truth of the description are
acknowledged by those who, like Mr. BARING,
are conversant with the principles and opera-
tions of finance. Under no other circum-
stances than those of the last session would
the country have tolerated such repeated and
egregious blunders ; but the novelty of the
position in which the present generation
in this great empire are now placed,
the general feeling in favour of the war
on the grounds of its necessity and justice,

795

the excitement which it has occasioned,
the apprehension that its inchoate operations
might be disturbed by a change of Ministry,
induced the public and Parliament to prefer,
at the moment, any alternative to such a
change. No one was more alive to this than
Mr. GLADSTONE himself. He knew full well
that the Cabinet could not do without him.
Forming, as he does, the connecting link be-
tween the Conservative and Liberal sections,
he was virtually its most influential member.
He knew, also, that, on general public grounds,
however open his measures were to attack, it
would not he thought expedient to overthrow
the Government by a condemnatory vote, and
therefore he had recourse to effrontery and
mistatement. He challenged the Opposition
to bring his measures to the test of a vote, and
his financial mistakes were only excelled by
the audacity with which he denied them. It
shall be our business, during the recess, from
time to time to review his operations; and, as
we proceed, we shall ask our readers to put it
to themselves, as a portion of the public, are
the finances of this empire in safe hands? ‘r e
shall consider his South-Sea Stock transac-
tions, his Exchequer-Bill transactions, his
savings-banks transactions, his dealings with
the balances in the Exchequer, the principles
of his several budgets, and the representations
under which he induced Parliament to assent
to them, and, lastly, his transactions and
legislation as regards charges on the Consoli-
dated Fund.

THE GREVTOWN IMBROGLIO.

THE startling affair at Greytown is painfully
symptomatic of the troubled future that, in
the opinion of many deep observers, lowers
over the Southern States of the American de-
mocracy. It was always anticipated by Jer-
PERSON that slavery would prove a source of
excessive trouble to the statesmen of the Ite•
public, and its progress only confirms that
eminent stateman's sagacious apprehension.
It is easy enough to say that " untoward
events," like that of the destruction of Grey-
town, may be modified by diplomacy ; but, with
our experience of the disastrous consequences
resulting from the indecisive and disinge-
nuous iiireign policy of our present Cabinet,
we have little confidence that our Foreign-
office can extinguish the fierce and irregular
passions that are generated by the anomalous
construction of society in several parts of
the American Union. Can diplomacy accom-
plish, forsooth, what American statesmanship
at Washington finds itself unequal to de-
termine ?
The relations subsisting between Spain and
the United States are certainly of a most dan-
gerous character. " Provisional measures"
are all that aro at present discussed by the
American Senate, and the settlement of the
whole Cuban question seems left to the provi-
dence of events. That the future is a gloomy
one, is visible in the words of the President of
the United States, who affirmed not long since
that the proximity of Cuba, "its relation to
" commercial and other interests" of the States,
and the " series of unfriendly acts infringing
" commercial rights," cannot long peacefully
exist. To an uninitiated eye such language
might read like the conventional cant of the
American President's prolix messages ; but
when we know the subtlety of those allusions
to the " peculiar institution " of slavery, and
when we remember that one of the " un-
friendly acts" adverted to. Is the Governor of
Cuba having enrolled negroes in his militia,
we can discern serious grounds for a cases
belii of no ordinary character.
It is a most extraordinary circumstance that
a Spanish governor of a West Indian island
should be assailed by the democrats of the
United States for his liberality to the coloured
population ! Yet these very democrats were
the parties who lectured the present Emperor
of AUSTRIA in his conduct towards Hungary,
a fact which will long be remembered in con-
nection with the retort of Prince SCHWARTZEN-
SEMI, on the difference between the educe,-
' tional institutions of Austria and the American
laws against teaching slaves. We have never

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sanctioned any exaggerated attacks on the
American people on account of their treat-
ment of the negroes. We are only too well
aware of the vast difficulty of the whole
question ; but the violence at Greytown, and
the disagreeably ambiguous character of the
American policy with respect to Cuba, are
most painful to contemplate. At present the
character of Spain stands low in Europe, yet
if ESPARTERO had the energy of an Alberoni
he might, by a masterly movement on the
Cuban question, revive for Spain much sym
pathy in Western Europe. Whether such a
course would be wise, with regard to Spanish
colonial interests, or not, we will not now
discuss, but with the present state of feeling
in the world it is one that might conciliate
sympathy towards Spain.

RAILWAY ACCIDENTS.
AMONGST the other measures which the
Coalition succeeded in not passing into
law was Mr. CARDWELL'S promised addition
to the powers of the railway department
of the Board of Trade. At present the
authority of the inspecting officers can be
best described as enabling them to recommend
that the door be shut when the steed is stolen ;
and even this permission extends only to what
is strictly passenger traffic, although, as in the
late case on the North London Railway, acci-
dents to passengers may very easily happen by
previous mishaps to luggage-trains. As the
law stands, an accident must be reported by
the company to the Board of Trade within
twenty-four hours of its alleged occurrence.
The Board appoints an inspecting officer, and
to the gratuitous courtesy of the company
alone that officer is indebted for the oppor
tunity of performing his duty. The results of
his mission are recommendations of which
generally no more is heard after they have
reached Whitehall, and which, if they were
acted upon, or even published in the Gazette,
and made producible in judicial inquiries,
might be of the last importance to the public
safety. The inspecting officers are generally
men of high military reputation and of great
scientific attainments, and if Mr. CARDWELL
could have managed to make their efforts—
always so zealously rendered—of a little more
service, one item of good might at least have
arisen from what is facetiously called the
labours of the Government.
This might particularly have been done in
the case of the excursion trains. The railway
system is one capable of almost mathematical
exactness, and yet hardly an accident occuts
from causes that might not have been foreseen.
Excursion trains are an incident to the sys-
tem, and not a part of it, and it would
surely be no hardship to make special rules
relating to them, so that neither their once
occupants, nor persons pursuing their ordinary
business, should be endangered for the conve-
nience of mere seekers of pleasure. Besides,
to certain classes of excursion-trains consi-
derale advantages (as in the omission of the
passenger-duty) are given by the State; and it
is a wholesome doctrine of government that
the concession of an advantage justifies the
imposition -if a rule.
One thing is certain, that trade, revenue,
personal comfort, and national interests are
all suffering by the frequency of such acci-
dents as the reports of this week present, and
that it can neither be called centralisation nor
despotism to endeavour to save our lives from
the recklessness 'if railway companies.

The bill for damages done at the late destruction of
Greytown, and fur which the United States will be
called to account, is thus specified by the New York
Herald :
Dols.
For French property destroyed BOO,OOO
For British ditto
For Granadian ditto
For American ditto
For Borland's regiment l,OOl
Total
It is not yet certain whether the Government will have to
pay the American Transit Company's claim of 24,000 dols.,
which Captain liollins was employed in a national ship•of
war to collect.

TIIV PAESS._

THE EASTERN QUESTION.
Soma further correspondence that has taken place, and
notes that have been exchanged between the British
and Austrian Governments, respecting the Turkish
question, are now published in a parliamentary blue
book. This new series of State papers contains,
first, a "note," dated July 8, from the Earl of West-
moreland to Count Buol, Austrian Foreign Minister,
setting forth the principles upon which the present
difficulties can alone be solved. These principles
are stated in the negative form, the writer declaring
it to be the joint opinion of the three powers, Eng
land, France, and Austria, "that the relation-3 of the
Porte with Russia cannot be re-established on solid
and durable bases,"
" 1. If the protectorate hitherto exercised by the Imperial Court
of Russia over the principalities of Wallachia, Moldavia? and
Servia he not discontinued for the future; and if the privileges
accored by the Sultans to these provincesthe collective guarantee deenencies of their
empirde, be not placed underof the
powers, in virtue of an arrangement to be concluded with the
Sublime Porte, and the stipulations of which should at the same
time regulate all questions of detail.
" 2. If the navigation of the Danube at its mouths be not freed
from all obstacle, and submitted to the application of the prin-
ciples established by the acts of the Congress of Vienna.
' 3. If the treaty of the 19th of July, 1841, be not revised in
concert by the high contracting parties in the interest of the
balance of power In Europe.
" 4. If Russia do not give up the claim to exercise an official
protectorate over the subjects of the Sublime Porte, to whatever
rite they may belong, and if France, Austria, Great Britain,
Prussia, and Russia, do not lend their mutual assistance to obtain
as an initiative from the Ottoman Government the confirmation
and the observance of the religious privileges of the different
Christian communities, and to turn to account, in the common
interest of their co-religionists, the generous intentions mani-
fested by his Majesty the Sultan, at the same time avoiding any
aggression on his dignity and the independence of his crown."
Then follows a note from Count Bnol, bearing the
same date, and recapitulating the same conclusions,
to which full adhesion is expressed on the part of
Austria.
This interchange of notes was duly communicated
to Lord Clarendon, and mentioned more than once
in Parliament before the session closed. Afterwards
came the announcement of the Russian reply to the
last summons sent from Austria, followed by a tele-
graphic despatch from the British Ambassador in
Vienna, stating that Prussia had declined joining in
the Conference summoned for the purpose of taking
that reply into consideration. Lord Clarendon then
transmitted the following paper to the Earl of West-
moreland, analysing the Nesselrode letter, and ex-
plaining the views of the British Government upon
the whole question in its present aspect
" Foreign-office, July 22, 1854.
"My Lord,—l have to acknowledge the receipt, this day,
of your lordship's telegraphic despatch, by which her Ma-
jesty's Government learn that Prussia has declined to
attend the Conference which Count Buot proposed to sum-
mon fer the purpose of communicating the answer to the
demands addressed by Austria to the Cabinet of St.
Petersburg, and that it will in consequence be transmitted
by Count Buol to Count Colloredo for the information of
her Majesty's Government.
" Her Majesty's Government, however, being already in
possession of this answer, and having taken it into mature
considordshieration, I shall no longer delay communicatinin g to
your lordship the views which they enterta with respect
to it.
" It is unnecessary to dwell at any length upon the argu-
ments by which Count Nesselrode endeavours to throw
upon the Western powers the responsibility of the war
which Russia alone has provoked. Count Nesselrode
objects to the form of the summons addressed to Russia
by England and France, and maintains that this summons,
rendered imperative by the acts of Russia, was the true
cause of war ; but he takes no account of the long series of
negotiations during the past year, nor of the repeated
warnings which were given to Russia by France and Eng-
land, and he chooses to forget that it was the invasion of
the principalities by Russian troops which first disturbed
the peace of Europe, and which has rendered abortive
every effort for its restoration. The despatch of Count
Buol to Count Esterhazy, to which Count Nesselrode's
despatch is an answer, points out clearly upon whom the
responsibility rests of the present state of things ; and in
the protocol of the 9th of April the four powers have
solemnly recorded their opinion that the summons ad-
dressed to Russia by England and France was founded in
justice.
" The opinion of Europe has been pronounced in favour
of the course pursued by England and France, and it is
needless, therefore, that they should defend themselves
against the accusations of Russia. I proceed to examine
the other points contained in the Russian answer. In the
first place, if the demands of Austria, supported by Prussia,
are considered in a purely German sense, it is impossible
that the answer of the Russian Cabinet can be considered
satisfactory by the two German powers. The main
points put forward in Count Buol's despatch to Count
Esterhazy were:—
" 1. The necessity of a speedy evacuation of the Danu-
bian principalities.
" 2. The impossibilities of making this evacuation, re-
quired by the essential interests of Germany, dependent
upon conditions which it was out of the power of Austria
to ensure.
" But Russia fixes no limit whatever to the occupation of
the principalities; and she looks upon an armistice as a
previous condition sine qua nun of the withdrawal of her
armies beyond the Prutli.
"The injury, then, which in the opinion of Austria and
Prussia the Russian occupation inflicts upon the Germanic
Confederation continues unabated; nay, more, it is aggra-

gAttriibiY,

vated by the refusal of Russia to attend to the just demands
of the two German powers.
" Count Nesselrode professes, it is true, to adhere to the
principles laid down in the protocol of the 9th of April ;
but this declaration is worth little, as long as the Russian
troops remain on Turkish soil.
" In fact, the evacuation of the principalities is essential
to the integrity of the Ottoman empire, and their occu•
pation is in itself a flagrant breach of the public law of
Europe.
" The crisis which disturbs the peace of the world had
its origin in the passage of the Pru.h ; and it is impossible
to admit the pretensions of Russia to make the reparation
which she owes for an act universally condemned depen-
dent upon the exigencies of a position which she has volun-
tarily created for herself.
" Nor can England and France consent to an armistice
upon the vague assurances given by Count Nesseirode of
the pacific disposition of the Russian Government. After
malting such great efforts and sacrifices, and engaged as
they are in a cause so just, the allied powers will not, stop
in their course without the certainty that they will not
again be called upon, after a short interval, to recommence
the war. The particular conditions of peace must depend
upon too many contingencies for it to be possible to lay
them down definitively at the present moment. Her Ma-
jesty's Government have, however, no hesitation in stating
the guarantees which, in their opinion, and in that of the
French Government, are essential to secure the tranquillity
of Europe from future disturbances. These guarantees are
naturally suggested by the dangers to guard against which
they are required.
" Thus Russia has taken advantage of the exclusive right
which she had acquired, by treaty, to watch over the rela-
tions of Wallachia and Moldavia, with the suzerain power
to enter those provinces as if they were part of her own

territory.
" Again, the privileged frontier of Russia in the Black Sea
has enabled her to establish in those waters a naval power
which, in the absence of any counterbalancing force, is a
standing menace to the Ottoman empire.
" The uncontrolled posssesion by Russia of the principal
mouth of the Danube has created obstacles to the naviga-
tion of that great river which seriously affect the general
commerce of Europe.
" Finally, the stipulations of the treaty of Rutschuk-
Kainarriji, relative to the protection of the Christians, have
become, by a wrongful interpretation, the principal cause
of the present struggle.
" Upon all these points the status quo ante belly's must
undergo important modifications.
" Her Majesty's Government cannot doubt that the
Austrian Government will admit that these views are in ac-
cordance with the principles laid down in the protocol of
April 9 ; and that it would be difficult to restrict within
more moderate bounds the inquiry which, by that protocol,
the four powers engaged themselves to make in common,
as to the means best calculated to maintain the Ottoman
empire, by attaching it to the general balance of Etirope.
But it is remarkable that to this passage in the protocol of
the 9th of April—the only passage of capital importance,
implying, as it does, the necessity of a European revision
of the ancient relations of Russia with Turkey—Count
Nesselrode carefully avoids making the slightest allusion
" In fact, the profession of the Russian Cabinet, that it
adheres to the principles laid down by the Conference at
Vienna, contains nothing which is of a satisfactory nature.
" Her Majesty's Government are at a loss to understand
the meaning of Count Nesselrode's declaration, that the
integrity of the Ottoman empire will not be menaced by
Russia so long as that integrity is respected by the powers
who now occupy the territory and waters of the Sultan.
What comparison can be drawn between the invaders and
the defenders of the Turkish territory ? What analogy can
exist between the presence of the allied troops at the invi-
tation of the Porte, under the authority of a diplomatic con-
vention, and the forcible invasion of the Ottoman territory
by the Russian armies ?
" It is unnecessary to say anything further as to the con-
ditions which are attached by Russia to the evacuation of
the principalities; and I come now to that paragraph in
Count Nesselrode's despatch which relates to the situation
of the Christian subjects of the Sultan.
" It amounts to nothing less than this, that the Russian
Cabinet includes among the ancient privileges which are
to be preserved to the Greek Church the entire rights which
flow from the protectorate, civil as well as religions, claimed
by Russia ; but it cannot for a moment be supposed tha
the system established by such a protectorate, even if it
were based upon a European guarantee, could be compatible
with the independence and sovereign rights of the Porte.
" Her Majesty's Government is very far from saying that
Europe can be indifferent to the amelioration of the condi-
tion of the Christians in Turkey; on the contrary, they
think that Europe ought to take an active interest in the
welfare of the rayah population, and ought to come toe
of an
understanding as to the best mode of taking advantag
the generous intentions of the Sultan towards his Chris-
tian subjects ; but at the same time they are firmly con-
vinced that the reforms which are needed in the govern-
ment of the various Christian communites in the Ottoman
empire can only be effectually and beneficially carried out
by the Porte taking the initiative with regard to them,reign and,
that if such reforms are to be promoted by any fo
influence, it can only be by means of friendly counsel anY
d
advice, and not by an interference grounded upon
engagements into which no State could enter without ab-
dicating its independence.
" In fine, it appears to her Majesty's GovernmentM thno
at
the respective situations of the different powers are
way whatever changed; they are only more clearly marked
ed
out by the answer of the Ru sal Cabinet. England asaran
France must therefore continue in the attitude of bellige-
rents on the other hand, as the principalities have not been

evacuated.
" Austria and Prussia will, no doubt, consider that the
obligations of the treaty of the 20th of April, strengthened,

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