EUROPE AND AMERICA.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXI, Issue 1192, 4 February 1864, Page 5

EUROPE AND AMERICA.

GENERAL SUMMARY,

[i-'UOM Oim OWN COItKKSI'ONDENT.] London, November 25, 18(53. At one o'clock on Thursday, the sth of November, Napoleon the Third, opened the French Chambers with a speech, the importance of which has scarcely been exceeded by anything that has been uttered during the last 30 years, either by a monarch m his minister. The extract from its peroration which I am about to quote will at once vindicate its claim to so high a position, and explain its significance for Europe. After succinctly stating, in the manner of our English speeches from the Throne what the domestic transactions and foreign events of the year 1863, had been, the Emperor proceeded to advert to the general position of Europe. He concluded a resume of the several well known causes of general disquietude and international jealousy with some remarks on the great and grievous struggle still in progress in Poland.

" The Polish insurrection," said he, " which from its duration assumed a national character, aroused sympathy on every side, and the aim of diplomacy has been to attract to its cause as much adhesion as

possible, so as to bring to bear upon Russia all the

pressure possible of the public opinion of Europe. I his almost unanimous expression of wishes appeared to us to be the best means of persuading the Russian Cabinet. Unfortunately, our disinterested Counsels have been interpreted as an intent to intimidate ; and the steps taken by England, France, and Austria, instead of putting a stop to the struggle, have only tended to embitter it. * Excesses are being perpetrated on both sides, which in the name of humanity must be equally deplored. What then is to be done ? Are we reduced to the sole alternative of war or silence ? No! Without having recourse to arms, and without remaining silent, one means remains to us. It is to submit the Polish Question to an European tribunal. Russia has already declared that conferences at which all the other questions which agitate Europe shall be discussed, would in no wise offend her dignity. Let us take note of that declaration. Let it serve us to extinguish once for all, the ferments of discord which are ready to burst forth on every side, and from the disquietude itself of Europe, which in every quarter is mined by the elements of dissolution, let a new era of order and of peace arise ! Has not the moment arrived

to rebuild on new foundations the edifice destroyed by the hand of time, and piecemeal by revolutions ? It is not urgent to recognise by new Conventions that which has been irrevocably accomplished, and to carry by common accord what the peace of the world requires ? The treaties of 1815 have ceased

to exist. The force of circumstances has upset them, or tends to upset them. They have been discarded nearly everywhere—in Greece, in Belgium, in France, in Italy, as upon the Danube. Germany is agitating to alter them, England has generously modified them by the cession of the lonian Islands, and Russia treads them under foot at Warsaw. In the midst of these successive' infringements of the fundamental European Past, ardent passions become over excited, powerful interests demand solution, in the south as well as in the north. What, then, can be more legitimate and more sensible than to convoke the Powers of Europe to a congress in which self love and resistance would disappear in the face of a supreme arbitrament ? What can be more in conformity with the ideas of the age, with the wishes of tire greatest number, than to address ourselves to the conscience, to the reason, of statesmen in all countries, and to say,—"have not the prejudices and rancour which divide us already lasted long enough? Is the jealous rivalry of the great Powers incessantly to obstruct the progress of civilization ? Shall we be constantly casting defiance at each other by exaggerated armaments ? Are our most precious resources to be indefinitely exhausted in vain ostentation of our strength ? Shall we eternally preserve a position which is neither peace with its security, nor war with its chances of success ? Let us no longer give factitious importance to the subversive spirit of extreme parties by opposing ourselves with narrow calculations to the legitimateaspira-

tions of nations. Let us have the courage to substitute a regular and stable state of affairs for an unhealthy and precarious condition, even if it should cost sacrifices. Let us meet without a preconceived system, without exclusive ambition, animated by the sole thought of establishing an order of things based henceforth upon the well understood interest of the Sovereigns and of the peoples.

" I cannot but believe that this appeal would be listened to by all. A refusal would lead to the supposition of secret projects which fear the light of day ; but even if the proposal should not be unanimously adopted, it would have the immense advantage of having shown Europe where lies danger and where safety. Two ways are open ; the one leads to progress through conciliation and peace, the oilier, sooner or later, conducts fatally to Avar by the obstinacy of maintaining a past which is rolling away. " You know now, gentlemen, the tone which I propose to adopt towards Europe ; approved by you, sanctioned by the public assent, it cannot fail to be listened to, i'or I speak in the name of France." Jt is difficult alike to analyze and to arrange the impressions which these words, noble as they undoubtedly are when considered by themselves alone, evoke when read under the shifting lights which are cast on them by the complex character of their pre* nouncer. Perhaps it would be true lo say that we rise as we read them to an enthusiasm that begins slowly to shrivel up into distrust from the very moment that their sounds have ceased and we begin to ponder them. To begin with, it is not long before we descry under their peaceful surface the presence of the dread alternative of war. Peace, which could be purchased by a shameless inattention to the shrieks of Poland or the pleadings of Venetia is denounced as impossible; while an appeal to arms is only deprecated until it has been preceded by proposals for a less bloody arbitrament. But these failing, what then? Europe may well ask the question, and she may easily anticipate the reply of a man who propounds the choice of solutions at the head of 000,000 men. Nor is this all. There is too much, fur too much, in the antecedents of Louis Napoleon of that which points towards a moral insiuceiity in these proposals for a Congress of States. His own generation can hardly forget that his favorite form of political ingenuity has ever been _ to throw upon others the responsibility for the active initiation of his most evil resolves. He hounded Uussia 011 to the Turks, he goaded Austria over the Ticino, thus rulding' himself of the odium attacning to si formal agression in two wars which lie hud novel tholoss hatched with the longest and most secret patience. The man who consents only to poise the maintenance of peace upon a base which he has himself studiously made untenable, is plainly responsible for the war he thus renders inevitable. In such a position has Napoleon the Third already twice been. On this occasion he plainly declares for a Congress or a war. 15ut the very terms in which he proposes a Congress, as the last prevention of a general conflagration to which he himself can and will only apply the torch, almost seem constructed with a view to failure and rejection. On the very eve of the day on which his speech to his own Chambers was delivered, he dispatched an autograph note to the .several , ovc eigus of Europe, of which the following is a tiansla,lo"ln presence of (he events which every day arise and become urgent, 1 deem it indispensable to express myself without reserve to the sovereigns to whom the destiny of the world is confided. » Whenever severe shocks have shaken the bases 'Hid displaced the limits of states, solemn transactions have taken place to arrange the new elements and to consecrate by revision the accomplished transformations. Such was the object oi thetrea y >1 Westnhalia in the 17th century, an l o the .1 to at Vienna in 1815. It is on tins latter ...nidation that now reposes the political edifice of Euiopc, and yet, as you are aware, it is crumbling away on a "<l ( Mhe situation of the different countries be pretensions without restraint. improvemuch the more formidable because the iinproje ESS SMt % carry us away despite ourselves in IP ''""[therefore propose to vm> .0 regulate the present SET « : and the will of the French people, but than any of adversity, I am Sovereigns, and the other to ignore the rights of tlie fcovereifei , legitimate aspirations of nations. meconce ived " Therefore I am ready, without any preconceive

system, to bring to an International Council the spirit of moderation and justice, the usual portion of those who have endured so many various trials.

" If 1 take the initiative in such an overture, I do not yield to an impulse of vanity, but as I am the Sovereign to whom ambitious projects are most attributed, I have it at heart to prove by this frank and loyal step that my sole object is to arrive without a shock at the pacification of Europe. If this proposition be favorably received, I pray you to accept Paris as the place of meeting. " In case the Princes, allies and friends of France, should think proper to heighten by their presence the authority of the deliberation, I shall be proud to offer them my cordial hospitality. Europe would see, perhaps, some advantage in the capital, from which the signal for subversion has so often been given, becoming the scat of the Conferences destined to lay the bases of a general pacification."

In this letter the impracticability of the Congress is suffered gradually to expose itself. The personal egotism of the document is perhaps unconscious, but it is not the less calculated to disgust the Royal aristocracy of the Continent. But the sop to the vanity of the French nation is somewhat too coarsely dipped in the sentences which pray the sovereigns to accept Paris as the place of meeting, and ask them, in a somewhat low-bred tone of hinted menace that aspires but awkwardly to haughtiness, to see some advantage to themselves in receiving a guarantee for their future security in the fact that the capital from which the signal for subversion has so often been given should become the seat of conferences destined to lay the bases of a general pacification. Such a paragraph as this is hardly likely to cool any royal cheek which may have flushed at the words, " I cannot fail to be listened to, for I speak in the 'name of France." But the temper of the sovereigns of Europe will not be roused more thoroughly than their apprehension against the scheme of the French Emperor. What monarch could enter a Congress, called " without any preconceived system," who would not feel upon entering it that he had everything to lose and nothing to gain? What equivalent could Russia get for Poland? How could Austria exchange Venetia, or would either of these two powers submit the question of an uncompensated cession to the will of a majority of her compeers? And would not each of them see in any re-distribu-tion of territories by which they might receive fresh dependencies in lieu of the old, only an exchange of bitterness for gall, and a substitution of one group of discontented nationalities by possessions that would soon fester into another? It is not to be .wondered at that Austria should leave emphatically declared that she would rise and have any Congress table at which the name of Venetia should even be mentioned. I Her southern seaboard is essential to her continuance as a first-rate power. It has been said that she could be compensated upon the banks of the Danube or along the shores of Illyria. But such a change would be to relegate her from the west to the east of Europe, from a place in the State system of which London and Paris are the centres, to a share in the lower or less advanced society and destinies of Russia, Greece, and Turkey. It would be as though some English gentleman were offered as an equivalent for an estate in the Home Counties, and a Chairmanship of Quarter Sessions a tract of land in Ohio or California. Europe has not at its disposal anything to offer Austria for Venetia. Its cession would be her ruin, and that ruin she has not unnaturally determined shall be effected by the sword alone. It is moreover rumoured that all mention of the Turkish Question would be excluded from the Congress. With what hope then could Russia enter it ? And with what hope, it may be asked, could Prussia or Germany ? The consolidation of many small thrones into one large state, is a well known theory of modern economy, and the aspirations of her great neighbour for a river frontier are not unknown to Prussia. The only possible solution of the Sch-leswig-llolstein Controversy would prove to be one noc only painful to German vanity, but hostile to German hopes. The Congress would infallibly incorporate the Duchies with the Danish monarchy, and the much coveted seaboard on the Baltic would be put beyond the reach of the great land locked Empire for ever. And how could England present herself at a Congress which she must approach with a feeling that she was about to hazard, with her eyes open, the prostitution of her moral dignity ? One of the first acts which she would be called upon to

lo would be to set the seal of her adhesion upon the

incidents of the second Empire of France. How, after all her protestations and all her disgust, could she formally sanction the cession of Savoy and Nice ? Or how could she go on to

urge, or at all events to assist or acquiesce' 1 in the furtherance of fresh geographical redistributions and restorations Avhich would bring the names of " Gibraltar " and " Malta " on to the lips of half

a dozen disputants ? Besides all ibis the politicians of Europe do not need to be told that the natural place and position of a Congress is after a war, not before one. History has hitherto gone to show that

nations only consent to surrender at the Council table what they have satisfied themselves previously by the crucial test of their last military efforts that they can no longer hold on the field of battle. Nor has there been anything in the action of the present generation to shew that it is antecedently more amenable to reason and moral persuasion than its forerunners were, when national interests are at stake. At this very moment, while the possibility of a Congress is being debated, Russia is laughing while her engineers are refortifying Orondstai'it and the Neva, and Austria is stultifying all speculation by adding to her armies twenty new regiments of the line. And further, it may be, as we have already suggested, that the French Emperor himself, so tar from feeling rebuffed or disconcerted, is complacently watching the death-throes of a conception which he always meant should die. But be that as it may, and apart from all conjectures as to the personal motives and desires of its producer, the almost absolute certainty remains that the infant Congress is still-born. King Frederick of Denmark has died, and his death "has given an entirely new character to the eternal perplexities involving the relation of the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein to the Danish Monarchy. In order to make this change intelligible to your readers, it is worth while to give a°succinct historical account of the connection. Originally the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein were two independent States, but about the middle of the 15th century they were connected with Denmark by the election of Christian the First of that country as Duke of both Duchies. Christian, on taking possession, acknowledged the tenure to be distinct from that of his Danish Crown. He also acknowledged the right of the Duchies to elect a successor, find admitted the principle that Schlcswig and Holstein should be for ever united. By arrangements effected in the course of the !7th century, the whole of Schleswig and Holstein descends to heirs male This decree was opposed both by the Sciileswigers and Holsteiners at the time, but is now, according to German interpretation, the everlasting unchangeable law of the two Duchies. Aftci. t us, a famous statute, which is known as the Lex Kegia of Denmark was passed, and by it females as well as males were permitted to inherit the DaniMi Crown. Thus, the seeds of future trouble were sown. Probably when the divergence in the law of succession to the Duchies on the one hand, and the Danish Crown on the oilier, was effected, the contingency which has now happened was not thought of/ At all events, a separation between them and the kingdom would not then have had the political importance to Europe that it has now. However that may be, this divergence, caused by the acts ot Princes in the 17th century, has been the occasion of all the troubles which have afflicted .Northern Europe in our time. As early as the Kith the Royal House of Denmark had become divided into two branches, that which sat on the throne, ana that which bore the title of Duke of Ho!stein-(.ot-torp. Other families branched oil" subsequently, 01. which the survivors are the Houses of SehleswigIlolstein, Sonderburg, Augustenburg, and SchleswigHolstein Sonderburg-Glucksburg. Or the tlrsr, which is also the elder, the present representative is Prince Fredorick of Augustenburg, and <>' the other Christian, father of the I r ' n( -' of Wales and George the First, King or tl Hellenes, and by a treaty, known as the treaty ot London of May 1852, King of Denmark and Due of Holstein and Schleswig. By this succession to the Crown of Denmark and the Duchies was settled on Prince Christian, [t was so settled, nt the invitation of the then reigning and newly deceased King of Denmark, by the Five Great Powers of Europe assembled for the purpose. _ I fact was that King Frederick had no nuile his body, and he was desirous to prevent the 1 - )ULl '.' being sundered from the Monarchy by the j of the Salic, law. The arrangement look pl«we m concert with the living representatives of those branches of the family which would have succeeds! in default of it. But for the conclusion of tins treaty a Princess, the Princess Christi;m, w°nld h^e succeeded to the Danish Throne, while the Duke ot Augustenburg would have succeeded to the Duchies. The present question is, whether this treaty bind the Duchies themselves, the families of Augus burg and Glucksburg, and the German Diet. Prince Frederick of Augustenburg, the son and heir male „f t i l}l t Duke of Augustenburg who consented to tne iS that it ft*. notf The (fenm D.et,

eager to see a claim substantiated which would

bring back the Duchies into the fold of the Confederation, will in all probability insist so too. It is alleged that it was never accepted by the Diet, nor by the representatives of the Duchies, which in fact afterwards declared their renunciation of it. Furthermore, Austria and Prussia gave their consent conditionally on its acceptance by the Diet and t'ie Duchies, and therefore stand excused from maintaining the treaty. Such is the difficulty which now arises, and of which German statesmen will of course maxe

the most. The question is whether Europe will allow the settlement oL ! 1852 to be set aside, and the son of the Duke of Augusfenburg to lay claim io possessions which his father, for himself and his heirs, formally renounced. Of the decision there can he little doubt, but the problem has the effect, beneficial perhaps as it is unexpected, of throwing the solution ot' that vexed question of which it is an offset into the hands of the Great Powers.

At the date of my Inst letter Ave knew little or nothing of the details of the events that had been progressing in Japan. The nation is now completely informed of them, and they form the subject of an almost universal exasperation. Several influential members of Parliament, in public speeches and letters to the daily journals, have in the most significant manner declared their conviction that a strong effort will be made by more than one political party in the ensuing session to bring the whole transaction under the censure of Parliament It seems not improbable that once more a Cabinet of Lord Palmerston will be overthrown upon an Asiatic question by a coalition between the Radicals and the Conservatives. On this occasion, however, the position of the Premier is not what it was on the occasion of the boarding of the Lorcha. The conduct of the Japanese Government has been all through this business of Mr. Richardson's murder the very reverse of that of the Chinese on the occasion referred to. Mr. Richardson, who was riding with a party of friends on horseback near to the town of Yokohama, fell into a quarrel with the escort of the Prince of Satsuma, whom he happened to meet. He was slain, and the British representative demanded satisfaction for his death. The Government of the Tycoon at once consented to call the occurrence a murder, made a formal apology, and paid the very substantial were of £110,000 sterling. Not content with this, we demanded the punishment of the Prince of Satsuma. To this extreme demand the Tycoon replied, as every one in the least degree acquainted with the affairs of Japan must have expected, that, to his regret, he had no means of bringing so powerful a subject to justice. So Henry the Third of England might have said of Simon de Montfort, or Henry the Sixth of the Earl of Warwick. The Daimios of Japan, like the mediaeval Barons of Europe, are too powerful for their Feudal Lord. Upon this expression of inability on the part of the Tycoon, the English Admiral, according to his instructions, demanded permission to exact the penalty, and to this arrangement the helpless Asiatic was fain to submit. Admiral Kuper, accordingly, with his squadron of seven ships, steamed off for Kagosima, a sea port situated on a bay of the same name, and the capital of the territories of the Prince of Satsuma. The fleet was soon in hot combat with certain forts by which the shores of the bay were defended. These the superior artillery of the British of course silenced, though not until several important casualties on board their ships had borne testimony to a vigorous resistance. So far, perhaps, an apologist of his country might find nothing that need be considered absolutely indefensible; but the worse feature remains. The bombardment was not confined to the batteries or to the palace of the Prince of Satsuma, but the whole town of Kagosima, containing 180,000 inhabitants was deliberately laid in ruins. To the commonplace taunt that we English do not treat Asiatic nations with the same justice and forbearance that we do the more dangerous American and European Powers, the easy and confident answer of the typical politician of the day always is, "Of course we don't." Why we don't, and whither the course by which we don't is carrying us, such a gentleman certainly does not see and probably does not care. But to more worthy citizens it is perhaps worth while to suggest that there is such a thing as the moral greatness of nations, and to wiser egotists that the decadence of material prosperity and national morality have proved alarmingly coincident in the history of the world. It is also probable that the great mass of the English people does not correctly understand how very small a handful of us are directly interested in onr self intrusion upon Japan. The score or so of not very reputable adventurers at Jeddo or Yokohama, to whom it has been much to have irradiated .their names with the title of British merchant, must be almost astounded at their own elevation when they find themselves allowed to represent the great English nation, while a Foreign Secretary dictates terms for their protection, and fleets thunder and massacres are enacted in their revenge. We commenced the conquest of India by exactly the same steps with which we are now, in the slang of the day, " making good our footing in Japan." That is to say, we were committed to it by foolhardy and unscrupulous traders. But that subjugation was effected in times when the parade of conquest was the common gait of great nations; and even as it was, such had been the progress of morality since its commencement, that its later phases were constantly excused on the ground that they had become inevitable. The second and third Chinese wars were similarly pronounced to be the inevitable development of antecedents which it had become useless to deplore. Are we then thus to go on for ever, with the great book of our history open before us, to provide a fresh store of this rude material of antecedent to be worked np hereafter into a fresh plague of ' inevitabilities?' In the case of Japan, are we not still in time for abstinence? We have not yet destroyed her polity, nor disgraced her rulers before her population, nor debased millions of her citizens with the materials for the most noxious of all intoxications; our trade at her ports has not yet grown to irremediable proportions; no section of our public revenues is dependant on our connection with her, as those of India are on the maintenance of the opium trade; nor are we yet pledged to the obstinacy arising from a misconception of prestige. Let us then forego the direct and political method of creating an intercourse with this strange nation, and let us substitute the moral and the indirect. It will not be exclusive for ever. By laws that will operate more slowly, but more wholesomely, than broadsides from three-deckers, or charges of the Sikh horse, the barriers of exclusiveness will be sapped and fall. And in the meantime the more impatient; pioneers of civilization are not out of work; the more ambitious of our merchants are not cramped for markets; there are abundant fields for propagandist!! without force, and enterprise without bucaniering; and, in a general way, the unclosed places of tiie world are teeming with opportunities. These three great topics—and great they really are—exhaust all that the month has furnished of interest or importance sufficient to warrant my giving it a place in this letter. I can see, howover, that before I shall find myself seated at the composition of my next, some great and significant matters will have become ripe for comment. Especially do I think that a great military denouement is at hand in America, and that in less than a fortnight we shall hear of events that will go far towards laying open the road cither to Richmond or Washington. The movements and counter-movements, the alternate success and failure in partial engagements of the widely spread divisions of the two pairs of opposed armies in Virginia and Tennessee, leave no doubt that the respective generals commanding them, have each their own scheme for closing the campaign with some signal operation. But the isolated telegrams that represent what is, as it were, the preliminary fencing in these two great duels, are totally uninteresling, and would hardly be intelligible even if they were reliable. As it is they are neither. Of your own war we have heard nothing that has aroused a keener public attention to it, or drawn public opinion into any new channel in regard to it. The discussion of this, as of most other domestic subjects, will, in the absence of any unlooked for crisis, probably continue in abeyance until the opening of Parliament. People are at present wholly occupied with the contemplation of the clouds that are fast rolling up on the European sky. The trial of the famous " Alexandra " case on appeal to the Court of "Error, and the Court-Martial on Colonel < Crawley, both of which have been progressing for the last fortnight, and on the first of which the arguincuts are already concluded, fail, in the presence of the Danish complications and the proposed Congress to excite either much attention or much talk. I have, therefore, nothing further to do than to bring to a close a letter which is made up of a smaller number of topics than any of its predecessors have been. At the same time I hope that to politicians it will hardly prove fny the less interesting.

I just open this letter to add that the ' Times' has a leader this morning, declaring on authority, that after hearing from the French Government; what matters would be submitted to a Congress in the event of its meeting, Lord Cabinet have declined to accept the proposal of Napoleon the Third; at the same time it has given him all credit for honesty of his intentions towards Europe, and for what would be the beneficial tendency of his suggestions, if they were practicable,