Part 3 (1/2)
”Several grievances of the English merchants in their trade into the dominions of the King of Sweden, whereby it does appear how dangerous it may be for the English nation to depend on Sweden only for the supply of the naval stores, when they might be amply furnished with the like stores from the dominions of the Emperor of Russia.”
”The case of the merchants trading to Russia” (a pet.i.tion to Parliament), etc.
It was they who in the years 1714, 1715, and 1716, regularly a.s.sembled twice a week before the opening of Parliament, to draw up in public meetings the complaints of the British merchantmen against Sweden. On this small fraction the Ministers relied; they were even busy in getting up its demonstrations, as may be seen from the letters addressed by Count Gyllenborg to Baron Gortz, dated 4th of November and 4th of December, 1716, wanting, as they did, but the shadow of a pretext to drive their ”mercenary Parliament,” as Gyllenborg calls it, where they liked. The influence of these British merchants trading to Russia was again exhibited in the year 1765, and our own times have witnessed the working for his interest, of a Russian merchant at the head of the Board of Trade, and of a Chancellor of the Exchequer in the interest of a cousin engaged in the Archangel trade.
The oligarchy which, after the ”glorious revolution,” usurped wealth and power at the cost of the ma.s.s of the British people, was, of course, forced to look out for allies, not only abroad, but also at home. The latter they found in what the French would call _la haute bourgeoisie_, as represented by the Bank of England, the money-lenders, State creditors, East India and other trading corporations, the great manufacturers, etc. How tenderly they managed the material interests of that cla.s.s may be learned from the whole of their domestic legislation--Bank Acts, Protectionist enactments, Poor Regulations, etc.
As to their _foreign policy_, they wanted to give it the appearance at least of being altogether regulated by the mercantile interest, an appearance the more easily to be produced, as the exclusive interest of one or the other small fraction of that cla.s.s would, of course, be always identified with this or that Ministerial measure. The interested fraction then raised the commerce and navigation cry, which the nation stupidly re-echoed.
At that time, then, there devolved on the Cabinet, at least, the _onus_ of inventing _mercantile pretexts_, however futile, for their measures of foreign policy. In our own epoch, British Ministers have thrown this burden on foreign nations, leaving to the French, the Germans, etc., the irksome task of discovering the _secret_ and _hidden_ mercantile springs of their actions. Lord Palmerston, for instance, takes a step apparently the most damaging to the material interests of Great Britain.
Up starts a State philosopher, on the other side of the Atlantic, or of the Channel, or in the heart of Germany, who puts his head to the rack to dig out the mysteries of the mercantile Machiavelism of ”perfide Albion,” of which Palmerston is supposed the unscrupulous and unflinching executor. We will, _en pa.s.sant_, show, by a few modern instances, what desperate s.h.i.+fts those foreigners have been driven to, who feel themselves obliged to interpret Palmerston's acts by what they imagine to be the English commercial policy. In his valuable _Histoire Politique et Sociale des Princ.i.p.autes Danubiennes_, M. Elias Regnault, startled by the Russian conduct, before and during the years 1848-49 of Mr. Colquhoun, the British Consul at Bucharest, suspects that England has some secret material interest in keeping down the trade of the Princ.i.p.alities. The late Dr. Cunibert, private physician of old Milosh, in his most interesting account of the Russian intrigues in Servia, gives a curious relation of the manner in which Lord Palmerston, through the instrumentality of Colonel Hodges, betrayed Milosh to Russia by feigning to support him against her. Fully believing in the personal integrity of Hodges, and the patriotic zeal of Palmerston, Dr. Cunibert is found to go a step further than M. Elias Regnault. He suspects England of being interested in putting down Turkish commerce generally.
General Mieroslawski, in his last work on Poland, is not very far from intimating that mercantile Machiavelism instigated England to sacrifice her own _prestige_ in Asia Minor, by the surrender of Kars. As a last instance may serve the present lucubrations of the Paris papers, hunting after the secret springs of commercial jealousy, which induce Palmerston to oppose the cutting of the Isthmus of Suez ca.n.a.l.
To return to our subject. The mercantile pretext hit upon by the Townshends, Stanhopes, etc., for the hostile demonstrations against Sweden, was the following. Towards the end of 1713, Peter I. had ordered all the hemp and other produce of his dominions, destined for export, to be carried to St. Petersburg instead of Archangel. Then the Swedish Regency, during the absence of Charles XII., and Charles XII.
himself, after his return from Bender, declared all the Baltic ports, occupied by the Russians, to be blockaded. Consequently, English s.h.i.+ps, breaking through the blockade, were confiscated. The English Ministry then a.s.serted that British merchantmen had the right of trading to those ports according to Article XVII. of the Defensive Treaty of 1700, by which English commerce, with the exception of contraband of war, was allowed to go on with ports of the enemy. The absurdity and falsehood of this pretext being fully exposed in the pamphlet we are about to reprint, we will only remark that the case had been more than once decided against commercial nations, not bound, like England, by treaty to defend the integrity of the Swedish Empire. In the year 1561, when the Russians took Narva, and laboured hard to establish their commerce there, the Hanse towns, chiefly Lubeck, tried to possess themselves of this traffic. Eric XIV., then King of Sweden, resisted their pretensions. The city of Lubeck represented this resistance as altogether new, as they had carried on their commerce with the Russians time out of mind, and pleaded the common right of nations to navigate in the Baltic, provided their vessels carried no contraband of war. The King replied that he did not dispute the Hanse towns the liberty of trading with Russia, but only with Narva, which was no Russian port. In the year 1579 again, the Russians having broken the suspension of arms with Sweden, the Danes likewise claimed the navigation to Narva, by virtue of their treaty, but King John was as firm in maintaining the contrary, as was his brother Eric.
In her open demonstrations of hostility against the King of Sweden, as well as in the false pretence on which they were founded, England seemed only to follow in the track of Holland, which declaring the confiscation of its s.h.i.+ps to be piracy, had issued two proclamations against Sweden in 1714.
In one respect, the case of the States-General was the same as that of England. King William had concluded the Defensive Treaty as well for Holland as for England. Besides, Article XVI., in the Treaty of Commerce, concluded between Holland and Sweden in 1703, expressly stipulated that no navigation ought to be allowed to the ports blocked up by either of the confederates. The then common Dutch cant that ”there was no hindering traders from carrying their merchandise where they will,” was the more impudent as, during the war, ending with the Peace of Ryswick, the Dutch Republic had declared all France to be blocked up, forbidden the neutral Powers all trade with that kingdom, and caused all their s.h.i.+ps that went there or came thence to be brought up without any regard to the nature of their cargoes.
In another respect, the situation of Holland was different from that of England. Fallen from its commercial and maritime grandeur, Holland had then already entered upon its epoch of decline. Like Genoa and Venice, when new roads of commerce had dispossessed them of their old mercantile supremacy, it was forced to lend out to other nations its capital, grown too large for the vessels of its own commerce. Its fatherland had begun to lie there where the best interest for its capital was paid. Russia, therefore, proved an immense market, less for the commerce than for the outlay of capital and men. To this moment Holland has remained the banker of Russia. At the time of Peter they supplied Russia with s.h.i.+ps, officers, arms, and money, so that his fleet, as a contemporary writer remarks, ought to have been called a Dutch rather than a Muscovite one.
They gloried in having sent the first European merchant s.h.i.+p to St.
Petersburg, and returned the commercial privileges they had obtained from Peter, or hoped to obtain from him, by that fawning meanness which characterizes their intercourse with j.a.pan. Here, then, was quite another solid foundation than in England for the Russianism of statesmen, whom Peter I. had entrapped during his stay at Amsterdam, and the Hague in 1697, whom he afterwards directed by his amba.s.sadors, and with whom he renewed his personal influence during his renewed stay at Amsterdam in 1716-17. Yet, if the paramount influence England exercised over Holland during the first _decennia_ of the 18th century be considered, there can remain no doubt that the proclamations against Sweden by the States-General would never have been issued, if not with the previous consent and at the instigation of England. The intimate connection between the English and Dutch Governments served more than once the former to put up precedents in the name of Holland, which they were resolved to act upon in the name of England. On the other hand, it is no less certain that the Dutch statesmen were employed by the Czar to influence the British ones. Thus Horace Walpole, the brother of the ”Father of Corruption,” the brother-in-law of the Minister, Townshend, and the British Amba.s.sador at the Hague during 1715-16, was evidently inveigled into the Russian interest by his Dutch friends. Thus, as we shall see by-and-by, Theyls, the Secretary to the Dutch Emba.s.sy at Constantinople, at the most critical period of the deadly struggle between Charles XII. and Peter I., managed affairs at the same time for the Emba.s.sies of England and Holland at the Sublime Porte. This Theylls, in a print of his, openly claims it as a merit with his nation to have been the devoted and rewarded agent of Russian intrigue.
FOOTNOTE:
[21] In the year 1657, when the Courts of Denmark and Brandenburg intended engaging the Muscovites to fall upon Sweden, they instructed their Minister so to manage the affair that the Czar might by no means get any footing in the Baltic, because ”they did not know what to do with so troublesome a neighbour.” (See Puffendorf's _History of Brandenburg_.)
CHAPTER IV
”_The Defensive Treaty concluded in the year 1700, between his late Majesty, King William, of ever-glorious memory, and his present Swedish Majesty, King Charles XII. Published at the earnest desire of several members of both Houses of Parliament._
'Nec rumpite foedera pacis, Nec regnis praeferte fidem.'
--SILIUS, _Lip._ II.
”_Article I._ Establishes between the Kings of Sweden and England 'a sincere and constant friends.h.i.+p for ever, a league and good correspondence, so that they shall never mutually or separately molest one another's kingdoms, provinces, colonies, or subjects, wheresoever situated, _nor shall they suffer or agree that this should be done by others, etc._'
”_Article II._ 'Moreover, each of the Allies, his heirs and successors, shall be obliged to take care of, and promote, as much as in him lies, the profit and honour of the other, to detect and give notice to his other ally (as soon as it shall come to his own knowledge) of all imminent dangers, conspiracies, and hostile designs formed against him, to withstand them as much as possible, and to prevent them both by advice and a.s.sistance; and therefore _it shall not be lawful for either of the Allies, either by themselves or any other whatsoever, to act, treat, or endeavour anything to the prejudice or loss of the other_, his lands or dominions whatsoever or wheresoever, whether by land or sea; that one shall in no wise favour the other's foes, either rebels or enemies, to the prejudice of his Ally,' etc.
”_Query I._ How the words marked in italics agree with our present conduct, when our fleet acts in conjunction with the enemies of Sweden, _the Czar commands our fleet, our Admiral enters into Councils of War, and is not only privy to all their designs, but together with our own Minister at Copenhagen_ (as the King of Denmark has himself owned it in a public declaration), _pushed on the Northern Confederates to an enterprise entirely destructive to our Ally Sweden, I mean the descent designed last summer upon Schonen_?
”_Query II._ In what manner we also must explain that pa.s.sage in the first article by which it is stipulated that one Ally shall not either by themselves or any other whatsoever, act, treat, or endeavour anything to the loss of the other's lands and dominions; to justify in particular our leaving in the year 1715, even when the season was so far advanced as no longer to admit of our usual pretence of conveying and protecting our trade, which was then got already safe home, eight men-of-war in the Baltic, with orders to join in one line of battle with the Danes, whereby we made them so much superior in number to the Swedish fleet, that it could not come to the relief of Straelsund, and whereby _we chiefly occasioned Sweden's entirely losing its German Provinces_, and even the _extreme danger his Swedish Majesty ran in his own person_, in crossing the sea, before the surrender of the town.
”_Article III._ By a special defensive treaty, the Kings of Sweden and England mutually oblige themselves, 'in a strict alliance, to defend one another mutually, as well as their kingdoms, territories, provinces, states, subjects, possessions, as their rights and liberties of navigation and commerce, as well in the Northern, Deucalidonian, Western, and Britannic Sea, commonly called the Channel, the Baltic, the Sound; as also of the privileges and prerogatives of each of the Allies belonging to them, by virtue of treaties and agreements, as well as by received customs, the laws of nations, hereditary right, against any aggressors or invaders and molesters in Europe by sea or land, etc.'