SUM OF THE COMMUNICATIONS WITH AUSTRIA. Ix what position do
the official communications with the Austrian Government leave this country towards her Allies ? In what position towards the enemy ? The papers threw light upon the political position of Lord John, and they have been more than sufficiently used to put an end to any preponderance of Russell in Eastern affairs; but the two questions with which we started are after all the most important, and to elucidate them was the di- rect object of publishing the " Communications with the Austrian Government."
With respect to France, the papers do not add much to our pre- vious information, although they strengthen the belief of a com- plete unity between the Emperor of the French and those members of our own Cabinet who have been permanent. The Emperor Napo- leon, with the Ministers whom he selects to execute his behests, and Lord Palmerston and Lord Clarendon, with the members of the Cabinet who have abided by their fortune, appear to be in complete accord. Each Government refers to the acts of the other as an authority for itself. There is, therefore, no question in re- ference to our position with France.
With respect to Austria the ease is different. She has materi- ally altered her relation to this country. The Conferences had scarcely begun ere Austria was proposing the "equipoise" prin- ciple the effect of which would have been to place Russia exactly in the same position in which she stood in 1853; with the under- standing that if she were to attempt any further encroachment hereafter and not to behave better, it might constitute a ground of compulsory interference. This was clearly a departure from the pledge implied in the treaty of December 2; but to extenuate the inconsistency, the Austrian Ministers represented, in the first place, that the limitation of the naval force of Russia was not in- cluded in the four points, but was a point reserved for enforcement by the belligerents; and she further set forth, that she would in- caw a risk in going to war with Russia without being able to de- pend upon the military support of the Western Powers. Austria was at least pledged to put an end to the preponderance of Russia in the Black Sea; whereas she now proposed leniently to treats the present contest with Russia as a warning to her that she should be more severely treated in future. How far Austria may have been led into this departure from her pledges by collateral circumstances, it is now too late to ask. It has always been understood that the selection of the Crimea as a battle-field was disapproved in Vienna, since it removed the military support that the Allied armies would have given if they had been placed nearer to the Austrian frontier. Possibly the effect of English writing and speaking against German Governments, which increases the difficul- ties in the Diet, may have served the Austrian conscience as a plau- sible excuse for the breach of faith ; though it cannot be formally pleaded. It is also possible that the yielding manners of the English Plenipotentiary in Vienna may have encouraged Austria to commit herself the further to her inadmissible proposal. She has no ex- cuse in any change of language on the part of Lord Clarendon, who received the announcement on the 3d of April with the same " surprise and concern" that he continued to express down to the last interview and in the last despatch of the series. At the very first interview he pointed out that if the war went on it would be for Austria to consider her own position, not only during the con- tinuance of the war, but at the peace; and on the 13th of June he told Count Colloredo that the continuance of the war must " to a certain extent change the position of Austria and her Allies to- wards each other unless she took part in the war." Austria must of course choose which kind of risk she will run; it is clear that she cannot avoid both—that from alliance with the West, and that from alliance with Russia. We have always held one material guarantee of good faith to consist in the improvements which she was oarrying'ont in'Hungary and Bohemia • on the strength of which, after having been a bankrupt and a beggar in the market, she was enabled to recover her credit, and to raise money. It is a fact pregnant with meaning, that she now fails to obtain the terms which she expected for her Lombardo-Venetian railways. This is ascribed to her asking too much ; we agree with those, however, who ascribe it to the loss of confidence occasioned by her lipse from the Western Alliance.
The position in which the private interviews related in these papers leave our own Government is described negatively rather than positively. In consenting to hold the Conferences at Vienna, the Western Powers made a concession; in resuming the discus- sion on the four points, already rejected by Russia, they made a further concession ; those concessions were repaid by a rejection on the part of Russia which may be called insolent, and by an attempt on the part of Austria to make such an erasure from the most important of the four points as would in filet have destroyed the force of the whole. It would, therefore, be impossible to proceed again upon the basis of the four points; and Lord Clarendon has
expressly notified that, "although questions involved in the four points may come under consideration," the Government "must in the meanwhile regard as non avenus ' the partial arrangements made at the Conferences at Vienna." The diplomatic record, therefore, so far as it constituted a restraint and not a warning .to us, is a tabula rasa. In the circular despatch addressed to her Majesty's repre- sentatives at Foreign Courts, on the 19th of July, Lord Clarendon declares that the object of the present war is to prevent, as far as Turkey is concerned, the accomplishment of the wishes of Peter, of Catherine, of Alexander, and of Nicholas. Our Government, therefore, stands thus. Its unity of counsel and action with France is unimpaired; its relation with Austria, who retreats into neutrality, is altered, and we are free from restraints towards that Power, except in so far as policy may induce us to avail ourselves of the neutral and negative aid which Austria gives by her occu- pation of the Principalities; while the object of putting an end to the preponderance of Russia in the Black Sea is enlarged to pre- vention of the projects avowed for Peter and his descendants by the reigning Emperor of Russia.
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