TOPICS OF THE DAY.
PARLIAMENT AND THE PEACE-NEGOTIATIONS.
PERSONS of less bureaucratic tendency than even Pnglish Cabinet Ministers might well be excused for regretting that the opening of
the Parliamentary Session will be nearly contemporaneous with the opening of the Conferences which are to decide whether peace or war is to be the destiny of Europe this year, and perhaps many years to come. The management of the complicated interests and delicate susceptibilities of the Western Allies, the caution, the reticence, and the firmness, necessaryin dealing with a crafty an-
tagonist, are not easily united with the openness and facility of communication demanded of a Minister by the British Parliament, or with the tendency of Parliament to discuss, criticize, and in- quire into all matters in which the country is interested. Yet the Minister must neither injure the interests of the alliance, and give the antagonist an advantage by absolute unreservedness of communication, nor, on the other hand, offend the Houses of Par- liament, and raise the suspicions of the country, by bureaucratic reserve and haughty silence. Lord Palmerston will want all his reputed tact to steer clear of these opposite dangers. But better than any mere tact, the safest weapon of an English Minister placed in such a position is frankness, which, so far as information can be made public with due regard to the interests of the country, attempts no concealment and puts on no airs of statecraft, but at the same time makes no pretence of stating part of the truth as the whole truth, and is particularly careful of allowing false im- pressions to be received from its half-revelations. It may often happen that the whole truth cannot safely be told at particular times, but honour and policy alike forbid false statements to be made to Parliament by a responsible Minister, and the events of last summer may teach Ministers how even a fraudulent suppressio veri is regarded out of the immediate circle of party leaders and their hangers-on. What the House of Commons and the country have a right to look for from Lord Palmerston is this statesmanlike frankness. To adopt it at once on the meeting of Parliament, is both the policy that his interest suggests, and the treatment the previous conduct of the nation throughout the struggle deserves. It would consist—not in gratifying the mere gossiping curiosity of indi- vidual Members to know every detail of every diplomatic trans- action between the different Allied Governments since the close of the Vienna Conferences last year, but in the plainest statement of the present situation' the principles of the negotiation about to open, the views of the Allied Governments in proceeding to a renewal of negotiations, their resolves in case the negotiations fail, and their calculation of the chances of success. The English nation can scarcely be content to leave so important a negotiation in the hands of the Executive except they know exactly the limits with- in which the results are uncertain, and capable of being modified by the discussions of the diplomatists engaged in the conference. Lord Palmerston may therefore be expected to inform Parliament of the precise nature of the terms which Russia has in some sense accepted as a basis of peace—of the precise sense in which Russia has accepted them—of the amount of definite agreement that ex- ists between the Allied Governments as to the details of the ne- gotiation and the conduct that is to follow alternative issues—of the effect the negotiation is to be allowed to have upon military operations and preparation. • Perhaps the most important and interesting of these points is, the amount of definite agreement subsisting between the Govern- ments of France and England Circumstances and rumours alike indicate that the prospect of peace is more welcome to France than to England. Parliament would like to know whether this diver- gence of views goes so far as to have induced the English Govern- ment to assent to terms unsatisfactory in themselves or less satis- factory than they would otherwise have insisted on. Still more— and for more practical reasons—would Parliament be rejoiced to hear that perfect unanimity of views for the future exists between the two Governments, that the success or failure of the negotia- tion would equally maintain the cordiality of the Alliance and that all details had been so fully discussed between its members as that no material difference of opinion could possibly emerge in the course of the negotiation. With respect to the terms them- selves, no one who recalls the original objects .of the war, and remembers the bearing of Russia at that time and since, can be reasonably dissatisfied with them, if they are what the newspapers generally represent them to be. Englishmen may indeed regret that their navy, with all its vast appliances and improvements, has won no fresh laurels, and scarcely kept the greenness of its ancient wreaths ; but that can be no motive for continuing a war beyond the attainment of its avowed objects, though it may be a very fair motive for refusing any terms that fall short of those objects. And, if Russia has really and sincerely consented to such terms as Austria is generally supposed to have conveyed, the original objects of the war are attained as far as they could be by force. So far as the independence of Turkey was threatened by Russia, the abolition of the Russian protecto- rate of the Principalities—the rectification of the Bessarabian frontier, including the cession of Ismail and of the whole bank of the Danube—the abrogation of all the treaties which gave Russia a claim to interfere with the Turkish Government on behalf of the Christians of the Greek rite—new regulations for the Black Sea, involving the suppression of naval arsenals on its coasts,—these terms go far to atone for the original outrage, and. to secure Turkey in Europe against its renewal. We hear nothing, indeed, about Turkey in Asia; but a definition of the boundary will of course form a portion of the treaty of peace, and its discussion will probably be involved in the fifth point, which entitles the Allies to demand additional guarantees in the _general interest of Europe. And the fact that henceforth the Turkish empire—Asiatic as well as European—will be included in. the European system, will be a guarantee that holds for Asia as well as Europe. But to this point the House of Commons will all the more eagerly direct their interest, inasmuch as the progress of Russia in Asia is supposed to be especially an English question, and France is conjectured—not without authentic grounds—to feel but slight interest in checking a power that acts- as a coun- terpoise to England in a region where France has scarcely got a footing. The policy of a nation may generally be calculated from its own views of its interest ; and to presume in such a case upon any superfluous generosity on the part of the French nation and Emperor, would be puerile weakness in a British House of Com- mons, and something worse in a British Government, which knows or ought to know accurately the state of facts. There is one other stipulation supposed to be involved in the vague phraseology of the fifth point. Russia is not to refortify the .Aland Islands. This con- cession is a reward for Sweden's modified adherence to the West ; but in reality it is no less important for Europe at large that these posts, at once a symbol and a menace of aggressive schemes, should be disarmed. With these terms sincerely accepted by Russia, the Allies may well be content, and may consider their efforts to obtain them well rewarded. Russia has not been "crumpled up," but she has sustained uniform defeat, and has been unable to keep her strongholds out of the hands of her oppo- nents. She is still powerful to resist, but the pressure has been suf- ficient to induce her to profess her readiness to accept terms, which the late Emperor Nicholas would, two years since, have sincerely believed it impossible could ever be proposed to him. Though Poland has not been reconstituted, nor constitutionalism been established throughout Russia, we cannot doubt that the cause of despotism has in Russia's defeat received a damaging blow, and that throughout Russia itself more correct notions of the relative power of the different states of Europe now prevail. Our gains from whatever point of view they be contemplated, are im- portant, and worth the expense and efforts that have been lavished to obtain them.
Perhaps even on the main question of all, whether Russia has sincerely accepted these terms, or whether her acceptance is a mere device for gaining time, impeding the preparations of the Allies for next campaign, and taking the chance of a division among them, Government will be able to assure the House and the country. In any case, Parliament will demand the strongest assurances that any such dispositions on the part of Russia will be met and baffled, that military operations will not be suspended a moment beyond the conviction that Russia is playing this game, and that preparations will not be so interrupted by negotiation as to render a successful campaign this year impossible in case nego- tiations fail.
If Lord Palmerston shall meet Parliament frankly on these points, the good sense of the country and the House will protect him alike from intrusive curiosity and factions criticism. }lb will, if he satisfy Parliament on these points, have all the advantage in the negotiation of an unanimous public opinion at his back—a public opinion prepared to share with him the responsibility of peace or war, as knowing thoroughly the reasons which actuate the Go- vernment, and sympathizing in its sentiments. The country de- sires peace, for it knows the evils and hazards of war ; but it re- fers a continuance of war to a peace without honour, without security—for it has confidence in its power ultimately to win a ,peace which shall promote both its glory and its interests.
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