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 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 384.: THE CZAR AND THE HUNGARIAN REFUGEES IN TURKEY [1] DAILY NEWS, 3 OCT., 1849, P. 2 - The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXV - Newspaper Writings December 1847 - July 1873 Part IV

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Subject Area: Political Theory
Collection: The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill

384.: THE CZAR AND THE HUNGARIAN REFUGEES IN TURKEY [1] DAILY NEWS, 3 OCT., 1849, P. 2 - John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXV - Newspaper Writings December 1847 - July 1873 Part IV [1847]

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The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, XXV - Newspaper Writings December 1847 - July 1873 Part IV, ed. Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson, Introduction by Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986).

Part of: Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, in 33 vols.

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384.

THE CZAR AND THE HUNGARIAN REFUGEES IN TURKEY [1]

DAILY NEWS, 3 OCT., 1849, P. 2

In 1848, Hungary had revolted against the Austrian Empire, but by May of 1849 Russia had rigorously suppressed the rebellion in the name of the Holy Alliance of 1815 between herself, Austria, and Prussia. During the summer of 1849 public opinion in England rallied against Austria. A crisis arose over the demand by Russia and Austria that Turkey extradite the leaders of the revolution, Kossuth, Bem, and others. The Sultan, Abd-ul-Mejid (1823-61), refused to do so. Mill’s letter, headed as title with subhead, “To the Editor of the Daily News,” is described in his bibliography as “A letter signed J.S.M. in the Daily News of 3d October 1849 on the case of the Hungarian refugees in Turkey” (MacMinn, p. 71). (Mill’s evident wish to be identified by his initials was perhaps frustrated by the misprinting of “I.” for “J.”; however, the correct initials appeared in the second letter on the subject, No. 385.)

sir,—

Many thousands in England, and millions, I will venture to say, in Europe, are waiting anxiously to see whether the noble conduct of the Sultan in refusing to deliver up the defenders of Hungarian liberty to the crowned employers of the scourgers of women, the butchers of Warsaw and Pesth, is to have the support of England or not.

We are told that our enormous naval force is and must be kept up on account of the state of the Continent. If we ever could be called upon to use that force by any occurrence on the Continent, it is now.

Wait not for the support of France. France, in a moment of insanity, has given herself up for four years to the discretion of the relative (by marriage), and servile tool of the Emperor of Russia, by whose help he hopes to be made Emperor of France.1 But France must follow, if England at once takes the lead.

The Czar ought instantly to be told that the first movement of troops across the frontiers of Turkey in this quarrel will be a signal for the blockading of all his ports in the Baltic and the Black Sea, to be followed, if needful, by the destruction of his naval arsenals.

Any trifle is thought sufficient cause for summoning a public meeting. Shall there be no meeting to save England from the infamy of standing by while men and women, who ought to be carried in triumph through every city in Europe, are torn by main force from the protection of the Mussulman prince, who dares defy a power ten times stronger and ten times more barbarous than his own, rather than deliver up fugitive victims to the slaughterer?

A month ago it would have seemed quite needless that a public demonstration should warn a liberal ministry of such a duty. But since we have a Colonial Secretary and a Prime Minister either so base, or so infantinely weak and credulous, as to be capable, the one of sanctioning, the other of defending, the conduct of More O’Ferrall,2 it is quite time that the public should rouse itself, and give strength to the only member of the government who stands between us and the Aberdeen policy, between us and a mean complicity with the new “Holy” Alliance.3

J.S.M.

[1 ]Louis Napoléon (1808-73), nephew of Bonaparte, a bête noire to Mill, had become President of France in December 1848 and, after a coup d’état in December 1851, was to become Emperor in December 1852. His relationship to Czar Nicholas I of Russia was distant: Princess Mathilde, daughter of Jerome Bonaparte, had once been engaged to Louis Napoléon and served as his hostess for some years before his marriage; she was a third cousin of the Czar.

[2 ]Henry George Grey was Colonial Secretary 1846-52; the Prime Minister was Lord John Russell. The conduct of Richard More O’Ferrall (1797-1880), who in July 1849, as Governor of Malta, had refused to permit refugees to land, was sanctioned by the Colonial Office in a speech of 1 Aug., 1849, by the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, Benjamin Hawes (PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 107, col. 1161); it was defended by Russell in a letter of 5 Sept. to Joseph Hume (printed in the Examiner, 22 Sept., p. 602), which also mentions Grey’s approbation.

[3 ]Lord Palmerston objected, in a speech of 21 July (PD, 3rd ser., Vol. 107, cols. 807-15), to the proposals of George Hamilton Gordon (1784-1860), 4th Earl of Aberdeen, to renew relations with the Powers who had always been Britain’s allies and to approve Russia’s intervention as “necessary,” in a speech of 20 July (ibid., cols. 690-705). The Holy Alliance of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, formed in 1815 to ensure Christian co-operation and brotherhood and eventually joined by most of Europe except for England, had prompted the Czar’s intervention in Hungary. The prospect of a new Holy Alliance was raised in the Commons by Ralph Bernal Osborne on 21 July (ibid., col. 788).