CANNING AND THE EASTERN QUESTION CANNING was born in 1770. He was in his second year at Christchurch at the taking of the Bastille, and he was forty-five when Waterloo was fought. His earliest and most vigorous manhood was thus contemporary with the great revolutionary movement ending in the re-settlement of the map of Europe; and it is impossible to understand his subsequent policy, and to do justice to his conduct, without at least attempting to realise the effect of such a history upon his mental attitude. We have been accustomed quite recently to hear much of the unparalleled importance of the Victorian Era.' But those who are not so near to its period will hereafter admit, what may not be so readily conceded now, that the sixty years of the reign of George the Third far excel the same space of time under his granddaughter in the rank of its international events, and the depth and impulse of its changes. We have seen transformations in France, the re-creation of Germany, a new birth of Italy, but all these have made up a spectacle we have regarded from without, and could watch with no other excitement than that of sympathy. Our great-grandfathers were participators in the turbulence of their generation. Canning saw the ancient monarchy of France broken by the beheading of a King. He saw the military prestige of Frederick the Great shattered and destroyed, the German Empire disappear, Austrian armies beaten in rapid succession, and Austria, and then Russia itself, compelled to fall into line with the military despot who had subjugated Western Europe. But Canning saw these things, not as a citizen of a neutral nation standing aloof, but with all the intensity of feeling of one whose country shared the struggle in which he himself, indeed, was from time to time an active agent, so that with scarce a breathing time of peace Great Britain fought and bled, until the final defeat of Napoleon closed the struggle of a quarter of a century. Nor was this all. If Canning knew the press and struggle of contending with insurrectionary movement and military aggression on the Continent, he was also brought into touch with something more than a tremor of domestic danger at home. At a time when the population of Ireland was onehalf that of Great Britain, a rebellion in the sister island engaged the sympathies of Protestants as much as of Catholics, and the statesmen of Britain were forced to feel that they had no immunity from the insurrectionary action of subjugated but not reconciled races. When at last Europe was pacified, when the task of re-settlement was undertaken, and after it had been apparently completed, the memories of the recent past could not but affect the judgment and action of Canning; and if of Canning, then certainly much more of his colleagues, and of those European monarchs and statesmen assembled together in concert over the future, most of whom had been personally embroiled in the struggle just terminated. It is impossible to be just to the members of the Congresses at Aix-la-Chapelle and Vienna unless we keep in mind the experiences through which they had passed. Their most natural, their most praiseworthy desire was to save Europe from another desolating period of war, and if they. did not see that the best guarantees of peace are to be found in the development of freedom within separate States, and the separation of States in harmony with the sense of common citizenship of their inhabitants, we may regret, but we cannot condemn shortcomings which in the nature of things were inevitable. The first aim of the members of the European Congresses was to divide the Continent into political communities so constituted that their powers might give a promise of being able to withstand any movement from any quarter towards an unsettlement of what had been established. The experiences through which they had passed had been so dreadful, that a recurrence of them was above all things to be avoided. The delimitation of States by the Powers assembled in Congress was not effected without much discussion. Some made strong efforts to reduce as far as possible the area of France, as a dominion whence had sprung all the mischief with which they had been troubled.. But counsels of prudence checked extravagant suggestions, and at last compromises were agreed upon, giving, as it was thought, the best promise of permanency, together with the most effective means of collective and repressive action, should such be wanted. The repartition of States was made part of the common law of Europe, and the treaty which embodied the result contained guarantees for its maintenance. So strong was the feeling of the covenants thus established, that so recently as 1870, when the Franco-German War began, Mr. Disraeli thought it desirable to impress upon the House of Commons the fact that we had guaranteed the Saxon provinces of Prussia. It is true that his hearers stared with strange eyes when they were reminded of this guarantee, and it cannot be regarded as otherwise than extraordinary that a person of such authority should have so erred in his estimate of the forces then in collision, and should have so misapprehended the chances of the future, as to deem it expedient to make such a declaration. But the fact at least shows how deeply the international guarantees of the European settlement after the Great War had sunk into his mind. Reciprocal covenants of defence were, however, not enough to satisfy the anxieties of all the Powers. The Emperor Alexander of Russia desired still larger securities. He was a man of a mystical, it may be said a superstitious, habit of mind, deeply impressed with the divine right of kings, and, it must be added, with a corresponding conviction of the obligation to govern according to what he regarded as Christian principles. He proposed therefore that the sovereigns in congress should enter into a Holy Alliance, in which each pledged himself personally to rule according to the Christian standard, and to come to the assistance of any other in the case of domestic as well as of international difficulty. Lord Castlereagh as the representative of this country, demurred to a pledge which his sovereign could not undertake independently of Parliament. But he desired to avoid all possibility of disagreement with the other Powers, and especially not to offend the susceptibilities of a personage who had been so influential in overcoming the common enemy; and after correspondence with Lord Liverpool at home, the Prince Regent wrote a friendly letter expressing his personal interest and sympathy with the aims of the other sovereigns, whilst refraining, on the ground of constitutional necessity, from entering on his own part into any obligations such as were proposed. The other Powers had no such hesitation. They undertook the sacred duty of crushing trouble at the beginning by lending their forces to put down any movement, whether strictly domestic or not, which threatened to interfere with an established organisation. The general outcome of the settlement was a series of guarantees against international aggression, supplemented by the special obligations of the members of the Holy Alliance to suppress internal disorders. The object of the Holy Alliance was to maintain the European system undisturbed on the principle of the sacredness of things as they were. We were only committed to the duty of assisting to keep the frontiers of the different Powers free from invasion, but it will be seen that the Prince Regent had been allowed to express privately his sympathy with the larger designs of the alliance, and it may be believed that neither Lord Castlereagh nor the Duke of Wellington felt any aversion to this further aim. Whether Mr. Canning was disposed to reject it at the outset must be uncertain. It may be remembered that he was and continued to the end of his life to be opposed to any measure of parliamentary reform at home. And Lord Liverpool, between whom and Mr. Canning there was always a close sympathy, did not dissent from the action Lord Castlereagh suggested, which was in fact completed with his approval. As the French Revolution had commenced with attempts no one could represent as other than moderate reform of the legislative and administrative organisation of France, it is not surprising that those who had so recently escaped from the perils which appeared directly to flow from the French Revolution should not be unfriendly to suggestions to prevent the development of any similar experience elsewhere. But, whatever may have been his feelings at first, it cannot be doubted that Mr. Canning soon came to recognise the impropriety of our joining in attempts to prevent internal changes in the several European countries, and was thus led to maintain the policy and duty of non-interference. This became most apparent almost immediately on his accession to the Foreign Office, when, although he did not venture on opposing force by force, he remonstrated against the intervention of a French army in Spain to uphold the absolute power of the King, and, in language familiar to a later generation, may be said to have cried 'Hands off!' to the King of France and the Holy Alliance. It may be thought to-day that it required little foresight to know that the effort to maintain each State in the condition in which it was left at the settlement of 1815 must prove impossible. No people will ever long remain in a stationary condition. And the movement throughout Europe which preluded the French Revolution was certain to reappear, and in all probability in many countries. It must soon have become obvious, and it is Mr. Canning's distinction to have recognised it, that national growth would manifest itself, and that attempts to prevent it would be vain. What, however, are we to say of the larger questions which arise when we are in face not of a single homogeneous nation developing its own destinies, but of a Power embracing within its sway subject peoples never subdued to its authority? The European settlement contained many such cases, and looking back upon them we see that it has been no more possible to check the centrifugal tendencies of nations than to arrest the growth of a people. Can we, however, even now indicate the conditions which should have been recognised by a far-seeing statesman eighty years since, as demonstrating the certainty of the changes which have since occurred? Looking over the map of Europe after 1815 three regions might have been noted as possible scenes of future uprisings. The Italian peninsula had been parcelled out in such a way as to give the Emperor of Austria an absolute possession of a large portion of its best lands, and a close influence over the greater part of that which was not absolutely his own. Italy, according to the well-known phrase of Prince Metternich, was a 'mere geographical expression,' 1 and he might have added, tied and bound for ever, as he It may be surmised that the statesmen of 1815 thought very little of the claims of nationalities; and indeed less than forty years ago one who had already been twice Prime Minister of Great Britain applied to the people of Italy the lines of Macbeth: Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men ; 1 As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, hoped, to Austria. Poland, having been twice subdivided, had been finally absorbed by the three military Powers of Russia, Prussia, and Austria, and finis Polonia was writ large across the map. The authority of the Sultan of Turkey extended over South-eastern Europe, controlling many Christian races, the Greek being the most eminent among them. Of the three problems, Greek, Polish, Italian, which if any seemed most likely first to demand solution? To which of them should the speculative statesman give his attention. as most pressing for consideration? We know in fact that the Greek question first became practical; that the Italian, though arising' later, has outdistanced the former in attaining a complete solution; whilst the Polish question, although agitated from time to time, has not apparently advanced at all, and may be deemed to have been finally extinguished. Yet the detached observer might have thought that Poland was most likely first to occupy the attention of statesmen. It is true that the military despotisms which had divided it amongst themselves were possessed of almost overwhelming power. Yet the independence of Poland had not long become a thing of the past, its local institutions had remained undisturbed, at least in Russian Poland, and if the Powers were agreed in suppressing it, they were not free from jealousies among themselves. Insurrectionary movements have indeed occurred not infrequently; and not more than thirty years ago a leading member of the Paris Bar, afterwards Prime Minister of the Republic, thought it convenient to salute the second Alexander when on a visit to the French capital with the cry Vive la Pologne!' an incident strangely in contrast with the alliances of to-day. Yet all attempts to revive the Polish cause have signally failed. No one who contemplates the complicated and unstable organisation of the Empire-monarchy of Austria-Hungary can indeed be certain that a provincial autonomy may not revive the Polish name, but as a question of international difficulty the problem of Poland has long ceased to exist. The last effacement of national independence has been the most complete. It was in connexion with the Greek subjects of the Sultan of Turkey, a matter not included in the settlement of 1815, and at that time not regarded as lying within the sphere of European law, that the signatories to the Treaty of Vienna were first called upon to deal with the difficulties involved in the uprising of a subject race against its sovereign. In 1821 the Greek revolt had begun. The movement began with an abortive rising in the Trans-Danubian principalities, followed shortly by a revolt in the Morea, extending soon after to Roumelia and the islands. The Powers assembled at Laybach, and though the situation in Naples was the most pressing subject of their deliberations, Russia, Prussia, and Austria joined in a declaration against revolutionary principles, which was understood by Sultan Mahmoud as aimed at the Greek movement, and was accepted by him |