ple. Anybody with a large enough army can make a coup d'état, but it needs a dash of genius to beard the lion in his den, and come out all covered with diamonds. No sooner did the news of the coup d'état reach Constantinople, than a conference met there, and decided, in a protocol,

"Ist, That several stipulations of the protocol of the Paris Conference of July 30, 1858, have not been carried into execution.

"2d, That by a number of successively-issued decrees, the Moldo-Wallachian Government has decided in its own favour several of those matters, the solution of which was reserved to the guaranteeing Powers, and respecting which they have decided in an Act (the Paris Convention) in binding the aforesaid Gov

ernment.

"3d, That the Conference regards those decrees, which, in consequence of their unauthorised character, cannot have the slightest importance in its eyes, as not binding, and considers itself called upon most emphatically to condemn the manner in which the Moldo - Wallachian Government has permitted itself to outstep the sphere of its operations, and to interfere in affairs whose settlement it is not empowered to undertake."

In the teeth of this strong condemnation of his conduct, Prince Couza starts straight for Constantinople to meet his accusers face to face, and not merely to account for his conduct, but to win them over to his side. Nothing exasperated his subjects more than this bold step, by which he conciliated the very Power they trusted to to redress their grievances. No sooner does the outraged boyard appeal to the Porte for protection, than he finds he has been forestalled by his Highness, who has taken the bull by the horns, and pleaded his own cause with such effect, that he has cut away the last piece of standingground from under the feet of the opposition, and left no other

alternative to them but a revolution.

"Well," laughs the Prince triumphantly to his discomfitted boyards on his return, "I went to Constantinople to put my head into the Sultan's hands, and the Sultan has put your heads into my hands."

Payer d'audace is a motto which Prince Couza has found to answer admirably; but, added to the impudence of the chevalier d'industrie, he combines the plausibility without which his character as a member of the fraternity would be imperfect. Having heard much of the irresistible fascination of his manner, I confess I was extremely disappointed with it, and astonished that anybody could be taken in by an eye and a mouth which betrayed to the most superficial physiognomist the more prominent features of his character. No one with the most slender experience of Leicester Square, or a slight knowledge of the places of public amusement in the Barrières of Paris, Iwould be deceived for a moment by his Highness. But the Sultan, who has not probably seen a billiard-marker in his life, and does not know the difference between one description of gentleman and another, has been completely gulled by this crafty adventurer, who has not only obtained at Constantinople the condonation from his suzerain of his recent flagrant breaches of the constitution, but was invested with the first class of the order of the Osmanleh in diamonds. Everybody whom he meets he wins. The very priests whom he has despoiled become his friends and admirers, not because, like Mr Gladstone, he kisses their hands, but because he has felt their pockets; and, finally, he obtains the qualified sanction of the ambassadors of all the protecting Powers to his infraction of that constitution they themselves made him swear to respect.

It is true that the Conference at

Constantinople, from very shame, have only ratified his proceedings upon the promise, on the part of the Prince, to comply with certain conditions which they have imposed, and which enable them to say that the Convention of Paris has not been abrogated but merely modified; and they have found the Prince perfectly willing to agree to anything, because he never has the slightest intention of adhering to his engagements. Thus he has yielded at once to the following stipulation, dated 9th of last June, which has been imposed upon him with reference to the monastic fund the appropriation of which I have already described :

:

"Your Highness will understand that, with the view of preserving the existence of those monastic establishments, their revenues are in future to be devoted to a special fund, which will be placed under the control of the guaranteeing Powers. The Conference has unanimously expressed its opinion that this control is not to be merely apparent or superficial, but real and valid. Your Highness will therefore be good enough to come to an understanding in this sense with the Sublime Porte, in order that the fund may be devoted to the purpose marked out for it by the Conference.

"This object will be attained if the trustee of the fund furnishes satisfactory security for such application to the Sublime Porte as well as to the guaranteeing Powers; and if your Highness renders the fulfilment of their task possible to the representatives of the Powers by informing them of the amounts received, and of the periods at which the payments were made.

"It will be understood that this present notification is the unanimous resolution and expression of opinion of the Sublime Porte and of the guaranteeing Powers. (Signed) FUAD.”

In the eyes of his Highness this is quite a minor consideration; he has fingered the money, and he trusts to his good star and the corruptibility of the trustee, or the jealousy of each other of the protecting Powers, for the rest. That he considers his self-imposed mis

sion in the light of a great diplomatic success is evident from the fact, that he no sooner finds himself back upon his own dunghill, than he flaps his wings and gives vent to a crow of triumph, in the form of the annexed proclamation to his subjects, from which it will be seen that, however much our Foreign Minister may deny that the Convention of Paris has been abrogated by the coup d'état, Prince Couza announces that "the fundamental bases of the new institutions are neither endangered nor changed by the alterations to which I have consented in agreement with the Sublime Porte, and with the assent of the collective guaranteeing Powers. When we find that the document recognising these new institutions accords to the united Principalities their complete autonomy, we must agree rather with Prince Couza than with Mr Layard in maintaining that the Conference of Constantinople has practically abolished the Convention of Paris. The The following proclamation is dated

66

"BUCHAREST, July 14, 1864.

"Roumains! Between the 10th (22d) and the 14th (26th) May the nation has replied with 682,681 votes to the appeal of your Prince, and has approved the principles of the appendix to the constitution and the electoral law submitted to its consideration.

"From the documents I now publish and bring to your knowledge you will gain the conviction that the existence and the fundamental bases of the new institutions voted by the nation are neither endangered nor changed by the alterations to which I have consented in agreement with the Sublime Porte, and with the assent of the collective guaranteeing Powers.

"These modifications, however, are merely provisional. They may be supplemented and completed by the legislative bodies in their approaching session.

"For, Roumains, I declare to you, and you will yourselves admit, that Roumania only enters upon its full autonomy from this day, as contained in our ancient agreements concluded with the Porte and guaranteed by the Treaty

of Paris.

"This autonomy has been until now practically obstructed in many respects. A proof of this was afforded by Appendix No. II. to the Convention-viz., the electoral law-which could not be altered without foreign assent.

"Now, upon the other hand, the high Powers, in consideration of our ancient rights and the Treaty of Paris-by which Europe took our political existence under her protection-have sanctioned our internal autonomy in its full extent. At the head of the document by which the new institutions of RouInania are recognised, the Sublime Porte, in conjunction with the guaranteeing Powers, has written these words: The United Principalities are in future at liberty to change and modify the laws affecting their internal administration, with the legal participation of the collective authorities established by

the State.'

"From this day forth, therefore, and only from this day forth, the Roumain nation takes possession of its autonomy, From this time forth it may alter and improve its internal institutions without foreign intervention.

"Roumains! The future is our own. May the confidence of the nation in its chosen head become still greater, that we may recover the time lost, that our beloved country may rapidly rejoice in the fruits of its patience and sacrifices, and the Roumain nation may in this manner recover the place to which it is

entitled in the great European family of peoples.

66

Let us, then, warmly greet the new Legislative Chambers which are summoned to develop our laws and public

"I, Alexander John I., late SubPrefect of Galatz, out at elbows, but devoted to billiards and the fairer portion of the population of that very untidy port, am about to assume the imperial purple-to exchange a cue for a sceptre, and, surrounded by all that is lovely and accomplished in Europe, to become Alexander John I., Emperor of Roumania, bounded on the west by the Adriatic, on the east by the Black Sea, on the south by the Balkan, and on the north by the Carpathians; 'with,' as they say in prospectuses, permission to add to my frontiers.'

all this, that Alexander John is Who is to deny, in the face of not a great man already, and likely to become a greater? How far our policy was a wise one in encouraging these dreams remains to be seen. The Porte was under the impression that Prince Couza was a man to be conciliated, not defied; and that the best chance of keeping things smooth in the Principalities was to make a friend of him. Possibly, we took the same view; but the boyards may prove Russian occupation is the thing as dangerous as the Prince if a we do not want to see, it is a question, whether, by backing the Prince against the people, we

shall avert the contingency; or whether, on the contrary, we have not added to the existing dangers. We have shown the Prince that he may defy the Porte and the Powers with impunity, and that, although they may object ostensibly to his proceedings, their opposition or disapproval practically resolves itself into consent and approval; and we have shown the boyards that they need not depend upon us to stand by the engagements in their behalf which we have contracted, and that they had better make friends wherever they can, and, having got the support of Russia or Austria, make a revolution on their own account. Not content with becoming parties to this Convention, which we have since repudiated, with a fatality, or rather a fatuousness, which has characterised most of our foreign policy lately, we deliberately guaranteed the integrity of the Ottoman empire at the close of the Crimean war; thereby laying up for ourselves a most certain store of dishonour, as we have no more idea of adhering to our solemnlycontracted obligations in this respect than Alexander John himself. That we should leave the weak to be bullied or annexed by the strong when our interests are not concerned—or, which comes to the same thing, when we ignorantly think they are not-is comprehensible enough; but why we should bind ourselves in sacred official documents, signed by the seal of the country, and pledging the honour of the nation to do what it has no intention of ever doing, can only be accounted for by supposing that the Government that made the treaty was as ignorant of public opinion in England, as they have invariably shown themselves of public opinion abroad. Meantime, of this we may be sure, that the contempt which our Danish policy has brought upon our heads is nothing to that with which we shall be loaded when we repudiate our engage

ments towards Turkey. We shall again have to choose between the alternative of humiliation before Europe, or of a disastrous and unprofitable war; and we shall again part with our honour to save our pockets. It is melancholy to look forward to, particularly as an inevitable certainty. We are still struggling to reconcile the diplomacy of cotton-spinners with the diplomacy of gentlemen, and the two things are incompatible. Better have no diplomacy at all, than mob-diplomacy as represented by the Manchester school. If our code of honour differs so egregiously from that of other civilised nations, that the political morality of America is the only kind we can appreciate, let us keep as much aloof from European affairs as the Americans do. But if we insist upon mixing in good society, let us behave like gentlemen and men of honour.

Either let us keep

In the

out of the society of nations altogether, or let us accept the duties and obligations which our position imposes upon us. We can no more continue our present system of selfish, mercenary, low-minded policy, than we could, as individuals, be tolerated in clubs where we purloined the bread, and refused to pay our debts of honour. mean time, nothing is so demoralising to our diplomatic agents abroad, as the consciousness that the Government and the country will support them in any successful patching-up or staving-off a difficulty, however discreditable to our national reputation, and will visit with heavy condemnation any solution which should involve the risk of war, however essential to the preservation of our honour. We trust that the result may prove that the sanction obtained by Prince Couza from the Powers at Constantinople for the abrogation—or, as they would call it, the modification-of the Paris Convention, may not have the effect which more than one Power that consented to

it desired, of precipitating the Eastern question.

We shall see, moreover, whether those profuse professions of his Highness, that he only wanted a little of his own way to develop the resources of his country, will be carried out. When I was there he persistently refused to make concessions to any railway company whatever; and, in one case, contractors only requested to be allowed to make a line from Bucharest to the Danube without demanding a Government guarantee. A line thirty miles long, connecting a capital city containing 150,000 inhabitants and the largest navigable river in Europe, it was thought, would pay on its own merits, more especially as at present the road from the city to its port is not even macadamised, but is in winter an almost impassable slough; but the Prince refused his sanction to the enterprise, and the result is, that it is cheaper to transport goods the first five hundred miles to Giurgevo than the last thirty to Bucharest. The best illustration which can be afforded of the deficiency of internal communication in these provinces is to be found in the fact, that when corn in Wallachia has been so abundant that it was actually burnt by the peasantry for fuel, its price has been higher in the capital of the province than in London. It has been cheaper to transport corn from the banks of the Danube to London than to Bucharest. I used to bet, to the great indignation of the "Roumanians," that Prince Kung would connect Pekin with his port by a railway before Prince Couza would grant the permission necessary for connecting his capital with civilisation by the same means, and I still think that the odds are in favour of the Chinaman.

What is much more in his Highness's line than promoting works of this nature, is intriguing with neighbouring Sclavonic nations in the prosecution of his Roumanian pol

icy. The history of the transmission of Russian arms through Bucharest into Servia is still fresh in our memory; and I was amused, in discussing the subject with a high functionary who had been Minister of War at the time, to hear the excuse made for the falsehood deliberately told by the Prince to our Government, when he was charged with this violation of the stipulations. The arms were stowed away in a store at Bucharest; and upon the Prince being taxed with this fact he indignantly denied it; "for," said the ex-War-Minister, “he had to gain time. How could he admit it? There was no harm in his gaining time to send them out of the town, and he could not have done this had he not said they were not in it." Not very long before my visit, General Türr had paid a visit of intrigue to his Highness, which caused some anxiety to constituted governments at the time, and to which great importance was attached, as it was supposed to be significant of a rising in the provinces. The real object of his visit, however, was to persuade Prince Couza to exercise his authority over the Roumanians of Transylvania, who were at that moment voting for the Austrian Reichsrath, to withhold their votes, and follow the example of Hungary in the matter. General Türr was recalled, however, by the Italian Government, re infectâ, and the Transylvanians entered the Reichsrath in spite of Couza. What the last new project of his Highness may be is at present a mystery; but he is always coquetting with the party of action, in further imitation of another illustrious individual, and, when the European crisis comes, will not be found lagging.

When I was at Bucharest, the army was being prepared to support the coup d'état, and a salutary pressure was being exercised upon the people by the presence of a camp containing 15,000 men just outside the town. Such a force of native