Page:Karl Marx - The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston - ed. Eleanor Marx Aveling (1899).pdf/34

 28 only effectual means." When the three northern Powers occupied Cracow in 1836, its Constitution was abrogated, the three consular residences assumed the highest authority—the police was entrusted to Austrian spies—the senate overthrown—the tribunals suspended—the university put down by prohibiting the students of the neighbouring provinces from frequenting it—and the commerce of the free city, with the surrounding countries, destroyed.

In March, 1836, when interpellated on the occupation of Cracow, Lord Palmerston declared that occupation to be of a merely transitory character. Of so palliative and apologetic a kind was the construction he put on the doings of his three northern allies, that he felt himself obliged suddenly to stop and interrupt the even tenor of his speech by the solemn declaration, "I stand not up here to defend the measure, which, on the contrary, I must censure and condemn. I have merely stated those circumstances which, though they do not excuse the forcible occupation of Cracow, might yet afford a justification, etc. …" He admitted that the Treaty of Vienna bound the three Powers to abstain from any step without the previous consent of England, but "they may be justly said to have paid an involuntary homage to the justice and plain dealing of this country, by supposing that we would never give our assent to such a proceeding."

Mr. Patrick Stewart having, however, found out that there existed better means for the preservation of Cracow than the "abstention from remonstrance," moved on April 20, 1836, "that the Government should be ordered to send a representative to the free town of Cracow as consul, there being three consuls there from the three other powers, Austria, Russia, and Prussia." The joint arrival of an English and French consul at Cracow would prove an event, and must, in any case, have prevented the noble lord from afterwards declaring himself unaware of the intrigues pursued at Cracow by the Austrians, Russians, and Prussians. The noble viscount seeing that the majority of the House was favourable to the motion, induced Mr. Stewart to withdraw it, by solemnly promising that the