Page:Karl Marx - The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston - ed. Eleanor Marx Aveling (1899).pdf/59

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There is no such word in the Russian vocabulary as "honour." As to the thing itself, it is considered to be a French delusion.

"Schto takoi honneur? Ett Fransusski chimere." is a Russian proverb. For the invention of Russian honour the world is exclusively indebted to my Lord Palmerston, who, during a quarter of a century, used at every critical moment to pledge himself in the most emphatic manner, for the "honour" of the Czar. He did so at the close of the session of 1853, as at the close of the session of 1833.

Now, it happens that the noble lord, while he expressed "his most implicit confidence in the honour and good faith" of the Czar, had just got into possession of documents, concealed from the rest of the world, and leaving no doubt, if any existed, about the nature of Russian honour and good faith. He had not even to scratch the Muscovite in order to find the Tartar. He had found the Tartar in his naked hideousness. He found himself possessed of the self-confessions of the leading Russian ministers and diplomatists, throwing off their cloaks, opening out their most secret thoughts, unfolding, without constraint, their plans of conquest and subjugation, scornfully railing at the imbecile credulity of European courts and ministers, mocking the Villèles, the Metternichs, the Aberdeens, the Cannings, and the Wellingtons; and devising in common, with the savage cynicism of the barbarian, mitigated by the cruel irony of the courtier, how to sow distrust against England at Paris, and against Austria at London, and against London at Vienna, how to set them all by the ears, and how to make all of them the mere tools of Russia.

At the time of the insurrection in Warsaw, the vice-