No. 40.
Mr. Kasson
to Mr. Evarts.
Vienna, April 14, 1880. (Received April 29.)
Sir: No election in recent times has produced so pronounced an effect upon other European governments as the late triumph of the liberals in the Parliamentary elections of England, under the leadership of Mr. Gladstone. The feeling in Austria is that of a political crisis. One of the government organs utters this cry:
The fall of the Tories is also a misfortune for Austria. We have founded all our hopes upon the treaty of Berlin, and this treaty has just lost its best protector. The fall of Mr. Disraeli is in effect the death of the treaty of Berlin.
The feeling against Mr. Gladstone is strong, and rests not only upon his published criticisms of Austrian affairs, but upon his assertion of the principles of international justice and his known sympathy with all the people included in the general term of oppressed nationalities. This feeling touches Austria in too many points not to attract attention and create apprehension.
The existing alarm justifies my previous observations on the Berlin treaty, for it is equivalent to an admission of the violent and transient character of many of its provisions, which rest upon no law of nature and no law of international justice, only upon the bargained majority of the strongest powers. Under such conditions a treaty must depend largely for its force upon the continuing power of the statesmen who were personally responsible for its execution.
Since the date of its signature, have disappeared from their places at the head of their respective governments, Caratheodori Pasha, Count Corti, Count Andrássy, M. Waddington, and now Lord Beaconsfield. Remain only of the chief signatories and premiers Prince Gortsehakoff, apparently now near his end, and Prince Bismarck, who represents no special national interest in the treaty, and who acted simply in the role of mediator.
Under such circumstances you will not unreasonably find justification of the fears existing here respecting the duration of the Berlin convention and the future division of the spoils of European Turkey.
I have, &c.,