The Question of the Ionian Islands

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This article was written by Marx in connection with the English Government’s policy aimed at obstructing the liberation of the islands from the English protectorate, established in 1815, and their cession to Greece. The decision on the cession of the islands to Greece was adopted by the Legislative Assembly of Corfu, the main island. Gladstone went on a special mission to the Ionian Islands in November 1858. The English Government succeeded in delaying a solution of the problem up to 1864.

The case of Mr. William Hudson Guernsey, alias Washington Guernsey, criminally prosecuted for stealing from the library of the British Colonial Office two secret dispatches addressed—the one on June 10, 1857, the other on July 18, 1858—to the late Government of Lord Palmerston by Sir John Young, Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands, has just been tried before Baron Martin of the Central Criminal Court, and ended in the acquittal of the accused.

The trial was interesting, both in a political and a judicial point of view. It will be remembered that the Homeric

Mr. Gladstone had hardly left London, on his extraordinary mission to pacify the Ionian Islands, when, like a Scythian arrow, darted from an unseen hand, Sir John Young’s dispatch, which proposes to abandon the protectorate of the islands and surrender them to Greece, but only after having cut off the finest morsel by merging Corfu in the colonial domains of Great Britain, made its appearance in the columns of The Daily News. Great and general was the astonishment. The portion of the London press opposed to secret diplomacy congratulated Lord Derby’s Cabinet on the bold step of initiating the public into the mystery of diplomatic whisperings; and The Morning Star, in its naive enthusiasm, proclaimed that a new epoch of international policy had dawned upon the United Kingdom. The sweet voice of praise became, however, in no time, overhowled by shrill and angry tones of criticism. The anti-ministerial press eagerly seized upon the “premeditated blunder,” as they called it, which, they said, was aimed at nothing else than the destruction, in the first instance, of Mr. Gladstone’s political independence and at his temporary removal from the Parliamentary arena; while, at the same time, by an unscrupulous stroke of Machiavellian perfidy, his mission was to be baffled on the part of his own employers by the publication of a document which put him at once in a false position toward the party he had to negotiate with, toward public opinion in England, and toward the public law of Europe. To ruin a too confiding rival, said The Times, The Globe, The Observer, and the smaller anti-ministerial fry, the Derby Cabinet had not hesitated to commit an indiscretion which, under existing circumstances, amounted to nothing less than treason.

How could Mr. Gladstone negotiate when the Ionians were not only informed that a foregone conclusion was arrived at on the part of Britain, but when the leading Ionian patriots were compromised by the betrayal of their acceptance of a plan resulting in the dismemberment of the seven islands? How could he negotiate in face of the European remonstrances, which were sure to result from such an infringement of the treaty of Vienna, that treaty constituting England not the owner of Corfu, but the protector only of the seven islands, and settling the territorial divisions of the European map forever? These newspaper articles were, in fact, followed by actual remonstrances on the part of Russia and France.

Let me remark, en passant, that the treaty of Vienna, the only acknowledged code of international law in Europe, forms one of the most monstrous fictiones juris publici ever heard of in the annals of mankind. What is the first article of that treaty? The eternal exclusion of the Bonaparte family from the French throne; yet there sits Louis Napoleon, the founder of the Second Empire, acknowledged and fraternized with, and cajoled and bowed to by all the crowned heads of Europe. Another article runs to the effect that Belgium is forever granted to Holland; while, on the other hand, for eighteen years past, the separation of Belgium from Holland is not only a fait accompli, but a legal fact. Then the treaty of Vienna prescribes that Cracow, incorporated with Austria since 1846, shall forever remain an independent republic; and last, not least, that Poland, merged by Nicholas into the Russian Empire, shall be an independent constitutional kingdom, linked with Russia by the personal bond of the Romanoff dynasty only. Thus, leaf after leaf has been torn out of this holy book of the European jus publicum, and it is only appealed to when it suits the interests of one party and the weakness of the other.

The Derby Cabinet was evidently wavering, whether to pocket the unmerited praises of one part of the press, or meet the unmerited slanders of the other. Yet, after eight days’ vacillation, it decided on the latter step, declared by a public advertisement that it had no hand in the publication of Sir John Young’s dispatches, and that an investigation was actually going on as to the performer of the criminal trick. Finally, Mr. William Hudson Guernsey was traced out as the guilty man, tried before the Central Criminal Court, and convicted of having purloined the dispatches. The Derby Cabinet consequently comes out victorious in the contest; and here the political interest of the trial ends. Still, in consequence of this lawsuit, the attention of the world has been again directed to the relations between Great Britain and the Ionian Islands. That the plan of Sir John Young was no private crotchet, is conclusively proved by the following extract from a public address of his predecessor, Sir Henry Ward, to the Ionian Assembly, on the 13th of April, 1850:

“It is not for me to speak, in the name of the British Crown, of that distant future which the address shadows forth, when the scattered members of the Greek race may be reunited in one mighty empire, with the consent of the European powers. But I have no difficulty in expressing my own opinion” (he spoke in the name of the British Crown) “that, if such an event be within the scope of human contingencies, the Sovereign and the Parliament of England would be equally willing to see the Ionians resume their place as members of the new power that would then take its place in the policy of the world.”

Meanwhile, the philanthropic feelings of Great Britain for the islands, gave themselves vent in the truly Austrian ferocity with which Sir Henry Ward crushed the then rebellion in the islands. Out of a population of 200,000 souls, 8,000 were punished by hanging, scourging, imprisonment and exile; women and children being whipped until blood flowed. In order not to be suspected of exaggeration, I will auote a British paper, The Morning Chronicle, of April 25, 1850:

“We shudder at the awful measure of retribution which was inflicted by the Court Martials, under the direction of the Lord High Commissioner. Death, transportation and corporal punishments were awarded to the wretched criminals in some cases without trial, in another by the rapid process of martial law. Of capital executions there were 21, and of other punishments a large number.”

But, then, the Britishers boast of having blessed the Ionians with a free Constitution and developed their material resources to a pitch forming a bright contrast with the wretched economical state of Greece proper. Now, as to the Constitution, Lord Grey, at the moment when he was given to constitution-mongering for the whole Colonial Empire of Great Britain, could with no good grace pass over the Ionian Islands; but he only gave them back what England for long years had fraudulently wrested from them. By a treaty drawn up by Count Capo D’Istria, and signed with Russia at Paris in 1815, the protection of the Ionian Islands was made over to the Great Britain, on the express condition of her abiding by the Russian Constitution granted to them in 1803. The first British Lord High Commissioner, Sir Thomas Maitland, abrogated that Constitution, and replaced it by one investing him with absolute power. In 1839, the Chevalier Mustoxidis, an Ionian, states in his Pro Memoria, printed by the House of Commons, June 22, 1840:

“The Ionians do not enjoy the privilege which the communities of Greece used to possess even in the days of Turkish tyranny, that of electing their own magistrates, and managing their own affairs, but are under officers imposed upon them by the police. The slight latitude which had been allowed to the municipal bodies of each island of administering their own revenues has been scotched from them, and in order to render them more dependent, these revenues have been thrown into the public exchequer.”

As to the development of the material resources, it will suffice to say that England, Free-Trade England, is not ashamed to pester the Ionians with export duties, a barbarous expedient which seemed relegated to the financial code of Turkey. Currants, for instance, the staple product of the islands, are charged with an export duty of 22½ per cent.

“The intervening seas,” says an Ionian, “which form, as it were, the highway of the islands, are stopped, after the method of a turnpike gate, at each harbour, by transit duties, which tax the commodities of every name and description interchanged between island and island.”

Nor is this all. During the first twenty-three years of British administration, the taxation was increased threefold and the expenditure fivefold. Some reduction took place afterward, but then in 1850 there was a deficiency equal to one half of what was previously the total taxation, as is shown by the following table:

	Annual Taxation	Expenditure
1815	£68,459	£48,500
1817	108,997	87,420
1850	147,482	170,000

Thus, export duties on their own produce, transit duties between the different islands, increase of taxation and waste of expenditure are the economical blessings conferred on the Ionians by John Bull. According to his oracle in Printing-House Square, he grasps after colonies only in order to educate them in the principles of public liberty; but, if we adhere to facts, the Ionian Islands, like India and Ireland, prove only that to be free at home, John Bull must enslave abroad. Thus, at this very moment, while giving vent to his virtuous indignation against Bonaparte’s spy system at Paris, he is himself introducing it at Dublin. The judicial interest of the trial in question hangs upon one point: Guernsey’s advocate confessed to the purloining of ten copies of the dispatches, but pleaded not guilty, because they had not been intended to be used for a private purpose. If the crime of larceny depends on the intention only with which foreign property is unlawfully appropriated, the criminal law is brought to a dead stop in that respect. The solid citizens of the jury-box scarcely intended to effect such a revolution in the conditions of property, but only meant to assert, by their verdict, that public documents are the property—not of the Government, but of the public.