The Czar now proposed that a coercive naval demonstration by the Powers should be made in the Bosphorus, but Lord Derby rejected the idea. After some weeks he suggested that a Conference of the Powers should be held to

consider the situation on the basis of his own excellent proposals for peace, which have been already described. The Conference was assented to, and Lord Derby to some extent retrieved the position he lost on the morrow of Alexinatz. The Czar had also given the English Government the fullest assurances that he had no design on Constantinople, and in proof of his sincerity he had withdrawn a suggestion he had thrown out for the temporary occupation of Bosnia and Bulgaria by Austrian and Russian troops, and frankly accepted the English proposals for a settlement. It has been seen that during the negotiations which led up to the Crimean War, whenever the question was on the point of being settled somebody always interfered in England and in France to break the accord of the Powers. On this occasion history repeated itself. On the 9th of November Lord Beaconsfield delivered a speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, which suppressed all information as to the conciliatory mood of the Czar, and not only terrified Englishmen into a belief that Russia was scheming to seize Bulgaria, but that England was determined to oppose her by arms. The Czar, on the other hand, in an address to the Notables of Moscow, said that he was “firmly resolved to act independently if necessary” to obtain justice for the Christian subjects of Turkey.[94] At Constantinople there was joy among the Pashas, for they argued that after Lord Beaconsfield’s Guildhall speech they might regard the verdict of the Conference with indifference. The Czar, on his side, by way of emphasising his Moscow speech, mobilised six corps d’armée,[95] and Sir Stafford Northcote and Mr. Cross, in order to minimise the effect of Lord Beaconsfield’s threats, delivered addresses showing that they thought Turkey must be coerced if she trifled with Europe.[96] Lord Salisbury visited the European capitals on his way to the Conference at Constantinople, at which he was to represent England, and at each one he was informed that he must expect no aid in supporting Turkey. An appeal was made by the Times to Prince Bismarck to check Russia—but in vain. When Lord Salisbury had an interview with Prince Bismarck he found he was virtually a diplomatic ally of Russia. In fact, ere he reached Constantinople, Lord Salisbury found that Lord Beaconsfield’s policy of applying the obsolete ideas of the Whigs of 1854 to solve the Eastern Question in 1876, had isolated England. In the preliminary Conference, from which the Turks were excluded, Mr. Gladstone’s plan of giving administrative autonomy to the European Provinces of Turkey was adopted, Lord Salisbury supporting it with great ability and skill.[97] He even consented to allow 6,000 troops from some minor State—Belgium was suggested—to support the International Commission for reorganising the Government of an autonomous Bulgaria. This scheme was to have been adopted by the Porte at a Plenary Conference. Relying on the support of Lord Beaconsfield, and misled by the denunciations of Lord Salisbury which appeared in the Ministerial Press—then busy manufacturing failure for the English representatives at the Conference—the Porte met the demands of the Powers for reform, by proclaiming a grotesque Parliamentary Constitution for the Ottoman Empire. But it obstinately refused to grant the reforms demanded by the Conference, which accordingly broke up on the 20th of January, 1877. The Ambassadors of the Powers were then recalled from Constantinople. On the 8th of December (1876) a National Conference, under the presidency of the Duke of Westminster, and representing not only the heads of the Whig nobility, but most of the leaders of literature, science, and art, the High Church clergy, the Nonconformists, and politicians of every shade of Liberal opinion, met in St. James’s Hall to condemn Lord Beaconsfield’s policy, and protest against England giving armed aid to Turkey.

Early in 1876 the death of Lady Augusta Stanley, wife of the Dean of Westminster, removed one of the Queen’s most trusted friends. She had been for many years in personal attendance on her Majesty, and her services were so valuable that for many years her marriage with Dean Stanley had been postponed simply because the Royal Family could not spare her from their domestic circle. This gentle lady, throughout her life of unobtrusive usefulness at the Deanery of Westminster, served as one of the connecting-links between the upper, the middle, and the lower classes. She was as well known and as well loved in the dismal “slums” of London as in the radiant circle of the Court, and her death somewhat dimmed the brightness of the London season of 1876. It was a feverish, ill-conditioned season, agitated by financial scandals, by the pressure of hard times, by the failure of trade due to the uncertainty of the political situation, and by fierce and factious controversies as to the relative merits of Turks and Eastern Christians. To be in the mode one had to affect a strong admiration, not only for the ethics of the Koran, but for those of the Bashi-Bazouk, and a compassionate regret that Christianity had failed to elevate the European subjects of the Sultan, to the plane of Asiatic civilisation. The china mania, or craze for collecting old pottery, represented the fashionable movement in Art. Rinking, or skating on roller-skates in very mixed assemblies,[98] was the favourite form of physical recreation, and persons of quality kept their intellects alive by holding the spelling competitions known as “Spelling Bees.” Besides the “hard times” due to the collapse of investments, the Colorado beetle and the tropical heat of summer were added to the torments of the time; and the publication of the Domesday Book, showing that 710 individuals owned more than one-fourth of the soil of England and Wales, still further aggravated the uneasiness of a territorial aristocracy, whose margin of income for expenditure on luxuries was daily diminishing. The year closed with the sudden return of the Polar Expedition under Sir George Nares. Its record of achievement was most meagre, and its retreat after enduring only one winter in the ice was felt to be discreditable to the manhood of the British Navy. It was, however, discovered that the disaster was due to a terrible outbreak of scurvy in the crews of the Arctic ships, which was traced to their neglect to use lime-juice. The reputation of the explorers for pluck and endurance was thus redeemed at the expense of their intelligence.

The daily papers were filled with glowing accounts of the proclamation of the Queen as Empress of India (Kaiser-i-Hind) at Delhi, in the presence of the Viceroy and the great feudatories of the Empire on the 1st of January, 1877. The ceremony was accompanied by salvoes of artillery. A banner and a medal were given to the Princes to commemorate the event, and five of the most powerful magnates, Holkar, Scindiah, the Maharajah of Cashmere, the Maharajah of Travancore, and the Maharanee of Oodeypore, were granted rank, typified by salutes of twenty-one guns, equivalent to that of the Nizam. But as the viceregal salute was raised to thirty-one guns, Holkar and Scindiah, whose claim was to hold higher status than the Viceroy in their own dominions, and equal rank with him elsewhere, went away discontented. The scenic display was a little tawdry and theatrical, and grizzled Anglo-Indians, who had been accustomed to see austere statesmen or stern soldiers on the viceregal throne, were perplexed to find the Empress represented by a Viceroy who appeared to enjoy keenly the Orientalism of the function, and saw no absurdity in representing the majesty of Empire from the back of an elephant, which had been painted white for the occasion. Yet the ceremony was not without a deep meaning. It represented the final triumph of the new system which was introduced into India by Canning, the system by which, instead of ruling India by a paternal bureaucracy, whose aim was to sweep away all magnates who stood between it and the people, the hereditary rights of the native Princes were recognised, and they themselves admitted as corner-stones in the fabric of Empire of which the Kaiser-i-Hind was now proclaimed the apex and crown. It was, therefore, not without significance that the only class unrepresented at the Coronation was the Indian people. Yet one occasionally heard of the Indian people. A quarter of a million of them had been drowned by a cyclone in Bengal when the debates on the Imperial title were going on in London. Eight millions of them were in the agonies of famine in Central India when that title was proclaimed at Delhi.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE REIGN OF JINGOISM.

On the 8th of February the Queen opened Parliament in person, and was well received in the crowded streets, but Mr. Gladstone, Lord Beaconsfield, and the Chinese Ambassador and his suite were for the time the real heroes of the mob. The scene in the House of Lords was one of exceptional brilliancy, and after the Speech, was read by Lord Cairns, the Queen, descending the steps of the Throne, left the Chamber, the ceremony, so far as her Majesty was concerned, not occupying more than fifteen minutes. It need not be said that in both Houses the debates on the Address centred round the Eastern Question. The Conference had been a failure, and the Government were seriously embarrassed. Logically, Ministers, as men of spirit, were bound to make the demands of the Conference effective, for was it not their own device for settling the Eastern Question, and were not its demands their demands? That was the view which Lord Hartington vindicated in a speech of great power and cogency.

On the other hand, it was clear that the Cabinet had no fixed aim when it organised the Conference—that if it ever contemplated the contingency of failure, which its supporters by their fierce attacks on Lord Salisbury had virtually manufactured, it had hoped to tide over the difficulty by letting matters drift. Lord Derby had begun by assuming that it was not the right or duty of England to insist on Turkey conceding reforms to Bulgaria. The autumnal agitation about the atrocities induced him to change front, and to admit that it was alike the duty and right of England, as one of the Powers whose support maintained the Turkish Empire, to demand that its European Provinces should not be submerged in barbarism. He had organised the Powers in support of this demand, and now, when the Turks refused to yield to it, he reverted to his original theory that England had no more right to interfere with Turkey, than with Austria or France. What made matters worse for the Cabinet was the prevailing belief that, though they sent Lord Salisbury to Constantinople to insist on reforms, their agents privily assured Midhat Pasha, then Grand Vizier, that no harm would come if Turkey upset the Conference. The State Papers furnish no confirmation of this belief. Indeed, they show that Lord Derby told Lord Salisbury to warn the Turks that though England would take no part in coercive measures against them, the Porte “is to be made to understand that it can expect no assistance from England in the case of war.”[99] The Turks, however, had a fixed conviction that England would help them in a war with Russia. Nothing but a strong statement from Lord Beaconsfield would have eradicated this belief, and all that the English Government can be blamed for is, that Lord Beaconsfield failed or refused to make this statement. According to Prince Bismarck, no statesman who aspires to influence abroad will permit his Government to be associated with a failure in diplomacy. Yet not only had Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Derby permitted their project of the Conference to be laughed to pieces by the Turks, but all they had to say to Parliament was that they were sorry that Turkey had misunderstood her own interests. They were quite contented to accept the defeat of their scheme meekly. Their position appears rather abject to those who look at it critically, and yet no other was practically open to them. Only a small faction, led by Lord Hartington and Mr. Gladstone, were for coercing Turkey. A still smaller faction of idle loungers, whose favourite phrase was that “Piccadilly wanted a little wholesome blood-letting,” were for joining Turkey in a war against the Slav States headed by Russia. The people were divided between their spasmodic fear of Russia and their equally spasmodic loathing for the Turks, and Radical Russophobes, like Mr. Joseph Cowen, were just as loud in demanding non-intervention as Radical Russophiles like Mr. Bright. Thus the policy of the Government—that of demanding concessions from Turkey from a love of Humanity, and tamely submitting to a contemptuous refusal, from fear of Russia, fairly well reflected the mind of the English democracy.

Sir Stafford Northcote’s leadership of the House of Commons was not promising. He tolerated the obstruction of a small group of members, who caused the Bill which closed public-houses in Ireland on Sundays to be abandoned, after Ministers stood pledged to its principle, and all parties in the House were willing to pass it. He permitted his more devoted followers to oppose a Resolution moved by Mr. Clare Read—who had left the Government because he considered that they neglected agricultural interests—in favour of County Government Reform. But at the last moment he put forward Mr. Sclater-Booth to accept the Resolution in a speech which was evidently meant as a conclusive argument against it. Mr. Cross’s Prisons Bills, too, spread disaffection among the squirearchy. These measures reduced the management of gaols in the three kingdoms to something like uniformity. But they made the prisons national and not local institutions, centralised their administration in the hands of the Imperial Government, deposed the local justices from their position of control over them, and charged their cost to the Consolidated Fund.

The debates in Parliament were rendered memorable by the appearance of a cool and adroit gladiator on the Irish benches, whose business-like methods of attacking the Prisons Bill in Committee extorted admiration from all old Parliamentary hands. This was Mr. Charles Stewart Parnell. It was known to be his intention to obstruct the Prisons Bill, in defiance of the wishes of Mr. Butt, the leader of the Irish Party. But it was assumed that a combination of the two great English Parties would easily crush opposition of the frivolous and factious order with which Mr. Beresford Hope and a section of the Tories had met Mr. Forster’s Ballot Bill.[100] But Mr. Parnell had evidently foreseen this contingency, and he met it by inventing a higher and more scientific type of obstruction than Mr. Hope had been capable of devising. His obstruction paralysed the two front benches, because he took care that it was not frivolous. He had evidently spent many nights and days in the minute dissection of the Bill, and he had manifestly toiled without stint in reading up the whole question of Prison discipline. It was not till he had made himself master of the entire subject that he intervened in the Debates, and then the House, to its amazement, found that the Home Secretary himself, when pitted against this bland young Irish squire with his soft voice, his lugubrious intonation, his funereal manner, and dull, prosaic Gradgrind-like form of speech, was but a poor amateur wriggling in the firm grip of a pitiless expert. To the dismay of the three leaders of the House—Sir Stafford Northcote, Lord Hartington, and Mr. Butt—there was no easy means of getting rid of Mr. Parnell, simply because his amendments—and their name was legion—were not vamped up. Nay, with Machiavelian ingenuity he had draughted them so skilfully that most of them appealed strongly to the sympathies of other sections of the House than those connected with Ireland. Indeed, but for the persistency with which Mr. Parnell and one or two of his friends “bored” the House with the sufferings of certain Fenian prisoners under discipline, one would have thought that his treatment of the Bill was simply that of an English country gentleman, who had made himself an authority on the question, and had a genuine desire to eliminate from it stupid provisions which had been palmed off on a credulous Home Secretary. Nor was it in mastery of detail and skill of draughtsmanship alone that Mr. Parnell showed himself formidable. His ingenuity in inventing amendments drawn on lines that appealed to English popular feeling was inexhaustible. If at one moment the Home Secretary found himself contending with Mr. Parnell in the guise of a healthy-minded Tory squire, who was a hater of centralisation and a champion of the rights of visiting justices, at another he found himself battling with a philanthropist in whom the spirit of Howard lived again. Few who witnessed the long duel between Mr. Cross and Mr. Parnell will ever forget the pitiful and perturbed embarrassment of the Home Secretary when he found himself at every turn so maliciously cornered by his enemy, that he must either surrender, offend the prejudices of the rural magistracy, who hated the Bill, or raise up hosts of enemies in Exeter Hall and other centres of philanthropic activity, where any proposal to humanise Prison Discipline was hailed with delight. And when the duel was over it was impossible to deny that whatever might be Mr. Parnell’s motive, he had by his opposition extorted from Mr. Cross a series of concessions, which not only improved the Bill, but converted it from a bad one into a good one.

One more point remains to be noted. Mr. Parnell’s party practically consisted of one—namely, Mr. Joseph Gillies Biggar. If it was Mr. Parnell’s desire “to scorn delights and live laborious days” in reforming the administration of English prisons, it was the firm and austere resolve of Mr. Biggar that this great work should be done with a solemnity of deliberation

worthy of such an august Assembly as the House of Commons. The business in hand was too serious to be transacted without a quorum—so Mr. Biggar invariably tried to “count” out the House. Public affairs ought not to be transacted at an hour when, to use his favourite phrase, “no decent person would be out of their beds,” so Mr. Biggar would insist on adjourning the House or the Committee about one o’clock in the morning.[101] And Mr. Biggar played his part in the serio-comedy with so much elfish delight and quaint, grotesque humour, that if the House now and then roared with rage at him, it still oftener roared with laughter. Those who saw deeper than the surface saw that something more serious than a comedy was being produced by these new performers from Ireland. They saw sprouting the germ of that extraordinary policy of Parliamentary pressure by which the new school of Irish Nationalists sought to gain their end—the policy that offered the Imperial Government the choice of one of two alternatives—concession of autonomy in Ireland, or the sacrifice of the ancient liberties and privileges of Parliament.

Still Englishmen were loth to believe that an issue so grave would be forced upon them. Indeed, the Conservative Party regarded obstruction, so far as it had gone, with merely a Platonic hatred. It had been used only to check legislation, and Conservative interests were not hurt by keeping things as they were. Then it was also said that the success of Mr. Parnell was due to the feebleness of Mr. Cross, who, however, was in a position to smile at such innuendoes. Whether he had been strong or weak, Mr. Cross had, at all events, got his Prisons Bill passed in a form that brought him great credit in the country. However, in the lobbies of the House of Commons and in the political clubs the general opinion was, that there was no need for Conservatives to be alarmed so long as Mr. Parnell merely delayed legislative changes. He would not venture to obstruct administrative work, and he must assuredly succumb if he challenged a vigorous and resolute Minister like Mr. Gathorne-Hardy. Mr. Parnell accordingly put up Mr. O’Connor Power to block Mr. Hardy’s Army Estimates on the 2nd of July. Mr. Power waited till the Army Reserve Vote came on, and then he met it with a motion to report progress, first, because money ought not to be voted away after midnight, and secondly because Ireland, not being allowed to raise a Volunteer Force, ought not to pay taxes to support the Volunteer Forces of England and Scotland. Would Mr. Hardy explain why Ireland should not have Volunteers? Mr. Hardy seemed speechless with wrath at the audacity of the attack, and met the question with contemptuous silence. The interest of the House was now roused. It would be seen whether the strong Minister of the Government, would be more successful than Mr. Cross in coping with obstruction. Of course the motion was defeated—but eight members, including Mr. Whalley, voted for it. Mr. Parnell, it was then seen, had a small party at his back, nay, he had lieutenants at his call ready to serve. Mr. O’Donnell next moved that the Chairman of Committee leave the chair, and defiantly warned Mr. Hardy that, till he did answer Mr. Power’s question, no Supply would be voted. Mr. Hardy still refused, and then the struggle went on merrily, dilatory motions being moved one after the other, till at last the Government gave up the fight, and allowed the House to be counted out at a quarter past seven in the morning.[102] Mr. Cross was the only Conservative member who did not appear crestfallen next day. His “feeble” method of dealing had, at all events, borne fruit. He had got work, and good work, done. Mr. Hardy’s vigour had simply demonstrated to the world that six Irish members could keep the House of Commons sitting till seven o’clock in the morning, and keep it sitting for nothing. Sir Stafford Northcote accordingly carried the feeling of the House with him when, at next meeting, he threatened to move that the rules of Procedure be reconsidered. But on going into the matter he found that this would take time. The rules were dear to Members opposed to reform, because they were so contrived as to give the utmost facilities for impeding legislative change. Hence, he intimated, on the 5th of July, that he would deal with the difficulty after the Recess. Mr. Parnell’s retort was to obstruct business at that sitting till about three in the morning. He and his friends not only opposed the clause in the Irish Judicature Bill fixing the salaries of the Irish Judges,[103] but they affected to have suddenly taken an absorbing interest in the Solicitors Examination Bill which had come down from the House of Lords. On the 23rd of July Sir Stafford Northcote, still shrinking from altering the rules of the House, tried to meet the case by moving that the Government should confiscate for their business the nights allotted to private members. This enabled the Parnellite Party to again obstruct business, as champions of Parliamentary privileges.

By this time the House of Commons was working itself up into a fit of burning indignation. The anger of the Conservatives indeed knew no bounds, for they saw that they must either submit to Mr. Parnell, or surrender privileges of obstruction which they had themselves found useful in defeating measures of reform in bygone days. Mr. Parnell’s Party sat maliciously cool and annoyingly calm through all the turmoil; indeed, Mr. Parnell seemed bent on provoking the Tories opposite him, by assuming towards them a demeanour of supercilious aristocratic superiority that cut them at every moment like a whip. His manner of disdainful mastery indicated that he must have some dire instrument of torture in reserve for them. And so he had. He and his friends had picked up a Bill which nobody dreamt of seriously attacking, because it was purely an administrative measure proposed by the Colonial Office. It gave the Colonies and the two Dutch Republics in South Africa the means of forming a Confederation if they chose to do so. It was perfectly harmless and permissive, but it was unfortunately complex and loaded with detail. Mr. Parnell and his band had devoted their unremitting energies to mastering, not only this Bill, but every imaginable point in South African policy. Hence, when it came before the House, they suddenly appeared in the character of South African “experts,” who knew infinitely more about the subject than the unfortunate Minister in charge of the measure. The Government had also annexed the Transvaal Republic under the erroneous impression that the Boers desired annexation, and Lord Grey had frankly admitted in the House of Lords that South Africa was not ripe for Confederation. A few Radical doctrinaires, led by Mr. Courtney, alarmed at the annexation of the Transvaal, also disliked the Bill. In fact, an ideal opportunity for practising obstructive tactics had been presented to Mr. Parnell by the Government, and he took advantage of it ruthlessly. He and his Party opposed the South Africa Bill line by line, nay, almost word by word,[104] contemptuously asking Ministers to explain why they persisted in giving to Colonies that did not want it, the autonomy for which Ireland sued in vain. What, however, chiefly embarrassed the Ministry was the factiousness of several powerful Radicals, like Mr. Chamberlain, Professor Fawcett, and Mr. Rylands, who, not content with expressing dissent in the constitutional manner on the Second Reading, voted with Mr. Parnell in obstructing the formal proposal to go into Committee on the Bill.[105] It would have been comparatively easy to rouse an overwhelming force of public opinion against Mr. Parnell at this juncture, had not Messrs. Chamberlain, Rylands, Courtney, and Fawcett thrown over his opposition the ægis of their personal authority. Their unexpected alliance emboldened Mr. Parnell, who accordingly blocked the Bill in Committee to such an extent, that Sir Stafford Northcote, on the 25th of July, moved that the Irish leader be suspended for two days because he had said he had “satisfaction in preventing and thwarting the intentions of the Government in respect of the Bill.” In the wrangle that followed, Mr. Parnell’s cool, supercilious manner rendered the House almost ungovernable, until several Members recalled it to reason. It was seen that the words expressed no more in themselves than a legitimate act of critical opposition. Mr. Whitbread moved that the debate on the motion to suspend Mr. Parnell be adjourned for twenty-four hours. Mr. Hardy accepted the proposal, whereupon Mr. Parnell with frigid imperturbability rose and resumed his speech at the very sentence in delivering which Sir Stafford Northcote had interrupted him exactly two hours before. During that sitting, from noon till a quarter to six in the evening, only two clauses were passed. But one point was gained. Mr. Parnell had inflicted on Sir Stafford Northcote a personal defeat so detrimental to his authority as leader of the House, that he was at last compelled to consent to a modification of the rules of procedure.

On the 27th of July he moved two Resolutions, one prohibiting a Member from moving dilatory motions of adjournments more than once on the same night, and another enabling the Chair to put without debate a motion silencing a Member for the rest of the debate who had been “named” as defying the authority of the Speaker or Chairman of Committees. As for Sir Stafford Northcote’s motion to suspend Mr. Parnell, that was dropped at Lord Hartington’s suggestion. After apologetic explanations were given by Lord Beaconsfield and Sir Stafford Northcote to the Members of the Tory Party at a private meeting at the Foreign Office, these resolutions were carried. Independent critics predicted that they would be futile; that, indeed, no remedy short of the Continental clôture, which the Conservatives dreaded much more than Mr. Parnell, could be effective.

Mr. Parnell proceeded without delay to give a practical illustration of the defects of the new rules. He played his game more warily, but more persistently than ever, and every day the House of Commons found itself an object of contempt to the nation, because it could not vindicate its authority against one man. At last, on the 31st of July, Sir Stafford Northcote in despair resolved to resort to physical methods. He arranged with Lord Hartington to force the South Africa Bill through Committee, by getting the House to sit on without a break till the Parnellites were worn out from sheer bodily exhaustion. Relays of Members were brought up to keep the House in Session, and Mr. Parnell and his friends were allowed to talk themselves out. For twenty-six consecutive hours the struggle went on with the seven Irish Members, who, ere it was half through, lost their Radical ally, Mr. Courtney, who flounced out of the House muttering his disgust at the hideous scene of anarchy. At two o’clock in the afternoon of the following day, Sir Stafford Northcote threatened “further proceedings,” and then, and not till then, did the Irish forlorn hope give way. Mr. O’Donnell, whose voice was now scarcely audible, said that this menace[106] changed the situation, and the Bill was forthwith passed through Committee. The Government triumphed, but at a terrible cost. They had to drop all their best Bills, because Mr. Parnell kept them using up the time at their disposal in passing a measure which was of little interest to Englishmen, and which ultimately proved, not only useless, but mischievous. The Session was therefore barren of legislative fruit. Even the Budget failed to excite debate, for, as Sir Stafford Northcote said, it was “a ready-made” one, and changed nothing.[107] No old taxes were remitted, and no new ones imposed. Sir Stafford Northcote perhaps underrated the depression in trade, which was even then obviously growing. He hardly appreciated the rapidity with which the working classes were exhausting their savings at a time when wages were more likely to fall than rise. But otherwise his statement was unobjectionable.

Foreign Policy was, however, the mainstay of the Ministry, and it is curious to note how completely the anti-Turkish agitation, which Mr. Gladstone had fomented with passionate zeal, forced the Cabinet to change their attitude to the Eastern Question. In 1876 the Ministerial doctrine was that England had no more to do with a quarrel between the Sultan and his subjects than between the Austrian Emperor and his people—the Ministerial theory, in fact, was, that if England was bound to protect anybody, it was the Sultan, and not his subjects. In 1877 Ministers acknowledged that, as England had been mainly responsible for keeping the Turk in Europe, she was in honour bound to protect his Christian subjects from the torture which his Pashas inflicted on them. There was also a change in regard to another point. In 1876 Ministers were all for maintaining the “integrity and independence” of Turkey. The Atrocities agitation, however, forced Lord Derby to make demands on Turkey, and to assent to demands being made on her, which ignored her visionary integrity and her mythical independence. It was said at the time that the Court, having strongly supported the pro-Turkish policy of 1876, was disappointed at the change of front in 1877. It is quite certain that these views were not shared by the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh and their entourage. A passage in one of the letters of the Princess Alice to the Queen makes that point tolerably clear.[108] But as to the other question the evidence is faulty. The policy of the Prince Consort, which was always supposed to dominate the ideas of the Court, was certainly not pro-Turkish. In his celebrated Memorandum to Lord Aberdeen’s Cabinet in 1853 he laid down two principles: It was the duty and interest of England to prevent Russia from imposing in an underhand way a Protectorate on the European provinces of Turkey “incompatible with their own independence.” It was also the duty and interest of England to prevent Turkey from using English diplomacy so as to enable the Pashas to impose “a more oppressive rule of two millions of fanatic Mussulmans over twelve millions of Christians.” England might go to war to prevent Bulgaria from falling into the hands of Russia, but not for the mere maintenance of the integrity and independence of Turkey. Nay, the Prince considered that such a war ought to lead, in the peace which must be its object, “to the obtaining of arrangements more consonant with the well-understood interests of Europe, of Christianity, liberty, and civilisation, than the re-imposition of the ignorant barbarian and despotic yoke of the Mussulman over the most fertile and favoured portion of Europe.”[109] Lord Aberdeen, Lord Clarendon, Sir James Graham, and Mr. Gladstone accepted this view of English policy. On the other hand, Lord Palmerston repudiated it. He contended that it was the duty of England to maintain the integrity of Turkey at all hazards; that the Prince Consort’s policy pointed to the ultimate expulsion of the Ottomans from Europe; and that any reconstruction of Turkey such as that which the Prince foreshadowed simply meant “its subjection to Russia, direct or indirect, immediate or for a time delayed.”

But Lord Beaconsfield’s policy was simply a reproduction of Lord Palmerston’s, hence it might be inferred that if the Prince Consort’s ideas still prevailed at Court, his policy in 1876 could not have had Royal sanction. On the other hand, there is no proof that Prince Albert’s ideas on the subject—which in the main were those of the great bulk of the English people—were still held as authoritative at Court. In a curious letter, the significance of which is obvious in its relation to the Queen’s personal opinions, written by the Princess Alice to her mother (25th July, 1878) there occurs, after an outburst against the advance of the Russians on Bulgaria, the following passage: “What do the friends of the ‘Atrocity Meetings’ say now? How difficult it has been made for the Government through them, and how blind they have been! All this must be a constant worry and anxiety for you.” [110]

As the Princess’s letters, where they touch on English public affairs, invariably reflect the opinions of the Queen, and as it cannot be imagined that in a matter of bitter political controversy she would venture to obtrude on the Queen so contemptuous a view of the “Atrocity Meetings” and of the conduct of the Opposition, had it not been in sympathy with the Queen’s own feelings, we may safely draw one conclusion. Despite the conjectures which have been ingeniously based on the Prince Consort’s Memorandum of 1853, the policy of the Court was identified with that of the Cabinet all through 1876, and if it was changed in 1877, it was changed in deference to the popular hostility to Turkey, which Mr. Gladstone had aroused. Among those persons, however, who were closest in contact with the Court, and who usually reflected Royal ideas most correctly, there was no change of opinion. Mr. Hayward’s correspondence teems with references to the fierce hatred with which Mr. Gladstone and the Opposition were denounced by “the upper ten thousand;”[111] in fact, Society vilipended Mr. Gladstone with the same obloquy that it had bestowed on him for his pamphlet denouncing the Neapolitan atrocities. But Mr. Hayward is at pains to state that, “all that the Government have been doing in the right direction is owing to the flame kindled by him [Mr. Gladstone]”; and the Hayward Correspondence proves that at the different embassies the diplomatists were at one on three points (1), the insulation of England; (2), the necessity of protecting the Bulgarians effectually from Turkish oppression; (3), the necessity of refusing Russia any cession of Turkish territory in Europe; a condition which, says Mr. Hayward in his account of a celebrated diplomatic dinner-party at the Austrian Embassy, Russia accepted.[112]

Events justified the accuracy of Mr. Hayward’s information, for it was the fatal error of Lord Beaconsfield’s policy that it assumed there was no genuine accord among the Powers, and that they were neither able nor willing to prevent Russia from seizing Turkish territory in Europe. Indeed, Mr. Hayward seems to have been the only observer of public affairs who clearly understood why they were drifting in the direction indicated by the table-talk of the embassies. In a letter to Lady Waldegrave (7th October, 1876) he says, “the power of public opinion is a remarkable feature of the Eastern Question. Russia is so strongly impelled by it that the Government would be endangered by holding back. Austria is impelled by the Magyar to oppose the construction of any new Slav State. The Porte is afraid of exasperating its Mahometan subjects by what might be deemed unworthy concessions. The English Government is completely controlled by public opinion.” And again in a letter to Mr. Gladstone he says, “One of the strongest features of the situation is, that the popular voice or national will is bettering or impelling diplomacy and statesmanship in Russia, Austria, England, and Turkey, and

fortunately so as concerns England. Whatever England is doing in the right direction is owing to the popular impulse for which you are mainly responsible, and which will redound to your lasting honour.”[113] At the same time, there was a point at which Mr. Gladstone and the nation parted company. He thought that if England admitted that she ought to see that the Bulgarians were protected from oppression, she ought to force Turkey to give effectual guarantees for their protection. If she did not, Russia would step in as their champion, and establish a claim to exclusive influence over European Turkey, which it was not politic to give her even a pretext for exercising. The great majority of Englishmen, however, held (1), that it was not their business to waste their taxes in winning freedom for the Bulgarians; (2), that they sufficiently discharged their duty to them when they paralysed Turkey by withdrawing British support from her; and (3), that the futile results of the Crimean War proved that Austria and Germany, from their geographical position, were the only Powers who could be safely trusted to effectively check Russian aggression in Eastern Europe. The masses, as distinguished from the aristocratic and academic classes, here proved themselves wiser than their leaders, on whom they forced a policy of non-intervention, which practically meant benevolent neutrality to the oppressed provinces of Turkey. The manner in which the Treaty of San Stefano was transformed into the Treaty of Berlin, every concession extorted from Russia being obviously exacted in Austro-German interests, more than justified the somewhat cynical anticipations of the British people.

It is not necessary to describe at length the steps which led up to the outbreak of war between Russia and Turkey on the 23rd of April, 1877. In vain did Lord Derby implore Turkey to grant of her own free will the concessions she had refused to the abortive Conference. Russia stood grimly on the frontier, with her hand on her sword-hilt, asking Europe how long she was to wait ere she unsheathed her weapon. In March a Protocol was signed by the Powers pressing Turkey to yield. To this Russia appended a declaration that she would disarm if Turkey accepted the advice of the Powers, and also sent an ambassador to St. Petersburg to arrange for mutual disarmament. But otherwise Russia clearly indicated her intention to use force. Lord Derby accepted, as did the other Powers, this declaration, only he added, on behalf of England, a reservation that she would consider the instrument null and void if it did not lead to disarmament. The Turks rejected the appeal of the Protocol. Prince Bismarck rejected a personal appeal which the Queen made to him to hold back Russia; and so war was declared. To the last the Turks expected that England would take their side, and they had been confirmed in their attitude of contumacy by the appointment of Mr. Layard, a notorious supporter of Turkey, to the British Embassy at Constantinople on the day on which the Protocol was signed. If it was the object of Lord Beaconsfield to prevent the outbreak of war and to save the Ottoman Empire in Europe from ruin, his policy must be described as an utter failure. And it failed for obvious reasons. Lord Beaconsfield and the British diplomatic agents in Turkey talked and wrote in terms which persuaded the Turks that, if they resisted the demands of Europe, England would defend them, as in 1853-4. On the contrary, if Lord Beaconsfield desired the Foreign Policy of England to succeed, and to save Turkey from being crushed by Russia, he should have taken steps to convince her that, even if he had the will, he had not the power to do battle for her.

Others besides the Turks shared the opinion that Lord Beaconsfield meant to drag England into a new Crimean War. On the 5th of May Mr. Carlyle stated in the Times, “not on hearsay, but on accurate knowledge,”[114] that Lord Beaconsfield was contemplating a feat “that will force, not Russia only, but all Europe to declare war against us.”[115] The idea of the Government was to occupy Gallipoli to protect British interests. This would have forced Russia to declare war against England, and then English public opinion would, of course, have supported Lord Beaconsfield in fighting on the side of Turkey. But Mr. Carlyle’s sudden revelation of the scheme roused public opinion in favour of non-intervention, and Mr. Gladstone “took occasion by the hand” to inflame the populace against Lord Beaconsfield’s supposed designs. Stormy meetings were held all over England during the first week of May, and then Ministers seemed to have changed their offensive tone towards Russia. On the 6th of May Lord Derby buoyed out for Russia the torpedoes called “British interests” which lay in her way. He laid down in a polite despatch the precise conditions under which England would remain neutral, conditions so plainly reasonable that Prince Gortschakoff accepted them with the utmost frankness. Meanwhile Mr. Gladstone was seriously misled by the public indignation which had been roused against a conspiracy to fight for Turkey under the pretext of protecting British interests. He imagined it would enable him to carry out his own project of coercing Turkey in company with Russia. He therefore submitted to the House of Commons six Resolutions, which were discussed early in May. Of these, however, he was forced to withdraw two, because a powerful section of the Liberal party considered that they bound England to joint action with Russia. Thus Mr. Gladstone’s formidable array of Resolutions dwindled down to the simple and harmless proposition that the Turk was a bad man, who did not deserve English sympathy or support. The House, however, by a majority of 131, carried a colourless amendment declining to embarrass the Government by any formal vote, and leaving “the determination of policy entirely in their hands.” The debate on the Resolutions was one of those high and sustained triumphs of Parliamentary eloquence which at great crises display the British House of Commons at its best. It may be said to have exhausted the controversy on the Eastern Question. Mr. Gladstone’s speech (which would of itself have rendered the debate historical) admittedly soared as high as the loftiest flights of Chatham and of Burke.

There is no need to narrate the events of the war, how Osman Pasha, from behind his earthworks at Plevna, blocked the Russian advance, and Mukhtar held the Russians at bay in Asia Minor. As the star of fortune shed its beams on either side, public opinion in England grew feverish and excited, the Tories all the while clamouring for intervention on behalf of Turkey. Some of them, indeed, seemed to hold that it was the duty of England to head a new Crusade on behalf of Islam against Christianity. But the public utterances of Ministers indicated their determination to remain neutral, and Lord Derby did his best to convince Musurus Pasha that Turkey was abandoned to her fate.