The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume II Part 48

I am entirely in harmony with you as to your view of the eastern policy. It has been depressing and corrupting to the country; a healthier air has been generated by indignation at the Bulgarian ma.s.sacres, which have thrown us back on our rather forgotten humanity. I hope the subject will not slumber through the recess.

Dizzy's speech (so I call him with all due respect to the peerage) in the Turkish debate gave me a new light on his views. He is not quite such a Turk as I had thought. What he hates is Christian liberty and reconstruction. He supports old Turkey, thinking that if vital improvements can be averted, it must break down; and his fleet is at Besika Bay, I feel pretty sure, to be ready to lay hold of Egypt as his share. So he may end as the Duke of Memphis yet.

II

Then came the pamphlet. The story of this memorable publication is told in the diary:-

_Aug. 28, 1876._-Church 8- A.M. Worked on a beginning for a possible pamphlet on the Turkish question. I stupidly brought on again my lumbago by physical exertion. Was obliged to put off my pamphlet. Read _The Salvation of all Men_ ... 29.-Kept my bed long. Wrote to Lord Granville, etc. ... and as a treat began _Waverley_ once more. Lumbago bad. 30.-Much bed; forswear all writing. Read St. Thomas Aquinas on the Soul.... _Waverley_. A snug evening in the Temple of Peace. 31.-Kept my bed till four, and made tolerable play in writing on Bulgarian horrors. _Sept.

1._-Wrote [16 letters]. Again worked hard in bed and sent off more than half to the printers. Read _Waverley_. Short drive with C.

2.-This day I wrote again a good piece of the pamphlet in bed, but improved considerably. Rose at four. Read _Waverley_ in the evening. 3.-Hawarden Church 11 A.M. and 6- P.M. Wrote [16 letters]. Off at 10.15 P.M. for London. 4.-Reached 18 C.H.T. at five in the morning by limited mail; bed till nine. Saw Lord Granville, Mr. Delane, Sir A. Panizzi, Mr. Clowes, Messrs. Murray, the American minister. In six or seven hours, princ.i.p.ally at the British Museum, I completed my MS., making all the needful searches of papers and journals. Also worked on proof sheets.

_To Mrs. Gladstone._-We had an interesting little party at Granville's. I had a long talk with Delane. We, he and I, are much of one mind in thinking the Turks must go out of Bulgaria, though retaining a t.i.tular supremacy if they like. Between ourselves, Granville a little hangs back from this, but he could not persuade me to hold it back.

5.- ... Saw Lord Granville, Lord Hartington.... Finished the correction of revises before one, discussing the text with Lord Granville and making various alterations of phrase which he recommended. At seven I received complete copies. We went to the Haymarket theatre. Arranged my papers after this, and sent off copies in various directions.

(M177) The pamphlet spread like fire.(340) Within three or four days of its first appearance forty thousand copies had gone. It was instantly followed up by a tremendous demonstration among his const.i.tuents. "Sept.

9, 1876.-Thought over my subject for Blackheath. Off at two. A very large meeting. The most enthusiastic far that I ever saw. Spoke over an hour."

This is his very prosaic story of the first of those huge and excited mult.i.tudes of which for months and years to come he was to confront so many. The pamphlet and the Blackheath speech were his rejoinder to the light and callous tones of Mr. Disraeli, and the sceptical language of his foreign secretary, "I have a strong suspicion," he told the Duke of Argyll, who was a fervent sympathiser, "that Dizzy's crypto-Judaism has had to do with his policy. The Jews of the east _bitterly_ hate the Christians; who have not always used them well." This suspicion was constant. "Disraeli," he said to Mr. Gladstone, "may be willing to risk his government for his Judaic feeling,-the deepest and truest, now that his wife has gone, in his whole mind."

The tract beats with a sustained pulse and pa.s.sion that recall Burke's letters on the _Regicide Peace_. The exhortation against moral complicity with "the basest and blackest outrages upon record within the present century, if not within the memory of man"; the branding of the Turkish race as "the one great anti-human specimen of humanity"; the talk of "fell satanic orgies"; the declaration that there was not a criminal in a European gaol nor a cannibal in the South Sea Islands, whose indignation would not rise at the recital of that which had been done, which remained unavenged, which had left behind all the foul and all the fierce pa.s.sions that produced it, and might again spring up in another murderous harvest, from the soil soaked and reeking with blood, and in the air tainted with every imaginable deed of crime and shame,-all this vehemence was hailed with eager acclamation by mult.i.tudes who felt all that he felt, and found in his pa.s.sionate invective words and a voice. Mr. Gladstone was not the man, his readers and his public were not the men, for mere denunciation.

They found in him a policy. Indignation, he said in a thoroughly characteristic sentence, indignation is froth, except as it leads to action; mere remonstrance is mockery. There are states of affairs, he told them, in which human sympathy refuses to be confined by the rules, necessarily limited and conventional, of international law. Servia and Montenegro in going to war against Turkey might plead human sympathies, broad, deep, and legitimate, and that they committed no moral offence. The policy of the British government was the _status quo_, "as you were." This meant the maintenance of Turkish executive authority. What was really needed was the total withdrawal of the administrative rule of the Turk.

And here he used words that became very famous in the controversy:-

But I return to, and end with, that which is the omega as well as the alpha of this great and most mournful case. An old servant of the crown and state, I entreat my countrymen, upon whom far more than perhaps any other people of Europe it depends, to require and to insist that our government which has been working in one direction shall work in the other, and shall apply all its vigour to concur with the other states of Europe in obtaining the extinction of the Turkish executive power in Bulgaria. Let the Turks now carry away their abuses in the only possible manner, namely by carrying off themselves. Their Zaptiehs and their Mudirs, their Bimbas.h.i.+s and their Yuzbas.h.i.+s, their Kaimakams and their Pashas, one and all, bag and baggage, shall I hope clear out from the province they have desolated and profaned.

At Blackheath, under dripping rain clouds, he said the same, though with the invective tempered. "You shall receive your regular tribute," he said in slow sentences to imaginary Ottomans, whom he seemed to hold before his visual eye, "you shall retain your t.i.tular sovereignty, your empire shall not be invaded, but never again as the years roll in their course, so far as it is in our power to determine, never again shall the hand of violence be raised by you, never again shall the flood-gates of l.u.s.t be open to you, never again shall the dire refinements of cruelty be devised by you for the sake of making mankind miserable."

Once again, it was not words that made the power of the orator, it was the relation in purpose, feeling, and conviction between him and his audience.

He forced them into unity with himself by the vivid strength of his resolution and imagination; he could not believe that his own power of emotion was not theirs too:-

On Monday morning last between four and five o'clock, I was rattling down from Euston station through the calm and silent streets of London, when there was not a footfall to disturb them.

Every house looked so still, that it might well have been a receptacle of the dead. But as I came through those long lines of streets, I felt it to be an inspiring and a n.o.ble thought that in every one of these houses there were intelligent human beings, my fellow-countrymen, who when they woke would give many of their earliest thoughts, aye and some of their most energetic actions, to the terrors and sufferings of Bulgaria.

All this was the very spirit of Milton's imperishable sonnet upon the late Ma.s.sacre in Piedmont; the spirit that made Cromwell say that the slaughter in the Waldensian valleys "came as near to his heart as if his own nearest and dearest had been concerned."

(M178) Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, who had been one of the most responsible promoters of the policy of the Crimean war, told Mr. Gladstone of his own strong impression (Sept. 10), that the formidable crisis would not have arisen, had England in the first instance taken part with the other Powers. Not that he believed that Russia was always and fully trustworthy, but she was so circ.u.mstanced then as to be open to the full bearing of our moral influence. Six weeks later Lord Stratford again expressed his unaltered opinion that if in the beginning England had taken her place at the side of the three emperors, the cloud on the horizon would never have swelled out into its present colossal proportions. "It seems to me," he said, "that Russia has been gradually drawn into a position from which she can hardly retreat with credit." "Whatever shades of difference appear in our opinions," he told Mr. Gladstone in September, "may be traced in a great measure to your having made Bulgaria the main object of your appeal, whereas the whole eastern question was my theme, and the Bulgarian atrocities, execrable as they were, only a part of it."

The truth was that in making the atrocious doings in Bulgaria the main object of his appeal, Mr. Gladstone had both displayed a sure instinct as to the most effective method of popular approach, and at the same time did justice to his own burning and innate hatred of all cruelty and oppression, whether in Bourbon or Bas.h.i.+-Bazouk. Humanity was at the root of the whole matter; and the keynote of this great crusade was the a.s.sociation of humanity with a high policy worthy of the British name.

October was pa.s.sed in a round of visits to great houses, the popular tide in the north still appearing to rise around him. To Lord Granville he writes:-

_Alnwick Castle, Oct. 3, 1876._-We have advanced thus far in a northern and eastern tour, and we hope to be at Castle Howard on Wednesday. I left home at this particular time partly with ideas of health and relaxation, partly because I thought that being everywhere and nowhere I should escape a little from the turmoil of the time. Through Ches.h.i.+re and Lancas.h.i.+re we accomplished the first stage of our journey to Raby without witnessing any particular indication of public sentiment; and this rather encouraged our extending a little the circle of our visits, which I am now half tempted to regret. For at every point I have had the greatest difficulty in maintaining any show of privacy, and avoiding strong manifestations. I never saw such keen exhibitions of the popular feeling, appearing so to pervade all ranks and places. A tory county member said to my wife two days ago, "If there were a dissolution now, I should not get a vote." This may be in some degree peculiar to the northerners with their strong character and deep emotions....

_Castle Howard, Oct. 7, 1876._-Before receiving your letter of the 5th, I had been driven to the conclusion that I must make a further utterance, following the actual course of the transactions. And upon the whole I adhere to this conclusion, notwithstanding your opinion, to which I attach great weight.

There is a great difference in our situations, which I think accounts for this difference of view. I found Ailesbury, of course, full of friends.h.i.+p and loyalty to you, but disposed to regret that you had not been able to see your way to a more advanced and definite policy. I told him that I found no cause for surprise in your reserve, and thought you held yourself in hand for the purpose of holding your party in hand-a view which I think he more or less embraced. Now, I have not your responsibilities to the party, but I have for the moment more than your responsibilities to the country, in this sense that I feel myself compelled to advise from time to time upon the course of that national movement which I have tried hard to evoke, and a.s.sist in evoking. I regard myself as an outside workman, engaged in the preparation of materials, which you and the party will probably have to manipulate and then to build into a structure. For though I do not wish to shut the door upon the government, I despair of them, after so many invitations and so many refusals....

(M179) To Madame Novikoff, a Russian lady who at this time began to exercise a marked influence upon the opinions of important men with much influence on the opinions of many other people,(341) he indicated some doubtful symptoms:-

_Hawarden, Oct. 17, 1876._-There is an undoubted and smart rally on behalf of Turkey in the metropolitan press. It is in the main representative of the ideas and opinions of what are called the upper ten thousand. From this body there has never on any occasion within my memory proceeded the impulse that has prompted, and finally achieved, _any_ of the great measures which in the last half century have contributed so much to the fame and happiness of England. They did not emanc.i.p.ate the dissenters, Roman catholics, and Jews. They did not reform the parliament. They did not liberate the negro slave. They did not abolish the corn law. They did not take the taxes off the press. They did not abolish the Irish established church. They did not cheer on the work of Italian freedom and reconst.i.tution. Yet all these things have been done; and done by other agencies than theirs, and despite their opposition. When I speak of _them_, I speak of course of the majority among them. Unhappily, the country is understood abroad mainly through the metropolitan press.

He was no sooner back at Hawarden than he fell to work on subsidiary branches of the question of questions.

_Oct. 22._-Worked hard and finished my paper on Russia in Turkestan, and sent it off. Criminal justice on Sunday! But it is for peace. 24.-To London. 27.-Up at 6. Went with Harry to Dover, saw him off on board the packet and pier [on his way to India].

Drove over to Walmer, reviewed the place, saw Lord Granville and Sir W. James. Returned to London, and at 9.30 to the Gaiety, saw a miserable burlesque of which I had heard a most inviting but false account. 28.-To Hawarden. 31.-Tennyson and H. T. came. _Nov.

1._-Tennyson read to us his _Harold_. It took near 2- hours. Walk with him and a party. 2.-Read Bagehot on Lord Spencer's _Life_-very clever, very imperfect. Conversation with Tennyson on future retribution and other matters of theology. He has not thought, I conceive, systematically or thoroughly upon them, but is much alarmed at the prospect of the loss of belief. He left us at one. Walk and long conversation with Lord Acton, who seems in opinion to go beyond Dollinger, though in certain things he stops short of him. 8.-Read aloud the debate of the first _Iliad_ from Pope. 9.-Read aloud my version of the a.s.sembly-_Iliad_ i. 10.-Read aloud Lord Derby's and Cowper's version of the a.s.sembly. 14.-The Olympian part of _Iliad_ I. in Pope's version aloud, and then my own. 17.-We went to Liverpool, where we attended the theatre to see Pennington in _Hamlet_. It was really excellent. I never was so well received in that town. 21.-Finished revision of my MS., "The h.e.l.lenic Factor in the Eastern Problem," and sent it to press.

III

At the Lord Mayor's feast in November, the prime minister used menacing language. The policy of England, he said, was peace, but no country was so well prepared for war as ours. If England were to enter into a righteous war, her resources were inexhaustible. "She is not a country that, when she enters into a campaign, has to ask herself whether she can support a second or a third campaign. She enters into a campaign which she will not terminate till right is done." This was a hardly veiled threat to Russia, it was encouragement to Turkey, it was incitement to a war party in Great Britain. "The provocation offered by Disraeli at the Guildhall," wrote Mr.

Gladstone, "is almost incredible. Some new lights about his Judaic feeling in which he is both consistent and conscientious have come in upon me."

Still the general feeling was strongly adverse to any action on behalf of Turkey. Mr. Gladstone eagerly noted even the most trivial incident that pointed this way. "Yesterday night," he wrote (Nov. 26), "in the tory town of Liverpool, when Oth.e.l.lo was being acted, and the words were reached 'The Turks are drowned,' the audience rose in enthusiasm and interrupted the performance for some time with their cheering. These things are not without meaning." Men who commonly stood aside from political activity were roused. "Mr. Carlyle," says Mr. Ruskin, "Mr. Froude, and several other men of creditable name gathered together at call of Mr. Gladstone as for a great national need, together with other men of more retired mind-Edward Burne-Jones for one, and myself for another."

(M180) The reply to the Guildhall speech was a conference at St. James's Hall (Dec. 8), one of the most remarkable gatherings of representative men of every type and from every part of the kingdom ever held in this country. "I have most flouris.h.i.+ng accounts of the progress of preparations for the conference of which I have been a promoter from the beginning.

They urge me to speak on the 8th, but I should much prefer that others should put themselves in the foreground." Besides the eminent politicians, great territorial magnates were there, and men of letters, and divines of various churches, and men who had never been to a militant a.s.sembly in their lives before,-all with a resolute purpose expressed by Mr.

Trevelyan, "No matter how the prime minister may finger the hilt of the sword, the nation will take care that it never leaves the scabbard." Mr.

Gladstone reached London a day or two before. On the 8th, he enters:-

8.-Made notes and extracts for speech. Attended the meetings at St. James's Hall, 12-1- and 4-8. Spoke (I fear) 1- hours with some exertion, far from wholly to my satisfaction. The meetings were great, notable, almost historical.

The day after this important and impressive gathering he was back at Hawarden, busy at his article upon the life of the Prince Consort. Then came Christmas day,-"The most solemn I have known for long; I see that eastward sky of storm and of underlight!"

At a suggestion from the London foreign office, a conference of the great Powers met at Constantinople in the middle of December. Lord Salisbury went as the representative of England. To a correspondent Mr. Gladstone spoke of this as an excellent selection:-

I think it right at once to give you my opinion of Lord Salisbury, whom I know pretty well in private. He has little foreign or eastern knowledge, and little craft; he is rough of tongue in public debate, but a great gentleman in private society; he is very remarkably clever, of unsure judgment, but is above anything mean; has no Disraelite prejudices; keeps a conscience, and has plenty of manhood and character. In a word the appointment of Lord Salisbury to Constantinople is the best thing the government have yet done in the eastern question.

As the conference met, so it ran a usual course, and then vanished. The Powers were in complete accord as to the demands that were to be made upon Turkey for the protection of the unfortunate Christian rayahs. The Turk in just confidence that he should find a friend, rejected them, and the envoys departed to their homes. Mr. Gladstone, however, found comfort in the thought that by the agitation two points had been gained: the re-establishment of the European concert, and extrication from a disgraceful position of virtual complicity with Turkey.

In the spring of 1877 he wrote a second pamphlet,(342) because a speech in the House could not contain detail enough, and because parliamentary tradition almost compelled a suspension of discussion while ministers were supposed to be engaged in concert with other Powers in devising a practical answer to Russian inquiry. He found that it "produced no great impression," the sale not going beyond six or seven thousand copies.

Still, the gala remained from the proceeding in the autumn, that the government dared not say they had nothing to do with the condition of the Christian rayahs of Turkey, and any idea of going to war for Turkey was out of the question.