The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume II Part 50

In July he made a pleasure trip in one of Sir Donald Currie's steamers, from London to Dartmouth. "We set out at 10.20," he says, "for the docks.

Started in the _Dublin Castle_ at noon. We spent the night at the Nore, good weather, kind reception, splendid fare. The Cape deputies came with us as far as Gravesend." Among these deputies was Mr. Kruger.

In October he paid his first and only visit to Ireland. It lasted little more than three weeks, and did not extend beyond a very decidedly English Pale. He stayed in great houses, was feasted by the provost of Trinity, in spite of disestablishment, and he had a friendly conversation with Cardinal Cullen, in spite of Vaticanism. "You know, Mr. Gladstone," said the Cardinal, "we could have given you a warmer reception if it had not been for certain pamphlets which we in Ireland did not like very well." He received the freedom of the city of Dublin, broke bread with the Duke of Marlborough at the vice-regal lodge, admired the picturesque site of the castle at Kilkenny, enjoyed sympathetic talks with host and hostess at Abbeyleix, and delighted in the curious antiquities and exquisite natural beauties of the county of Wicklow. Of the mult.i.tudes of strange things distinctively Irish, he had little chance of seeing much.

Chapter V. A Tumultuous Year. (1878)

On these great questions, which cut so deep into heart and mind, the importance of taking what they think the best course for the question will often seem, even to those who have the most just sense of party obligation, a higher duty than that of party allegiance.-GLADSTONE (_to Granville_, 1878).

I

Of 1878 Mr. Gladstone spoke as "a tumultuous year." In January, after a fierce struggle of five months in the Balkan pa.s.ses, the Russian forces overcame the Turkish defence, and by the end of January had entered Adrianople and reached the Sea of Marmora. Here at San Stefano a treaty of peace was made at the beginning of March. The last word of the eastern question, as Lord Derby said in those days, is this: Who is to have Constantinople? No great Power would be willing to see it in the hands of any other great Power, no small Power could hold it at all, and as for joint occupation, all such expedients were both dangerous and doubtful.(348) This last word now seemed to be writing itself in capital letters. Russia sent the treaty to the Powers, with the admission that portions of it affecting the general interests of Europe could not be regarded as definitive without general concurrence. A treaty between Russian and Turk within the zone of Constantinople and almost in sight of St. Sophia, opened a new and startling vista to English politicians.

Powerful journalists, supposed to be much in the confidence of ministers, declared that if peace were ultimately concluded on anything like the terms proposed, then beyond all doubt the outworks of our empire were gone, and speedy ruin must begin. About such a situation there had been but one opinion among our statesmen for many generations. Until Mr.

Gladstone, "all men held that such a state of things [as the Russians at Constantinople] would bring the British empire face to face with ruin."(349)

(M185) Before the treaty of San Stefano, an angry panic broke out in parts of England. None of the stated terms of British neutrality were violated either by the treaty or its preliminaries, but even when no Russian force was within forty miles of Constantinople, the cabinet asked for a vote of six millions (January), and a few days later the British fleet pa.s.sed the Dardanelles. Two years earlier, Mr. Gladstone had wished that the fleet should go to Constantinople as a coercive demonstration against the Porte; now, in 1878, the despatch of the fleet was a demonstration against Russia, who had done alone the work of emanc.i.p.ation that in Mr.

Gladstone's view should have been done, and might have been done without war by that concert of the Powers from which England had drawn back. The concert of the Powers that our withdrawal had paralysed would have revived quickly enough, if either Austria or Germany had believed that the Czar really meant to seize Constantinople. "I have done my best," wrote Mr.

Gladstone to a friend, "against the vote of six millions; a foolish and mischievous proposition. The liberal leaders have, mistakenly as I think, shrunk at the last moment from voting. But my opinion is that the liberal party in general are firmly opposed to the vote as a silly, misleading, and mischievous measure." He both spoke and voted. The opinion of his adherents was that his words, notwithstanding his vote, were calculated to do more to throw oil on the troubled waters, than either the words or the abstention of the official leader.

The appearance of the British fleet with the nominal object of protecting life and property at Constantinople, was immediately followed by the advance of Russian troops thirty miles nearer to Constantinople with the same laudable object. The London cabinet only grew the wilder in its Projects, among them being a secret expedition of Indian troops to seize Cyprus and Alexandretta, with the idea that it would be fairer to the Turk not to ask his leave. Two ministers resigned in succession, rather than follow Lord Beaconsfield further in designs of this species.(350)

"It is a bitter disappointment," Mr. Gladstone wrote to Madame Novikoff, "to find the conclusion of one war, for which there was a weighty cause, followed by the threat of another, for which there is no adequate cause at all, and which will be an act of utter wickedness-if it comes to pa.s.s, which G.o.d forbid-on one side or on both. That unhappy subject of the bit of Bessarabia,(351) on which I have given you my mind with great freedom (for otherwise what is the use of my writing at all?) threatens to be in part the pretext and in part the cause of enormous mischief, and in my opinion to mar and taint at a particular point the immense glory which Russia had acquired, already complete in a military sense, and waiting to be consummated in a moral sense too."

Public men do not withstand war fevers without discomfort, as Bright had found in the streets of Manchester when he condemned the Crimean war. One or two odious and unusual incidents now happened to Mr. Gladstone:-

_Feb. 24._-Between four and six, three parties of the populace arrived here, the first with cheers, the two others hostile.

Windows were broken and much hooting. The last detachment was only kept away by mounted police in line across the street both ways.

This is not very sabbatical. There is strange work behind the curtain, if one could only get at it. The instigators are those really guilty; no one can wonder at the tools.

One Sunday afternoon a little later (March 4):-

Another gathering of people was held off by the police. I walked down with C., and as a large crowd gathered, though in the main friendly, we went into Dr. Clark's, and then in a hansom off the ground.

Stories were put about that Lord Beaconsfield reported the names of dissentient colleagues to the Queen. Dining with Sir Robert Phillimore (Jan. 17), Mr. Gladstone-

was emphatic and decided in his opinion that if the premier mentioned to the Queen any of his colleagues who had opposed him in the cabinet, he was guilty of great baseness and perfidy.

Gladstone said he had copies of 250 letters written by him to the Queen, in none of which could a reference be found to the opinion of his colleagues expressed in cabinet.

On the same occasion, by the way, Sir Robert notes: "Gladstone was careful to restrain the expression of his private feelings about Lord Beaconsfield, as he generally is."

II

(M186) In the summer the famous congress a.s.sembled at Berlin (June 13 to July 13), with Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury as the representatives of Great Britain, to sanction, reject, or modify the treaty of San Stefano. Before the congress met, the country received a shock that made men stagger. While in London it was impossible to attempt to hold a meeting in favour of peace, and even in the northern towns such meetings were almost at the mercy of anybody who might choose to start a jingo chorus; while the war party exulted in the thought that military preparations were going on apace, and that the bear would soon be rent by the lion; a doc.u.ment was one afternoon betrayed to the public, from which the astounding fact appeared that England and Russia had already entered into a secret agreement, by which the treaty of San Stefano was in substance to be ratified, with the single essential exception that the southern portion of Bulgaria was to be severed from the northern. The treaty of Berlin became in fact an extensive part.i.tion of the Turkish empire, and the virtual ratification of the policy of bag and baggage. The Schouvaloff memorandum was not the only surprise. Besides the secret agreement with Russia, the British government had made a secret convention with Turkey. By this convention England undertook to defend Turkey against Russian aggression in Asia, though concessions were made to Russia that rendered Asiatic Turkey indefensible; and Turkey was to carry out reforms which all sensible men knew to be wholly beyond her power. In payment for this bargain, the Sultan allowed England to occupy and administer Cyprus.

At the end of the session Mr. Gladstone wound up his labours in parliament with an extraordinarily powerful survey of all these great transactions.

Its range, compa.s.s, and grasp are only matched by the simplicity and lucidity of his penetrating examination. It was on July 30:-

Finished the protocols and worked up the whole subject. It loomed very large and disturbed my sleep unusually. H. of C. Spoke 2- hours. I was in body much below par, but put on the steam perforce. It ought to have been far better. The speech exhausted me a good deal, as I was and am below par.

He sketched, in terse outline, the results of the treaty-the independence of Roumania, Servia, and Montenegro; the virtual independence of northern Bulgaria; the creation in southern Bulgaria (under the name of Eastern Roumelia) of local autonomy, which must soon grow into something more.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, though Mr. Gladstone would have hoped for their freedom from external control, had been handed over to Austria, but they were at any rate free from the Ottoman. The cardinal fact was that eleven millions of people formerly under Turkish rule, absolute or modified, were entirely exempted from the yoke. "Taking the whole of the provisions of the treaty of Berlin together, I most thankfully and joyfully acknowledge that great results have been achieved in the diminution of human misery and towards the establishment of human happiness and prosperity in the East." A great work of emanc.i.p.ation had been achieved for the Slavs of the Turkish empire. He deplored that equal regard had not been paid to the case of the h.e.l.lenes in Thessaly and Epirus, though even in 1862, Palmerston and Russell were in favour of procuring the cession of Thessaly and Epirus to Greece. As for the baffling of Russian intrigue, it was true that the Bulgaria of Berlin was reduced from the Bulgaria of San Stefano, but this only furnished new incentives and new occasions for intrigue.(352) Macedonia and Armenia were left over.

(M187) On the conduct of the two British plenipotentiaries at Berlin he spoke without undue heat, but with a weight that impressed even adverse hearers:-

I say, sir, that in this congress of the great Powers, the voice of England has not been heard in unison with the inst.i.tutions, the history, and the character of England. On every question that arose, and that became a subject of serious contest in the congress, or that could lead to any important practical result, a voice has been heard from Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury which sounded in the tones of Metternich, and not in the tones of Mr. Canning, or of Lord Palmerston, or of Lord Russell. I do not mean that the British government ought to have gone to the congress determined to insist upon the unqualified prevalence of what I may call British ideas. They were bound to act in consonance with the general views of Europe. But within the limits of fair differences of opinion, which will always be found to arise on such occasions, I do affirm that it was their part to take the side of liberty; and I do also affirm that as a matter of fact they took the side of servitude.

The agreement with Russia had in truth constantly tied their hands. For instance, Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury might make to Russia as many eloquent speeches as they liked against the restoration of Bessarabia, but everybody in the room knew that the British government had taken the lead in virtually a.s.suring Russia that she had only to hold to her point and Bessarabia should again be hers. Most effective of all was his exposure of the convention with Turkey, a proceeding by which we had undertaken, behind the back of Europe and against the treaty of Paris, to establish a sole protectorate in Asiatic Turkey.(353) We had made a contract of such impossible scope as to bind us to manage the reform of the judicature, the police, the finances, the civil service of Turkey, and the stoppage of the sources of corruption at Constantinople. The load, if we took it seriously, was tremendous; if we did not take it seriously, then what was the whole story of the reform of Asiatic Turkey, but a blind to excuse the acquisition of Cyprus? This great presentation of a broad and reasoned case contained a pa.s.sage near its close, that had in it the kernel of Mr. Gladstone's policy in the whole controversy that was now drawing to an end:-

I think we have lost greatly by the conclusion of this convention; I think we have lost very greatly indeed the sympathy and respect of the nations of Europe. I do not expect or believe that we shall fall into that sort of contempt which follows upon weakness. I think it to be one of the most threadbare of all the weapons of party warfare when we hear, as we sometimes hear, on the accession of a new government, that before its accession the government of England had been despised all over the world, and that now on the contrary she has risen in the general estimation, and holds her proper place in the councils of nations. This England of ours is not so poor and so weak a thing as to depend upon the reputation of this or that administration; and the world knows pretty well of what stuff she is made.... Now, I am desirous that the standard of our material strength shall be highly and justly estimated by the other nations of Christendom; but I believe it to be of still more vital consequence that we should stand high in their estimation as the lovers of truth, of honour, and of openness in all our proceedings, as those who know how to cast aside the motives of a narrow selfishness, and give scope to considerations of broad and lofty principle. I value our insular position, but I dread the day when we shall be reduced to a moral insularity.... The proceedings have all along been a.s.sociated with a profession as to certain British interests, which although I believe them to be perfectly fict.i.tious and imaginary, have yet been pursued with as much zeal and eagerness as if they had been the most vital realities in the world. This setting up of our own interests, out of place, in an exaggerated form, beyond their proper sphere, and not merely the setting up of such interests, but the mode in which they have been pursued, has greatly diminished, not, as I have said, the regard for our material strength, but the estimation of our moral standard of action, and consequently our moral position in the world.

(M188) Lord Beaconsfield lost some of his composure when Mr. Gladstone called the agreement between England and Turkey an insane convention. "I would put this issue," he said, "to an intelligent English jury: Which do you believe most likely to enter into an insane convention? A body of English gentlemen, honoured by the favour of their sovereign and the confidence of their fellow-subjects, managing your affairs for five years-I hope with prudence, and not altogether without success-or a sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity,"(354)-and so forth, in a strain of unusual commonness, little befitting either Disraeli's genius or his dignity. Mr. Gladstone's speech three days later was as free from all the excesses so violently described, as any speech that was ever made at Westminster.

No speech, however, at this moment was able to reduce the general popularity of ministers, and it was the common talk at the moment that if Lord Beaconsfield had only chosen to dissolve, his majority would have been safe. Writing an article on "England's Mission" as soon as the House was up, Mr. Gladstone grappled energetically with some of the impressions on which this popularity was founded. The _Pall Mall Gazette_ had set out these impressions with its usual vigour. As Mr. Gladstone's reply traverses much of the ground on which we have been treading, I may as well transcribe it:-

The liberals, according to that ably written newspaper, have now imbibed as a permanent sentiment a "distaste for national greatness." This distaste is now grown into matter of principle.

"The disgust at these principles of action ever grew in depth and extent," so that in the Danish, the American, and the Franco-German wars, there was "an increasing portion of the nation ready to engage in the struggle on almost any side," as a protest against the position that it was bound not to engage in it at all!

The climax of the whole matter was reached when the result of the Alabama treaty displayed to the world an England overreached, overruled, and apologetic. It certainly requires the astounding suppositions, and the gross ignorance of facts, which the journalist with much truth recites, to explain the manner in which for some time past pure rhodomontade has not only done the work of reasoning, but has been accepted as a cover for constant miscarriage and defeat; and doctrines of national self-interest and self-a.s.sertion as supreme laws have been set up, which, if unhappily they harden into "permanent sentiment" and "matter of principle," will destroy all the rising hopes of a true public law for Christendom, and will subst.i.tute for it what is no better than the Communism of Paris enlarged and exalted into a guide of international relations. It is perhaps unreasonable to expect that minds in the condition of the "increasing portion" should on any terms accept an appeal to history. But, for the sake of others, not yet so completely emanc.i.p.ated from the yoke of facts, I simply ask at what date it was that the liberal administrations of this country adopted the "permanent sentiment" and the "matter of principle" which have been their ruin? Not in 1859-60, when they energetically supported the redemption and union of Italy. Not in 1861, when, on the occurrence of the Trent affair, they at a few days' notice despatched ten thousand men to Halifax. Not when, in concert with Europe, they compelled the sultan to cut off the head of his tyrannical pasha, and to establish a government in the Lebanon not dependent for its vital breath on Constantinople. Not when in 1863 they invited France to join in an _ultimatum_ to the German Powers, and to defend Denmark with us against the intrigues which Germany was carrying on under the plea of the Duke of Augustenburg's t.i.tle to the Duchies; and when they were told by Louis Napoleon in reply that that might be a great British interest, but that it had no significance for France. Not when in 1870 they formed in a few days their double treaty for the defence of Belgium. Does, then, the whole indictment rest on this-that, in conformity with the solemn declaration of the European Powers at Paris in 1856, they cured a deep-seated quarrel with America by submitting to the risk of a very unjust award at Geneva; and reconciled a sister nation, and effected a real forward step in the march, of civilisation at about half the cost which the present administration has recently incurred (but without paying it) in agitating and disturbing Europe? Or is it that during all those years, and many more years before them, while liberty and public law were supported, and British honour vindicated, territorial cupidity was not inflamed by the deeds or words of statesmen, British interests were not set up as "the first and great commandment," and it was thought better to consolidate a still undeveloped empire, which might well satisfy every ambition, as it a.s.suredly taxes to the utmost every faculty.

III

(M189) Though this was a "tumultuous year," he noted with some complacency that the work of his pen produced a thousand pounds. He laboured hard at his Homeric primer, "just contriving to squeeze the completion of it into the Easter recess"; wrote articles on the "Peace to Come," on the "Paths of Honour and of Shame," on the Abbe Martin, on "England's Mission," on "Electoral Statistics," the "Friends and Foes of Russia," and other matters. He finished a paper on Iris, "a charming little subject, and for once I am a little pleased with my work." He toiled diligently at a collection of old articles, which he christened _Gleanings_:-