EMPRESS OF INDIA.
Mr. Disraeli recognises Intellect--Lord Hartington Liberal
Leader--The Queen’s Speech--Lord Hartington’s “Grotesque
Reminiscences”--Mr. Cross’s Labour Bills--The Artisans’
Dwellings Act--Mr. Plimsoll and the “Ship-knackers”--Lord
Hartington’s First “Hit”--The Plimsoll Agitation--Surrender of
the Cabinet--“Strangers” in the House--The Budget--Rise of Mr.
Biggar--First Appearance of Mr. Parnell--The Fugitive Slave
Circular--The Sinking of the Yacht _Mistletoe_--The Loss of the
_Vanguard_--Purchase of the Suez Canal Shares--The Prince of
Wales’s Visit to India--Resignation of Lord Northbrook--Appointment
of Lord Lytton as Viceroy of India--Outbreak of the Eastern
Question--The Andrassy Note--The Berlin Memorandum--Murder of
French and German Consuls at Salonica--Lord Derby Rejects the
Berlin Memorandum--Servia Declares War on Turkey--The Bulgarian
Revolt Quenched in Blood--The Sultan Dethroned--Opening of
Parliament--“Sea-sick of the Silver Streak”--Debates on the
Eastern Question--Development of Obstruction by Mr. Biggar and Mr.
Parnell--The Royal Titles Bill--Lord Shaftesbury and the Queen--The
Queen at Whitechapel--A Doleful Budget--Mr. Disraeli becomes Earl
of Beaconsfield--The Prince Consort’s Memorial at Edinburgh--Mr.
Gladstone and the Eastern Question--The Servian War--The
Constantinople Conference--The Tories Manufacture Failure for Lord
Salisbury--Death of Lady Augusta Stanley--Proclamation of the Queen
as Empress at Delhi.
The year 1875 opened less gloomily for the Ministry than for the
Opposition. Mr. Disraeli had sanctioned the despatch of a Polar
Expedition, and in a curious letter, since published by Mr. Froude, he
had tendered Mr. Carlyle the Grand Cross of the Bath on the ground that
“a Government should recognise Intellect.”[80] He had also offered Mr.
Tennyson--“if not a great poet, a real one,” to use his own phrase--a
baronetcy. Both offers had been refused, but the scientific and
literary classes--potent agencies for influencing public opinion--sang
loud the praises of a Ministry that was so obviously in sympathy with
them. As for the Opposition, Mr. Gladstone’s definite refusal to lead
them any longer, compelled them to elect a successor, whereupon an
infinite amount of dissension, heartburning, and jealousy was stirred
up in their ranks. Mr. Goschen, Sir William Harcourt, and Mr. W. E.
Forster were the candidates who had most partisans, and the last was
undoubtedly the one on whom the public choice would have fallen, if
the public had been permitted to arbitrate between the rivals. The
Nonconformists, however, had not yet forgiven Mr. Forster, and Mr.
Bright put him out of the field by using his powerful influence in
favour of Lord Hartington, who was finally selected. According to one
of the ablest of Liberal political critics, Lord Hartington “succeeded
in making the whole party content, if not enthusiastic, with their
choice.”[81] Lord Hartington had, in the course of the Session,
virtually nothing to do, and, like the Peers in Mr. Gilbert’s opera,
he “did it very well.” The Queen’s Speech outlined a temperately
progressive policy, and when the Opposition leader taunted Ministers
with failing to carry out the scheme of reaction to which they stood
pledged on the hustings and in the Conservative Press, Mr. Disraeli,
with demure gaiety, protested against his “grotesque reminiscences.”
Lord Hartington, he complained, sought out “the most violent speeches
made by the most uninfluential persons in the most obscure places,
and the most absurd articles appearing in the dullest and most
uninfluential newspapers,” and took these as the opinions of “the great
Conservative Party.”[82] The opinions of the Conservative Ministry, he
added, were now expressed from the front Ministerial Bench, and for
these alone did he hold himself responsible.
Mr. Cross was the popular Minister of the Session. His Artisans’
Dwellings Bill embodied a resolution which Mr. U. Kay-Shuttleworth and
Sir Sidney Waterlow had induced Mr. Gladstone’s Government to accept,
and though in practice it proved disastrous to local ratepayers, it was
taken as a kindly recognition of claims which Liberal Cabinets had too
often ignored.[83] Mr. Cross was much more successful with his Labour
Bills, drafts of which, it was said, had been prepared by Mr. Lowe. The
Home Secretary had framed his Bills to conciliate Tory members who had
eloquently denounced Trades Unions during the General Election. But
in Committee he accepted amendments which removed from the law every
trace of the evil spirit that punished breach of contract by a workman,
not as a civil offence, but as a crime. Though he fought hard against
the repeal of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, he finally surrendered
to Mr. Lowe, and not only accepted his definition of “molestation” or
“picketing,” but further agreed to his proposal to make that offence
punishable when committed by anybody--be he master or servant. The
growth of a Conservative spirit among the Trades Unions dates from the
passing of Mr. Cross’s Employers and Workmen Bill, and his Conspiracy
Bill. Mr. Gathorne-Hardy’s Regimental Exchanges Bill was a reactionary
concession to “the Colonels,” for it gave rich officers facilities for
bribing poor ones to relieve them from arduous foreign service. Lord
Cairns, however, did much more harm to the Government by withdrawing
his Judicature Bill under the menaces of a secret Junta of Peers,
headed by the Duke of Buccleuch, who had resolved to restore to the
House of Lords its Appellate Jurisdiction. Whilst independent Peers
protested against this course as a slight to the Upper House, the
country considered that it indicated a deplorable want of courage. For
when Lord Cairns’ new Bill, postponing till the 1st of November, 1886,
the provisions of Lord Selborne’s Act (1873),[84] and establishing
an Intermediate Court of Appeal as a kind of judicial makeshift,
came before the House of Commons, Sir John Holker, with indiscreet
frankness, explained why the Government had dropped their own measure.
The Peers, he said, meant to retain their jurisdiction in spite of the
House of Commons, and it was, therefore, futile to resist them. This
admission that the Cabinet, which ought to be responsible only to the
Queen and to Parliament, was really controlled by a small caucus of
Peers, whose very names were kept secret, was one which Government
could now-a-days survive. The Bill, however, passed before the Session
closed.
[Illustration: MR. PLIMSOLL ADDRESSING THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.]
Ministers also lost much of their popularity through Mr. Disraeli’s
tenderness towards owners of unseaworthy ships. Mr. Plimsoll had stirred
[Illustration: THE MARQUIS OF HARTINGTON.
(_From a Photograph by Russell and Sons._)]
up public opinion against the “ship-knackers,” as he called them, who,
having over-insured vessels that were rotten, sent them away to founder
at sea with their crews, and then put the insurance money in their
pockets. The Board of Trade had rather frowned on his efforts to get
it to detain unseaworthy ships for survey, but in deference to popular
pressure the Government had promised to bring in a Merchant Shipping
Bill to check the evil which Mr. Plimsoll had discovered and denounced.
The Bill was read a second time in the Commons without opposition,
and it was one in which the Queen was said to be as much interested
as Mr. Plimsoll himself. But Mr. Disraeli had brought forward a
measure permitting farmers to receive compensation for unexhausted
improvements, and enabling landlords to deny them this compensation
by contracting themselves out of the Bill. He had contrived to get
Government business into confusion by trying to push on Ministerial
measures abreast instead of in single file, and in a fatal moment
he shelved the Merchant Shipping Bill, in order to make way for the
perfectly worthless Agricultural Holdings Bill. He announced the fact
on the 22nd of July, when Mr. Goschen entered a mild protest.
Mr. Plimsoll, however, rose quivering with rage and passion, and
moved the adjournment of the House. He not only protested against the
Government postponing a Bill that interfered with “the unhallowed
gains” of the “shipknackers,” but said that some of them sat in the
House, and mentioned by name one of “the villains” he was determined
to “unmask.” In vain the Speaker called him to order. Louder and
louder grew the turmoil, and in the midst of it Mr. Disraeli grew
visibly pale when Mr. Plimsoll rushed up the floor of the House with
his clenched fist extended in front of him. However, he did not strike
the Premier or Sir Charles Adderley--who was officially in charge of
the Bill--as had been dreaded. He merely stood on one leg, placed a
written protest on the table, and then, having shaken his fist in the
Speaker’s face, marched out of the Chamber amidst a scene of terrible
disorder. Mr. Disraeli lost his temper and, with it, touch of the
House for a moment. In angry accents he moved that Mr. Plimsoll be
reprimanded there and then, whereupon the Speaker interfered, and
said that before a motion of that sort could be put Mr. Plimsoll,
who was now standing below the bar, must be heard in his place. Mr.
Plimsoll, however, preferred immediate withdrawal, and the House was
on the eve of entering into conflict with a defiant Member, supported
by an irresistible force of democratic passion in the country, a
conflict from which it must have emerged with impaired authority,
when suddenly Lord Hartington came to the rescue. His frigid accents,
in strong contrast with Mr. Disraeli’s tremulous tones of wrath,
immediately cooled the temper of the House. Mr. Plimsoll was, said
Lord Hartington, merely suffering from “overstrain acting on a very
sensitive temperament, and before taking any strong measures against
a man so universally respected, it would be more consonant with the
dignity of the House to give him reasonable time to put himself right.”
Mr. Disraeli instantly saw that Lord Hartington’s phlegmatic sense
had suggested the course that would extricate him from the dangerous
position into which he was leading the House, and he consented to
adjourn the matter for a week. Mr. Plimsoll made an honourable apology
to the Speaker, and the matter ended happily, but the incident, to the
gratification of the country, revealed in Lord Hartington a capacity
for cool and adroit leadership, the existence of which had hitherto
been unsuspected. The day after the scene in the House of Commons a
storm of agitation broke over the country on behalf of Mr. Plimsoll.
From every constituency remonstrances couched in terms of strong
indignation poured in upon the House of Commons. Tory Members warned
the Whips that they did not dare to run athwart the wave of passion
that swept over the land. The Cabinet accordingly held a meeting in a
panic, and resolved to bring in a temporary Bill empowering the Board
of Trade to detain rotten ships and to prohibit grain cargoes from
being carried in bulk. The measure was passed, even the Peers shrinking
from the responsibility of rejecting it.
Another blunder damaged Mr. Disraeli’s leadership. In April Mr. Charles
Lewis moved that the printer of the _Times_ be summoned to the Bar
and dealt with for printing a letter reflecting on a Member of the
House of Commons, in a report of evidence given before the Foreign
Loans Committee. It was an attempt to carry out the old Standing
Order, which made it an offence for newspapers to report Parliamentary
proceedings. Mr. Disraeli first spoke against the motion, and then
voted for it. It was carried. But next day he moved that the Order be
discharged, and when Mr. Sullivan asked him if he intended to put the
relations of the Press and Parliament on a less anomalous footing, he
answered “No.” Thereupon Mr. Sullivan warned him he would insist on
carrying out the ridiculous old Standing Order, and clearing the House
of reporters every night till Mr. Disraeli yielded. Lord Hartington
induced Mr. Sullivan to refrain, but Mr. Biggar next stepped in, and
with elfish humour, one night when the Prince of Wales was listening
to a debate, rose and said he “espied strangers in the House,” which
was duly cleared of every one--including the Prince--save Members. The
two leaders then carried a motion suspending the ridiculous Order for
that evening. Mr. Disraeli, however, still refused to alter the rule or
accept a proposal from Lord Hartington for altering it. Mr. Sullivan
accordingly retorted by again “espying strangers,” clearing the
House, and compelling the Government to adjourn an important debate.
Mr. Disraeli now saw he had no choice but to surrender. He therefore
carried a new Standing Order, enabling the Speaker to exclude strangers
when he saw fit, but submitting the attempt of a private Member to
clear the House, to the check of an immediate and undebateable vote.
Sir Stafford Northcote’s Budget was ominous of hard times coming.
Prices were beginning to fall, and unsound Foreign Loans, in which
rich people had invested, were beginning to collapse. Sir Stafford
Northcote, therefore, though he received half a million more revenue
than he expected, wisely made no sanguine estimate for the ensuing
year. His anticipated expenditure he put at £75,268,000, an increase of
£939,000, and his revenue at £75,685,000, showing a probable surplus
of £417,000, which was ultimately converted by supplementary estimates
into an estimated deficit of £300,000--a bad contrast to the miraculous
surplus of £6,000,000, which in the previous year he inherited from Mr.
Gladstone. There was no special feature in the Budget, save the scheme
fixing the charge for the paying up the interest and the principal
of the National Debt in future at £28,000,000 a year, and making it
obligatory to meet this sum before any surplus could be declared. It
was, in fact, a plan for establishing a rigid Sinking Fund to discharge
the National Debt, and though it was popular at the time, it failed, as
all such plans fail, because whenever a difficulty arises Ministers of
Finance always confiscate a Sinking Fund in preference to imposing new
taxes.
[Illustration: ABERGELDIE CASTLE.
(_From a Photograph by G. W. Wilson and Co._)]
Ireland, represented by the new National Party, under Mr. Butt,
gained little during 1875, but she gained something. Under a Liberal
Government half the Home Rule Party could have been bribed by places
into silence. But an ostentatiously hostile Tory Ministry could
not offer them places, and yet they had to be quieted somehow, for
the Irish people had by this time lost faith in their insincere
Parliamentary action. Fenian agents were telling the Irish peasantry
that they could expect no concessions unless they extorted them by
revolution. The Government, accordingly, relaxed the existing Coercion
Acts, and the debate on one of these--the Westmeath Act--was, on
the 22nd of April, 1875, rendered historic by the intervention of
Mr. Biggar, who talked against time for five hours, by the simple
device of reading long extracts from Blue Books.[85] Shortly after
this feat, Mr. Charles Stewart Parnell, a young Wicklow squire, who
had been educated at Cambridge, and was notable for his shyness, his
aristocratic reserve, and his faltering and confused speech, took
his seat as Member for Meath, in succession to John Martin, who had
died. Nothing was known of him save that he had the reputation of
being a Protestant landlord who was on good terms with his tenants,
that from his mother--a daughter of the celebrated Commodore Stewart
of the United States Navy--he had inherited Republican ideas, that he
was a lover of field sports, and that he was a cadet of the family of
which his great-grandfather, Sir John Parnell, Chancellor of the Irish
Exchequer in 1782, was a distinguished member, and the head of which
was the present Lord Congleton. That his beautiful estate of Avondale
was heavily mortgaged was _not_ regarded as noteworthy. Mr. Joseph
Gillies Biggar, whose quaint b_ourgeois_ humour had already made him,
if not the favourite, at least one of the privileged “diversions”
of the House, and who was destined to be Mr. Parnell’s coadjutor
in organising the largest and most powerful Irish National Party of
the Victorian period, was a prosperous provision-dealer, of Scottish
extraction, trading in Belfast. His experience of affairs had been
gained as Chairman of the local Water Board.
Parliament was prorogued peacefully on the 13th of August, and, on the
whole, Ministers emerged from the Session with credit. Mr. Disraeli’s
bright wit, his cheerful temper, and his airy jocularity in meeting
serious attacks, recalled pleasant memories of Lord Palmerston, and
tempted the House to forget his occasional blunders as its Leader. The
Recess, however, brought serious peril to his Cabinet--peril which,
however, it had done little to deserve. In the middle of September
it was discovered that the Foreign Office had induced the Admiralty
to issue a Fugitive Slave Circular to naval officers. They were told
they must not receive fugitive slaves in territorial waters unless
their lives were in danger. If the fugitive slave came on board a
British ship in territorial waters, he was not to remain if it were
proved he were a slave. If received on the high seas, he must be
surrendered when the ship came within the territorial waters of the
country from which he had escaped. The Circular, in fact, defined the
legal obligations under which British ships of war must logically lie
if they chose to enter the territorial waters of slave States, with
which England was not at war. It was a Circular embodying regulations
on which every Liberal Minister had habitually acted, but the Liberal
Party immediately proceeded to make political capital out of it. An
agitation as fierce as that which was caused by the abandonment of the
Merchant Shipping Bill sprang up, and Lord Derby, at whose instance
the Admiralty issued the Circular, was accused of attempting to commit
England to a furtive partnership with slave-owners. The most that
could be said in fairness against the document was that it was so
badly drafted as to imply that the deck of a Queen’s ship was subject
to foreign jurisdiction. Moreover, the order to surrender a fugitive
slave who had taken refuge on a Queen’s ship on the high seas, was so
completely indefensible that Lord Derby himself struck it out of the
second edition of his Circular. He might as well have ordered a British
Consul in Rio to arrest and surrender a Brazilian slave who, having
gained freedom by escaping to English soil, had afterwards returned
to that port. Till Parliament met in 1876, the country rang with the
inflated protests of Liberal partisans against the amended Circular,
which was published after the original one had been suspended in
October, and cancelled in November.
But the issue and publication of the Slave Circular was not the only
blunder at the Admiralty that rendered the Government unpopular during
the Recess. They were guilty of one which gave the Queen the utmost
annoyance. When she was crossing the Solent from Osborne to Gosport
on the 18th of August her yacht ran down another yacht called the
_Mistletoe_. The owner (Mr. Heywood) and his sisters-in-law, Miss
Annie Peel and Miss Eleanor Peel, were on board, and, though the
last-named was rescued, Miss Annie Peel and the sailing-master were
drowned. The Queen happened to be on deck, and her emotion during the
scene was painful to witness. The Prince of Leiningen, as commander
of the Royal yacht, was blamed by the people for the catastrophe,
and unfortunately the Admiralty not only refused to try him by
court-martial, but, after a secret inquiry, condemned the navigating
officer. This roused public wrath, and it was ungenerously alleged
that the Queen had forced a servile Minister to protect her nephew
from just punishment. The fact is, as a subsequent case showed, the
Admiralty merely followed the stereotyped rule, which, in those days,
was to punish subordinate officers for the blunders of their superiors.
It used to be asked, What was a navigating officer on board a Queen’s
ship for, unless to take his captain’s punishment? Unfortunately for
the Prince of Leiningen, there was a tribunal from which he could not
escape--the coroner’s inquest on the bodies of those for whose death
he was morally responsible. The evidence given before the coroner
still further exasperated the ill-feeling which had been roused.
Yachtsmen--proverbially a loyal body of men--were irritated at the
tone of a letter addressed to the president of the Cowes Yacht Club
(the Marquis of Exeter), in which General Ponsonby expressed the
Queen’s wish that in future members of the Club would not approach too
closely to the Royal yacht when the Queen was on board. The insinuation
contained in this document and assumption that no blame rested on the
officers of the _Alberta_, provoked yachtsmen in every club in Great
Britain to retort that, in their painful experience, the Queen’s yachts
were navigated in the Solent with a disregard of the “rules of the
road” which rendered them a constituted nuisance.
In this particular instance the Royal yacht had been driven at the
rate of seventeen miles an hour, and the Prince of Leiningen and
his subordinates had paid no attention to the Board of Trade rule
which makes it the duty of a steamer to get well out of the way of
a sailing-vessel. The quartermasters of the yacht, too, gave their
evidence in a manner which not only cast suspicion on their testimony,
but suggested that they stood in terror of their officers. A letter
which the Queen wrote to her nephew expressing her satisfaction
with their conduct, was moreover taken to be an attempt to unduly
influence the Coroner’s Court. The first jury did not agree on a
verdict, and the outcry about the Queen’s letter was so loud that
the case had to be tried again. The Queen had for a moment forgotten
that the vast influence which she had acquired during her reign
rendered it imperative for her to be silent on all matters of
controversy--especially if they were under judicial investigation.
She forgot that the mere expression of her individual opinion gave
an advantage to one side in a dispute, the extent of which she
herself had clearly never dreamt of--an advantage so great, that it
bore unfairly against the side that had not got it. The second jury,
however, brought in a verdict of “Accidental Death,” and condemned the
officers of the Royal yacht (1), for steaming at too high a speed,
and (2), for keeping a bad look-out. The verdict was quite illogical.
If the look-out on the _Alberta_ was bad and her speed too high, and
if, as was proved, her officer had violated the rule of the road, the
verdict ought to have been one of Manslaughter. But no further steps
were taken to do justice. Mr. Anderson brought the case before the
House of Commons, and though he was defeated in his effort to make the
Government move in the affair, he created a great stir in the country,
by declaring that public funds had been used as hush-money to prevent
further inquiry.[86] So far as the verdict of the jury went, demanding
that the Royal yachts should steam at less speed in the Solent, it was
absurd. State business often forces the Queen and her messengers and
Ministers to travel fast. What the jury should have recommended was a
new rule of the road, to the effect that everything must make way on
the water for a yacht flying the Sovereign’s personal flag.
The other blunder of the Admiralty arose out of an inquiry into the
loss of two ironclads off the Wicklow coast. On the night of the 1st
of September the _Iron Duke_ rammed and sank the _Vanguard_. There was
a fog at the time, and the captain of the _Vanguard_ left the deck at
the moment of greatest peril, and was stupid enough to reduce speed
for no discernible reason without warning the _Iron Duke_, which was
coming behind him. The captain of the _Iron Duke_ was stupid enough to
increase her speed in the fog, and she was not only badly steered, but
her fog-signal was not blown. Had they been employed in the merchant
service these two officers would have been subjected to the severest
punishment. As it was, the captain of the _Vanguard_ was dismissed
the service. The captain of the _Iron Duke_, who had been condemned
by the court-martial for ramming the _Vanguard_, was acquitted, on a
review of his sentence by the Admiralty. The Admiralty then, by way
of compensation, cashiered his subordinate, Lieutenant Evans, without
a trial, and without giving him leave to make a defence. As for the
Admiral, who, from lack of skill or from negligence permitted the ships
of his squadron to sail close to each other in a fog, he was freed from
blame.
Fortunately for Mr. Disraeli, an opportunity for a great stroke of
policy occurred, which diverted public attention from these blunders,
and re-established the waning popularity of his Ministry. On the
26th of November it was announced that the Government had bought for
£4,000,000 the Khedive’s shares in the Suez Canal, and what a French
writer described as “a conquest by mortgage” was hailed by the English
people, with a shout of gratification. The impecunious ruler of Egypt
had been literally hawking
[Illustration: VIEW ON THE SUEZ CANAL.]
his Canal shares among the Powers. It was possible that at any moment
Germany or France might buy them up, and then impede the passage of
English troops to India. Not a day was to be lost, and Mr. Disraeli,
therefore, on his own responsibility, and without consulting his
Cabinet, purchased the Shares. There was joy in the City over this
operation. The bankruptcy of Turkey, declared at the end of October,
had converted Turkish Bonds into waste paper, and it was some
compensation to speculators that Mr. Disraeli’s purchase of the Canal
Shares sent up the price of Egyptian Stock by leaps and bounds. Lord
Hartington, it is true, in a speech at Sheffield (15th of December),
querulously carped at the transaction. But as his contention was that
England was in a better position to secure the neutrality of the Canal
without than with a solid proprietary interest in it, nobody paid the
least attention to his unpatriotic cavillings. They merely convinced
the country that, despite Mr. Disraeli’s bungling Parliamentary
leadership, his inaccuracy of statement, his loose hold of principle,
and the administrative blunders of his subordinates, he was the only
living statesman of first rank, in whose hands the higher interests of
the Empire were safe.
[Illustration: COUNT FERDINAND DE LESSEPS.]
It was announced in March that the Prince of Wales was to visit India
in November, with Sir Bartle Frere as his guide. In July it was decided
that his tour should be a State Progress, the expenses of which should
be paid for out of the revenues of England and India. The marine escort
was to be provided by the Admiralty at a cost of £52,000; the Indian
Treasury was to contribute £30,000; and when Mr. Disraeli asked the
House of Commons for £52,000, Lord Hartington had no complaint to make
except that he thought the vote ought to be larger. Messrs. Macdonald
and Burt, when they objected that the working-classes would not approve
of the grant, were literally “howled down” by the House. Yet all Mr.
Burt said was that as he himself lived on a salary derived from his
constituents, he could not decently vote away their money to pay the
cost of what they believed was a tour of pleasure for a rich Prince.
His argument was fair enough from his point of view. It was faulty
because he failed to see that a vote for a State pageant which meant
to individualise the Monarchy to the Indian mind, was not a grant to
the Prince as a private individual. Mr. Bright’s support of the grant,
which was voted, was useful to the Government. But as his argument
was that the visit of the Prince might be serviceable in checking the
harsh and cruel treatment to which the natives of India are subjected
by their English rulers, it was condemned as unjust to the devoted
servants of the Queen, who wear out their lives in honourable exile,
maintaining peace in an Empire that, without them, would be converted
into a pandemonium of slaughter.
The opening days of 1876 were marked by the announcement of Lord
Northbrook’s resignation as Viceroy of India. The Indian Viceroy had
for some time thwarted the policy of the Secretary of State, and the
final rupture was made when they differed in opinion as to the kind of
Envoy the Government should have at Cabul. It was a quaint controversy.
Lord Salisbury said the face of the British Envoy should be white. Lord
Northbrook contended that it should be black, whereupon Lord Salisbury
wrote Lord Northbrook a despatch, couched in terms that left him no
alternative save resignation. According to Lord Salisbury, unless a
white Envoy kept watch over the Ameer, Shere Ali, our information from
Cabul would be defective. According to Lord Northbrook, if we sent an
European Envoy to Cabul, he would be promptly assassinated, in which
case we should get no information at all, and India would be dragged
into a ruinous war of vengeance. Lord Northbrook had nothing on his
side but facts. No Afghan Ameer had ever been able to guarantee a
Christian Envoy at Cabul against assassination. When Lord Salisbury
did send an European Envoy to Cabul he was not only murdered, but,
pending his inevitable murder, the only information worth having that
came from Cabul, came from native sources. It was, moreover, a slight
on the Indian Government to say that they had not been able to train a
Mahommedan official of rank up to the duties of effective diplomatic
espionage at Cabul. However, the dispute ended in Lord Northbrook
coming back to England, and in Lord Lytton going out to India as
his successor. There was no doubt a time when the appointment of a
diplomatist who was a Peer and a passionate poet, to the Viceregal
Throne might have been useful. Unhappily, in 1876, a different type of
ruler was needed in India. The war cloud in Eastern Europe was about
to break, and it was well known that in any diplomatic contest between
Russia and England, it would be the aim of Russia to weaken England
by making trouble for her on her Indian frontier. For the stress of
the times, a man like Lord Mayo was necessary, and Lord Lytton was
everything that Lord Mayo was not.
All through 1875 there had been in Bosnia and Herzegovina disturbances
precisely similar to those in the Principalities which preceded the
Crimean War. After Lord Derby had been appealed to by Musurus Pasha,
the Turkish Ambassador in London, he suggested to Count Andrassy that
Austria should prevent her subjects on her frontier from supporting the
insurgents in the mutinous Turkish provinces, and a similar suggestion
was made to the Servian Government. His advice to the Turks was to
stamp out rebellion as quickly as possible, so as to prevent it from
spreading and provoking European intervention. The Porte, instead of
acting on this advice, desired that the Consuls of the Great Powers
should mediate between the Sultan and the rebels, and Lord Derby,
instead of adhering to his original counsels, weakly fell in with
this proposal, and consented, though with great hesitancy, to let the
British Consul join the delegation. The rebels were delighted with the
proposals of the Consuls for their better government, but refused
to lay down their arms unless the Powers guaranteed that the Turks
would carry them out. The Consuls were pleased that the demands of the
insurgents were moderate and reasonable, but could give no guarantees
for the good faith of Turkey. As they were returning from their mission
fighting began again.
From their public utterances during the recess of 1875 it was inferred
that while Lord Derby was averse from further intervention on the
part of England in the business, because in the East, he said, “we
want nothing, and fear nothing,” Mr. Disraeli was of opinion that
England had great interests in Eastern Europe, which the Government,
he said at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, “are resolved to guard and
maintain.” There are no novelties in English politics. The situation
was the same as that which led to the Crimean War, and it also had to
be dealt with by a Cabinet which, like Lord Aberdeen’s, was divided
into interventionists and non-interventionists. But an acute observer
might have detected what Mr. Disraeli failed to see, that English
opinion had changed since 1853. In 1853 the electors were in favour
of intervention, whereas, since the defeat of Palmerston by the Court
and Mr. Cobden in 1864, they had always been against it. As the
insurrection spread, the Porte promised reforms. Three Powers--Austria,
Germany and Russia, afterwards joined by France and Italy--sent a Note
to Turkey known as “the Andrassy Note” (30th of December, 1875),
condemning the misgovernment of the insurgent provinces, bewailing the
broken promises of the Porte, and demanding certain reforms in Bosnia
and Herzegovina to prevent a general rising. Lord Derby, after about
a month’s hesitation, instructed the British Ambassador to give the
Note a general support. Turkey accepted most of its proposals, and
issued another _Iradé_ to carry them out. The _Iradé_ was never made
operative, and though Lord Derby was not offended by the contumacy of
Turkey, the other Powers resented it. Count Schouvaloff persuaded him
to permit Lord Odo Russell to meet the representatives of the five
Powers at Berlin in May to consider the situation. At this meeting the
Berlin Memorandum was produced and agreed to by the Continental Powers.
[Illustration: THE MOSQUE OF SAN SOPHIA, CONSTANTINOPLE.]
It assumed, that as the Porte had promised to carry out the reforms
in the Andrassy Note, the Powers had now the right to force it to
keep its pledges. It formulated the guarantees which Europe asked for
in order to give effect to the Andrassy Note, and threatened Turkey
with “more effective measures” of coercion if she failed to give them
within two months after an armistice between her and her rebellious
provinces had been concluded. The reason why the Note was minatory lay
on the surface. The Consuls of France and Germany had been murdered
by the Turks at Salonica, and before any redress could be obtained
Prince Bismarck had to send the Porte an ultimatum that meant war. Lord
Derby declined to assent to the Memorandum, on the ground that England
had not been consulted in the preparing of it, and did not believe
that it would do any good if presented. The Foreign Ministers of the
Powers in vain implored him to reconsider his decision, and then the
Memorandum was tossed into the waste-paper basket of diplomacy. Turkey,
seeing that Lord Derby had broken up the European Concert at Berlin,
behaved exactly as she did when Clarendon broke up the same instrument
of coercion at Vienna. Her contumacy was intensified, and what was
still more serious, her European vassals, seeing that diplomacy had
failed to rescue them from misrule, took up arms. Within a month after
the diplomatic triumph of England, the Turks found it had secured to
them the following advantages:--(1), The Continental Powers withdrew
from the field, and adopted an attitude of vigilant inactivity. (2),
Servia and Montenegro declared war on Turkey. (3), The soil of Bulgaria
was soaked with the blood of her Christian population, whose revolt
had been quelled by massacres and ghastly atrocities, that rendered
expulsion from Europe the manifest destiny of the Ottoman race. (4),
The Sultan Abdul Aziz was dethroned by a mob of fanatical Moslems, and
his European Empire lay wrecked in anarchy. It had been made a matter
of complaint that the Foreign Policy of England in 1853 was slow in
producing any effect. When we consider what happened in the month that
followed the failure of the Berlin Memorandum, and the collapse of the
European Concert, that complaint cannot be justly advanced against Mr.
Disraeli’s Foreign Policy in 1876.
[Illustration: HERALDS AT THE MANSION HOUSE, PROCLAIMING THE QUEEN AS
“EMPRESS OF INDIA.”]
Parliament was opened on the 8th of February by the Queen in person,
with great pomp and ceremony; and the Royal Speech promised several
useful measures dealing with the Court of Appeal, Merchant Shipping,
and Prisons. But the one that excited most public interest was the Bill
to confer on the Sovereign a new title derived from India, in gracious
acknowledgment of the enthusiastic reception given to the Prince of
Wales by the natives of that Empire. As for the Slave Circular, the
questions raised by it were to be referred to a Royal Commission.
The Foreign Policy of the Government was expressed by Mr. Disraeli,
in terms that appealed sympathetically to national feeling. It was
based on the idea that England was responsible for the good use of her
influence in the councils of Europe, and it united the Tory Party, and
caused the country to condone all Ministerial blunders. The debate
on the Eastern Question showed that Mr. Gladstone and other eminent
Liberals approved of Lord Derby’s adherence to the Andrassy Note. But
it clearly indicated that the Opposition would attack the Government
if it adopted the old Crimean policy of supporting Turkey whenever
she rejected the demands of Europe. The purchase of the Suez Canal
Shares provoked more controversy. It turned out that they had been
mortgaged by the Khedive, and could not yield dividends for nineteen
years, a fact unknown to Mr. Disraeli when he bought them. Sir Stafford
Northcote, therefore, proposed to borrow £4,000,000, and exact from
the Khedive 5 per cent. a year on that sum to cover the loss of the
mortgaged dividends. Mr. Gladstone attacked the financial details of
the transaction,[87] and though his criticism was logical it failed
to influence the country. Had the purchase of the Shares been solely
a commercial speculation, the unbusiness-like manner in which it had
been effected would have been of some importance. But it was also a
stroke of high policy, and it appealed to the imperial instincts of the
nation which, as Mr. Disraeli said, was getting “sea-sick of the silver
streak.”[88] Most of Mr. Gladstone’s prophecies have been falsified
by events. Oddly enough the only valid objections to the purchase of
the Canal Shares were not pressed by him. They were (1), That a Canal
which could be easily blocked and wrecked by an enemy’s ship, was not a
safe route to India; and (2), That the fault of Mr. Disraeli’s policy
was in his failure to carry it out to its logical conclusion--the
establishment of a British Protectorate over Egypt, which would
have rendered the final fate of Turkey, a matter of indifference to
Englishmen. Parliament ratified the policy of the Government with
enthusiasm. The appointment of the Royal Commission to examine all the
difficulties raised by the Slave Circular saved Ministers from defeat
at the end of the Debate on the issue of that stupid State Paper. The
Government was also fortunate in its domestic legislation. The Merchant
Shipping Bill, when it passed, was found to be a compromise which
remedied most of the wrongs for which Mr. Plimsoll sought redress. Lord
Sandon’s Education Act was a concession to the advocates of compulsory
education, for it prohibited the employment of children under ten, and
it prohibited the employment of children between ten and fourteen, who
had not attended school 250 times a year and passed an examination
in the Fourth Standard. In fact, the Bill legalised, not direct, but
indirect compulsion. Bills restricting the practice of vivisection,
and restoring to the House of Lords its Appellate Jurisdiction, but
adding to it Judges of Appeal, who would be Peers during their tenure
of office, and who, with the ex-Chancellor, would discharge the
judicial functions of the Upper House, were also passed. For the meagre
achievements of the Session three reasons may be given: (1), Much time
was lost over the Education Act, because not only was it necessary for
the Opposition to tone down its reactionary clauses, but concessions
to the opponents of School Boards were suddenly sprung upon the House
by Lord Sandon, which had to be fiercely resisted. (2), The policy of
obstruction which had been adopted with so much success to delay Mr.
Forster’s Ballot Bill in 1883, was now developed in an ingenious manner
by Messrs. Biggar and Parnell. They “blocked” Bills indiscriminately,
so as to bring them under the rule which forbade opposed measures to
be taken after half-past twelve at night. They moved adjournments in
various forms at half-past twelve, on the ground that the hour was too
far advanced for discussion. They were always on the watch to “count
out” the House, and they never missed a chance of “talking out” a
Bill,[89] quite regardless of its merits. Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar
thus taught themselves to be formidable debaters at the expense of the
House, for, as Mr. Parnell once told a friend, the best way to learn
the rules of Parliament is to break them.[90] (3), A great deal of
time was also wasted in discussing the Royal Titles Bill, to which the
Liberals offered an amount of opposition out of all proportion to the
significance of the measure.
The Royal Titles Bill was introduced by the Prime Minister on the 7th
of February. He had some idea that it would be an offence against the
prerogative if he stated what the new title was to be, but it was
said that the Queen, ever since the Duchess of Edinburgh had claimed
precedence over her sisters-in-law, on the ground that hers was an
Imperial, whilst theirs was a Royal title, desired to be styled Empress
of India. On the other hand, most people objected to change the Queen’s
designation. Why, it was asked, should the successor of Egbert wish to
be a modern Empress? To insert India in the existing form of the Royal
title would adequately meet any
[Illustration: THE QUEEN VISITING THE WARDS OF THE LONDON HOSPITAL.]
real necessity for change. The Imperial title was also surrounded
with evil associations, and it suggested that Imperialism or personal
Government, tempered by casual appeals for support to the democracy
or the Army over the head of Parliament, was the end aimed at by the
Ministerial policy. Mr. Disraeli’s haughty refusal to communicate the
new title to the House of Commons was met by a motion that no progress
be made with the Bill till the title was revealed. The Prime Minister
accordingly yielded the point, and promised to give the necessary
explanations before the Bill was read a second time. The debate on the
Second Reading showed clearly that the House of Commons was hostile to
the Bill; but as the Government gave a pledge that the title should be
used in India only, the Second Reading was carried. This pledge was
soon broken, for the Proclamation was made, not that the new title
should be used in India, but that it might be used
[Illustration: THE ALBERT MEMORIAL, CHARLOTTE SQUARE, EDINBURGH.]
everywhere save in the United Kingdom. The Peers were as reluctant as
the Commons to sanction the adoption of any exotic titles by the Crown,
and the Court did not scruple to bring personal pressure to bear on
them for the purpose of overcoming their threatened opposition. Lord
Shaftesbury was summoned to Windsor in early spring, and as it was
twenty years since he had been the Queen’s guest, he says in his Diary
that he assumed his invitation was brought about by the controversy
then raging over the Royal Titles Bill. “I dread it [the visit],” he
writes in his Diary, on the 12th of March, “the cold, the evening
dress, the solitude, for I am old, and dislike being far away from
assistance should I be ill at night.... She [the Queen] sent for me
in 1848 to consult me on a very important matter. Can it be so now?”
The next entry showed his foreboding to be correct. He says, on the
14th of March, “Returned from Windsor. I am sure it was so, though not
distinctly avowed. Her Majesty personally said nothing.” But though
she did not discuss the views he expressed to her, a Lord-in-Waiting
formally requested him to communicate them to Mr. Disraeli. Mr.
Disraeli paid no heed to them, and Lord Shaftesbury accordingly moved
(3rd of April), in the House of Lords, an Address to the Queen praying
her not to take the title of Empress. He pointed out that in time
it would lose its present impression of feminine softness, and be
transformed into “Emperor,” whereupon “it must have an air military,
despotic, offensive, and intolerable.” To scoff as Mr. Disraeli had
done at the popular dislike to the Imperial title as a mere “sentiment”
was a mistake. “Loyalty itself,” observed Lord Shaftesbury, “was a
sentiment, and the same sentiment that attached the people to the word
Queen, averted them from that of ‘Empress.’” In the division, though
the Government obtained 137 votes in favour of what the _Saturday
Review_ called a “vulgar and impolitic innovation,” eight Dukes and
a large body of habitual courtiers voted with Lord Shaftesbury in
the minority of 91.[91] The dismal predictions of the opponents of
the measure have not been verified--possibly because their protests
convinced the Court that any ostentatious display of modern Imperialism
by an ancient Constitutional Monarchy would lead to a recrudescence of
the Republic agitation. Fortunately the heated debates on the Titles
Bill did not affect the personal popularity of the Sovereign. In the
midst of the controversy the Queen visited Whitechapel on the 6th
of March, to open a new wing of the London Hospital, which had been
built by the munificence of the Grocers’ Company. Her Majesty was
enthusiastically received, the only complaint being that she drove too
fast along the route where the populace swarmed in their thousands to
gaze on her. The visit was taken to be an intimation that the Crown was
not a mere toy of the aristocratic quarters of the capital, and that
when the Queen emerged from her seclusion it was not solely for the
purpose of benefiting the West End shopkeepers. “The bees welcome their
Queen,” was one of the mottoes displayed on the route. “I was sick and
ye visited me,” was another, and both inscriptions reflected the kindly
feeling with which her Majesty was greeted by industrial London. In
the Hospital many interesting incidents were recorded, one of the most
touching being that of a little girl who was suffering from a severe
burn, and who had said she was sure she would get better if she “could
only see the Queen.” When this was communicated to her Majesty, she
smiled, went straightway to the child’s cot, where she kissed her, and
soothed her with many tender words of comfort.
Sir Stafford Northcote’s Budget was a doleful statement of increased
expenditure, and diminished income from a revenue that had ceased to be
elastic. He estimated a deficit for the coming year of £774,000, and
so he increased the income-tax to 5d. in the £, and added 4d. on the
pound to the duty on tobacco. The latter tax was a mistake. It did not
raise the price of tobacco to the poor, but it caused the manufacturers
to adulterate their tobacco with water so as to add to its weight. The
Session ended on the 15th of August, and next day the world heard with
great surprise that Mr. Disraeli had become Earl of Beaconsfield, and
to use his own jocose expression, that, “abandoning the style of Don
Juan for that of Paradise Lost,” he would in future lead the House of
Lords. Sir Stafford Northcote was left to represent him in the House of
Commons.
On the 17th of August the Queen unveiled the Scottish National
Memorial of Prince Albert, which had been erected in Charlotte Square,
Edinburgh. The monument consisted of a colossal equestrian statue of
the Prince Consort, and the four panels of the pedestal contained
bas-reliefs illustrating notable events in his Royal Highness’s career.
At each of the four corners of the platform on which the pedestal
stands were groups of statuary, symbolical of the respect paid to
Prince Albert’s memory by all classes of the community: one group
typifying Labour, another Science and Art, a third the Army and Navy,
and the fourth the Nobility. The equestrian figure and the panels
were the work of the veteran Scottish sculptor, Mr. John Steell, who
designed and superintended the construction of the memorial. The
subordinate groups were executed by Mr. D. W. Stevenson, Mr. Clark
Stanton, Mr. Brodie, and Mr. George McCallum, a young artist of high
promise, who died before his group was completed. The ceremony of
unveiling was unusually interesting. A gaily-decorated pavilion had
been raised for the occasion. The Queen was accompanied by Prince
Leopold, the Princess Beatrice, and the Duke of Connaught. Under
the command of the Duke of Buccleuch, the Royal Company of Archers
formed the bodyguard. The Duke of Roxburghe, Lord Rosebery, Sir W.
Gibson-Craig, the Earl of Selkirk, the Earl of Lauderdale, Lord
Provost Falshaw, and the Town Council, were among the distinguished
persons present. After the statue had, at her Majesty’s command, been
uncovered, she walked round it and expressed her entire satisfaction
with the memorial. To signalise her appreciation of what had been
done, and to manifest her desire to honour her “faithful city,” Mr.
Falshaw was created a baronet, and a knighthood was conferred on Mr.
John Steell, and on Mr. Herbert Oakeley, Professor of Music in the
University.
During the Recess, the country could think of nothing save the Eastern
Question. Mr. Gladstone’s taste
“For writing pamphlets and for roasting Popes”
was bent in a new direction, and he threw himself with all his might
into the controversy that ended in turning English public opinion
irrevocably against Turkey. Throughout the Session Mr. Gladstone and
Lord Hartington had, with commendable patriotism, abstained from
putting questions to Ministers with reference to their Eastern policy.
Parliament and the country were, therefore, in the dark as to what was
going on. But towards the end of
[Illustration: HOLYROOD PALACE, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST.]
June disquieting rumours flew about to the effect that there had been
a revolution in Bulgaria, and that the Turks had suppressed it by
massacres of the most revolting barbarity. The Government met these
tales with jaunty persiflage. On the 10th of July Mr. Forster put a
question on the subject, which Mr. Disraeli answered by saying that he
considered the reports exaggerated, nor did he think that torture had
been resorted to by “an Oriental people who, I believe, seldom resort
to torture, but generally terminate their connection with culprits in
a more expeditious manner.”[92] This ill-timed jest was hailed with a
great guffaw of laughter from the Ministerial Benches. It destroyed Mr.
Disraeli’s authority in the country when the awful truth was revealed,
not by the diplomatic agents of England, who strove hard to conceal
it, but by two American gentlemen, Mr. J. A. Macgahan, a distinguished
journalist, and Mr. Eugene Schuyler, the United States Consul-General
in Turkey. They went to Philippopolis on the 25th of July, and Mr.
Macgahan’s description of what he saw in the country, which had been
ravaged by the Turks, when published in the _Daily News_, sent a thrill
of horror through the
[Illustration: SIR JAMES FALSHAW.
(_From a Photograph by J. Moffat, Edinburgh._)]
civilised world. The partisans of Turkey were enraged beyond
self-control, and vowed that the worst of all outrages that had been
committed was that which was perpetrated by the publication of Mr.
Macgahan’s report on the brutalities of the Turkish soldiery. The
wild work of the Sepoys at Cawnpore was indeed merciful and humane
compared with what had been done by the Turks at Batak. Indiscriminate
butchery could alone be laid to the charge of the Indian mutineers.
But in Bulgaria, before the Turk murdered his victims, he inflicted on
them fiendish tortures and bestial outrages. The Province was one vast
desolation covered with blackened ruins, devastated fields, putrefying
corpses, and bleached skeletons. Neither age nor sex had been spared.
The land would have been as silent as a desert, save for the wailing
of the scattered remnant of the Christian population who had eluded
the vengeance of their oppressors. As for the Porte--whose promises
of reform in Bulgaria were cheerily cited by Mr. Disraeli to cast
doubt on the descriptions of these atrocities--it gave but one sign
of action. It promoted Achmed Aga, the barbarian who was responsible
for all this wickedness, to be Governor of the Province which he had
laid waste.”[93] The effect of these revelations on public opinion was
heightened by Mr. Gladstone’s pamphlet, entitled “Bulgarian Horrors,”
and by his speech at Blackheath on the 9th of September, wherein he
convicted the Government of apologising for Turkish barbarities, when
it could no longer venture to deny their existence. He laid down the
lines of the new Eastern policy which England must support. The Turkish
officials must be expelled from Bulgaria “bag and baggage,” and the
European Provinces of Turkey granted such powers of self-government
under the suzerainty of the Sultan, as would protect them from being
seized by Austria and Russia on the one hand and devastated by Asiatic
savages on the other. Sir Stafford Northcote and Lord Derby, in
subsequent speeches, seemed to adopt the principle of Mr. Gladstone’s
policy. They admitted that it was the duty of England to join the
civilised Powers in preventing Turkey from opening again the floodgates
of lust, rapine, and murder in Bulgaria, and the English people for the
first time understood how, with the cries of their tortured neighbours
ringing in their ears, the Servians and Montenegrins had flown to arms.
Some Conservative writers and speakers still tried to persuade the
world that the Russian Government had bribed the Turkish Pashas
to commit and the Bulgarians to submit to outrages, in order to
discredit Ottoman rule in Europe. But their efforts were futile, and
the word went forth from all sides that never again would England
draw her sword, as in 1854, to save Turkey from the consequences of
her incurable barbarism. Strange to say, Lord Beaconsfield failed
to gauge the strength of this feeling. On the 20th of September, in
his speech at Aylesford, he neither adopted nor rejected the policy
suggested by Sir Stafford Northcote and Lord Derby, but he spoke in a
querulous tone of the popular meetings which were being held all over
England expressing sympathy with Bulgaria and urging the Government
to shield her from the cruelty of her oppressors. The agitation,
he said, was “impolitic, and founded on erroneous data.” Those who
got up these meetings, he declared, were guilty of outrages on “the
principle of patriotism, worse than any of those Bulgarian atrocities
of which we have heard so much.” His negative policy which destroyed
the Berlin Memorandum without putting any counter proposals in its
place, would, he contended, have had a happy issue in negotiations.
These, however, were upset by the unexpected Servian declaration of
war against Turkey, which was prompted by “the Secret Societies.” Yet
England had signed the Andrassy Note, which warned Turkey that this
unexpected war would be waged against her by Servia, unless she granted
the reforms demanded in the Note. When Turkey, instead of granting
these reforms, massacred the population that craved for them, it was
absurd to suppose that “the Secret Societies of Europe,” rather than
the popular sympathies of the Christian Slavs, forced the Servian
Government into war. That the speech fell flat was seen by the polling
at the Buckinghamshire Election next day, when in Lord Beaconsfield’s
own county Mr. Freemantle only saved the seat from the attack of Mr.
Rupert Carrington, the Liberal candidate, by the small majority of
186. There were now two voices in the Cabinet; for on the day after
Lord Beaconsfield’s speech was made and was taken by Turkey to mean
that she had the English Cabinet on her side, Lord Derby ordered Sir
H. Elliot to go to the Sultan, and not only denounce the outrages in
Bulgaria, but, in the name of the Queen, who was profoundly shocked
by them, demand that the officials who perpetrated them be adequately
punished. It is hardly necessary to say that the Sultan, imagining that
the Prime Minister was all-powerful, paid no heed to remonstrances from
the Foreign Secretary. On the 25th of September, the day after the war
with Servia began, Sir H. Elliot pressed the Porte to make peace on
terms which Lord Derby suggested, and which were most creditable to his
diplomatic sagacity. Lord Derby’s proposals, if carried out, would have
saved Turkey from the supreme disaster which was awaiting her, for they
provided that the Porte should effectively guarantee administrative
reforms in her Christian Provinces, while Servia and Montenegro should
lay down their arms and return to the _status quo ante bellum_. The
Porte would only accept an armistice which would have been unfair
to Servia and Montenegro, and Servia would not accept a settlement
which did not provide for the withdrawal of the barbarous soldiers of
Turkey from Bulgaria. Whilst negotiations were pending, the Turks,
on the 29th of October, beat down the Servian defence at Alexinatz,
whereupon, to the mortification of England, the Czar effected in an
instant that which Lord Derby, after many weary weeks of negotiation,
had failed to accomplish. Ignatieff was instructed to tell the Porte
that if it did not accept an armistice of six weeks within forty-eight
hours, diplomatic relations between Turkey and Russia would cease.
When the same threat had been delivered by the British Ambassador,
the Turks ignored it; in fact, they were impudent enough to meet it
with a counter-proposal so absurd, that the Italian Minister said they
were obviously playing with England. Although strengthened by a great
victory, they did not, however, dare to treat the representative of
the Czar as if he were the representative of the Queen. They accepted
his ultimatum without demur or delay, and thus owing to the feebleness
of English diplomacy, Russia emerged with the honours of the game
in which, up to the last moment, Lord Derby held the winning cards.
This was, however, a minor matter. Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Derby
had now given Russia not only a plausible pretext for taking the lead
in dealing with the Eastern Question, but also an opportunity for
intimating to the world that, in circumstances which extorted the
sanction of the Continental Powers, she had the right, in case of a
deadlock, to deal with it single-handed. In other words, the English
Government, by allowing the Porte to trifle with it during September,
1876, flung away at one cast the only practical results won by the
Crimean War.
[Illustration: LORD BEACONSFIELD AT THE BANQUET IN THE GUILDHALL.]
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
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF CONSTANTINOPLE.]
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.
[Illustration: TROOPING THE COLOURS IN ST. JAMES’S PARK ON THE QUEEN’S
BIRTHDAY.]
[Illustration: LORD CAIRNS.
(_From a Photograph by Russell and Sons._)]