=Source.=--Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet, _Bulgarian Horrors and the
Question of the East_, 1876, p. 10.
In default of Parliamentary action, and a public concentrated as
usual, we must proceed as we can, with impaired means of appeal.
But honour, duty, compassion, and I must add shame, are sentiments
never in a state of _coma_. The working-men of the country, whose
condition is less affected than that of others by the season, have
to their honour led the way, and shown that the great heart of
Britain has not ceased to beat. And the large towns and cities, now
following in troops, are echoing back, each from its own place,
the mingled notes of horror, pain, and indignation.... A curtain
opaque and dense, which at the prorogation had been lifted but a
few inches from the ground, has since then, from day to day, been
slowly rising. And what a scene it has disclosed! And where!
... I have the fullest confidence in the honour and in the
intelligence of Mr. Baring, who has been inquiring on behalf of
England. But he was not sent to examine the matter until the 19th
of July, three months after the rising, and nearly one month after
the first inquiries in Parliament. He had been but two days at
Philippopolis, when he sent home, with all the despatch he could
use, some few rudiments of a future report. Among them was his
estimate of the murders, necessarily far from final, at the figure
of twelve thousand.
We know that we had a well-manned Embassy at Constantinople, and
a network of Consulates and Vice-Consulates, really discharging
diplomatic duties, all over the provinces of European Turkey.
That villages could be burned down by scores, and men, women, and
children murdered, or worse than murdered, by thousands, in a
Turkish province lying between the capital and the scene of the
recent excitements, and that our Embassy and Consulates could know
nothing of it? The thing was impossible. It could not be. So
silence was obtained, and relief; and the well-oiled machinery of
our luxurious, indifferent life worked smoothly on....
It was on the 20th of April that the insurrection broke out in
Bulgaria.... On the 9th of May Sir Henry Elliot ... observing a
great Mohammedan excitement, and an extensive purchase of arms in
Constantinople, wisely telegraphed to the British Admiral in the
Mediterranean expressing a desire that he would bring his squadron
to Besika Bay. The purpose was for the protection of British
subjects, and of the Christians in general.... These measures were
substantially wise, and purely pacific. They had, if understood
rightly, no political aspect, or, if any, one rather anti-Turkish
than Turkish. But there were reasons, and strong reasons, why
the public should not have been left to grope out for itself the
meaning of a step so serious as the movement of a naval squadron
towards a country disturbed both by revolt and by an outbreak of
murderous fanaticism. In the year 1853, when the negotiations with
Russia had assumed a gloomy and almost a hopeless aspect, the
English and French fleets were sent eastwards; not as a measure
of war, but as a measure of preparation for war, and proximate to
war. The proceedings marked a transition of discussion into that
angry stage which immediately precedes a blow; and the place, to
which the fleets were then sent, was Besika Bay. In the absence
of information, how could the British nation avoid supposing that
the same act, as that done in 1853, bore also the same meaning?...
The expectation of a rupture pervaded the public mind. The Russian
funds fell very heavily, under a war panic; partisans exulted in
a diplomatic victory, and in the increase of what is called our
_prestige_, the bane, in my opinion, of all upright politics. The
Turk was encouraged in his humour of resistance. And this, as we
now know, while his hands were so reddened with Bulgarian blood.
Foreign capitals were amazed at the martial excitement in London.
But the Government spoke never a word.... And this ostentatious
protection to Turkey, this wanton disturbance of Europe, was
continued by our Ministry, with what I must call a strange
perversity, for weeks and weeks....
What we have to guard against is imposture--that Proteus with a
thousand forms. A few months ago the new Sultan served the turn,
and very well. Men affirmed that he must have time. And now another
new Sultan is in the offing. I suppose it will be argued that he
must have time too. Then there will be, perhaps, new constitutions;
firmans of reforms; proclamations to commanders of Turkish armies,
enjoining extra humanity. All these should be quietly set down as
simply zero. At this moment we hear of the adoption by the Turks of
the last and most enlightened rule of warfare--namely, the Geneva
Convention. They might just as well adopt the Vatican Council or
the British Constitution. All these things are not even the oysters
before the dinner. Still worse is any plea founded upon any reports
made by Turkish authority upon the Bulgarian outrages.... I return
to, and I 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 Bimbashis and
their Yuzbachis, their Kaimakams and their Pashas, one and all, bag
and baggage, shall, I hope, clear out from the province they have
desolated and profaned. This thorough riddance, this most blessed
deliverance, is the only reparation we can make to the memory of
those heaps on heaps of dead; to the violated purity alike of
matron, of maiden, and of child; to the civilization which has
been affronted and shamed; to the laws of God, or, if you like,
of Allah; to the moral sense of mankind at large. There is not a
criminal in a European gaol, there is not a cannibal in the South
Sea Islands, whose indignation would not rise and overboil at the
recital of that which has been done, which has left behind all
the foul and all the fierce passions that produced it, and which
may 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.