=Source.=--_Hansard_, Third Series, vol. 231, col. 1,138, August
11, 1876 (Third Reading of the Appropriation Bill; Bulgarian
Atrocities raised).
MR. DISRAELI: ... Let me at once place before the House what I
believe is the true view of the circumstances which principally
interest us to-night, for, after the Rhodian eloquence to which
we have just listened, it is rather difficult for the House to
see clearly the point which is before it. The Queen's Ambassador
at Constantinople, who has at all times no easy duty to fulfil,
found himself at the end of April and in the first three weeks
of May in a position of extreme difficulty and danger. Affairs
in Constantinople never had assumed--at least in our time,
certainly--a more perilous character. It was difficult to ascertain
what was going to happen; but that something was going to happen,
and something of a character which might disturb the relations
of the Porte with all the Powers of Europe, and might even bring
about a revolution, the effect of which would be felt in distant
countries, there was no doubt.... In the present instance the
hon. and learned gentleman has made one assumption throughout his
speech--that there has been no communication whatever between the
Queen's Ambassador at Constantinople and Her Majesty's Ministers
upon the subject in discussion; that we never heard of those
affairs until the newspapers published accounts. The state of
the facts is the reverse. From the very first period that these
transactions occurred--from the very commencement--the Ambassador
was in constant communication with Her Majesty's Ministers.
(No, no.) Why, that may be proved by the papers on the table.
Throughout the months of May and June the Ambassador is constantly
referring to the atrocities occurring in Bulgaria and to the
repeated protests which he is making to the Turkish Government, and
informing Her Majesty's Government of interviews and conversations
with the Grand Vizier on that subject. The hon. and learned
gentleman says that when questions were addressed to me in this
House I was perfectly ignorant of what was taking place. But that
is exactly the question we have to settle to-night. I say that we
were not perfectly ignorant of what was taking place.... I agree
that even the slightest estimate of the horrors that occurred in
Bulgaria is quite enough to excite the indignation of this country
and of Parliament; but when you come to say that we were ignorant
of all that was occurring, and did nothing to counteract it,
because we said in answer to Questions that the information which
had reached us did not warrant the statements that were quoted
in the House--these are two entirely different questions. In the
newspaper which has been referred to the first account was, if I
recollect aright, that 30,000 or 32,000 persons had been slain;
that 10,000 were in prison; it was also stated that 1,000 girls had
been sold in the open market, that 40 girls had been burnt alive in
a stable; and cartloads of human heads paraded through the streets
of the cities of Bulgaria--these were some of, though not all, the
statements made; and I was perfectly justified in saying that the
information which had reached us did not justify these statements,
and therefore we believed them to be exaggerated.... Lord Derby
telegraphed to Sir Henry Elliot that it was very important that Her
Majesty's Government should be able to reply to the inquiries made
in Parliament respecting these and other statements, and directed
Sir Henry Elliot to inquire by telegram of the Consuls, and report
as soon as he could. All these statements are untrue. There never
were forty maidens locked up in a stable and burnt alive. That
was ascertained with great care by Mr. Baring, and I am surprised
that the right hon. gentleman the member for Bradford should still
speak of it as a statement in which he has confidence. I believe
it to be an entire fabrication. I believe also it is an entire
fabrication that 1,000 young women were sold in the market as
slaves. We have not received the slightest evidence of a single
sale, even in those journals on which the right hon. gentleman
the member for Bradford founded his erratic speech. I have been
attacked for saying that I did not believe it was possible to have
10,000 persons in prison in Bulgaria. So far as I can ascertain
from the papers, there never could have been more than 3,000. As
to the 10,000 cases of torture, what evidence is there of a single
case of torture? We know very well that there has been considerable
slaughter; that there must have been isolated and individual cases
of most atrocious rapine, and outrages of a most atrocious kind;
but still we have had communications with Sir Henry Elliot, and he
has always assumed from what he knew that these cases of individual
rapine and outrage were occurring. He knew that civil war there was
carried on under conditions of brutality which, unfortunately, are
not unprecedented in that country; and the question is whether the
information we had justified the extravagant statements made in
Parliament, which no one pretends to uphold and defend.... The hon.
and learned member (Sir W. Harcourt) has done full justice to the
Bulgarian atrocities. He has assumed as absolutely true everything
that criticism and more authentic information had modified, and
in some cases had proved not merely to be exaggeration but to
be absolute falsehoods. And then the hon. and learned gentleman
says--"By your policy you have depopulated a province." Well, sir,
certainly the slaughter of 12,000 individuals, whether Turks or
Bulgarians, whether they were innocent peasants or even brigands,
is a horrible event which no one can think of without emotion.
But when I remember that the population of Bulgaria is 3,700,000
persons, and that it is a very large country, is it not a most
extravagant abuse of rhetoric to say that the slaughter of so
considerable a number as 12,000 is the depopulation of a province?
Well, the hon. and learned gentleman said also that Her Majesty's
Government had incurred a responsibility which is not possessed by
any other country as regards our relations with and our influence
with the Turks. I say that we have incurred no responsibility which
is not shared with us by all the other contracting Powers to the
Treaty of Paris. I utterly disclaim any peculiar responsibility....
That an hon. and learned gentleman, once a member of a Government
and an ornament of that Government, should counsel as the solution
of all these difficulties that Her Majesty's Government should
enter into an immediate combination to expel the Turkish nation
from Eastern Europe does indeed surprise me. And because we are
not prepared to enter into a scheme so quixotic as that would be,
we are held up as having given our moral, not to say our material,
support to Turkey.... We are, it is true, the allies of Turkey;
so is Austria, so is Russia, so is France, and so are others. We
are also their partners in a tripartite Treaty, in which we not
only generally, but singly, guarantee with France and Austria
the territorial integrity of Turkey. And if these engagements,
renovated and repeated only four years ago by the wisdom of Europe,
are to be treated by the hon. and learned gentleman as idle wind
and chaff, and if we are to be told that our political duty is by
force to expel the Turks to the other side of the Bosphorus, then
politics cease to be an art, statesmanship becomes a mere mockery,
and instead of being a House of Commons faithful to its traditions,
and which is always influenced, I have ever thought, by sound
principles of policy, whoever may be its leaders, we had better at
once resolve ourselves into one of those revolutionary clubs which
settle all political and social questions with the same ease as the
hon. and learned member.
[NOTE.--This was Disraeli's last speech as a member of the House of
Commons. He was raised to the peerage on August 12, 1876.]