=Source.=--_Hansard_, Third Series, vol. 242, col. 344 (House of
Lords: Debate on the Protocols of Berlin, August, 1878).
The Earl of Rosebery rose to call attention to a memorandum
purporting to have been signed by the Marquis of Salisbury and
Count Schouvaloff on May 30, 1878, and to ask if it was the
intention of the Government to lay it on the table of the House....
The course the Government had pursued with respect to their policy
was, he would venture to say, one of obscurity enlivened with
sarcasm. In the whole history of the negotiations there were five
cardinal points--points which became salient to everyone who had
studied the history of these transactions. First, there was the San
Stefano treaty; the second was the circular of the 1st of April;
the third, the alleged secret agreement of May 30th; the fourth,
the secret convention of June 4th with Turkey; and the fifth was
the treaty signed at Berlin on the 30th of July. As to the secret
agreement between Russia and England, it would be well to recall
how they came to have any cognizance of it at all. The substance
of it appeared in the _Globe_ within, he thought, three or four
days after it was signed, and it was on the 14th of June, he
thought, that the entire text was given in the columns of the same
journal.... They had all heard that the agreement was not to be
laid on the table, because there were documents in connection with
it which it would be necessary to present at the same time; but
other Powers would not allow us to produce them. What he gathered
from all this was that, if it had not been for the ill-advised
conduct of a very subordinate clerk in the Foreign Office, who was
entrusted with the copying of the agreement at the rate of 10d. an
hour, the English public would not at this moment have the faintest
conception of such an agreement, and the keystone of the whole
purpose of the Government would be wrapped in obscurity. This was
alarming in itself, because, if these subterranean methods were
employed as a rule, they would give the public some little dismay
in regard to the course of further negotiations.... Having signed
this agreement, and having signed another secret agreement within
two or three days with Turkey, Her Majesty's Plenipotentiaries
proceeded, fortified with them, to the Congress. Now came the most
extraordinary point in all the history of these negotiations, so
far as they knew it. Eight days after the signature, or alleged
signature, of this agreement, in which, if the House would
remember, we consented to the abandonment of Batoum and other
Russian conquests in Armenia, the Foreign Secretary addressed a
despatch to our Resident Plenipotentiary in Berlin, in which he
urged him to use his exertions to the utmost on behalf of Batoum.
The words were so remarkable that he might be pardoned for quoting
them to their lordships. On the 8th of June the noble Marquis wrote
to Lord Odo Russell: "There is no ground for believing that Russia
will willingly give way in respect to Batoum, Kars, or Ardahan; and
it is possible that the arguments of England urged in Congress will
receive little assistance from other Powers, and will not be able
to shake her resolution in this respect." Well, that was not likely
under the circumstances. The noble Marquis continued in this letter
of June 8th: "You will not on that account abstain from earnestly
pressing upon them and upon Russia the justice of abstaining from
annexations which are unconnected with the professed object of the
war, and profoundly distasteful to the populations concerned, and
the expediency, in regard to the future tranquillizing of Asia, of
forbearing to shake so perilously the position of the Government
of Turkey...." Now, the great point with regard to this was, was
Lord Odo Russell, when he received that communication, cognizant
of the agreement which had been signed on the 30th of May? Because
what they wanted to know was this, was Lord Odo Russell one of a
company, or was he a simple actor put up to recite the arguments
of Batoum, with a prompter by to keep him to his part?... Then,
on the same day, Mr. Secretary Cross addressed a despatch to
the Plenipotentiaries of Her Majesty, urging them to make great
exertion on behalf of Greece. He should say that the position of
a Plenipotentiary who entered the Congress to struggle on behalf
of Batoum, Kars, Ardahan, and Greece must have been a somewhat
melancholy one in the retrospect; because, when the questions
came up, the Turkish positions were abandoned, and Greece was
ignored.... He did not pretend that secret understandings were
unknown to us, but he believed this was the first time we had
called a European Congress with the view of discussing great
treaties, and standing forth on behalf of public law, we ourselves
having, at the same time, bound ourselves in private to consent to
those stipulations which we had denounced, and which we continued
to denounce.