obscured. This confusion arose from an ambiguity in such terms as" Reform," a word which was often used to describe each of these two opposite policies. According to the anti-Turkish view, bad government was the root of the evil: what more plausible than to say "Reform will be the cure"?

Everybody was for an amelioration in the political state of the Provincials, and if "Reform " was understood in its wide sense to mean amelioration, every one was for "Reform." But a mere reform of the Turkish methods of government was another matter. Thus there was often a failure, through this unfortunate ambiguity, to distinguish between a policy of securing a better government to the Provincials by emancipating them from Turkish rule, and a policy of inducing or helping the Turks to mend their political institutions. The former was a "violet" policy; the latter was a "red" policy, and is connected with the notion of Turkey as being, in contrast to Russia, a tolerant, liberal and reforming Power which has been noticed as a factor of philoTurkism, and which is directly antithetical to the notion that the Turk is non-European. This "Reform," in the sense in which the word was identified with the "violet" policy, had no necessary connection with a constitution or representative institutions, or even with political liberty. It aimed at placing the Provincials under a Government which would govern after the European fashion; whether after the fashion of the most despotic of European governments, or the most liberal, was a question which might be postponed.

...

In Austria the Slav vainly beats against the bars of his cage, but he can still live as a man. In Turkey he cannot live as a man. . . . All these barbarous proceedings of a Tartar horde against a Christian people act of course differently on Russian nerves from political oppression in Austria.-General Rostistaff.1 "Reform," in the generic sense of "Improvement," was what the Emancipation policy was aiming at; but that policy was founded on the view that the evils from which the Provincials suffered, were inherent in their subjection to uncontrolled Turkish sovereignty. "The Turk cannot reform," was a cardinal dogma of anti-Turkism. What this meant was, that no reform of the Turkish administration in the narrower specific sense in which the word is opposed to revolution, no reform, in short, which would leave the administration of the Christian Provinces Turkish, would meet the necessities of the case.

1 "The Eastern Question," quoted in Fraser's Magazine, Oct. 1875.

N

On the other hand, from the Turkophil point of view, it was part and parcel of the policy of Support, to help the Turks to reform their administration. We may call reform in this sense Red, or Mahometan Reform.

We shall find the policy of Support, in its particular aspect of "helping the Turks to reform," recommended to the antiTurkish party as a policy embodying all that was essential in their demands after those demands had been reduced to practical and reasonable shape. Nay, the organs of the Red party professed themselves as surpassing their opponents in their zeal for “Reform" and "Good Government," inasmuch as they were for rejuvenating the whole Turkish Empire, whereas the proposals of the violet policy were directed exclusively to particular Christian Provinces. This very question whether remedial measures were to be applied to the whole of the Turkish Empire, or only to the specially affected portion of it, was perhaps the best touchstone to distinguish between the opposing policies.

A touchstone was sometimes required, for the apparent verbal agreement about the necessity of reform of the Turkish Government covered a wide divergence of policy when it came to the question whether there was to be any real authority set up over and above the Turkish Power. As was often said, the whole question turned upon guarantees. The anti-Turkish party were for curtailing the Turkish Power in those Provinces where its unrestrained exercise had proved itself incompatible with the security of the Christian inhabitants. The Turkophil party were for reform which would leave the Porte's sovereignty unimpaired throughout the whole Turkish Empire.

It is curious to notice that a favourite suggestion for carrying out this policy was to introduce a large English personnel into the Turkish administration.

The Turks committed a blunder in not taking English officers into their service. Had they done so the sympathy of England would have been with them, and victory would have been on their side. The Turkish soldiers are sober, patient, and very enduring. Many English officers will testify to this. When Mr. Gladstone talks about driving the Turks out of Europe, he does not know the Turks, and he does not know his own countrymen, who would never w such injustice to be done. English popular feeling has ortunately run in the wrong line. ("No, no.") The proper so would have been for England to say "Turkey must govern subjects, Mussulman as well as Christian, better. She shall sisted in doing so by England, who will facilitate the Sultan ing into his service Englishmen, accustomed to govern mixed

races in India. The revenue shall be collected, and the laws put in force by English Commissioners in the service of the Sublime Porte.-Col. Loyd Lindsay.1

If this device for transforming the Turkish Government by making it act through subordinates who should govern in European fashion could have been adopted, we should reach a point where " Red Reform" would, to a certain extent, approximate to Emancipation.

The Turkophils would not, it seems, have been unwilling that the Turkish Power should be to a large extent superseded by that of an English bureaucracy, provided it were done in this unacknowledged and unofficial manner, and especially if all foreign "influence" except English influence should be excluded from those regions. But this was not a matter to be settled between England and Turkey alone, and the policy of reforming Turkey by providing her with an exclusively English bureaucracy did not become a practical one.

Public Opinion, on the whole, succeeded in distinguishing singularly clearly the "Red Reform," incident to the policy of Support, from Emancipation, and hardly ever accepted the one for the other, at all events for long, however plausible the professions with which it was presented.

[If public opinion had an opportunity of expressing itself distinctly, it would insist very emphatically upon one condition as essential to any satisfactory settlement, viz.: that the carrying out of the reforms, whatever they are, shall in nowise depend for its fulfilment on the will or the energy of the Government at Constantinople. The finest scheme of government that philosophic statesman ever drafted would be of no use to the Christians in the Turkish provinces if it were left for its practical application in the hands of Turkey. The particular name is not of great importance. It is of the utmost importance to know by what influence and through whose hands the system is to be applied.] -D. N. Oct. 30th, 1876.

Speaking broadly, Public Opinion concentrated its attention on the broad policy of curtailing Turkish sovereignty as the one thing needful, and did not busy itself with ideas of the grade of complexity that may be called "solutions." It was sufficient that the Turkish Power should be so far excluded from interference with the lives and rights of the Provincials as to render impossible a repetition of such scenes as had occurred. The questions how it was to be excluded and what was to replace it were left for those to consider whose business it was.

1 At Reading, T. Oct. 9, 1876.

Some of the opponents of "Emancipation" were perse to distress their opponents by forcing this problem upon them and wunting them with allowing their minds to leave their task half dine. What the latter were clear about was that whatever nominal authority or sovereignty should be left to the Turks their power should be practically superseded.

This result might be attained either by annexing the provinces in question to some other Power though to this course there might be strong and overpowering objections on other grounds, or by giving them autonomy under some name, such as calling them Hospodarates, or, again, by the undertaking of some supervision of their administration on the part of the great Powers. Such "solutions," in various forms, and with various modifications, were put forward and discussed from time to time.1

The "solution" to which the anti-Turkish party inclined was best expressed by a phrase that was often adopted in the resolutions passed during the first agitation, namely, to give the disturbed provinces "practical independence." On the other hand, this section of Public Opinion was ready to acquiesce with Mr. Gladstone in accepting the solution proposed by Lord Stratford de Redcliffe of an international commission to guarantee the promised reforms, and to supervise and control the Turkish officials in carrying them out.

With regard to the policy of Support, it was sometimes insisted that netive measures might be taken for resisting Russia, quite apart from any support of Turkey. It was suggested that Gallipoli or Constantinople might be occupied by England, to guard her own interests, or those of Europe, against Russia. But unless taken as a stop towards a general settlement of the East, involving the extinction of the Turkish Power in Europe, a point of view which was hardly that of those by whom such measures were advocated, such a course was too closely allied with "Support" to be distinguished from it in considering the practical results.3

Now an interesting article, "Solution of the Eastern Question," T. Nov. 23, P4 Compare Mr. Grant Duff's "nostrum" (his "dream as he wrote), viz. to Joave the Sultan a titular dignity, and to place the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh at Constantinople to administer Turkey with a bureaucracy.-T. Sept. 11, 1876.

* No doubt Mr. Gladstone's opinion that such a solution would amount to emancipation had a great effect in determining the acquiescence of the "violet" section of opinion; but it would be a mistake to suppose that this section were ready to take any cue from Mr. Gladstone at this time. Compare the dissatisfaction excited by his reference to the integrity of Turkey until his meaning was made clear. Compare next $ Egypt.' See also Chap. XVII. as to momentary possibility of the distinction becoming practical,

§ 2. Egypt.

In addition to the four policies which have been distinguished, a fifth, which must also be recognised as the embodiment of some volume of opinion, emerged amid the conflicting counsels of the time. This was the policy which would add Egypt to the list of English possessions.

As an answer to the questions raised by the disturbances in the Christian provinces it was irrelevant. The suggestion of such a policy does not arise, as is the case with the other four, from a mere inspection of the list of notions.

But though the policy which for the sake of brevity we may call "Egypt" was not in itself a solution of the difficulty about the Christian populations of Turkey in Europe, it might perhaps render a solution easier, by reconciling England to a settlement which she might otherwise feel obliged to oppose as imperilling the security of her possessions.

Thus the policy "Egypt" has a certain connection with various factors of opinion of the most different complexions, and consequently scattered about in different parts of the scale. If, for instance, England, by common consent, could secure herself in this manner against the consequences she feared from the break-up of the Turkish Empire, the odious necessity of maintaining an intolerable yoke upon innocent peoples might no longer be imposed upon her. This was distinctly the feeling which flashed up at the time of the purchase of the Canal shares in 1875.

From another point of view the attack on Turkey by the Provincials and by Russia was regarded as the signal for international anarchy. If all respect for public law or the rights of other States was at an end, it would not do for England, in the impending shipwreck, to be behindhand in seizing for herself the plank of safety, or it may be, her share of the spoil.

Lastly, by others the virtual acquisition of Egypt by England was not regarded so much as taking part in a general partition of Turkey, as a means by which England and Turkey might be drawn into closer union, and a step in the policy of supporting Turkey.1 The actual carrying out of such a policy by Lord Beaconsfield's Government in the summer of 1878, substituting Cyprus for Egypt, helps us to realise the conception.

1 Compare the protest of the Spectator (June 9, 1877, post, chap. xvi. § 1) against the assumption that it could be anything but an act of hostility to Turkey, and note especially the remark that Great Britain could pay the tribute to no State on earth.