government. The people, of course, do not decide what they take no interest in, but they have all the responsibility of the decision which comes from some other quarter, and so they throw their ægis over those who do decide.-Spec. April 15th.1

In the upshot, we notice a strong tendency to believe that the Government was thoroughly discredited, at least with the middle and educated classes.

Mr. Bagehot contrasted Mr. Disraeli's performance as the leader of a majority with his former exploits. "So far from being first-rate he was ninth-rate. He seemed to resemble those guerilla commanders who, having achieved great exploits with scanty and ill-trained troops, nevertheless, are utterly at a loss and fail when they are placed at the head of a first-rate army."-Economist, Aug. 1876.2

We may fully concede that Disraeli never appeared at his best except as the leader of a minority. But he had yet to exhibit himself as a master of one branch of the art, namely, as the leader of a minority of Public Opinion.

§ 3. The Andrassy Note has not settled matters. Increasing recognition of the necessity of some intervention.

Meanwhile the accounts which kept coming from the East showed that the Andrassy Note, too, had failed to solve the question. The insurgent leaders met at Mostar directly after the acceptance of the Note by the Sultan and agreed to continue the insurrection. At the same time the attitude of Austria towards the insurgents appears to have undergone a change. Her neutrality ceased to be "benevolent." Doles of food and money which had been given to the Christian refugees who had fled across the frontier were withdrawn, and more stringent measures were taken to starve the insurrection by preventing supplies from crossing the frontier. This change appears to have been entirely to the satisfaction of the English Foreign Office, and Public Opinion appears to have acquiesced,3 perhaps because it wished to be rid of the affair on any terms-perhaps because it assumed the "concessions" of Turkey, of which much was made, ought to content the insurgents-not a little, probably, from the utter discrediting of Turkey and the belief, at this time general, that the insurgents

1 "The Dangerous Blanks in the Wishes of a Democracy."

2 "Mr. Disraeli as a member of the House of Commons." Reprinted in Bagehot's Biographical Essays.

3 See Fort. Rev. April, 1876, "Home and Foreign Affairs."

by their own strength could achieve their own freedom; but most of all from the fact that little attention was paid to the matter. The policy of Austria at this time finds its expression in the instructions given to Baron Rodich, the Governor of Dalmatia.

[He was] intrusted with the double task of preventing the further entrance of sympathisers into Herzegovina, and negotiating with the insurgents themselves for an abandonment of their enterprise.-T. March 9th.

But the insurrection refused either to be starved out or lulled by persuasion. Some conferences took place, but Baron Rodich was not able to persuade the insurgent leaders that the concessions. of the Porte and the proposed reforms were anything but illusory.1

Therefore he published an address in which he rebuked the insurgents for the attitude they assumed. This address excited great irritation in Russia. A war between Russia and Austria was considered within the probabilities of the immediate future. It was rumoured that the Czar, oppressed by work, anxiety and constitutional melancholy, intended to abdicate. The accession of the Czarovitch, it was believed, would immensely strengthen the war party in Russia, where the semi-inspired press was beginning to declare that Turkey had failed in her promises, and that Russia would throw no obstacle in the way of the Provincials working out their own deliverance.

Meanwhile the insurgents gained some not unimportant successes in the field. Servia raised a forced loan and prepared to call out its militia. Roumania too began to arm.

1 The demands of the insurgents when they met Baron Rodich appear to have been as follows:

1. That one-third of the land should be made over to the Christian population. 2. The concentration of Turkish troops into certain specified garrisons, and the withdrawal of them from the rest of the provinces.

3. The resettlement of the refugees in their homes, the rebuilding of houses, churches, &c., with food for a year and freedom from taxation for three years.

4. The retention of arms by the Christian population until the Mussulmans should also be disarmed, and until the reforms promised were in process of execution. 5. The full association of the Christian leaders with the functionaries of the Government in the execution of the promised reforms.

6. That the funds devoted to the resettlement should be placed in the hands of a European Commission.

These conditions, save that the first is omitted, correspond pretty nearly with those published as the insurgents' demands, in the Times of April 8th (see Paris telegrain).

The Duke of Argyll points out that these terms (with the omission of the first) formed the basis of the Berlin Memorandum. See his book, vol. i. p. 169 and following, for an account of these negotiations. It was sometimes said at this time

that the insurgents demanded autonomy (Spec. Mar. 11th and April 29th), but this statement seems to be hardly justified by the facts.

It is pretty clear that during April some amount of attention was being excited again by the insurrection. People were beginning to recognise not merely that the Andrassy Note had failed, but that its failure must be the prelude to some further action.

[It is seldom that events follow one another in so strictly logical a manner as they have done since the presentation of the Andrassy Note.] The Porte was told that it must mend its ways, and, at the same time, that no matter how solemnly it might promise to mend them it would not be believed. Thereupon the Porte makes the required promises, and calls on the insurgents to lay down their arms. The insurgents reply that their estimate of the Porte's assurance is exactly that formed by the three Northern Powers; and that they decline to lay down their arms without some guarantee that they will really get what the Sultan has undertaken to give them. [Thereupon Austria] rates them. soundly. [Russia ostentatiously abstains from seconding this act of Austria.] Matters have returned to the position they were in before the presentation of the Andrassy Note, except so far as the contents of that Note make it more difficult for the authors of it to allow events to go their own way. The effect, therefore, of the Andrassy Note has simply been to aggravate the symptoms which it was professedly designed to mitigate. Intervention of some sort therefore it seems as though there must be. . . A guarantee has to be provided which shall not only insure the execution of the reforms which the Porte has promised to concede to the revolted subjects, but insure it in such a way as shall content the conscience of the Russian people, and at the same time convince the Porte that its position will not be made permanently worse by assenting to it. Such a guarantee must be a military occupation of some kind, because nothing short of this can control Mahometans and Christians with an equally firm hand, or satisfy the insurgents and those who sympathise with them that they will not suffer by laying down their arms. Yet it must be such a military occupation as shall not appear to the Porte in the light of a thinly disguised invasion, or justify the fear that when the occupation is at an end it will turn out to have been only another name for dismemberment.-P. M. G. April 17th.

[The vague uneasy fear that something was going to happen, which prevailed in Eastern Europe last week was the natural consequence of the apparent failure of the prudent efforts made to smooth down the trouble in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Andrassy Note was a memorial of good intentions. It has not succeeded. We are so far removed from the agitation that we may think and speak of it without panic. Perhaps the Powers immediately surrounding will be content to "establish a cordon " and let the combatants settle their difficulties among themselves.

The Czar is believed to support this policy. We ought to be able to use our purely neutral position to remove any difference which might arise between Austria and Russia by recommending counsels in which both could agree.]-T. April 18th.

[Owing to Turkish bankruptcy the Christian populations have a better chance of delivering themselves than they ever had before. What is wanted is that the Powers should hold their hands and allow the Turk and the subject Christians to fight it out.] The Turk beaten, as beaten in the long run he would be, if those he has ground down so long are worthy to live at all, [we might get a solution satisfactory to Western Europe, which wants not Austria or Russia on the Bosphorus, but a new Southern Power, peacefully inclined and not aggressively strong.] If our statesmen were to grasp firmly what would be the best event for Europe from this struggle, and to take the side of the subject races as steadfastly as England ever took the side of the Turks, and take it in time, Turkey might be gradually dismembered, and yet Russia kept from exclusive domination on the Bosphorus.

It would be a policy worthy of the traditions of England .. but we dare not hope to see it in these days. While the spirit of indifference is supreme at home, and suffers our destinies to be in the hands of a man who feels nothing in his heart of the greatness, the ambition, or the ancient renown of the realm, all that we can expect is histrionic make-believes that flutter Europe for a moment with excitement soon changing into the laughter of contempt. Yet as we write an opportunity appears to offer for an effective intervention in the interest of peace and the oppressed. . . . [The only satisfaction in contemplating England supine and without a policy is the notion that Russia on the Bosphorus would break up.]-Fraser, May, 1876.

At this point matters were precipitated by an event in Turkey, the first of a series that burst like so many thunderclaps upon the still half-drowsy ear of Europe. This was the massacre of the French and German Consuls at Salonica on May 6th. They fell in a religious riot a riot which seemed to point to a growing restlessness of the Mahometan spirit under the apathy of the Sultan.

This event showed clearly enough the explosive condition of Turkey. But we find that a certain divergency manifested itself as to the inferences to be drawn from it. On the one hand it seemed to point to the necessity of interference. On the other hand we find coming into prominence as an argument against interference, the danger of arousing Mahometan fanaticism. This is a view much dwelt on by the Pall Mall Gazette about this time. The danger which was contemplated appears to have been twofold. First, there was the danger of local outbreaks and massacres

of Christians; next, there was the danger of a Jehad, the fear that a united Islam, heated to madness by religious zeal, might turn upon its foes and bring about an internecine religious war on a tremendous scale. It was the first of these fears for which there now appeared to be most ground, and it was this which was most present to people's minds. It is impossible to avoid comparing it with the occurrences, not known in England as yet, that were actually taking place at the time.1

[So far as we can judge the outbreak has no political significance. For a long time there has been a talk of deeds of violence on the part of the Turkish population. The first thought is that this is the first flash of the coming storm. There is reason to believe that the Turks are restless under the indignities to which their race and creed are exposed, and under the tutelage to which foreign Governments condemn them. It is not impossible that before the present political troubles end, as they only can end, in the weakening of the Sultan's hold on the provinces now in revolt, we may witness some outbreaks of Moslem fanaticism. But there is no proof that the fanatical fury of the crowd at Salonica was inspired by recent political events. It is a sort of thing that might have happened at any time.-7. May 9th.

The Times shortly, however, assumes a different tone; it speaks of "this momentous crisis in the affairs of Eastern Europe," of the fears of a general assault on the Christian population. "Travellers we are told are leaving en masse-resident Europeans are sending away their families. Such an event (as a massacre of Christians) would be the death-blow of the Turkish power. It would indeed be the most effectual solution of the Eastern Question. All lingering regard for the Sultan's independence, all hesitations caused by divergence of views and possibly by mutual distrust would vanish at once before the absolute necessity of putting an end at once to the crimes of a barbarian horde. We know how quickly an occupation by European troops followed the massacre in Syria. An occupation would ensue as quickly in the present case, and who could say whether it would ever come to an end? To such an operation on the part of Europe the Porte could offer no serious resistance. The days are past for a Jehad.— (May 13th.)

The immediate result of the Salonica occurrence was that it became necessary in the view of the European Powers to take steps in order to provide for the safety of European sojourners in Turkish ports, and accordingly a war-ship or two from each naval Power was sent to the scene of the disturbance. That this had been done was known almost simultaneously with the news of the

1 The massacre of Batak took place on May 9th.