these transactions, characterised as they had been by ferocity, perfidy, and mendacity from first to last, was this-he hoped to God that at last we had done with the Turks! (Cheers.) If we could not control their proceedings-and we had shown in these transactions that we could not-then we had no right to prop up their power. (Cheers.) In the name of humanity and civilisation we should allow them to sink beneath the crushing weight of their own wickedness. (Cheers.). . . . They had a right to ask the Government in the last days of an expiring Session, Was not the time at last come to "do justice and to work mercy"? (Cheers.). . . . He had hoped, and he still hoped, that England would take a proud and worthy place in the vindication of this great cause. In common with other members of that House he had read with pleasure the despatch of Lord Derby of the 9th of August.-H. of C. Aug. 11th.

There are never many members of the House of Commons in London on the evening of the 11th of August, and the attendance at Westminster last night was not large, but the gathering was fairly representative of all shades of opinion, and the discussion was, perhaps, the most important that had been raised this Session. A most marvellous agreement in reference to Turkey and our relations with Turkey was revealed; opinions which a few weeks ago were hesitating and uncertain had become sharply defined and firmly held; and the predominant judgment of the Legislature, no longer embarrassed by doubt, was clear and strong. It is evident that the atrocities committed in Bulgaria have to use Lord Derby's expression-proved more disastrous to the Turks than the loss of a battle. They have deprived the Porte of the good opinion of England. They have forced the reflection on many minds unwilling to receive it that we cannot assume the responsibility of upholding a system of which such deeds are the natural fruits. If the maintenance of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire means a grant of licensed impunity to Bashi-Bazouks in the Provinces of the Empire, our efforts cannot be directed to uphold it. With the exception of the official speakers, the Prime Minister and Mr. Bourke,-this was what was said by every member who took part in last night's debate, and Mr. Bourke was silent on the subject of policy. Mr. Forsyth, speaking from the Ministerial side, outdid Mr. Evelyn Ashley in the plainness with which he insisted upon the necessity of giving the Northern Provinces of Turkey the practical security of selfgovernment. Sir Henry Drummond Wolff was no less emphatic; and the weighty declarations of Mr. Forster, spoken with a deliberation which made them still more weighty, were received with manifestations of hearty approval in all quarters of the House. Later in the evening Sir William Harcourt was ardent in his renunciation of the Turk and all his works. What may be regarded as the last sitting of the Session has thus been

1 Ante, p. 342

devoted to a warning to the Porte of unusual significance; and the Ambassador who has so long and so ably represented the Sultan among us will have to report to the Council of Ministers at Constantinople that any approach to a repetition in Servia of what was perpetrated in Bulgaria will be fatal to the Ottoman Empire. It will involve an armed intervention which we shall approve and support.-T. Aug. 12th.

This debate, raised by Mr. Evelyn Ashley on the eve of the Prorogation, is remarkable as being the last occasion on which Mr. Disraeli spoke in the House of Commons. His last words there were an assertion of the duty of the Government before all things to maintain the Empire of England.

After taunting Sir William Harcourt with his Rhodian 1 eloquence, the Premier went on :—

[That Sir William Harcourt] 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. (Cheers.) And because we are not prepared to enter into a scheme so Quixotic as that would be, we are held up by the hon. and learned gentleman and the right hon. gentleman the member for Bradford as having given our moral, not to say our material assistance to the Turkish people and the Turkish Government. We are always treated as if we had some peculiar alliance with the Turkish Government, as if we were their peculiar friends, and even as if we were expected to uphold them in any enormity they might commit. I want to know what evidence there is of this. We are the allies of the Sultan of Turkey; so is Russia, so is Austria, so is France, and so are others. We are also partners in a tripartite treaty in which we not only generally, but singly, guarantee with France and Austria the territorial integrity of Turkey. These are our engagements, and they are the engagements that we endeavour to fulfil. 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. . . . We refused to join in the Berlin Note because we were convinced that if we made that step we should very soon see an Imperial interference in that country, and we were not of opinion that by a system of material guarantees the great question which the hon. and learned gentleman has adverted to would be solved either for the general welfare of the world or for the interests of England, which, after

1 Reported in Times, 'After the Herodian eloquence to which we have just listened (a laugh) it is rather difficult for the House to see clearly the point which is before it."

all, must be our sovereign care. I am sure that as long as England is ruled by English Parties who understand the principles on which our Empire is founded, and who are resolved to maintain that Empire, our influence in that part of the world can never be looked upon with indifference. If it happen that the influences which control the greater portion of those fair lands are found to be incompetent for their purpose, neither England nor any of the Great Powers will shrink from fulfilling the high political and moral duty which will then devolve upon them. (Cheers.) But, Sir, we must not jump at conclusions so quickly as is now the fashion. There is nothing to justify us in talking in such a vein of Turkey at this moment. It is a state of affairs which requires the most vigilant examination and the most careful management. But those who suppose that England ever would uphold, or at this moment particularly is upholding, Turkey from blind superstition and from a want of sympathy with the highest aspirations of humanity, are deceived. (Cheers.) What our duty at this critical moment is, is to maintain the Empire of England; nor will we ever consent to any step-although it may obtain comparative quiet and a false prosperity-which could hazard the existence of that Empire. (Loud cheers.)-Mr. Disraeli, H. of C. Aug. 11th.

§ 5. Mr. Disraeli becomes Unpopular.

Public Opinion was becoming very critical of the tone in which public men alluded to the atrocities; and the manner in which the Premier had treated the subject, his scepticism, and what was regarded as the levity exhibited in his replies, especially in that of July 10th, fixed on him a reputation of cynically disregarding the sufferings of the Provincials. And from this reputation he could never shake himself free.

It must have been hard to stick to the conventional forms of Parliamentary courtesy, to speak of the right honourable gentleman," and the like, after such a speech as that of Mr. Disraeli. That any man in the Parliament of England could have found matter for brutal mockery in the past and present deeds of his barbarian friends might make one blush for one's country if one did not remember that he who uttered those words, though Prime Minister of England, is not an Englishman, and has never yet learned to understand the feelings of Englishmen. That Englishmen were found to laugh at his words was perhaps simply because the reference to the "historical people was a little over the heads of his party. To have looked on at the flaying of Bragadino, to have gazed on the martyrs writhing on their stakes before the walls of Mesolongi, would seemingly have been matter of choice merriment for Mr. Disraeli. I do not think so ill

of the great mass of those whom a strange fate binds to cheer and laugh at his sayings as to think that they would have cheered and laughed at his saying if they had only known its meaning.Mr. Freeman in D. N. July 13th.

Moreover, Mr. Disraeli had come to be regarded as the apologist of Turkey, and the advocate of an ultra "red" policy, in a more special manner than other members of the Cabinet, and it began to be noted that a great change was coming over the general appreciation in which he was held.

Mr. Disraeli has done himself more harm in the House of Commons by his jaunty replies in reference to the questions put to him as to the atrocities in Bulgaria, than by any escapade of his Premiership.-Spec. July 15th.

The

The bitterness with which Mr. Freeman writes of him, the roughness, almost brutality with which Mr. Chamberlain recently attacked him, the disposition shown by the press to doubt him, all these recent incidents mark a change in the general attitude towards Mr. Disraeli which is worth a moment's examination. He is losing rapidly a popularity with his enemies, which both in its degree and kind was quite exceptional in English politics. There is a tone of suspicion and even of active dislike in all comments on Mr. Disraeli which is novel, and which exercises an ever-increasing effect on his position. The old toleration has become slightly contemptuous, the old distrust has deepened to hostility, the old smile at his vagaries has broadened into a sneer. country papers, always first to indicate a change, have begun to doubt if Englishmen ought not to be ashamed of such a ruler, to speak of the Premier, "whom it pleases Providence to set over us"; and to warn their readers very carefully that on foreign politics more especially it behoves them to be very watchful of Mr. Disraeli's personal idiosyncrasies and desires. . .. Mr. Disraeli's indifference to facts has in the novelist and the orator had a charm, but the public now, when people are being tortured for insurrection, do not like to hear, as an extenuation of such deeds, that Turks have usually taken a shorter method with insurgents. If an actor were suddenly understood to be not acting but behaving, many an amused cheer would be changed into an angry hiss, and that is precisely the change which is passing over Mr. Disraeli's position. His words have become facts, and the tendency to admire their skill without reference to their importance has consequently passed.-Spec. July 22nd.

We wish we could bring home to our readers the serious, even the disastrous consequences which will arise to the British Government from the attitude which Mr. Disraeli, and Mr. Disraeli alone, even in his own Government, has assumed about the Turkish atrocities.-Spec. Aug. 5th.

Perhaps after reading [the Batak letter in the Daily News] Lord Beaconsfield may lose his levity, and Lord Derby his passion for status quo.-Mr. Auberon Herbert in D. N. Aug. 28th.

The excessive imprudence of the tone and language of the Prime Minister during the last weeks of the recent Session has seriously aggravated the difficulties of his Administration. When he should have declared his abhorrence of Turkish cruelties, and his profound grief and anxiety that English Statesmen should ever have to weigh their existence against the still more terrible calamity of a general war, he made a mock of Bulgarian sufferings, and sought to raise a laugh at the more primitive and speedy methods of despatch used by an historical people to get rid of its enemies. That misplaced frivolity has cost the Government dear. The indignation of the people against the indulgence of Turkish sensuality and cruelty has been made more intense because the leader and spokesman of the nation led Europe to suppose that we cared nothing about such excesses. All that Lord Derby did and Mr. Bourke can do cannot dispel this feeling. The Ministry have a double odium to overcome, and their tardy efforts to put themselves right before the country must be pushed more energetically and more openly if they would recover the position they have too evidently lost.-T. Sept. 6th.

The next day the following letter from the Premier himselt appeared:

There are some occasions on which a misstatement, frequently repeated, ought to be noticed. There is such a case, I think, in your leading article of yesterday.

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I never used such an expression as an historical people," to which it is difficult to annex a precise idea, or ever sought to raise a laugh at the more primitive and speedy methods used by such peoples to get rid of their enemies.

My statement was in answer to one that ten thousand Bulgarians had been submitted to torture. I was perfectly grave when I replied that I was sceptical as to such occurrences, as massacre, not torture, was the custom of an Oriental (not historical) people. Unhappily, it has turned out that I was correct.

Certainly, on the occasion in question there was, to my surprise, a laugh, but it came, as I was subsequently told, only from one member. I hope the misplaced laughter of another is no proof of the levity of your obedient servant.-Beaconsfield in T. Sept. 7th. We catch a faint suggestion of an analogy between the conduct of the Turkish Government and the attitude of Mr. Disraeli, considered merely as matters of prudence, or of tactics.

The Saturday Review says that the outrages which the Turkish Government has permitted in Bulgaria may perhaps turn out to be the gravest mistake it has ever made. It is in many ways un fortunate that the official reserve which may have been incumbent