LORI) DERBY'S DESPATCH.
Ts' the excitement of the great debate, there is-too much
reason to believe that Lord Derby's answer to Prince Gortscledroffs despatch will not receive all the attention it deserves. Yet it is not only the greatest and most important step yet taken by the Government, but it leas been pointedly defended by the Home Secretary, and quoted almost in its integrity in his speech in the Souse, at the very time when he was emphatically urging on the House the good constitutional doctrine that the Cabinet are a unit, and that you have no right to separate one seotion of the Cabinet from another. Yet we say with the deepest conviction that Lord Derby's despatch is the most fatal step yet taken by the Government in that policy of drifting into war, by which the most feeble-spirited Foreign Minister of the century seems likely to achieve
a somewhat sinister political immortality. The tone of Lord Derby's despatch, as the acute Press of our allies in Berlin and Paris at once detected, is the same which Lord Derby took on Tuesday fortnight in the House of Lords, when lie openly stated that in his opinion no concession which Turkey could have made would have been accepted by Russia, and implied as plainly as a Minister could imply that all the pacific professions of Russia were false, and Turkey perfectly excusable for regarding them as insincere. But that is not even the worst characteristic of this bad despatch. The worst feature in it is that the Minister who is always preaching the ephemeral character andthe fugitivesignificance of Treaties, who hardly ever opens his mouth upon an engagement of this country's except to minimise its meaning and prove that it binds us to nothing, who writes freely to his own servant at another Court that public' opinion in England will not allow us to fulfil our obliga- tions, even if we wish,--eounts it as the gravest of charges against Russia, and makes the charge in diplomatic language of unusual warmth and severity, that she is emancipating her- self without the consent of her co-signataries from one such engagement ; and this though the circumstances under which that course is taken are such, that in Lord Derby's own hands they would have constituted unanswerable proof that England was not only warranted, but in duty bound to interpret her en- gagement freely by the light of the new situation. Lord Derby's despatch is, indeed, of that offensive kind which is the be- ginning of wars ; and the offensiveness is pointed at a policy of Russia's infinitely truer to the spirit and meaning of her ,engagements than Lord Derby even alleges that it js necessary for England to be to the spirit of any unwelcome engagement which it becomes:his official duty to interpret. He is the greatest of all apologists for treaty-breaking, and yet it is he who casts the first stone at a Power who, to our minds, has frilKIled, and more than fnlfilled, the spirit, if not the letter, of the engagement which Lord Derby reproaches her with breaking. Lord Derby begins by rehearsing the famous Protocol which, as we all know, he signed—at least so he stated in his annex to it r....notfor the ostensible purpose for which it was intended, namely, to maintain the accord of the Powers in relation to the reforms needful to secure the Christian provinces of Turkey against the frightful abuses of which we have heard so much, but " solely iiithe interests of Europeaupeace." In other words, Lord Derby signed,-and.asserted that he signed, that Protocol in a non natural sense. And Lord_Derby, in this new despateh, frankly puts -the true explanation on his purpose in signing that Pro- tocol. It was not.really to procure the _concert of the Powers for effecting the changes -needful in Turkey, but " with a view of enabling.Ruesia the better _to abstain from isolated action,"--that is, not to ,confirm the ,unity of action as a whole, but to counteract the policy he leered in one single Power. -Neither, indeed, in the Protocol, nor, so far as his despatches Appear to inchoate his purpose, at any period whatever .since the failure of the ,Oonference, has Lord Derby-been- -thinking of the object for which the concert of -the .Powers was established, but rather of one particular danger-0 daeger chietly to the interests of England—which he Apprehended, from the action of one of those Powers. And he could not justify :Russia better than he has done in this cynical confession. The foreign policy of England has
been devoted ever since the failure of the Conference not to the cure of the frightful evils which brought about the crisis, but to the outmanoeuvring of the only Power which was really prepared to make great sacrifices to care those evils. That is the key to the whole situation,—at once the apology of Russia for what .she has done, and the condemnation of the miserable diplomacy by which Lord Derby has in vain attempted to prevent its being done. Lord Derby goes on to say that the assent of the Porte was not asked and not necessary to the Protocol, and that though Turkey " unfortunately thought fit to protest against " the Protocol as " implying an encroachment on .the Sultan's sovereignty and independence,"—in other words, thought St to reject contemptuously all that was suggested in the Protocol as the only conceivable conditions which would have justified disarmament,—yet as that declaration was accompanied by-mere promises for the future, there was no reason at all to despair of Turkey, or to declare war. Lord Derby further declares that the army collected on the Pruth " constituted a ;material obstacle to internal pacification and reform" in Turkey,—whereas Lord Salisbury had spoken of it as the one motive power which he had to work upon at the Conference,—aed the Foreign Secre- tary implies his belief that if no stringent measures at all had been taken, or if things had gone on just as things went on during the whole twenty years during which Turkey set Europe at defiance, Turkey would have been more likely to reform. Of course the Russian answer to that is quite com- plete. For twenty years that policy was tried, and not only tried, but at one or two great crises pressed home. The massacre in Syria, the revolt in Crete, were the occasions for pressing with the greatest energy upon the Porte the need of these internal reforms, and for pressing them, moreover, without the application of any of that "motive power" to reform, due to Russian armies on the Pruth, which Lord Derby now declares to have been motive-power in the other direction,—and it was all in vain. No one except a diplomatist who was quite blinded. to the real end in view by his selfish dislike of the means employed, would have ever dreamed that the way to get Turkey to act was to deliver her from all fear for the results of inaction,—though that is Lord Derby's position now.
But all those reproaches directed by Lord Derby against Russia for endeavouring, first of all, to obtain the real end in view, an end which Lord Derby has evidently never regarded as anything but the most secondary object of his efforts, are capped by his much more dangerous reproach to Russia,—a reproach couched in the language which is usually sup- posed to precede the language of the cannon,—for her contravention of the stipulation of the Treaty of Paris, by which Russia engaged to respect the independence and integrity of Turkey, and the stipulation of the'renewal-Trealy in 1871, which affirmed it to be "an essential principle of the law of nations that no Power can liberate itself from the en- gagements of a treaty nor modify-the stipulations thereof, unless with the consent of the contracting parties by means of an amicable arrangement." " In taking action against Turkey on his own part, and having recourse to arms without further consultation with his allies, the Emperor of Russia has sepa- rated himself from the European concert hitherto maintained, and has at the same time departed from the rule to which he himself has solemnly recorded his consent. It is impossible to foresee the consequences of such an act. Her Majesty's Government would willingly have refrained from malting any observation in regard to it, but as Prince Gortschakoff seems to assume in a declaration addressed to all the Governments of Europe that Russia is acting in the interest of Great Britain and that of the other Powers, they feel bound to state in a manner equally. formal and public that the decision of the Russian Government is not one which can have their concur- rence or approval." Thus ends this very grave official apology for the insulting obstinacy of Turkey, and this serious indictment against the public spirit of Russia. Russia is reproached for not further consulting her allies. As if she had not consulted'them ad nauseam, and been told in so many words by England that expostulation was her only remedy,— that the failure of one expostulation ought to be followed by the delivery of another ; and that that was the only remedial effort which British policy would sanction or support. What Power in its senses would go on consulting with such allies as these ? Lord Derby had declined, as he boasted in the House of Lords, to specify any time when expostulation would cease, and action begin. His Government even gloried in put- ting no term to expostulation,—in avowing that coercion, even as the ultima ratio, should never be sanctioned,—in repeating that
the Treaty of Paris was to be regarded as permanently binding and that the reform of an administration by coercion from without, was inadmissible. Now, what Government that meant something more than words would ask for "further consulta- tion " with such a Government as this ? We believe Russia to have exhausted and more than exhausted the resources of con- sultation, and that only when all hope of efficient action by the Powers was at an end, did she take the grave, but the only remaining step in her power.
And then, is it for such a one as Lord Derby to make it a subject of the gravest censure that Russia did not carry out to the letter the terms of a treaty engagement ? Is it the Great Minimiser who wants to make Russia think the words of a treaty, rather than its spirit, binding? Why, Lord Derby has introduced a new school in the interpretation of treaty engagements—a school so latitudinarian as to be startling. He is always telling us that they must be interpreted by the circumstances, that no human language can bind the future when the future turns out to contain emer- gencies never contemplated in the past,—that it is idle and wanting in common-sense to take a literal view of such engage- ments as these. On the very morrow of the Luxembourg Treaty, he told us that the Luxembourg Treaty meant nothing. At the opening of the present Session, he told us that the Paris Treaty of 1856 could not possibly be enforced, and that as for the Tripartite Treaty, the contingency of its being enforced was so small that it was not worth while even to consider it. It was he who told Sir Henry Elliot that even if we were called upon to fulfil our engagements, the spirit of the country would not permit us to fulfil them. And of course Lord Derby knows that all these conditions justify Russia in what she has done far more than they would ever have justified England. For *her, the circumstances are wholly changed since the agreement was given ; she has so far fulfilled the agreement, that she has 'tried negotiation in every form, and conceded attenuations of
her most reasonable proposals, for more than six months ; and lastly, if ever the excited spirit of a great people can justify its Government in breaking loose from obligations given under very different circumstances,—and it is Lord Derby who asserts that it can,—the excited spirit of the great Russian people has justified Russia in declaring that she can keep no longer to the literal obligation taken, now that she has so amply complied with its spirit.
This despatch of Lord Derby, then,—adopted, as it is in the most complete manner, by one of the most moderate and reason- able of the Ministers in the Cabinet,—fills us with indignation and alarm. The key-note is apology for Turkey. It menaces Russia. And it applies to Russia principles which Lord Derby repudiates for Great Britain. Could there have been a more fatal and menacing step in the direction of that war against which the whole conscience and intellect of the people of this country indignantly protest ?
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