LORD STRATFORD DE REDOLIFFE.* WHATEVER our judgment on Lord Stratford's

policy and its results, no one can gainsay the massive honesty and unswerving will of the Ambassador who for so many years stayed the course of Eastern events by his personal character. Among the cor- rupt Pachas, the ravening Ministers of other Powers eager for prey, and all the wrack of the Turkish Empire, he was as a star shining through the scud, and giving a steady, though often inconvenient light. Whether his extraordinary influence were for ultimate good to the Turks or not, the secret of it is worth noting ; and it is partly revealed in these essays, written within the last six years, when he had long left the arena of his life's contention. There are few more valuable facts in the history of the first half of our century than Sir Stratford Canning's power at Constantinople, that meeting- point where eastern and western, northern and southern races, struggle for supremacy. Dean Stanley's touching memoir which prefaces the volume we are reviewing, in a few words sketches the typical Englishman, whose very defects as well as his merits bridged for a time the widening gulph between Islam and modern Europe. Because of the part ho played in resisting northern encroachment, and because of a

• The Eastern Question. By the late Viscount Stratford de Rodeliffe, G •C.R., $0. London Murray. 1881.

certain honourable loyalty to the Sovereign at whose Court he was accredited, Lord Stratford has been called philo-Turk ; yet of all men of our time he was, perhaps, the most emphatically English. There are points, more numerous than we readily think, where our prejudices and traditions approach those of the Turkish race, and Lord Stratford may well have been less antagonistic to it than were other Europeans not of loosertfaith or morals. But, again, he was less tolerant than other Europeans

of the inertness, the fatalism, and the manifold corruption of the empire which, because he was an Englishman, he worked so hard to sustain. Writing of a book entitled Tine Eastern Question, and of the man who held the Eastern hydra so many years at his feet, it seems a paradox to say that Lord Stratford's character should be looked at apart from the events that occurred during his tenure of office, because we cannot but judge them by modern standards, and by the results that followed when his grasp slackened iu Eastern affairs. He has been so lately present with us by his frequent contributions to periodical literature, that it requires an effort to think of him as he was, the mate of Wellington and George Canning, the disciple of Pitt in method, if not in opinions. He belongs to their epoch and their caste, and though we are not of those who think that England is declining, or has come to an end. of her great men, still the break-up of the European comity at the end of the last century brought men of firm temper and strong will and far-sight to the front of the time; while, for various reasons, Englishmen were more English in their qualities and the defects of those qualities than they had been since the days of the Armada.

From his boyhood, Lord. Stratford's career took him out of the region of home politics, and for the years of his greatest vigour he was set to do battle-with forces of which we have but small practical knowledge. We cannot, therefore, easily gauge his work, but we can appreciate his faith in the power of justice, truth, and honesty over the minds of men. His con- fidence in the necessary triumph of high principle was the main secret of his influence, backed as it was by fierce scorn of meaner methods than his own, and of the weaker men who resorted to them. In his first volume of the IiIrCrIthM, of the Crimea, Mr. Kinglake records the fact that ." Lord Stratford. was uncon- scious of exercising the ascendancy he did, and imagining that men gave way to him because he was iu the right, he never came to understand the awe which he inspired." He was strong in his rectitude, not in any way self-opinionated, but, as the volume jest published abundantly proves, personally confident, we think much too confident, of the justice and the truth of the cause of which he was an instrument. Those who were honoured by Lord Stratford's friendship can recall the unconscious humility with which he would ques- tion persons of inferior knowledge to his own and listen to their opinions, until perhaps some moral weakness or some doubt, such as those which swarm among us, was spoken of, and then the blue eyes gathered shade under the indignant brow, and the thin lips tightened, and straightway doubt and paltering with the truths in which he believed, vanished from before him, as an evil fume and intellectual folly. The line from Cymbelinc in praise of "reverence, that angel of the world," was often in his thoughts; and iu truth reverence ennobled his estimate of men and things, so that when be talked of the men of his youth, the listener could not but feel that there were giants in those days, so nobly did the survivor of their band describe them and their time. The poetry of the last century, with which his great and accurate memory was stored, gained. in dignity as he recited it with scholarly respect for its special characteristics ; and if here and there a line of fierce invective were emphasised with some faint afterglow of his Constantiuopolitau fire, the listener could not but feel that that fire had been kindled and fed by what he, at least, held to be righteous wrath, and not by merely irascible egotism, however trying it might have been at times to his staff or his colleagues.

These reminiscences would seem to have little to do with Lord Stratford's republished essays, yet a just estimate of his personal character must enter into any true history of Turkish affairs during the past sixty years; and a merely literary criticism of his writings, or the examination of them from a modern politician's stand-point, would not elicit from them the instruction which, remembering the manner of man who wrote them, they can give. The pen in Lord Stratford's hand was never a powerful weapon. It was not by the pen that he baffled the Czar Nicholas, and controlled the diplomacy of Europe at the Porte, though few men revised their writings more carefully, or aimed at a more perfect correctness of plain speech. Know- ing how exactly he meant every word he wrote, and how little he was either assisted or led into error by imagination, these essays and memorandums of his later years have the value of genuine remains, from which we can partially reconstruct the man, and in some degree understand the elements of his unparalleled. influence, even while we regret the waste of it in controlling Eastern intrigue. Thus a paragraph written by Lord Stratford in February, 1880, strikes the key-note of his life and action, in his attempt to maintain Turkey as an English bulwark in the East :-

" When I was Ambassador at Constantinople, I never recommended reform as a cure of the wasting evils. My language on that subject was sorupulously limited to what appeared to ho the reality of the case. It may be expressed in the following terms. You are on the road to ruin, owing, in part, to your principles of administration, in part to the abuse of them. In advising reform, I do not pretend to offer a perfect remedy. Of this only 1 feel at all confident. The adoption of judicious reform will make your future course more useful to yourselves, and more satisfactory to your allies. It is calculated to retard the evil hour, and to soften its asperity when it comes ; nor does it by any means exclude the possibility of final recovery."

Had he possessed a more elastic faith in the vitality of races and laws and creeds other than English, be might have used his power in revivifying those vassal States which, relieved from the oppressions of Pashas, might have better buttressed both the Turkish empire and British interests in it ; but Lord Stratford was no cosmopolitan, and had little "enthusiasm of humanity." Ho had rather the old Roman reverence for law, for treaties, and for the commonwealth, of which he was the in- domitable servant. He fought what he evidently believed to be a losing game as regarded the ultimate existence of the Turkish Empire, but be fought in behalf of England, of which, at the end of his long experieuce, he writes :- " We move as a nation on tho lino marked out by Providence, and happy is our lot in other matters also, when we take for our guide the rule of action which an earnest search into the laws of Almighty

Wisdom can hardly fail to suggest To overcome the worst difficulties for a groat and beneficent purpose is true glory, and well might Englishmen bo proud of their Government, if the attempt were made in good-faith, and by suitable means, though without any adequate success."

It is difficult not to believe that though the presence of this strong man, armed with principles such as these, only

delayed,—perhaps, to some extent, unfortunately delayed,—

the disintegration of Turkey, yet the very assertion of them served, and will serve, English reputation, and gave the Eng-

lish interests a firmer basis than that of meanly selfish concern in the ownership of the Dardanelles, *Idle the peace which Lord Stratford secured for some twenty years, has ripened many questions towards sounder solutions.

No doubt Lord Stratford over-estimated, in an age of ever in- creasing movement, the value of established facts, when compared with the most tempting ideals, but he also knew how to use existing conditions to the best account. He could work with whatever tools came to his hand, and drove his relentless plane over the flaws and knots of the toughest subject, by mingled skill and strength. No English interests were too minute for his care, nor did the greatest responsibilities for a moment daunt him. He belongs to, it may be, a race extinguished by tele- graphs, in his utter fearlessness of consequences, once he was assured that his cause was good. He was at ease in great decisions and courted the difficulties of a crisis, conscious of his power to " direct the storm." His appreciation of the events which he could influence was truer than his forecast of the future, because lie never sufficiently allowed for his own power of con- trol. Yet in this volume is recorded his accurate prophecy of the Turkish bankruptcy, which, he conceived, should have been averted, and his forecast of Bulgarian and Roumanian prosperity, a forecast which the latest information singularly corroborates, Bulgaria having just now a surplus of £800,000, and in one par- ticular tax showing a return of fifty per cent. in excess of the cal- culated amount. Lord Stratford's projects for reform, simple and practical as they are, arc vitiated by his unimaginative belief that a sufficient number of men like himself could be found to form the Secret Commission which he proposes for the cure of Turkish evils. " Something is wanted between a tool of arbitrary power and an overpowering democracy," be writes, and he recommends the creation of a " Supreme Council at the seat of Government. Improved by free elections from the provincial councils open to all classes, and itself so constituted as to check without ex- cluding the Sultan's interference, it might be found to work

with sufficient effect for present purposes, and in due season be capable of expanding into a less restrained exercise of adminis- trative power." To which we can only reply that it would need a Stratford Canning to secure practical action as a result of such an assembly's deliberations.

Two pages of the volume before us, on the claims of Greece, have special interest just now. Lord Stratford's latest pub- lished words, as his first diplomatic mission, concerned the Hellenos. We quote what he says, though it appears to us to indicate a very inadequate conception of the authority duo to the European. Powers wheu engaged in extracting from Turkey the conditions of a general pacification :-

" I want to show, on the strength of responsible documents, why think the Christian Powers wrong in forcing on the Sultan his assent to their territorial demands on behalf of Greece. My present im-. pression is that the Greeks have uo ground of claim. The pretext of their not attacking Turkey when threatened or invaded by Russia has no value, as the Porte did no wrong to Greece at those periods. I believe, moreover, that neither England alone, nor the Christian Powers united, ever promised more than a con- sideration of the Greek pretensions at the proper time ; and when the time came, that they only agreed to advise a rectification of frontier. Finally, that to compel Turkey by force of arms to accept, the present demand would be not only unjust, but highly impolitic, and contrary to those European interests which keep the Porte at Constantinople What is now required of the Sultan is a largo cession of territory, which, far from producing a permanent settlement, would only encourage the Greeks in their desire for stilt further extension If the Powers of Christendom went so- far as to enforce assent to their demands by war, they would commit an act of injustice not only dishonourable, but injurious to their own interests. A moderate line of extension, however unnecessary, might, and would be granted by Turkey to the Greek Government, and suck a lino could be traced without effort on the map. A sacrifice thus limited might be made without very serious increase of the pressure upon Turkey, and with the additional advantage of saving the character of Christendom from the shame of voluntary discredit and im policy."

Lord Stratford would hardly have written this in his stronger days. In conclusion, we have to praise the arrangement of these fragments. The table of historical events which accompanies• them is useful, and the map of reference is necessary to a full comprehension of Lord Stratford's work in the past, and his contentions for the future action to which England, as he con- ceived, is bound in prudence. Probably, Lord Stratford has left copious materials for memoirs, and from them we may expect to know morn of his energetic measures to secure a passage for our troops through India when the Indian Mutiny broke out, of his success at Washington, and of other im- portant events in which he bore a part not alluded to in this volume.