Mr. Forster asked the Prime Minister on Monday whether the
statements which had recently appeared in the public papers, and especially in the Daily News of June 23, respecting the Turkish. cruelties in Bulgaria, were in any way supported by official in- formation. At the same time, he stated that he himself had received information from a pro-Turkish source which went strongly to confirm the general tenor of that horrible news. Mr. Disraeli's reply was curt in its tone, and rather that of the un- willing witness. " We have no information in our possession,' he said, " which justifies the statements to which the right honourable gentleman refers." And he tried to explain the mass- acres as the results of quarrels between the Bulgarians and Circas- sian, the Bashi-Bazouks and the settlers, who had no official cora- ...La:inn from the Porte. But, said Mr. Disraeli, when in May Sir H. Elliot's attention was drawn to this state of things, he at once got the Turkish Government to send down some regular troops into Bulgaria, and " very shortly after the disturbances in Bulgaria seem to have ceased." Lord Derby, on the contrary, said, on the same night, that no doubt Bashi-Bazouks had been employed in the suppression of the Bulgarian insurrection, and that they were guilty of atrocities. But Mr. Disraeli's tone was unmistakably that of a man who was bent on confessing as little as possible anything unfavourable to Turkey.
