THE DUTY OF SYMPATHY WITH FREEDOM. A RE Englishmen really losing
their sympathy with free States, free institutions, and freedom of speech and writing ? We do not believe it, but certainly the language indulged in by some of our contemporaries is calculated to produce abroad an impression of the kind. A perfect crowd of journalists condemn the rulers of Greece because they pay some attention to the views of the Parliament to which they are legally responsible, and of the population which not only supplies all their means, but is marching by tens of thousands to die in a struggle against the secular oppressor of their race. Greece, with it twentieth of our population and a two-hundredth part of our resources, is sending to battle an army as great as that which we prided ourselves on despatching for the reconquest of India in 1857, and some of our foremost publicists consequently lack words to express their contempt for Greek vanity and feebleness. The old feeling for the weaker Power seems to have dis- appeared, and no occasion is lost for praising the Ottoman, who has "magnificent artillery," and decrying the Greek soldier who, with inferior cannon, is standing up to his opponent. Mr. Gladstone, oldest of the friends of the Greeks, and for years the governing man in Eugland, ventures to remark in a letter that we are follow- ing too implicitly the lead of "two young despots," and hands are thrown up in a paroxysm of social horror. Such language about great Sovereigns ! Mr. Gladstone is no gentleman ! Yet what has Mr. Gladstone said ? He has simply described two Sovereigns in a way in which one of them constantly describes himself, the Czar writing pub- licly of his own autocracy, and in which the other shows by every action that he desires to be regarded. The Emperor of Russia is autocrat in every official document, and the 'German Emperor, though he cannot impose a new tax, is, as head of the Executive, autocratic,—that is, he himself, of his own will, appoints and removes every head of a Department, the Chancellor included, dictates his policy, and controls his relations with the representatives. Mr. Gladstone, who is not only not in office, but who never again can be in office, uses indeed the term "despot," not autocrat ; but wherein resides the offensiveness of that ? A despot is not necessarily a tyrant, and the utmost that can be said of the choice of the term is that it anarks Mr. Gladstone's inner dislike of the concentration of all power in a single hand, a dislike upon which all free States are really founded. Is he not at liberty to express that dislike ? Surely there is no moral offence in such a use of political terminology, nor any departure from that external courtesy which we fully admit should ioe kept up in all relations with foreign Powers, until, like the Sultan, they sanction acts so evil that even to be courteous to their author may be misinterpreted into con- donation. Or if there is any, does it exceed that right of free speech about the things we condemn in politics, which is used by all but responsible Ministers in every Parliament in the world, and which, when Tennyson wrote his Address to the Queen, all Englishmen quoted as their proudest boast ? Or is Mr. Gladstone, for some occult reason, to be the only Englishman out of office who may not "say the thing he will" ? We should not have alluded to the incident, which in itself is of little importance, were it not that this denunciation of Mr. Gladstone's letter marks a tone in influential quarters which we regard with apprehension,— a disposition to consider all foreign politics as if English- men had no instinctive preference for the free, as if they had forgotten the meaning of their own history, their own struggles, their own great efforts in the world. The notion that freedom is of itself a claim to political sympathy seems to be dying out. In this very struggle men take sides with Greece or Turkey according to their view of English interests, or according to their feeling for humanity outraged by the massacre of Armenians, or it may be, in some cases, according to their religious pre- possessions; but few seem to wish the Greeks success because they are an unusually free people fighting the most enslaved people in the world, a people not only bound to obey a despot, but heartily desirous that he should be despotic in the most extreme sense, should, for instance, pour out death on the submissive at will. It is the struggle of Holland against Philip II. over again, yet many Englishmen doubt if they ought not to sympathise with Alva. Grant that Greece desires territory, as all small nations must do in an age when, without territory, the cost of civilisation is almost insupportable, she will liberate the territory she acquires from the most destruc- tive and stupefying of all the tyrannies now left in Europe. Why did we sympathise with Cavour, if it were not that his " rash " and " insolent " and "unprovoked" action enfranchised a people bound for centuries under the feet of what was then a most tyrannical Power ? It is said, in excuse, that we ought to be impartial ; but if we believe freedom to be good, and tyranny evil, where is the reason for an impartiality which cannot exist unless we hold them to be in essence the same? It is said that we must consider our own interests, and up to a, point we entirely agree; but is a great victory for despotism, whether Russian or German or Turkish, to our interest ; are not all combinations that are solid combinations of the absolutists against us ; is it not, first of all, on account of our freedom that we are hated, and is it not because of that freedom that we have grown so strong, and seem to our enemies to be everywhere on earth ? What is the source of the difference in the success of the English in Australia and of the Spaniards in Cuba except the fact that we are free and intend our countrymen beyond sea to be free likewise ? If freedom is nothing to us, we do not see where our foothold is on the planet, or how we can apologise for the enormous expansion of our territory, and the force with which we assert our right to interfere in every quarter of the world.
We dislike screaminess in discussion, and should our- selves have described the Sovereigns of Russia and Germany as absolutists rather than as despots; but if Mr. Gladstone wished to indicate dislike or regret at the position of those great personages he had a right to use the phrase which expressed his meaning in the fewest words. There is surely no dispute as to the accuracy of his thought. It is a great misfortune for Europe that so large a portion of her military resources should be at the disposal of two persons so nearly irresponsible to any wills or judgments but their own. It is a misfortune for this country that we are compelled, because of those resources, to follow in part the lead of men whose sympathies and objects and interests are so divergent from our own. Nobody, we presume, will deny that we should all be happier, and Europe much safer, if Lord Salisbury could lead the Concert, and settle affairs, as in that position he might do, so as to in- crease by millions the number of freemen in Europe. That is all that Mr. Gladstone has stated or implied, and surely if a man with his record and his rank in Europe may not say so in the words which seem to his mind most fitting, liberty of utterance in this country has passed under very strict limitations. That is not a light change if it is so, for the opinion of millions cannot be formed by speeches such as befit a Sovereign's drawing-room, not can the despotic masters of States ever be truly informed of the way in which they are regarded by the free peoples whose opinion has with them so heavy a weight. If the world is to be reduced to a deathlike silence, there will soon be no place left in it for the free, who, because they are free, will not keep silent when they see wrong done. There must be some place kept in the world where opinions even about the fitting powers for Sovereigns shall be free, and hitherto Englishmen have imagined that it belonged to them. They are wrong if Mr. Glad- stone's letter can be gravely condemned by grave politicians because he intimated in it that he did not like autocracy, and was even prepared in the light of his old experience to stigmatise it as despotism. Autocracy is despotism, at all events when it is wrongly exerted; and Mr. Gladstone's whole meaning is that in leading us to act in favour of Turkey the power of the Sovereigns of Germany and Russia is wrongly or unjustly exerted. If it is forbidden by the new code of political morals to pass such a judgment as that, what is the use of discussing foreign politics at all ? Both the Sovereigns mentioned are their own Premiers, both move armies, both are exempt from criticism within their own States. Is it not well, instead of ill, that a cold breath of criticism should occasionally reach them from abroad, and that it should come from disinterested statesmen far removed from the political arena rather than from journalists alone ?
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