IL-THE LIBERAL CASE.
TO this defence of Lord Beaconsfield, thus moderately stated, we should reply as follows. In the first place, it is a gross misinterpretation of the true attitude of Mr. Gladstone's Government to describe it as one willing, in any respect what- ever, to deprive the United Kingdom of its historic position in the world for the sake of promoting its material prosperity. There never was a prouder Government, in the best sense, than Mr. Gladstone's Government, and its action in the Alabama case' was the outcome of that noble pride. The Administration of that day held England to be strong enough, and secure enough from any plausible accusation of cowardice, to set a great example to the world of avoiding, whenever it was possible without the sacrifice of a great cause, the folly and brutality of deciding by force international disputes which might be terminated, in- deed, in that way, but never settled. In that belief the Tory Cabinet at the time concurred, and the present leader of the House of Commons was a party to the treaty by which the agreement to accept arbitration was concluded. Lord Beaconsfield him- self, as he has never pretended to deny, approved of the course taken. It was the course not of an abject Government afraid of the opinion of the world, but of an exceedingly proud Government, which believed that it could do something,— more, perhaps, than was then really possible,—to lead the opinion of the world into nobler attitudes. And it perse- vered, even under the strongest temptation to break off the negotiation, because it felt that an ignominious failure in the first attempt to settle so great a quarrel by arbitra- tion, would give the severest possible blow to the hope of any future exercise of similar international reason and equity, and a great triumph to the cynics who believe that as between nations force must always be master. In point of fact, the arbitration succeeded in averting war and recementing national friendship ; and succeeded so well, that in relation to the fisheries dispute, the United States have paid what was awarded to us without murmurs, though the American people were as profoundly convinced that the award was unjust, as the English people were convinced that the award in the ' Alabama' case was unjust. It is not in the least true that Mr. Gladstone's Government was willing to risk an arbi- tration in order to avoid war, when it knew that a just cause might be sacrificed by incurring such a risk. In the case of
Belgium, it offered both to Germany and to France an alli- ance against any Power that ventured to infringe the neu- trality of Belgium ; it increased the Army at once, to show that it was in earnest ; and it perfectly succeeded, with- out ostentation, in preventing any further conspiracies against the independence of that free and self-governed State. It was the same in relation to the Russian attempt of 1870 to tear up the Black-Sea Clause in the Treaty of 185G, without the consent of the Powers who were parties to it. Lord Granville did not, it is true, and could not, declare war without an ally, for a clause which Lord Palmerston himself recognised as a mere temporary makeshift, a provision without any element of per- manence. which Mr. Gladstone, the Prime Minister of 1870, bad opposed at the time the Treaty of 1856 was made, and which most of the Great Powers had before 1870 actually expressed their desire to see relaxed. But he did compel Russia to retract unreservedly her pretensions to break the provisions of any treaty without the consent of the other parties to it, and he did com- pel her to accept for the clause which he then, and not till then, consented to annul, a substitute a great deal more useful to Turkey than the one which was by common agreement cancelled. Thus nothing can be less true than to say that Mr. Gladstone's Government effaced the influence of England in Europe. Nay, the first estimate of that influence which fell from Lord Derby's lips when the Tories took office, heartily acknowledged the high consideration in which he found the policy of England held amongst the other Powers of Europe.
It may or it may not be true that during the first two years of Lord Derby's administration the influence of England to some extent declined. Lord Derby always professed himself too much of a waiter upon public opinion in relation to foreign affairs, and too little of its guide. But that is Lord Beaconsfield's affair. He appointed Lord Derby to the Foreign Office, probably because he thought that Lord Derby's cool and rather over-cautious temper would guarantee an administration of that office in a Liberal sense,—it was before he saw the chance of striking a great coup by taking up foreign policy in the Tancred' mood,—and if there were any decline of England's influence between 1874 and 1876, it was Lord Beaconsfield's affair. The Liberals hold that there was a very good reason in Lord Derby's own policy for a certain indifference to British opinion on the Turkish question, at the time of the Berlin Memorandum, though they are not by any means sure that any such indifference as is implied was openly shown. It was the great fault of the Tory Ministry that they did not take any lead in the Turkish question in 1875 and the beginning of 1876,—that they did not discern the signs of the times,—that they attempted, so far as they attempted anything, to begin once more the old Sisyphus labour of rolling Turkey up the hill which she her- self was determined to roll down ; that they made their signature of the Andrassy note a farce, by only signing it at the request of Turkey ; and that they preached everywhere the doctrine that active intervention was intolerable, and that the state of Bosnia and the Herzegovina could not be expected to grow better, till it had first grown worse. With such a policy, no wonder that Great Britain lost influence, if she did lose influence, on the Turkish question. But she lost it by the fault of the Tory Government,—by the failure of Tory foresight,—by the timidity of Tory counsel. No doubt the Tories thought they regained their prestige in Europe when Lord Derby so curtly declined to accept the Berlin Memo- randum. But there, again, the Liberals join issue. They wish to see England's prestige high and her influence potent, but they wish to see this in order that she may become a renovating Power in Europe, not a depressing and suffocating Power. The effect of Lord Derby's curt and uncon- ditional rejection of the Berlin Memorandum was to rank her among the obstructives who held out no hope of reform in. Turkey. Nay, it very nearly isolated her completely in Europe. Had not Abdul Aziz been executed, an identic Note in the sense of the Berlin Memorandum, signed by every Power interested in the Eastern Question, including France and Italy, excepting England alone, would have been presented to the Sultan, calling on him to execute those reforms which we had declined to join in urging. The Liberals say, then, that what they wanted, and what Mr. Gladstone advocated, was very far indeed from an effacement of England in relation to the Eastern Question, still less a subordination of England to the selfish designs of Russia, but rather a bold initiative, having for its object to combine all the great Powers in a reso- lute effort to put an end to the "Non possumus " of the Sultan, and to control, by sharing and essentially modifying, that dangerous Russian initiative which Lord Beaconsfield's policy so. rashly left undr'r the sole discretion of Prince Gortschakoff. Mr. Gladstone's policy, so far from being timid, passive, and oppres- sively humble, would have united the Powers in declaring that if the anarchy at Constantinople did not cease, and a more enlightened government prevail, the bond between European and Asiatic Turkey should be severed, and Turkish misrule paralysed at the very core. It would have left Russia no excuse for national conquests and territorial acquisitions. It would have secured the disinterested ends for which Russia professed to go to war, without giving her the pretence for securing interested ends as well. In short, the policy of
England would hare been a high policy, and her attitude a proud attitude ; but instead of her policy being a cold policy which ran the risk of isolating her from all the other Powers, instead of her attitude being a proud attitude which stiffened anew the barren and barbarous atti- tude of the Porte, her's would have been a policy devoted to cherishing the growth of all the new life among the Greeks, Macedonians, Bulgarians, Sclays, and other Christian races of the Turkish Empire, and an attitude of generous sympathy with their needs. Again, in relation to Afghanistan, the Liberals maintain that the policy of the Government was the furthest possible from a proud policy. It seized eagerly on the opportunity of making an example of a feeble friend of Russia's, because it well knew the difficulty, not to say the unpopularity, of punishing Russia herself. Afghanistan was first threatened into panic, then snubbed into conspiracy, and finally beaten into subjection. We always knew that this was easy to do. We always knew that no effectual resistance could be offered. But we always knew also that nothing could be gained by it but great hatred for ourselves and a vast drain upon India. England had the first Afghan war to warn her, and yet we faithfully copied all its evil precedents, and reaped as diligently all its evil fruits. Thus, so far from " neither overlooking nor evading danger," the Government carefully evaded it where it was serious, privately conceding to Russia every point which might have constituted a cases &Hi, before we even risked going into council with her,—and on the other hand, carefully over- looked danger when it was comparatively trivial, though imminent, walking open-eyed into the network of Afghan peril of every mesh of which we had the fullest ex- perience, and sending poor Cavagnari to a death which many Anglo-Indian statesmen knew to be nearly certain, because there was no readier way to get the prestige of chastising a friend of Russia's without encountering Russia as well. What the Liberals would have desired would have been a far bolder policy in Turkey, and a far more proud indifference in India. They would not have bullied Ameer Ali—by telling him that he was an earthen jar between two iron pots—into the arms of Russia, and then have struck at Russia through his body. They think such a policy one which happily combines the sin of both evading danger and overlooking it. They would have had England display a different kind of pride,—the pride of aiding actively a fruitful policy in Europe, and of abiding serenely the empty menaces of the panic-mongers of India.
With regard to Ireland, the Liberals have little to answer to the charge that they are not sharp and imperious enough in the negative they give to unreasonable demands, for this simple reason,—that, knowing what a long arrear of hideous debt they owe to that guiltily-governed island, they do not think it possible to be too careful not to revive the recollections of the age of brutality they repent and deplore. Pride is hardly a possible attitude for England towards Ireland, while England keeps a memory at all. Of course, this is no excuse for break- ing up the Empire in order to please Ireland, but it is a perfect reason for not assuming the grand airs of a superior race. Say what you will, the Home-rule agitation, while it remains a Home-rule agitation, is a perfectly constitutional agitation, though it is one to be met with a firm and clear denial. Lord Beaconsfield's attitude to Ireland is a thoroughly bad attitude. It is the attitude of a man of the world who, knowing that the age of flagrant misrule is past, and yet feeling all the scorn which once led to misrule, compen- sates himself for the necessity of considerate action by gestures of contempt and phrases of ridicule. He sends the Irish an Irish Secretary who is as ignorant of the country as he is arrogant in talking of it. Further, he treats their political specifics as on a par with pestilence and famine. He brands their allies among the statesmen as traitors to their country and their Queen. This is atoning for an otherwise sober administration by practical jokes, jibes, and sneers. Mr. Lowther is the practical joke, while the Prime Minister himself supplies the jibes and sneers. Against this treatment the Liberals earnestly protest. Mr. Gladstone gave Ireland the best Irish Secretary it ever had in Lord Carlingford, and the gravest remedial legislation they ever received in the Church and Land Acts. On that policy the Liberals would rely again. They desire not only to be politically just to Ireland, but to heal the social root of Irish discontent. And that no Government can ever do by a course of Lowther and literary sneers.
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