Part 2

MR. GLADSTONE: I am very much obliged, and I perceive completely the hon. member's meaning; but I am sorry that to that meaning, as it stands, I take the greatest objection. If it be true--and it is true--that we govern India without the restraints of law, except such law as we make ourselves; if it be true that we have not been able to give to India the benefit and blessings of free institutions, I leave it to the hon. gentleman--I leave it to the right hon. gentleman if he thinks fit--to boast that he is about to place that fact solemnly upon record. By the assumption of the title of Empress, I for one will not attempt to turn into glory that which, so far as it is true, I feel to be our weakness and our calamity.... It is plain that the government of India--that is, the entire India--never has yet, by statute, been vested in Her Majesty; but that which has been vested is the government of the countries which were held in trust for Her Majesty by the East India Company. I would be the last man to raise this question if it were a mere verbal quibble. It is as far as possible from being a question merely verbal.... I am under the belief that to this moment there are important Princes and States in India over which we have never assumed dominion, whatever may have been our superiority of strength. We are now going, by Act of Parliament, to assume that dominion, the possible consequences of which no man can foresee; and when the right hon. gentleman tells us the Princes desire this change to be made, does he really mean to assure us that this is the case? If so, I require distinct evidence of the fact. There are Princes in India who, no doubt, have hitherto enjoyed no more than a theoretical political supremacy, but do they desire to surrender even that under the provisions of this Bill? The right hon. gentleman is going to advise the Queen to become Empress of India. I raise the question, What is India? I have said that the dominion now vested in Her Majesty is limited to the territories vested in the East India Company. I ask whether the supremacy of certain important Native States in India ever was vested in the Company, or whether it was not? We are bound to ask the right hon. gentleman--and I think he is bound to answer the question through the medium of his best legal authorities--whether this supremacy is so vested or not, and whether he can assure us upon his responsibility that no political change in the condition of the Native Princes of India will be effected by this Bill. If there is a political change effected, I do not hesitate to say I do not think it would be possible to offer too determined an opposition to the proposal of the Government.... I feel with the right hon. gentleman--indeed, I feel a little more than the right hon. gentleman--the greatness, the unsullied greatness, of the title which is now borne by the Queen of England. I think I use the language of moderation when I say that it is a title unequalled for its dignity and weight, unequalled for the glory of its historic associations, unequalled for the promise which it offers to the future, among the titles of the Sovereigns of Europe, among all the states and nations on earth. Sir, I have a jealousy of touching that title, and I am not to be told that this is a small matter. There is nothing small in a matter, in my judgment, which touches the honour and dignity of the Crown of England.... The right hon. gentleman has indeed manfully contended that there is no inferiority in the title of King as compared with that of Emperor.... I want to know why I am to be dragged into novelties, or into comparisons on a subject of this sort?... There is one other point on which I am anxious to make a few comments. I was, I own, struck by what fell from my right hon. friend the member for the University of London (Mr. Lowe) the other evening in reference to the colonies. Whether it be desirable to make any recital with regard to the colonies or not, it is a subject which requires much consideration whether we can wisely introduce reference to India in the title of the Sovereign, while we at the same time take no notice of the colonies.

BULGARIAN ATROCITIES (1876).

I. THUNDER FROM MR. GLADSTONE.

=Source.=--Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet, _Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East_, 1876, p. 10.

In default of Parliamentary action, and a public concentrated as usual, we must proceed as we can, with impaired means of appeal. But honour, duty, compassion, and I must add shame, are sentiments never in a state of _coma_. The working-men of the country, whose condition is less affected than that of others by the season, have to their honour led the way, and shown that the great heart of Britain has not ceased to beat. And the large towns and cities, now following in troops, are echoing back, each from its own place, the mingled notes of horror, pain, and indignation.... A curtain opaque and dense, which at the prorogation had been lifted but a few inches from the ground, has since then, from day to day, been slowly rising. And what a scene it has disclosed! And where!

... I have the fullest confidence in the honour and in the intelligence of Mr. Baring, who has been inquiring on behalf of England. But he was not sent to examine the matter until the 19th of July, three months after the rising, and nearly one month after the first inquiries in Parliament. He had been but two days at Philippopolis, when he sent home, with all the despatch he could use, some few rudiments of a future report. Among them was his estimate of the murders, necessarily far from final, at the figure of twelve thousand.

We know that we had a well-manned Embassy at Constantinople, and a network of Consulates and Vice-Consulates, really discharging diplomatic duties, all over the provinces of European Turkey. That villages could be burned down by scores, and men, women, and children murdered, or worse than murdered, by thousands, in a Turkish province lying between the capital and the scene of the recent excitements, and that our Embassy and Consulates could know nothing of it? The thing was impossible. It could not be. So silence was obtained, and relief; and the well-oiled machinery of our luxurious, indifferent life worked smoothly on....

It was on the 20th of April that the insurrection broke out in Bulgaria.... On the 9th of May Sir Henry Elliot ... observing a great Mohammedan excitement, and an extensive purchase of arms in Constantinople, wisely telegraphed to the British Admiral in the Mediterranean expressing a desire that he would bring his squadron to Besika Bay. The purpose was for the protection of British subjects, and of the Christians in general.... These measures were substantially wise, and purely pacific. They had, if understood rightly, no political aspect, or, if any, one rather anti-Turkish than Turkish. But there were reasons, and strong reasons, why the public should not have been left to grope out for itself the meaning of a step so serious as the movement of a naval squadron towards a country disturbed both by revolt and by an outbreak of murderous fanaticism. In the year 1853, when the negotiations with Russia had assumed a gloomy and almost a hopeless aspect, the English and French fleets were sent eastwards; not as a measure of war, but as a measure of preparation for war, and proximate to war. The proceedings marked a transition of discussion into that angry stage which immediately precedes a blow; and the place, to which the fleets were then sent, was Besika Bay. In the absence of information, how could the British nation avoid supposing that the same act, as that done in 1853, bore also the same meaning?... The expectation of a rupture pervaded the public mind. The Russian funds fell very heavily, under a war panic; partisans exulted in a diplomatic victory, and in the increase of what is called our _prestige_, the bane, in my opinion, of all upright politics. The Turk was encouraged in his humour of resistance. And this, as we now know, while his hands were so reddened with Bulgarian blood. Foreign capitals were amazed at the martial excitement in London. But the Government spoke never a word.... And this ostentatious protection to Turkey, this wanton disturbance of Europe, was continued by our Ministry, with what I must call a strange perversity, for weeks and weeks....

What we have to guard against is imposture--that Proteus with a thousand forms. A few months ago the new Sultan served the turn, and very well. Men affirmed that he must have time. And now another new Sultan is in the offing. I suppose it will be argued that he must have time too. Then there will be, perhaps, new constitutions; firmans of reforms; proclamations to commanders of Turkish armies, enjoining extra humanity. All these should be quietly set down as simply zero. At this moment we hear of the adoption by the Turks of the last and most enlightened rule of warfare--namely, the Geneva Convention. They might just as well adopt the Vatican Council or the British Constitution. All these things are not even the oysters before the dinner. Still worse is any plea founded upon any reports made by Turkish authority upon the Bulgarian outrages.... I return to, and I end with, that which is the Omega as well as the Alpha of this great and most mournful case. An old servant of the Crown and State, I entreat my countrymen, upon whom far more than perhaps any other people of Europe it depends, to require, and to insist, that our Government, which has been working in one direction, shall work in the other, and shall apply all its vigour to concur with the other States of Europe in obtaining the extinction of the Turkish executive power in Bulgaria. Let the Turks now carry away their abuses in the only possible manner--namely, by carrying off themselves. Their Zaptiehs and their Mudirs, their Bimbashis and their Yuzbachis, their Kaimakams and their Pashas, one and all, bag and baggage, shall, I hope, clear out from the province they have desolated and profaned. This thorough riddance, this most blessed deliverance, is the only reparation we can make to the memory of those heaps on heaps of dead; to the violated purity alike of matron, of maiden, and of child; to the civilization which has been affronted and shamed; to the laws of God, or, if you like, of Allah; to the moral sense of mankind at large. There is not a criminal in a European gaol, there is not a cannibal in the South Sea Islands, whose indignation would not rise and overboil at the recital of that which has been done, which has left behind all the foul and all the fierce passions that produced it, and which may again spring up, in another murderous harvest, from the soil soaked and reeking with blood, and in the air tainted with every imaginable deed of crime and shame.

II. COLD WATER FROM DISRAELI.

=Source.=--_Hansard_, Third Series, vol. 231, col. 1,138, August 11, 1876 (Third Reading of the Appropriation Bill; Bulgarian Atrocities raised).

MR. DISRAELI: ... Let me at once place before the House what I believe is the true view of the circumstances which principally interest us to-night, for, after the Rhodian eloquence to which we have just listened, it is rather difficult for the House to see clearly the point which is before it. The Queen's Ambassador at Constantinople, who has at all times no easy duty to fulfil, found himself at the end of April and in the first three weeks of May in a position of extreme difficulty and danger. Affairs in Constantinople never had assumed--at least in our time, certainly--a more perilous character. It was difficult to ascertain what was going to happen; but that something was going to happen, and something of a character which might disturb the relations of the Porte with all the Powers of Europe, and might even bring about a revolution, the effect of which would be felt in distant countries, there was no doubt.... In the present instance the hon. and learned gentleman has made one assumption throughout his speech--that there has been no communication whatever between the Queen's Ambassador at Constantinople and Her Majesty's Ministers upon the subject in discussion; that we never heard of those affairs until the newspapers published accounts. The state of the facts is the reverse. From the very first period that these transactions occurred--from the very commencement--the Ambassador was in constant communication with Her Majesty's Ministers. (No, no.) Why, that may be proved by the papers on the table. Throughout the months of May and June the Ambassador is constantly referring to the atrocities occurring in Bulgaria and to the repeated protests which he is making to the Turkish Government, and informing Her Majesty's Government of interviews and conversations with the Grand Vizier on that subject. The hon. and learned gentleman says that when questions were addressed to me in this House I was perfectly ignorant of what was taking place. But that is exactly the question we have to settle to-night. I say that we were not perfectly ignorant of what was taking place.... I agree that even the slightest estimate of the horrors that occurred in Bulgaria is quite enough to excite the indignation of this country and of Parliament; but when you come to say that we were ignorant of all that was occurring, and did nothing to counteract it, because we said in answer to Questions that the information which had reached us did not warrant the statements that were quoted in the House--these are two entirely different questions. In the newspaper which has been referred to the first account was, if I recollect aright, that 30,000 or 32,000 persons had been slain; that 10,000 were in prison; it was also stated that 1,000 girls had been sold in the open market, that 40 girls had been burnt alive in a stable; and cartloads of human heads paraded through the streets of the cities of Bulgaria--these were some of, though not all, the statements made; and I was perfectly justified in saying that the information which had reached us did not justify these statements, and therefore we believed them to be exaggerated.... Lord Derby telegraphed to Sir Henry Elliot that it was very important that Her Majesty's Government should be able to reply to the inquiries made in Parliament respecting these and other statements, and directed Sir Henry Elliot to inquire by telegram of the Consuls, and report as soon as he could. All these statements are untrue. There never were forty maidens locked up in a stable and burnt alive. That was ascertained with great care by Mr. Baring, and I am surprised that the right hon. gentleman the member for Bradford should still speak of it as a statement in which he has confidence. I believe it to be an entire fabrication. I believe also it is an entire fabrication that 1,000 young women were sold in the market as slaves. We have not received the slightest evidence of a single sale, even in those journals on which the right hon. gentleman the member for Bradford founded his erratic speech. I have been attacked for saying that I did not believe it was possible to have 10,000 persons in prison in Bulgaria. So far as I can ascertain from the papers, there never could have been more than 3,000. As to the 10,000 cases of torture, what evidence is there of a single case of torture? We know very well that there has been considerable slaughter; that there must have been isolated and individual cases of most atrocious rapine, and outrages of a most atrocious kind; but still we have had communications with Sir Henry Elliot, and he has always assumed from what he knew that these cases of individual rapine and outrage were occurring. He knew that civil war there was carried on under conditions of brutality which, unfortunately, are not unprecedented in that country; and the question is whether the information we had justified the extravagant statements made in Parliament, which no one pretends to uphold and defend.... The hon. and learned member (Sir W. Harcourt) has done full justice to the Bulgarian atrocities. He has assumed as absolutely true everything that criticism and more authentic information had modified, and in some cases had proved not merely to be exaggeration but to be absolute falsehoods. And then the hon. and learned gentleman says--"By your policy you have depopulated a province." Well, sir, certainly the slaughter of 12,000 individuals, whether Turks or Bulgarians, whether they were innocent peasants or even brigands, is a horrible event which no one can think of without emotion. But when I remember that the population of Bulgaria is 3,700,000 persons, and that it is a very large country, is it not a most extravagant abuse of rhetoric to say that the slaughter of so considerable a number as 12,000 is the depopulation of a province? Well, the hon. and learned gentleman said also that Her Majesty's Government had incurred a responsibility which is not possessed by any other country as regards our relations with and our influence with the Turks. I say that we have incurred no responsibility which is not shared with us by all the other contracting Powers to the Treaty of Paris. I utterly disclaim any peculiar responsibility.... That an hon. and learned gentleman, once a member of a Government and an ornament of that Government, should counsel as the solution of all these difficulties that Her Majesty's Government should enter into an immediate combination to expel the Turkish nation from Eastern Europe does indeed surprise me. And because we are not prepared to enter into a scheme so quixotic as that would be, we are held up as having given our moral, not to say our material, support to Turkey.... We are, it is true, the allies of Turkey; so is Austria, so is Russia, so is France, and so are others. We are also their partners in a tripartite Treaty, in which we not only generally, but singly, guarantee with France and Austria the territorial integrity of Turkey. And if these engagements, renovated and repeated only four years ago by the wisdom of Europe, are to be treated by the hon. and learned gentleman as idle wind and chaff, and if we are to be told that our political duty is by force to expel the Turks to the other side of the Bosphorus, then politics cease to be an art, statesmanship becomes a mere mockery, and instead of being a House of Commons faithful to its traditions, and which is always influenced, I have ever thought, by sound principles of policy, whoever may be its leaders, we had better at once resolve ourselves into one of those revolutionary clubs which settle all political and social questions with the same ease as the hon. and learned member.

[NOTE.--This was Disraeli's last speech as a member of the House of Commons. He was raised to the peerage on August 12, 1876.]

SIR THEOPHILUS SHEPSTONE'S COMMISSION (1877).

=Source.=--_The Times_, January 7.

Whereas grievous disturbances have broken out in the territories adjacent to Our colonies in South Africa, with war between the white inhabitants and the native races, to the great peril of the peace and safety of Our said colonies; and whereas, having regard to the safety of Our said colonies, it greatly concerns Us that full inquiry should be made into the origin, nature, and circumstances of the said disturbances, and with respect to the measures to be adopted for preventing the recurrence of the like disturbances in the future; and whereas it may become requisite to this end that the said territories, or portions of them, should be administered in Our name and in Our behalf.

Now know you that We, having especial trust and confidence in the loyalty and fidelity of you, the said Sir Theophilus Shepstone, have appointed you to be Our special Commissioner for the purpose of making such inquiry as aforesaid ... and if the emergency seem to you to be such as to render it necessary, in order to secure the peace and safety of Our said colonies, and of Our subjects elsewhere, that the said territories, or any portion or portions of the same, should be provisionally, and pending the announcement of Our pleasure, be administered in Our name and on Our behalf, then, and in such case only, We do further authorize you, the said Sir Theophilus Shepstone, by proclamation under your hand, to declare that from and after a day to be therein named, so much of any such territories aforesaid as to you, after due consideration, shall seem fit, shall be annexed and form part of Our dominions.

And We do hereby constitute and appoint you to be thereupon Administrator of the same provisionally and until Our pleasure is more fully known.

Provided, first, that no such proclamation shall be issued by you with respect to any district, territory, or state, unless you shall be satisfied that the inhabitants thereof, or a sufficient number of them, or the Legislature thereof, desire to become Our subjects; nor if any conditions unduly limiting Our power and authority therein are sought to be imposed....

RUSSIA DECLARES WAR ON TURKEY (1877).

=Source.=--_The Times_, April 25.

We have not a word to say in defence of the Porte. We admit that it was guilty, as Lord Salisbury has confessed, of infatuation when it defied the Conference, and that it would have accepted even the Protocol, if it had possessed a tithe of the sagacity which was once a better protection of its weakness than ironclads are to-day. We may even admit that the Protocol was, what Prince Gortchakoff styles it, the last expression of the united will of Europe. But his story is fatally incomplete. It would have been desirable to know whether Russia has done her best to make it easy for Turkey to accept the undisguised tutelage of the European Powers. That question calls to mind how much the fanaticism of the Turks was inflamed by the covert aid which Russia gave to Servia. The Czar refers to the famous words which he spoke in the Kremlin. They were indeed the real declaration of war, for they prevented Russia from accepting anything less than the complete submission of Turkey. Russia might plead, no doubt, that as war was certain to be found an absolute necessity in the end, it mattered little how rudely she ruffled the Osmanli pride. But in that case the negotiations of the past two years have been a series of hypocrisies. As it is, the general judgment is expressed by what Lord Derby said last night. While he found it hopeless to bend the will of Turkey towards submission, he equally found on the part of her Government "a deeply seated conviction that, do what they would, sooner or later war would be forced upon them." He believed that he and his colleagues have throughout been "engaged in the solution of a hopeless problem." Such, we fear, is the prosaic truth, and, whatever be the measure of Turkish obstinacy, Russia cannot escape condemnation. She has sometimes acted as if she wished to cut off a way of retreat both from herself and her foe.... Russia has hastened to stop all further negotiations, and to act as if she and she alone had an interest in the tranquillity of the Turkish Empire. Thus she has forfeited any right to speak in the name of Europe. Nor has she given the Powers assurances which they had a right to expect. Nothing is said in the same strain as the declarations at Livadia, that Russia had no objects of territorial ambition.... The Czar has committed a grave error by neglecting to proclaim that in no event would he seize Turkish territory.

IRISH OBSTRUCTION IN ITS EARLY DAYS (1877).

=Source.=--_The Times_, August 1.