Chapter 31

But that was not all. Nearly at the same time we performed the same operation in another quarter. We objected to a treaty between Russia and Turkey as having no authority, though that treaty was made in the light of day--namely, to the Treaty of San Stefano; and what did we do? We went not in the light of day, but in the darkness of the night--not in the knowledge and cognizance of other Powers, all of whom would have had the faculty and means of watching all along, and of preparing and taking their own objections and shaping their own policy--not in the light of day, but in the darkness of the night, we sent the Ambassador of England in Constantinople to the Minister of Turkey, and there he framed, even while the Congress of Berlin was sitting to determine these matters of common interest, he framed that which is too famous, shall I say, or rather too notorious as the Anglo-Turkish Convention. Gentlemen, it is said, and said truly, that truth beats fiction; that what happens in fact from time to time is of a character so daring, so strange, that if the novelist were to imagine it and to put it upon his pages, the whole world would reject it from its improbability. And that is the case of the Anglo-Turkish Convention. For who would have believed it possible that we should assert before the world the principle that Europe only could deal with the affairs of the Turkish Empire, and should ask Parliament for six millions to support us in asserting that principle, should send Ministers to Berlin who declared that unless that principle was acted upon they would go to war with the material that Parliament had placed in their hands, and should at the same time be concluding a separate agreement with Turkey, under which those matters of European jurisdiction were coolly transferred to English jurisdiction; and the whole matter was sealed with the worthless bribe of the possession and administration of the island of Cyprus! I said, gentlemen, the worthless bribe of the island of Cyprus, and that is the truth. It is worthless for our purposes, worse than worthless for our purposes--not worthless in itself; an island of resources, an island of natural capabilities, provided they are allowed to develop themselves in the course of circumstances, without violent and unprincipled methods of action. But Cyprus was not thought to be worthless by those who accepted it as a bribe. On the contrary, you were told that it was to secure the road to India; you were told that it was to be the site of an arsenal very cheaply made, and more valuable than Malta; you were told that it was to revive trade. And a multitude of companies were formed, and sent agents and capital to Cyprus, and some of them, I fear, grievously burned their fingers there, I am not going to dwell upon that now. What I have in view is not the particular merits of Cyprus, but the illustration that I have given you in the case of the agreement of Lord Salisbury with Count Schouvaloff, and in the case of the Anglo-Turkish Convention, of the manner in which we have asserted for ourselves a principle that we had denied to others--namely, the principle of over-riding the European authority of the Treaty of Paris, and taking the matters which that treaty gave to Europe into our own separate jurisdiction. Now, gentlemen, I am sorry to find that that which I call the pharisaical assertion of our own superiority has found its way alike into the practice and seemingly into the theories of the Government. I am not going to assert anything which is not known, but the Prime Minister has said that there is one day in the year--namely, the 9th of November, Lord Mayor's Day--on which the language of sense and truth is to be heard amidst the surrounding din of idle rumours generated and fledged in the brains of irresponsible scribes. I do not agree, gentlemen, in that panegyric upon the 9th of November. I am much more apt to compare the 9th of November--certainly a well-known day in the year--but as to some of the speeches that have lately been made upon it, I am very much disposed to compare it with another day in the year, well known to British tradition; and that other day in the year is the 1st of April. But, gentlemen, on that day the Prime Minister, speaking out,--I do not question for a moment his own sincere opinion,--made what I think one of the most unhappy and ominous allusions ever made by a Minister of this country. He quoted certain words, easily rendered as 'Empire and Liberty'--words (he said) of a Roman statesman, words descriptive of the State of Rome--and he quoted them as words which were capable of legitimate application to the position and circumstance of England. I join issue with the Prime Minister upon that subject, and I affirm that nothing can be more fundamentally unsound, more practically ruinous, than the establishment of Roman analogies for the guidance of British policy. What, gentlemen, was Rome? Rome was indeed an Imperial State, you may tell me--I know not, I cannot read the counsels of Providence--a State having a mission to subdue the world; but a State whose very basis it was to deny the equal rights, to proscribe the independent existence, of other nations. That, gentlemen, was the Roman idea. It has been partially and not ill described in three lines of a translation from Virgil by our great poet Dryden, which run as follows:

O Rome! 'tis thine alone with awful sway To rule mankind, and make the world obey, Disposing peace and war thine own majestic way.

We are told to fall back upon this example. No doubt the word 'Empire' was qualified with the word 'Liberty'. But what did the two words 'Liberty' and 'Empire' mean in a Roman mouth? They meant simply this--'Liberty for ourselves, Empire over the rest of mankind'.

I do not think, gentlemen, that this Ministry, or any other Ministry, is going to place us in the position of Rome. What I object to is the revival of the idea--I care not how feebly, I care not even how, from a philosophic or historic point of view, how ridiculous the attempt at this revival may be. I say it indicates an intention--I say it indicates a frame of mind, and that frame of mind, unfortunately, I find, has been consistent with the policy of which I have given you some illustrations--the policy of denying to others the rights that we claim ourselves. No doubt, gentlemen, Rome may have had its work to do, and Rome did its work. But modern times have brought a different state of things. Modern times have established a sisterhood of nations, equal, independent; each of them built up under that legitimate defence which public law affords to every nation, living within its own borders, and seeking to perform its own affairs; but if one thing more than another has been detestable to Europe, it has been the appearance upon the stage from time to time of men who, even in the times of the Christian civilization, have been thought to aim at universal dominion. It was this aggressive disposition on the part of Louis XIV, King of France, that led your forefathers, gentlemen, freely to spend their blood and treasure in a cause not immediately their own, and to struggle against the method of policy which, having Paris for its centre, seemed to aim at a universal monarchy. It was the very same thing, a century and a half later, which was the charge launched, and justly launched, against Napoleon, that under his dominion France was not content even with her extended limits, but Germany, and Italy, and Spain, apparently without any limit to this pestilent and pernicious process, were to be brought under the dominion or influence of France, and national equality was to be trampled under foot, and national rights denied. For that reason, England in the struggle almost exhausted herself, greatly impoverished her people, brought upon herself, and Scotland too, the consequences of a debt that nearly crushed their energies, and poured forth their best blood without limit, in order to resist and put down these intolerable pretensions.

Gentlemen, it is but in a pale and weak and almost despicable miniature that such ideas are now set up, but you will observe that the poison lies--that the poison and the mischief lie--in the principle and not the scale. It is the opposite principle which, I say, has been compromised by the action of the Ministry, and which I call upon you, and upon any who choose to hear my views, to vindicate when the day of our election comes; I mean the sound and the sacred principle that Christendom is formed of a band of nations who are united to one another in the bonds of right; that they are without distinction of great and small; there is an absolute equality between them,--the same sacredness defends the narrow limits of Belgium, as attaches to the extended frontiers of Russia, or Germany, or France. I hold that he who by act or word brings that principle into peril or disparagement, however honest his intentions may be, places himself in the position of one inflicting--I won't say intending to inflict--I ascribe nothing of the sort--but inflicting injury upon his own country, and endangering the peace and all the most fundamental interests of Christian society.

WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE

APRIL 2, 1880

THE AGGRANDIZEMENT OF RUSSIA

Now, I have charged at various times what I think an essential count in this indictment--that intelligence had been kept back from Parliament. Intelligence necessary to full understanding and to competent discussion has been withheld from Parliament at the very time of that discussion. I have shown various instances; I might show more. But I will name now only very briefly that remarkable case of the Afghan War. We were carried into that war, gentlemen, as you will recollect, without any previous notice or preparation. No papers had been laid upon the table to enable us to judge of the state of our relations with Afghanistan. Some suspicion had arisen, and a question had been put in the House of Lords; and the answer had been that there was no change of policy, or no sensible and serious change of policy towards Afghanistan intended. At that moment there were in possession of the Government--and for twelve months after--papers of the most vital consequence--what are called the conferences at Peshawur--opening up the whole case in every one of its aspects; and the Government, with these papers in their hands, kept them back for eighteen months, until they had hurried us into this deplorable, and, I must say, into this guilty war. The island of Cyprus was taken; responsibility of governing Asia Minor was assumed; a _quasi_-territorial supremacy was asserted over Syria in common with the rest of Asia Minor, which was a matter with respect to which we knew very well that the jealousies of France were sure to be aroused; but we were called upon and compelled, gentlemen, to discuss that matter, I think, in the end of July, 1878, at the celebrated epoch of 'peace with honour'--we were called upon to discuss that matter in total ignorance that France had remonstrated, that France had complained; and the Government never let drop in the debate the slightest intimation or inkling that such was the case. We had to debate, we had to divide, we had to take the judgement of Parliament, in utter ignorance of the vital fact that great offence had been given to a faithful and a powerful ally by the steps taken by the Ministry; and it was only when the papers were laid, two or three months after, by the French Government, before the French Chamber, that we became aware of the fact that these papers were presented to us. How is it possible for any House of Commons to perform its duty if it consents to be treated in such a way,--if it consents not only to exercise every patience and forbearance, which must often be the case before intelligence can be produced, but if it consents to be dragged through the mire by being set to pronounce formal judgement upon national emergencies of the highest import, and to do that without the information necessary for a judgement; and when it is believed that information has been withheld, no notice whatever is taken of the fact, and perfect satisfaction is felt by the members of that majority whom you are now called upon to try?

Well, that is the withholding of information, gentlemen; but there has been even worse than that--worse, I am grieved to say it. I cannot help saying it without being in a condition to trace home the charge if this was thought needful, and I am very unwilling to fasten it upon any one without that full and demonstrative evidence which the case hardly admits of; but I will say this, that news--that intelligence--has been falsified to bewilder and mislead to their own peril and detriment the people of this country. You remember, gentlemen, what happened at the outbreak of the great war between France and Germany in 1870. At that time there existed for a few days a condition of things which produced in that case excitement of expectation as to the points upon which the quarrel turned; and you remember that a telegram was sent from Berlin to Paris, and was published in Paris, or rather, if I recollect aright, it was announced by a Minister in the Chamber, stating that the King of Prussia, as he was then, had insulted the ambassador of France by turning his back upon him in a garden, where they had met, and refusing to communicate with him. The consequence was an immense exasperation in France; and the telegram, which afterwards proved to be totally and absolutely false, was a necessary instrument for working up the minds of the French people to a state in which some of them desired, and the rest were willing to tolerate, what proved to be a most disastrous war. That war never was desired by the French nation at large, but by false intelligence heat was thrown into the atmosphere, party feeling and national feeling to a certain extent were excited, and it became practicable to drag the whole nation into the responsibility of the war. I remember well at that time what passed through my mind. I thought how thankful we ought to be that the use of methods so perilous, and so abominable--for the word is not too strong--never could be known in our happy country. Yes, gentlemen; but since that time it has been known in our happy country. Since that time false telegrams about the entry of the Russian army into Constantinople have been sent home to disturb, and paralyse, and reverse the deliberations of Parliament, and have actually stopped these deliberations, and led experienced statesmen to withhold their action because of this intelligence, which was afterwards, and shortly afterwards, shown to be wholly without ground. Who invented that false intelligence I do not know, and I do not say. All I say is, that it was sent from Constantinople. It was telegraphed in the usual manner; it was published in the usual manner; it was available for a certain purpose. I can no more say who invented it than I can say who invented the telegram that came to Paris about the King of Prussia and the French ambassador; but the intelligence came, and it was false intelligence.

That was not the only, nor was it the most important case. You remember--I am now carrying your recollections back to the time of the outbreak of the war with Afghanistan, and if you recollect the circumstances of that outbreak, at the most critical moment we were told that the Ameer of Afghanistan had refused to receive a British Mission with insult and with outrage, and that insult and outrage were represented as at once enlisting our honour and reputation in the case, as making it necessary to administer immediate chastisement. I do not hesitate to express my full belief that without that statement the war with Afghanistan would not have been made, would not have been tolerated, by the country; but it was difficult, considering the nature of our Indian Empire, considering how it is dependent upon opinion in Asia, and upon the repute of strength, it was difficult to interfere strongly--indeed. Parliament was not sitting--but it was difficult even by opinion out of doors strongly to protest against military measures taken in a case where the authority of the Crown had been insulted, and outrage committed upon it by the Ameer of Afghanistan. That intelligence was sent. We were never undeceived about it until we were completely committed to the war, and until our troops were in the country. The Parliament met; after long and most unjustifiable delays the papers were produced, and when the papers were produced and carefully examined, we found that there was not a shred of foundation for that outrageous statement, and that the temper and pride of the people of this country had been wrought up, and the spirit of wrath fomented and kindled in their bosoms, by intelligence that was false intelligence, and that somebody or other--somebody or other having access to high quarters, if not dwelling in them--had invented, had fabricated for the evil purpose of carrying us into bloody strife.

All these are among the acts which I am sorry to say it is my business to charge upon the majority of the late Parliament, and upon every member of that majority; and all these are the acts which those who are invited to vote or who intend to vote for my noble opponent--whatever may be his personal claims, all these are the acts, the responsibility of which they are now invited to take upon themselves, and the repetition of which, by giving that vote, they will directly encourage.

The next charge is the charge of broken laws. We have contended--it is impossible to trouble you with argument--but we have contended, and I think we have demonstrated, in the House of Commons, sustained by a great array of legal strength and bearing, that in making that war in Afghanistan, the Government of this country absolutely broke the laws which regulate the Government of India. I do not say they admit it; on the contrary, they deny it. But we have argued it; we believe, we think we have shown it. It is a very grave and serious question; but this much, I think, is plain, that unless our construction of that Indian Government Act, which limits the power of the Crown as to the employment of the Indian forces at the cost of the Indian revenue without the consent of Parliament--unless our construction of that Act be true, the restraining clauses of that Act are absolutely worthless, and the people who passed those restraining clauses, and who most carefully considered them at the time, must have been people entirely unequal to their business; although two persons--I won't speak of myself, who had much to do with them, but two persons who next to myself were most concerned, were the present and the late Lord Derby, neither of them persons very likely to go to work upon a subject of that kind without taking care that what their hand did was done effectually.

Now besides the honour, if it be an honour, of broken laws, the Government has the honour of broken treaties. When I discussed the case of broken laws, I told you fairly that the Government denied the breaking of the laws, and make their own argument to show--I suppose they think they show--that they did not break the laws. But when I pass to the next head, of the broken treaties, the case is different, especially in one of the most material points, which I will state in a few words, but clearly. The first case which we consider to be that of a distinctly broken treaty is that of sending the warships of England through the Dardanelles without the consent of the Sultan of Turkey. We believe that to be a clear breach of the Treaty of Paris. But that also, if I remember aright, was argued on both sides, and, therefore, I pass on from it, and I charge another breach of the Treaty of Paris. That famous Anglo-Turkish Convention, which gave to you the inestimable privilege of being responsible for the government of the island of Cyprus without deriving from it any possible advantage; that famous Anglo-Turkish Convention, which invested us with the right of interference, and caused us to interfere both as to the integrity and as to the independence of the Sultan by our own sole act; that Anglo-Turkish Convention was a direct and an absolute breach of the Treaty of Paris, which, bearing as it did the signature of England, as well as the rest of the Powers, declared that no one of these Powers should of themselves interfere in any matter of the integrity or independence of Turkey without the consent of the rest. And here I must tell you that I never heard from the Government, or any friend of the Government, the slightest attempt to defend that gross act of lawlessness, that unpardonable breach of international law, which is the highest sanction of the rights of nations and of the peace of Europe.

It is not, however, in matters of law only. We have been busy in alienating the sympathies of free peoples. The free Slavonic peoples of the East of Europe--the people of Roumania, the people of Montenegro, the people of Servia, the people of Bulgaria--each and all of these have been painfully taught in these last few years to look upon the free institutions of this country as being for them a dream, as being, perhaps, for the enjoyment of this country, but not as availing to animate a nation with a generous desire to extend to others the blessings they enjoyed themselves. In other times--it was so when Mr. Canning was the Minister of this country, when Lord Palmerston was the Minister of this country, when Lord Clarendon was the Minister of this country at the Foreign Office--it was well known that England, while regardful of her own just interests, and while measuring on every occasion her strength and her responsibility, yet was willing to use and willing to find opportunities for giving cordial aid and sympathy to freedom; and by aid and sympathy many a nation has been raised to its present position of free independence, which, without that sympathy, would probably never have attained to such a height in the order of civilization. The sympathies of free people ought to be a dear and precious object of our ambition. Ambition may be a questionable quality: if you give a certain meaning to the phrase, it ill comports with the Christian law. But there is one sense in which ambition will never mislead men; that is the ambition to be good, and the ambition to do good in relieving from evil those who are grievously suffering, and who have not deserved the evils they endure: that is the ambition which every British statesman ought to cherish. But, as I have said, for the last two years especially--and even for more than two years--more or less, I think, during the whole active period of the foreign policy of the Beaconsfield Administration--the sympathies of these now free peoples of the East have been constantly more and more alienated; and except, perhaps, in a single case which I am glad to cling to--the single and isolated case of Eastern Roumania--except this case, the whole strength of England, as far as they have been conversant with it, has been exercised for the purpose of opposing their best interests.