Chapter V. A Tumultuous Year. (1878)
On these great questions, which cut so deep into heart and mind, the importance of taking what they think the best course for the question will often seem, even to those who have the most just sense of party obligation, a higher duty than that of party allegiance.—Gladstone (to Granville, 1878).
I
Of 1878 Mr. Gladstone spoke as “a tumultuous year.” In January, after a fierce struggle of five months in the Balkan passes, the Russian forces overcame the Turkish defence, and by the end of January had entered Adrianople and reached the Sea of Marmora. Here at San Stefano a treaty of peace was made at the beginning of March. The last word of the eastern question, as Lord Derby said in those days, is this: Who is to have Constantinople? No great Power would be willing to see it in the hands of any other great Power, no small Power could hold it at all, and as for joint occupation, all such expedients were both dangerous and doubtful.[348] This last word now seemed to be writing itself in capital letters. Russia sent the treaty to the Powers, with the admission that portions of it affecting the general interests of Europe could not be regarded as definitive without general concurrence. A treaty between Russian and Turk within the zone of Constantinople and almost in sight of St. Sophia, opened a new and startling vista to English politicians. Powerful journalists, supposed to be much in the confidence of ministers, declared that if peace were ultimately concluded on anything like the terms proposed, then beyond all doubt the outworks of our empire were gone, and speedy ruin must begin. About such a situation [pg 573] there had been but one opinion among our statesmen for many generations. Until Mr. Gladstone, “all men held that such a state of things [as the Russians at Constantinople] would bring the British empire face to face with ruin.”[349]
Treaty Of San Stefano
Before the treaty of San Stefano, an angry panic broke out in parts of England. None of the stated terms of British neutrality were violated either by the treaty or its preliminaries, but even when no Russian force was within forty miles of Constantinople, the cabinet asked for a vote of six millions (January), and a few days later the British fleet passed the Dardanelles. Two years earlier, Mr. Gladstone had wished that the fleet should go to Constantinople as a coercive demonstration against the Porte; now, in 1878, the despatch of the fleet was a demonstration against Russia, who had done alone the work of emancipation that in Mr. Gladstone's view should have been done, and might have been done without war by that concert of the Powers from which England had drawn back. The concert of the Powers that our withdrawal had paralysed would have revived quickly enough, if either Austria or Germany had believed that the Czar really meant to seize Constantinople. “I have done my best,” wrote Mr. Gladstone to a friend, “against the vote of six millions; a foolish and mischievous proposition. The liberal leaders have, mistakenly as I think, shrunk at the last moment from voting. But my opinion is that the liberal party in general are firmly opposed to the vote as a silly, misleading, and mischievous measure.” He both spoke and voted. The opinion of his adherents was that his words, notwithstanding his vote, were calculated to do more to throw oil on the troubled waters, than either the words or the abstention of the official leader.
The appearance of the British fleet with the nominal object of protecting life and property at Constantinople, was immediately followed by the advance of Russian troops thirty miles nearer to Constantinople with the same laudable object. The London cabinet only grew the wilder in its Projects, among them being a secret expedition of Indian troops to seize Cyprus and Alexandretta, with the idea that [pg 574] it would be fairer to the Turk not to ask his leave. Two ministers resigned in succession, rather than follow Lord Beaconsfield further in designs of this species.[350]
“It is a bitter disappointment,” Mr. Gladstone wrote to Madame Novikoff, “to find the conclusion of one war, for which there was a weighty cause, followed by the threat of another, for which there is no adequate cause at all, and which will be an act of utter wickedness—if it comes to pass, which God forbid—on one side or on both. That unhappy subject of the bit of Bessarabia,[351] on which I have given you my mind with great freedom (for otherwise what is the use of my writing at all?) threatens to be in part the pretext and in part the cause of enormous mischief, and in my opinion to mar and taint at a particular point the immense glory which Russia had acquired, already complete in a military sense, and waiting to be consummated in a moral sense too.”
Public men do not withstand war fevers without discomfort, as Bright had found in the streets of Manchester when he condemned the Crimean war. One or two odious and unusual incidents now happened to Mr. Gladstone:—
Feb. 24.—Between four and six, three parties of the populace arrived here, the first with cheers, the two others hostile. Windows were broken and much hooting. The last detachment was only kept away by mounted police in line across the street both ways. This is not very sabbatical. There is strange work behind the curtain, if one could only get at it. The instigators are those really guilty; no one can wonder at the tools.
One Sunday afternoon a little later (March 4):—
Another gathering of people was held off by the police. I walked down with C., and as a large crowd gathered, though in the main friendly, we went into Dr. Clark's, and then in a hansom off the ground.
Stories were put about that Lord Beaconsfield reported the [pg 575] names of dissentient colleagues to the Queen. Dining with Sir Robert Phillimore (Jan. 17), Mr. Gladstone—
was emphatic and decided in his opinion that if the premier mentioned to the Queen any of his colleagues who had opposed him in the cabinet, he was guilty of great baseness and perfidy. Gladstone said he had copies of 250 letters written by him to the Queen, in none of which could a reference be found to the opinion of his colleagues expressed in cabinet.
On the same occasion, by the way, Sir Robert notes: “Gladstone was careful to restrain the expression of his private feelings about Lord Beaconsfield, as he generally is.”