This, however, merely signified that the signatory Powers would resist encroachments on the territorial integrity of Turkey. It did not limit the rights of the Powers, as specified in various "Capitulations," to safeguard their own subjects residing in Turkey against Turkish misrule. The Sultan raised great hopes by issuing a firman granting religious liberty to his Christian subjects; this was inserted in the Treaty of Paris, and thereby became part of the public law of Europe. The Powers also became collectively the guarantors of the local privileges of the Danubian Principalities. Another article of the Treaty provided for the exclusion of war-ships from the Black Sea. This of course applied specially to Russia and Turkey[88].
The chief diplomatic result of the Crimean War, then, was to substitute a European recognition of religious toleration in Turkey for the control over her subjects of the Greek Church which Russia had claimed. The Sublime Porte was now placed in a stronger position than it had held since the year 1770; and the due performance of its promises would probably have led to the building up of a strong State. But the promises proved to be mere waste-paper. The Sultan, believing that England and France would always take his part, let matters go on in the old bad way. The natural results came to pass. The Christians showed increasing restiveness under Turkish rule. In 1860 numbers of them were massacred in the Lebanon, and Napoleon III. occupied part of Syria with French troops. The vassal States in Europe also displayed increasing vitality, while that of Turkey waned. In 1861, largely owing to the diplomatic help of Napoleon III., Moldavia and Wallachia united and formed the Principality of Roumania. In 1862, after a short but terrible struggle, the Servians rid themselves of the Turkish garrisons and framed a constitution of the Western type. But the worst blow came in 1870. During the course of the Franco-German War the Czar's Government (with the good-will and perhaps the active connivance of the Court of Berlin) announced that it would no longer be bound by the article of the Treaty of Paris excluding Russian war-ships from the Black Sea. The Gladstone Ministry sent a protest against this act, but took no steps to enforce its protest. Our young diplomatist, Sir Horace Rumbold, then at St. Petersburg, believed that she would have drawn back at a threat of war[89]. Finally, the Russian declaration was agreed to by the Powers in a Treaty signed at London on March 31, 1871.
These warnings were all thrown away on the Porte. Its promises of toleration to Christians were ignored; the wheels of government clanked on in the traditional rusty way; governors of provinces and districts continued, as of yore, to pocket the grants that were made for local improvements; in defiance of the promises given in 1856, taxes continued to be "farmed" out to contractors; the evidence of Christians against Moslems was persistently refused a hearing in courts of justice[90]; and the collectors of taxes gave further turns of the financial screw in order to wring from the cultivators, especially from the Christians, the means of satisfying the needs of the State and the ever-increasing extravagance of the Sultan. Incidents which were observed in Bosnia by an Oxford scholar of high repute, in the summer of 1875, will be found quoted in an Appendix at the end of this volume.
Matters came to a climax in the autumn of 1875 in Herzegovina, the southern part of Bosnia. There after a bad harvest the farmers of taxes and the Mohammedan landlords insisted on having their full quota; for many years the peasants had suffered under agrarian wrongs, which cannot be described here; and now this long-suffering peasantry, mostly Christians, fled to the mountains, or into Montenegro, whose sturdy mountaineers had never bent beneath the Turkish yoke[91]. Thence they made forays against their oppressors until the whole of that part of the Balkans was aflame with the old religious and racial feuds. The Slavs of Servia, Bulgaria, and of Austrian Dalmatia also gave secret aid to their kith and kin in the struggle against their Moslem overlords. These peoples had been aroused by the sight of the triumph of the national cause in Italy, and felt that the time had come to strike for freedom in the Balkans. Turkey therefore failed to stamp out the revolt in Herzegovina, fed as it was by the neighbouring Slav peoples; and it was clear to all the politicians of Europe that the Eastern Question was entering once more on an acute phase.
These events aroused varied feelings in the European States. The Russian people, being in the main of Slavonic descent, sympathised deeply with the struggles of their kith and kin, who were rendered doubly dear by their membership in the Greek Church. The Panslavonic Movement, for bringing the scattered branches of the Slav race into some form of political union, was already gaining ground in Russia; but it found little favour with the St. Petersburg Government owing to the revolutionary aims of its partisans. Sympathy with the revolt in the Balkans was therefore confined to nationalist enthusiasts in the towns of Russia. Austria was still more anxious to prevent the spread of the Balkan rising to the millions of her own Slavs. Accordingly, the Austrian Chancellor, Count Andrassy, in concert with Prince Bismarck and the Russian statesman, Prince Gortchakoff, began to prepare a scheme of reforms which was to be pressed on the Sultan as a means of conciliating the insurgents of Herzegovina. They comprised (1) the improvement of the lot of the peasantry; (2) complete religious liberty; (3) the abolition of the farming of taxes; (4) the application of the local taxation to local needs; (5) the appointment of a Commission, half of Moslems, half of Christians, to supervise the execution of these reforms and of others recently promised by the Porte[92].
These proposals would probably have been sent to the Porte before the close of 1875 but for the diplomatic intervention of the British Cabinet. Affairs at London were then in the hands of that skilful and determined statesman, Disraeli, soon to become Lord Beaconsfield. It is impossible to discuss fully the causes of that bias in his nature which prejudiced him against supporting the Christians of Turkey. Those causes were due in part to the Semitic instincts of his Jewish ancestry,--the Jews having consistently received better treatment from the Turks than from the Russians,--and in part to his staunch Imperialism, which saw in Muscovite expansion the chief danger to British communications with India. Mr. Bryce has recently pointed out in a suggestive survey of Disraeli's character that tradition had great weight with him[93]. It is known to have been a potent influence on the mind of Queen Victoria; and, as the traditional policy at Whitehall was to support Turkey against Russia, all the personal leanings, which count for so much, told in favour of a continuance in the old lines, even though the circumstances had utterly changed since the time of the Crimean War.
When, therefore, Disraeli became aware that pressure was about to be applied to the Porte by the three Powers above named, he warned them that he considered any such action to be inopportune, seeing that Turkey ought to be allowed time to carry out a programme of reforms of recent date. By an iradé of October 2, 1875, the Sultan had promised to all his Christian subjects a remission of taxation and the right of choosing not only the controllers of taxes, but also delegates to supervise their rights at Constantinople.
In taking these promises seriously, Disraeli stood almost alone. But his speech of November 9, 1875, at the Lord Mayor's banquet, showed that he viewed the Eastern Question solely from the standpoint of British interests. His acts spoke even more forcibly than his words. That was the time when the dawn of Imperialism flushed all the eastern sky. H.R.H. the Prince of Wales had just begun his Indian tour amidst splendid festivities at Bombay; and the repetition of these in the native States undoubtedly did much to awaken interest in our Eastern Empire and cement the loyalty of its Princes and peoples. Next, at the close of the month of November, came the news that the British Government had bought the shares in the Suez Canal, previously owned by the Khedive of Egypt, for the sum of £4,500,000[94]. The transaction is now acknowledged by every thinking man to have been a master-stroke of policy, justified on all grounds, financial and Imperial. In those days it met with sharp censure from Disraeli's opponents. In a sense this was natural; for it seemed to be part of a scheme for securing British influence in the Levant and riding roughshod over the susceptibilities of the French (the constructors of the canal) and the plans of Russia. Everything pointed to the beginning of a period of spirited foreign policy which would lead to war with Russia.
Meanwhile the three Empires delayed the presentation of their scheme of reforms for Turkey, and, as it would seem, out of deference to British representations. The troubles in Herzegovina therefore went on unchecked through the winter, the insurgents refusing to pay any heed to the Sultan's promises, even though these were extended by the iradé of December 12, offering religious liberty and the institution of electoral bodies throughout the whole of European Turkey. The statesmen of the Continent were equally sceptical as to the bona fides of these offers, and on January 31, 1876, presented to the Porte their scheme of reforms already described. Disraeli and our Foreign Minister, Lord Derby, gave a cold and guarded assent to the "Andrassy Note," though they were known to regard it as "inopportune." To the surprise of the world, the Porte accepted the Note on February 11, with one reservation.