[152] There were seventy-five adults, and from ten to fifteen children. The bodies were nearly all washed away by the tide.
[153] Dr. Köller, a Church of England clergyman, employed by the Church Missionary Society in Constantinople, had engaged Ahmed Tewfik, a Mohammedan schoolmaster, to help him to translate the Scriptures into Turkish. Ahmed and the MSS. were seized, and the former adjudged worthy of death by the Sheik-ul-Islam. For three months Sir Henry Layard had vainly demanded his release, and the dismissal of the Minister of Police, Hafiz Pasha, from his post.
[154] Hafiz was one of the savages, whose share in the Bulgarian atrocities was so patent, that Lord Derby had demanded his punishment. The answer to this demand by the Turks was the appointment of Hafiz as Minister of Police at Constantinople, where he and Sir Henry Layard suddenly fell out.
[155] He had given the Lord-Lieutenancy of a county to Colonel King-Harman.
[156] Loans to Baronial Sessions for improvement works were virtually loans to the landlords.
[157] Nobody knew better than Lord Beaconsfield, from his experiences of 1846, that the potato is the barometer of Famine in Ireland, and it is impossible to suppose that he would have been satisfied with Mr. Lowther’s Bill if he had looked into the facts. For these all pointed to a dreadful failure of the potato crop. In 1876 its value was £12,464,382. In 1878 it was only £7,579,512. In 1879 it fell to £3,341,028. In England a crisis like this would have compelled the Government to take strong measures of relief, and yet in England such a state of affairs is always eased by the landlords abating or wiping out rent. But the distress in Ireland was aggravated because the worse it grew the fiercer became the demand of the landlords for rent. “Evictions,” writes Mr. J. Huntley McCarthy, “had increased from 463 families in 1877 to 980 in 1878, to 1,238 in 1879; and they were still on the increase, as was shown at the end of 1880, when it was found that 2,110 families were evicted.” Moreover, the Irish peasantry paid part of their rent out of wages earned as migratory labourers during part of the year in England and Scotland. But English and Scottish farmers were themselves cutting down their labour bills, and the loss to the Irish on migratory labour alone in 1877 was £250,000 (Hancock). See Healy’s “Why is there a Land Question?” pp. 71, 72; O’Connor’s “Parnell Movement,” pp. 166-7. J. H. McCarthy’s “England under Gladstone,” p. 103.
[158] The new Rule was to the effect that a Member “named” by the Speaker or Chairman for obstruction might be suspended for the rest of the sitting on a motion voted without debate; and if he repeated the offence three times, he might be suspended for an indefinite period till pardoned by the House.
[159] These were Barnstaple, Liverpool, and Southwark. At Barnstaple the Liberal (Lord Lymington) increased the Liberal majority by 60 votes. But Sir R. Carden increased the Tory minority by 99. In Liverpool Mr. Whitley was returned by a majority of 2,221, though Lord Ramsay, the losing candidate, polled 3,000 more votes than the winning candidate had ever polled before. Southwark (vacated by the death of Mr. Locke, a strong Radical) was carried by Mr. Edward Clarke, a strong Conservative, by a large majority. Lord Beaconsfield’s calculations were here faulty. The verdict of Barnstaple, being a corrupt constituency, went for nothing on either side. In Liverpool the Tories maintained their ascendency, but not at all with the proportionate majority they obtained in 1874. Southwark was dominated by the publican vote, and the Liberal candidate (Mr. Dunn) was not only a bad speaker, but especially hateful to the working-class, because he had, by insisting on standing at a former election, ruined the candidature of Mr. Odger, and, by splitting the Liberal vote, had handed over the second seat in Southwark to Colonel Beresford, the Conservative candidate. The bye-elections to which Lord Beaconsfield trusted afforded no true guidance as to the drift of opinion.
[160] Mr. Cross created a Water Trust, partly representative and partly nominated, for taking over the business of the water companies. He had in the previous Session promised Mr. Fawcett that he would not give the companies a “fancy” price for their property. He now proposed to hand over a Three and a Half per Cent. Stock to the companies as compensation for their property. The actual value of that property was about £19,000,000; but the Standard and the critics of the scheme complained that Mr. Cross gave the companies £30,000,000 compensation. Water shares rose 75 per cent. when Mr. Cross’s Bill was produced.
[161] The contest in Midlothian excited the keenest interest. When the poll had been counted it was found that Mr. Gladstone had obtained the seat by a majority of 211 votes, the figures being Gladstone 1,579, Dalkeith 1,368. As soon as the result became known the utmost enthusiasm was aroused throughout the country. In Edinburgh the excitement was intense and Mr. Gladstone had to address the shouting crowd, under a fall of snow, from the balcony of Lord Rosebery’s House in George Street.