“For writing pamphlets and for roasting Popes”
was bent in a new direction, and he threw himself with all his might into the controversy that ended in turning English public opinion irrevocably against Turkey. Throughout the Session Mr. Gladstone and Lord Hartington had, with commendable patriotism, abstained from putting questions to Ministers with reference to their Eastern policy. Parliament and the country were, therefore, in the dark as to what was going on. But towards the end of
HOLYROOD PALACE, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST.
June disquieting rumours flew about to the effect that there had been a revolution in Bulgaria, and that the Turks had suppressed it by massacres of the most revolting barbarity. The Government met these tales with jaunty persiflage. On the 10th of July Mr. Forster put a question on the subject, which Mr. Disraeli answered by saying that he considered the reports exaggerated, nor did he think that torture had been resorted to by “an Oriental people who, I believe, seldom resort to torture, but generally terminate their connection with culprits in a more expeditious manner.”[92] This ill-timed jest was hailed with a great guffaw of laughter from the Ministerial Benches. It destroyed Mr. Disraeli’s authority in the country when the awful truth was revealed, not by the diplomatic agents of England, who strove hard to conceal it, but by two American gentlemen, Mr. J. A. Macgahan, a distinguished journalist, and Mr. Eugene Schuyler, the United States Consul-General in Turkey. They went to Philippopolis on the 25th of July, and Mr. Macgahan’s description of what he saw in the country, which had been ravaged by the Turks, when published in the Daily News, sent a thrill of horror through the
SIR JAMES FALSHAW.
(From a Photograph by J. Moffat, Edinburgh.)