consider the situation on the basis of his own excellent proposals for peace, which have been already described. The Conference was assented to, and Lord Derby to some extent retrieved the position he lost on the morrow of Alexinatz. The Czar had also given the English Government the fullest assurances that he had no design on Constantinople, and in proof of his sincerity he had withdrawn a suggestion he had thrown out for the temporary occupation of Bosnia and Bulgaria by Austrian and Russian troops, and frankly accepted the English proposals for a settlement. It has been seen that during the negotiations which led up to the Crimean War, whenever the question was on the point of being settled somebody always interfered in England and in France to break the accord of the Powers. On this occasion history repeated itself. On the 9th of November Lord Beaconsfield delivered a speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, which suppressed all information as to the conciliatory mood of the Czar, and not only terrified Englishmen into a belief that Russia was scheming to seize Bulgaria, but that England was determined to oppose her by arms. The Czar, on the other hand, in an address to the Notables of Moscow, said that he was “firmly resolved to act independently if necessary” to obtain justice for the Christian subjects of Turkey.[94] At Constantinople there was joy among the Pashas, for they argued that after Lord Beaconsfield’s Guildhall speech they might regard the verdict of the Conference with indifference. The Czar, on his side, by way of emphasising his Moscow speech, mobilised six corps d’armée,[95] and Sir Stafford Northcote and Mr. Cross, in order to minimise the effect of Lord Beaconsfield’s threats, delivered addresses showing that they thought Turkey must be coerced if she trifled with Europe.[96] Lord Salisbury visited the European capitals on his way to the Conference at Constantinople, at which he was to represent England, and at each one he was informed that he must expect no aid in supporting Turkey. An appeal was made by the Times to Prince Bismarck to check Russia—but in vain. When Lord Salisbury had an interview with Prince Bismarck he found he was virtually a diplomatic ally of Russia. In fact, ere he reached Constantinople, Lord Salisbury found that Lord Beaconsfield’s policy of applying the obsolete ideas of the Whigs of 1854 to solve the Eastern Question in 1876, had isolated England. In the preliminary Conference, from which the Turks were excluded, Mr. Gladstone’s plan of giving administrative autonomy to the European Provinces of Turkey was adopted, Lord Salisbury supporting it with great ability and skill.[97] He even consented to allow 6,000 troops from some minor State—Belgium was suggested—to support the International Commission for reorganising the Government of an autonomous Bulgaria. This scheme was to have been adopted by the Porte at a Plenary Conference. Relying on the support of Lord Beaconsfield, and misled by the denunciations of Lord Salisbury which appeared in the Ministerial Press—then busy manufacturing failure for the English representatives at the Conference—the Porte met the demands of the Powers for reform, by proclaiming a grotesque Parliamentary Constitution for the Ottoman Empire. But it obstinately refused to grant the reforms demanded by the Conference, which accordingly broke up on the 20th of January, 1877. The Ambassadors of the Powers were then recalled from Constantinople. On the 8th of December (1876) a National Conference, under the presidency of the Duke of Westminster, and representing not only the heads of the Whig nobility, but most of the leaders of literature, science, and art, the High Church clergy, the Nonconformists, and politicians of every shade of Liberal opinion, met in St. James’s Hall to condemn Lord Beaconsfield’s policy, and protest against England giving armed aid to Turkey.
Early in 1876 the death of Lady Augusta Stanley, wife of the Dean of Westminster, removed one of the Queen’s most trusted friends. She had been for many years in personal attendance on her Majesty, and her services were so valuable that for many years her marriage with Dean Stanley had been postponed simply because the Royal Family could not spare her from their domestic circle. This gentle lady, throughout her life of unobtrusive usefulness at the Deanery of Westminster, served as one of the connecting-links between the upper, the middle, and the lower classes. She was as well known and as well loved in the dismal “slums” of London as in the radiant circle of the Court, and her death somewhat dimmed the brightness of the London season of 1876. It was a feverish, ill-conditioned season, agitated by financial scandals, by the pressure of hard times, by the failure of trade due to the uncertainty of the political situation, and by fierce and factious controversies as to the relative merits of Turks and Eastern Christians. To be in the mode one had to affect a strong admiration, not only for the ethics of the Koran, but for those of the Bashi-Bazouk, and a compassionate regret that Christianity had failed to elevate the European subjects of the Sultan, to the plane of Asiatic civilisation. The china mania, or craze for collecting old pottery, represented the fashionable movement in Art. Rinking, or skating on roller-skates in very mixed assemblies,[98] was the favourite form of physical recreation, and persons of quality kept their intellects alive by holding the spelling competitions known as “Spelling Bees.” Besides the “hard times” due to the collapse of investments, the Colorado beetle and the tropical heat of summer were added to the torments of the time; and the publication of the Domesday Book, showing that 710 individuals owned more than one-fourth of the soil of England and Wales, still further aggravated the uneasiness of a territorial aristocracy, whose margin of income for expenditure on luxuries was daily diminishing. The year closed with the sudden return of the Polar Expedition under Sir George Nares. Its record of achievement was most meagre, and its retreat after enduring only one winter in the ice was felt to be discreditable to the manhood of the British Navy. It was, however, discovered that the disaster was due to a terrible outbreak of scurvy in the crews of the Arctic ships, which was traced to their neglect to use lime-juice. The reputation of the explorers for pluck and endurance was thus redeemed at the expense of their intelligence.
The daily papers were filled with glowing accounts of the proclamation of the Queen as Empress of India (Kaiser-i-Hind) at Delhi, in the presence of the Viceroy and the great feudatories of the Empire on the 1st of January, 1877. The ceremony was accompanied by salvoes of artillery. A banner and a medal were given to the Princes to commemorate the event, and five of the most powerful magnates, Holkar, Scindiah, the Maharajah of Cashmere, the Maharajah of Travancore, and the Maharanee of Oodeypore, were granted rank, typified by salutes of twenty-one guns, equivalent to that of the Nizam. But as the viceregal salute was raised to thirty-one guns, Holkar and Scindiah, whose claim was to hold higher status than the Viceroy in their own dominions, and equal rank with him elsewhere, went away discontented. The scenic display was a little tawdry and theatrical, and grizzled Anglo-Indians, who had been accustomed to see austere statesmen or stern soldiers on the viceregal throne, were perplexed to find the Empress represented by a Viceroy who appeared to enjoy keenly the Orientalism of the function, and saw no absurdity in representing the majesty of Empire from the back of an elephant, which had been painted white for the occasion. Yet the ceremony was not without a deep meaning. It represented the final triumph of the new system which was introduced into India by Canning, the system by which, instead of ruling India by a paternal bureaucracy, whose aim was to sweep away all magnates who stood between it and the people, the hereditary rights of the native Princes were recognised, and they themselves admitted as corner-stones in the fabric of Empire of which the Kaiser-i-Hind was now proclaimed the apex and crown. It was, therefore, not without significance that the only class unrepresented at the Coronation was the Indian people. Yet one occasionally heard of the Indian people. A quarter of a million of them had been drowned by a cyclone in Bengal when the debates on the Imperial title were going on in London. Eight millions of them were in the agonies of famine in Central India when that title was proclaimed at Delhi.
TROOPING THE COLOURS IN ST. JAMES’S PARK ON THE QUEEN’S BIRTHDAY.
LORD CAIRNS.