Mr. Parnell proceeded without delay to give a practical illustration of the defects of the new rules. He played his game more warily, but more persistently than ever, and every day the House of Commons found itself an object of contempt to the nation, because it could not vindicate its authority against one man. At last, on the 31st of July, Sir Stafford Northcote in despair resolved to resort to physical methods. He arranged with Lord Hartington to force the South Africa Bill through Committee, by getting the House to sit on without a break till the Parnellites were worn out from sheer bodily exhaustion. Relays of Members were brought up to keep the House in Session, and Mr. Parnell and his friends were allowed to talk themselves out. For twenty-six consecutive hours the struggle went on with the seven Irish Members, who, ere it was half through, lost their Radical ally, Mr. Courtney, who flounced out of the House muttering his disgust at the hideous scene of anarchy. At two o’clock in the afternoon of the following day, Sir Stafford Northcote threatened “further proceedings,” and then, and not till then, did the Irish forlorn hope give way. Mr. O’Donnell, whose voice was now scarcely audible, said that this menace[106] changed the situation, and the Bill was forthwith passed through Committee. The Government triumphed, but at a terrible cost. They had to drop all their best Bills, because Mr. Parnell kept them using up the time at their disposal in passing a measure which was of little interest to Englishmen, and which ultimately proved, not only useless, but mischievous. The Session was therefore barren of legislative fruit. Even the Budget failed to excite debate, for, as Sir Stafford Northcote said, it was “a ready-made” one, and changed nothing.[107] No old taxes were remitted, and no new ones imposed. Sir Stafford Northcote perhaps underrated the depression in trade, which was even then obviously growing. He hardly appreciated the rapidity with which the working classes were exhausting their savings at a time when wages were more likely to fall than rise. But otherwise his statement was unobjectionable.
Foreign Policy was, however, the mainstay of the Ministry, and it is curious to note how completely the anti-Turkish agitation, which Mr. Gladstone had fomented with passionate zeal, forced the Cabinet to change their attitude to the Eastern Question. In 1876 the Ministerial doctrine was that England had no more to do with a quarrel between the Sultan and his subjects than between the Austrian Emperor and his people—the Ministerial theory, in fact, was, that if England was bound to protect anybody, it was the Sultan, and not his subjects. In 1877 Ministers acknowledged that, as England had been mainly responsible for keeping the Turk in Europe, she was in honour bound to protect his Christian subjects from the torture which his Pashas inflicted on them. There was also a change in regard to another point. In 1876 Ministers were all for maintaining the “integrity and independence” of Turkey. The Atrocities agitation, however, forced Lord Derby to make demands on Turkey, and to assent to demands being made on her, which ignored her visionary integrity and her mythical independence. It was said at the time that the Court, having strongly supported the pro-Turkish policy of 1876, was disappointed at the change of front in 1877. It is quite certain that these views were not shared by the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh and their entourage. A passage in one of the letters of the Princess Alice to the Queen makes that point tolerably clear.[108] But as to the other question the evidence is faulty. The policy of the Prince Consort, which was always supposed to dominate the ideas of the Court, was certainly not pro-Turkish. In his celebrated Memorandum to Lord Aberdeen’s Cabinet in 1853 he laid down two principles: It was the duty and interest of England to prevent Russia from imposing in an underhand way a Protectorate on the European provinces of Turkey “incompatible with their own independence.” It was also the duty and interest of England to prevent Turkey from using English diplomacy so as to enable the Pashas to impose “a more oppressive rule of two millions of fanatic Mussulmans over twelve millions of Christians.” England might go to war to prevent Bulgaria from falling into the hands of Russia, but not for the mere maintenance of the integrity and independence of Turkey. Nay, the Prince considered that such a war ought to lead, in the peace which must be its object, “to the obtaining of arrangements more consonant with the well-understood interests of Europe, of Christianity, liberty, and civilisation, than the re-imposition of the ignorant barbarian and despotic yoke of the Mussulman over the most fertile and favoured portion of Europe.”[109] Lord Aberdeen, Lord Clarendon, Sir James Graham, and Mr. Gladstone accepted this view of English policy. On the other hand, Lord Palmerston repudiated it. He contended that it was the duty of England to maintain the integrity of Turkey at all hazards; that the Prince Consort’s policy pointed to the ultimate expulsion of the Ottomans from Europe; and that any reconstruction of Turkey such as that which the Prince foreshadowed simply meant “its subjection to Russia, direct or indirect, immediate or for a time delayed.”
But Lord Beaconsfield’s policy was simply a reproduction of Lord Palmerston’s, hence it might be inferred that if the Prince Consort’s ideas still prevailed at Court, his policy in 1876 could not have had Royal sanction. On the other hand, there is no proof that Prince Albert’s ideas on the subject—which in the main were those of the great bulk of the English people—were still held as authoritative at Court. In a curious letter, the significance of which is obvious in its relation to the Queen’s personal opinions, written by the Princess Alice to her mother (25th July, 1878) there occurs, after an outburst against the advance of the Russians on Bulgaria, the following passage: “What do the friends of the ‘Atrocity Meetings’ say now? How difficult it has been made for the Government through them, and how blind they have been! All this must be a constant worry and anxiety for you.” [110]
As the Princess’s letters, where they touch on English public affairs, invariably reflect the opinions of the Queen, and as it cannot be imagined that in a matter of bitter political controversy she would venture to obtrude on the Queen so contemptuous a view of the “Atrocity Meetings” and of the conduct of the Opposition, had it not been in sympathy with the Queen’s own feelings, we may safely draw one conclusion. Despite the conjectures which have been ingeniously based on the Prince Consort’s Memorandum of 1853, the policy of the Court was identified with that of the Cabinet all through 1876, and if it was changed in 1877, it was changed in deference to the popular hostility to Turkey, which Mr. Gladstone had aroused. Among those persons, however, who were closest in contact with the Court, and who usually reflected Royal ideas most correctly, there was no change of opinion. Mr. Hayward’s correspondence teems with references to the fierce hatred with which Mr. Gladstone and the Opposition were denounced by “the upper ten thousand;”[111] in fact, Society vilipended Mr. Gladstone with the same obloquy that it had bestowed on him for his pamphlet denouncing the Neapolitan atrocities. But Mr. Hayward is at pains to state that, “all that the Government have been doing in the right direction is owing to the flame kindled by him [Mr. Gladstone]”; and the Hayward Correspondence proves that at the different embassies the diplomatists were at one on three points (1), the insulation of England; (2), the necessity of protecting the Bulgarians effectually from Turkish oppression; (3), the necessity of refusing Russia any cession of Turkish territory in Europe; a condition which, says Mr. Hayward in his account of a celebrated diplomatic dinner-party at the Austrian Embassy, Russia accepted.[112]
Events justified the accuracy of Mr. Hayward’s information, for it was the fatal error of Lord Beaconsfield’s policy that it assumed there was no genuine accord among the Powers, and that they were neither able nor willing to prevent Russia from seizing Turkish territory in Europe. Indeed, Mr. Hayward seems to have been the only observer of public affairs who clearly understood why they were drifting in the direction indicated by the table-talk of the embassies. In a letter to Lady Waldegrave (7th October, 1876) he says, “the power of public opinion is a remarkable feature of the Eastern Question. Russia is so strongly impelled by it that the Government would be endangered by holding back. Austria is impelled by the Magyar to oppose the construction of any new Slav State. The Porte is afraid of exasperating its Mahometan subjects by what might be deemed unworthy concessions. The English Government is completely controlled by public opinion.” And again in a letter to Mr. Gladstone he says, “One of the strongest features of the situation is, that the popular voice or national will is bettering or impelling diplomacy and statesmanship in Russia, Austria, England, and Turkey, and
THE TOWER OF GALATA, CONSTANTINOPLE.
fortunately so as concerns England. Whatever England is doing in the right direction is owing to the popular impulse for which you are mainly responsible, and which will redound to your lasting honour.”[113] At the same time, there was a point at which Mr. Gladstone and the nation parted company. He thought that if England admitted that she ought to see that the Bulgarians were protected from oppression, she ought to force Turkey to give effectual guarantees for their protection. If she did not, Russia would step in as their champion, and establish a claim to exclusive influence over European Turkey, which it was not politic to give her even a pretext for exercising. The great majority of Englishmen, however, held (1), that it was not their business to waste their taxes in winning freedom for the Bulgarians; (2), that they sufficiently discharged their duty to them when they paralysed Turkey by withdrawing British support from her; and (3), that the futile results of the Crimean War proved that Austria and Germany, from their geographical position, were the only Powers who could be safely trusted to effectively check Russian aggression in Eastern Europe. The masses, as distinguished from the aristocratic and academic classes, here proved themselves wiser than their leaders, on whom they forced a policy of non-intervention, which practically meant benevolent neutrality to the oppressed provinces of Turkey. The manner in which the Treaty of San Stefano was transformed into the Treaty of Berlin, every concession extorted from Russia being obviously exacted in Austro-German interests, more than justified the somewhat cynical anticipations of the British people.