On the 12th of January, 1878, this proposal was discussed in the Cabinet, and it would have been necessary to follow up the step by asking the House of Commons for a war vote. At a meeting on the 14th, from which Lord Derby was absent, the proposal was adopted. On the 15th Lord Carnarvon sent in his resignation, but Mr. Montagu Corry came to him with a message from Lord Beaconsfield to say that certain telegrams had arrived which had caused the order to the Fleet to be cancelled. These telegrams must obviously have been from Lord Augustus Loftus, conveying Prince Gortschakoff’s pledge that Gallipoli would not be touched, and his warning that Russia would regard the British occupation of it as a breach of neutrality. On the 16th Lord Carnarvon was at the Cabinet meeting, but his resignation was not returned to him till the 18th, when Lord Beaconsfield assured him that there was no longer any difference between them. Lord Beaconsfield, indeed, went further in his soothing assurances to the House of Lords on the 17th. Though he had Lord Carnarvon’s resignation at that moment in his pocket, he said “there is not the slightest evidence that there has ever been any difference between my opinions and those of my colleagues.”[123] As for the rumours of dissensions in the Cabinet, Lord Salisbury scornfully averred that they were only the inventions of “our old friends the newspapers.”
To understand the events that followed, and which again threw the country into a panic, two facts must be kept in view. First, the resolution to send the Fleet to the Dardanelles had been taken on the 14th of January, after the receipt of a telegram from Mr. Layard warning the Government that the Russians were moving on Gallipoli. This false statement had been neutralised by Lord Augustus Loftus, who sent on the 15th the telegram conveying Gortschakoff’s renewed pledges to respect British interests, in time to enable Lord Beaconsfield to cancel the orders to the Fleet. But the second point is, that the public and Parliament were kept in complete ignorance of Gortschakoff’s fresh pledges not to approach Gallipoli, and not to occupy Constantinople. If the one pledge was to be trusted, so was the other, and the withdrawal of the orders to the Fleet proved that the Government thought that the one pledge was valid. Yet Lord Beaconsfield’s friends strove without ceasing to impress the public with the false notion that Russia meant to seize Constantinople. On the 17th Mr. Layard sent another alarmist telegram. The Russians, he said, were marching on Adrianople. They were next to occupy Constantinople, and the Sultan was making ready to fly to Broussa. On the 22nd a deputation of the Tory War Party, representing seventy-five malcontents in the House of Commons, urged a policy of intervention on Sir Stafford Northcote. On the 23rd the Cabinet resolved to send immediate orders to Admiral Hornby to take the Fleet to Constantinople. Lord Derby and Lord Carnarvon thereupon resigned. The order to the Fleet was countermanded, and Hornby was instructed to anchor in Besika Bay, whereupon Lord Derby returned to the Cabinet, but without Lord Carnarvon. Lord Derby afterwards admitted that neither he nor his colleagues had altered their opinions about the propriety of sending the order to the Fleet, so that the Ministry and its Foreign Secretary were now avowedly at variance as to a vital point of principle in Foreign policy. If the Cabinet was trustworthy Lord Derby should not have left it. If it was not trustworthy he was right to leave it, but wrong to go back. As for Lord Beaconsfield, that he should have permitted Lord Derby to return in such circumstances was, it need hardly be said, discreditable to him as a man of honour. On January 24th Sir Stafford Northcote gave notice that on the 28th he would move “a supplementary estimate for the military and naval services,” and the Ministerial press immediately circulated the most startling accounts of the oppressive conditions which Russia sought to impose on Turkey, then negotiating for an armistice. The Liberal press, on the other hand, accused Sir Stafford Northcote of breaking his promise, passed on the opening day of the Session, that he would not ask for a Vote till he knew what the Russian terms of peace were, and saw that they plainly put British interests in peril.
As for the public, it had not the faintest idea that Ministers had received assurances from Prince Gortschakoff which they had dealt with as satisfactory. The official excuse for the War Vote now was that Russia, by delaying to communicate the terms of peace which were the basis of the armistice, rendered precautionary measures necessary. On the 25th, Count Schouvaloff communicated these terms to the Foreign Office, and they were found to be simply those which Russia had, with unusual frankness, forewarned England and the Powers at various stages of the war, she would exact from Turkey. On the evening of the 25th, Lord Beaconsfield alluded to these terms as a possible basis for an armistice. He must have regarded them as eminently moderate, for he said that they had induced him to cancel the order to the Fleet to proceed to Constantinople.[124] But the Ministry still persisted in going on with the War Vote, and on the 28th of January Sir Stafford Northcote denounced the terms of peace, in language which would have induced Turkey to reject them had Russia not astutely kept them secret till Turkey had accepted them. On the same day Lord Carnarvon, in the House of Lords, explained his reasons for quitting the Cabinet.[125]
PRINCE GORTSCHAKOFF.
The feeling in the House of Commons was now running high against the Ministry, whose dissensions could no longer be concealed. But the War Party organised with some difficulty a strong agitation in London in their favour, and the streets and public-houses soon rang again with the hymnal invocation to the war-god Jingo. His worshippers attacked and broke up meetings called to protest against the War Vote, and they themselves held meetings in Sheffield, in Trafalgar Square, and in Exeter Hall (6th February). Still these demonstrations were empty of real meaning, and the Opposition would not have been intimidated by them but for a curious circumstance.
On the 7th of February the debate on the War Vote was still dragging on, and every night the case of the Cabinet seemed to grow feebler and feebler. The accommodating Mr. Layard, however, once more came to their rescue. He began again to pour in his stereotyped telegrams that the Russians, in spite of the armistice, were still marching on Constantinople. Finally his despatches formed the basis for a rumour that was circulated at Countess Münster’s ball, on the 6th of January, that the Russians had actually occupied Constantinople. Next day the panic-stricken City was literally occupied by raging “Jingoes,” and but for the police Mr. Gladstone’s house would have been sacked. Every man who did not bow to the war-god was a traitor and a Russian spy, and the violence of the War Party ultimately frightened the wits out of the Opposition. When the House of Commons met, Sir Stafford Northcote, in reply to Lord Hartington, read Mr. Layard’s alarming telegrams, and then the Liberal leaders ran from their guns in a panic. Mr. Forster made haste to withdraw his Resolution against the War Vote. Nobody would listen to Mr. Bright, who shrewdly suggested that Mr. Layard was again misleading the Government; and the Liberal Party, deserted by its leaders, sat in abject dismay, cowering beneath the triumphant cheering of their opponents. But in a moment the whole scene changed, as if by the touch of a magician. While Mr. Bright was casting doubt on Mr. Layard’s telegrams, a note was passed on to Sir Stafford Northcote, after reading which he grew visibly agitated. He handed it to his colleagues, and when Mr. Bright sat down, Sir Stafford Northcote rose and, with a shame-faced visage, said he had something of importance to communicate. Both sides strained every ear to learn what fresh act of Russian perfidy had been discovered; but the reaction was indescribable when he read out an official denial from Prince Gortschakoff of Mr. Layard’s sensational despatches. “The order,” said Gortschakoff, “has been given to stop hostilities along the whole line in Europe and in Asia. There is not a word of truth in the rumours which have reached you.” Peals of derisive laughter greeted this anti-climax, only it was difficult to know whether the Opposition and Ministers were laughing at themselves, or at each other.
The end of the affair was that Mr. Forster could not muster up enough courage to press his Resolution, and when a division came he and Lord Hartington and about a hundred bewildered Liberals walked out of the House. Hence the Vote was carried into Committee by a majority of 295 to 199. The country did not conceal its contempt for Mr. Forster’s manœuvre. Men of sense agreed that there was only one ground on which such a Vote could be fairly opposed. It was that till Ministers stated definitely, whether their policy was to be that of Lord Derby or Lord Beaconsfield, tempered at intervals by a telegraphic romance from the British Embassy at Constantinople, not a farthing should be granted to them. No such statement of policy was made, and the withdrawal of the Liberals from their position served to convince impartial observers that their opposition had been factious from the beginning. [126]