Representative British Orations Volume 3 (of 4) / With Introductions and Explanatory Notes

by Unknown

But here is a very strange fact. You know that that portion of Armenia includes the port of Batoum. Lord Salisbury has lately stated to the country that, by the Treaty of Berlin, the port of Batoum is to be only a commercial port. If the Treaty of Berlin stated that it was to be only a commercial port, which, of course, could not be made an arsenal, that fact would be very important. But happily, gentlemen, although treaties are concealed from us nowadays as long and as often as is possible, the Treaty of Berlin is an open instrument. We can consult it for ourselves; and when we consult the Treaty of Berlin, we find it states that Batoum shall be essentially a commercial port, but not that it shall be only a commercial port. Why, gentlemen, Leith is essentially a commercial port, but there is nothing to prevent the people of this country, if in their wisdom or their folly they should think fit, from constituting Leith as a great naval arsenal or fortification; and there is nothing to prevent the Emperor of Russia, while leaving to Batoum a character that shall be essentially commercial, from joining with that another character that is not in the slightest degree excluded by the treaty, and making it as much as he pleases a port of military defence. Therefore, I challenge the assertion of Lord Salisbury; and as Lord Salisbury is fond of writing letters to the Times to bring the Duke of Argyll to book, he perhaps will be kind enough to write another letter to the Times, and tell in what clause of the Treaty of Berlin he finds it written that the port of Batoum shall be only a commercial port. For the present, I simply leave it on record that he has misrepresented the Treaty of Berlin.

With respect to Russia, I take two views of the position of Russia. The position of Russia in Central Asia I believe to be one that has, in the main, been forced upon her against her will. She has been compelled—and this is the impartial opinion of the world,—she has been compelled to extend her frontier southward in Central Asia by causes in some degree analogous to, but certainly more stringent and imperative than, the causes which have commonly led us to extend, in a far more important manner, our frontier in India; and I think it, gentlemen, much to the credit of the late government, much to the honor of Lord Clarendon and Lord Granville, that, when we were in office, we made a covenant with Russia, in which Russia bound herself to exercise no influence or interference whatever in Afghanistan, we, on the other hand, making known our desire that Afghanistan should continue free and independent. Both the powers acted with uniform strictness and fidelity upon this engagement until the day when we were removed from office. But Russia, gentlemen, has another position—her position in respect to Turkey; and here it is that I have complained of the government for aggrandizing the power of Russia; it is on this point that I most complain.

The policy of her Majesty’s government was a policy of repelling and repudiating the Slavonic populations of Turkey-in-Europe, and of declining to make England the advocate for their interests. Nay, more, she became in their view the advocate of the interests opposed to theirs. Indeed, she was rather the decided advocate of Turkey; and now Turkey is full of loud complaints—and complaints, I must say, not unjust—that we allured her on to her ruin; that we gave the Turks a right to believe that we should support them; that our ambassadors, Sir Henry Elliot and Sir Austin Layard, both of them said we had most vital interests in maintaining Turkey as it was, and consequently the Turks thought if we had vital interests, we should certainly defend them; and they were thereby lured on into that ruinous, cruel, and destructive war with Russia. But by our conduct to the Slavonic populations we alienated those populations from us. We made our name odious among them. They had every disposition to sympathize with us, every disposition to confide in us. They are, as a people, desirous of freedom, desirous of self-government, with no aggressive views, but hating the idea of being absorbed in a huge despotic empire like Russia. But when they found that we, and the other powers of Europe under our unfortunate guidance, declined to become in any manner their champions in defence of the rights of life, of property, and of female honor,—when they found that there was no call which could find its way to the heart of England through its government, or to the hearts of other powers, and that Russia alone was disposed to fight for them, why naturally they said, Russia is our friend. We have done every thing, gentlemen, in our power to drive these populations into the arms of Russia. If Russia has aggressive dispositions in the direction of Turkey—and I think it probable that she may have them,—it is we who have laid the ground upon which Russia may make her march to the south,—we who have taught the Bulgarians, the Servians, the Roumanians, the Montenegrins, that there is one power in Europe, and only one, which is ready to support in act and by the sword her professions of sympathy with the oppressed populations of Turkey.[73] That power is Russia, and how can you blame these people if, in such circumstances, they are disposed to say, Russia is our friend? But why did we make them say it? Simply because of the policy of the government, not because of the wishes of the people of this country. Gentlemen, this is the most dangerous form of aggrandizing Russia. If Russia is aggressive anywhere, if Russia is formidable anywhere, it is by movements toward the south, it is by schemes for acquiring command of the Straits or of Constantinople; and there is no way by which you can possibly so much assist her in giving reality to these designs, as by inducing and disposing the populations of these provinces, who are now in virtual possession of them, to look upon Russia as their champion and their friend, to look upon England as their disguised, perhaps, but yet real and effective enemy.

Why, now, gentlemen, I have said that I think it not unreasonable either to believe, or at any rate to admit it to be possible, that Russia has aggressive designs in the east of Europe. I do not mean immediate aggressive designs. I do not believe that the Emperor of Russia is a man of aggressive schemes or policy. It is that, looking to that question in the long run, looking at what has happened, and what may happen in ten or twenty years, in one generation, in two generations, it is highly probable that in some circumstances Russia may develop aggressive tendencies toward the south.

Perhaps you will say I am here guilty of the same injustice to Russia that I have been deprecating, because I say that we ought not to adopt the method of condemning anybody without cause, and setting up exceptional principles in proscription of a particular nation. Gentlemen, I will explain to you in a moment the principle upon which I act, and the grounds upon which I form my judgment. They are simply these grounds: I look at the position of Russia, the geographical position of Russia relatively to Turkey. I look at the comparative strength of the two empires; I look at the importance of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus as an exit and a channel for the military and commercial marine of Russia to the Mediterranean; and what I say to myself is this: If the United Kingdom were in the same position relatively to Turkey which Russia holds upon the map of the globe, I feel quite sure that we should be very apt indeed both to entertain and to execute aggressive designs upon Turkey. Gentlemen, I will go further, and will frankly own to you that I believe if we, instead of happily inhabiting this island, had been in the possession of the Russian territory, and in the circumstances of the Russian people, we should most likely have eaten up Turkey long ago. And consequently, in saying that Russia ought to be vigilantly watched in that quarter, I am only applying to her the rule which in parallel circumstances I feel convinced ought to be applied, and would be justly applied, to judgments upon our own country.

Gentlemen, there is only one other point on which I must still say a few words to you, although there are a great many upon which I have a great many words yet to say somewhere or other.

Of all the principles, gentlemen, of foreign policy which I have enumerated, that to which I attach the greatest value is the principle of the equality of nations; because, without recognizing that principle, there is no such thing as public right, and without public international right there is no instrument available for settling the transactions of mankind except material force. Consequently the principle of equality among nations lies, in my opinion, at the very basis and root of a Christian civilization, and when that principle is compromised or abandoned, with it must depart our hopes of tranquillity and of progress for mankind.

I am sorry to say, gentlemen, that I feel it my absolute duty to make this charge against the foreign policy under which we have lived for the last two years, since the resignation of Lord Derby.[74] It has been a foreign policy, in my opinion, wholly, or to a perilous extent, unregardful of public right, and it has been founded upon the basis of a false, I think an arrogant and a dangerous, assumption, although I do not question its being made conscientiously and for what was believed the advantage of the country,—an untrue, arrogant, and dangerous assumption that we are entitled to assume for ourselves some dignity, which we should also be entitled to withhold from others, and to claim on our own part authority to do things which we would not permit to be done by others. For example, when Russia was going to the Congress at Berlin, we said: “Your Treaty of San Stefano is of no value. It is an act between you and Turkey; but the concerns of Turkey by the Treaty of Paris are the concerns of Europe at large. We insist upon it that the whole of your Treaty of San Stefano shall be submitted to the Congress at Berlin, that they may judge how far to open it in each and every one of its points, because the concerns of Turkey are the common concerns of the powers of Europe acting in concert.”

Having asserted that principle to the world, what did we do? These two things, gentlemen: secretly, without the knowledge of Parliament, without even the forms of official procedure, Lord Salisbury met Count Schouvaloff in London, and agreed with him upon the terms on which the two powers together should be bound in honor to one another to act upon all the most important points when they came before the Congress at Berlin. Having alleged against Russia that she should not be allowed to settle Turkish affairs with Turkey, because they were but two powers, and these affairs were the common affairs of Europe, and of European interest, we then got Count Schouvaloff into a private room, and on the part of England and Russia, they being but two powers, we settled a large number of the most important of these affairs in utter contempt and derogation of the very principle for which the government had been contending for months before, for which they had asked Parliament to grant a sum of £6,000,000, for which they had spent that £6,000,000 in needless and mischievous armaments.[75] That which we would not allow Russia to do with Turkey, because we pleaded the rights of Europe, we ourselves did with Russia, in contempt of the rights of Europe. Nor was that all, gentlemen. That act was done, I think, on one of the last days of May, in the year 1878, and the document was published, made known to the world, made known to the Congress at Berlin, to its infinite astonishment, unless I am very greatly misinformed.

But that was not all. Nearly at the same time we performed the same operation in another quarter. We objected to a treaty between Russia and Turkey as having no authority, though that treaty was made in the light of day—namely, to the Treaty of San Stefano; and what did we do? We went not in the light of day, but in the darkness of the night,—not in the knowledge and cognizance of other powers, all of whom would have had the faculty and means of watching all along, and of preparing and taking their own objections and shaping their own policy,—not in the light of day, but in the darkness of the night, we sent the ambassador of England in Constantinople to the minister of Turkey, and there he framed, even while the Congress of Berlin was sitting to determine these matters of common interest, he framed that which is too famous, shall I say, or rather too notorious, as the Anglo-Turkish Convention.