That was not the only, nor was it the most important case. You remember—I am now carrying your recollections back to the time of the outbreak of the war with Afghanistan, and if you recollect the circumstances of that outbreak, at the most critical moment we were told that the Ameer of Afghanistan had refused to receive a British Mission with insult and with outrage, and that insult and outrage were represented as at once enlisting our honour and reputation in the case, as making it necessary to administer immediate chastisement. I do not hesitate to express my full belief that without that statement the war with Afghanistan would not have been made, would not have been tolerated, by the country; but it was difficult, considering the nature of our Indian Empire, considering how it is dependent upon opinion in Asia, and upon the repute of strength, it was difficult to interfere strongly—indeed. Parliament was not sitting—but it was difficult even by opinion out of doors strongly to protest against military measures taken in a case where the authority of the Crown had been insulted, and outrage committed upon it by the Ameer of Afghanistan. That intelligence was sent. We were never undeceived about it until we were completely committed to the war, and until our troops were in the country. The Parliament met; after long and most unjustifiable delays the papers were produced, and when the papers were produced and carefully examined, we found that there was not a shred of foundation for that outrageous statement, and that the temper and pride of the people of this country had been wrought up, and the spirit of wrath fomented and kindled in their bosoms, by intelligence that was false intelligence, and that somebody or other—somebody or other having access to high quarters, if not dwelling in them—had invented, had fabricated for the evil purpose of carrying us into bloody strife.
All these are among the acts which I am sorry to say it is my business to charge upon the majority of the late Parliament, and upon every member of that majority; and all these are the acts which those who are invited to vote or who intend to vote for my noble opponent—whatever may be his personal claims, all these are the acts, the responsibility of which they are now invited to take upon themselves, and the repetition of which, by giving that vote, they will directly encourage.
The next charge is the charge of broken laws. We have contended—it is impossible to trouble you with argument—but we have contended, and I think we have demonstrated, in the House of Commons, sustained by a great array of legal strength and bearing, that in making that war in Afghanistan, the Government of this country absolutely broke the laws which regulate the Government of India. I do not say they admit it; on the contrary, they deny it. But we have argued it; we believe, we think we have shown it. It is a very grave and serious question; but this much, I think, is plain, that unless our construction of that Indian Government Act, which limits the power of the Crown as to the employment of the Indian forces at the cost of the Indian revenue without the consent of Parliament—unless our construction of that Act be true, the restraining clauses of that Act are absolutely worthless, and the people who passed those restraining clauses, and who most carefully considered them at the time, must have been people entirely unequal to their business; although two persons—I won't speak of myself, who had much to do with them, but two persons who next to myself were most concerned, were the present and the late Lord Derby, neither of them persons very likely to go to work upon a subject of that kind without taking care that what their hand did was done effectually.
Now besides the honour, if it be an honour, of broken laws, the Government has the honour of broken treaties. When I discussed the case of broken laws, I told you fairly that the Government denied the breaking of the laws, and make their own argument to show—I suppose they think they show—that they did not break the laws. But when I pass to the next head, of the broken treaties, the case is different, especially in one of the most material points, which I will state in a few words, but clearly. The first case which we consider to be that of a distinctly broken treaty is that of sending the warships of England through the Dardanelles without the consent of the Sultan of Turkey. We believe that to be a clear breach of the Treaty of Paris. But that also, if I remember aright, was argued on both sides, and, therefore, I pass on from it, and I charge another breach of the Treaty of Paris. That famous Anglo-Turkish Convention, which gave to you the inestimable privilege of being responsible for the government of the island of Cyprus without deriving from it any possible advantage; that famous Anglo-Turkish Convention, which invested us with the right of interference, and caused us to interfere both as to the integrity and as to the independence of the Sultan by our own sole act; that Anglo-Turkish Convention was a direct and an absolute breach of the Treaty of Paris, which, bearing as it did the signature of England, as well as the rest of the Powers, declared that no one of these Powers should of themselves interfere in any matter of the integrity or independence of Turkey without the consent of the rest. And here I must tell you that I never heard from the Government, or any friend of the Government, the slightest attempt to defend that gross act of lawlessness, that unpardonable breach of international law, which is the highest sanction of the rights of nations and of the peace of Europe.
It is not, however, in matters of law only. We have been busy in alienating the sympathies of free peoples. The free Slavonic peoples of the East of Europe—the people of Roumania, the people of Montenegro, the people of Servia, the people of Bulgaria—each and all of these have been painfully taught in these last few years to look upon the free institutions of this country as being for them a dream, as being, perhaps, for the enjoyment of this country, but not as availing to animate a nation with a generous desire to extend to others the blessings they enjoyed themselves. In other times—it was so when Mr. Canning was the Minister of this country, when Lord Palmerston was the Minister of this country, when Lord Clarendon was the Minister of this country at the Foreign Office—it was well known that England, while regardful of her own just interests, and while measuring on every occasion her strength and her responsibility, yet was willing to use and willing to find opportunities for giving cordial aid and sympathy to freedom; and by aid and sympathy many a nation has been raised to its present position of free independence, which, without that sympathy, would probably never have attained to such a height in the order of civilization. The sympathies of free people ought to be a dear and precious object of our ambition. Ambition may be a questionable quality: if you give a certain meaning to the phrase, it ill comports with the Christian law. But there is one sense in which ambition will never mislead men; that is the ambition to be good, and the ambition to do good in relieving from evil those who are grievously suffering, and who have not deserved the evils they endure: that is the ambition which every British statesman ought to cherish. But, as I have said, for the last two years especially—and even for more than two years—more or less, I think, during the whole active period of the foreign policy of the Beaconsfield Administration—the sympathies of these now free peoples of the East have been constantly more and more alienated; and except, perhaps, in a single case which I am glad to cling to—the single and isolated case of Eastern Roumania—except this case, the whole strength of England, as far as they have been conversant with it, has been exercised for the purpose of opposing their best interests.
Well, gentlemen, while free peoples have been alienated, a despotic Power has been aggrandized through our direct agency. We have more than any other Power of Europe contributed to the direct aggrandizement of Russia and to its territorial extension. And how? Not by following the counsels of the Liberal party. The counsels of the Liberal party were the concert of Europe—the authoritative declaration of the will of Europe to Turkey. Had that authoritative declaration been made, we believe that it would have been enforced without the shedding of a drop of blood. But even suppose there had been bloodshed—I am not now speaking of that, I deem it too absurd a supposition; but suppose that force had required to be used, that force would not have given to Russia, or to any other Power, a claim to territorial extension. We chose to cast upon her the responsibility; and she, making great exertions and great sacrifices of blood and treasure, advanced this claim to territory, the consequence of which is that she has received by that a great access of military reputation, and likewise an enlargement of her borders, which we have been the main agents in bringing about.
Now I think I anticipate your feelings when I say that although we, and all of us, say that the rights of a Power, the rights of a nation, ought not to be invaded because it happens to have the misfortune of a despotic Government, yet none of us would wish that the agency of England should be gratuitously and wantonly employed in extending the limits of that despotism, and causing it to exercise its power where that power had not before prevailed. In truth, as you know, the case is even more gross than I have supposed it, because the most important case of this extension was that in which a portion of Bessarabia was handed back to Russia. That portion of Bessarabia had been under free institutions—perfectly free representative institutions. It was handed back to Russia, and placed under despotic institutions, and it was so handed back under an arrangement made between Lord Salisbury, the Minister of England, and Count Schouvaloff, the Minister of Russia. They agreed beforehand that this should be done at the Congress at Berlin, with this reservation—Lord Salisbury said, 'Unless I convince you by my argument that you ought not to do it.' You may attach what value you please to the reservation, but I think I can illustrate without much difficulty the effect of that promise made beforehand. You remember, perhaps, that in the year 1871 the Russians demanded that the Treaty of Paris should be altered, and that the restriction should be removed upon their right to build ships in the Black Sea. The whole of the Powers of Europe met in London by their representatives, and they agreed to that change, and the charge, gentlemen, has been laid upon the British Government of having made that change; and not only so, but I read in one of the blue placards this morning that Mr. Gladstone removed the restriction from the Emperor of Russia. Now I repel that charge. What we did was—we considered the matter with the other Powers of Europe; we required Russia to admit that she had no power to make the change except with the consent of the other Powers. The other Powers could not deny that the change was in itself not unreasonable, and so the change was made. But I want to know what people would have said, supposing, in the middle of these deliberations, somebody had produced a Salisbury-Schouvaloff agreement. Supposing he had produced a memorandum signed by Lord Granville, the Foreign Secretary of England, and Count Brunow, the ambassador of Russia, and supposing in that memorandum Lord Granville had, before the meeting of Europe in congress, pledged himself to give this concession to Russia unless he could convince the Russians by his argument, I want to know what then would have been our responsibility? Gentlemen, I would not have been the man, under circumstances like those, to deny for one moment that virtually and practically the whole responsibility of the treaty rested upon our shoulders; and so I say now the responsibility for handing back free Bessarabia to despotic Russia rests upon the Cabinet that is now in power, and on the majority that is now soliciting your suffrages for re-election.
I cannot go through the whole of the matter; yet, at the same time, it is desirable that you should have it in your minds. But while we thus handed over a free representative country to despotism, we likewise handed over a liberated country to servitude. We recollect the vote for six millions was taken in order to act upon the Congress at Berlin. It was taken in order to show, as was so much boasted of at the time—to show that we were ready to support in arms what we recommended at the Congress at Berlin. And what did we recommend, and what was the great change made at the Congress of Berlin, in deference to our representations—that is to say, what was the great change purchased by your six millions? I will tell you what it was. The Treaty of San Stefano had relieved from the yoke of Turkish administration four and a half millions of people, and made them into a Bulgarian province. With regard to one and a quarter millions of those people who inhabited a country called Macedonia, we at the Treaty of Berlin, by virtue of your six millions—see how it was used to obtain 'peace with honour'!—we threw back that Macedonia from the free precinct into which it was to be introduced for self-government along with the rest of Bulgaria, and we put it back into the hands of the Sultan of Turkey, to remain in exactly the same condition in which it had been before the war.
Well, gentlemen, I won't speak of India. I have spoken of India elsewhere. I won't speak of various things that I might enter upon, but one thing I must mention which I have never taken the opportunity of mentioning in Scotland, and that was the manner in which, those proceedings are justified. I am going now to refer to a speech of the present Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Lord Salisbury. He was meeting an allegation some opponent had made, that it was wrong to take the island of Cyprus; and he justified himself by an appeal to history for once, which is, however, a rare thing with him. But he made out his case in this way: 'Take the island of Cyprus? Of course we took the island of Cyprus. Wherever there is a great European controversy localized in some portion of the great European region, we always step in and appropriate some territory in the very heart of the place where that controversy raged.' 'Why, dear me,' he said, 'in the time of the Revolutionary War, when the Revolutionary War turned very much upon events in Italy, we appropriated Malta. At a previous time when the interests of Europe had been concentrated a great deal upon Spain, at the time of the latter part of the reign of Louis XIV, we stepped in and appropriated Gibraltar.' And this is positively advanced as a doctrine by the Secretary of State, that wherever there is a serious conflict among the European Powers or the European peoples, we are to step in, not as mediators, not as umpires, not as friends, not to perform the Christian and the truly British art of binding together in alliance those who have been foes, but to appropriate something for ourselves. This is what Ministers have done, and this is what the majority have approved. Aye, and if, instead of appropriating Cyprus only, they had appropriated a great deal more—if they had taken Candia too, if they had taken whatever they could lay their hands upon—that majority, equally patient, and equally docile, and not only patient and docile, but exulting in the discreditable obedience with which it obeyed all the behests of the Administration—that majority never would have shrunk, but would have walked into the lobby as cheerfully as it did upon the occasions of which you have heard so much, and would have chuckled the next day over the glorious triumph they had obtained over factious Liberalism. I have done with these details, and I will approach my winding up, for I have kept you a long time. I have shown you—and I have shown you in a manner that our opponents will find it very difficult to grapple with, though I have stated it briefly—I have shown you what your six millions were used for; and I say without hesitation that the main purpose for which your six millions were used—the main change which was effected—was to throw a million or a million and a quarter of people inhabiting Macedonia, who were destined by the Treaty of San Stefano for freedom and self-government, back under the lawless government of Turkey.
All these things have been going on. I have touched some of them in detail. What has been the general result, what is the grand total, what is the profit, what is the upshot, what is the balance at the end? Worse than ever. When Her Majesty's Government came into office their Foreign Secretary declared that the state of our foreign relations all over the world was thoroughly and absolutely satisfactory; and what is the declaration of the Prime Minister now? He says this is one of the most formidable crises ever known, and that unless you keep the present Government in power he cannot answer for the peace of Europe or the destinies of the country.