Imperialism and Mr. Gladstone

II. Cold Water from Disraeli

Source.– Hansard, Third Series, vol. 231, col. 1,138, August 11, 1876 (Third Reading of the Appropriation Bill; Bulgarian Atrocities raised)

Mr. Disraeli: … Let me at once place before the House what I believe is the true view of the circumstances which principally interest us to-night, for, after the Rhodian eloquence to which we have just listened, it is rather difficult for the House to see clearly the point which is before it. The Queen's Ambassador at Constantinople, who has at all times no easy duty to fulfil, found himself at the end of April and in the first three weeks of May in a position of extreme difficulty and danger. Affairs in Constantinople never had assumed – at least in our time, certainly – a more perilous character. It was difficult to ascertain what was going to happen; but that something was going to happen, and something of a character which might disturb the relations of the Porte with all the Powers of Europe, and might even bring about a revolution, the effect of which would be felt in distant countries, there was no doubt… In the present instance the hon. and learned gentleman has made one assumption throughout his speech – that there has been no communication whatever between the Queen's Ambassador at Constantinople and Her Majesty's Ministers upon the subject in discussion; that we never heard of those affairs until the newspapers published accounts. The state of the facts is the reverse. From the very first period that these transactions occurred – from the very commencement – the Ambassador was in constant communication with Her Majesty's Ministers. (No, no.) Why, that may be proved by the papers on the table. Throughout the months of May and June the Ambassador is constantly referring to the atrocities occurring in Bulgaria and to the repeated protests which he is making to the Turkish Government, and informing Her Majesty's Government of interviews and conversations with the Grand Vizier on that subject. The hon. and learned gentleman says that when questions were addressed to me in this House I was perfectly ignorant of what was taking place. But that is exactly the question we have to settle to-night. I say that we were not perfectly ignorant of what was taking place… I agree that even the slightest estimate of the horrors that occurred in Bulgaria is quite enough to excite the indignation of this country and of Parliament; but when you come to say that we were ignorant of all that was occurring, and did nothing to counteract it, because we said in answer to Questions that the information which had reached us did not warrant the statements that were quoted in the House – these are two entirely different questions. In the newspaper which has been referred to the first account was, if I recollect aright, that 30,000 or 32,000 persons had been slain; that 10,000 were in prison; it was also stated that 1,000 girls had been sold in the open market, that 40 girls had been burnt alive in a stable; and cartloads of human heads paraded through the streets of the cities of Bulgaria – these were some of, though not all, the statements made; and I was perfectly justified in saying that the information which had reached us did not justify these statements, and therefore we believed them to be exaggerated… Lord Derby telegraphed to Sir Henry Elliot that it was very important that Her Majesty's Government should be able to reply to the inquiries made in Parliament respecting these and other statements, and directed Sir Henry Elliot to inquire by telegram of the Consuls, and report as soon as he could. All these statements are untrue. There never were forty maidens locked up in a stable and burnt alive. That was ascertained with great care by Mr. Baring, and I am surprised that the right hon. gentleman the member for Bradford should still speak of it as a statement in which he has confidence. I believe it to be an entire fabrication. I believe also it is an entire fabrication that 1,000 young women were sold in the market as slaves. We have not received the slightest evidence of a single sale, even in those journals on which the right hon. gentleman the member for Bradford founded his erratic speech. I have been attacked for saying that I did not believe it was possible to have 10,000 persons in prison in Bulgaria. So far as I can ascertain from the papers, there never could have been more than 3,000. As to the 10,000 cases of torture, what evidence is there of a single case of torture? We know very well that there has been considerable slaughter; that there must have been isolated and individual cases of most atrocious rapine, and outrages of a most atrocious kind; but still we have had communications with Sir Henry Elliot, and he has always assumed from what he knew that these cases of individual rapine and outrage were occurring. He knew that civil war there was carried on under conditions of brutality which, unfortunately, are not unprecedented in that country; and the question is whether the information we had justified the extravagant statements made in Parliament, which no one pretends to uphold and defend… The hon. and learned member (Sir W. Harcourt) has done full justice to the Bulgarian atrocities. He has assumed as absolutely true everything that criticism and more authentic information had modified, and in some cases had proved not merely to be exaggeration but to be absolute falsehoods. And then the hon. and learned gentleman says – "By your policy you have depopulated a province." Well, sir, certainly the slaughter of 12,000 individuals, whether Turks or Bulgarians, whether they were innocent peasants or even brigands, is a horrible event which no one can think of without emotion. But when I remember that the population of Bulgaria is 3,700,000 persons, and that it is a very large country, is it not a most extravagant abuse of rhetoric to say that the slaughter of so considerable a number as 12,000 is the depopulation of a province? Well, the hon. and learned gentleman said also that Her Majesty's Government had incurred a responsibility which is not possessed by any other country as regards our relations with and our influence with the Turks. I say that we have incurred no responsibility which is not shared with us by all the other contracting Powers to the Treaty of Paris. I utterly disclaim any peculiar responsibility… That an hon. and learned gentleman, once a member of a Government and an ornament of that Government, should counsel as the solution of all these difficulties that Her Majesty's Government should enter into an immediate combination to expel the Turkish nation from Eastern Europe does indeed surprise me. And because we are not prepared to enter into a scheme so quixotic as that would be, we are held up as having given our moral, not to say our material, support to Turkey… We are, it is true, the allies of Turkey; so is Austria, so is Russia, so is France, and so are others. We are also their partners in a tripartite Treaty, in which we not only generally, but singly, guarantee with France and Austria the territorial integrity of Turkey. And if these engagements, renovated and repeated only four years ago by the wisdom of Europe, are to be treated by the hon. and learned gentleman as idle wind and chaff, and if we are to be told that our political duty is by force to expel the Turks to the other side of the Bosphorus, then politics cease to be an art, statesmanship becomes a mere mockery, and instead of being a House of Commons faithful to its traditions, and which is always influenced, I have ever thought, by sound principles of policy, whoever may be its leaders, we had better at once resolve ourselves into one of those revolutionary clubs which settle all political and social questions with the same ease as the hon. and learned member.

[Note. – This was Disraeli's last speech as a member of the House of Commons. He was raised to the peerage on August 12, 1876.]

SIR THEOPHILUS SHEPSTONE'S COMMISSION (1877)

Source.—The Times, January 7

Whereas grievous disturbances have broken out in the territories adjacent to Our colonies in South Africa, with war between the white inhabitants and the native races, to the great peril of the peace and safety of Our said colonies; and whereas, having regard to the safety of Our said colonies, it greatly concerns Us that full inquiry should be made into the origin, nature, and circumstances of the said disturbances, and with respect to the measures to be adopted for preventing the recurrence of the like disturbances in the future; and whereas it may become requisite to this end that the said territories, or portions of them, should be administered in Our name and in Our behalf.

Now know you that We, having especial trust and confidence in the loyalty and fidelity of you, the said Sir Theophilus Shepstone, have appointed you to be Our special Commissioner for the purpose of making such inquiry as aforesaid … and if the emergency seem to you to be such as to render it necessary, in order to secure the peace and safety of Our said colonies, and of Our subjects elsewhere, that the said territories, or any portion or portions of the same, should be provisionally, and pending the announcement of Our pleasure, be administered in Our name and on Our behalf, then, and in such case only, We do further authorize you, the said Sir Theophilus Shepstone, by proclamation under your hand, to declare that from and after a day to be therein named, so much of any such territories aforesaid as to you, after due consideration, shall seem fit, shall be annexed and form part of Our dominions.

And We do hereby constitute and appoint you to be thereupon Administrator of the same provisionally and until Our pleasure is more fully known.

Provided, first, that no such proclamation shall be issued by you with respect to any district, territory, or state, unless you shall be satisfied that the inhabitants thereof, or a sufficient number of them, or the Legislature thereof, desire to become Our subjects; nor if any conditions unduly limiting Our power and authority therein are sought to be imposed…

RUSSIA DECLARES WAR ON TURKEY (1877)

Source.—The Times, April 25

We have not a word to say in defence of the Porte. We admit that it was guilty, as Lord Salisbury has confessed, of infatuation when it defied the Conference, and that it would have accepted even the Protocol, if it had possessed a tithe of the sagacity which was once a better protection of its weakness than ironclads are to-day. We may even admit that the Protocol was, what Prince Gortchakoff styles it, the last expression of the united will of Europe. But his story is fatally incomplete. It would have been desirable to know whether Russia has done her best to make it easy for Turkey to accept the undisguised tutelage of the European Powers. That question calls to mind how much the fanaticism of the Turks was inflamed by the covert aid which Russia gave to Servia. The Czar refers to the famous words which he spoke in the Kremlin. They were indeed the real declaration of war, for they prevented Russia from accepting anything less than the complete submission of Turkey. Russia might plead, no doubt, that as war was certain to be found an absolute necessity in the end, it mattered little how rudely she ruffled the Osmanli pride. But in that case the negotiations of the past two years have been a series of hypocrisies. As it is, the general judgment is expressed by what Lord Derby said last night. While he found it hopeless to bend the will of Turkey towards submission, he equally found on the part of her Government "a deeply seated conviction that, do what they would, sooner or later war would be forced upon them." He believed that he and his colleagues have throughout been "engaged in the solution of a hopeless problem." Such, we fear, is the prosaic truth, and, whatever be the measure of Turkish obstinacy, Russia cannot escape condemnation. She has sometimes acted as if she wished to cut off a way of retreat both from herself and her foe… Russia has hastened to stop all further negotiations, and to act as if she and she alone had an interest in the tranquillity of the Turkish Empire. Thus she has forfeited any right to speak in the name of Europe. Nor has she given the Powers assurances which they had a right to expect. Nothing is said in the same strain as the declarations at Livadia, that Russia had no objects of territorial ambition… The Czar has committed a grave error by neglecting to proclaim that in no event would he seize Turkish territory.

IRISH OBSTRUCTION IN ITS EARLY DAYS (1877)

Source.—The Times, August 1

Mr. Parnell and his special friends greatly distinguished themselves in the House of Commons last night by the multiplicity of the motions in committee on the South Africa Bill. The Government adopted special means to wear out the tenacity of the members who thus consume hour after hour, for it had arranged that the House should sit until the work should be done, even if the discussion should last till breakfast time. But it does injustice to Mr. Parnell. He is the most misunderstood and most ill-used man in the House of Commons. Such is the burden of the long letter from him which we printed on Monday. He has been accused of trying to stop public business by floods of irrelevant speech. He has been charged with something like open disrespect for the authority of Mr. Speaker. He has been suspected of a wish to make Irish members intolerable, in the hope that weary Englishmen and Scotchmen would bid them begone to enjoy the beatitudes of Home Rule. He has made the Leader of the House, although the mildest of men, propose to banish him to the penal settlement of silence, and the House has done him the honour of framing two new rules to impede the flow of his speech during the rest of the Session… The incorrectness of that accusation, he replies, is proved by the comparatively small use he has made of almost boundless opportunities. If his enemies speak of what he has done, he appeals to what he might have done. Has he obstructed every clause of every Bill? Has he even obstructed every Bill? Has he exhausted all the forms of the House even yet? These questions oppress us with a sense of his moderation. If he has done so much, he might have done so much more! As most Bills have at least ten clauses, as most clauses contain at least a hundred words, and as at least one amendment might be moved after each word, Mr. Parnell could have opposed each Bill with at least a thousand amendments, and he himself, Mr. Biggar, and Mr. O'Donnell could each have delivered at least a thousand speeches.

PLEVNA AFTER THE SIEGE (1877)

Source.—The Times, December 15From Our Special Correspondent. – Plevna, December 11

As I rode up the slope of the hill east of Plevna towards the redoubt defending the road between the town and the village of Radicheve, a ghastly scene was presented. Hundreds of Russian skeletons lay glistening on the hillsides, where they had fallen during the assault of September. The bones were generally completely bare. Those nearest to the earthwork had been covered with a few inches of earth, which had been washed off by the first shower, and now they lay as naked as the others. The Moslem outpost pits were among these skeletons, many of them not being more than a yard distant. Singular as it may seem, many of these skeletons had distinct expressions, both in the attitude in which they had fallen and in the position of the fleshless jaws. I could distinguish those who had fallen without suffering from those who had died in agony, and the effect was such as I shall never forget. The Russian soldiers who marched into Plevna in the rear of Osman's sallying force passed among these remains of their unburied comrades… On entering the town I was surprised to find it so little injured by the cannonading…

Within a short time after Osman's surrender at the bridge over the Vid, on the Sofia road, the 16,000 prisoners were turned back into the town, with the artillery and transport trains… The Turks were well fed in appearance, but were generally ragged, and were all wearing sandals. No boots were to be seen, though most of them had overcoats… The contrast between these tatterdemalion battalions and the well-dressed men guarding them made the war appear a one-sided affair, until the reflection came that a ragged man shot as well as one perfectly equipped. Later in the day, standing on the Sofia road, in the Gravitza valley west of Plevna, I surveyed the whole basin forming Osman's position. The herbage and all other growing things had so effectually disappeared that the earth's surface looked as if a conflagration had swept over every square foot of it. The colour was a dull brown, and I never gazed upon a more dismal-looking region. The sides of the basin were serried by ravines, all centering in the valley where I stood, and upon the surrounding edges of the basin were the Turkish and Allied batteries planted in irregular line, but commanding every vantage-point of the neighbourhood… Where the Gravitza chaussée crosses the elevation the Turkish redoubts were weakest, and here the Russian artillery fire had been chiefly concentrated. The front and rear of the earthworks were ploughed up by shells, and in truth there was scarcely a square yard which had not been struck. Thousands of such missiles, varying from 3 inches to 6 inches in diameter, lay unexploded upon the surface of the earth. In a previous telegram I said that these redoubts were battered to pieces; but I now discover that this was a curious error of vision. The works are practically uninjured. So far as the earthworks are concerned, the Russian artillery ammunition has been absolutely wasted, and from an inspection of the trenches I do not believe that the garrison has suffered more than their defences. Neither do I believe that any artillery could have accomplished more. The fact is that shells against earthworks are useless at a greater distance than 500 or 600 yards, and then the guns cannot be worked on account of the enemy's sharpshooters. The Turkish soldiers in the redoubts had bomb-proof abodes in the back walls of the pits… I was very much surprised to find the Turkish lines of fortification so weak, as far as the quantity of earthwork is concerned. The redoubts are much smaller than I supposed them to be… There are no double lines of infantry trenches – in fact, no interior lines of any sort; neither are there trenches on the hillsides below the redoubts. There are no lines of intrenchments for the reserves; indeed, there were apparently no reserves. When I saw this technically weak line I could not but admire the efficiency of the weapons with which it had been defended, and the stubborn tenacity of the men who could hold it against such assaults as the Allies have delivered against it. The Allies had double and treble lines around Plevna. Their works are much better constructed than those of the Turks, so far as finish is concerned; but for safety I would rather trust myself to the latter… The Roumanian trenches, however, were well constructed and capacious. The best trench is within 25 feet of the Turkish counterscarp [of a redoubt]. From the bottom of this trench two shafts were sunk about 15 feet in depth, and from the bottom two galleries had been pushed under the Turkish parapet, and the mines were nearly ready when the Moslems evacuated their positions. But the strangest part of the history of this siege is the fact that the Turks had also mined the Gravitza redoubt opposite, and before leaving their earthwork they had fired the mining fuse. The Roumanians, discovering their departure, entered their ditches, found the gallery, and reached the fuse in time to quench it before it had burned to the explosive charge; so that each was prepared to blow the other up without knowing, apparently, that counter-operations were in progress…

At noon to-day the Emperor arrived at the redoubt defending the approach to Plevna by the Gravitza chaussée… [After a religious service] the whole party rode into Plevna, taking the less frequented streets, lest some assassin might fire upon the Emperor. In a small house, surrounded by a high stone wall, lunch was served, after which there was a sudden hush, and Osman Pasha was carried into the yard and through the portico by a Cossack officer and one of his own attendants. As he passed through the crowd of staff officers, every one saluted him, and shouted, "Bravo, Osman!" He then passed into the presence of the Emperor, who shook hands with him, and informed him that, in consideration of his gallant defence of Plevna, he had given orders that his sword should be returned to him, and that he could wear it.

STRAINED RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA (1878)

I

Source.—Hansard, Third Series, vol. 237, cols. 1,326, 1332 (Questions, February 8, 1878)

The Chancellor of the Exchequer: Mr. Speaker, the Government have received a telegram to-day from Mr. Layard, containing a summary of the articles of the armistice… The telegram ends by saying that the Turks have begun to remove their guns from the Constantinople lines. Now it is quite evident that, whatever may have been the arrangements with regard to the neighbourhood of Constantinople, a neutral zone has been declared, which includes the lines of Tchekmedje, which protect Constantinople; and according to the terms of the armistice the Turks are bound not to retain those fortresses, and accordingly are bound to remove – and are quietly beginning to remove – their guns and armaments from the fortifications by lines and to specified places… The consequence is that, although the Russians do not occupy those lines themselves, they occupy an outpost close to them, while the lines themselves are being thoroughly disarmed. They have the power, therefore, at any moment, subject to the necessity of giving three days' notice of the termination of the armistice, of advancing on Constantinople without hindrance… I may perhaps venture to call the attention of the House to one of the papers which we laid upon the table yesterday. That contains a copy of a Memorandum which was communicated to the Russian Ambassador by Her Majesty's Government on the 28th of July last, in which they say they "look with much anxiety at the state of things in Constantinople, and the prospect of the disorder and bloodshed, and even anarchy, which may occur as the Russian forces draw near to the capital. The crisis which may at any time arrive in Constantinople may be such as Her Majesty's Government could not overlook, while they had the means of mitigating its horrors. Her Majesty's Government are fully determined (unless it should be necessary for the preservation of interests which they have already stated they are bound to maintain) not to depart from the line of neutrality which they have declared their intention to observe; but they do not consider that they would be departing from this neutrality, and they think that Russia will not consider they are doing so, if they should find themselves compelled to direct their fleet to proceed to Constantinople, and thus afford protection to the European population against internal disturbance." The Government, I may add, feel that the state of affairs disclosed by the armistice has given rise to the danger which they thus apprehended, and they have, in the circumstances, thought it right to order a portion of the fleet to proceed at once to Constantinople for the purpose of protecting the lives and property of British subjects.

Cols. 1622-1623 (Questions, February 13, 1878)

The Chancellor of the Exchequer: I stated, I think, or at all events referred on Monday to the fact, that communications had been made to the Porte to ascertain whether permission would be given, or a firman be granted, for the British fleet to enter the Dardanelles. That permission was refused, but Her Majesty's Government thought it right to direct the ships to proceed, and they have proceeded accordingly. No material opposition was offered, and they are by this time, I presume, anchored in the neighbourhood of Constantinople. I may perhaps mention that a communication has been made by the Russian Government to the effect that, in view of the intended sending of the fleet by Her Majesty's Government to the neighbourhood of Constantinople, it would be a matter for the consideration of the Russian Government whether they should not themselves occupy the city. In answer to that Her Majesty's Government have sent a communication which will be laid on the table of the House to-night, in which they protest against that view, and state that they cannot acknowledge that in the case of the two countries the circumstances are parallel, or that the despatch of the British fleet for the purpose indicated justifies the Russian Government in the step which they announce it to be their intention to take.