engagements, and responsibility of a peculiar nature arising from those diplomatic engagements, is really to introduce a preposterous element into the debate. I am asked why it is that because we have in August agreed to send a vice-consul to Philippopolis, we did not do so in May? Does anyone believe that if a vice-consul had been sent to Philippopolis in May it would have prevented the disastrous events that have occurred? It is quite impossible to suppose anything of the kind. What we have done now in a place where I am sorry to say we have no commercial relations, will at least lay the basis of some better means of communication in that country, and we should have better communication with Turkey at present if, unfortunately, some years back there had not been a Liberal assault on the consular system which reduced the number of Turkish vice-consuls.

The honourable and learned gentleman told the Government: There is a question now which you must face, and that question is, why do you stand out as an obstacle to the settlement of a great question from pure jealousy of Russia? '

I should like to know, in the first place, what is this great question to the settlement of which we stand out as an obstacle? The honourable and learned gentleman, although he has seldom had greater command of eloquence, and although he appears to have given the subject great consideration, never told us what the real question was, and when he taunted us so indignantly with being an obstacle to the settlement of this great question, he never ventured to define it, except, indeed, that he did intimate that it was the duty of England, in combination with Russia and the other Powers, to expel the whole Turkish nation from Eastern Europe. That an honourable and learned gentleman,' once a member of a Government, and an ornament of that Government, and one who would in future be one of our eminent statesmen, that after having experienced a sense of political responsibility, he should get up on the last day of the session, and with the conviction that from his glowing

Sir W. Vernon Harcourt had been Solicitor-General in the previous Government, and was Home Secretary in the administration which succeeded Lord Beaconsfield.

and animated words the country might be disturbed for the next six months at least, 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 becausewe are not prepared to enter into a scheme so Quixotic as that would be, we are held up by the honourable and learned gentleman and the right honourable gentleman the member for Bradford as having given our moral, not to say our material, assistance to the Turkish people and the Turkish Government. We are always treated as if we had some peculiar alliance with the Turkish Government, as if we were their peculiar friends, and even as if we were expected to uphold them in any enormity they might commit. I want to know what evidence there is of that, what interest we have in such a thing. We are, it is true, the allies of the Sultan of Turkey-so is Russia, so is Austria, 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. These are our engagements, and they are the engagements that we endeavour to fulfil. And if these engagements, renovated and repeated only four years ago by the wisdom of Europe, are to be treated by the honourable 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 honourable and learned member.

Sir, we refused to join in the Berlin note because we were convinced that if we made that step we should very soon see a material interference in Turkey; and we were not of opinion that by a system of material guarantees the great question

which the honourable and learned gentleman has adverted to, would be solved either for the general welfare of the world or for the interests of England, which after all must be our sovereign care. The Government of the Porte was never for a moment misled by the arrival of the British fleet in Besika Bay. They were perfectly aware when that fleet came there that it was not to prop up any decaying and obsolete Government, nor did its presence there sanction any of those enormities which are the subjects of our painful discussion to-night. What may be the fate of the eastern part of Europe it would be arrogant for me to speculate upon, and if I had any thoughts on the subject I trust I should not be so imprudent or so indiscreet as to take this opportunity to express them. But I am sure that as long as England is ruled by English Parties who understand the principles on which our Empire is founded, and who are resolved to maintain that Empire, our influence in that part of the world can never be looked upon with indifference. If it should happen that the Government which controls the greater portion of those fair lands is found to be incompetent for its purpose, neither England nor any of the Great Powers will shrink from fulfilling the high political and moral duty which will then devolve upon them.

But, Sir, we must not jump at conclusions so quickly as is now the fashion. There is nothing to justify us in talking in such a vein of Turkey as has, and is being at this moment entertained. The present is a state of affairs which requires the most vigilant examination and the most careful management. But those who suppose that England ever would uphold, or at this moment particularly is upholding, Turkey from blind superstition and from a want of sympathy with the highest aspirations of humanity, are deceived. What our duty is at this critical moment is to maintain the Empire of England. Nor will we ever agree to any step, though it may obtain for a moment comparative quiet and a false prosperity, that hazards the existence of that Empire.

161

SPEECH ON CALLING OUT RESERVE FORCES. April 8,

1878.

MESSAGE FROM QUEEN.

[By the Treaty of San Stefano, concluded between Russia and Turkey in the spring of 1878, the latter Power was reduced to a cypher in the hands of Russia, and the position of England in the Mediterranean seriously imperilled. Russia was required by the British Government to submit the treaty to a Congress; and her refusal to do so was the signal for Lord Beaconsfield to advise Her Majesty to call out the Reserve Forces.]

THE

THE EARL OF BEACONSFIELD: My lords, in moving an humble address to Her Majesty to thank the Queen for the gracious message which we have recently received from Her Majesty, I think it will not be considered unusual that I should make a few remarks on the circumstances in which that message has been addressed to Parliament. I assure your lordships I shall not ask you to follow me in a narrative of the war which has occurred between Russia and Turkey, or of the course which has been pursued by Her Majesty's Government during that

war.

When last I had the honour of addressing your lordships on this subject, which was on the occasion of the meeting of Parliament, I said that during that war no noble lord opposite had challenged the policy which we had pursued, and I thought, therefore, I was entitled to assume that the policy on which we had acted had been generally approved, and I believe I may infer from what passed on that occasion that noble lords opposite assented to my statement. But it so happened that at almost the very moment I was then speaking circumstances were occurring which gave quite a new aspect to affairs, and I think that upon those circumstances and upon all the conduct of Her Majesty's Government subsequently to those circumstances

your lordships have a legitimate, constitutional, and Parliamentary right to declare your opinion. With one exception, I will ask your attention only to what has occurred from the moment to which I have been alluding. My lords, before I enter into the details with which I shall have to trouble your lordships, I ask permission to read an extract from an important despatch, which extract it seems to me to be necessary you should have in your minds before you can form an impartial judgment on the statement which I am about to submit to your lordships' House. In that paper, which was an answer to Prince Gortchakoff announcing and vindicating the commencement of the war between Russia and Turkey, the Secretary of State (the Earl of Derby) argued with great ability the many reasons why we could not agree with His Highness. Having given many reasons for this, the Secretary of State concluded:-

"The course on which the Russian Government has entered involves graver and more serious considerations.' (That is, graver and more serious than those which he had already alleged.) It is in contravention of the stipulation of the Treaty of Paris of March 30, 1856, by which Russia and the other signatory Powers engaged, each on its own part, to respect the independence and the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire. In the Conference of London of 1871, at the close of which the above stipulation with others was again confirmed, the Russian plenipotentiary, in common with those of the other Powers, signed a declaration affirming it to be "an essential principle of the law of nations that no Power can liberate itself from the engagements of a treaty, nor modify the stipulations thereof, unless with the consent of the contracting parties by means of an amicable arrangement." In taking action against Turkey on his own part, and having recourse to arms without further consultation with his allies, the Emperor of Russia has separated himself from the European concert hitherto maintained, and has at the same time departed from the rule to which he himself had solemnly recorded his consent.'

My lords, the reply from which I have read that extract is dated May 1, 1877; and it is of the greatest importance that the House should bear in mind that, at the commencement of the