Imperialism and Mr. Gladstone. Various
in troops, are echoing back, each from its own place, the mingled notes of horror, pain, and indignation… A curtain opaque and dense, which at the prorogation had been lifted but a few inches from the ground, has since then, from day to day, been slowly rising. And what a scene it has disclosed! And where!
… I have the fullest confidence in the honour and in the intelligence of Mr. Baring, who has been inquiring on behalf of England. But he was not sent to examine the matter until the 19th of July, three months after the rising, and nearly one month after the first inquiries in Parliament. He had been but two days at Philippopolis, when he sent home, with all the despatch he could use, some few rudiments of a future report. Among them was his estimate of the murders, necessarily far from final, at the figure of twelve thousand.
We know that we had a well-manned Embassy at Constantinople, and a network of Consulates and Vice-Consulates, really discharging diplomatic duties, all over the provinces of European Turkey. That villages could be burned down by scores, and men, women, and children murdered, or worse than murdered, by thousands, in a Turkish province lying between the capital and the scene of the recent excitements, and that our Embassy and Consulates could know nothing of it? The thing was impossible. It could not be. So silence was obtained, and relief; and the well-oiled machinery of our luxurious, indifferent life worked smoothly on…
It was on the 20th of April that the insurrection broke out in Bulgaria… On the 9th of May Sir Henry Elliot … observing a great Mohammedan excitement, and an extensive purchase of arms in Constantinople, wisely telegraphed to the British Admiral in the Mediterranean expressing a desire that he would bring his squadron to Besika Bay. The purpose was for the protection of British subjects, and of the Christians in general… These measures were substantially wise, and purely pacific. They had, if understood rightly, no political aspect, or, if any, one rather anti-Turkish than Turkish. But there were reasons, and strong reasons, why the public should not have been left to grope out for itself the meaning of a step so serious as the movement of a naval squadron towards a country disturbed both by revolt and by an outbreak of murderous fanaticism. In the year 1853, when the negotiations with Russia had assumed a gloomy and almost a hopeless aspect, the English and French fleets were sent eastwards; not as a measure of war, but as a measure of preparation for war, and proximate to war. The proceedings marked a transition of discussion into that angry stage which immediately precedes a blow; and the place, to which the fleets were then sent, was Besika Bay. In the absence of information, how could the British nation avoid supposing that the same act, as that done in 1853, bore also the same meaning?.. The expectation of a rupture pervaded the public mind. The Russian funds fell very heavily, under a war panic; partisans exulted in a diplomatic victory, and in the increase of what is called our prestige, the bane, in my opinion, of all upright politics. The Turk was encouraged in his humour of resistance. And this, as we now know, while his hands were so reddened with Bulgarian blood. Foreign capitals were amazed at the martial excitement in London. But the Government spoke never a word… And this ostentatious protection to Turkey, this wanton disturbance of Europe, was continued by our Ministry, with what I must call a strange perversity, for weeks and weeks…
What we have to guard against is imposture – that Proteus with a thousand forms. A few months ago the new Sultan served the turn, and very well. Men affirmed that he must have time. And now another new Sultan is in the offing. I suppose it will be argued that he must have time too. Then there will be, perhaps, new constitutions; firmans of reforms; proclamations to commanders of Turkish armies, enjoining extra humanity. All these should be quietly set down as simply zero. At this moment we hear of the adoption by the Turks of the last and most enlightened rule of warfare – namely, the Geneva Convention. They might just as well adopt the Vatican Council or the British Constitution. All these things are not even the oysters before the dinner. Still worse is any plea founded upon any reports made by Turkish authority upon the Bulgarian outrages… I return to, and I end with, that which is the Omega as well as the Alpha of this great and most mournful case. An old servant of the Crown and State, I entreat my countrymen, upon whom far more than perhaps any other people of Europe it depends, to require, and to insist, that our Government, which has been working in one direction, shall work in the other, and shall apply all its vigour to concur with the other States of Europe in obtaining the extinction of the Turkish executive power in Bulgaria. Let the Turks now carry away their abuses in the only possible manner – namely, by carrying off themselves. Their Zaptiehs and their Mudirs, their Bimbashis and their Yuzbachis, their Kaimakams and their Pashas, one and all, bag and baggage, shall, I hope, clear out from the province they have desolated and profaned. This thorough riddance, this most blessed deliverance, is the only reparation we can make to the memory of those heaps on heaps of dead; to the violated purity alike of matron, of maiden, and of child; to the civilization which has been affronted and shamed; to the laws of God, or, if you like, of Allah; to the moral sense of mankind at large. There is not a criminal in a European gaol, there is not a cannibal in the South Sea Islands, whose indignation would not rise and overboil at the recital of that which has been done, which has left behind all the foul and all the fierce passions that produced it, and which may again spring up, in another murderous harvest, from the soil soaked and reeking with blood, and in the air tainted with every imaginable deed of crime and shame.
II. Cold Water from Disraeli
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