(1876—1887)
Source.—Hansard, Third Series, vol. 227, col. 95 (Debate on the
Address, February, 1876).
Mr. Disraeli: ... When we acceded to office two years
ago an International Commission had only just ceased its labours
at Constantinople upon the dues of the Suez Canal, and upon
the means of ascertaining and maintaining a limit of them, and
it had arrived at reasons entirely protested against by the
proprietary. What was the state of affairs there? Lord
Derby had to deal with them. The proprietary of the canal
threatened, and not only threatened, but proceeded, to stop the
canal. They refused pilots; they threatened to change the
signals; they took steps which would have interrupted that
mode of intercourse with India.... From that moment it
became a matter of interest to those responsible for the government
of this country to see what could be done to remedy
those relations with the Suez Canal.... But it suddenly
comes to our knowledge that the Khedive, on whose influence
we mainly depended, is going to part with his shares. We
received a telegram from Cairo informing us that the Khedive
was anxious to raise a considerable sum of money upon his
shares in the Suez Canal, and offered them to England. We
considered the question immediately, and it appeared to us to be
a complicated transaction—one to which there were several
objections; and we sent back to say that we were favourably
disposed to assist the Khedive, but that at the same time we
were only prepared to purchase the shares outright. What
was the answer? The answer was that the Khedive was
resolved, if he possibly could, to keep his shares, and that he
could only therefore avail himself of a loan. There matters
seemed to end. Then suddenly there came news to the Government
of this country that a French society—Société Générale—was
prepared to offer the Khedive a large sum of money—very
little inferior to the four millions—but on very onerous conditions.
The Khedive communicated with us, and said that the
conditions were so severe that he would sooner sell the shares
outright, and—which I had forgotten to mention—that, in
deference to his promise that England should always have the
refusal of the shares if he decided to sell them, he offered them
to the English Government. It was absolutely necessary to
decide at that moment what course we should take. It was
not a thing on which we could hesitate.... To pretend that
Lord Derby has treated this business as a mere commercial
speculation is idle. If he did not act in accordance with the
principles of high policy, I should like to know what high
policy is, and how a man can pursue it.
Apart from looking upon this as an investment, if the shares
had been offered, and if there had been no arrangement of
paying interest for nineteen years, so far as I am concerned, I
should have been in favour of the purchase of the shares.
I should have agreed with Lord Derby in thinking that
England would never be satisfied if all the shares of the Suez
Canal were possessed by a foreign company. Then it is said,
if any obstacles had been put in your way by the French
proprietors of the canal, you know very well that ultimately it
must come to force, and you will then obtain at once the satisfaction
of your desire. Well, if the government of the world
was a mere alternation between abstract right and overwhelming
force, I agree there is a good deal in that observation; but
that is not the way in which the world is governed. The world
is governed by conciliation, compromise, influence, varied
interests, the recognition of the rights of others, coupled with
the assertion of one's own; and, in addition, a general conviction,
resulting from explanation and good understanding, that
it is for the interests of all parties that matters should be
conducted in a satisfactory and peaceful manner.... I
cannot doubt that the moral influence of England possessing
two-fifths of the shares in this great undertaking must have
made itself felt, must have a considerable influence upon the
conduct of those who manage the company.... England
is a Mediterranean Power; a great Mediterranean Power.
This is shown by the fact that in time of war always, and
frequently in time of peace, she has the greatest force upon
those waters. Furthermore, she has strongholds upon those
waters which she will never relinquish. The policy of England,
however, is not one of aggression. It is not provinces she
wants. She will not interest herself in the redistribution of
territory on the shores of the Mediterranean, as long as the
redistribution does not imperil the freedom of the seas and the
dominion which she legitimately exercises. And therefore I
look upon this, that in the great chain of fortresses which we
possess, almost from the Metropolis to India, that the Suez
Canal is a means of securing the free intercourse of the waters,
is a great addition to that security, and one we should prize.
Source.—Parliamentary Publications, "Afghanistan," C 2, 190,
of 1878, p. 156.
Extract from Lord Salisbury's Despatch to the Viceroy of India,
dated February 28, 1876.
The increasing weakness and uncertainty of British influence
in Afghanistan constitutes a prospective peril to British interests;
the deplorable interruption of it in Khelat inflicts upon them
an immediate inconvenience by involving the cessation of all
effective control over the turbulent and predatory habits of the
trans-Indus tribes. In view of these considerations, Her
Majesty's Government have ... instructed the Viceroy to
find an early occasion for sending to Cabul a temporary mission,
furnished with such instructions as may, perhaps, enable
it to overcome the Ameer's apparent reluctance to the establishment
of permanent British Agencies in Afghanistan, by convincing
His Highness that the Government of India is ...
willing to afford him material support in the defence of his
territories from any actual and unprovoked external aggression,
but that it cannot practically avert or provide for such a contingency
without timely and unrestricted permission to place
its own agents in those parts of his dominions whence they may
best watch the course of events. It appears to Her Majesty's
Government that the present moment is favourable for the execution
of this last-mentioned instruction. The Queen's assumption
of the Imperial title in relation to Her Majesty's Indian
subjects, feudatories, and allies will now for the first time conspicuously
transfer to her Indian dominion, in form as well as
in fact, the supreme authority of the Indian Empire.... The
maintenance in Afghanistan of a strong and friendly power has
at all times been the object of British policy. The attainment
of this object is now to be considered with due reference to the
situation created by the recent and rapid advance of the Russian
arms in Central Asia towards the Northern frontiers of British
India. Her Majesty's Government cannot view with complete
indifference the probable influence of that situation upon the
uncertain character of an Oriental Chief whose ill-defined
dominions are thus brought, within a steadily narrowing circle,
between the conflicting pressures of two great military Empires,
one of which expostulates and remains passive, whilst the other
apologizes and continues to move forward. It is well known
that not only the English newspapers, but also all works published
in England upon Indian questions, are rapidly translated
for the information of the Ameer, and carefully studied by His
Highness. Sentiments of irritation and alarm at the advancing
power of Russia in Central Asia find frequent expression
through the English press, in language which, if taken by
Shere Ali for a revelation of the mind of the English Government,
must have long been accumulating in his mind impressions
unfavourable to its confidence in British power.... Her
Majesty's Government would not, therefore, view with indifference
any attempt on the part of Russia to compete with British
influence in Afghanistan, nor could the Ameer's reception of a
British Agent (whatever be the official rank or function of that
Agent) in any part of the dominions of His Highness afford for
his subsequent reception of a Russian Agent any pretext to
which the Government of Her Majesty would not be entitled
to, except as incompatible with the assurances spontaneously
offered to it by the Cabinet of St. Petersburg. You will bear
in mind these facts when framing instructions for your mission
to Cabul.... The conduct of Shere Ali has more than once
been characterized by so significant a disregard of the wishes
and interests of the Government of India that the irretrievable
alienation of his confidence in the sincerity and power of that
Government is a contingency which cannot be dismissed as
impossible. Should such a fear be confirmed by the result of
the proposed negotiation, no time must be lost in reconsidering,
from a new point of view, the policy to be pursued in reference
to Afghanistan.
Source.—Hansard, Third Series, vol. 227, col. 1,736 (Debate on Royal
Titles Bill, March 9, 1876).
Mr. Gladstone: ... In my opinion this is a matter of
the greatest importance. We have had some declarations in
this House with respect to India. The hon. member for West
Cumberland (Mr. Percy Wyndham), on the night when the
right hon. gentleman first made his proposal, said that an
Imperial title would be the one most suitable, because it would
signify that Her Majesty governed India without the restraints
of law or constitution.
Mr. Percy Wyndham: I said that the Government of India
was a despotic Government, not in the hands of one person,
and not, as in this country, a constitutional Government in the
hands of the Queen and the Houses of Lords and Commons.
The Government of India is essentially a despotic Government
as administered by us, although it includes more than one
individual.
Mr. Gladstone: I am very much obliged, and I perceive
completely the hon. member's meaning; but I am sorry that
to that meaning, as it stands, I take the greatest objection. If
it be true—and it is true—that we govern India without the
restraints of law, except such law as we make ourselves; if it
be true that we have not been able to give to India the benefit
and blessings of free institutions, I leave it to the hon. gentleman—I
leave it to the right hon. gentleman if he thinks fit—to
boast that he is about to place that fact solemnly upon
record. By the assumption of the title of Empress, I for one
will not attempt to turn into glory that which, so far as it is
true, I feel to be our weakness and our calamity.... It is
plain that the government of India—that is, the entire India—never
has yet, by statute, been vested in Her Majesty; but
that which has been vested is the government of the countries
which were held in trust for Her Majesty by the East India
Company. I would be the last man to raise this question if it
were a mere verbal quibble. It is as far as possible from being
a question merely verbal.... I am under the belief that to
this moment there are important Princes and States in India
over which we have never assumed dominion, whatever may
have been our superiority of strength. We are now going, by
Act of Parliament, to assume that dominion, the possible consequences
of which no man can foresee; and when the right
hon. gentleman tells us the Princes desire this change to be
made, does he really mean to assure us that this is the case?
If so, I require distinct evidence of the fact. There are Princes
in India who, no doubt, have hitherto enjoyed no more than a
theoretical political supremacy, but do they desire to surrender
even that under the provisions of this Bill? The right hon.
gentleman is going to advise the Queen to become Empress
of India. I raise the question, What is India? I have said
that the dominion now vested in Her Majesty is limited to
the territories vested in the East India Company. I ask
whether the supremacy of certain important Native States in
India ever was vested in the Company, or whether it was not?
We are bound to ask the right hon. gentleman—and I think he
is bound to answer the question through the medium of his
best legal authorities—whether this supremacy is so vested or
not, and whether he can assure us upon his responsibility that
no political change in the condition of the Native Princes of
India will be effected by this Bill. If there is a political change
effected, I do not hesitate to say I do not think it would be
possible to offer too determined an opposition to the proposal
of the Government.... I feel with the right hon. gentleman—indeed,
I feel a little more than the right hon. gentleman—the
greatness, the unsullied greatness, of the title which is now
borne by the Queen of England. I think I use the language
of moderation when I say that it is a title unequalled for its
dignity and weight, unequalled for the glory of its historic
associations, unequalled for the promise which it offers to the
future, among the titles of the Sovereigns of Europe, among
all the states and nations on earth. Sir, I have a jealousy
of touching that title, and I am not to be told that this is a small
matter. There is nothing small in a matter, in my judgment,
which touches the honour and dignity of the Crown of
England.... The right hon. gentleman has indeed manfully
contended that there is no inferiority in the title of King
as compared with that of Emperor.... I want to know why
I am to be dragged into novelties, or into comparisons on a
subject of this sort?... There is one other point on which
I am anxious to make a few comments. I was, I own, struck
by what fell from my right hon. friend the member for the
University of London (Mr. Lowe) the other evening in reference
to the colonies. Whether it be desirable to make any
recital with regard to the colonies or not, it is a subject which
requires much consideration whether we can wisely introduce
reference to India in the title of the Sovereign, while we at the
same time take no notice of the colonies.
Source.—Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet, Bulgarian Horrors and the
Question of the East, 1876, p. 10.
In default of Parliamentary action, and a public concentrated
as usual, we must proceed as we can, with impaired
means of appeal. But honour, duty, compassion, and I must
add shame, are sentiments never in a state of coma. The working-men
of the country, whose condition is less affected than
that of others by the season, have to their honour led the way,
and shown that the great heart of Britain has not ceased to
beat. And the large towns and cities, now following 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.
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.]
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....
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.
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.
Source.—The Times, December 15.
From 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.
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.
Source.—The Times, March 29, 1878.
The uncertainty which has prevailed during the last few
days respecting the course which our Government would
pursue, in view of the difference respecting the Congress which
had arisen between ourselves and Russia, has received a startling
and momentous solution. When the House of Lords met
yesterday, Lord Derby no longer occupied his seat on the
Ministerial Bench, and he at once announced that he had
resigned the office of Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs....
The explanations given yesterday remove all doubt respecting
the relative positions assumed by our Government and Russia
in regard to the Congress. Sir Stafford Northcote stated in the
House of Commons the import of the communications which
have passed between ourselves and Russia.... Russia's
reply amounted to a clear intimation that she claims to withhold
from the cognizance of the Powers any articles of the
preliminary Treaty she may choose. Such a reserve as she
asserts is tantamount to a definite claim to alter an existing
Treaty by force of arms without consulting the other Powers
who signed it, and towards whom she is under honourable obligations.
There being this imminent danger that the Congress
may not meet—it being, as Lord Beaconsfield said, "the
belief" of the Government "that the Congress would not
meet," it became necessary for the Government to consider
what further course they would take.... We do not know
what course Lord Derby would have advised, and it is possible
he would not immediately have taken any fresh steps. But the
rest of the Government decided that in the interests of peace,
and for the due protection of the rights of the Empire, it was
their duty "to advise Her Majesty to avail herself of those
powers which she has for calling for the services of her
Reserved Forces." As subsequently explained by Mr. Hardy
in the House of Commons, this step is one which is rendered
necessary by the new organization of the Army.... Its result
will be to raise our regular forces to their utmost efficiency.
In other words, it will place the land forces which actually
exist in readiness for prompt action; and it is thus a plain
declaration—a declaration rendered emphatic by Lord Derby's
resignation—that we are prepared to act promptly if the course
on which Russia has entered directly injures our honour or our
interests. Such a declaration of our being determined to
adhere to the claims we have put forward is perhaps the most
momentous step which has yet been taken by this country.
Source.—The Times, July 17.
The Premier alighted at his official residence in Downing
Street, and was met on the threshold by General Ponsonby,
bearing a bouquet of rare flowers, sent to him by the gracious
forethought of Her Majesty the Queen.... The ground was
well kept by the police, till the Prime Minister appeared at a
window and began to speak. Then a rush swept the police
away. Three cheers for Lord Beaconsfield were given. For
the second time in the day the Prime Minister was visibly
affected. He had to wait long for silence, but when an approach
to quiet had been obtained Lord Beaconsfield said: "I
can assure you that no recognition of neighbours could be more
gratifying to my feelings than these expressions of the sentiments
of those among whom I see many of my oldest and most
cherished friends. Lord Salisbury and myself have brought
you back peace, but a peace, I hope, with honour, which may
satisfy our Sovereign, and tend to the welfare of the country."
Source.—Hansard, Third Series, vol. 242, col. 344 (House of Lords:
Debate on the Protocols of Berlin, August, 1878).
The Earl of Rosebery rose to call attention to a memorandum
purporting to have been signed by the Marquis of Salisbury and
Count Schouvaloff on May 30, 1878, and to ask if it was the intention
of the Government to lay it on the table of the House....
The course the Government had pursued with respect to their
policy was, he would venture to say, one of obscurity enlivened
with sarcasm. In the whole history of the negotiations there
were five cardinal points—points which became salient to
everyone who had studied the history of these transactions.
First, there was the San Stefano treaty; the second was the
circular of the 1st of April; the third, the alleged secret agreement
of May 30th; the fourth, the secret convention of June 4th
with Turkey; and the fifth was the treaty signed at Berlin on
the 30th of July. As to the secret agreement between Russia
and England, it would be well to recall how they came to have
any cognizance of it at all. The substance of it appeared in
the Globe within, he thought, three or four days after it was
signed, and it was on the 14th of June, he thought, that the
entire text was given in the columns of the same journal.... They
had all heard that the agreement was not to be laid on the
table, because there were documents in connection with it which
it would be necessary to present at the same time; but other
Powers would not allow us to produce them. What he gathered
from all this was that, if it had not been for the ill-advised
conduct of a very subordinate clerk in the Foreign Office, who
was entrusted with the copying of the agreement at the rate of
10d. an hour, the English public would not at this moment have
the faintest conception of such an agreement, and the keystone
of the whole purpose of the Government would be wrapped in
obscurity. This was alarming in itself, because, if these subterranean
methods were employed as a rule, they would give the
public some little dismay in regard to the course of further negotiations....
Having signed this agreement, and having signed
another secret agreement within two or three days with Turkey,
Her Majesty's Plenipotentiaries proceeded, fortified with them,
to the Congress. Now came the most extraordinary point in
all the history of these negotiations, so far as they knew it.
Eight days after the signature, or alleged signature, of this
agreement, in which, if the House would remember, we consented
to the abandonment of Batoum and other Russian conquests
in Armenia, the Foreign Secretary addressed a despatch
to our Resident Plenipotentiary in Berlin, in which he urged
him to use his exertions to the utmost on behalf of Batoum.
The words were so remarkable that he might be pardoned for
quoting them to their lordships. On the 8th of June the noble
Marquis wrote to Lord Odo Russell: "There is no ground for
believing that Russia will willingly give way in respect to
Batoum, Kars, or Ardahan; and it is possible that the arguments
of England urged in Congress will receive little assistance
from other Powers, and will not be able to shake her
resolution in this respect." Well, that was not likely under
the circumstances. The noble Marquis continued in this letter
of June 8th: "You will not on that account abstain from
earnestly pressing upon them and upon Russia the justice of
abstaining from annexations which are unconnected with the
professed object of the war, and profoundly distasteful to the
populations concerned, and the expediency, in regard to the
future tranquillizing of Asia, of forbearing to shake so perilously
the position of the Government of Turkey...." Now, the
great point with regard to this was, was Lord Odo Russell,
when he received that communication, cognizant of the agreement
which had been signed on the 30th of May? Because
what they wanted to know was this, was Lord Odo Russell
one of a company, or was he a simple actor put up to recite
the arguments of Batoum, with a prompter by to keep him to
his part?... Then, on the same day, Mr. Secretary Cross
addressed a despatch to the Plenipotentiaries of Her Majesty,
urging them to make great exertion on behalf of Greece. He
should say that the position of a Plenipotentiary who entered
the Congress to struggle on behalf of Batoum, Kars, Ardahan,
and Greece must have been a somewhat melancholy one in the
retrospect; because, when the questions came up, the Turkish
positions were abandoned, and Greece was ignored.... He
did not pretend that secret understandings were unknown to
us, but he believed this was the first time we had called a
European Congress with the view of discussing great treaties,
and standing forth on behalf of public law, we ourselves having,
at the same time, bound ourselves in private to consent to those
stipulations which we had denounced, and which we continued
to denounce.
Source.—The Times, December 2.
Mr. Gladstone (at Greenwich): I want to ask you, and I
think after these two years it is about time, who are the true
friends of Russia? Is it we, gentlemen, who met two years
and a half ago on Blackheath, and said it was most mischievous
to leave to any single country the settlement of the Eastern
question?... Who brought Russia back to the Danube?
Those very men who are continually denouncing us as the
friends of Russia. We had in 1856 by the fortune of war
driven Russia back from the Danube; the present Government
have brought Russia back to the Danube. They made
a secret memorandum with Count Schouvaloff by which they
engaged—unless they could convert him by their arguments—to
vote in the Congress for bringing Russia back to the
Danube.... Who gave Russia the fortress of Kars? The
present Government. These people say they want to keep
down the power of Russia. Want to keep down the power
of Russia! Why, they have left it in her power to make herself
the liberator of Bulgaria, and secure for herself the influence
which always follows upon gratitude.
Source.—Parliamentary Publications, "Afghanistan," C 2,190 of
1878, p. 228.
Telegram dated August 2, 1878. From Viceroy, Simla, to
Secretary of State, London.
Further confirmation received of presence of Russian mission
at Cabul headed by General Abramoff, Governor of Samarkand,
who is mentioned by name. We desire to point out that
present situation requires immediate correction. It will soon
be known throughout India that Russian officers and troops
have been received with honour, and are staying at Cabul
within short distance of our frontier and our largest military
garrison, while our officers have been denied admission there.
We have further reports of Russian officers having visited and
been well received at Maimena. To remain inactive now will,
we respectfully submit, be to allow Afghanistan to fall as
certainly and as completely under Russian power and influence
as the Khanates. We believe we could correct situation if
allowed to treat it as question between us and the Ameer, and
probably could do so without recourse to force. But we must
speak plainly and decidedly, and be sure of your support. We
propose, therefore, in the first place, to insist on reception of
suitable British mission at Cabul. To this we do not anticipate
serious resistance; indeed, we think it probable that Ameer,
adhering to his policy of playing Russia and ourselves off
against each other, will really welcome such mission, while
outwardly only yielding to pressure....
From Secretary of State, August 3, 1878 (Extract).
Assuming the certainty of Russian officers at Cabul, your
proposals to insist on reception of British envoy approved. In
case of refusal you will telegraph again as to the steps you
desire to take for compelling the Ameer to receive your mission.
Telegram from Viceroy, September 21, 1878.
Chamberlain[A] reports from Peshawur that it is quite evident
Ameer is bent on utmost procrastination, and determined on
making acceptance of our mission dependent on his pleasure
and choice of time.... To await at Peshawur Ameer's
pleasure would be to abandon whole policy and accept easy
repulse at outset.... Consequently mission moved this
morning to Jamrud; thence Cavagnari advances to Ali Musjid
with small escort to demand passage....
Telegram from Viceroy, September 22, 1878.
Following telegram received last night from Sir Neville
Chamberlain. Message begins: Cavagnari reports that we
have received a decisive answer from Faiz Mahomed, after
personal interview, that he will not allow mission to proceed.
He crowned the heights commanding the way with his levies,
and though many times warned by Cavagnari that his reply
would be regarded as reply of the Ameer, said he would not let
mission pass....
Telegram from Secretary of State, October 30, 1878.
Text of letter, as approved, to be sent to the Ameer.... In
consequence of this hostile action on your part, I have assembled
Her Majesty's forces on your frontier, but I desire to give you
a last opportunity of averting the calamities of war. For this
it is necessary that a full and suitable apology be offered by
you in writing, and tendered on British territory by an officer
of sufficient rank. Furthermore, as it has been found impossible
to maintain satisfactory relations between the two States
unless the British Government is adequately represented in
Afghanistan, it will be necessary that you should consent to
receive a permanent British Mission within your territory....
Unless these conditions are accepted, fully and plainly, by
you, and your acceptance received by me not later than the
20th November, I shall be compelled to consider your intentions
as hostile, and to treat you as a declared enemy of the
British Government.
Source.—Parliamentary Publications, "Afghanistan," C 2,190 of
1878, p. 225.
Extract from a Memorandum by Lord Napier of Magdala.
We have unfortunately managed Shere Ali badly. Perhaps
it might not have been possible, with our scruples and his
want of them, to have managed him advantageously; but it
must be admitted that we have not given him the reasons to
unite himself with us that he naturally expected. First, we
stood aloof in his struggles for life and empire, ready to acknowledge
whoever might prove the master of Afghanistan. Then,
when Shere Ali had subdued his enemies, he came forward to
meet us with an alliance, but we were willing to form only an
imperfect alliance with him. He was willing to trust us, provided
that we would trust him; but we felt that we could not
bind ourselves to unreserved support of a power whose ideas
of right and wrong were so different from ours. We therefore
proposed to bind him, leaving ourselves (according to his idea)
free, and he recoiled from this bargain. His friendly feelings,
however, were not entirely alienated by that experience of us;
he abstained from any action towards Seistan at our desire,
and he believed that the mediation which we pressed upon him
would have ended by the restoration of the portion of Seistan
that Persia had occupied in his days of trouble. And not only
Shere Ali, but the whole Afghan people, believed that we should
restore to them what they had lost. When they found that we
had allowed Persia to obstruct and ill-treat our arbitrator, and
to retain much of her encroachments, they looked upon us as
a weak and treacherous people, who, under the guise of friendship,
had spoiled them in favour of Persia. This I believe to
be the root of Shere Ali's discontent with us.
Source.—Parliamentary Publications, "Afghanistan," C 2,401 of
1879, p. 12.
Translation of a Letter, dated February 26, 1879, from Sirdar
Mahomed Yakub Khan to Major Cavagnari.
... I now write a second time in accordance with former
friendship to inform you that to-day a letter was received by
post from Turkestan announcing that my worthy and exalted
father had, upon 29th Safar (21st February, 1879), obeyed the
call of the summoner, and, throwing off the dress of existence,
hastened to the region of the divine mercy.
Source.—Parliamentary Publications, "Afghanistan," C 2,362 of 1879.
Article III.—His Highness the Ameer of Afghanistan and
its dependencies agrees to conduct his relations with foreign
States in accordance with the advice and wishes of the British
Government.... The British Government will support the
Ameer against any foreign aggression with money, arms, or
troops, to be employed in whatsoever manner the British
Government may judge best for the purpose.
Article IV.—With a view to the maintenance of the direct
and intimate relations now established ... it is agreed that
a British Resident representative shall reside at Cabul, with
a suitable escort, in a place of residence appropriate to his rank
and dignity. It is also agreed that the British Government
shall have the right to depute British Agents with suitable
escorts to the Afghan frontiers, whensoever this may be considered
necessary by the British Government in the interests
of both States, on the occurrence of any important external
fact....
Article IX.—The British Government restores to His
Highness the Ameer of Afghanistan and its dependencies the
towns of Candahar and Jellalabad, with all the territory now
in possession of the British armies, excepting the districts of
Kurram, Pishin, and Sibi. His Highness ... agrees on his
part that the districts of Kurram, Pishin, and Sibi, according
to the limits defined in the schedule annexed, shall remain
under the protection and administrative control of the British
Government: that is to say, the aforesaid districts shall be
treated as assigned districts, and shall not be considered as permanently
severed from the limits of the Afghan kingdom....
The British Government will retain in its own hands the control
of the Khyber and Michni Passes, and of all relations with the
independent tribes of the territory directly connected with
these passes.
Done at Gandamak this 26th day of May, 1879.
Source.—Parliamentary Publications, "Afghanistan," C 2,457 of
1880, p. 95.
Statement of Taimur (Timoss), Sowar B troop, Corps of Guides, on
September 15, 1879.
I was in the Bala Hissar, Cabul, on the 3rd instant: Major
Sir Louis Cavagnari and the other British officers were in the
bungalow. At about 8 a.m. the Turkestani ("Ardal") regiment,
which was in the Bala Hissar, was paraded to receive its pay.
Daud Shah, the Commander-in-Chief, gave them one month's
pay. They claimed two, and broke. They were paraded quite
close to the Residency, and another regiment was also quartered
with them. One of soldiery shouted out, "Let us destroy the
Envoy first of all, and after that the Ameer!" They rushed into
the courtyard in front of the Residency, and stoned some of
the syces who were sitting there. We then opened fire on
them, without orders from any European. All the British
officers were inside. The Ameer's men then went for their
weapons, and returned with them in a quarter of an hour.
They then commenced to besiege the Residency, and from
commanding positions made the roof of the Residency untenable.
We made shelter trenches on it, and fired from the
windows. The city people came to help the soldiers about
10 a.m. Major Sir Louis Cavagnari was wounded in the forehead
about 1 p.m.; he was in a shelter trench. A man from
the roof of a house shot at him, and the bullet striking a brick,
it, together with a piece of brick, struck Sir Louis. But he
was not killed. Mr. Jenkyns came up and sent for a Munshi
to write to the Ameer, but the scribe was unable to write through
fear. I then wrote briefly to the Ameer that we were besieged,
and he was to help us; and sent it by Gholam Nabbi, a Kabuli,
an old Guide Sowar who was in the Residency. No answer
came. Gholam Nabbi afterwards told me that the Ameer wrote
on the letter, "If God will, I am just making arrangements."
Major Cavagnari was helped into the Residency, and tended to
by Dr. Kelly. Mr. Jenkyns then ordered me to send a second
letter to the Ameer, stating that Major Cavagnari was wounded,
and to hasten on assistance. The letter was sent by a Hindu
whose name I don't know. He was cut to pieces in front of
the Residency. I was at about 3 p.m. sent with a letter by
Mr. Hamilton promising six months' pay. By that time they
had managed to get on to the roof of the Residency. I went
armed into the midst of the crowd, and was immediately stripped
of my arms, but my life was saved by an officer. They threw
me from the roof of the Residency on to the roof of the neighbouring
house. I lost my senses.... I know nothing of what
happened after this, but I visited the place next morning. I
recollect they had begun to set fire to the Residency just as
I was leaving.... Daybreak I went to the Residency, and
saw first the corpse of Lieutenant Hamilton lying over a
mountain gun which had been brought up. The troops who
were there told me Mr. Hamilton had shot about three men
with his pistol, and had cut down two more before he was shot.
He was stripped and cut into pieces, but not dishonoured.
About 25 feet off was the body of Mr. Jenkyns in a similar
state. I did not go into the Residency, but was told Dr. Kelly
was lying killed in the Residency. Sir Louis Cavagnari was
in the Residency when it fell in flames. He was in the room
where the wounded were, and his body had not been discovered
when I left the city.
Source.—Parliamentary Publications, "Afghanistan," C 2,457 of
1880, p. 83.
Extract from Deposition of Ressaldar-Major Nakshband Khan.
At about 9 a.m., while the fighting was going on, I myself
saw the four European officers charge out at the head of some
twenty-five of the garrison; they drove away a party that were
holding some broken ground. About a quarter of an hour after
this another sally was made by a party with three officers
at their head—Cavagnari was not with them this time—with
the same result. A third sally was made with two British
officers (Jenkyns and Hamilton) leading; a fourth sally was
made with a Sikh Jemadar bravely leading. No more sallies
were made after this. They all appeared to go to the upper
part of the house, and fired from above. At about half-past
eleven o'clock part of the building, in which the Embassy was,
was noticed to be on fire. I do not know who fired it. I think
it probable that the defenders, finding themselves so few, fired
part, so as to have a less space to defend. The firing went on
continuously all day; perhaps it was hottest from 10 a.m. to
3 p.m., after which it slackened, and the last shots were fired at
about 8.30 p.m. or 9 p.m., after which all was quiet, and everyone
dispersed. The next morning I heard shots being fired.
I asked an old woman, to whose house I had been sent for
safety by Sirdar Wali Muhammad Khan, what this was: she
sent out her son to find out. He said: "They are shooting the
people found still alive in the Residency."
Source.—The Saturday Review, November 29.
The personal enthusiasm with which Mr. Gladstone is
regarded by the mass of his followers has been largely stimulated
by his appearance in Scotland and by his fervid harangues.
The only local topic on which he has cared to dwell is the
alleged creation of fagot votes by his opponents. There can
be no doubt that the purchase of little freeholds for the sole
purpose of obtaining votes is an abuse and a grievance, though
it is said that Mr. Gladstone once held a fagot vote. For two
or three years of his life Mr. Cobden concentrated all his efforts
on a gigantic scheme of fagot votes, by which the manufacturing
towns were to obtain control of the counties; but the
total failure of the project caused it to be tacitly abandoned.
If Mr. Gladstone is after all defeated in Midlothian, the moral
effect of a Conservative victory will be greatly impaired by the
process of tampering with the representation. To Mr. Gladstone's
excited mind an attempt to pack a constituency probably
assumes extravagant dimensions. Before he arrived at Edinburgh
he began his public protest against fagot votes in
Midlothian, as well as against the crimes of a Government
which he has persuaded himself to regard as the worst and
most dangerous that has held power in England. He has
denounced his opponents so loudly and so often that even his
overflowing eloquence could include nothing new, but the
crowded assemblies which he addressed, though they had read
his orations, and perhaps his pamphlets, had not heard him
speak. It is not surprising that eager and unanimous multitudes
should welcome with admiration and delight the detailed
exposition, by the most eloquent of politicians, of the opinions
which they had already been taught to hold. Few cold-blooded
or dispassionate sceptics would ask themselves whether it was
credible that a Ministry and a great and steady majority of the
House of Commons should never, even by accident, have
deviated into prudence, justice, or patriotic foresight. In
private discussion and in Parliamentary debate it is found
expedient, according to the old legal phrase, to give colour, or,
in other words, to admit that the theory, which is impugned,
though unsound, is at least credible or intelligible. Mr. Gladstone
follows the bent of his own genius when he encourages
the popular tendency to deal with difficult controversies as if
they were wholly one-sided.
His Liberal colleagues, perhaps, regard his present enterprise
with mixed feelings. Their confidence in their former
leader is qualified by doubts of his judgment, and by uncertainty
as to the present range of his ambition. They cannot
but perceive that he assumes the character of representative of
the party, although he probably intends no disloyalty to its
official or nominal chiefs. It is true that if, in appealing to the
multitude, he pushes his successors aside, they have little right
to complain. Almost all of them have of late addressed
vehement language to public meetings, though none of them
can compete with Mr. Gladstone in the power of stirring
political passion. Official subordination is set aside when
policy is regulated, not by Parliament, but by the voice of the
general population. Senators and Consulars must stand aside
in the presence of a Dictator. Although it has long been
customary for statesmen to make occasional speeches to public
meetings, the extent to which the practice has lately been
carried is altogether unprecedented. The result is that the
Constitution is gradually weakened by the substitution of
numerical majorities for the representatives of the people in
Parliament. The approach of a General Election furnishes no
sufficient justification for an innovation which accelerates the
prevalence of democracy, and aggravates its evil tendencies.
Mr. Gladstone himself perhaps understands and approves the
organic change which promotes the supremacy of popular
eloquence in the State. It is his habit to depreciate the honesty
and judgment of the educated classes.
Source.—Holland's Life of the Duke of Devonshire, i. 258.
(Longmans and Co.)
Lord Beaconsfield to Mr. Gathorne Hardy.
It certainly is a relief that the drenching rhetoric has at
length ceased—but I have never read a word of it. "Satis
eloquentiæ sapientiæ parum."
Source.—Parliamentary Publications, "Afghanistan," C 2,736 of
1880, p. 3.
Telegram from Viceroy, June 27, 1880, to Secretary of State.
Telegram from Thomson at Teheran says: Ayub Khan
marching against Candahar with large force. I think we
should leave Shere Ali to defend himself beyond the Helmund,
but it seems to me, after communicating with Stewart, that it
would be inconsistent with security of our military position at
Candahar to allow hostile forces to cross that river. I propose,
therefore, to instruct Primrose, if Ayub reaches Furrah, to
advance towards Girishk with sufficient force to prevent passage
of Helmund....
Telegram dated August 2, 1880, from Colonel St. John,
Candahar, to Foreign, Simla (p. 33).
29th.—Arrived here yesterday afternoon with General Burrows
and Nuttall and remnant of force. Telegraph has been
interrupted ever since my arrival. No chance of restoration,
so send this by messenger to Chaman. Burrows marched
from Kushk-i-Nakhud on morning 27th, having heard from me
that Ayub's advanced guard had occupied Maiwand, about
three miles from the latter place. Enemy's cavalry appeared
advancing from direction of Haidrabad, their camp on Helmund
ten miles above Girishk. Artillery and cavalry engaged
them at 9 a.m., so shortly afterwards whole force of enemy
appeared, and formed line of battle—seven regiments, regulars
in centre, three others in reserve; about 2,000 cavalry on
right; 400 mounted men and 2,000 Ghazis and irregular infantry
on left; other cavalry and irregulars in reserve; five
or six batteries of guns, including one of breechloaders, distributed
at intervals. Estimated total force, 12,000. Ground
slightly undulating, enemy being well posted. Till 1 p.m.
action confined to artillery fire, which so well sustained and
directed by enemy that our superior quality armament failed
to compensate for inferior number of guns. After development
of rifle fire, our breechloaders told; but vigorous advance of
cavalry against our left, and Ghazis along the front, caused
native infantry to fall back in confusion on 66th, abandoning
two guns. Formation being lost, infantry retreated slowly;
and in spite of gallant efforts of General Burrows to rally them,
were cut off from cavalry and artillery. This was at 3 p.m.,
and followers and baggage were streaming away towards
Candahar. After severe fighting in enclosed ground, General
Burrows succeeded in extricating infantry and brought them
into line of retreat. Unfortunately no effort would turn fugitives
from main road, waterless at this season. Thus majority
casualties appear to have occurred from thirst and exhaustion.
Enemy's pursuit continued to ten miles from Candahar, but
was not vigorous. Cavalry, artillery, and a few infantry reached
banks of Argandab, forty miles from scene of action, at 7 a.m.,
many not having tasted water since previous morning. Nearly
all ammunition lost, with 400 Martini, 700 Sniders, and 2 nine-pounder
guns. Estimated loss, killed, and missing: 66th, 400;
Grenadiers, 350; Jacob's Rifles, 350; artillery, 40; sappers, 21;
cavalry, 60.... Preparations being now made for siege....
Extract from General Burrows's Report on the Action (p. 101).
... Between two and three o'clock the fire of the enemy's
guns slackened, and swarms of Ghazis advanced rapidly towards
our centre. Up to this time the casualties among the infantry
had not been heavy, and as the men were firing steadily, and
the guns were sweeping the ground with case shot, I felt
confident as to the result. But our fire failed to check the
Ghazis; they came on in overwhelming numbers, and, making
good their rush, they seized the two most advanced horse
artillery guns. With the exception of two companies of
Jacob's Rifles, which had caused me great anxiety by their
unsteadiness early in the day, the conduct of the troops had
been splendid up to this point; but now, at the critical moment,
when a firm resistance might have achieved a victory, the
infantry gave way, and, commencing from the left, rolled up,
like a wave, to the right. After vainly endeavouring to rally
them, I went for the cavalry.... The 3rd Light Cavalry and
the 3rd Sind Horse were retiring slowly on our left, and I
called upon them to charge across our front and so give the
infantry an opportunity of reforming; but the terrible artillery
fire to which they had been exposed, and from which they had
suffered so severely, had so shaken them that General Nuttall
was unable to give effect to my order. All was now over....
Extract from Report by Lieutenant-General Primrose, Commanding
1st Division Southern Afghanistan Field Force (p. 156).
I would most respectfully wish to bring to the Commander-in-Chief's
notice the gallant and determined stand made by the
officers and men of the 66th Regiment at Maiwand....
10 officers and 275 non-commissioned officers and men
were killed, and 2 officers and 30 non-commissioned officers
and men wounded. These officers and men nearly all fell
fighting desperately for the honour of their Queen and country.
I have it on the authority of a Colonel of Artillery of Ayub
Khan's army that a party of the 66th Regiment, which he
estimated at one hundred officers and men, made a most determined
stand in a garden. They were surrounded by the whole
Afghan Army, and fought on until only eleven men were left,
inflicting enormous loss upon the enemy. These eleven
charged out of the garden, and died with their faces to the foe,
fighting to the death. Such was the nature of their charge and
the grandeur of their bearing that, although the whole of the
Ghazis were assembled around them, not one dared approach to
cut them down. Thus standing in the open, back to back,
firing steadily and truly, every shot telling, surrounded by
thousands, these eleven officers and men died; and it was not
until the last man had been shot down that the Ghazis dared
advance upon them.
Source.—The Times, June 25.
We may regard the episode of Tuesday's resolution, and its
natural sequence in the imprisonment of Mr. Bradlaugh for
defying the authority of the House, as now at an end....
We regret unfeignedly, as we have all along done, that
Mr. Bradlaugh was not permitted to make affirmation, instead
of taking an oath, when he first asked to be allowed to do
so.... But opportunity of creating a precedent consonant
with reason and common sense has been let slip, and in default
of a reasonable precedent the only manly course now seems to
be to supply its place by fresh legislation. If the personal
question of Mr. Bradlaugh and his very unsavoury opinions can
once be got out of the way, there are probably very few
members of the House of Commons, and very few sensible
Englishmen, however strong their religious opinions, who
would not acknowledge the anomaly, the inexpediency, and the
injustice of making the Parliamentary oath of allegiance more
stringent and more exclusive than the existing statutory provisions
for securing truth of testimony and uprightness of
conduct.
Source.—The Times, July 3.
The fact is that considerations of risk are not uniformly
present to servants when they are hired, and that the miner or
railway guard generally contracts on the assumption in his own
mind that he will be lucky, and will not be injured. The
impulse to such Bills as Mr. Brassey's, Earl De La Warr's, and
the measure introduced by the Government, is the inability of
many people to see any good reason why, if a master is liable
for the acts of his servant towards a stranger, he should be
irresponsible when someone, fully clothed with his authority,
and acting with all his power to enforce obedience, injures
a so-called fellow-servant, who, perhaps, did not know of the
existence of this vice-principal, and who never, in fact, consented
to endure without complaint what might befall him by reason
of the negligence of the latter. Perhaps in theory it is entirely
wrong to make a master in any case liable for the acts of his
servants. It is hard to give any good reason for this portion of
our common law. Perhaps this species of responsibility, when
historically examined, will be proved to be a shoot from the
Roman law of master and slave, which has been unintelligently
grafted on a law governing the relations of men who are free.
It matters not, however, how employers came to incur their
present liability to strangers for the acts of their workmen.
The question is whether it is right or worth while retaining
an exception to the general law of master and servant. The
question has become one, not of principle, but of details....
The Government Bill starts from the principle that workmen
may claim redress when they are injured in consequence
of defective works or machinery, or of the negligence of any
person in the service of the employer, who has superintendence
entrusted to him.... It will be highly expedient to endeavour
to express more clearly a law which must annually be set
in motion in hundreds of cases.
Source.—The Times, September 2.
A subject of great interest was discussed at yesterday's
meeting of the Liverpool City Council. In seconding a
recommendation of the Finance Committee that the settlement
of the prospectus and terms of issue of the first £2,000,000 of
stock to be created under the Liverpool Loans Act be referred
to that Committee, Alderman A. B. Forwood explained that
the Bill had now passed both Houses.... It had been a very
difficult and intricate matter to get the Bill through, because
the Liverpool Corporation were the first in the kingdom to
obtain powers to fund their debt in the way proposed. He
believed that, when the new water scheme was passed, the new
mode of raising money would materially reduce the cost of
money to the town, and would effect the saving of £25,000 to
£30,000 a year. The stock would be put in exactly the same
position as Consols.
Source.—The Times.
January 5.—The last American mail has brought us interesting
details relating to the progress made in manipulating the
electric light. Pending the researches in which Professor
Edison has for a long time been engaged, it appears that his
laboratory at Menlo Park was practically closed to all strangers,
until the young scientist should have arrived at a point to
enable him to declare that complete success had attended his
final efforts. That point has apparently been reached....
The steadiness, reliability, and non-fusibility of the carbon
filament, Mr. Edison tells us, are not the only elements incident
to the new discovery. There is likewise obtained an element
of proper and uniform resistance to the passage of the electric
current.
April 10.—Several chambers in the Temple will shortly
possess the advantage of having communication by telephone
with the Law Courts at Westminster and the Houses of Parliament.
The telephonic apparatus is at present being laid down
between the Temple Gardens and Westminster Hall, the
Metropolitan District Railway being utilized for the purpose.
The apparatus, after having been connected with several of the
chambers and offices in the Temple, enters the underground
railway line, which it is carried along, immediately under the
crown of the railway arch.
May 31.—That the Lord Mayor should in his official capacity
have lent his presence to the opening of the Grand Hotel
at Charing Cross, as he did on Saturday evening, implies that
the new undertaking possesses a more than private character.
So, in fact, it does. If it cannot be said altogether to open
a new era in the history of hotels in this country, it makes
at least a distinct advance in the character of English hotel
accommodation.... The distinctively English hotel is a
dismal and cheerless place, where one feels cut off from all
human sympathy. Of late years there has been a tendency in
London to adopt Continental ways, but the improvement has
seldom been carried much further than the establishment of a
table d'hôte. The Grand Hotel is an ambitious attempt to rival
the best European and American models.
Source.—Freeman's Journal, September 9 (Report of a speech
by Parnell at Ennis).
Depend upon it that the measure of the Land Bill of next
session will be the measure of your activity and energy this
winter; it will be the measure of your determination not to
pay unjust rents; it will be the measure of your determination
to keep a firm grip of your homesteads; it will be the measure
of your determination not to bid for farms from which others
have been evicted, and to use the strong force of public opinion
to deter any unjust men among yourselves—and there are many
such—from bidding for such farms. If you refuse to pay
unjust rents, if you refuse to take farms from which others
have been evicted, the Land Question must be settled, and
settled in a way that will be satisfactory to you. It depends,
therefore, upon yourselves, and not upon any Commission or
any Government. When you have made this question ripe
for settlement, then, and not till then, will it be settled....
Now what are you to do to a tenant who bids for a farm from
which another tenant has been evicted? [Several voices,
"Shoot him!"] I think I heard somebody say, "Shoot him!"
I wish to point out to you a very much better way—a more
Christian and charitable way—which will give the lost man an
opportunity of repenting. When a man takes a farm from
which another has been unjustly evicted, you must show him
on the roadside when you meet him, you must show him in
the streets of the town, you must show him in the shop, you
must show him in the fair-green and in the market-place, and
even in the place of worship, by leaving him alone, by putting
him into a moral Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of
his country as if he were the leper of old—you must show him
your detestation of the crime he has committed.
Source.—The Times, November 10.
Captain Boycott's case, from the time when attention was
first drawn to it, has inspired general and increasing interest,
which in the north of Ireland has taken the practical form
of the relief expedition despatched yesterday to the shores of
Lough Mask. It is well understood on both sides that the
persecution of Captain Boycott is only a typical instance of
the system by which the peasantry are attempting to carry
into effect the instructions of the Land League. Into the
merits of Captain Boycott's relations with the tenants on Lord
Erne's estates it is quite unnecessary to enter. He has been
beleaguered in his house near Ballinrobe; he is excluded from
intercourse, not merely with the people around him, but with
the neighbouring towns; his crops are perishing, because such
is the organized intimidation in the district that no labourers
would dare to be seen working in his fields. It is certain that
any ordinary workman whom Captain Boycott might hire
would be subjected to brutal violence, as indeed has already
happened to servants and others who ventured even to fetch
his letters for him from the nearest post-office.
Source.—Parliamentary Papers, "Transvaal," C 2,838 of 1881, p. 10.
To the Administrator of the Transvaal.
Excellency,
In the name of the people of the South African Republic
we come to you to fulfil an earnest but unavoidable duty.
We have the honour to send you a copy of the Proclamation
promulgated by the Government and Volksraad, and universally
published. The wish of the people is clearly to be seen therefrom,
and requires no explanation from us. We declare in the
most solemn manner that we have no desire to spill blood, and
that from our side we do not wish war. It lies in your hands
to force us to appeal to arms in self-defence. Should it come
so far, which may God prevent, we will do so with the utmost
reverence for Her Majesty the Queen of England and her flag.
Should it come so far, we will defend ourselves with a knowledge
that we are fighting for the honour of Her Majesty, for
we fight for the sanctity of treaties sworn by Her, but broken
by Her officers. However, the time for complaint is past, and
we wish now alone from your Excellency co-operation for an
amicable solution of the question on which we differ.... In
1877 our then Government gave up the keys of the Government
offices without bloodshed. We trust that your Excellency, as
representative of the noble British nation, will not less nobly
and in the same way place our Government in the position to
assume the administration.
We have, etc.,
S. J. P. Kruger (Vice-President).
M. W. Pretorious.
P. J. Joubert.
(Triumvirate.)
J. P. Mare.
C. J. Joubert.
E. J. P. Jorissen.
W. Edward Bok (Acting State Secretary).
Heidelberg,
December 16, 1880.
Source.—Parliamentary Papers, "Transvaal," C 2,838 of 1881, p. 11.
In the name of the people of the South African Republic.
With prayerful look to God we, S. J. P. Kruger, Vice-President,
M. W. Pretorious, and P. J. Joubert, appointed by the
Volksraad in its session of the 13th December, 1880, as the
Triumvirate to carry on temporarily the supreme administration
of the Republic, make known:
We thus give notice to everyone that on the 13th day of
December of the year 1880 the Government has been re-established;
the Volksraad has resumed its sitting....
And it is further generally made known that from this day
the whole country is placed in a state of siege and under the
stipulations of the War Ordinance....
Source.—The Times, January 17.
We give this morning an account from our correspondent at
Pretoria of the meeting held by the Boers last month for the
purpose of protesting against the annexation of the Transvaal.
The report of the proceedings leaves no doubt of the extent
and nature of Boer disaffection.... That the annexation of
the Transvaal may have been necessary when the step was
taken may be admitted without prejudice to the question
whether its permanent occupation and administration by
British authority is desirable or not. When Sir Theophilus
Shepstone annexed the territory, the Government was disorganized,
the Treasury was bankrupt, the Republican troops
were hopelessly demoralized, and the whole district was
threatened by two powerful native chiefs, the weaker of whom
had proved his superiority to any force which the Boers could
bring against him. Now Cetywayo and Secocoeni are captives,
and the whole border is tranquil. We have done for the Boers
what it is certain they could not have done for themselves, and
we have placed the security of the South African Colonies
beyond all reasonable fear. Hence it might be argued that
the reasons which compelled the temporary annexation of the
Transvaal are no longer applicable in favour of its permanent
occupation. It may be argued that we cannot recede where
we have once advanced; certainly we cannot, where we have
good reason to believe that our security requires that we should
maintain our hold. But when our presence is manifestly unwelcome,
and when the question of the best mode of guarding
our security in future is at least an open one, it would be a very
contemptible piece of national vanity to refuse to recede, simply
because we had once found it necessary to advance in very
different circumstances.
Source.—Parliamentary Papers, "Transvaal," C 2,998 of 1881.
Convention for the Settlement of the Transvaal Territory,
signed at Pretoria, 1881.
Preamble: Her Majesty's Commissioners for the settlement
of the Transvaal Territory, duly appointed as such by
a Commission passed under the Royal Sign Manual and Signet,
bearing date the 5th of April, 1881, do hereby undertake and
guarantee on behalf of Her Majesty that, from and after the
8th day of August, 1881, complete self-government, subject to
the suzerainty of Her Majesty, her heirs and successors, will
be accorded to the inhabitants of the Transvaal upon the
following terms and conditions, and subject to the following
reservations and limitations.
Source.—The Times, August 5, 1881.
England can now have no desire to intrude herself upon the
Transvaal. The more completely its people can get on without
interference of any kind, the better pleased we shall be....
The occasion may come which will call for all the knowledge
and discretion which our Government will have at its command.
The Boers, if they are so disposed, may give trouble
in a thousand ways. The question may be continually arising
whether the point has yet been reached at which active interference
is called for, or whether it may be the prudent and
better course to let things be. The fact is that between
England and the Transvaal there is no natural connection
whatever. The bond which unites them is an artificial one,
and though it is too early to anticipate the time at which it
will be severed, we are sure that at no time will it be found
strong enough to bear a violent strain. The strain may never
come. The Convention, which has been entered upon in due
form, and with all solemnity, may remain to all intents and
purposes a dead letter as to the chief part of its provisions,
and may thus pass quietly into the great limbo to which all
monstrous political births must some day come. It will be by
the fault of the Boers that we can be driven to put an active
interpretation upon it. It contains terms which we cannot
suffer to be disregarded.
Source.—The Times, January 12.
Extract from a Memorial to the Archbishop of Canterbury,
signed by various Deans, Canons, etc.
... The immediate need of our Church is, in our opinion, a
tolerant recognition of divergent ritual practice; but we feel
bound to submit to your Grace that our present troubles are
likely to recur, unless the Courts by which ecclesiastical causes
are decided in the first instance and on appeal can be so constructed
as to secure the conscientious obedience of clergymen
who believe the constitution of the Church of Christ to be
of Divine appointment, and who protest against the State's
encroachment upon Rights assured to the Church of England
by solemn Acts of Parliament....
Source.—The Times, February 3.
About nine o'clock in the morning Mr. Gladstone, Mr. W. E.
Forster, Mr. Dodson, Sir Stafford Northcote, and Sir R. Cross
entered the House amid cheers. While Mr. Biggar was continuing
his observations on the Land League the Speaker
resumed the Chair amid loud cheering. The Speaker, without
calling on the hon. member to proceed with his remarks, at
once said: "The motion for leave to bring in the Person and
Property Protection (Ireland) Bill has now been under discussion
for five days. The present sitting, having commenced
on Monday last, has continued till Wednesday morning, a
period of no less than forty-one hours, the House having been
occupied with discussions upon repeated motions for adjournment.
However tedious these discussions were, they were
carried to a division by small minorities in opposition to the
general sense of the House. A necessity has thus arisen
which demands the interposition of the Chair (cheers). The
usual rule has been proved powerless to insure orderly debate.
An important measure, recommended in Her Majesty's Speech,
and declared to be urgent in the interests of the State by a
decisive majority, has been impeded by the action of an inconsiderable
minority of members who have resorted to those
modes of obstruction which have been recognized by the
House as a Parliamentary offence. The credit and authority
of this House are seriously threatened, and it is necessary they
should be vindicated. Under the operation of the accustomed
rules and methods of procedure the legislative powers of the
House are paralyzed. A new and exceptional course is imperatively
demanded, and I am satisfied that I shall best carry out
the wish of the House if I decline to call upon any more
members to speak, and at once put the question to the House."
The Speaker then put the question, when there appeared—
| For the amendment | 19 |
| Against | 164 |
The Speaker then put the main question, that leave be given
to bring in the Bill, when Mr. J. McCarthy rose to speak, but
the Speaker declined to hear him, and there were loud cries of
"Order" on the Ministerial side of the House. The Home
Rulers stood up, and for some time, with raised hand, shouted,
"Privilege!" and then, having bowed to the Chair, left the
House.
Source.—The Times, April 20.
The end really corresponded to the beginning, and both were
alike exceptional.... It must have been an ideal and living
world that home life introduced Benjamin Disraeli to. It was
in this that he acquired his repertory of parts and character;
his caps fit for wearers; his motley for those it suited; his
titles of little honour; his stage tricks and artifices; his gibes
and jests that Yorick might have overflowed with in the spirit
of his age; and his unfailing consciousness of a knowledge and
power ever sufficient for the occasion.... The new deliverer
of the Conservatives presented himself as a magician, master
of many spells, charged with all the secrets of the political
creation, ready to control the winds and the tides of opinion
and faction, sounding the very depths of political possibility,
and with a touch of his wand able to leave a mark on any foe
or wanton intruder. The plea was necessity. Fortunately for
Lord Beaconsfield, the age of consistency is no more. Sir Robert
Peel destroyed that idol, and in doing so sacrificed himself.
Lord Beaconsfield advanced to power over his body.
Source.—The Times, April 22, 1881.
It is finely said by Bacon of death that "it openeth the gate
to good fame and extinguisheth envy...." It is singularly
true of Lord Beaconsfield, whose fate it was to interest all
men, to puzzle most, and to provoke the antagonism of many.
Certainly no English statesman, since the death of Lord
Palmerston, has occupied so prominent a position or excited
so deep an interest on the Continent of Europe. His secret
lay perhaps in the magnetic influence of a dauntless will, in
his unrivalled powers of patience, in his impenetrable reserve
and detachment. If we compare the beginning of his political
life with its close, and note how its unchastened audacity was
gradually toned down into the coolest determination and the
most dispassionate tenacity, we shall see how the magnificent
victory he achieved over himself gave him power to govern
others, to withstand their opposition, and to bend their wills to
his own. This is what Continental observers saw in him—unrivalled
strength of will and dauntless tenacity of purpose—and
this is why they admired him. The sense of mystery
engendered the sense of power, and foreigners freely admired
where Englishmen were often puzzled and at times almost
bewildered.
Source.—Hansard, Third Series, vol. 259, C 49-74 (House of Lords
debate on the withdrawal from Candahar, March 3, 1881).
The Earl of Lytton: ... And now, my Lords, allow me
to recapitulate the conclusions which appear to me established
by the facts to which I have solicited your attention. On the
strength of these facts I affirm once more that Russian influence
at Cabul did not commence with the Stolieteff mission, and that
it did not cease with the withdrawal of that mission. I affirm
that for all practical purposes the Ameer of Cabul had ceased
to be the friend and ally of England, and that he had virtually
become the friend and ally of Russia at least three years before
I had any dealings with His Highness, or any connection with
the government of India. I affirm that the sole cause of the
late Afghan war was a Russian intrigue of long duration, for
purposes which it was the imperative duty of the Government
of India to oppose at any cost. And, finally, I affirm that the
establishment of Russian influence was caused by the collapse
and paralysis of British influence at Cabul, and that this was
the natural result of the deplorable policy to which Her Majesty's
Government are now so eagerly reverting.... Surely, my
Lords, prevention is better than cure. Surely it is wiser and
safer to stay at Candahar, whence we can exclude Russian
influence from Herat by peaceably extending our own influence
in that direction, than to retire to the Indus, and there passively
await an event which is to involve us in a great European war,
for the purpose of undoing what could not otherwise have been
done in a remote corner of Asia. The noble Duke, the Lord
Privy Seal, has expressed his astonishment at the prodigious
importance I now attach to the retention of Candahar, because,
he says, I did not hold that opinion till a late period of my
Viceroyalty. That is true—I did not. But in the statement
which elicited this remark I thought I had explained the reason
why. I can sincerely assure your Lordships that the late
Government of India was not an annexationist Government.
As long as we had any reasonable hope of loyalty on the
part of Yakub Khan, or of the observance of the Gandamak
Treaty, which gave us moral guarantees of adequate control
over Afghanistan, our wish was not to weaken but to strengthen
the Cabul Power. But the whole situation, and our duty concerning
it, were changed irrevocably by the atrocious crime
which compelled us to occupy Cabul, and by the revelations
discovered at Cabul, and now known to your Lordships, of the
extent to which Russian influence had penetrated to the very
heart of the country. My Lords, it then seemed to my colleagues
in the Government of India, and it still seems to me,
that the only practical means of counteracting the dangerous
Russian influence at Cabul would be to assume ourselves over
Western Afghanistan a controlling and commanding position,
not dependent on the good or bad faith of any Cabul ruler.
Such control can only be exercised from Candahar. The
history of the last eight years clearly shows, not merely that
the Russian Power is approaching, and must approach, towards
India, but that Russia has long sought, is still seeking, and will
continue to seek, great political influence over Afghanistan;
that this influence has already found a fulcrum at Cabul, and
that it must be a permanent source of disquiet to the Government
of India, whenever she wishes to embarrass British
policy in Europe. Therefore, for the safety of the British
Power in India, it is indispensable that the Government of
India shall have the means of preventing—at all events, of
counteracting—Russian influence in Afghanistan. It is absurd
to suppose that you can have any controlling power over a
country in which you have no locus standi at all. Now amongst
the arrangements contemplated by Her Majesty's Government
after the evacuation of Candahar, where do they expect to find
a locus standi in Afghanistan? I do not see where.... Great
as are the undisputed strategical advantages of Candahar, the
late Government of India did not regard the retention of it
primarily, or mainly, as a military question. We felt that it
would give us a political and commercial control over Western
Afghanistan up to Herat so complete that we might contemplate
with unconcern the course of events at Cabul. If you retain
Candahar, and hold it firmly and fearlessly, then you may view
with indifference the uncertain faith and fate of Cabul rulers,
and the certain advance of the Russian Power. If you retain
Candahar, and administer it wisely, you will replace anarchy
and bloodshed and difficulty and uncertainty on your own border
by peace and prosperity; and if you connect Candahar by rail
with the Valley of the Indus, you will be able to sweep the
whole commerce of Central Asia, vastly augmented by the
beneficent protection of a strong, a settled, and a civilized
Government, into the harbours of Kurrachee and Calcutta,
and thence into the ports of Liverpool and London. But, my
Lords, you cannot do all this unless you retain a garrison in
Candahar.... If you accept the conclusion admitted by the
noble Duke, and affirmed by every Indian statesman, that
Afghanistan must on no account be permitted to remain under
the forbidden influence of Russia, then, my Lords, for the
enforcement of that conclusion you must choose between the
retention of Candahar and reliance on the instructions said to
have been issued to General Kauffman "not to do it again."
There is no alternative. To talk about developing the internal
resources of India is nothing to the point. There is no reason
why the continued development of India's internal resources
should not proceed pari passu with the consolidation of her
external securities. But do not fatten the lamb only to feed
the wolf. My Lords, all those whose privilege it is to build
up the noble edifice of India's prosperity must be content to
labour like the builders of the second Temple—working with
one hand, but holding the sword in the other to defend their
work.
Source.—The Times, October 13.
For two years, or thereabouts, our towns have had frequent
opportunities of witnessing an exhibition not to everybody's
taste. The "Salvation Army," as far as it can be known to
the uninitiated, consists of bands of men marching through the
streets, generally towards "church time," with banners, devices,
and sometimes emblematic helmets and other accoutrements,
singing sensational hymns. Most people are ready to leave it
alone. But there remain the irrepressible "roughs." It is
with them that the "Salvation Army" is now waging its only
physical warfare. English people generally would leave it to
the test of time.... We must beware how we quarrel with
those who honestly believe there is a great work to be done.
If we do not like these singular modes of propagandism and
conversion, we need not assist the "roughs" to put them down.
Another course lies before us all. It is to do the work in a
better way.
Source.—The Times, December 21.
Extract from a letter by Sir William Gregory.
... I called at Arabi Bey's house by appointment, and was
very courteously received by a tall, athletic, soldier-like man.
His countenance is peculiarly grave, and even stern, with much
power in it. It is at first sight somewhat heavy, until he is
aroused, when his eyes light up and he speaks with great
energy.... He said that he looked on the Sultan as his lord—as
the head of his religion—and that he was bound to do so;
that the dominions of the Sultan were like a great palace, in
which the different nations had each one its own chamber,
suited to its wants, and arranged according to its own manner;
that to introduce other persons into those chambers would be
to upset the arrangements, to annoy and dispossess the occupants,
and to do an unjust act; and he was therefore most
decidedly opposed to any interference on the part of the Sultan
in the government of Egypt, and every opposition would be
given to the introduction of Turkish troops. Secondly, as
regards the religious question, nothing could be more untrue
than the allegations that he and those who went with him were
in favour of any intolerant movement.... The next point
was the accusation that he was aiming at establishing a
military supremacy. This he denied, saying that an army has
no right to be supreme in time of peace ... but it was obliged
to take the lead in getting rid of abuses and establishing justice.
Lastly, as to his desire to remove European officials from the
country, he said he had no idea or wish to remove the Control
to which his countrymen were indebted for the Justice which
the cultivators now enjoy, at all events for the present, until
Egypt knew how to govern herself, and could stand alone;
but he spoke with the greatest bitterness of the manner in
which his countrymen were ousted from every superior position
in every department.... I next asked him if the opinion
were prevalent that England desired to occupy Egypt. He
said that he himself did not believe it. Egypt was looked
upon as the centre of the Mohammedan world, and in every
country where there was a Mussulman community there would
be deep-seated indignation were she to be annexed, and probably
the loss of India would be ultimately the consequence.
Egypt, if left alone, would always protect the passage to India,
which he knew to be our great object.
Cairo,
December 11.
Source.—Hansard, Third Series, vol. 266, col. 1,124,
February 20, 1882.
Ordered: That, when it shall appear to Mr. Speaker or to
the Chairman of Committee of the whole House, during any
debate, to be the evident sense of the House or of the Committee,
that the Question be now put, he may so inform the
House or the Committee; and, if a motion be made, "That
the Question be now put," Mr. Speaker, or the Chairman, shall
forthwith put such question; and, if the same be decided in
the affirmative, the Question under discussion shall be put
forthwith; provided that the Question shall not be decided in
the affirmative, if a division be taken, unless it shall appear
to have been supported by more than 200 members, or to have
been opposed by less than 40 members.
Source.—The Times, March 11.
A meeting convened by the Council of the International
Monetary Standard Association was held in the Egyptian Hall
of the Mansion House.
Mr. Grenfell, Governor of the Bank of England, said ...
he presumed that all present knew that the standard of this
country was a monometallic gold standard, and that it was
introduced by that great statesman Sir Robert Peel; but it
was not so generally known, and it was somewhat singular,
that when Sir R. Peel brought forward the measure for the
resumption of cash payments, and for the institution of a monometallic
gold standard, he appealed to the House of Commons,
by all the wish they had to act with good faith towards their
creditors, that they should return to the ancient standard of the
realm. He presumed that Sir R. Peel meant that the ancient
standard of the realm was a gold standard; but it was not a
monometallic standard at all. The ancient standard of the
realm was a bimetallic standard, and although there had been
a monometallic standard before, it was never a gold standard....
What were the events that had occurred since Sir R.
Peel's death? They were entirely new. The first event was
the calling together of a conference in Paris in 1868, for the
purpose of attempting to govern the coinage of all nations, and
unfortunately that conference came to the conclusion that the
best of all standards was a monometallic gold standard. Very
shortly afterwards there came the Franco-German War, and
when a large quantity of the gold of France passed into the
hands of Germany, that Government decided to make a gold
standard. Scarcely had that been done, when the evil arising
from the great monetary revolution began to be shown....
Had they calculated what the cost of the demonetization of Germany
was? The amount the German Government coined was
87,000,000 sterling of gold, which, according to the average
for the last twenty years, was equal to 3.3 years of the whole
world's production of gold. Besides that, Germany sold
28,000,000 sterling of silver, which was equal to more than
two years' production of the whole world of that metal. What
did they think, supposing the Latin Union, our Indian Empire,
and the United States were to resort to some such measure as
Germany did?
Source.—Hansard, Third Series, vol. 272, col. 724, July 17, 1882.
A Gladstonian Fine Distinction.
Mr. Gladstone: ... This is not an occasion for arguing the
question of the differences that have unhappily arisen between
my right hon. friend and those who were, and rejoiced to be,
his colleagues. But I venture to assure him that I agree with
him in thinking that the moral law is as applicable to the conduct
of nations as of individuals, and that the difference between
us, most painful to him and most painful to us, is a difference
as to the particular application in this particular case of the
Divine law.
Source.—The Times, March 5.
Four weeks have elapsed since we first called attention to
the disapprobation and discontent excited among the English
residents in India by the Bill for subjecting them to the
criminal jurisdiction of native judges and magistrates. The
measure, of which we then pointed out the dangers, has since
assumed a portentous importance. The whole non-official
European community has been convulsed by it.... As
for the asserted symmetry which is to follow from it, and the
asserted inequalities which it is to remove, it will not, and
cannot, do what it has been credited with doing. It removes
one inequality while it leaves a dozen others untouched, and
the inequality which it does remove is just that which is most
clearly justifiable. It is a pandering, we will not say to native
opinion, for no such opinion has been formed for it, but to the
noisily expressed views of the native Press, and of one or two
native civil servants, who are anxious to exercise the powers
which the Bill confers, and who are on that very account so
much the less fit to be trusted with them.... The Bill may
be unimportant in itself, but it is one among many signs of the
new ideas and new principles upon which the Government of
India is to be conducted, ideas and principles which are
utterly at variance with those by which our position in the
country has been gained and held.
Source.—The Times, March 16.
A terrific explosion occurred last night at the offices of the
Local Government Board, Parliament Street, Westminster.
The report was heard about half a minute after nine o'clock in
the House of Commons. So great was the force of the explosion
that the floor of the House and the galleries shook. At
the time there was but a thin attendance of members, it being
the dinner hour. The Duke of Edinburgh was in the Peers'
Gallery, and he turned round at once and spoke to Sir Henry
Fletcher, who was sitting near him. The Speaker rang his
bell, and inquired the cause of the alarm.... The explosion
occurred in the ground floor of the Local Government Board,
smashing the stonework into splinters, and breaking into fragments
the windows, portions of which lay strewn in the surrounding
streets. Alarmed crowds gathered.
Source.—Sir Reginald Wingate's Mahdiism and the Egyptian
Soudan, pp. 2, 5, 12-14. (Macmillans.)
Mahdiism, with which we have to deal, has two sides to it.
There is the Mahdi, whose coming is looked forward to by good
Sunnis as the advent of the Messiah is expected by the Jews.
And there is the Mahdi who disappeared, and may appear
miraculously at any moment to good Shias.... Mohammed
Ahmed of Dongola took up Mahdiism from the Shia's point of
view.... His movement was, in the first place, a religious
movement—the superior enthusiasm, eloquence, and dramatic
knowledge of one priest over his fellows. It was recruited by
a desire, widespread among the villagers, and especially among
the superstitious masses of Kordofan, for revenge for the
cruelties and injustice of the Egyptians and Bashi-Bazuks. It
swept into force on the withdrawal of all semblance of government,
the sole element opposed to it, and it became a tool for
the imperious and warlike Baggara, and enabled them to usurp
the vacant throne. Religion has thus knit together the different
races, each with their own grievance, and summoned them to
the banner of emirs in search of power and the right to trade in
slaves.... There is no doubt that, until he was ruined by
unbridled sensuality, this man [Mohammed Ahmed] had the
strongest head and the clearest mental vision of any man in the
two million square miles of which he more or less made himself
master before he died; and it is a matter of regret that more
cannot be learnt of his early youth than what follows. Born at
Dongola in 1848, of a family of excellent boat-builders, whose
boats are to this day renowned for sound construction, he was
early recognized by his family as the clever one, and, so to
speak, went into the Church. At twenty-two he was already a
sheikh with a great reputation for sanctity, and his preaching
was renowned far and wide. Men wept and beat their breasts
at his moving words; even his brother fikis could not conceal
their admiration. The first steps of the Mahdi in his career
are of genuine interest. Tall, rather slight, of youthful build,
and, like many Danagla, with large eyes and pleasing features,
Mohammed Ahmed bore externally all the marks of a well-bred
gentleman. He moved about with quiet dignity of manner,
but there was nothing unusual about him until he commenced
to preach. Then, indeed, one understood the power within
him which men obeyed. With rapid earnest words he stirred
their hearts, and bowed their heads like corn beneath the storm.
And what a theme was his! No orator in France in 1792
could speak of oppression that here in the Soudan was not
doubled. What need of description when he could use denunciation;
when he could stretch forth his long arm and point
to the tax-gatherer who twice, three times, and yet again,
carried off the last goat, the last bundle of dhurra straw, from
yon miserable man listening with intent eyes! And then he
urges in warning tones what Whitfield, Wesley, have urged
before him, that all this misery, all this oppression, is God's
anger at the people's wickedness. That since the Prophet left
the earth the world has all fallen into sin and neglect. But
now a time was at hand when all this should have an end.
The Lord would send a deliverer who should sweep away the
veil before their eyes, clear the madness from the brain, the
hideous dream would be broken for ever, and, strong in the
faith of their divine leader, these new-made men, with clear-seeing
vision and well-laid plans before them, should go forth
and possess the land. The cursed tax-gatherer should be
driven into holes and caves, the bribe-taking official hunted
from off the field he had usurped, and the Turk should be
thrown to jabber his delirium on his own dunghill. With the
coming of the Mahdi the right should triumph, and all oppression
should have an end. When would this Mahdi come?
What wonder that every hut and every thicket echoed the
longing for the promised Saviour! The hot wind roamed from
desert to plain of withered grass, from mountain range to sandy
valley, and whispered "Mahdi" as it blew; all nature joined;
how childish, yet how effective. The women found the eggs
inscribed with "Jesus," "Mohammed," and the "Mahdi."
The very leaves rustled down to the ground, and in their fall
received the imprint of the sacred names. The land was sown
with fikis, many of them past masters in the art of swaying
a crowd. They came and listened, and soon they recognized
that they had found their master here. The leaven worked
rapidly among them, until one evening at Abba Island, a
hundred and fifty miles south of Khartoum, there came a band
of self-reliant men who heard the stirring words, and saw the
tall, slight, earnest figure. They said, "You are our promised
leader," and in solemn secrecy he said, "I am the Mahdi."
[Note.—Mahdi signifies "the guided" in the hadaya or true
way of salvation, hence "the guide." In the tenets of all sects
of the Moslems there is an intimate connection between the
Mahdi and Jesus Christ.]
Source.—The Times, July 31.
James Carey has not long escaped those who, it was well
known, had resolved to slay him at the first opportunity.
According to telegrams received from Durban and Cape Town
he was shot dead on Sunday, on board the liner Melrose, by an
Irishman named O'Donnell. The vessel had got into harbour
at Port Elizabeth, and was discharging her passengers and
cargo, when Carey was shot. Fully warned of the intention
to murder him, the authorities at Dublin had taken pains to
conceal his movements. When he quitted Kilmainham, it was
stated that he had resolved to brave the worst, and settle down
in Dublin to his old occupations. Then it was said that he
had been seen in London. According to another account he
had sailed for Canada, and had actually landed at Montreal
under the escort of two detectives. If these tales were circulated
with the hope of putting the Invincibles on a false
scent, they signally failed. His enemies were too astute to be
deceived by pious frauds. Carey's death is a public misfortune.
He had indeed been a principal in a cruel and barbarous murder.
He behaved with supreme callousness and repulsive levity
throughout the trials; and he was in every way one of the
worst specimens of a bad type. But he was the instrument
by which the Phœnix Park murderers were brought to justice,
and it would have been well had he lived to defy the machinations
of the Invincibles. But this misfortune is only a consequence
of facts which, as a rule, serve as a safeguard and
protection to society. Gibbon has forcibly described the
unhappy condition of the wretch who tried to flee from the
power of a Roman Emperor. There was no escape from it:
he confronted it wherever he fled. No better are the chances
of flight of one who, in these days of publicity, of photographs
and illustrated newspapers, tries to hide himself from the gaze
of those who know him. All this told against Carey's chances
of escape. He had made himself the object of bitter hatred
of secret societies, which have ramifications through many
parts of the world. During the long trials at Dublin, portraits
of him in all attitudes were published. His very marked
features became familiar to everyone. Disguise himself as
he might—and it is stated that when he was shot he was disguised—he
could not help being recognized wherever he went.
Source.—Sir Reginald Wingate's Mahdiism and the Egyptian
Soudan, pp. 85, 88-90. (Macmillans.)
Mohammed Ahmed, on hearing of the departure of the
army of Hicks Pasha from Khartoum, sent spies to watch their
movements, and on learning that the latter had arrived at Duem,
and intended advancing on El Obeid, he sent a force of 3,000
men under the emir Abd el Halim and Abu Girgeh to follow
in rear of the Egyptian army and close up the wells as they
advanced, so that retreat would be impossible. Abd el Halim,
on arrival at Rahad, at once rode off to El Obeid and personally
informed the Mahdi of the strength and probable movements
of the Egyptian force. On receipt of this news Mohammed
Ahmed forthwith despatched all his fighting men towards
Rahad to join Abd el Halim's force, but on their way they met
Abd el Halim retiring from Alluba, and, having joined him, the
whole force, amounting to some 40,000, encamped in the forest
of Shekan, and there awaited the advance of the Egyptian
troops.... At 10 a.m. on Monday morning, November 5, the
troops marched out of the zariba and formed up in three
squares, the whole formation resembling a triangle. Each
square had its own transport and ammunition in the centre.
Hicks Pasha with his staff led the way, followed by four guns
of the artillery, then the first square, which was supported to
the right and left rear by the other two squares, some 300
yards distant from the square and from each other. Ala ed
Din Pasha commanded the right square and Selim Bey the
left. The exposed flanks of the squares were covered by
cavalry, and a detachment of horsemen brought up the rear.
In this formation the troops steadily advanced, and half an
hour later reached a fairly open valley, interspersed here and
there with bush, while on either side were thick woods full of
the enemy.... Now all was ready, and Mohammed Ahmed
patiently awaited the arrival of the troops, which could already
be seen advancing in the distance. He assembled his emirs
for the last final instructions, and, rising from his prayer, drew
his sword, shouted three times, "Allahu akbar! You need
not fear, for the victory is ours." On came the squares. The
first had reached the wooded depression, when up sprang the
Arabs with their fierce yells. Startled and surprised, the
square was broken in a moment. The flanking squares now
fired wildly at the Arabs fighting hand to hand with the
Egyptians, and in their efforts must have killed numbers of
their own comrades. But almost at the same instant the
Arabs simultaneously attacked from the woods on both sides
and from front and rear. The wildest confusion followed;
squares fired on each other, on friends or enemies. While
the surging mass of Arabs now completely encircled the force
and gradually closed in on them, a massacre of the most
appalling description took place. In little over quarter of an
hour all was over. Hicks Pasha with his staff, seeing that he
could do nothing, cut his way through on the left and reached
some cultivated ground. Here he was surrounded by some
Baggara horsemen, and for a time kept them at bay, fighting
most gallantly till his revolver was empty, and then committing
most terrible execution with his sword. He was the last of
the Europeans to fall, and one savage charge he made on his
assailants is memorable to this day in the Soudan, and a body
of Baggara who fled before him were called by their tribesmen
"Baggar Hicks," or the cows driven by Hicks. But at last
he fell, pierced by the spear of the Khalifa Mohammed Sherif.
His cavalry bodyguard fought gallantly, and though repeatedly
called on to surrender replied, "We shall never surrender, but
will die like our officers, and kill many of you as well." And
soon all were killed. Ala ed Din Pasha was killed trying to
make his way from the right square to join Hicks Pasha.
Genawi Bey lay dead in the square beside his horse. It is
said that as he fell mortally wounded he, with his own
sword, hamstrung his horse, saying, "No other shall ever ride
on you after me." The whole force, with the exception of some
300 men, and most of these wounded, had now been completely
annihilated.... The news of the Mahdi's victory spread far
and wide, and if there had been some doubts previous to what
was now termed a miracle, the complete annihilation of a
whole army soon dispelled them, and from the Red Sea to the
confines of Waddai the belief was universal that at last the true
Mahdi had appeared.
[Note.—Sir R. Wingate's account is quoted from two
sources—one, Mohammed Nur el Barudi, who was cook to
Hicks Pasha, and was one of the wounded prisoners after the
battle; and the other, Hassan Habashi, a former Government
official at El Obeid, who had fallen into the Mahdi's hands on
the capture of that place. Hence the story is complete on both
sides.]
Source.—Parliamentary Papers, "Transvaal," C 3,947 of 1884,
p. 47.
A Convention between Her Majesty the Queen of the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the South
African Republic.
Whereas the Government of the Transvaal State, through
its delegates, consisting of Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger,
President of the said State, Stephanus Jacobus Du Toit,
Superintendent of Education, and Nicholas Jacobus Smit, a
member of the Volksraad, have represented that the Convention
signed at Pretoria on the 13th day of August, 1881, and
ratified by the Volksraad of the said State on the 25th October,
1881, contains certain provisions which are inconvenient, and
imposes burdens and obligations from which the said State is
desirous to be relieved, and that the south-western boundaries
fixed by the said Convention should be amended, with a view
to promote the peace and good order of the said State and of
the countries adjacent thereto; and whereas Her Majesty the
Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
has been pleased to take the said representations into consideration.
Now, therefore, Her Majesty has been pleased to direct,
and it is hereby declared, that the following articles of a new
Convention, signed on behalf of Her Majesty by Her Majesty's
High Commissioner in South Africa, the Right Honourable
Sir Hercules George Herbert Robinson, Knight Grand Cross
of the most distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George,
Governor of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, and on
behalf of the Transvaal State (which shall hereinafter be called
the South African Republic) by the above-named delegates,
Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger, Stephanus Jacobus Du
Toit, and Nicholas Jacobus Smit, shall, when ratified by the
Volksraad of the South African Republic, be substituted for
the articles embodied in the Convention of 3rd August, 1881;
which latter, pending such ratification, shall continue in full
force and effect.
[Note.—The word "Preamble" is not prefixed to the opening
passage of this Convention. When the suzerainty question
arose in 1898 the British argument was that the 1884 Convention
only altered the articles of the 1881 Convention, and left
the Preamble in force; the Boer argument was that the 1884
Convention had a preamble, and therefore the earlier one must
have been superseded.]
Source.—Parliamentary Papers, "Egypt," No. 2 of 1884, C 3,845.
P. 2. The Cabinet's Instructions to General Gordon.
Her Majesty's Government are desirous that you should
proceed at once to Egypt, to report to them on the military
situation in the Soudan, and on the measures which it may be
advisable to take for the security of the Egyptian garrisons
still holding positions in that country, and for the safety of
the European population in Khartoum. You are also desired
to consider and report upon the best mode of effecting the
evacuation of the interior of the Soudan, and upon the manner
in which the safety and good administration by the Egyptian
Government of the ports on the sea coast can best be secured.
In connection with this subject, you should pay especial consideration
to the question of the steps that may usefully be
taken to counteract the stimulus which it is feared may
possibly be given to the Slave Trade by the present insurrectionary
movement and by the withdrawal of the Egyptian
authority from the interior.
Source.—Parliamentary Papers, "Egypt," No. 6 of 1884, C 3,878.
Further Instructions by the Egyptian Government.
I have now to indicate to you the views of the Egyptian
Government on two of the points to which your special attention
was directed by Lord Granville. These are (1) the
measures which it may be advisable to take for the security of
the Egyptian garrisons still holding positions in the Soudan,
and for the safety of the European population in Khartoum.
(2) The best mode of effecting the evacuation of the interior of
the Soudan. These two points are intimately connected, and
may conveniently be considered together. It is believed that
the number of Europeans at Khartoum is very small, but it
has been estimated by the local authorities that some 10,000
to 15,000 people will wish to move northwards from Khartoum
only when the Egyptian garrison is withdrawn. These people
are native Christians, Egyptian employés, their wives and
children, etc. The Government of His Highness the Khedive
is earnestly solicitous that no effort should be spared to insure
the retreat both of these people and of the Egyptian garrison
without loss of life. As regards the most opportune time and
the best method for effecting the retreat, whether of the
garrisons or of the civil populations, it is neither necessary
nor desirable that you should receive detailed instructions....
You will bear in mind that the main end to be pursued is the
evacuation of the Soudan. This policy was adopted, after
very full discussion, by the Egyptian Government, on the
advice of Her Majesty's Government. It meets with the full
approval of His Highness the Khedive, and of the present
Egyptian Ministry. I understand, also, that you entirely concur
in the desirability of adopting this policy, and that you
think it should on no account be changed. You consider that
it may take a few months to carry it out with safety. You
are further of opinion that "the restoration of the country
should be made to the different petty Sultans who existed at
the time of Mehemet Ali's conquest, and whose families
still exist"; and that an endeavour should be made to form a
confederation of those Sultans. In this view the Egyptian
Government entirely concur. It will, of course, be fully
understood that the Egyptian troops are not to be kept in the
Soudan merely with a view to consolidating the power of the
new rulers of the country. But the Egyptian Government
has the fullest confidence in your judgment, your knowledge
of the country, and in your comprehension of the general line
of policy to be pursued. You are, therefore, given full discretionary
power to retain the troops for such reasonable
period as you may think necessary, in order that the abandonment
of the country may be accomplished with the least possible
risk to life and property.
Sir E. Baring, in forwarding the copy of the instructions to
Lord Granville, wrote:
I read the draft of the letter over to General Gordon. He
expressed to me his entire concurrence in the instructions.
The only suggestion he made was in connection with the
passage in which, speaking of the policy of abandoning the
Soudan, I had said, "I understand also that you entirely concur
in the desirability of adopting this policy." General Gordon
wished that I should add the words, "and that you think it
should on no account be changed." These words were
accordingly added.
Source.—Lord Cromer's Modern Egypt, vol. i., p. 428.
(Macmillans.)
Looking back at what occurred after a space of many years,
two points are to my mind clear. The first is that no Englishman
should have been sent to Khartoum. The second is that,
if anyone had to be sent, General Gordon was not the right
man to send. The reasons why no Englishman should have
been sent are now sufficiently obvious. If he were beleaguered
at Khartoum, the British Government might be obliged to send
an expedition to relieve him. The main object of British
policy was to avoid being drawn into military operations in the
Soudan. The employment of a British official at Khartoum
involved a serious risk that it would be no longer possible to
adhere to this policy, and the risk was materially increased
when the individual chosen to go to the Soudan was one who
had attracted to himself a greater degree of popular sympathy
than almost any Englishman of modern times.
Source.—Lord Cromer's Modern Egypt, vol. i., p. 432.
(Macmillans.)
I must, for the elucidation of this narrative, state why I
think it was a mistake to send General Gordon to Khartoum.
"It is impossible," I wrote privately to Lord Granville on
January 28, 1884, "not to be charmed by the simplicity and
honesty of Gordon's character." "My only fear," I added,
"is that he is terribly flighty and changes his opinions very
rapidly...." Impulsive flightiness was, in fact, the main
defect of General Gordon's character, and it was one which,
in my opinion, rendered him unfit to carry out a work which
pre-eminently required a cool and steady head. I used to
receive some twenty or thirty telegrams from General Gordon
in the course of the day when he was at Khartoum, those in
the evening often giving opinions which it was impossible to
reconcile with others despatched the same morning. Scarcely,
indeed, had General Gordon started on his mission, when Lord
Granville, who does not appear at first to have understood
General Gordon's character, began to be alarmed at his impulsiveness.
On February 8 Lord Granville wrote to me: "I
own your letters about Gordon rather alarm. His changes
about Zobeir are difficult to understand. Northbrook consoles
me by saying that he says all the foolish things that pass
through his head, but that his judgment is excellent." I am
not prepared to go so far as to say that General Gordon's judgment
was excellent. Nevertheless, there was some truth in
Lord Northbrook's remark. I often found that, amidst a mass
of irrelevant verbiage and amidst many contradictory opinions,
a vein of sound common sense and political instinct ran through
General Gordon's proposals. So much was I impressed with
this, and so fearful was I that the sound portions of his proposals
would be rejected in London on account of the eccentric
language in which they were often couched, that, on February
12, I telegraphed to Lord Granville: "In considering
Gordon's suggestions, please remember that his general views
are excellent, but that undue importance must not be attached
to his words. We must look to the spirit rather than the letter
of what he says."
Source.—Lord Cromer's Modern Egypt, vol. i., p. 488.
(Macmillans.)
On February 26th, thirty-nine days had elapsed since
General Gordon had left London, thirty-one days since he had
left Cairo, and eight days since he had arrived at Khartoum.
During that period, leaving aside points of detail, as to which
his contradictions had been numerous, General Gordon had
marked out for himself no less than five different lines of
policy, some of which were wholly conflicting one with another,
whilst others, without being absolutely irreconcilable, differed
in respect to some of their most important features. On
January 18 he started from London with instructions which
had been dictated by himself. His wish then was that he
should be merely sent to "report upon the best means of effecting
the evacuation of the interior of the Soudan." He expressed
his entire concurrence in the policy of evacuation. This was
the first and original stage of General Gordon's opinions.
Before he arrived in Egypt, on January 24, he had changed his
views as to the nature of the functions he should fulfil. He no
longer wished to be a mere reporter. He wished to be named
Governor-General of the Soudan with full executive powers.
He supplemented his original ideas by suggesting that the
country should be handed over to "the different petty Sultans
who existed at the time of Mehemet Ali's conquest." This
was the second stage of General Gordon's opinions. Fifteen
days later (February 8) he wrote from Abu Hamed a memorandum
in which he advocated "evacuation but not abandonment."
The Government of Egypt were to "maintain their
position as a Suzerain Power, nominate the Governor-General
and Moudirs, and act as a supreme Court of Appeal." This
was the third stage of General Gordon's opinions. Ten days
later (February 18) General Gordon reverted to the principles
of his memorandum of the 8th, but with a notable difference.
It was no longer the Egyptian but the British Government
which were to control the Soudan administration. The British
Government were also to appoint a Governor-General, who
was to be furnished with a British commission, and who was
to receive a British decoration. Zobeir Pasha was the man
whom General Gordon wished the British Government to
select. This was the fourth stage of General Gordon's
opinions. Eight days later (February 26), when General
Gordon had learnt that the British Government were not
prepared to approve of Zobeir Pasha being sent to the Soudan,
he proposed that the Mahdi should be "smashed up," and that,
to assist in this object, 200 British Indian troops should be
sent to Wadi Halfa. This was the fifth stage of General
Gordon's opinions. In thirty-nine days, therefore, General
Gordon had drifted by successive stages from a proposal that
he should report on the affairs of the Soudan to advocating
the policy of "smashing up" the Mahdi. It would, he said,
be "comparatively easy to destroy the Mahdi."
Source.—Parliamentary Papers, "Egypt," No. 12 of 1884.
P. 71. Major-General Gordon to Sir E. Baring. Telegraphic,
Khartoum, February 18, 1884.
I have stated that to withdraw without being able to place a
successor in my seat would be the signal for general anarchy
throughout the country, which, though all Egyptian element
was withdrawn, would be a misfortune and inhuman.... I
distinctly state that if Her Majesty's Government gave a Commission
to my successor, I recommend neither a subsidy nor
men being given. I would select and give a Commission to
some man, and promise him the moral support of Her Majesty's
Government and nothing more.... As for the man, Her
Majesty's Government should select one above all others—namely,
Zobeir. He alone has the ability to rule the Soudan,
and would be universally accepted by the Soudan. He should
be made K.C.M.G., and given presents.... Zobeir's exile
at Cairo for ten years, amidst all the late events, and his mixing
with Europeans, must have had great effect on his character....
P. 72. Extract from Sir E. Baring's Despatch commenting on the
Above.
I believe Zobeir Pasha to be the only possible man. He
undoubtedly possesses energy and ability, and has great local
influence. As regards the Slave Trade, I discussed the matter
with General Gordon when he was in Cairo, and he fully
agreed with me in thinking that Zobeir Pasha's presence or
absence would not affect the question in one way or the other.
I am also convinced from many things that have come to my
notice that General Gordon is right in thinking that Zobeir
Pasha's residence in Egypt has considerably modified his
character. He now understands what European power is,
and it is much better to have to deal with a man of this sort
than with a man like the Mahdi.... I cannot recommend
that he should be promised the "moral support" of Her
Majesty's Government. In the first place, he would scarcely
understand the sense of the phrase, and, moreover, I do not
think that he would attach importance to any support which
was not material. It is for Her Majesty's Government to
judge what the effect of his appointment would be upon public
opinion in England, but except for that I can see no reason
why Zobeir Pasha should not be proclaimed Ruler of the
Soudan with the approbation of Her Majesty's Government.
P. 95. Earl Granville to Sir E. Baring. February 22, 1884.
Her Majesty's Government are of opinion that the gravest
objections exist to the appointment by their authority of
a successor to General Gordon. The necessity does not,
indeed, appear to have yet arisen of going beyond the suggestions
contained in General Gordon's Memorandum of the 22nd
ultimo, by making special provision for the government of the
country. In any case the public opinion of this country would
not tolerate the appointment of Zobeir Pasha.
Source.—Parliamentary Papers, "Egypt," No. 12 of 1884.
P. 156. Major-General Gordon to Sir E. Baring. Khartoum,
March 3, 1884.
... I am strongly against any permanent retention of the
Soudan, but I think we ought to leave it with decency, and
give the respectable people a man to lead them, around whom
they can rally, and we ought to support that man by money
and by opening road to Berber. Pray do not consider me in
any way to advocate retention of Soudan; I am quite averse
to it, but you must see that you could not recall me, nor could
I possibly obey, until the Cairo employés get out from all the
places. I have named men to different places, thus involving
them with Mahdi: how could I look the world in the face if I
abandoned them and fled? As a gentleman, could you advise
this course? It may have been a mistake to send me up, but
that having been done I have no option but to see evacuation
through, for even if I was mean enough to escape I have no
power to do so.
P. 161. The Same to the Same. Khartoum, March 9, 1884,
11.30 p.m.
If you mean to make the proposed diversion to Berber [of
British troops], and to accept my proposal as to Zobeir, to
install him in the Soudan and evacuate, then it is worth while
to hold on to Khartoum. If, on the other hand, you determine
on neither of these steps, then I can see no use in holding on
to Khartoum, for it is impossible for me to help the other
garrisons, and I shall only be sacrificing the whole of the
troops and employés here. In this latter case your instructions
to me had better be that I should evacuate Khartoum,
and, with all the employés and troops, remove the seat of
Government to Berber. You would understand that such a
step would mean the sacrificing of all outlying places except
Berber and Dongola. You must give a prompt reply to this,
as even the retreat to Berber may not be in my power in a few
days; and even if carried out at once, the retreat will be of
extreme difficulty.
P. 161. Same Date, 11.40 p.m.
If the immediate evacuation of Khartoum is determined
upon, irrespective of outlying towns, I would propose to
send all Cairo employés and white troops with Colonel
Stewart to Berber, where he would await your orders. I
would also ask Her Majesty's Government to accept the
resignation of my commission, and I would take all steamers
and stores up to the Equatorial and Bahr Gazelle provinces,
and consider those provinces as under the King of the Belgians.
[P. 160. Sir E. Baring comments that, owing to interruption
of the telegraph line, these and other messages did not reach
him till March 12. He instructed Gordon to hold on at
Khartoum until he could communicate further with the British
Government, and on no account to proceed to the Bahr Gazelle
and Equatorial provinces.]
P. 152. Earl Granville to Sir E. Baring, March 13, 1884.
If General Gordon is of opinion that the prospect of his
early departure diminishes the chance of accomplishing his
task, and that by staying at Khartoum himself for any length
of time which he may judge necessary he would be able to
establish a settled Government at that place, he is at liberty to
remain there. In the event of his being unable to carry out
this suggestion, he should evacuate Khartoum and save that
garrison by conducting it himself to Berber without delay.
Source.—Parliamentary Papers, "Egypt," No. 13 of 1884, C 3,970.
P. 9. Sir E. Baring to Earl Granville. Cairo, April 8, 1884.
In a telegram from Khartoum, General Gordon says: I wish
I could convey to you my impressions of the truly trumpery
nature of this revolt, which 500 determined men could put
down. Be assured, for present, and for two months hence, we
are as safe here as at Cairo. If you would get, by good pay,
3,000 Turkish infantry and 1,000 Turkish cavalry, the affair,
including crushing of Mahdi, would be accomplished in four
months.
P. 12. Sir E. Baring to Earl Granville. Cairo, April 18, 1884.
Lately I have been sending telegrams to Berber to be forwarded
to Gordon. Since communication between Berber and
Khartoum was cut, his telegrams to me have taken from a
week to ten days. My telegrams to him appear to have taken
even longer, and some, I think, have not reached him at all.
The Same, Later.
I have received another telegram from Gordon.... It is
most unfortunate that of all the telegrams I have sent to him
only one very short one appears to have reached him. He
evidently thinks he is to be abandoned, and is very indignant.
Source.—Parliamentary Papers, "Egypt," C 3,998 of 1884.
P. 1. Gordon to Baring. Telegraphic. Khartoum,
April 16, 1884, 5.15 p.m.
As far as I can understand, the situation is this: you state
your intention of not sending any relief up here or to Berber,
and you refuse me Zobeir. I consider myself free to act
according to circumstances. I shall hold on here as long as I
can, and if I can suppress the rebellion I shall do so. If I
cannot, I shall retire to the Equator, and leave you indelible
disgrace of abandoning garrisons of Senaar, Kassala, Berber,
and Dongola, with the certainty that you will be eventually
forced to smash up the Mahdi under great difficulties if you
would retain peace in Egypt.
Source.—Parliamentary Papers, "Egypt," C 3,970 of 1884.
P. 15. Earl Granville to Mr. Egerton, April 23, 1884.
Gordon should be at once informed, in cipher, by several
messengers at some interval between each, through Dongola
as well as Berber, or in such other way as may on the spot be
deemed most prompt and certain, that he should keep us
informed, to the best of his ability, not only as to immediate
but as to any prospective danger at Khartoum; that to be
prepared for any such danger he advise us as to the force
necessary in order to secure his removal, its amount, character,
route for access to Khartoum, and time of operation; that we
do not propose to supply him with Turkish or other force for
the purpose of undertaking military expeditions, such being
beyond the scope of the commission he holds, and at variance
with the pacific policy which was the purpose of his mission
to the Soudan; that if with this knowledge he continues at
Khartoum, he should state to us the cause and intention with
which he so continues. Add expressions both of respect and
gratitude for his gallant and self-sacrificing conduct, and for
the good he has achieved.
Source.—Parliamentary Publications, "Egypt," No. 21 of 1884,
C 4,005.
Mr. Egerton to Earl Granville. Cairo, May 10, 1884.
The messengers sent in succession by the Governor of
Dongola with the ciphered message for Gordon have returned.
He telegraphed yesterday that they report that the rebels
have invested Khartoum; that, in consequence, excursions in
steamers are made on the White Nile in order to attack those
on the banks; that the rebels have constructed wooden
shelters to protect themselves against the projectiles; when
the Government forces pursue them into these shelters, the
rebels take flight into the country beyond gun-shot; that this
state of things makes it impossible to get into Khartoum.
Source.—Parliamentary Publications, "Egypt," No. 22 of 1884,
C 4,042.
Earl Granville to Mr. Egerton, May 17, 1884.
The following is the further message which Her Majesty's
Government desires to communicate to General Gordon in
addition to that contained in my telegram of the 23rd ultimo,
which should be repeated to him. Having regard to the time
which has elapsed, Her Majesty's Government desires to add
to their communication of the 23rd April as follows: As the
original plan for the evacuation of the Soudan has been dropped,
and as aggressive operations cannot be undertaken with the
countenance of Her Majesty's Government, General Gordon
is enjoined to consider and either to report upon, or, if feasible,
to adopt, at the first proper moment, measures for his own
removal and that of the Egyptians at Khartoum who have
suffered for him or who have served him faithfully, including
their wives and children, by whatever route he may consider
best, having especial regard to his own safety and that of the
other British subjects. With regard to the Egyptians above
referred to, General Gordon is authorized to make free use of
money rewards or promises at his discretion. For example,
he is at liberty to assign to Egyptian soldiers at Khartoum sums
for themselves and for persons brought with them per head,
contingent on their safe arrival at Korosko, or whatever point
he may consider a place of safety; or he may employ or pay
the tribes in the neighbourhood to escort them. In the event
of General Gordon having despatched any persons or agents to
other points, he is authorized to spend any money required for
the purpose of recalling them or securing their safety.
Source.—The Times, July 29.
Last night at eleven o'clock the British and African Royal
Mail steamer Kinsembo arrived in Plymouth Sound, having on
board Mr. H. M. Stanley, the African explorer. In the course
of a conversation with a correspondent, Mr. Stanley declared
that General Gordon might leave Khartoum whenever he
chose, and had three routes of escape open to him. He was
a soldier, but not a traveller. He would not leave Khartoum
ingloriously. He could escape by means of the Congo, the
Nile, and across the desert to Zanzibar. He could force his
way through the country, because the people would be afraid
of an armed force. He is perfectly well supplied with arms
and ammunition, and is quite strong enough to meet the Mahdi.
Mr. Stanley derides the suggested expedition to Khartoum, and
says the men would die like flies when the summer is waning.
He says that Gordon only requires to act like a soldier, as he
believes he will, to settle the whole difficulty.
Source.—Holland's Life of the Duke of Devonshire, vol. i.,
p. 472 et seq. (Longmans.)
On 29th July Lord Hartington circulated to the Cabinet his
own final memorandum on the subject. He said: "I wish
before Parliament is prorogued, and it becomes absolutely impossible
to do anything for the relief of General Gordon, to
bring the subject once more under the consideration of the
Cabinet. On the last occasion when it was discussed, although
an opinion was expressed that the balance of probability was
that no expedition would be required to enable General Gordon
and those dependent on him to leave Khartoum, I gathered
that a considerable majority were in favour of making some
preparations, and taking some steps which would make a relief
expedition to Khartoum possible. I believe that I have already
stated the grounds on which I think that if anything is now
attempted it must be by the Valley of the Nile, and not by the
Suakin-Berber line. The delay which has taken place makes
it impossible that the railway should be constructed for any
considerable distance on that line during the next autumn and
winter, the period during which military operations would be
practicable without great suffering and loss of life to the troops.
The renewed concentration of the tribes under Osman Digna,
near Suakin, and the fall of Berber, makes it inevitable that
severe fighting would have to be done at both ends of the
march, and, in consequence of the necessity of crossing the
desert in small detachments, the engagement near Berber
would be fought under great disadvantages. On the other
hand, we have for the defence of the Nile itself been compelled
to send a considerable force of British and Egyptian troops up
the Nile; and the positions which are now occupied by those
troops are so many stages on the advance by the Nile Valley....
The proposal which I make is that a brigade should be ordered
to advance as soon as possible to Dongola by the Nile.... I
have not entered into the question whether it is or is not probable
that General Gordon can leave Khartoum without assistance.
As we know absolutely nothing, any opinion on this
subject can only be guess-work. But I do not see how it is
possible to redeem the pledges which we have given, if the
necessity should be proved to exist, without some such preparations
and measures as those which I now suggest...."
Mr. Chamberlain minuted that he was "against what is called
an expedition, or the preparations for an expedition." He did
not think that the information was sufficient to justify it. He
thought that more information should first be obtained....
Mr. Gladstone minuted (July 31): "I confess it to be my
strong conviction that to send an expedition either to Dongola
or Khartoum at the present time would be to act in the teeth
of evidence as to Gordon which, however imperfect, is far from
being trivial, and would be a grave and dangerous error."
Mr. Gladstone at the same time wrote to Lord Granville a
letter, which the latter forwarded to Lord Hartington. He
said: "I had intended to give much time to-day to collecting
the sum of the evidence as to Gordon's position, which appears
to me to be strangely underrated by some.... Undoubtedly
I can be no party to the proposed despatch, as a first step, of a
brigade to Dongola. I do not think the evidence as to Gordon's
position requires or justifies, in itself, military preparations for
the contingency of a military expedition. There are, however,
preparations, perhaps, of various kinds which might be made,
and which are matters simply of cost, and do not include
necessary consequences in point of policy. To these I have
never offered an insuperable objection, and the adoption of
them might be, at the worst, a smaller evil than the evils with
which we are threatened in other forms. This on what I may
call my side. On the other hand, I hope I may presume that,
while we are looking into the matters I have just indicated,
nothing will be done to accelerate a Gordon crisis until we see,
in the early days of next week, what the Conference crisis is to
produce."
Source.—General Gordon's Journal, pp. 46, 56, 59, 93, 112.
(Kegan Paul.)
September 17.—Had Zobeir Pasha been sent up when I asked
for him, Berber would in all probability never have fallen, and
one might have made a Soudan Government in opposition to
the Mahdi. We choose to refuse his coming up because of his
antecedents in re slave trade; granted that we had reason, yet
as we take no precautions as to the future of these with respect
to the slave trade, the above opposition seems absurd. I will
not send up A. because he will do this, but will leave the
country to B., who will do exactly the same.
September 19.—I was engaged in a certain work—i.e., to take
down the garrisons, etc. It suited me altogether to accept this
work (when once it was decided on to abandon the Soudan),
which, to my idea, is preferable to letting it be under those
wretched effete Egyptian Pashas. Her Majesty's Government
agreed to send me. It was a mutual affair; they owe me positively
nothing, and I owe them nothing. A member of Parliament,
in one of our last received papers, asked "whether officers
were not supposed to go where they were ordered?" I quite
agree with his view, but it cannot be said I was ordered to go.
The subject was too complex for any order. It was, "Will
you go and try?" and my answer was, "Only too delighted."
As for all that may be said of our holding out, etc., etc., it is
all twaddle, for we had no option; as for all that may be said
as to why I did not escape with Stewart, it is simply because
the people would not have been such fools as to have let me
go, so there is an end of those great-coats of self-sacrifice, etc.
I must add in re "the people not letting me go," that even if
they had been willing for me to go, I would not have gone, and
left them in their misery.
September 19.—Anyone reading the telegram 5th May,
Suakin, 29th April, Massowah, and without date, Egerton
saying, "Her Majesty's Government does not entertain your
proposal to supply Turkish or other troops in order to undertake
military operations in the Soudan, and consequently if you
stay at Kartoum you should state your reasons," might imagine
one was luxuriating up here, whereas, I am sure, no one wishes
more to be out of this than myself; the reasons are those
horribly plucky Arabs. I own to having been very insubordinate
to Her Majesty's Government and its officials, but it is
my nature, and I cannot help it.
September 24.—I altogether decline the imputation that the
projected expedition has come to relieve me. It has come to save
our national honour in extricating the garrisons, etc., from a position
our action in Egypt has placed those garrisons. As to myself, I
could make good my retreat at any moment if I wished.
September 29.—My idea is to induce Her Majesty's Government
to undertake the extrication of all people or garrisons,
now hemmed in or captive, and that if this is not their programme
then to resign my commission and do what I can to
attain it (the object).... I say this, because I should be
sorry for Lord Wolseley to advance from Dongola without
fully knowing my views. If Her Majesty's Government are
going to abandon the garrisons, then do not advance. I say
nothing of evacuating the country; I merely maintain that if
we do so, everyone in the Soudan, captive or hemmed in, ought
to have the option and power of retreat.
Source.—The Times, November 19.
The Representation of the People Bill was yesterday read a
second time in the House of Lords without a division, and
without discussion upon anything it contains.... The terms
offered by the Government, and now definitely accepted by the
Opposition, are, first, that the draft of the Redistribution Bill
shall be submitted in private to the Conservative leaders, in
order that, by suggesting the alterations they think necessary,
they may convince themselves of the equity and fairness of
the measure. In the second place, it is agreed that, when
a Redistribution Bill satisfactory to both parties has been
framed, the Opposition will give to the Government adequate
assurance that the Franchise Bill shall pass the House of
Lords.... Lastly, the Government pledge themselves to
take up the Redistribution Bill as early as possible in the New
Year, to push it through its remaining stages with all possible
expedition, and, relying upon the loyal support of the Opposition
being given to the joint scheme, to stake not only their credit
but their existence upon the passing of the Bill into law in the
Session of 1885.
Source.—The Times, December 13.
The question of providing penny dinners for the children of
the London poor has received pretty ample discussion. Everybody
can form an idea now of the difficulties which will have
to be surmounted by the central committee of School Board
managers and teachers.... The vital principle of the scheme
is that the dinners shall be supplied on a self-supporting basis.
In some places the work has been undertaken with more zeal
than knowledge, and there has been quick disappointment.
The Vicar of St. Mark's, Walworth, who seems to doubt
whether the scheme can be carried out on purely commercial
lines, tells us how fastidious are the children of the poor. They
turn from macaroni; they dislike the flavour of cabbage boiled
up in a stew; they will have nothing to say to haricot beans,
lentils, or salads; they mistrust soup; and are generally most
attracted by suet dumplings and jam or currant puddings.
Source.—Sir Reginald Wingate's Mahdiism and the Egyptian
Soudan, pp. 166-172. (Macmillans.)
Soon all that had been in the commissariat was finished, and
then the inhabitants and the soldiers had to eat dogs, donkeys,
skins of animals, gum, and palm fibre, and famine prevailed.
The soldiers stood on the fortifications like pieces of wood.
The civilians were even worse off. Many died of hunger, and
corpses filled the streets; no one had even energy to bury
them.... We were heartbroken; the people and soldiers
began to lose faith in Gordon's promises, and they were terribly
weak from famine. At last Sunday morning broke, and
Gordon Pasha, who used always to watch the enemy's movements
from the top of the palace, noticed a considerable
movement in the south, which looked as if the Arabs were
collecting at Kalakala. He at once sent word to all of us who
had attended the previous meeting, and to a few others, to
come at once to the palace. We all came, but Gordon Pasha
did not see us. We were again addressed by Giriagis Bey, who
said he had been told by Gordon Pasha to inform us that he
noticed much movement in the enemy's lines, and believed an
attack would be made on the town; he therefore ordered us to
collect every male in the town from the age of eight, even to
the old men, and to line all the fortifications, and that if we
had difficulty in getting this order obeyed we were to use force.
Giriagis said that Gordon Pasha now appealed to us for the
last time to make a determined stand, for in twenty-four hours'
time he had no doubt the English would arrive; but that if we
preferred to submit then, he gave the commandant liberty to
open the gates, and let all join the rebels. He had nothing
more to say. I then asked to be allowed to see the Pasha,
and was admitted to his presence. I found him sitting on a
divan, and as I came in he pulled off his tarboush (fez) and
flung it from him, saying, "What more can I say? I have
nothing more to say; the people will no longer believe me;
I have told them over and over again that help would be here,
but it has never come, and now they must see I tell them lies.
If this, my last promise, fails, I can do nothing more. Go and
collect all the people you can on the lines, and make a good
stand. Now leave me to smoke these cigarettes." (There
were two full boxes of cigarettes on the table.) I could see
he was in despair, and he spoke in a tone I had never heard
before. I knew then that he had been too agitated to address
the meeting, and thought the sight of his despair would dishearten
us. All the anxiety he had undergone had gradually
turned his hair to a snowy white. I left him, and this was the
last time I saw him alive.... It was a gloomy day, that
last day in Khartoum; hundreds lay dead and dying in the
streets from starvation, and there were none to bury them. At
length the night came, and, as I afterwards learnt, Gordon
Pasha sat up writing till midnight, and then lay down to sleep.
He awoke some time between two and three a.m. The wild
war-cries of the Arabs were heard close at hand. A large
body of rebels had crept in the dark close up to the broken-down
parapet and filled-up ditch, between the White Nile and
the Messalamieh Gate. The soldiers never knew of the
enemy's approach until about twenty minutes before they were
actually attacked, when the tramp of feet was heard, and the
alarm was sounded; but they were so tired out and exhausted
that it was not until the sentries fired that the rest of the men
suddenly started up surprised, to find swarms of Arabs pouring
over the ditch and up the parapet, yelling and shouting their
war-cries. Here they met with little resistance, for most of
the soldiers were four or five paces apart, and were too feeble
to oppose such a rush. The Arabs were soon within the lines,
and thus able to attack the rest of the soldiers from behind.
They were opposed at some points, but it was soon all over....
Meanwhile Gordon Pasha, on being roused by the noise, went
on to the roof of the palace in his sleeping clothes. He soon
made out that the rebels had entered the town, and for upwards
of an hour he kept up a hot fire in the direction of the attack.
I heard that he also sent word to get up steam in the steamer,
but the engineer was not there; he had been too frightened to
leave his house. As dawn approached Gordon Pasha could
see the Arab banners in the town, and soon the gun became
useless, for he could not depress it enough to fire on the enemy.
By this time the Arabs had crowded round the palace in
thousands, but for a time no one dared enter, for they thought
mines were laid to blow them up. Meanwhile Gordon Pasha
had left the roof; he went to his bedroom, which was close to
the divan, and there he put on a white uniform, his sword, which
he did not draw, and, carrying his revolver in his right hand,
stepped out into the passage in front of the entrance to the
office, and just at the head of the staircase. During this interval
four men, more brave than the rest, forced their way into the
palace, and once in were followed by hundreds of others. Of
these latter, the majority rushed up the stairs to the roof,
where, after a short resistance, the palace guard, servants,
and cavasses were all killed; while the four men—Taha Shahin,
a Dongolawi, whose father was formerly in my service; Ibrahim
Abu Shanab, servant of George Angelleto; Hamad Wad Ahmed
Jar en Nebbi, Hassani; and a fourth, also a Dongolawi, servant
to Fathallah Jehami—followed by a crowd of others, knowing
Gordon Pasha's room, rushed towards it. Taha Shahin was
the first to encounter Gordon beside the door of the divan,
apparently waiting for the Arabs, and standing with a calm and
dignified manner, his left hand resting on the hilt of his sword.
Shahin, dashing forward with the curse "Mala' oun el yom
yomek!" (O cursed one, your time is come!), plunged his
spear into his body. Gordon, it is said, made a gesture of
scorn with his right hand, and turned his back, where he
received another spear wound, which caused him to fall forward,
and was most likely his mortal wound. The other three men,
closely following Shahin, then rushed in, and, cutting at the
prostrate body with their swords, must have killed him in a few
seconds. His death occurred just before sunrise. He made no
resistance, and did not fire a shot from his revolver. From all
I knew, I am convinced that he never intended to surrender.
I should say he must have intended to use his revolver only if
he saw it was the intention of the Arabs to take him prisoner
alive; but he saw such crowds rushing on him with swords
and spears, and there being no important emirs with them, he
must have known that they did not intend to spare him, and
that was most likely what he wanted.... Gordon Pasha's
head was immediately cut off and sent to the Mahdi at
Omdurman, while his body was dragged downstairs and left
exposed for a time in the garden, where many Arabs came to
plunge their spears into it. I heard that the Mahdi had given
orders for Gordon to be spared, but what I have stated was
told me by the four men I have mentioned, and I believe the
Mahdi pardoned them for their disobedience of orders....
I saw Gordon Pasha's head exposed in Omdurman. It was
fixed between the branches of a tree, and all who passed by
threw stones at it.
[Note.—This account is from the journal of Bordeini Bey,
an eminent Khartoum merchant, who willingly gave up his
large stores of grain to Gordon for the supply of the garrison.
He was taken prisoner at the fall of the city.]
Source.—Lord Cromer's Modern Egypt, vol. i., p. 589.
(Macmillans.)
It has been already shown that General Gordon paid little
heed to his instructions, that he was consumed with a desire to
"smash the Mahdi," and that the view that he was constrained
to withdraw everyone who wished to leave from the most
distant parts of the Soudan was, to say the least, quixotic.
The conclusion to be drawn from these facts is that it was a
mistake to send General Gordon to the Soudan. But do they
afford any justification for the delay in preparing and in despatching
the relief expedition? I cannot think that they do
so. Whatever errors of judgment General Gordon may have
committed, the broad facts, as they existed in the early summer
of 1884, were that he was sent to Khartoum by the British
Government, who never denied their responsibility for his
safety, that he was beleaguered, and that he was, therefore,
unable to get away. It is just possible that he could have
effected his retreat, if, having abandoned the southern posts,
he had moved northward with the Khartoum garrison in April
or early in May. As time went on, and nothing was heard of
him, it became more and more clear that he either could not
or would not—probably that he could not—move. The most
indulgent critic would scarcely extend beyond June 27 the date
at which the Government should have decided on the question
of whether a relief expedition should or should not be despatched.
On that day the news that Berber had been captured on May 26
by the Dervishes was finally confirmed. Yet it was not till
six weeks later that the Government obtained from Parliament
the funds necessary to prepare for an expedition.
Source.—Hansard, Third Series, vol. 294, col. 1311. (House of
Lords debate on Egypt, February 26, 1885.)
The Marquis of Salisbury: ... The conduct of Her
Majesty's Government has been an alternation of periods of
slumber and periods of rush, and the rush, however vehement,
has always been too unprepared and too unintelligent to repair
the damage which the period of slumber has effected.... The
case of the bombardment of Alexandria, the case of the abandonment
of the Soudan, the case of the mission of General
Graham's force—they are all on the same plan, and all show
you that remarkable characteristic of torpor during the time
when action was needed, and hasty, impulsive, ill-considered
action when the time for action had passed by. Their further
conduct was modelled on their action in the past. So far was
it modelled that we were able to put it to the test which
establishes a scientific law. I should like to quote what I said
on the 4th of April, when discussing the prospect of the relief
of General Gordon. What I said was this: "Are these circumstances
encouraging to us when we are asked to trust that,
on the inspiration of the moment, when the danger comes,
Her Majesty's Government will find some means of relieving
General Gordon? I fear that the history of the past will be
repeated in the future; and just again, when it is too late, the
critical resolution will be taken; some terrible news will come
that the position of Gordon is absolutely a forlorn and hopeless
one, and then, under the pressure of public wrath and Parliamentary
censure, some desperate resolution of sending an
expedition will be formed too late to achieve the object which
it is desired to gain." I quote these words to show that by
that time we had ascertained the laws of motion and the orbits
of those erratic comets who sit on the Treasury Bench. Now
the terrible responsibility and shame rests upon the Government,
because they were warned in March and April of the
danger to General Gordon, because they received every intimation
which men could reasonably look for that his danger
would be extreme, and because they delayed from March and
April right down to the 15th of August before they took a single
measure to relieve him. What were they doing all that time?
It is very difficult to conceive. What happened during those
eventful months? I suppose some day the memoirs will tell
our grandchildren, but we shall never know. Some people
think there were divisions in the Cabinet, and that after
division on division a decision was put off, lest the Cabinet be
broken up. I am rather inclined to think it was due to the
peculiar position of the Prime Minister. He came in as the
apostle of the Midlothian campaign, loaded with all the
doctrines and all the follies of that pilgrimage. We have seen
on each occasion, after one of these mishaps, when he has
been forced by events and by the common sense of the nation
to take some active steps—we have seen his extreme supporters
falling foul of him, and reproaching him with having
deserted their opinions and disappointed the ardent hopes
which they had formed of him as the apostle of absolute
negation in foreign affairs. I think he has always felt the
danger of that reproach. He always felt the debt he had
incurred to those supporters. He always felt a dread lest they
should break away; and he put off again and again to the last
practical moment any action which might bring him into open
conflict with the doctrine by which his present eminence was
gained. At all events, this is clear—that throughout those six
months the Government knew perfectly well the danger in
which General Gordon was placed. It has been said that
General Gordon did not ask for troops. I am surprised at that
defence. One of the characteristics of General Gordon was
the extreme abnegation of his nature. It was not to be expected
that he should send home a telegram to say, "I am in
great danger, therefore send me troops"—he would probably
have cut off his right hand before he would have sent a telegram
of that sort. But he sent home telegrams through
Mr. Power, telegrams saying that the people of Khartoum
were in great danger; that the Mahdi would succeed unless
military succour was sent forward; urging at one time the
sending forward of Sir Evelyn Wood and his Egyptians, and
at another the landing of Indians at Suakin and the establishment
of the Berber route, and distinctly telling the Government—and
this is the main point—that unless they would consent
to his views the supremacy of the Mahdi was assured....
Well, now, my Lords, is it conceivable that after two months,
in May, the Prime Minister should have said that they were
waiting to have reasonable proof that Gordon was in danger?
By that time Khartoum was surrounded, the Governor of
Berber had announced that his case was hopeless, which was
too surely proved by the massacre which took place in June;
and yet in May Mr. Gladstone was still waiting for "reasonable
proof" that the men who were surrounded, who had announced
that they had only five months' food, were in danger.... It
was the business of the Government not to interpret General
Gordon's telegrams as if they had been statutory declarations,
but to judge for themselves of the circumstances of the case,
and to see that those who were surrounded, who were only
three Englishmen among such a vast body of Mohammedans,
and who were already cut off from all communications with
the civilized world by the occupation of every important town
upon the river, were really in danger, and that if they meant to
answer their responsibilities they were bound to relieve them.
I cannot tell what blindness fell over the eyes of some members
of Her Majesty's Government....
Source.—The Times, January 26.
The "dynamite war," as it is called by the disloyal Irish
and the Irish-American outrage-mongers, was continued in
London on Saturday with some success to the perpetrators.
Accepting the privilege accorded to all comers to view the
Houses of Parliament and the Tower of London, they cunningly
placed charged machines of dynamite in the Crypt leading
out of Westminster Hall, in the House of Commons
chamber itself, and caused, almost at the same time, an
explosion in the Tower of London. The first explosion at
Westminster was in the Hall itself. Some visitors were passing
through the Crypt, when one noticed a parcel on the
ground. It is described as the usual "black bag." ... The
nearest police-constable, Cole by name, picked up the smoking
parcel, and brought it to the entrance of the Crypt, where,
from its heat or some other cause, he dropped it. It was
fortunate for him that he did so, for in an instant a terrific
explosion burst from the parcel.... The stone flooring was
shattered, and the rails round the Crypt were somewhat twisted
by the immediate blow of the explosion. Its secondary effect
was to break some of the windows, and shake down from the
vast beams of Irish oak, forming the roof, the accumulated
dust of ages.... The chamber of the House of Commons
presented the scene of a complete wreck from the second
explosion. The benches of the Government side were torn up,
and some of the seats had been hurled up into the gallery
above.... The explosion at the Tower of London was the
most serious in its effects of the three, for several persons
were injured, some damage was done to the building, and a
fire ensued, lasting an hour.... The explosive was placed
between the stands of arms in the ancient banqueting-room of
the Tower.
Source.—The Times, January 31.
Industrial Remuneration Conference.
Yesterday the delegates held their concluding sitting at
Prince's Hall, Piccadilly, when the subject set down for discussion
was: Would the more general distribution of capital
or land, or the State management of capital or land, promote
or impair the production of wealth and the welfare of the
community?...
The discussion on the papers was begun by Mr. Williams
(Social Democratic Federation), who said that if they left all
the machinery, all the railways, and all the mines in the hands
of the rich capitalists, the working classes would still continue
to be oppressed. They must either say that the Government
had no right to interfere with anything, or they must admit
that the State must equally interfere between the landlord, the
capitalist, and the labourer. He compared the part played by
politicians like Mr. Chamberlain, who directed their attacks
exclusively against the landlords, and spared the rich capitalists,
to that sustained by the Artful Dodger in "Oliver Twist."
Mr. B. Shaw (Fabian Society) said he had no desire to give
pain to the burglar—if any of that trade were in the room—or
to the landlord or the capitalist, pure and simple; all he
could say was that all three belonged to the same class, and
that the injury each inflicted on the community was precisely
of the same nature.
[Note.—The Social Democratic Federation had been founded
in 1881; the Fabian Society, a few weeks before this conference
met.]
Source.—The Times, February 17.
Yesterday afternoon three or four thousand of the unemployed
of London held a demonstration on the Embankment
near Cleopatra's Needle, and afterwards marched to Westminster,
carrying banners. From Whitehall a large number
of the crowd passed into Downing Street near the Premier's
residence, where a Cabinet meeting was being held at the time,
but at the request of the police, of whom an extra force were
in attendance, the crowd moved round to King Street, where
they were addressed in somewhat inflammatory terms by some
of their speakers, who wore red badges. One speaker clung
to the top of a lamp-post, and thence harangued the crowd;
another spoke from a window-sill. Meantime, in the absence
of Sir Charles Dilke, who was at the Cabinet Meeting, Mr.
G. W. E. Russell, Parliamentary Secretary of the Local
Government Board, received a small deputation of the leaders....
At the close of the interview the crowd marched back
to the Embankment, where the following resolution was passed
unanimously: "That this meeting of the Unemployed, having
heard the answer given by the Local Government Board to
their deputation, considers the refusal to start public works to
be a sentence of death on thousands of those out of work, and
the recommendation to bring pressure to bear on the local
bodies to be a direct incitement to violence; further, it will hold
Mr. G. W. E. Russell and the members of the Government,
individually and collectively, guilty of the murder of those who
may die in the next few weeks, and whose lives would have
been saved had the suggestions of the deputation been acted on."
(Signed) John Burns, Engineer.
John E. Williams, Labourer.
William Henry, Foreman.
James Macdonald, Tailor.
Source.—The Manchester Guardian, May 14.
We understand that it is in contemplation to raise a number
of workmen to the magisterial bench in the Duchy of Lancaster.
The first of the appointments is that of Mr. H. R. Slatter to
the Commission of the peace for the City of Manchester. He
is Secretary to the Provincial Typographical Association, and
a member of the Manchester School Board. It is understood
that similar offers of appointment to the magistracy have been
made to Mr. T. Birtwistle, of Accrington, Secretary to the
Operative Weavers' Association of North and North-east
Lancashire, and Mr. Fielding, of Bolton, who holds the post
of Secretary to the local branch of the Operative Cotton
Spinners' Association.
Source.—Hansard, Third Series, vol. 298, col. 1658.
(House of Lords, July 6, 1885.)
The Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland (The Earl of Carnarvon):
My Lords, my noble friend [Lord Salisbury] has desired
that I should state to your Lordships the general position that
Her Majesty's Government are prepared to occupy with regard
to Irish affairs, and I hope to do so in comparatively few
sentences. I need not tell your Lordships what everyone in
this House knows, the nature of the events which have brought
us to the present position. It will be perhaps sufficient if, by
quoting a few figures, I show what the state of agrarian crime
was a few years ago, what it has since been in the interval, and
what it is at the present time. In 1878 agrarian crime in
Ireland stood at 301 cases. In the following year there were
860, and in the three following years—1880, 1881, and 1882—the
cases reached the enormous totals of 2,580, 4,439, and 3,433
respectively. In 1883, after the Crimes Act had passed, agrarian
crimes fell to 870, and last year to 762. I ought perhaps to
supplement that statement by saying that in 1884 I think that
there was no case of the worst form of agrarian crime. I think
that there was not one case of actual murder, and the calendars
promise to be of a comparatively, if not singularly, light character.
The substance therefore of the statement is that,
whereas crime rose in those three years to an enormous figure,
it has since fallen to what I do not call an absolutely normal
level, but to the same level—in fact, below the level of 1879.
In these circumstances the question has naturally arisen—what
Her Majesty's Government are to do; and it is impossible to
conceive a graver or more serious matter on which to deliberate.
Within a very short time—indeed, within a time to be numbered
by weeks—the Crimes Act expires, and the question is, What
course should be taken? Three courses are possible. Either
you may re-enact the Crimes Act in the whole, or you may
re-enact it in part, or you may allow it to lapse altogether.
I think very few persons would be disposed to advocate
its re-enactment as a whole. The more serious and practical
question is whether it shall be re-enacted in part. The
Act having produced, as all agree, its effect, and three years
having lapsed, it seems hard to call on Parliament once more
to re-enact it. I believe for my part that special legislation
of this sort is inexpedient. It is inexpedient while it is in
operation, because it must conjure up a sense of restlessness
and irritation; and it is still more inexpedient when it has to
be renewed at short intervals, and brings before the mind of
the people of the country that they are to be kept under peculiar
and exceptional coercion. Now I have looked through a good
many of the Acts that have been passed, I may say, during
the last generation for Ireland, and I have been astonished to
find that ever since the year 1847, with some very short intervals
which are hardly worth mentioning, Ireland has lived under
exceptional and coercive legislation. No sane man can admit
that this is a satisfactory or wholesome state of things. It
does seem to me that it is very desirable, if possible, to extricate
ourselves from this miserable habit, and to aim at
some wholesome and better solution. But, more than being
undesirable, I hold that such legislation is practically impossible,
if it is to be continually and indefinitely re-enacted.
I think it was Count Cavour who said that it is easy to govern
in a state of siege. It may be easy to govern in a state of
siege for a time, but to attempt to govern permanently is,
I believe, utterly impossible. It may be said that this is a
question of trust. No doubt it is a question of trust; but trust
begets trust, and it is after all the only foundation upon which
we can hope to build up amity and concord between the two
nations. I know of nothing more sad than to see how, instead
of diminishing under the healing process of time, there has
been a growth of ill-will between these two nations; and I
think it is time to try how far we may appeal to better feelings.
I for my part believe that Ireland will justify the confidence
which is shown her when this Act is allowed to lapse. If I
am asked further as to policy, I will speak generally in these
terms. So far as the mere administration of the law is concerned,
it is our hope and intention to administer the ordinary
law firmly and effectually. So far as the larger field of Government,
which includes law, and more than law, is concerned, I
hope we shall deal justly, and that we shall secure perhaps a
somewhat better, wholesomer, and kindlier relation, I will not
say merely between classes, creeds, or races, but between the
rulers and the ruled. I cannot and will not lightly believe that
the combination of good feeling to England and good government
to Ireland is a hopeless task. My Lords, I do not believe
that with honesty and single-mindedness of purpose on the one
side, and with the willingness of the Irish people on the other,
it is hopeless to look for some satisfactory solution of this
terrible question. My Lords, these I believe to be the views
and opinions of my colleagues. And just as I have seen in
English colonies across the sea a combination of English, Irish,
and Scotch settlers bound together in loyal obedience to the law
and the Crown, and contributing to the general prosperity of
the country, so I cannot conceive that there is any irreconcilable
bar here in their native home and in England to the unity
and amity of the two nations.
Source.—The Times, October 1.
The interest excited by the recent trials of the Nordenfeldt
submarine boat is sufficiently shown by the presence at
Landskrona of thirty-nine officers, representing every European
Power, together with Brazil and Japan. The Nordenfeldt
boat, the first of its class, was built at Stockholm about two
years ago. The boat is cigar-shaped, with a coffin-like projection
on the top amidships, formed by vertical combings supporting
a glass dome or conning tower, 1 foot high, which enables
the commander to see his way. The dome, with its iron protecting
cover, stands on a horizontal lid, which can be swung
to one side to allow the crew of three men to get in or out
without difficulty. The length of the hull is 64 feet, and the
central diameter 9 feet. It is built of Swedish mild steel plates
⅝ inch thick at the centre, tapered to ⅜ inch at the ends....
In order to prepare for action, enough sea-water is taken in to
reduce the buoyancy to 1 cwt., which suffices to keep the
conning tower well above the surface. In order to sink the
boat further, the vertical propellers are set in motion, and by
their action it is held at the required depth. Thus to come to
the surface again it is merely necessary to stop the vertical
propellers, in which case the reserve of buoyancy at once
comes into play.... The motive power is steam alone. For
submarine work, as stoking is, of course, impossible, the firebox
has to be sealed. It is therefore necessary to store the requisite
power beforehand, and this is done by heating the water in two
tanks placed fore and aft, till a pressure of about 150 pounds
per square inch is obtained. With about this initial pressure
the boat has been driven for sixteen miles at a speed of three
knots.... No compressed air is carried, and the crew depend
therefore for existence on the amount of air sealed up in the
hull. With this amount of air only, four men have remained
for a period of six hours without any special inconvenience.
Source.—Morley's Life of Gladstone, vol. iii., pp. 173, 174, 220-226.
(Macmillans.)
Mr. Chamberlain had been rapidly advancing in public
prominence, and he now showed that the agitation against the
House of Lords was to be only the beginning and not the end.
At Ipswich (January 14) he said this country had been called
the paradise of the rich, and warned his audience no longer to
allow it to remain the purgatory of the poor. He told them
that reform of local government must be almost the first reform
of the next Parliament, and spoke in favour of allotments, the
creation of small proprietors, the placing of a small tax on the
total property of the taxpayer, and of free education. Mr. Gladstone's
attention was drawn from Windsor to these utterances,
and he replied that though he thought some of them were "on
various grounds open to grave objection," yet they seemed
to raise no "definite point on which, in his capacity of Prime
Minister, he was entitled to interfere and lecture the speaker."
A few days later, more terrible things were said by Mr. Chamberlain
at Birmingham. He pronounced for the abolition of plural
voting, and in favour of payment of members, and manhood
suffrage. He also advocated a bill for enabling local communities
to acquire land, a graduated income-tax, and the
breaking up of the great estates as the first step in land
reform....
Mr. Gladstone made a lenient communication to the
orator, to the effect that "there had better be some explanations
among them when they met." ... He recognized by now
that in the Cabinet the battle was being fought between old
time and new. He did not allow his dislike of some of the
new methods of forming public opinion to prevent him from
doing full justice to the energetic and sincere public spirit
behind them....
The address to his electors ... was given to the public
on September 17. It was, as he said, as long as a pamphlet....
The Whigs, we are told, found it vague, the Radicals
cautious, the Tories crafty; but everybody admitted that it
tended to heal feuds.... Mr. Chamberlain, though raising
his own flag, was respectful to his leader's manifesto. The
surface was thus stilled for the moment; yet the waters ran
very deep....
[Gladstone] goes on to say that the ground had now been
sufficiently laid for going to the election with a united front,
that ground being the common profession of a limited creed or
programme in the Liberal sense, with an entire freedom for
those so inclined to travel beyond it, but not to impose their
own sense upon all other people.... If the party and its
leaders were agreed as to immediate measures ... were not
these enough to find a Liberal administration plenty of work ...
for several years?...
An advance was made in the development of a peculiar
situation by important conversations with Mr. Chamberlain [at
Hawarden: these] did not materially alter Mr. Gladstone's
disposition [but the first crisis which promptly developed tended
to obscure the direct issue].
Source.—Morley's Life of Gladstone, vol. iii., pp. 188-245.
(Macmillans.)
On May 15 Mr. Gladstone announced ... that they proposed
to continue what he described as certain clauses of a
valuable and equitable description in the existing Coercion Act.
No Parliamentary situation could be more tempting to an
astute Opposition. The signs that the Cabinet was not united
were unmistakable.... The key to an operation that should
at once, with the aid of the disaffected Liberals and the Irish,
turn out Mr. Gladstone and secure the English elections, was
an understanding with Mr. Parnell.... Lord Salisbury and
his confidential friends had resolved [previous to the defeat
of the Government], subject to official information, to drop
coercion, and the only visible reason why they should form the
resolution at that particular moment was its probable effect
upon Mr. Parnell. [Meanwhile] the policy of the Central
Board [for Ireland], of which Mr. Gladstone so decisively
approved, had been killed.... When it came to the full
Cabinet it could not be carried. [June 6. Government defeated
on an amendment to the Budget by 264 to 252.] The defeat
of the Gladstone Government was the first success of a combination
between Tories and Irish that proved of cardinal
importance to policies and parties for several critical months
to come.... The new Government were not content with
renouncing coercion for the present. They cast off all responsibility
for its practice in the past.... In July a singular
incident occurred, nothing less strange than an interview
between the new Lord-Lieutenant [Lord Carnarvon] and the
leader of the Irish party. To realize its full significance we
have to recall the profound odium that at this time enveloped
Mr. Parnell's name in the minds of nearly all Englishmen....
The transaction had consequences, and the Carnarvon episode
was a pivot. The effect on the mind of Mr. Parnell was easy
to foresee.... Why should he not believe that the alliance
formed in June ... had really blossomed from a mere lobby
manœuvre and election expedient into a policy adopted by
serious statesmen?
[In Midlothian, on November 9, Mr. Gladstone said:] "It
will be a vital danger to the country and to the empire, if at
a time when a demand from Ireland for larger powers of self-government
is to be dealt with, there is not in Parliament
a party totally independent of the Irish vote." ... Mr.
Gladstone's cardinal deliverance in November had been preceded
by an important event. On October 7, 1885, Lord
Salisbury made that speech at Newport which is one of the
tallest and most striking landmarks in the shifting sands of
this controversy.... Some of the more astute of the
Minister's own colleagues were delighted with his speech, as
keeping the Irishmen steady to the Tory party.... The
question on which side the Irish vote in Great Britain should
be thrown seems not to have been decided until after
Mr. Gladstone's speech. It was then speedily settled. On
November 21 a manifesto was issued, handing over the Irish
vote in Great Britain solid to the orator of the Newport speech.
The tactics were obvious. It was Mr. Parnell's interest to
bring the two contending British parties as near as might be
to a level, and this he could only hope to do by throwing his
strength upon the weaker side. It was from the weaker side,
if they could be maintained in office, that he would get the
best terms.... Some estimated the loss to the Liberal party
in this island at twenty seats, others at forty. Whether twenty
or forty, these lost seats made a fatal difference in the division
on the Irish Bill a few months later.... But this was not
all, and was not the worst of it.... Passions were roused,
and things were said about Irishmen that could not at once be
forgotten; and the great task of conversion in 1886, difficult
in any case, was made a thousand times more difficult still by
the antipathies of the electoral battle of 1885. Meanwhile it
was for the moment, and for the purposes of the moment,
a striking success.
Source.—The Times, December 11.
From a carefully prepared statistical abstract of the election
it appears that in the English counties, out of a total electorate
of 2,303,133 voters, 1,937,988 votes were recorded, in the proportion
of 1,020,774 Liberal votes to 916,314 Conservative.
Source.—Morley's Life of Gladstone, vol. iii., pp. 292-295.
(Macmillans.)
What Mr. Gladstone called the basis of his new government
was set out in a short memorandum, which he read to each of
those whom he hoped to include in his Cabinet: "I propose to
examine whether it is or is not practicable to comply with the
desire widely prevalent in Ireland, and testified by the return
of eighty-five out of one hundred and three representatives, for
the establishment by statute of a legislative body to sit in
Dublin, and to deal with Irish as distinguished from Imperial
affairs, in such a manner as would be just to each of the three
kingdoms, equitable with reference to every class of the people
of Ireland, conducive to the social order and harmony of that
country, and calculated to support and consolidate the unity of
the Empire on the continued basis of Imperial authority and
mutual attachment." No definite plan was propounded or
foreshadowed, but only the proposition that it was a duty to
seek a plan. The cynical version was that a Cabinet was got
together on the chance of being able to agree. To Lord
Hartington Mr. Gladstone applied as soon as he received the
Queen's commission. The invitation was declined on reasoned
grounds (January 30th). Examination and inquiry, said Lord
Hartington, must mean a proposal. If no proposal followed
inquiry, the reaction of Irish disappointment would be severe,
as it would be natural. He could not depart from the traditions
of British statesmen, and he was opposed to a separate Irish
legislature. At the same time, he concluded, in a sentence
afterwards pressed by Mr. Gladstone on the notice of the
Queen: "I am fully convinced that the alternative policy of
governing Ireland without large concessions to the national
sentiment, presents difficulties of a tremendous character, which
in my opinion could now only be faced by the support of a
nation united by the consciousness that the fullest opportunity
had been given for the production and consideration of a conciliatory
policy...." The decision was persistently regarded
by Mr. Gladstone as an important event in English political
history. With a small number of distinguished individual
exceptions, it marked the withdrawal from the Liberal party
of the aristocratic element....
Mr. Goschen, who had been a valuable member of the great
Ministry of 1868, was invited to call, but without hopes that he
would rally to a cause so startling; the interview, while
courteous and pleasant, was over in a very few minutes. Lord
Derby, a man of still more cautious type, and a rather recent
addition to the officers of the Liberal staff, declined, not
without good nature. Most lamented of all the abstentions
was the honoured and trusted name of Mr. Bright.
Source.—Winston Churchill's Life of Lord Randolph Churchill,
vol. ii., pp. 60-65. (Macmillans.)
Lord Randolph crossed the Channel and arrived at Larne
early on the morning of February 22. He was welcomed like a
king.... That night the Ulster Hall (in Belfast) was crowded
to its utmost compass. In order to satisfy the demand for
tickets all the seats were removed, and the concourse—which
he addressed for nearly an hour and a half—heard him standing.
He was nearly always successful on the platform, but the
effect he produced upon his audience at Belfast was one of the
most memorable triumphs of his life.... "Now may be the
time," he said, "to show whether all these ceremonies and
forms which are practised in Orange lodges are really living
symbols or only idle and meaningless ceremonies; whether
that which you have so carefully fostered is really the lamp of
liberty, and its flame the undying and unquenchable fire of
freedom.... Like Macbeth before the murder of Duncan,
Mr. Gladstone asks for time. Before he plunges the knife into
the heart of the British Empire, he reflects, he hesitates....
The Loyalists in Ulster should wait and watch—organize and
prepare. Diligence and vigilance ought to be your watchword;
so that the blow, if it does come, may not come upon you as a
thief in the night, and may not find you unready, and taken by
surprise. I believe that this storm will blow over, and that the
vessel of the Union will emerge with her Loyalist crew stronger
than before; but it is right and useful that I should add that if
the struggle should continue, and if my conclusions should turn
out to be wrong, then I am of opinion that the struggle is not
likely to remain within the lines of what we are accustomed to
look upon as constitutional action. No portentous change such
as the Repeal of the Union, no change so gigantic, could be
accomplished by the mere passing of a law. The history of
the United States will teach us a different lesson; and if it
should turn out that the Parliament of the United Kingdom
was so recreant from all its high duties, and that the British
nation was so apostate to traditions of honour and courage, as
to hand over the Loyalists of Ireland to the domination of an
Assembly in Dublin, which must be to them a foreign and an
alien assembly, if it should be within the design of Providence
to place upon you and your fellow-Loyalists so heavy a trial,
then, gentlemen, I do not hesitate to tell you most truly that in
that dark hour there will not be wanting to you those of position
and influence in England who would be willing to cast in
their lot with you, and who, whatever the result, will share
your fortunes and your fate. There will not be wanting those
who, at the exact moment, when the time is fully come—if that
time should come—will address you in words which are perhaps
best expressed by one of our greatest English poets:
'The combat deepens; on, ye brave,
Who rush to glory or the grave.
Wave, Ulster—all thy banners wave,
And charge with all thy chivalry.'"
... A few weeks later, in a letter to a Liberal-Unionist
member, he repeated his menace in an even clearer form: "If
political parties and political leaders, not only Parliamentary
but local, should be so utterly lost to every feeling and dictate
of honour and courage as to hand over coldly, and for the sake
of purchasing a short and illusory Parliamentary tranquillity,
the lives and liberties of the Loyalists of Ireland to their hereditary
and most bitter foes, make no doubt on this point—Ulster
will not be a consenting party; Ulster at the proper
moment will resort to the extreme arbitrament of force; Ulster
will fight, Ulster will be right; Ulster will emerge from the
struggle victorious, because all that Ulster represents to us
Britons will command the sympathy and support of an enormous
section of our British community, and also, I feel certain,
will attract the admiration and the approval of free and civilized
nations."
Source.—The Times, April 14.
Demonstration at Her Majesty's Theatre against the Home
Rule Bill.
Lord Salisbury: ... The great result which I hope from
the brilliant debates that have taken place is that the conviction
will be carried home to the British people that there is no
middle term between government at Westminster and independent
and entirely separate government at Dublin. If you
do not have a Government in some form or other issuing from
the centre you must have absolute separation. Now I ask you
to look at what separation means. It means the cutting off
from the British Islands of a province tied to them by the
hand of Nature. It is hard to find a parallel instance in the
contemporary world, because the tendency of events has been
in the opposite direction. In every country you find that consolidation,
and not severance, has been the object which statesmen
have pursued. But there is one exception. There is a
State in Europe which has had very often to hear the word
"autonomy," which has had more than once to grant Home
Rule, and to see separation following Home Rule. The State
I have referred to is Turkey. Let anyone who thinks that
separation is consistent with the strength and prosperity of the
country look to its effect, its repeated effect, when applied to a
country of which he can judge more impartially.... Turkey
is a decaying Empire; England, I hope, is not. But I frankly
admit that this is not the only reason which urges me. The
point that the Government have consistently ignored is that
Ireland is not occupied by a homogeneous and united people.
In proportions which are variously stated, which some people
state as four-fifths to one-fifth, but which I should be more
inclined to state as two-thirds to one-third, the Irish people
are deeply divided, divided not only by creed, which may extend
into both camps, but divided by history and by a long
series of animosities, which the conflicts that have lasted during
centuries have created. I confess that it seems to me that
Whiteboy Associations, and Moonlight Associations, and
Riband Associations, and murder committed at night and in
the open day, and a constant disregard to all the rights of
property—these things make me doubt the angelic character
which has been attributed to the Irish peasantry. I do not for
a moment maintain that they are in their nature worse than
other people. But I say there are circumstances attaching to
Ireland—circumstances derived from history that is past and
gone through many generations—which make it impossible for
us to believe that, if liberty, entire liberty, were suddenly given
to them, they would be able to forget the animosities of centuries
and to treat those who are placed in their power for
the first time with perfect justice and equity. You must not
imagine that with a wave of a wand by any Minister, however
powerful, the effects of centuries of conflict and exasperation
will be wiped away.... My belief is that the future government
of Ireland does not involve any unmanageable difficulty.
We want a wise, firm, continuous administration of the law.
We want a steady policy. But you must support it, or it will
not take place. There has been a great contest between England
and the discontented portion of the Irish people. It is
a contest that has lasted through many generations past,
through many vicissitudes, and now you are asked to submit
to a measure which is placed before you, and to end that contest
by a complete and ignominious surrender. It is not a
surrender marked by the mere ordinary circumstances of ignominy.
It is a painful thing for a great nation to lose a battle
and have to acknowledge defeat. It is a painful thing if defeat
involves loss of territory, and the nation has to be content with
a restricted Empire. But these things do not represent the
depth of infamy to which you will descend. There is something
worse than all this, and that is when defeat is marked by
the necessity of abandoning to your enemies those whom you
have called upon to defend you, and who have risked their all
on your behalf. That is an infamy below which it is impossible
to go; that is an infamy to which you are asked to submit
yourselves now. Your enemies in every part of the world
will be looking on what you do with exultation. Your friends,
your supporters, your partisans, will view it with shame, with
confusion, and with dismay in every quarter of the globe.
Source.—Hansard, Third Series, vol. 295, col. 649. Second reading
of the Home Rule Bill, June 7th.
Ireland stands at your bar expectant, hopeful, almost suppliant.
Her words are the words of truth and soberness. She
asks a blessed oblivion of the past, and in that oblivion our
interest is deeper even than hers. You have been asked
to-night to abide by the traditions of which we are the heirs.
What traditions? By the Irish traditions? Go into the
length and breadth of the world, ransack the literature of all
countries, find if you can a single voice, a single book, in which
the conduct of England towards Ireland is anywhere treated
except with profound and bitter condemnation. Are these the
traditions by which we are exhorted to stand? No; they are
a sad exception to the glory of our country. They are a broad
and black blot upon the pages of its history, and what we want
to do is to stand by the traditions of which we are the heirs in
all matters except our relations with Ireland, and to make our
relation with Ireland conform to the other traditions of our
country. So we treat our traditions, so we hail the demand of
Ireland for what I call a blessed oblivion of the past. She
asks also a boon for the future; and that boon for the future,
unless we are much mistaken, will be a boon to us in respect
of honour, no less than a boon to her in respect of happiness,
prosperity, and peace. Such, sir, is her prayer. Think, I
beseech you; think well, think wisely, think, not for the
moment, but for the years that are to come, before you reject
this Bill.
Source.—The Times, May 17.
The Conservative leaders will do well to say plainly that
they will not attack any Liberal seats held by representatives
who have voted against the Home Rule Bill, whatever prospect
there may have otherwise been of displacing the sitting
members, or whatever provocation may have been given in
former contests. By this course Conservatives can insure the
return, with very few exceptions, of all the Liberal members
who have declared against the Bill. It is open to them to
assail the seats held by Gladstonian Liberals, and on the principle
of conjoint action they will be entitled, in assailing those
seats, and in defending those they at present occupy, to the
support of all Liberal Unionists.
Source.—The Times, February 9.
There is serious work before the new Home Secretary and
his working-man colleague, Mr. Broadhurst. Yesterday there
occurred the most alarming and destructive riot that has taken
place in London for many years, or perhaps we may say the
most destructive that has taken place within living memory.
The destruction of the Hyde Park railings in 1866 was in some
respects a more threatening affair, as being the work of a bigger
mob; but that, unlike the present business, was not accompanied
by the wholesale destruction of property and the looting
of shops. Yesterday a mob some thousands strong marched
along Pall Mall, St. James's Street, and Piccadilly to Hyde
Park, then broke into several sections, and returned by South
Audley Street, Oxford Street, Regent Street, and other routes,
smashing windows, wrecking private carriages, and robbing
jewellers' and other shops, utterly unchecked by the police, and
leaving only one or two of their number in the hands of the
authorities.... The occasion of all this lamentable affair
was the great meeting of the unemployed which took place in
Trafalgar Square. As our readers are aware, this meeting was
but the culmination of many attempts that have been made
lately to attract public attention to what is a very real difficulty
and hardship. At last the time came for the men to gather in
Trafalgar Square. But unfortunately there was not that perfect
harmony in their proceedings which might have been
desired. Some groups were simply unemployed labourers,
come in all honesty of purpose to hear what could be said for
them, and their chances of finding work. Some were fair-traders,
anxious to impress on the Government that foreign
bounties and other tariff enormities were at the root of the
mischief. But with these moderately pacific bodies were the
more dangerous element brought into the meeting by Messrs.
Hyndman, Burns, and Champion. The Revolutionary Social
Democrats were there, with the express object of breaking up
the meeting called by Mr. Kenny and his friends, and of "preventing
people being made the tools of the paid agitators who
were working in the interests of the Fair Trade League." It
cannot be too clearly understood that it was to the proceedings
of these men—of Mr. Burns and Mr. Hyndman and their colleagues—that
all the subsequent destruction was due....
Already on several occasions the fanatic Hyndman has done
his best to break the peace, from the time when, a year or two
ago, he told the crowd on the Thames Embankment that their
principle should be a life for a life—the life of a Minister for
that of every working-man who starved—down to the time
when at the Holborn Town Hall he offered to head "the
Revolution." Burns is as vehement, and his voice carries
further. He yesterday told the mob that "the next time they
met it would be to go and sack the bakers' shops in the West
of London," and that "they had better die fighting than
starving." He and his red flag led the mob yesterday in their
march.
Source.—The Times, February 19.
Extract from a Letter by Lord Grey.
Some portion of public attention ought to be given to a
subject of very pressing importance—that of the "scarcity of
gold." The share which the enhancement of the value of gold
has probably had in producing these disastrous strikes seems
not to have attracted sufficient notice. The fall of prices from
the growing scarcity of gold has necessarily made the same
wages for labour really higher than they formerly were, while
at the same time this fall of prices has diminished the total
return from labour and capital employed in production....
Probably this has not been sufficiently well understood by either
masters or men, but the masters have practically felt that they
could no longer afford to pay the same money wages they used
to do, while the men have not understood the necessity for such
a reduction. What I would propose is that £1 notes, payable
in silver bullion, should be issued, but only in exchange for the
same bullion after a certain fixed amount of them had been
sent into circulation. But this bullion I should propose to give
or receive in exchange for notes, not at any fixed price for
silver, but at the market price of the metal, which should be
published weekly in the Gazette. By this arrangement it will
be perceived that silver would be largely used as an instrument
for carrying on the business of exchange, without incurring the
inconvenience which seems to be inseparable from the scheme
of the bimetallists, who would establish by law a fixed price
for silver and for gold. As the cost of producing these metals
is liable to variation, I cannot understand how the bimetallists
can expect that fixing their comparative prices by law could
prevent that which could at the moment be most cheaply produced
from driving the other out of circulation, since all who
had to pay money would naturally make use of the cheapest
money they could get.
Source.—The Times, January 8.
Extract from an Article on "Science in 1885."
We may here refer to the momentous work of M. Pasteur
in connection with hydrophobia. That he has discovered a
remedy for one of the most terrible afflictions to which humanity
is liable it would probably be premature to say; but that he
has taken every precaution against self-deception must be
admitted, and so far as he has gone it is difficult to discredit
his results.
Source.—Morley's Life of Gladstone, vol. iii., pp. 364-368.
(Macmillans.)
As it happened, all this [Randolph Churchill's resignation
of the Exchequer, and Goschen's appointment] gave a shake
to both of the Unionist wings. The ominous clouds of coercion
were sailing slowly but discernibly along the horizon, and this
made men in the Unionist camp still more restless and uneasy.
Mr. Chamberlain, on the very day of the announcement of the
Churchill resignation, had made a speech that was taken to
hold out an olive-branch to his old friends. Sir William
Harcourt ... thought the break-up of a great political combination
to be so immense an evil as to call for almost any
sacrifices to prevent it. He instantly wrote to Birmingham to
express his desire to co-operate in reunion, and in the course
of a few days five members of the original Liberal Cabinet of
1886 met at his house in what is known as the Round Table
Conference (Sir W. Harcourt, Mr. Chamberlain, Lord Herschell,
Sir George Trevelyan, and myself).... Mr. Gladstone
gave the Round Table his blessing, his "general idea being
that he had better meddle as little as possible with the Conference,
and retain a free hand." Lord Hartington would neither
join the Conference nor deny that he thought it premature....
On the other side, both English Liberals and Irish Nationalists
were equally uneasy lest the unity of the party should be
bought by the sacrifice of fundamentals.... Mr. Parnell,
though alive to the truth that when people go into a conference
it usually means that they are willing to give up something,
was thoroughly awake to the satisfactory significance of the
Birmingham overtures.
Things at the Round Table for some time went smoothly
enough. Mr. Chamberlain gradually advanced the whole
length. He publicly committed himself to the expediency of
establishing some kind of legislative authority in Dublin in
accordance with Mr. Gladstone's principle, with a preference,
in his own mind, for a plan on the lines of Canada. This he
followed up, also in public, by the admission that of course the
Irish legislature must be allowed to organize their own form of
executive government, either by an imitation on a small scale
of all that goes on at Westminster and Whitehall, or in whatever
other shape they might think proper.... Then the
surface became mysteriously ruffled. Language was used by
some of the plenipotentiaries in public, of which each side in
turn complained as inconsistent with conciliatory negotiations
in private. At last, on the very day on which the provisional
result of the Conference was laid before Mr. Gladstone, there
appeared in a print called The Baptist an article from Mr.
Chamberlain containing an ardent plea for the disestablishment
of the Welsh Church, but warning the Welshmen that
they and the Scotch crofters, and the English labourers—thirty-two
millions of people—must all go without much-needed
legislation because three millions were disloyal, while nearly
six hundred members of Parliament would be reduced to
forced inactivity because some eighty delegates, representing
the policy and receiving the pay of the Chicago Convention,
were determined to obstruct all business until their demands
were conceded. Men naturally asked what was the use of
continuing a discussion when one party to it was attacking in
this peremptory fashion the very persons and the policy that in
private he was supposed to accept. Mr. Gladstone showed no
implacability ... he said ... "I am inclined to think we
can hardly do more now.... We are quite willing that the
subject should stand over for resumption at a convenient
season."
The resumption never happened. Two or three weeks later
Mr. Chamberlain announced that he did not intend to return
to the Round Table. No other serious and formal attempt
was ever made on either side to prevent the Liberal Unionists
from hardening into a separate species. When they became
accomplices in coercion they cut off the chances of reunion.
Source.—The Times, March 17.
Lord Hartington made a striking speech last night to the
Polytechnic Young Men's Christian Institute. In the presence
of such an audience a text was perhaps needed, and he took as
his text some remarks made by Professor Huxley, who lately
pointed out the instructive likeness between warfare and industry.
If we are well advised—and Lord Hartington has no
misgivings on the subject—in spending freely to protect ourselves
against aggression, it is equally our duty to be not
niggardly in providing industrial education, and diffusing
scientific knowledge. It is the condition of industrial
supremacy, and it is not an unattainable condition. A Watt
or even an Edison is born, not made. But the knowledge of
drawing, mechanics, mathematics, and chemistry, and other
sciences or arts, which aid the artisan in his daily work, may be
imparted, and on the spread of such knowledge may depend
the continuance of industrial supremacy. Great commanders
cannot be called into being; but in the main it depends on the
rank and file of the army of industry whether its battles are
lost or won. How is the work to be accomplished? In answer
to this question Lord Hartington let fall one or two remarks
which, though not offering a complete solution, are, if we
mistake not, likely to be fruitful in consequences. The State,
he is satisfied, cannot do all or much; and he is struck with
the inability of purely voluntary efforts to meet the demand.
He finds the necessary assistance, if anywhere, in our municipal
institutions. "I hope the time is not far distant when our town
councils or local governing bodies will establish in every considerable
centre industrial and technical schools, suitable to the
wants of the district, and supported out of local funds." The
institutions which now imperfectly do the work of diffusing
technical instruction "are playing the same part in relation to
technical and industrial education that was played by the voluntary
schools in relation to elementary education." This points
to a national system of technical education; it is the largest
and clearest conception of the subject which any public man of
importance has put forth.
Source.—Hansard, Third Series, vol. 315, col. 1674, June 10.
Ordered: That at ten o'clock p.m. on Friday, the 17th day of
June, if the Criminal Law Amendment (Ireland) Bill be not
previously reported from the Committee of the whole House,
the Chairman shall put forthwith the Question or Questions on
any amendment or motion already proposed from the Chair.
He shall next proceed and successively put forthwith the Question
that any clause then under consideration, and each remaining
clause in the Bill, stand part of the Bill, unless progress be
moved as hereinafter provided. After the clauses are disposed
of, he shall forthwith report the Bill, as amended, to the House.
From and after the passing of this Order, no motion that the
Chairman do leave the Chair, or do report progress, shall be
allowed, unless moved by one of the members in charge of the
Bill, and the Question on such motion shall be put forthwith.
If progress be reported on 17th June the Chairman shall put
this Order in force in any subsequent sitting of the Committee.
Source.—An article by Mr. Gladstone in The Nineteenth Century,
vol. xxi., p. 1.
The Prophet of the new Locksley Hall records against us many
sad, and even shameful, defaults. They are not to be denied,
and the list might probably be lengthened. The youngest
among us will not see the day in which new social problems
will have ceased to spring up as from the depths, and vex even
the most successful solvers of the old; or in which this proud
and great English nation will not have cause, in all its ranks
and orders, to bow its head before the Judge Eternal, and
humbly to confess to forgotten duties, or wasted and neglected
opportunities. It is well to be reminded, and in tones such as
make the deaf man hear, of city children who "soak and blacken
soul and sense in city slime"; of maidens cast by thousands on
the street; of the sempstress scrimped of her daily bread; of
dwellings miserably crowded; of fever as the result. But take
first the city child as he is described. For one such child now
there were ten, perhaps twenty, fifty years back. A very large,
and a still increasing proportion of these children have been
brought under the regular teaching and discipline of the school.
Take the maidens who are now, as they were then, cast by
thousands on the streets. But then, if one among them were
stricken with penitence, and sought for a place in which to hide
her head, she found it only in the pomp of paid institutions,
and in a help well meant, no doubt, yet carrying little of what
was most essential, sympathetic discrimination, and mild, nay
even tender care. Within the half-century a new chapter has
opened. Faith and love have gone forth into the field. Specimens
of womankind, sometimes the very best and highest, have not
deemed this quest of souls beneath them. Scrimping of wages,
no doubt, there is and was. But the fair wage of to-day is far
higher than it was then, and the unfair wage is assumably not
lower. Miserable and crowded dwellings, again, and fever as
their result, both then and now. But legislation has in the
interval made its attempts in earnest; and if this was with
awkward and ungainly hand, private munificence or enterprise
is dotting our city areas with worthy dwellings. Above all,
have we not to record in this behalf martyred lives, such as
those of Denison and Toynbee? Or shall we refuse honourable
mention to not less devoted lives, happily still retained, of such
persons as Miss Octavia Hill? With all this there has happily
grown up not only a vast general extension of benevolent and
missionary means, but a great parochial machinery of domestic
visitation, charged with comfort and blessing to the needy, and
spread over so wide a circle, that what was formerly an exception
may now with some confidence be said to be the rule. If
insufficiencies have come to be more keenly felt, is that because
they are greater, or because there is a bolder and better trained
disposition to feel them?...
I will refer as briefly as may be to the sphere of legislation.
Slavery has been abolished. A criminal code, which disgraced
the Statute Book, has been effectually reformed. Laws of
combination and contract, which prevented the working
population from obtaining the best price for their labour,
have been repealed. The lamentable and demoralizing abuses
of the Poor Law have been swept away. Lives and limbs,
always exposed to destruction through the incidents of labour,
formerly took their chance, no man heeding them, even when
the origin of the calamity lay in the recklessness or neglect of
the employer. They are now guarded by preventive provisions,
and the loss is mitigated, to the sufferers or their
survivors, by pecuniary compensation. The scandals of
labour in mines, factories, and elsewhere, to the honour, first
and foremost, of the name of Shaftesbury, have been either
removed, or greatly qualified and reduced. The population on
the sea-coast is no longer forced wholesale into contraband
trade by fiscal follies; and the Game Laws no longer constitute
a plausible apology for poaching. The entire people have good
schools placed within the reach of their children, and are put
under legal obligation to use the privileges and contribute to
the charge. They have also at their doors the means of
husbanding their savings, without the compromise of their
independence by the inspection of the rector or the squire, and
under the guarantee of the State to the uttermost farthing of
the amount. Information through a free press, formerly
cut off from them by stringent taxation, is now at their
easy command. Their interests at large are protected by
their votes, and their votes are protected by the secrecy which
screens them from intimidation either through violence, or in its
subtler forms.
It is perhaps of interest to turn from such dry outlines as
may be sketched by the aid of almanacs to those more delicate
gradations of the social movement, which in their detail are
indeterminate and almost fugitive, but which in their mass may
be apprehended, and made the subject of record. Pugilism,
which ranges between manliness and brutality, and which in
the days of my boyhood, in its greatest celebrations, almost
monopolized the space of journals of the highest order, is now
rare, modest, and unobtrusive. But, if less exacting in the
matter of violent physical excitements, the nation attaches not
less but more value to corporal education, and for the schoolboy
and the man alike athletics are becoming an ordinary incident
of life. Under the influence of better conditions of living, and
probably of increased self-respect, mendicity, except in seasons
of special distress, has nearly disappeared. If our artisans
combine (as they well may) partly to uphold their wages, it is
also greatly with the noble object of keeping all the members
of their enormous class independent of public alms. They have
forwarded the cause of self-denial, and manfully defended
themselves even against themselves, by promoting restraints
upon the traffic in strong liquors. In districts where they are
most advanced, they have fortified their position by organized
co-operation in supply. Nor are the beneficial changes of the
last half-century confined to the masses. Swearing and duelling
established until a recent date almost as institutions of the
country, have nearly disappeared from the face of society....
At the same time the disposition to lay bare public mischiefs
and drag them into the light of day, which, though liable to
exaggeration, has perhaps been our best distinction among the
nations, has become more resolute than ever....
The sum of the matter seems to be that, upon the whole and
in a degree, we who lived fifty, sixty, seventy years back, and
are living now, have lived into a gentler time; that the public
conscience has grown more tender, as indeed was very needful;
and that, in matters of practice, at sight of evils formerly
regarded with indifference, or even connivance, it now not only
winces, but rebels; that upon the whole the race has been
reaping, and not scattering; earning, and not wasting.
Source.—The Times, June 21.
The men of the Victorian age have lived in the midst of
almost cataclysmic mental changes. New facts have rained
upon them with a rapidity that baffles hypothesis, and stamps
theory as obsolete before half the world has become reconciled
to its existence. In such a time of intellectual flux anything
like monumental art is impossible, since neither the artist nor
the age possesses the permanence of mood required for a true
presentment. Although, however, the Victorian era has not
produced much that the most liberal charity can conceive as
belonging to all time, it has shown immense fertility and vigour
in supplying the intellectual wants of the present. In all but
those supreme manifestations of the human intellect which we
ascribe to genius, its products are at least equal, and in most
cases superior, to those of any period of our history, while in
quantity and variety of intellectual effort, and in diffusion of
intellectual interest, it is entirely unapproachable.
Source.—The Times, October 19.
(Mr. Gladstone at Nottingham): The case I have now to
mention goes further than that. It is the Mitchelstown case.
I was responsible for putting in a telegraphic answer to a telegram
the words, "Remember Mitchelstown," and Mitchelstown
will and must be remembered, and the meeting has an account
to settle with the Government in respect to Mitchelstown. I
should have been glad to have sealed my own lips, had not the
Government sent forth its testimony, its solemn, downright,
unequivocal judgment that the proceeding at Mitchelstown
were right.... What did Mr. Balfour say, when the Irish
Nationalist members brought up the question of the proceedings
at Mitchelstown? He said that the whole action of the police
was in the face of the most tremendous provocation, and absolutely
in self-defence. He said that when the order to fire was
given the order was to fire only on those portions of the crowd
who were engaged in throwing stones.... Three human
beings lost their lives under the fire of the police. I cannot say
three men, for in the ordinary sense of the word they were not
men. Two of them had been men, and were in harmless old
age. The other was growing to be a man, and was still in
harmless boyhood. Not one of these three persons is even
alleged to have thrown a stone. Not one of them, if I recollect
aright, is even alleged to have carried a stick.... Is not this
a melancholy and a miserable farce—tragic, too, in the highest
degree, when we consider that these trumpery proceedings,
perhaps of some casual boys or men, who are only able in the
utmost of their wrath and in the supply of stones that they
could command to break two or three windows in the police
barracks—that these are to be represented as leading and
heading an attack which caused a humane and intelligent body
of the representatives of the Government to fire out of windows,
to kill three persons, one of them distant 100 yards away, and
two others sixty yards away. I have said, and say again,
"Remember Mitchelstown!"
Source.—Mackail's Life of William Morris, vol. ii., p. 190.
The restlessness among the working classes culminated in the
famous scenes of the 13th of November (1887), "Bloody
Sunday," in and round Trafalgar Square. A meeting in the
Square had been announced to protest against the Irish policy
of the Government; it had been proclaimed by the police, and
became converted into a demonstration on a huge scale. No
one who saw it will ever forget the strange, and indeed terrible,
sight of that grey winter day, the vast sombre-coloured crowd,
the brief but fierce struggle at the corner of the Strand, and the
river of steel and scarlet that moved slowly through the dusky
swaying masses when two squadrons of the Life Guards were
summoned up from Whitehall. Only disorganized fragments
straggled into the Square, to find that the other columns had
also been headed off or crushed, and that the day was practically
over. Preparations had been made to repel something little
short of a popular insurrection. An immense police force had
been concentrated, and in the afternoon the Square was lined
by a battalion of Foot Guards, with fixed bayonets and twenty
rounds of ball cartridge. For an hour or two the danger was
imminent of street-fighting such as had not been known in
London for more than a century. But the organized force at
the disposal of the civil authorities proved sufficient to check
the insurgent columns and finally clear the streets without a
shot being fired. For some weeks afterwards the Square was
garrisoned by special drafts of police. Otherwise London next
day had resumed its usual aspect. Once more the London
Socialists had drawn into line with the great mass of the
London Radicals, and a formidable popular movement had
resulted, which, on that Sunday, was within a very little of
culminating in a frightful loss of life and the practical establishment
of a state of siege in London. But the English spirit of
compromise soon made itself felt.... Measures were taken
for the relief of the unemployed. Political Radicalism resumed
its normal occupations; and by the end of the year the Socialist
League had dropped back into its old place, a small body of
enthusiasts among whom an Anarchist group were now
beginning to assume a distinct prominence.
Source.—The Board of Trade Journal, December.
Extracts from a Report, dated 4th October, by Mr. Ralph
Williams, British Officer at Pretoria.
On the 20th September, 1886, the Witwatersrand district
was declared a public goldfield, and from that date the history
of Johannesburg begins. For some months the town was
known as Ferreira's Camp, and the Natal Camp, and it was not
till, perhaps, March last that the present town of Johannesburg
became recognized as the central point of the goldfields of the
district. From that date the growth of the town has been
almost unprecedented.... Large hotels exist which equal in
accommodation anything in South Africa. Warehouses are full
of all that can be obtained even at Cape Town. A theatre—rough,
it is true, but of considerable capacity—is in full working
order. Four banks are at work. Three newspapers are published
every other day.... The actual number of the population
I can hardly estimate, opinions differing so greatly. In the
town of Johannesburg itself I am disposed to think there are
about 4,000 people. The outlying districts also contain a very
large population, probably nearly equalling that of the town.
The reefs which constitute the wealth of the Witwatersrand
are entirely different from any development which has yet been
worked.... The principal reef, which has now been traced
to a distance of between twenty-five and thirty miles, is called
the "main reef." It may be taken to have an average breadth
of from 3 feet 6 inches to 15 feet. It has in several places
been tested to a depth of 70 feet, in every case being proved to
be better and richer at the lower levels than at the surface.
An inspection of the properties and inquiry into the cost
of production cannot fail to impress one with the fact that,
if these reefs are found to have sufficient depth, one of the
richest goldfields in the world has now come to light.
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
There is only one Footnote in this book, marked [A] on page 29. It
has been placed at the end of the short section containing the anchor.
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained. For example,
sea-coast, sea coast; to-night; employés; overboil; mendicity.
Pg 13, 'slighest evidence' replaced by 'slightest evidence'.
Pg 68, 'the British Goverment' replaced by 'the British Government'.
