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CHAPTER XIII.

MR. GLADSTONE'S LIVERPOOL SPEECH.

I MUST now deal with the change which has been made in the situation by Lord Rosebery's speech in Edinburgh. On my return to England in the end of August from a yachting cruise, during which I saw the newspapers very irregularly, the first piece of news that met my eyes was the horrible massacres in the streets and environs of Constantinople, of which the entire responsibility has been charged upon the Sultan by the unanimous declaration of the foreign Ambassadors accredited to his Court. I merely passed through London on my way to fulfil an engagement in Ireland; and during my ten days' residence in that country I was agreeably surprised to find the whole Irish nation, without distinction of creed or party, aflame by this sanguinary defiance of the Powers of Europe by the craven puppet who occupies his throne by their sufferance. Whig and Tory, Roman Catholic and Orangeman, Parnellite and antiParnellite, were united for once in demanding the punishment of the criminal and the rescue of the ancient people whom, like Haman in his plot

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Origin of the Agitation

against the Jews, Abdul Hamid has doomed to extermination. From England and Scotland, too, could be heard the premonitory symptoms of a storm of indignation which might, as I believed, be guided, but could not be repressed. I was myself inundated with letters from all parts of the country, appealing to me, in my capacity of Honorary Secretary of the Grosvenor House Committee, to organise an agitation which had now become inevitable. I had hitherto done my best to preach patience, and I assured my correspondents that I believed Lord Salisbury was doing his best to move the other Powers to some effective action for putting an end to the hideous orgies of the Sultan. One gentleman, a Conservative in politics, suggested that if the Great Powers of Europe, with their mighty hosts, had not the courage to put this criminal lunatic under restraint, diplomacy should, in this country at least, be superseded by voluntary efforts, as in the Greek war of independence; and he offered, for his own part, 5,000l. towards the purchase of arms to be distributed among the helpless Christians in parts of Turkey accessible by sea; to be followed perhaps by bands of volunteers. I give this as one out of many proofs of the white heat which the public indignation had reached.

Seeing that an agitation was now inevitable, and that it might do mischief if left to run its course without any guidance, I returned to London by way of Hawarden in order to confer

Consultation with Mr. Gladstone

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with Mr. Gladstone, who, having retired from public life, might be able to speak with greater freedom. He thought that the agitation, judiciously controlled, might help to convince foreign nations that this country was moved solely by a disinterested desire to put an end to the horrors which had been going on for two years in the Asiatic provinces of Turkey, and might thus strengthen the hands of the Government in their endeavour to move the Concert of Europe to some efficacious action.

It was in the hope of contributing to this result that Mr. Gladstone, after much hesitation, allowed himself to be persuaded to address a meeting at Liverpool, convened by the Mayor, Lord Derby, on a requisition signed by men of all parties in politics and religion. The resolution which Mr. Gladstone was asked to move was as follows:

That this meeting trusts that her Majesty's Ministers, realising to the fullest extent the terrible condition in which their fellow-Christians are placed, will do everything possible to obtain for them full security and protection; and this meeting assures her Majesty's Ministers that they may rely on the cordial support of the citizens of Liverpool in whatever steps they may feel it necessary to take for that purpose.

That resolution is on the lines of the advice which Mr. Gladstone gave to me for the guidance of meetings in general-namely, to avoid everything that might seem to dictate a policy to the

166 Mr. Gladstone's Speech Misrepresented

Government, and be content with offering them the cordial support of the country in any effective steps which they might take for protecting the Armenians. Mr. Gladstone followed in his own speech at Liverpool the advice which he gave to me. The most microscopic ingenuity cannot point out a sentence in that speech which dictates any specific course of action to her Majesty's Government. He said indeed-what is merely a political truism, on which Lord Salisbury has repeatedly insisted-that in dealing with the Sultan the only effective policy is coercion; but he was careful to abstain from urging any particular kind of coercion. As his speech has been so persistently misrepresented, it is necessary to make some quotations from it. After reading the resolution which Lord Derby had put into his hand, Mr. Gladstone proceeded:

It appears to me, my Lord Mayor, that resolution has great merits. It is firm, and at the same time it is cautious, and it does not take into our hands that which does not belong to us. It expresses our confidence that her Majesty's Ministers will do everything that is possible for the purpose of attaining a great end. It shows very well that we have not the information or the other advantages necessary for pointing out those means in detail, but it assures the Government that every measure which it may adopt for the advancement of that great end will have our warm, ungrudging, unhesitating support. Ladies and gentlemen, it is upon the ground of that resolution that I invite you to place yourselves, and I think you will allow me to say, in the first place, the terms of the

The Rules of Prudence Inculcated 167

resolution are of course to be interpreted in accordance with the rules of common sense, and when we say we hope her Majesty's Government will adopt every possible measure, we mean every measure which is possible consistently with reason. I therefore think that although the resolution does not say so, yet it is not the intention of this meeting to express a desire that everything that in the nature of things is abstractedly possible should be done. The rules of prudence must be observed, and the rules of prudence, I think, as has often been said in the course of this discussion, neither require nor permit-nor does duty, in my opinion, either require or permit-that we, for the sake even of the great object we have in view, should place ourselves in a condition of war with united Europe, or should take measures which would plunge Europe generally into a state of war. With that proposition I cordially agree; but when I speak of a state of war in that sense I mean a real state of war, and I don't mean those phantasms of European war which every one-not so much in this country as in other countries—who wishes to stop beneficial measures on behalf of Armenia conjures up before our eyes in saying that any country that takes into its own hands, exercises its own judgment, and makes itself in the last resort the judge of its own duty-that every such country must reckon upon plunging Europe into war. I do not say that. I say everything that is reasonable-everything that is possible. I say that it would not be reasonable to do that which would imply war with Europe or plunge Europe into war; but I completely deny that it means that England is, under all circumstances, to abandon and forego her own right of ultimate judgment upon her duties and her powers, and to be dragged at the chariot-wheels of the other Powers of Europe, or of some of them, who have possibly other points of view, and who may not take at present

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