and answered at the general election. Meantime we may content ourselves with Mr. Forster's reply. The foreign policy of the late Government, of the present Opposition, was, and would be, minding England's own business.' This means letting Russia have her way unless it should happen that she touches something visibly English, and this, I contend, was the policy which was repeatedly rejected by the country in the course of last year. There is no need for discussing the definition of that policy; it was urged by the Opposition in and out of Parliament in March and April last, and, by the admission of Mr. Gladstone himself, it was repudiated by the electorate. The people may have short memories, but not so short that they can forget the publication of the Treaty of San Stefano and its effect upon English opinion. Before the Congress met at Berlin, the voice of England was unanimous that Russian pretensions should not be allowed to prevail, but that unanimity was attained by the prudent and painful silence of those who, a few weeks earlier, had clamoured in a contrary sense. When the terms of peace were disclosed, Mr. Fawcett, in a speech at the Shoreditch Town Hall, declared that the Russian demands were drawn up in a spirit of moderation.' A Liberal journal audaciously asserted that when we elected to remain neutral during the war, we forfeited the power of arranging what its conclusion should be,' and contested the right of this country to interfere in the transactions, whatever might be their result, between the victors and the vanquished. A large number of Liberal writers and speakers denied that there was anything in the Treaty which would justify England in going to war. A few days after the publication of Lord Salisbury's circular, Mr. Bright introduced to Lord Granville and Lord Hartington a deputation from 120 Liberal Associations who protested against war as shameful, criminal, purposeless, and so forth. Mr. Gladstone, a week later, appeared at a 'National Anti-war and Arbitration Conference' of working men, at which he bade his audience 'never mind the majority in the House of Lords or Commons; for, as he went on to explain, 'in the upper classes I know but too well that those who ought to be the natural, historical, and legitimate advisers and guides of the people, hold opinions upon this question which, if they prevailed throughout the country, would do nothing but misguide us and lead us into danger and shame.' This confession that the educated classes rejected Mr. Gladstone's view of the duty of England at the gravest crisis in foreign affairs that has arisen since the battle of Waterloo, prefaced an appeal to the democracy. If that appeal had been answered accord

The House of Commons on the 9th of April rejected Sir Wilfrid Lawson's amendment, condemning the mobilisation of the reserve forces, by 319 to 64 votes. Mr. Gladstone did not vote for the amendment, but in the debate he spoke of the Russian invasion of Turkey as a grand and noble work of liberation,' the proposed annexations he termed 'fair and moderate,' and he denounced 'the immeasurable guilt of a causeless war.'

2

ing to Mr. Gladstone's hopes, and if Russia had persisted, as she was encouraged to do, in all her pretensions, the danger of war would hardly have been lessened, but during the conduct of the struggle we should have witnessed a renewal of the factious and unpatriotic tactics of the Whigs during the resistance to Napoleon's attack upon the liberties of the world. In the pages of this Review I have shown how far the spleen generated in Opposition carried at that time statesmen of high character and wide knowledge of affairs at a momentous crisis, when the very existence of England was at stake. There is no reason why we should look for greater moderation or a more selfsacrificing public spirit in Mr. Gladstone and Sir William Harcourt than in Brougham and Grey.

But the answer of the country was substantially the same as the answer of the House of Commons. This is in the memory of us all, but to save trouble I will cite one unimpeachable witness. On the 2nd of May, two months after the signature of the San Stefano terms and one month after the publication of Lord Salisbury's despatch, Mr. Gladstone wrote:

As to public opinion, the elections at Worcester and Hereford did very great mischief. The electoral body governs the country. If they like the present state of things, they have themselves to thank for the burdens, for the ridicule, and for the guilt which belong to a causeless war. It is idle to expect from the parliamentary minority effectual resistance to what the electoral body approves, or what it will not stir itself to disapprove.

The facts, indeed, could not be contested. The country was not willing that England, when Russia was remodelling the maps of Europe and Asia, should, as Mr. Forster says, 'mind her own business' and affect to ignore what was being done. In this temper the country remained down to the signature of the Treaty of Berlin.

It would be vain to deny that in many respects the later policy of the Government disappointed those who supported the vigorous assertion of English influence which was contained in Lord Salisbury's despatch, but the shortcomings-greatly exaggerated by some critics, whose claim to criticise cannot be admitted-must be measured by reference to the state of parties after the Treaty of San Stefano. If the Administration of Lord Beaconsfield failed, for whatever reasons, to perform to the full the national mandate, this may be regretted, may even be censured, but before it is punished by the ejection of Ministers from office it is necessary to inquire how those who would have taken their places would have met the difficulty. We have only to look back at what the Liberals were saying and doing in the spring of last year to satisfy ourselves that, if the Government has not done everything, their opponents would have done nothing. England would have 'minded her own business,' as Mr. Forster assures us; the moderation of the San Stefano terms, so promptly recognised by Mr. Fawcett and

2 The "Friends of the Foreigner" Seventy Years Ago,' August, 1878.

others, would have been acknowledged with an aigre-doux grimace in a despatch from Lord Granville; Mr. Gladstone would have complimented the Czar on the accomplishment of the noble work of liberation; and all the world would have been assured that to keep back Russia in the East was the concern of Europe, not of England. We know what would have been the course of a Liberal foreign policy in the recent past, we know what it must be in the immediate future, by the present declarations of the Opposition. At Bradford, Mr. Forster contended that it was not the duty of this country, but of Europe, to see the provisions of the Treaty of Berlin implemented;' Mr. Gladstone, in his article last month on the friends and foes of Russia,' levelled a gratuitous sneer, as his contribution to the foreign policy of his party, at Austria, our closest and most necessary ally; but the prize for candour must be awarded to Sir William Harcourt, who announced that the Liberals would do their best to defeat one of the main provisions of the Treaty, the separation of Eastern Roumelia from Bulgaria. Is it credible that the nation will stultify itself by giving the leaders of the Opposition the power to make their words of ill-omen come true?

It must not be forgotten that the Treaty of Berlin, be its defects few or many, was approved by the country in an unmistakable manner, and that the Anglo-Turkish Convention was as emphatically sanctioned. It was alleged at the time that the Government had obtained this sanction by practising upon the national credulity, but, at any rate, it will not be withdrawn except for valid reasons, and such reasons are not apparent in the criticisms of the Opposition. The ground lost by English policy under the Treaty of Berlin, when compared with the Salisbury despatch, will not be regained by throwing up the stipulations now subsisting or announcing that England will take no notice of any infraction of them by Russia. This, however, is obviously the sum total of the foreign policy of the Opposition, as expounded at Bradford and Oxford, and it is a singular way of enforcing the charges with which Sir William Harcourt has gone to the jury' so vehemently. The Government, it is alleged, has lost point after point in the game with Russia, and this is a reason for entrusting the play to those who would have given up the game from the first and would decline to play it now. It is an insult to the intelligence of the country to set such a specimen of reasoning before it.

In Mr. Forster's speech, and still more in Sir William Harcourt's, the view of results' is curiously one-sided and unfair. The positive results are enumerated, caricatured, and depreciated, but of the negative results not a word is said. Yet the latter are plainly most important. A man recovering from a dangerous illness does not think himself called upon to show his friends that he has gained in weight or muscle. It is a great deal if he can say that he has passed through the peril unscathed. J'ai vécu ' was the reply of Siéyès when

he was asked what he had done during the Reign of Terror. England was threatened with political extinction a year ago, as the great majority of Englishmen believed, and if the counsels of the Opposition had prevailed she would have set the seal to her own exclusion from the affairs of Europe. What is her position now? Is she contemned, disregarded, put aside as of no account? Mr. Forster is an adverse witness, but Mr. Forster is forced to admit that English policy is a most important factor in European relations, and is approved almost unanimously upon the Continent. So striking is this fact, so emphatically do French and German Liberals express their astonishment at the attitude of the English Opposition, that Mr. Forster seeks for an explanation in the selfishness of Continental nations, who are well pleased to see England undertaking their defence against Russia. I do not discuss this ingenious theory; I note only the significant admission it involves. It is unnecessary to press the point too far, to affirm that England has become admired and popular in Europe. M. Royer-Collard, in the lobby of the Chamber of Deputies, was once denouncing popularity,' when a bystander reminded him that he, too, himself enjoyed somewhat of the thing he scorned.. 'Popularité?' the philosopher replied, in his stately manner, 'j'espère que non: mais peut-être un peu de considération!' It is consideration,' in the French sense of the word, which England seemed on the point of losing last year, and which she has now retrieved. Are these no gains worth keeping-to have escaped the dangers of an acknowledged Russian supremacy in the East which appeared inevitable, when, it was thought, the San Stefano Treaty would be admitted without protest or resistance, to have established English influence as an indispensable element in European policy, to have demolished the system of insolent Imperial dictation of which the Berlin Memorandum was a typical instance? Mr. Forster and Sir William Harcourt are greatly mistaken if they think that the English people have missed the plain meaning of the political activity of 1878.

If we place ourselves at the right point of view, bearing in mind that the foreign policy of the Opposition would have allowed Russia to carry into effect the whole of the San Stefano terms and to work from that position as a base, we must acknowledge that our present situation in Europe and in Asia has been both materially and morally strengthened by the policy of the Government during the past twelve months. The Treaty of Berlin, it may be allowed, yielded to Russia far too many of the San Stefano demands, though it does not lie in the mouths of Sir William Harcourt and others who would have accepted the San Stefano terms in full to level that taunt at the Ministry; but still the position of Russia in the Balkan Peninsula is now very different from what it would have been if England had refused to take part in the peace negotiations. The Austrian occupation of Bosnia, the separate constitution of Eastern Roumelia, the provisions for the

Turkish defence of the mountain frontier of Bulgaria, were intended to make any further advance of Russia more difficult. If any one contends that they have made it less difficult, it can only be said that such is not the opinion of the Russians themselves. But it is alleged that these parts of the Berlin Treaty will not be carried out, that the Russians are already encroaching, and will encroach more menacingly, upon the centre of Turkish power. To this it might be a sufficient answer that the forecasts of ill-wishers are seldom to be trusted. Sir William Harcourt is confident that the Treaty of Berlin will break down; let those who desire its success take care that Sir William Harcourt's power over that instrument is limited to criticism. But there is a further answer. It is too early to predict failure. When the Russian occupation comes to an end in May next, when the Governments of Eastern Roumelia and Bulgaria are constituted, it will be time to judge the Berlin Treaty. Sir William Harcourt tells us that those results will never come to pass, and doubtless, if he had his will, they would not. With good intent, however, and steadiness in English policy, which depends mainly upon the people, we are justified in believing that the whole of these arrangements will be brought into working order within twelve months from the dissolution of the Congress. But, supposing even that the most malignant prophecies were realised, that the stipulations for separating Eastern Roumelia and Bulgaria were defied, that Russia four months hence were to persist in occupying the territory she is pledged to evacuate, is it not clear that she has now to work up slowly to the point she would have gained by the San Stefano surrender without a struggle? Had England sanctioned the conclusion of peace on the San Stefano terms, Russia, instead of intriguing to obstruct the separate organisation of Eastern Roumelia and Bulgaria, would by this time have established a Slav State extending from the Danube to the Ægean, and would have been able, if she pleased, to seize Constantinople before any Power could interfere to prevent her. Her plan of asking an inch and taking an ell supplies the alarmists, who assert that the Treaty of Berlin has failed, with their most effective argument; but would it not have been far more formidable if it had been freed from the fear of England's vigilant resistance and from the pressure of English power?

The same view of the Anglo-Turkish Convention and of the Afghan war leads us to similar conclusions. If the country has not suddenly and unreasonably reversed the direction of the policy which it approved some months ago, it cannot desire to give the Opposition the means of defeating that policy. Patience and steadiness of purpose are indispensable conditions of success, and these a Liberal majority, if we may believe Sir William Harcourt, would render impossible. It is not, indeed, to be expected that Parliamentary Liberals, pledged to the policy expounded by Mr. Forster, should take pains and run risks in