which the statements received have aroused in the Government and people of this country;" and in his despatch of the 21st of September, a week after the arrival of Mr. Baring's report confirming the statements respecting the outrages in Bulgaria, Lord Derby said: "The Porte cannot afford to contend with the public opinion of other countries, nor can it suppose that the Government of Great Britain, or any of the Signatory Powers of the Treaty of Paris, can show indifference to the sufferings of the Bulgarian peasantry under this outbreak of vindictive cruelty. No political considerations would justify the toleration of such acts; and one of the foremost conditions for the settlement of the questions now pending must be that ample reparation shall be afforded to the sufferers, and their future security guaranteed." The above extracts will show that Lord Derby was by no means sparing in his condemnation of the conduct of the Turkish Government in this matter. The indignation which it produced in England was very natural, and its expression at public meetings would have been unobjectionable The English if it had not been used for party purposes, to throw discredit on the Government and mislead foreign countries as to the real feeling of the English people with regard to its Eastern policy. There can now be no doubt that if it had not been for these meetings, and Mr. Gladstone's unfortunate and ill-timed polemical effusions, the Servians would not have refused the prolonged suspension of hostilities which was offered by the Porte* last September; less obstinacy would have been exhibited at Constantinople in resisting our proposals of peace, and Russia, seeing that the English Government and nation were at one in a determination to check her aggressive policy, would have refrained from precipitating matters to a crisis. It also appears from the despatch of last October, above referred to, that so far from England having given any support to the Porte against the demands of the other Powers for an armistice, she actually presented an ultimatum of her own at Constantinople, nearly a month before that of Russia. On the 5th of October, Sir Henry Elliot was instructed "to intimate that, in case of the refusal of an *Despatch to Lord A. Loftus of the 30th of October, 1876. armistice, he was instructed to leave Constantinople, as it would then be evident that all further exertions on the part of Her Majesty's Government to save the Porte from ruin would become useless." It is not necessary to enlarge here on the events which followed, for they are fresh in the memory of every one. It will be sufficient to remark that up to the time at least of the acceptance of the Conference, England has no reason to be ashamed of the part she has played in the negotiations. She reluctantly joined the other Powers, on the invitation of the Porte, and anxious not to disturb the European concert, in various attempts to pacify the insurgent provinces, though anticipating that they would only lead to further complications; and her apprehensions were justified by the event. She accepted the Andrassy Note, approving of its principles, but doubting whether at the time they could practically be carried out; and her doubts proved well-founded. She rejected the Berlin Memorandum, which was concurred in by some of the other Powers, not because they believed in its efficacy, but apparently from a disinclination to What should be England's offend Russia. That document has now been consigned to the limbo of diplomatic failures, and the Powers have returned, under the guidance of England, to the principles of the Andrassy Memorandum, which by her suggestion were made the bases of discussion for a Conference. And from first to last, while holding steadfastly to the principle of the independence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire, as being stipulated by the Treaty of Paris, and essential to the preservation of her interests, she has incessantly urged the Porte to reform its Government with a view to ameliorating the condition of its Christian subjects. I will now venture to make some suggestions as Policy? to what should, in my opinion, be the policy of this country in the present crisis. Three distinct proposals have been made on the subject: first, to ally ourselves with Russia, for what would practically be the destruction of the Turkish rule; second, to do our utmost for the maintenance of the Turkish rule; and third, to act as a police for the purpose of enforcing internal reforms in the Ottoman Empire. In considering the first of these proposals, it is necessary to inquire whether and in alliance with what respects the relative positions of England and Russia in the East have been modified by the Crimean war. Setting aside the primary origin of that war, the ownership of the Holy Places-inasmuch as that did not affect England-the question which was fought out on the bloody fields of Alma and Inkerman, and ostensibly settled by the Treaty of Paris, remains in 1876 what it was in 1854; namely, that of transferring Constantinople from an Ottoman to a Muscovite rule. The Treaty of The proposed Paris clearly stipulated that the internal organisa- Russia. tion of the Ottoman Empire was to be left in the hands of the ruler of that Empire. Great internal reforms, we all admit, are needed in Turkey; but that does not justify the interference of Russia in her internal organisation. Nor, because a few thousand irregular troops have committed atrocities revolting to humanity, is Russia, on the plea of civilisation, entitled to carry out her policy of twenty years ago, based as it is simply on aggressive ambition; or England obliged to stultify the course of action she adopted at the same period, and passively to allow Turkey to be dismembered. The politicans of the non-intervention or peace-at |