Mr. Grant Duff, by way of a reductio ad absurdum
of Mr. Gladstone's programme, sent to ,the Times of Monday a counter-proposal of his own for making the Duke of Edin- burgh Sultan, and governing European Turkey through a staff of Angle-Indian Civilians. By his marriage with a Russian princess, the Duke would conciliate Russia; by his connection with a German duchy, Germany ; by his own family position. be would command the confidence of England ; and as having once been offered the throne of Greece, he would probably be acceptable to the kingdom which would bound his realm on the south. No doubt if Europe could be conceived as approving such an arrangement, and grudging nothing to the Royal family of England, the administration of such an empire by Anglo-Indians would work well enough, and soon be a great success. But Mr. Grant Duff is poking fun at the world when he says that such a scheme involves a less change than Mr. Gladstone's, only because under it a good many of the old Turkish officials might still be re- tained in the administration. Query, could many of them be re- tained by any efficient Anglo-Indian? and if they could, what would that weigh in the mighty political scales in which the advantages of such a vast dynastic change as this would have to be weighed? Mr. Gladstone's-plan is, at most, nothing but the extension of an experiment which has twice succeeded. Mr. Grant Duff's" dream" would probably excite all the jealousies of Europe against Great Britain, and confirm tenfold the suspicion, already so common, that English sympathy with Bulgaria is nothing but selfishness dis- guised under a cloak of benevolence.
Previous page
