MR. GLADSTONE AND THE "DAILY TELEGRAPH." T HE story of Mr.
Gladstone's correspondence with M. Negropontis is interesting only as it bears on the literary morality of English journalism, but from that point of view it is unfortunately painfully interesting. On the 0th January last, Mr. Gladstone,—who of course cannot forget that his private opinions on such matters as war and peace have a very different kind of weight from those of an ordinary Eng- lish politician, and whose very opinions are probably more or less affected by that knowledge, for it is hardly possible to think under a pressure of several atmospheres of responsibility exactly as you would think without any responsibility,— wrote in reply to a Greek correspondent, M. Negropontis, who had asked his political advice, his general view of the moral sympathy which the Greek owes to the Slay. We have that letter before us, and as every one has remarked, nothing could be more harmless. We should, for our own parts, not scruple at all to say that Greece, in keeping neutral as she has done, has evaded a solemn responsibility, and run the risk of defeating or delaying the triumph of a great cause. But Mr. Gladstone, fortunately for himself perhaps, does not think so, and did not say anything of the kind. In the first place, he wrote before there was any ques- tion of immediate war, before the Conference had broken up. In the next place, he happens to have an habitual feeling of "strong disapproval, not unmixed even with contempt, for those who gratuitously advise others to go to war, while they themselves have only to live at home at ease ; " and for that reason alone, even if the question of war had been under discussion, which it was not, he would not have pressed war on the Greeks without pressing it on England. Hence, as a matter of fact, the reply of January 0th to M. Negropontis Is as harmless a letter as could have been written, and possibly enough even Lord Derby himself would have found no fault with it. However, M. Negropontis, having got a great corre- spondent, did not feel inclined to drop the correspond- ence, and appears to have written again ; and Mr. Glad- stone, probably a little bored, replied again, saying, as is admitted on all hands, nething but what he had said before, but saying it more curtly,—perhaps, as a man might who did not want an infinite series of discursive Greek letters to answer. Hereupon, on the 27th August, the special corre- spondent of the Daily Telegraph, at Constantinople, stated in that journal that important papers had just been made known there, from which he gathered that Mr. Gladstone was en- couraging the Greeks to break their neutrality, and join the Slays in an attack upon the Turks ; that these letters had been seen by the diplomatic body at Constantinople, and that Mr. Gladstone's interference in such a matter was greatly deprecated by them. The letter, moreover, was spoken of as written about "two months ago," which would be in Juno, long after the out- break of the war, instead of in January, while the Conference was still sitting. M. Negropontis wrote to the Times to deny that any such letters as were described had ever been sent to him by Mr. Gladstone, and to state that even such as there were, were strictly private, and that an important personage had broken faith in giving publicity to what was shown in strict confidence.
Further, Mr. Gladstone asked for the facts on which the Tele- graph correspondent had founded his statement, but in the mean- time the correspondent had got shut up in Plevna, and none was sent, till Monday last, just when Mr. Gladstone was send- ing off his letter to the London papers containing a copy of his first letter to M. Negropontis, and regretting that of the second " curt letter," which, as it was admitted, merely repeated the opinions of the first, he had no copy. This letter and its enclosure the Daily Telegraph of Tuesday published, with a note which seems to us one of the most discreditable fruits of our modern journalism. It states that the correspondence then published gives that journal a "much- desired opportunity of rebuking the idle idea" that it could "treat with indifference what concerns the reputation of the right honourable gentleman ;" and this misconception at least it does completely refute. It goes on to say that what their corre- spondent told was "avowedly based on the description given by several distinguished persons who had seen the Negropontis let- ters," and who declined to give their names, which " honour for- bade" the correspondent to betray. No doubt the chief of these persons is the 'Polonius " whom Mr. Gladstone refers to as the real moving spring in this matter, but who stays as obstinately behind the curtain, and refuses as steadily to come out, as if he were in the condition to which Hamlet reduced Polonius by his sudden sword-thrust. Now what, under these circumstances, does the Telegraph do? It insinuates that "an it would, it could" prove Mr. Gladstone in the wrong. It talks of the impossibility of producing the "complete file" of the correspondence,—no one having ever even asserted that Mr. Gladstone's letters were more than two in number, or that the second did more than repeat " curtly" the view of the first, which is now published.
It dwells on the "unfortunately imperfect condition of the facts, which appear to leave this question far from being abruptly closed, to the disparagement of our representative's good-faith." It suggests that Mr. Gladstone ought to have demanded from M. Negropontis the publication of the whole correspondence, as if Mr. Gladstone had any right to force M. Negropontis into pub- lishing M. Negropontis' own letters against his will, while no one affirms either that Mr. Gladstone's second letter adds any- thing to the first, or that there is any third in existence. And finally, it states that the special correspondent in question accepts " frankly " the only course properly open to him by withdrawing the statement which he cannot substantiate ; and then it adds, with a Pecksniffian air of generosity, "But we avoid prolonging the discussion, or diminishing the completeness of that satisfaction which, under the circumstances, Mr. Gladstone has a technical right to ask, we therefore leave the subject to public judgment with these frank explanations." In other words, the Daily Telegraph reasserts by insinuation all that its corre- spondent withdraws because Mr. Gladstone has a " technical " right to ask that withdrawal, and then calls its explanations frank. Certainly the Daily Telegraph is not indifferent to anything which concerns Mr. Gladstone's reputation. It is only too eager to cast mud upon it, in the confidence that some may stick, for what it really now says is much worse than that Mr. Gladstone tried to persuade the Greeks to break their neutrality, for it hints that he is not to be trusted when he disavows this, and proves his disavowal by facts. Our con- temporary would have been less indifferent, we think, to its own reputation, if it had been more indifferent, in the sense in which it construes indifference, to Mr. Gladstone's.
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