TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORD DERBY'S RESIGNATION.
LORD DERBY'S resignation is a catastrophe. We have never been able either to admire or to support his foreign policy, which has seemed to us feeble and indecisive or to respect his Conservatism, which has chiefly consisted in an acute perception of the difficulties in the way of change ; but for months past his position in the Cabinet has attracted esteem and sympathy from his political foes. He has resolutely main- tained, under a storm of insult such as has scarcely ever fallen on living English statesmen, the policy which has approved itself to him as the most beneficial to the permanent interests of his country. He has resisted his Premier, his party, the greater portion of society, and probably a majority of the people, in order that he might prevent those who were ungrateful to him from entering upon a great, an unjust, and probably a disastrous war. His position in the Cabinet must have been most painful, especially after Lord Carnarvon's resignation had warned him that in the opinion of his most faithful and quick-sighted colleague, his opposition would be fruitless ; but he has remained, in order to be to the public a guarantee that the Government would not enter on a rash, or viewy, or theatric course of policy. Of the method of his resist- ance to Lord Beaconsfield's views we know little, and that little does not impress us favourably ; for we hold that he ought, when he first offered his resignation, to have adhered to it, to have accompanied Lord Carnarvon into exile, and to have ceased to afford to his theatrical chief the support of the con- fidence which his great name, his splendid position, and his unequalled reputation for cautious sense have won for him among the people. But he remained, and remained resisting, and for weeks past it has been known that the victory of the war party in the Cabinet would be first made manifest to the country through the resignation of Lord Derby, that with him would de- part the last counterpoise to the influence of the Premier. His fall will therefore agitate all England. All men know that Lord Derby is a man of high capacity, few prejudices, and strong dislike to headstrong or separate action, that he loves to act with accustomed colleagues, and that he hates the notion of conflict with the man of sinister genius whom his House has done so much to raise to a dictatorship, and all men therefore will recognise how pregnant with disaster he must deem the policy upon which that man has finally resolved to enter. The English people judge broadly, if sometimes brutally, and they will pay little attention to talk about the Reserved Forces, or assurances that the Government seeks peace, or smooth explanations as to differences of opinion; but will say at once that Lord Derby, who risked his reputa- tion rather than retire prematurely, would not have resigned unless he had seen clearly that he could no longer avert the catastrophe he dreads. It "lust, they will say, be war he dreads, for there is no kind of negotiation to which he has refused to be a party.
And so far as it is possible for men outside the Cabinet to judge, they will, in so believing, be broadly in the right. Unless the Government has determined to do acts which either signify war, or which must by the most direct steps lead to war, and war for the rehabilitation of Turkey, it is impossible to comprehend what their policy can mean. It is not obviously to negotiate, for if it were, they would never have suffered Lord Derby to resign. The loss of his support, the shock which his fall will give to opinion throughout Europe, the renovated energy of all who dread or abhor the prospect of this war, would never have been risked if the Cabinet had de- termined to discover any course of agreement with Russia, or even to endure accomplished facts. They must have decided on some act which would eventually lead to war ; and it is difficult to imagine what this act can be, if it is not some act to be done in alliance with Turkey for the violent redressing of that balance of power in the Mediterranean which Lord Beacons- field formally avows he conceives to have been overset. We are not to go into Congress. We are not, it is well under- stood, about to occupy Egypt. It is most improbable in the present condition of Tory opinion, and after Sir Stafford Northcote's declaration that we must accept no policy which would further injure those poor Turks, that we are about to rebuild Byzantium. We cannot be intending merely to occupy Gallipoli in our own name and for our own reasons, for that would be a declaration of war upon the Sultan. And we can be going to purchase nothing,—Crete, or Cyprus, or Mitylene, or all of them. For that would not lead to war ; and it is immt- nent danger of war to which the summons to the Reserve Forces points, and which is indicated by the silence of Lord Beacons- field upon the subject. Lord Derby had pointedly informed the House that the grave resolutions taken by the Cabinet did not inevitably lead to war ; but Lord Beaconsfield, who repeated so much else in his colleague's speech, did not re- peat this. That was a most significant omission ; and when considered in the light of his whole policy, of the geographical situation, and of the impossibility of doing anything effective in the teeth both of Russia and Turkey, the facts point strongly to a renewal of the policy of the Crimean war, and to steps which can only be carried out through an armed alliance with Turkey purchased by the promise of giving her one more chance. It is almost inconceivable that such a policy, a policy which would throw Constantinople at once into the arms of Russia, should be adopted ; but in what other direction do the facts point ? Such a policy appears to- ns at once criminal and suicidal, and we hold it the duty of every Englishman to resist it by every constitutional effort in his power. There is absolutely no English reason for such a war, for our interests could be fully protected without it, and no justification for it, except a panic fear that the weakest of maritime States may, if an ally holds the Bosphorus, create at some future time, while its treasury is nearly insolvent, a navy with which the strongest and richest of maritime States will find it difficult to cope. We have ten times the cause to go to war with Germany for the same reason. And when we have sacrificed our children, our property, and the energy of a generation on an unjust because causeless war, we shall have gained nothing except the privilege of replacing an oppressive Asiatic caste in a position once more to refuse to Christian Europeans the most ordinary rights of human beings. We cannot believe even yet, in spite of the Worcester election, that Eng• lishmen, who once had political sense and instinct, will consent to a policy so evil, that they will plunge into a great war because they are vaguely told that Russia is designing something, or- because a Premier who has never concealed an almost per- sonal hatred of St. Petersburg believes that he must either inflict a humiliation upon the Russians, or suffer one at their hands. But that they will be asked so to plunge we find it difficult to doubt, as difficult as to doubt that the plunge will be followed by some great disaster. We at least do not belong to the Peace party. There is no variety of abuse which Mr. Richard and men of his opinions have not from time to time flung upon the Spectator. We have maintained always, often in the teeth of our own party, that war is not necessarily evil, that conquest is at times one of the weapons of civilisation, that there is no war, not even one with Germany, from which, if our honour or the interests of mankind demanded it, England ought to But in this war we have neither heart nor hope. There is absolutely no reason for it, save unreasoning hatred against everything Russian ; no object for it, except to renew an unendurable system ; no excuse for it, except that a Power which has done nothing not previously sanctioned by a Con- ference of Europe, and specially by the man who now, it is reported, agrees as Foreign Secretary to fight her, has in executing that verdict gained a certain accession of strength and of prestige. If there has been insult to us—and to us it appears as if Russia had avoided giving offence with pains- taking dread—think what there has been to our adversary From first to last, through these long months, England has treated Russia as a Power incapable of justice, her Sovereign as a man convicted of untruth, and her people as a mass of barbarian and savage serfs. And now the one man in the Cabinet who, in spite of all this, has striven on under obloquy to prevent its all ending in its natural result, is forced to re- tire, despairing any longer of upholding the flag of right. It is enough to make Englishmen despair of ever again seeing principle rule mankind.
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