EART, GREY'S POSITION.
"L"1 ART, GREY has established a right, something like that. 11/ of the Chorus in a Greek play to censure freely the deeds and motives of the actors, to criticise with a consider- able amount of gravity, and even severity, the conduct alike of Governments and of Oppositions. He has well earned that right, by his general ability and his complete independence of both parties in the State; and though he calls himself a Liberal, he has not, as far as we can see, shown of late years any discern- ible Liberal bias: in his Parliamentary criticisms. So much the more were we gratified last November by his letter to Lord Hartington on the speech delivered by the leader of Opposition in the House of Commons at Keighley. Slight as the leaning of that letter towards the Liberal policy was, still such a leaning could be clearly discerned. Earl Grey gave in his adhesion to the general principles of Lord Haxtington's speech. He even recognised that he had been wrong in approving during the earlier part of the year the non-intervention policy of the Government, and though it must be admitted that the interven- tion for which he contended in November was intervention of a very feeble and unmeaning hind, still here was his reluctant ad- mission that the Turks could not be trusted to reform themselves, that something must be done by pressure from outside to remove the intolerable evils of the Turkish Government, and that the policy of the Government had been wrong. But small as the concession made by Earl. Grey to the Liberal view in November was, it is virtually withdrawn by the speech on Lord Stratheden and Campbell's motion last Monday. Earl Grey has. a prescriptive right to differ from everybody, which he never, fails to assert. Indeed, the only party in the country with _which he is at all disposed to minimise his differences is the party composed of Earl Grey. And his dif- ferences even with that party, though they are. often attenu- ated as compared with his differences with any other, are not so inconsiderable but that they somewhat diminish the moral value of the soliloquies of our political Chorus. Even in his letter to Lord Hartington, Earl Grey freely admitted that he had so far changed his mind as to be desirous to exchange a policy of non-intervention for a policy of united pressure upon Turkey,—though, of course he did not agree with anybody else as to the points to which that united pressure should be applied. And now, as it appears, he has changed his mind again, on the most important of these points. Now, as in November, he objects wholly to ask for Autonomy, administrative or otherwise, for the Christian provinces of Turkey. Now, as in November, he wishes to press-the demand that enlightened despots should be appointed to govern the Christian provinces, and should be appointed with the consent of the Powers. But now he is no longer apparently disposed, as he was in November, to insist even on this inAnitesinial modicum of interference in a Govern- ment where all is bad,—that each Governors should never be removed without the consent of the Powers. He says, "If what was suggested at the, Conference [with regard to the ap- pointment of independent Lieutenant-Governors] had been ac- cepted by thePorte, I believe it.would have accomplished much good. At the same time, we ..must not conceal from ourselves that there is no email weight in the objections to such a pro- posal. It isundoubtedly true that a system under which a Govern- ment could not dismiss its officers, when they were disobedient, or manifested incapacity or dishonesty, would not in ordinary circumstances be Sonnd-favourable to good and vigorous admin- istration. I can't help regretting that proposals were not sub- mitted for improving the government of the Provinces -by meana less likely to provoke, the opposition of Turkey. It. might have been suggested to the Porte to appoint Governors who would command the confidence of the Powers, and that they should not be removed without the Powers being informed of the step about to be taken. That would have involved no actual interference with. the authority of the Porte." Certainly not, and therefore it would have been completely useless. Governors who did not dare to be " disobedient " to the Port4, would be of no use at all. And yet this is the almost inconceivable imbecility of the policy which one who was formerly among the ablest, if also among the most erotchetty, of the statesmen of England, recom- mends to us for the radical reform of the most bitterly oppressed and abused provinces which were ever plun- dered by a caste, calling itself a. Government. After ranch pondering, after a formidable struggle with himself_ as to the expediency of giving up his. favourite policy of...non-inter- vention.,_Earl Grey -came at- last: to a great decision,—that he had been wrong,—that the state of Turkey was such that a policy of non-intervention could no longer be justified,—which decision he announced to Lord Hart- ington. Even then he minimised intervention to the least amount of interference not obviously and flagrantly so minute as to make the policy ludicrous. He did-not propose to interfere in any way with the Turkish military commanders in the provinces to be put under his "enlightened despots." He did not propose to interfere with the Turkish appropriation of the revenues squeezed out of those provinces. All he sug- gested was the appointment of a special Governor, approved by the Powers, and not removable without the assent of the Powers, who might, however, and certainly would, have been completely paralysed, through the refusal of the Turkish troops to co-operate with him, and the refusal of the Turkish Govern- ment to leave him sufficient resources for his administrative reforms. We all know what such an experiment is like, from the unhappy experience of Wassa Effendi in the Herzegovina, where he found himself entirely crippled for any purposes of good through the refusal of the Commander-in-Chief to act with him, and the refusal of the Turkish authorities to give him carte blanche in regard to finance. In fact, the appointment of Haydar Effendi to superintend reforms in Bosnia, and Wassa Effendi to superintend them in the Herzegovina, turned out. a farce,—and precisely for the reasons for which the appointment of Earl Grey's Lieutenant-Governors, irre- movable without the consent of the Powers, would always be a farce,—that they could not command the troops, and could not regulate the finance without refer- ence to authorities not in the least disposed to facilitate reforms. Nevertheless, though Earl Grey's first proposal for intervention was so weak that it would have done no good if it had succeeded, he was evidently alarmed at its magnitude, and repented himself that he had proposed too much, and now regrets that her Majesty's Minister did not press on the Porte the appointment of removable Lieu- tenant-Governors, the Porte engaging, however, not to remove them without first informing the Powers of its intention. That is, indeed, even in the lowest deep of a policy of imbecility, a lower deep still. Earl Grey wishes to suggest the appointment of a few men whom Europe would approve, just in order that they may be speedily removed, without ever having had any power of doing good, and that the result of their failure might then be announced to Europe by Sal-vet Pasha in one of his cynically frank despatches. Ie it conceivable that a man of Earl Grey's ability can really have made up his mind to approve the intervention he so much fears, for the sake of a step so inane as this ?
But perhaps the secret is that what Earl Grey calls inter- vention, he very well knows to be not intervention at all. He utterly disapproved, he says of the Crimean war, and would utterly disapprove of our fighting now, either, as we understand him, to coerce Turkey, or to support Turkey and coerce Russia. Now what does intervention mean, if there is to be-no force behind it ? Of course it means nothing at all. Inter- vention that enters only with consent, can be got rid of at will. And this is the sort of intervention which Earl Grey refers to, and therefore it is, perhaps, that he is so chary of giving it any real significance. So long as you limit yourself to doing only what the Power in the confusions of whose maladministration you intervene, approves, you do no good. As soon as -you begin to do what it disapproves, you are sure to be foiled. Hence the only thing that intervention without coercion can mean, is a false appearance of doing something that is not to be -done really at all. But surely a man as. able as Earl Grey might have seen this, and stuck to his old policy of non- intervention, if he was not prepared, as he evidently was not prepared, to back intervention by coercion. As it is, this statesman of other days, whose reputation for ability has not yet died away, appears as censor of two policies, neither of which he approves, only to recommend a third which is positively inane, even when compared with the colourless and unmeaning policy of Lord Derby. Lord Derby did use-one motive force,—the force of Russia. If we understand Earl Grey aright, he would have done all in his power, short of positive threats of war with Russia, to neutralise that, and-yet would have recommended a pretentious and helpless meddling, which must have irritated the Turkish Government, without attaining an v beneficial result at all. It is painful to discover that there i,- so little strength, or even meaning, in the criticisms of a statesman who in other days was the admiration of all thinking men, for the firmness of his intellectual grasp and the equanimity with which he bore his isolated position.
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