LORD DERBY'S DEFENCE. T HE debate of Monday in the Lords
will do much to improve the position of Lord Derby with the public. We do not mean that portion of the public which is wild for war, which cares nothing for statesmen unless they beat the drum and wave the banner, and which, after pronouncing Lord Salisbury, as long as he kept his head, a dupe to Igna- tieff and a traitor to English interests, wept in gushing effusiveness on his bosom the moment he passed under the Premier's sway. We mean by the public the whole country, which has to live on after all this hubbub has passed away, which has a permanent interest in the character of its states- men, and which, of whatever party, is disappointed rather than pleased to see any one of its leaders fail. That public had caught the impression that Lord Derby, in spite of his great position, of his clear sense, and of his power of attracting attention to his views, was nearly out of politics ; that he shrank too entirely from action, and was too cold or mentally timid to be trusted. This impression will be removed to a degree which we confess surprises ourselves by his speech of Monday. That speech shows that Lord Derby's highest qualities are by no means lessened, as the world believed, by either danger or opposition ; that his broad compre- hension of facts, his lucid insight, and the judicial impartiality for which the Premier gave him such credit are as perfect in,great crises as in ordinary affairs t and that he possesses. something besides. There are some characters in the world; more common in the South than in the North, in which intellectual tenacity stipplies the place of political or moral courage ; which seem cold, and are•.cold, because their grain is so close that it is impossible to heat theta by ordinary blows to any perceptible purpose, bet which nevertheless never give way, but are as little moved from a purpose by the difficulties, all of which they sees as by the apprehensions, all of which they feel. They seem to have an inner will, which remains firm while the outer one is agitated ; to be able to carry on two processes of thought, one of which refixes itself on permanent and the other only on momentary action ; to have a power of reason beyond dis- turbance from the events or influences which seem to distant observers every moment to obscure it. Lord Derby is obviously one of these, and the difference between his real attitude and his supposed conduct has naturally misled the English public), That public understands a man like Mr. Hardy, hot, outspoken, and obstinate, eager to transmute thought into offensive action, and does not understand one who is intellectually tenacious, but whose tenacity is shown in dislike of rashness, in adherence to the temperate view, in toleration for opposition up to a point which to many would seem unbecoming. It is clear, from the whole of Lord Derby's speech, the ablest perhaps he ever delivered, that his view on the Eastern Question has remained unchanged, that his tenacity has survived the flux and reflux in the popular mind, the slow gliding of his colleagues towards war, the passionate obloquy heaped upon himself. That which would have killed most men has only slightly heated him. He held from the first, and holds now, that there should be no military aid rendered to Turkey; that Russia, in defeating her, did no harm to Europe or Britain ; that now, as before, there is nothing in the situation to justify a great war, and that the true policy for the United Kingdom is to keep free of en- tangling engagements. He does not shrink from action, but declares inaction wise. So believing, he turns on all his adver- saries in the House with a decision which the most vehement of orators could not surpass. He is reproached for quitting a united Cabinet He shows that he threatened resignation twice, and always when warlike counsels were in the ascendant. He is abused for seeking to resist the calling-out of the Reserves. He calmly tells Europe that he seceded because of another proposal, whichle is not yet at liberty to divulge. He is censured for wish- ing Britain to disarm when all the rest of Europe is arming, and reminds his audience quietly of the might of the British Navy, by which, even if war breaks out, war must mainly be conducted. He is told that negotiation has been exhausted, and replies that negotiation between the Powers is not exhausted, and that the deadlock to which the Congress has been brought does not matter, for no Power save Austria sincerely wishes that Con- gress to be held. He is almost angry—indeed, for him, quite furious—with the people for changing their minds every six months, but his anger makes no difference to his own judg- ment, which remains as before, clear, cold, and—this is the surprising point—decided. He tells them it will soon be im- possible for them to have a foreign policy, but he does not shift or attempt to shift his policy to meet their views. With half the people raging at him, and his colleagues all resentful or, like Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury, abusive, speak- ing, as he knew, to a most hostile audience, which included the Heir to the Throne, he resolutely maintained at once his own consistency and his own view.
That view is in no way ours. We think affairs have reached a point where the decision of Europe should not only be collective, but be visible, and if possible, ex- ecutive; where there is danger of England in her isolation bringing on a war, just as Russia in her isolation did, and desire, therefore, that Congress should meet ; and we are not blind to Lord Derby's reluctance to a great effort even on a side he thinks right,—but the merit of Lord Derby's policy is not our point to-day. What we desire to point out is that his broad sense, which the country acknowledges, is not unsupported by tenacity, though the tenacity in this case, and usually, takes the direction of avoiding rather than hurrying on dan- gerous action. It is not because he shrinks from war that he would allow the irritation in Russia and in England to subside, but because he deems that irritation nearly groundless. It is not because he dreads anything that he secedes from the Cabinet, for as he remarked, it takes more courage to oppose colleagues and the people than to glide easily with them to a precipiee,Int because he immovably believes both to be in the wrong. And he proceeds to show them that they are wrong, with a cold, precise lucidity, a cool facing of all inconvenient facts, which, if Lord Derby had but possessed his father's fire, even in rhetorical statement, or could give for one moment the impression that he was carried away by something other than reasonableness, would have been described as determined courage. The audience had just been excited by Lord Beaconsfield's " rub-a-dub " on the national drum, till it had forgotten itself and its decorum, and great ladies applauded as if in a theatre, and the one idea of the audience was that if war was not to come, at least Russia should be told that England was ready. In the midst of that scene, the Earl, thoroughly aware that almost every one was against him, with no party behind him, and with furious Lord Salisbury ready to reply, and sure to make his reply damaging, calmly told his excited hearers that the war was unreasonable, and the means for it imperfect. France, which had never liked the Crimean war, would not be our ally in this. Germany would maintain a neutrality benevolent towards Russia. Italy, content, but embarrassed, would sit still. Turkey was impos- sible as an ally, even if the country would bear such an alliance, with massacres still going on. There remained but Austria, and Austria "is a country which a single unsuccess- ful campaign might not impossibly break up." It takes, if not courage, at least rare intellectual decisiveness and determination to state such coldly unanswerable truths at such a moment,—to tell a people hungry for assurances that they are rich and Russia poor, that Russian poverty will fall, first of all, as another blow on British bondholders ; that no war was ever yet stopped by the poverty of a Government —who cashed Attila's Exchequer bills 1—that when men and food are unlimited, defensive fighting can go on for a long time ; that it was impossible to do anything serious by land, against an enemy whose strength has doubled since Napoleon invaded her with 500,000 men and failed ; and that if we were successful, there would be no result :—" You will not have gained the greater part of your object. You will not have destroyed Russian influence or substituted English in- fluence, because Russian influence in that country which is now to be called Bulgaria rests only in a slight degree upon military success ; it rests on what you cannot take away— identity of race, community of religion, similarity of religion, traditional historic sympathies, and the common hatred which has been felt against the common foe. These are reasons which you cannot take away ; they will continue while a Russian soldier is left in Bulgaria ; they would continue even after Russian soldiers had left, and Austrian soldiers taken their place. If, therefore, we were fortunate, and established English and Austrian authority over those large populations in European Turkey, I say you are fighting for a shadow, and even that shadow you will not obtain." With much of all this--except the passage we have textually quoted—we do not agree, remembering that after the Crimean war Russia did yield, and remembering, too, that a distant war does not call out those heroic efforts produced by an invasion ; but the man who, under those circumstances, and standing amidst that audience, and after that recent career, said it all out so firmly, may be trusted to tell the truth, or his conception of the truth, to his countrymen, with- out much care for the political consequences to him- self. No doubt some of the sentences—particularly the one about the undivulged secret—were indiscreet, though extorted by the tremendous provocation of Lord Beaconsfield's unfounded statements ; but then that capacity for fighting hard, for being indiscreet if driven too far, for making himself dangerous when needful, was just what the country in its heart was denying to Lord Derby. He can, then, set his back to the wall and hit out,—then his cold, irritating, freezing sense must again be studied. Lord Derby in that speech recovered half his power as a politician, and that without a single exhibition of deference to the colleagues whom he con- tradicted, the people whose fickleness he exposed, or the raging War party whose clamour he denounced as senseless. It takes nerve to be a fireman in the front rank even in politics, per- haps more than to be a fire-eater, and it is his possession of at least this kind of nerve which Lord Derby demonstrated on Monday. As he sat down, every Peer in the House, how- ever mortified, or enraged, or unconvinced, knew that he was again a great figure in English politics. That he can ever be a great Foreign Secretary, we do not believe. The work re- quires other qualities than his, and they must be fused by another temperame,nt ; but that he will remain a great and a trusted figure in English politics, as useful as the fireman is when compared with the soldier, we do believe, and that vic- tory of sheer brain over circumstance pleases us even in an adversary. Every man missing from the front rank of our statesmen is a loss, and Lord Derby is not lost.
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