LAYARD.
IT is one of the many misfortunes of Great Britain at the present crisis that it should be represented at Constanti- nople by an Ambassador so little fitted for his especial post as Mr. Layard. There never was an occasion on which the country so needed a representative there of the highest kind, a man temperate and resolute, and given to a cool-headed in- credulity, able to impress statesmen who cover the instincts of semi-civilised Asiatics with the courtly polish of refined Europeans, to keep his own Government fully informed as to their overt and covert policy, and to repress utterly the per- sonal proclivities towards this or that line of action which, whenever they are allowed the upper hand, render Ambassa- dors dangerous or useless to their chiefs. It has been neces- sary to communicate to the Turks information of the most disagreeable kind without wilfully giving cause of offence, to maintain the dignity of England while abstaining from action, and to reflect the official policy of the Govern- ment, while that policy was constantly the result of compro- mise among opinions which had scarcely either end or method in common. The duty- was one which might have over- tasked the ablest diplomatist of the old and, as most men think, the higher school,—the polished gentlemen who make up all deficiencies by address, who are never per- sdnally disliked, even by rival representatives, and who always daunt opposition by the reserve of power which they appear to conceal under their suave and restrained, but slightly sarcastic gentleness, and Mr. Layard was hopelessly unequal to it. That he has not succeeded in informing his Government accurately appears on the face of all recent correspondence, which show decisively that the Foreign Office has been compelled in a dozen crises to rely on information less abrupt, less condensed, and we must add, less prejudiced than his own. His own would have justified war, and there is no war. That he has not been successful in conciliating Turkish statesmen is evident from the almost brutal language employed about him—false lan- guage, it may well be—by the Turkish diplomatists in their message to the Daily News, by his total failure to obtain even the official effacement of Chefket Pasha—a failure which he certainly did not desire, and which was a direct slap in the face for the English Foreign Office—and by the humiliating ignorance as to the terms of the Armistice, in which he must have been designedly left by the Turkish Government. They must have known perfectly well that the Russians were to occupy the lines commanding Constantinople, days before Mr. Layard telegraphed that they were advancing without the know- ledge of the Porte. That he has not represented exactly the attitude of the British Government in Constantinople we can- not affirm, for we do not know, and never shall know, till he makes the statement himself, what attitude he did represent ; but that he did not leave a general impression of such repre- sentation is certain, from the irritation of the Turks, from the repeated statements of correspondents, especially in the Times, and from the policy adopted by the Turkish Pashas, who to the last must have believed English despatches to be written merely profornel. This was their fault, no doubt, but then it was Mr. Layard's failure. He was directed to convince them, and they were not convinced. That he intentionally represented the War party in this country instead of the Government is, we believe, a libel. Mr. Layard knows his business too well for that, he has too distinct and visible an interest in proving himself a faithful servant of the Foreign Office, a man who could always be trusted with the highest missions ; and above all, he himself denies it in too unmistakable terms. But it is clear that the qualities which make a great explorer, the roughness, the tendency to strong ideas, the readiness to jump to desired conclusions, do not make a great diplomatist. Mr. Layard, on the face of his whole correspondence, was unable to resist the conviction that his business was to resist Russia, to favour every man who was against Russia, to believe anything against any man who was supposed to be on the Russian side. Look at this Negroponte correspondence. Mr. Layard hears, he says, from a Greek, M. Negroponte, whom he himself thought given to untruth—Mr. Layard not being addicted to believing Greeks because they are Greeks—that Mr. Gladstone had written to him advising a rising of the Greek population in Epirus, Thessaly, and Macedonia, or generally in the Turkish Empire, against the Turks. He immediately, without reflect- ing that Mr. Gladstone would be the last man in the world to tender such advice, without attending to his own distrust of M. Negroponte, without himself seeing the letters—though he subsequently saw one which he himself incorrectly describes in these terms, " As far as I can recollect, its substance, from a very hasty perusal of it, was to the effect that as M. Negroponte was not inclined to take his (Mr. Gladstone's) advice that the Greeks should throw their lot in with the Slays, he had none other to give "—allows the story to be told to the representative of the most bigotedly pro-Turkish paper in Christendom, who flashes it home as a grave accusation against Mr. Gladstone. Why it should be so regarded we scarcely understand. That there are cases' in which insurrection against an estab- lished Government is a moral duty is a doctrine which has been held by the gravest moralists of the world, and it is one which Mr. Gladstone might well have considered appli- cable to the Greeks of Thessaly. He did consider it applicable to the Bulgarians, for he himself, in his place in Parliament, justified a demand on them for a heavy tribute' distinctly on the ground that they had not fought for their liberty as the Montenegrins had, and ought therefore to pay for it, and they could only have fought by insurrection. Still it is ob- vious that the charge was forwarded to England as a most tell- ing one, to be published against the most powerful of all anti- Turkish statesmen, and the conclusion is almost irresistible. The British Ambassador was so carried away by his eagerness to discredit a powerful' domestic opponent of his own Govern- ment, that he believed a story from a man he distrusted, without evidence and against probability, and helped to send it home as an undoubted and. most important fact. There is not a word of truth in it all. Mr. Gladstone's letters have been published, and are as innocent of instigations to instil% rection as if they had been written to an • archbishop who thought himself aggrieved by a new interpretation of an old canon. That, no doubt, is not Mr. Layard's fault. Ne`heard a different account from M. Negroponte. But then it is his fault that he was so eager to believe, or so credulous in believing, that he never read the letters, that, living in an atmosphere charged with electricity, and among men who mis- represent everything—very often unconsciously, from a sort- of epidemic of excitement—he should have rushed to use the charge as if it were a weapon against a statesman who-was either virtual head of the Opposition, or a private Member with whose letters he had nothing to do. Where in this pro- ceeding is the reticence, the dignity, even the keen eye for evidence which should distinguish a British Ambassador, and above all, an Ambassador specially selected to represent England in a time of such amazing difficulty that it furnishes the single reasonable excuse for Mr. Layard's credulity and rashness ? Where is the evidence that a man, who, whethet from prejudice or ignorance, or mere hastiness, could• be taken in by so absurd a bit of what Lord Beaconsfield would call " coffee-house babble" against a statesman whom he personally knows, is not taken in every hour by stories against the chiefs of European governments whom he does not know V We ven= ture to say that Mr. Layard hears every day or every hour some story of Russian designs, worse than the story against Mr. Gladstone, repeated by persons indefinitely more trustworthy than he believed M. Negroponte to be. Does he believe them all, and send them all home as bases for the action of the British Government ? Or how is it possible for the British people, when they read a correspondence like this, and hear, perhaps, that a British Fleet is in motion. in pursuance of information received from the Ambassador at Constantinople, not to ask whether, after all, that information may not have been as hastily received as was M. Negropontes ? We do not wish to be hard upon Mr. Layard. We can quite understand how a traveller who rose to great reputation by explorations in Turkey, who has caught the sentiment of the East, and who thinks Russia dangerous to England, may grow excessively bitter during- a Russo-Turkish war, may see in every politician who is not Turkish an enemy of his country, and may listen to stories against him under a prejudice which temporarily destroys his judgment. There are plenty of such people here at home, who only want to do their duty as they see it. But then we do not understand why such a man is retained in the one Embassy where an accession of such feeling may at any moment so mislead him as to do irreparable harm. An able Ambassador is as needful in such a crisis as an efficient Fleet.; but how can an Ambassador be able who under such circum- stances at once believes such men, telling him stories at once so important and so absurd ?
Upon one point we must acquit Mr. Layard. Much has been said of the fact that he has offered no apology to Mr. Gladstone now that the truth has come out, and only declines to continue the correspondence ; but he evidently awaits the opinion of his own chief, who is bound, having asked for the explanation, to pronounce some opinion upon it. Lord Derby has hitherto delayed doing so, and until he has done so Mr. Layard, as Ambassador, may fairly say that he sees no evidence of any disapproval of his course in the Foreign Office. And it is with Mr. Layard as Ambassador only that the British public has to do. It is Lord Derby, not Mr. Layard, who in the first instance has failed in courtesy and proper feeling towards an opponent at least his equal in political rank.
Previous page
