THE FRENCH IN TUNIS.
EUROPE should be consulted and should agree, before • France either annexes Tunis, or forces on that State a protectorate which will be undistinguishable, except for evil, from direct dominion. That seems to us the readiest and also the most practical solution of one of the most perplexing questions, alike of international law and morals, ever presented to the public. Before we discuss it, however, it may be as well to dismiss some hardly honest assumptions which have been made on both sides. It is alleged by the opponents of the expedition now starting that it is purely one of aggression, that France has no case against Tunis, and is moving either out of ordinary ambition, or out of an unworthy jealousy of Italy, or in order to seek "glory "just before the elections ; but that is not correct. Technically, France is within her right. Her territory has been invaded and her subjects killed by men who refuse reparation ; they are subjects of the Bey of Tunis, and as the Bey either will not or can- not restrain them, and indeed protects them, Prance has a right to do the work for herself. That right involves the right to enter Tunisian territory, to punish the raiding tribes, to defeat the Bey if he resists, and to compel him to give sufficient and effective securities for the future, which securities must, from the necessity of things, be defined either by the offended Power or by Europe at large. There is no violation in that procedure of ordinary custom or well- understood international law. On the other hand, the French are a little hypocritical. They want more than security. The terms imposed upon the defeated party may be so much in excess of the requirements of the case, that the whole affair may constitute an aggression carried out by military force—a con- quest in fact, and it is believed on very plausible, if not quite cer- tain grounds, that this will be the case. The French, it is stated, intend to make an end of the independence of Tunis, They will extend the direct dominion of Algeria up to the Mejersiali, thus acquiring the harbour of Biserta, said to be the most magnifi- cent on the shore of the Mediterranean ; and they will reduce the Bey, under one form of arrangement or another, to a mere vassal, oven if they do not declare his dynasty at an end. This is conquest, and is open to almost all the grounds of objection that can be raised against conquest. The occasion is inadequate, for the Bey, once convinced that the alterna- tives are submission or the loss of his independence, both could and would reduce his wild subjects to endurable order. The suffering State is very weak, and entirely unable to resist attack by a Power like France. And the people are, as a body, unwilling to lose their independence. A p1dbi8cite, sup- posing it possible to take one, would. be nearly unanimous against submission to any European, Christian, or white Power.
Those are sufficient reasons for disliking, though not for actively opposing, the action of Fiance; and taken by themselves, they are irrefragable. If we are to approve such expeditions, with such resultsf, we must approve of a strong State needlessly absorbing a weak one, without the consent of its population, which is precisely the form of immoral violence which most threatens peace, and to which collective civilise- tion is most anxious to put an end. But then there is one reason, and a very heavy reason, directly weighing on the other side. The world, and especially Europe, would directly benefit through the conquest of Tunis by France. The southern border of ' the Mediterranean ought to belong to Europe,—that is, to the progressive section of the world. It did belong to it once, and of all the losses to civilisation caused by the barbarian invasions, the greatest and the one least redeemed by subsequent events was the severance between North Africa and European life and progress. Between Madeira and Egypt there is room for a second Southern Europe,—for many nations, with large populations, great capitals, vigorous life of all kinds, from which civilisa- tion would filter down by a thousand channels into a con- tinent now absolutely valueless or injurious to mankind, full of tribes who in their isolation have remained scarcely above the level of the beasts of the field. Till North Africa is European, Central Africa, with its vast extent, its endless tribes, its immense natural wealth, must remain a vast jungle, tenanted by dangerous wild beasts who call themselves men, but make of killing an occupation and a pleasure. The soil of North Africa naturally is so rich that much of it was once better cultivated than Italy, and helped to feed the multitudes of Rome ; vigorous cities were once as numer- ous as in England or Italy ; the climate admits of Euro- pean labour, minerals and forests abound, and the trade of a continent should flow through it to the Mediterranean. If Northern Africa were in capable hands, it might receive the whole overspill of Southern Europe, and in two cen- turies show us a new Spain, a new France, a new Italy, and a new Greece, all flourishing, and all civilised. The prospect is precisely the one which justified the British occupation of North America, of Australia, of New Zealand, and of South Africa, in spite of native claims ; and its primary condition, without which no advance can be made, is, to speak plainly, -conquest. The "Moors," to use the old word which best describes the mixed Arabs of North Africa, will take no step towards civilisation. They have been tried for a thousand years, and they have failed. They have not destroyed so much as the Turk, for the white bar- barian preceded them and left little to destroy ; but they have founded nothing, have opened nothing, have improved nothing, have shut up Africa from Europe, and have deterio- rated themselves. They are a lower people than they were when their advanced guard, a thousand years ago, were driven back by Charles Martel. They have not even multiplied or culti- vated, and can show morally little more claim to their vast territories than the Maories to their islands or the Red Indians to North America. They diminish instead of in- creasing the small possession of mankind on which it is dependent for all future progress. Nobody really contests these facts, nobody doubts that if Spain had Aforocco, France Algiers and Tunis, Italy Tripoli, and England Egypt, the happiness, the civilisation, and the prospects of the world would be materially improved. Is it, then, pos- sible, in the face of such facts, heartily to dislike a French advance into Tunis, merely because the occasion is scarcely adequate, because French statesmen are a little hypocritical, or because the Italians are annoyed that the work and its advantages have not fallen to them ? To denounce the expedi- tion as far too groat for its end, and, therefore, dictated by ambition, is to maintain a very valuable principle of inter- national morality, but it is also to assert that conquest as an instrument of civilisation must be given up. If the French have no right in Tunis, our rights in Asia, or in New Zealand, cannot be logically maintained.
Nevertheless, it is not well that in regions so nearly within the range of European international law, and so entirely within the scope of European statesmanship, any conquest should be permitted to a single State. Its objects may be too purely selfish, its action too cruel, its policy too disturb- ing to those relations among the great States which must exist, if the world is to have any appeal against a rdyinie of simple violence and military power. Precisely those reasons which induce Europe to decree that collective civilisation, and not any single State, must redistribute Turkey, ought to induce it to insist on its right to assign, or not to assign, the shore of the Mediterranean. It claims that power over Turkey, not simply because it protected Turkey—for in that case the Turks might decline further protection—but in the general interest of the world, and it has precisely the same right over the Southern Mediterranean. Europe is, in short, within the range of its power, which certainly includes all the coasts of the Mediterranean, the supreme tribunal, or it has as a collective body no rights at all, and it should assert its claim. The case of Tunis, even if we accept the French view that the State is (le facto independent of the Sultan, a view supported by the facts of nearly two centuries, is even stronger than that of Turkey, for in Turkey the real people welcome the overthrow of their ruler's power, while in Tunis the people, as a whole, are passionately with the Bey. They may have no right to utter a veto inconsistent with the pro- gress of the world, but they have a right to appeal to Europe to decide whether the world's claien must be permitted to override their own. There should be some guarantee, within the range of Europe, at least, that the life of a State shall not be terminated except for valid reasons, and in the way most conducive to the general good, and the only possible guarantee is that Europe should assent to or prohibit the result of the war. We have no belief that this will be done, for the Powers, Italy excepted, are not deeply interested, and civilised. opinion is sick of the Mussulman rule, wherever it is visible, while the arbiter of the moment, Prince Bismarck, wishes to see France quarrelling with Italy ; but this is what ought to be done, if the double claim of States to their independence and of the world to progress are ever to be reconciled, and Europe is to possess and to recognise an effective appellate Tribunal.
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