POLEMICAL CONVICTIONS.
[To irm EDITOR Or THE SPECTATO....] Sra,—I quite agree with the general drift of your article on this subject. As a matter of fact, the impalement which Dr. Liddon and I witnessed in Bosnia had no argumentative value whatever against the Turkish Government, the Turkish race, or the Turkish religion ; and in all my polemic on the Eastern Question I never once quoted it. I sent a notice of it originally to the Times, to illustrate a mere detail of the controversy, and it never occurred to me that anybody would think it worth while to con- tradict what was a mere trivial incident in the carnival of horrors for which Lord Beaconsfield's Government demanded condign punishment on the criminals. But trivial and utterly un- important as the story was in itself, it has constantly been used to discredit Dr. Liddon's testimony and judgment, as well as my own, on other questions. The last instance was Canon Isaac; Taylor's attempt to discredit my views on Islam by means of the grotesque bean-bag theory and the mythical hoaxer on the mythical Danube steamer. I think it was worth while, therefore, to knock the whole szyllius on the head once for all. True, it was, as you say," slaying the slain "; but there are some controversialists of whom one may say what Napoleon said of the Russian soldiers,—" It is not enough to kill them ; you must knock them down." True also, that the small band represented by the two or three philo-Turks whom you name would not have been convinced by any evidence whatever. But outside of that small band was a large number of honest and open minds whom Lord Derby had com- pletely misled by his suppression of the despatches in which Consul Holmes admitted the direct contradictory of all that he had asserted in the despatches which Lord Derby published in all the newspapers. A year after the controversy was over, Sir W. Holmes himself frankly admitted to me that he had deliberately suppressed reports of impalements and other atrocities in Bosnia. And he defended his conduct—I am sure quite conscientiously—by the plea of patriotic motives.
The real explanation of the anger against Dr. Liddon and myself on account of this unlucky impalement story, is the absurd notion that we had thus been the chief agents in getting up the agitation which ended in the Russo-Turkieh War. Two of our opponents recently in the Times made this accusation. It is curious how few people, comparatively, carry the main facts of an inflamed controversy in their memories. Dr. Liddon and I left England for Servia on August 29th, 1876, and my first letter on the impalement appeared in the Times of Septem- ber 28th. But on August 29th (the day on which we left England) Lord Derby sent a despatch to the BritishAmbeandor
at Constantinople, from which I quote the two opening sentences :—
" I think it right to mention, for your guidance, that the impression produced here by events in Bulgaria has completely destroyed sym- pathy with Turkey. The feeling is universal, and so strong that even if Russia were to declare war against the Porte, her Majesty's Government would find it practically impassible to interfere."
A week later, Lord Derby wrote again :- " The accounts of outrages and excesses committed by the Turkish troops upon an unhappy, and for the moat part unreaisting, popula- tion, has roused an universal feeling of indignation in all classes of English society."
Why, it was five weeks after these despatches from Lord Derby before even Mr. Gladstone broke silence by speech or pen on the Turkish atrocities. Never was there a less got-up, never a more spontaneous agitation, than that against the Ottoman Govern- ment in the autumn of 1876; and one of the most energetic of the coryphtei of the agitation was the philo-Tark Pall Mall Gazette of those days.—I am, Sir, &a., MALCOLM MacCorz.
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