MR. GRANT Dui t' AT NORTHALLERTON.
EXCEPTING only that Mr. Grant Duff, in his speech at Northallerton, makes the mistake of taking credit to the Leaders of the Opposition for that want of firmness and pre- science which led them, in the Session of 1877, to refuse sup- port to two out of four of Mr. Gladstone's Resolutions on our Turkish policy, to the substance of which they have long ago been compelled to give in their hearty adhesion, it would be hard to conceive an abler or more brilliant reply to Mr. Cowen than that delivered last Monday. We mention this, our sole difference from Mr. Grant Duff, thus early, because, in our opinion, he has suggested a most misleading apology for the belated and vacillating action of his chiefs, when he appeared to intimate that it was the mere magnanimous self- restraint of a 'Rifle reserve, which led the official leaders of the Opposition to put obstacles at that time in the path of the real Liberal chief, and to hesitate between two opinions. As a matter of fact, it was from the least aggressive and most con- structive of Mr. Gladstone's resolutions,—the resolutions point- ing to the duty of promoting a concert of European Powers, and the wisdom of strengthening Greece,—that the half-hearted Liberals withheld their support ; and it is precisely on the blunders of the Government in relation to these two points that the leaders of Opposition have now, by way of compensa- tion, had to harp for a year past ; though it was really by their own connivance, and with their own sympathy, that the Government were encouraged to make light of these most essential points, in the great debate of 1877. We refer to this not to revive a schism in the Liberal party happily long since at an end, but to guard Mr. Grant Duff's readers against supposing that it was in any degree to the acrimony or excessive zeal of the Liberal criticism of the Government policy of that year that the leaders of Opposition took exception in 1877. The points to which in their vacillation they objected most, were not the war-cries of partisan assaults or recriminations, but points of calm and prescient policy,—the very points on which it has since proved that Mr. Gladstone's view was far ahead of that of his colleagues on the Opposition Bench, all of whom have since followed in his track, while taking credit to them- selves for the tardiness and hesitation with which they have done so. We venture absolutely to deny Mr. Grant Duff's assertion that the official leaders of the Liberals were severely censured by the most impetuous members of their own party for taking a more moderate line in 1877 than the extreme party wished on questions so delicate as those of foreign policy. It was not for taking a more moderate view, but for taking a much less decided and states- manlike view,—not for taking a less aggressive view, but for taking a less coherent, less sagacious, and less far-sighted view, —that the official leaders were then justly blamed. Mr. Gladstone was quite as moderate, but much more constructive than they. He dwelt on the principle of the Government's blunder, where Lord Hartington and his colleagues dwelt only on the blunder itself. Now, they all vie with him in insisting on the great need of preserving that concert of Europe in the solution of the Eastern Question, and of providing for that substitution of rising for decaying States, in relation to which, in 1877, Mr. Gladstone, supported mainly by the Radicals, stood almost alone.
But though we deny that Mr. Grant Duff had any excuse for suggesting that the official leaders of the Liberal party exhibited the moderation which Mr. Cowen calls in question, in their half-hearted desertion of Mr. Gladstone three years ago, there is not another passage in his speech which seems to us either questionable or superfluous. A brilliant and powerful exposure of Mr. Cowen's mistakes and misrepresen- tations would have been most useful, if it had been nothing more. But Mr. Grant Duff's speech at Northallerton is a great deal more than this. It starts from the true principle of Liberal policy, when it says that in accepting Free-trade the nation accepted something much wider than Free- trade—the idea, namely, that not only in commerce, but in polities also, the goal should be, not mutual independ- ence, but mutual interdependence ; that we should best benefit ourselves not by ruining each other, but, on the contrary, by benefiting each other to the highest possible degree. The true complement of the doctrine that it is the object of a wise national rivalry to outwit and outgeneral each other, is the trade doctrine of Protection and "independence of the Foreigner." The true complement of the doctrine that the more, as industrial nations, we give to each other, the more we receive from each other, is the doctrine that by freely de- veloping the growth of the political, moral, and domestic genius of other nations, we shall most effectually and per- manently benefit our own. This is the real reason why it is so fatal and so vulgar to go " empiring about the world," as Lord
Fife's Yankee friend called it, in the style in which the present Government and Mr. Cowen wish us to go. This is the true reason why it was so big a blunder to undertake to develops great continental regions, like Turkey in Asia, to which it is impossible that, with the Turk at Constantinople, we can ever gain real access, and to neglect for it the influence which we might have acquired, and might retain, over the development of a country like Egypt, which may be commanded from the sea, which is the key to our communication with India, and which might be held as securely as ever even if Russia should reach Constantinople,—a contingency which, while Germany, Austria, Italy, and France, no less than England, have the interest which they now have in preventing it, is by no means likely to be attained. What can be better as a political apophthegm than this maxim of Mr. Grant Duff's, laid down especially in relation to the absurd emphasis attached by Mr. Cowen to the imaginary Euphrates Valley Railway and route to India :—" That English statesman who directs the view of his countrymen to the land, and away from the sea, is a public enemy. Let us keep our eyes fixed upon Egypt. Do not let anything interfere with the Isthmus transit." By keeping a firm hold on that, we can develops resources which threaten no one of the Powers of Europe, improve immensely our rule in India, and incidentally benefit largely the Valley of the Nile too. But we cannot do any of these things by stifling the growth of the Greek and Bulgarian races in the Levant, only in order that we may be able, in appearance, now and then to galvanise the corpse of a "consolidated" Turkey. And we cannot do any of these things by first threatening and then beat- ing Afghanistan into professing for us a profound affection,—a policy which Mr. Grant Duff wittily compares to that of the French Terrorist, who shouted, "Be my brother, or I will kill you I" drily adding that, as regarded at least the unfortunate Shere Ali, we not only used the menace, but were "as good as our word."
It is the great merit of Mr. Grant Duff's speech that he not only follows Mr. Cowen most patiently through his labyrinth of blunders, but that he keeps before us all the time the definite limits of Great Britain's power for good, wide as he admits those limits to be, and that he makes us remember that whatever the crimes and faults of Russia may be, there are regions of the earth in which she, too, has wielded, and still wields, great power for good, and where it ought to be our policy not to thwart, but to conciliate her. It would be hard, we think, to sketch the true foreign policy of an English Minister in words more eloquent and more accurate than these Let ours be a policy which abhors aggression, which tries to promote peace everywhere, which, while always letting it be elearly seen that we possess sufficient force to make it highly imprudent for any one to assail us, leads us to behave in the society of nations as men of the world behave in ordinary society, with as little inclination to take as to give offence,—a policy which recognises the truth that nations beeome great not by squan- dering their resources in Quixotic enterprises, but by husbanding them ; and that true glory depends not upon military success, which is at best splendid misfortune, but upon brilliant achieve- ments in the arts of peace, upon wealth wisely and nobly used for public and private purposes ; upon long lists of great states- men, great poets, great historians, great artists, great orators, great men of science ; upon thinking first the thoughts which other nations adopt, and building up first the institutions which other nations imitate ; upon deserving to obtain from the future the praise of having been wise and just. The primary duty of an English statesman is to do what in him lies to stimulate every good influence, and to nurse every ele- ment of prosperity within these Islands, and throughout the Empire; but he must not neglect foreign affairs,—flret, because if he does, the chances are that he will get into some compli- cation which will divert his attention from internal improve- ment; and secondly, because it becomes him to foster a spirit of national co-operation, as distinguished from national com- petition." Moreover, it should be remembered that Mr. Grant Duff interprets this general and necessarily somewhat vague outline, in vivid and sagacious detail ; that he does not shrink from saying that if anything threatens our com- mand of the Isthmus route to India, we ought to obtain possession, not of Cyprus "the ridiculous," but of some genuine naval station in the lEgean Sea, which would give us real security for our command of that route ; and that he feels no namby-pamby shrinking from the use of the right means, whether forcible or moral, for defending our posi- tion in the great Empire we possess. He will not have us use force recklessly and needlessly, for the sake of ostenta- tion and display ; nor will he have us undertake tasks which we can never discharge, only that we may use great words before the ignorant, when our deeds are all the while poor, barren, and maleficent. He would have us know what we can do, and what we cannot ; and while maintaining boldly our right to do what we can, not affect to shut out other Powers from their right to do that which we never can. Mr. Grant Duff gave an answer to Mr. Cowen which might be well des- cribed in the old Homeric phrase, as one "giving gold for brass, what is worth a hundred oxen for what is worth nine."
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