TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. GLADSTONE AT BIRMINGHAM.
IT is melancholy to observe how those who, so long as they flattered Mr. Gladstone, would have exaggerated to the last degree the import of such a meeting as that held at Bir- mingham on Thursday, now endeavour to depreciate its sig- nificance. It may be true,—it is probably always true,—that of those who attend a great public meeting, many go from very mixed impulses of curiosity, sympathy, and passive acquiescence in the emotion of the moment, though many more may go to ex- press eager and deep political conviction. But that is a criti- cism which, so far as it is just, attenuates the significance of all great public demonstrations alike, and has no bearing at all on the special importance of such a demonstration as Birming- ham accorded to Mr. Gladstone on Thursday. Whatever popular enthusiasm can in any case mean, popular enthusiasm certainly meant in his case. The real way in which public opinion operates is by the power it puts into the hands of great leaders, the weapons which it lends them. There is nothing so impotent as public opinion without a fitting organ, nothing so powerful as a fitting spokesman,—who must also be a great moulder,—of public opinion, when it once finds him out. It is nothing to say that many of the fifty thousand people who followed Mr. Gladstone through the streets, and the thirty thousand who cheered him in the great hall, went with half-formed opinions, rather to take delight in his oratory, than to advance their own political views. Of course they did. But we may be pretty sure that almost all of them came away prepared to do their very utmost to second any effort he may make to realise his own policy on the Eastern Question, and to defeat that of Lord Beaconsfield. Hence such demonstrations as Birmingham made on Thursday, if they were frequently re- peatedin other parts of the country, would make our final stand for Turkey as impossible, even during the long vacation, as the anti-Corn-Law agitation made any final stand for the Corn Laws. Mr. Gladstone himself must know that the particular mode in which such meetings as that of Thursday act upon our Foreign politics, is by strengthening his own hands, and weaken- ing those of the Prime Minister,—by swelling the moral influence of Mr. Gladstone's voice when he speaks on the Eastern Question with the echoes of all those passionate acclamations, and by taking from Lord Beaconsfield's when he, too, speaks on that question, much of the authority which a Prime Minister of the United Kingdom must otherwise wield. Of course it lies very much in the breast of the man who elicits such enthusiasm how he will direct and embody it. The enthusiasm is elicited partly by the general tendency of the view for which it is expressed, partly by the past career of the man who elicits it, and is by no means so definite that it cannot be worked up, like a plastic material, into very different forms indeed, according to the judgment and wishes of him who ex- cites it. All this is mere matter of course. Every public man must know that he is not a mere funnel for decanting the popular conviction, but rather the organ for giving it effect, and that if he ceases to be the latter, he will soon cease to be the former also. So far, then, the malicious tendency to depreciate the mean- ing of the demonstration at Birmingham has not only something to say for itself, but may even be valuable, if it succeeds in impressing somewhat more powerfully on Mr. Gladstone and all his supporters that demonstrations of this sort can only be effective by the help of the man for whom they are made ; —and as a consequence, that in giving the signal of these demonstrations, Mr. Gladstone is accepting fully the responsi- bility of guiding the popular feeling on the Eastern Ques- tion, and of leading it eventually, if we succeed, to victory. The enemy will have done good service, if they help Mr. Glad- stone and his friends to realise this, which we confess we somewhat doubt whether they as yet do. It is enthusiasm, we will not say wasted,but very ill-economised, unless the statesman to whom it gives so much power is willing to redeem the trust which, for this purpose, we all place in him.
And it is from this point of view that we must venture to criticise to some extent Mr. Gladstone's speech on Thursday. It was a speech containing very noble pas- sages, and one image finer, we think, than any known to us in modern oratory. In short, it was admirable for the purpose of a great agitation. But it hardly went as far as we should have wished to see Mr. Gladstone go in shaping the policy of the future. There is something of truth in the hostile remark that the issue has now gone be- yond the stage in which that magic Whig formula, "the concert of Europe," can be of any avail, and that Russia being engaged in deadly conflict with Turkey, Mr. Gladstone should hardly have- gone back to the date when united European pressure might still have preserved peace. What we want to know is rather what should be the policy to recommend now ? What would Mr. Gladstone himself advise, supposing any acci- dental circumstances forced the Government to dissolve, and a Parliament were returned in which the great majority of Members were prepared to follow him in rela- tion to the Eastern Question? Would he now be prepared to arrest or to promote the euthanasia of the Ottoman Empire ? In case of the complete defeat of Turkey, would he desire, it he had any influence on the solution, to give Austria or Greece a capital at Constantinople, rather than let Russia take, or the wreck of the Ottomans keep, the keys of the Bosphorus ?. We know, or we think we know, that Mr. Gladstone would. gladly see Greece enlarged by Thessaly and Epirus, and would not unwillingly resign Armenia into Russian hands. But would he lend the active aid of England to the liquidation of the bankrupt Power's concerns ? Does he still regard it as a sine qua non that we should get the consent of all Europe for any arrangement that should be made, or would he be content to co-operate with Russia alone,, supposing the acquiescence of Austria could be secured, for the resettlement of South-East Europe ? These are questions which do not., of course, as yat press for a definite answer, but which are at least more practical now than re- grets for the failure of European concert at the time of the Berlin Memorandum. The policy of the future must depend in great measure, of course, on the events of the war, but in great measure also on the counsels pressed on the victor, and the steps which the neutrals are prepared to take to enforce those counsels. Especially we should like to know on what terms, and to what extent, those who, like ourselves, would willingly see England actively co-operating with Russia, would lend that co-operation. So far as the Birmingham speech falls below what we hoped from it, it is in this kind of definite- ness of view in relation to the future.
Still, much that is not expressed is implied. When Mr. Gladstone says that Powers which are always on the alert for their own selfish -interests are always "outwit- ting themselves," and that we have lost the share in guiding the policy of Russia which, both " in honour and in prudence," we were bound to have secured for ourselves, we suppose he fairly implies that even without the concert of Europe, co-operation with Russia would have been our true course. When he speaks of the Turks as a mere " camp " in Europe, not a State, and declares that " when they disappear," they will leave behind " only bitter and unhappy homes, no laws, no institutions, no public works," he im- plies, we suppose, that the sooner they disappear the better. And in the noble passage in which he describes how the Armenians, Bulgarians, Servians, and Greeks broke the force of the Turkish inundation which hun- dreds of years ago broke over Europe, and made us their eternal debtors by their resistance, he indicates, we sup- pose, his wish that any of those nations which desire a separate national life, shall have it secured to them whenever their cruel suzerain disappears. " They were like a shelving beach which restrained the ocean. That beach, it is true, is beaten by the waves ; it is laid desolate ; it produces nothing ; it becomes, perhaps, nothing but a mass of shingle, of rock, of almost useless sea-weed ; but it is a fence behind which the cultivated earth can spread and escape the incoming tide ; and such was, against the Turk, the resistance of Bulgarians, of Servians, of Greeks, —a resistance in which one by one they succumbed, with the single exception of the ever-glorious mountaineers of Monte- negro, who have never succumbed. It was that resistance which left Europe able to claim the enjoyment of her own liberty, and to develops her institutions and her laws." And what these victims of the Turkish onset have given to Europe we are now to give back ; and that, if we had but Mr. Glad- stone at the head of her Majesty's Government, instead of Lord Beaconsfield, England would already, with the aid of Russia, have done much to give them back. Mr. Gladstone, however, can still do much to aid in the reformation of our policy ; but we hope he will understand the great importance of the posi- tion he has now assumed, and the responsibility which it in- volves of really leading his followers on this question, whether it be to victory or to defeat.
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