MR. HARDY AT BRADFORD.
THAT was a muddle-headed speech of Mr. Hardy's at Brad- ford on Monday. There was an idea running through it, amidst all its silly adulation of an ideal England, the pro- tectress of the weak—when they are not Eastern Christians —and the opponent of the strong—when they do not happen to be Turks—and a large idea ; but Mr. Hardy could not keep to the idea steadily for five minutes, but mixed it up with other and baser, but more familiar ideas, in a fashion that suggests the confectionery of children,— all plums and unleavened flour. The idea is this,—The War party has from the first been very reluctant to say that it liked the Turks, that it thought them bold bar- barians, very like what Englishmen would be but for their creed, and that they ought to be preferred to their less bold. subjects, even though the latter happened to be Christians. They therefore invented the phrase, "The interests of Great .61 Rain," and in every speech, and manifesto, and letter de- , clared that although they desired to resist Russia, they did not desire it in the interest of the Turks, but only in order "to pro- tect British interests." They at last compelled their represen- tatives to adopt the phrase, the " interests " were defined in a i formal and rather threatening despatch, and the War ' party were for a moment not only content, but delighted. Now the limits of Russian aggression are, they said, laid down distinctly. Unfortunately for them, however, Russia was as , well disposed to protect British interests, as defined by Lord I Derby and Mr. Cross, as they were. She had not an idea of I approaching the Persian Gulf, more especially by the most inconvenient for her of her two possible routes. She was content not only not to attack Egypt, which she could not get at, but to let the English take Egypt, if they pleased. She had no wish whatever to annex Constantinople, holding, as Czar Nicholas said in 1853, that such a possession would be the ruin of Russia, and was quite willing to leave the old arrange- ment as to the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, an arrange- ment dictated by England, intact as it stood. There was, in fact, no ground in her action for war, and the War party, cruelly nonplussed, cast about them for another reason. They found a very large one, the "public law of Europe," and for weeks their organs, dropping the pretence of pity for the Turks, dropping even the plea of the interests of Great Britain, have been preaching sermons on the duty of defending Treaties and the violated law of Europe. This was the idea which Mr. Hardy did his very best to popularise at Bradford. There was a Treaty of 1856, confirmed in 1871, and under that Treaty no Power had any right to interfere in the internal affairs of Turkey. That Treaty we had observed strictly. We had, it is true gone into the Conference of Constantinople, which, as the diplomatists suggested the withdrawal of the Sultan's power over half his provinces, was surely a case of interference ; but we had not interfered, for we had never attempted or threatened to attempt to use any but "moral coercion. As a matter of fact, that is not the case, for Lord Salisbury's argument with the Turks all through was the danger of war with Russia, and we all through had said we should not interfere to defend Turkey, and a threat to let in the policeman if justice is not done hardly comes within a strict definition of "moral coercion." That, however, may pass. We heard of the Russian terms in full detail, and declared them to be moderate ; but still, says Mr. Hardy, we did not interfere, for everybody knew Turkey would not accept those terms ; and besides, Russia promised to submit them to Europe. Russia, however, did interfere, did defeat Turkey, and did make a peace without sub- mitting it to Europe ; and England, therefore, now stands forward to protect public law, and to insist that conditions entered upon with Europe shall not be departed from without European consent. "The broad principle upon which the Government of England takes its stand is this,—upon public faith, upon public honesty, upon the conditions into which it entered with Europe, and which it says ought not to be broken or departed from without the assent of Europe."
This is the idea, and it is a large one in its way, being a plea, as Mr. Hardy intends it, that England has not only the right, but has also the duty to fight Russia, in order to keep the Treaty of Paris intact ; but the Secretary for India could not, as we have said, keep to it for five minutes. The defence of European law was a new argument, only just adopted, while the defence of English interests was an old one, repeated till it had become a conviction, and so every now and then the interests reappeared in the funniest way in the middle of the principles. Mr. Hardy has hardly pleaded his new reverence for Treaties, when he declares that "the great question is whether we have or have not great interests in these matters," that is, the fate of Turkey, and that "the Ministry have pursued un- deviatingly the interests of this country." But then, on Mr. Hardy's own showing, they have done very wrong. Their duty was not to attend to English interests, but to uphold the faith of Treaties, even if upholding it was fatal to those interests. Or does Mr. Hardy, in his high morality, propose that we should always uphold these "great contracts," and public faith, and European I Law, whenever the upholding them is clearly profitable ? 1 That is a reserve worthy of the editor who told his contribu- tors always to uphold Evangelical principles, for, "You see, Evangelicals are rich,—and besides, I agree with them." This country, he proceeds, in the highest style of Far-West American eloquence, "is not simply a European Power ; this country is also an Asiatic Power ; it is an African Power ; it is an American Power ; in every sea you will find some island upon which the flag of England is waving. It is this great country, this England, which was once called a little body with a mighty heart,' but which may now be called a great body with a mighty heart ; it is this England, the centre of those great Powers which we have set up throughout the world. I ask you whether it is this country which, having entered into engagements, is to be deprived of the benefit of those engage- ments?" Why, on Mr. Hardy's principles, should she not be deprived of them ? What in the world has the size of the British Empire to do with her obligation to keep faith, or what is it to so public-spirited a Power that she would gain instead of lose by keeping it ? Mr. Hardy wanted to appeal to moral right as his new foundation for action, as something altogether superior to mere interest ; but he is not only a high- principled Englishman, but a member of Lord Beaconsfield's Cabinet, and the double situation was too much for him, and so he gradually slid into a speech which, when stripped of its vigorous rhetoric, is like nothing so much as the speculator's grand offer of shares "which would ensure the salvation of mankind, and twenty per cent, to the investor."
But apart from Mr. Hardy's inartistic blundering, is there nothing in this appeal to Treaties ? There would have been a very great deal, if the appeal had been made at the right time and in the right way. If Mr. Disraeli's Cabinet at the very outbreak of the affair had declared that the Treaty bound England under all circumstances, that frightful as the conduct of Turkey had been, she was within her guaranteed rights, and that the only course was to summon the signatory Powers and revise the Treaty, we should have held him wrong in preferring the lower to the higher law, but we should have respected his motives and understood his policy. And if he had added that he would help to compel Turkey by force to respect the clauses of the Treaty which she had broken, namely, those protecting the Christians, but would resist any Power which threatened her with the destruction of the whole Treaty, he might, we believe, even then have had the support of the country. But this is precisely what he refused to do,—this rigid adherence to Treaties is exactly the policy which even now Mr. Hardy, while pleading for Treaties, has the hardihood to denounce as "an iniquity which would have left an indelible stain upon the conscience of the country." Instead of doing this, the Government, by formally proclaiming its neutrality, left Russia free to go to war—left her to tear the Treaty of Paris into shreds—and now only appeals to the Treaty when war is over because English interests are threatened ; and be- cause when the interests of a Power like England, with her foot upon four continents, are threatened, she ought "to have the benefit of her engagements." Was there ever such a muddle of selfishness and Eldonian rigidity before,—except in the verses of Mr. Lowell ? Mr. Hardy does not, indeed, say with the Yankee orator, "I don't believe in principle, but 0 I dtt in interest !" for he believes in both, though he does not quite know which ; but he modifies the line into something just a little worse,—" I du believe in principle, when it perduces interest." And that, we fear, is much too nearly the feeling of the average Englishman about Treaties. The great Treaties of 1815 have been thrown to the winds without our interference. There never were clearer breaches of written law than the destruction of Denmark, the expulsion of Austria from Germany, or the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine ; but England never interfered, for none of these things in- volved her interests. It is only when her dominance in Eastern Europe is threatened, or rather, supposed to be threatened, that she appeals to all Europe to protect a Treaty, and the appeal failing, announces that she will protect it her- self even by war.
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