LORD CRANBROOK'S SPEECH.
LORD CRANBROOK told his great audience at Sheffield on Thursday night, that he was not there to apologise for anything the Government had done, but that he was there to address his audience as he would " his own con- science." If he is at all confirmed in the habit of making
such elaborate speeches to his own conscience as he made in the Albert Hall of Sheffield on this occasion, we cannot feel the least surprise that he has no apologies to offer. As a mere matter of moral discipline,—for we will not touch the question of the unfortunate intel- lectual results to be apprehended,—we would suggest to Lord Cranbrook that it is hardly wise often to treat his own consci- ence to a vehement party harangue. The " still, small voice " must inevitably be drowned in such a political bellowing as the speech of Thursday ; and we are sure that Lord Cranbrook cannot sincerely desire to drown the still, small voice, even in relation to politics, altogether. Surely there are seasons when even he would like to come to a reckoning with himself as to the moral influence he had exerted on the political convictions of his day. And at such seasons, would it not be well to try to emancipate himself from the idea of a General Election and of a low-spirited party in great need of stimulants, and ask himself not what it was possible to retort on his foes, but what he would really answer to himself, when questioning himself anxiously, and not with a view to effective sneers, as to the various acts of his political life. If he is serious in saying that in moments such as these he addresses himself as he did his Sheffield audience, we must for the future look upon his case as one.of the most deplorable examples of the deteriorating effect of party politics on a naturally vigorous and manly char- acter, of which we have ever heard. But, of course, this is not so. Lord Cranbrook's avowal that he was about to go through an ascetic exercise aloud, for the benefit of the Sheffield Conservatives,must be regarded only as the boldest flight of the Indian Secretary's somewhat tropical imagination. No conscience, not even Lord Cranbrook's, ever spoke in tones sounding so much like a gong, as this address at Sheffield. Why, the greatest merit of the speech was that it roared down every- thing but Conservative party feeling.. It was the voice, not of a man, but of a whole squirearchy, and of a squirearchy boom- ing away, not about its duties,—which even a squirearchy recognises,—but about the empty war-cries which have so long filled its ears.
Lord Cranbrook has always been a dauntless man. He has no belief in the reaction against the Government. "The in- sects," he says, " make the noise. The oxen, the John Bulls, as I may call them, of the country, lie quiescent in the field, not taking notice of these little noises going on about them, and which no more represent the feeling of that great field in which the oxen lie, than the voices of some flippant epi- grammatists do the nation." Well, if " the insects " make more noise than Lord Cranbrook, they must be very remark- ably constituted insects indeed. It was a bold thought of Lord Cranbrook's to transmute Jingoes into quiescent oxen, and the poor murmuring British elector, who does not know why all this dust has been raised, about a glory of which he can dis- cern no trace, into the angry insects who are endeavouring vainly to sting the people into rage. But the happiest thought of all—especially for a man who was professing to talk as he would to his own conscience, though an octave or two higher, so that he might be overheard by a few thousand people—was that of posing, as Lord Cranbrook did, as the representative of a Government pre-eminently pacific. "Peace, blessed peace," was the refrain to which, after crushing the insects, Lord Cranbrook steadily returned. For peace they had loved throughout. It was for peace, they re- jected the Berlin Memorandum ; for peace, that they sum- moned a winter Session of Parliament, and asked for the vote of six millions ; it was for peace, they called out the Reserves, and summoned the Indian troops to Malta ; for peace, that they sent the Fleet to the Dardanelles ; for peace, that they got rid of Lord Carnarvon and Lord Derby ; for peace, that they invaded Afghanistan ; and for peace, that they seized Cyprus. Lord Cranbrook can hardly name the name of peace without a rhapsody. And it is not only peace that they have thus loved, but freedom, too. Lord Cranbrook regards all that the Government did, both at Constantinople and Berlin, as work done in the spirit of Liberals, and on behalf of the oppressed populations of the East. He is very proud indeed of the suggestions made by Lord Salisbury to Turkey at the Constantinople Conference of 1876-7. And yet he is equally proud of the gloss with which we accompanied that advice,— that if it did not suit Turkey to take it, it would certainly not suit England to enforce it. Had we con- sented to apply coercion, says Lord Cranbrook, in his most stentorian manner, " We should have been guilty of murder."
But men who call coercion, when applied to prevent wholesale murder, itself murder, can hardly, we think, take so much credit to themselves for the Liberalism they display when, in dulcet tones, they advise the murderer, whose own execution they so passionately deprecate, what they would wish him to do, by way of regaining his moral reputation with the world. By Lord Cranbrook's own confession, this Liberalism is all words. The Government did nothing at Constantinople, they did nothing later, to enforce on Turkey their own advice. They left all that to Russia, and not only left it to Russia, but poured the most unmeasured vituperation on Russia for assuming the part they had left to her. It is thus quite in the general line of the audacity of Lord Cranbrook's speech, that after denouncing in language foaming with passion the suggestion that we ought to have proposed to join in coercing Turkey into decency, he yet loudly claims for Lord Beaconsfield's Government the great credit of interfering to gain for the subject popula- tions of Turkey, a measure of autonomy and freedom which the Liberals during twenty years had failed to procure for them. Why, by his own showing, it was Russia that did this,—and Russia that did it, under all the obloquy of our severest censure ! Still, he snatches at both testimonials of merit at once. He maintains that his Government has gained the prize at once for generosity to Turkey, and generosity to Turkey's most miserable victims. Lord Beaconsfield defended Turkey with one hand, and threw his shield over Turkey's slaves with the other. No doubt he did, and with precisely equal effect. He expended nothing but sound on behalf of either. He robbed Turkey of Cyprus. He pretended to regain Roumelia for her,—without effecting it. He did his best, however, to diminish the gain of the Bulgarians, Roumelians, and Greeks.. And in what he could not help, he followed in the steps of Russia. After this, it is rather a draft on English credulity for Lord Cranbrook to claim for the British Governnaent the double distinction of having saved Turkey, and having set free the slaves of Turkey, too.
The same astounding audacity runs through the rest of
the speech. In one very solemn passage, Lord Cranbrook warned his audience of the danger of teaching the country to play fast and loose with the engagements of their prede- cessors. What, he said, could be worse than attacks on the Treaty of Berlin, which taught Englishmen to think that if the Liberals succeeded the Tories, the solemn engagements of the, country would be set at naught. Yet he had himself admitted only a moment before that the Liberal chiefs had little or no fault to find with the positive part of the Treaty of Berlin, as actually worked out in practice by the Powers of Europe themselves. He had admitted that even his severest critic, the Duke of Argyll, bad found no hole to pick in the Treaty of Berlin, as it is now put in execution. In fact, Lord Cranbrook was thinking not of the Treaty of Berlin, but of the Convention with Turkey. He knew very well that his own colleagues, and not the Liberals, have plunged the country into the terrible dilemma to which he alluded. They have made England take an impossible engagement to defend a land frontier of thousands of miles against an un-get-at-able foe. They have contracted for their successors to do what they have not even lifted a finger to do for themselves,— what they are not even prepared to vote a shilling to help to do. It is this most unrighteous attempt to pledge their successors to bear a burden which they themselves decline to touch with one of their fingers, which really deserves the reproaches which Lord Cranbrook pours on the unhappy Liberals, for simply saying that the burden is an impos- sible one to bear. If it be not impossible to bear, why do those who undertook it, refuse to lift it? Why do they not come down to the country, and propose a vote of money to help the Turks in the fortification of their frontier, and in the administrative reforms which are the conditions of our aid ? It is har3ly worthy of an orator who professes to address his audience as he would ad- dress his own conscience, to make the one subject on which his own conscience undoubtedly pricks him, and pricks him severely, the excuse for a high-flown censure on his foes.
Perhaps, however, Lord Cranbrook surpasses himself in the financial part of his speech. He declares that the Liberals only wanted the Tories to pay their way, because it would have ren- dered them unpopular to pay their way. He declares that by spending six millions they have saved the country from a pro- table debt of six hundred millions :—he declares that as for accumulating debt, the Government are paying it off almost 1..s rapidly as they accumulate it ; in a word, lie is indif- ferent to the testimony of figures, and takes the debit side of the account as if it were the credit side, though he does not take the credit side as if it were the debit side. We are not sure that Lord Cranbrook, in all this, is not wise. Talking very loud to a democracy is a very good bit of tactics. But then he should not, as a British Peer and gentleman, call it talking as he would talk to his own conscience. That is a little too unscrupulous, even for the bellowing of a thorough John Bull. When a bull bellows like Lord Oran- brook, it makes no pretence of a conscience, though it is cs:entatious enough about its temper. It would be in better taste, if he would do likewise. The character of a Pecksniff does not suit him; and to say the truth, this is the first, and we hope it may be the last time, on which he has ever assumed it.
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