MR GLADSTONE ON THE EASTERN QUESTION.

Globe, Volume VII, Issue 754, 18 November 1876, Page 3

MR GLADSTONE ON THE EASTERN QUESTION.

(From the Some News.) Mr Gladstone’s pamphlet and address to his constituents on the ‘ ‘Bulgarian horrors” have been among the events of the month. The former is written with much vigour, and with more than Mr Gladstone’s customary clearness, but it is difficult to see what definite good it can accomplish. Having commented on the reticence of the Government on the subject of the deeds done in Bulgaria while Parliament Avas sitting, and the danger, now that Parliament has risen, lest the English Government should by its policy misrepresent the English people, Mr Gladstone dAvells on the exceptional viciousness of the Turkish Mahommedans. The Turks, he says, “ are not the mild Mahommedans of India, nor the chivalrous iSaladins of Syria, nor the cultured Moors of Spain.” They represented, according to him, and they still represent, Government by force as opposed to Government by law, having for the guide of life a “ relentless fatalism,” and for its “ future hereafter a sensual paradise,” After this Mr Gladstone again attacks the Government for its dilatoriness in inquiring into the Bulgarian massacres, and for allowing the fleet in Besika Bay to have the appearance of a resolution on the part of England—coinciding as its despatch did Avith the rejection of the Berlin memorandum—to protect the Turkish Empire at all hazards. Mr Gladstone, hoAvever, docs not now advise the withdrawal of the

licet, but a distinct assertion on the part of the Government that it is kept in Turkish waters for purposes of humanity only. In conclusion, Mr Gladstone protests against the notion that be wants to see the present Government displaced. He wants a change of measures, not of men—“ a change of attitude and policy, nothing less, nor more.” The specific objects which he thinks the Cabinet ought to keep in view after the termination of the war are the restoration of order in Bulgaria, the autonomy not only of Bulgaria, but of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the redemption of the Xffitish honor, “ which, in the deplorable events of the year, had been more gravely compromised than I have known it at any other former period to be.” Mr Gladstone’s pamphlet was followed by his speech on Saturday, September 9th. What was chiefly noticeable in his speech was the sense of responsibility which it disclosed in comparison with his pamphlet. It was altogether more temperate, and more statesmanlike than the now famous tract 8 and it is believed that the advice of Lord Hartingtou, who had spoken at Sheffield on Thursday night, on the same topic, had much to do with this moderation. Mr Gladstone’s chief point was that the central Government at Constantinople was as much answerable for the infamies perpetrated in Bulgaria as the Bashi-Bazouks and the Circassians themselves, ami that Servin. in going to war, had committed no moral offence. Not content with his pamphlet on the “ question of the East” and his Greenwich speech, Mr Gladstone wrote a letter to the Times on Saturday, September Kith, reicerating in a long scries of paragraphs his reasons for censuring the foreign policy of the Bast, and is said to be now correcting the proof sheets of a new tractate on the Bulgarian horrors. The best answer that the Government could have offered to the exPremier’s charge of Ministerial apathy was contained in a speech which the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is now the leader of the House of Commons, delivered to the Conservative working men of Edinburgh on the evening of the same day as that on which Mr Gladstone’s theses appeared in the Times. It was from the lips of Sir Stafford Northcote that the country first heard of the temporary truce between Turkeyj and Korvia,