Читать книгу The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford - Beresford Charles William De la Poer Beresford - Страница 16

NOTE

The following brief summary of political and international affairs is introduced for convenience of reference. It may be skipped by the reader, should he disdain politics.

The Government of Mr. Gladstone, returned to power in 1868, began to disintegrate in 1873. The proximate cause was the Irish University Education Bill, announced in the Speech from the Throne at the opening of the session on 6th February, 1873. Irish affairs have always been the curse of the Liberal Party. But a popular Government would have survived even the Irish University Education Bill, which, designed to please all parties, failed of course to please any. The truth is that, as people soon or late weary of all administrations, so they turned from the Liberal Government. Mr. Disraeli summarised the history of the Government in a piece of invective which has become classic: "You have had four years of it. You have despoiled churches. You have threatened every corporation and every endowment in the country. You have examined into everybody's affairs. You have criticised every profession and vexed every trade. No one is certain of his property, and no one knows what duties he may have to perform to-morrow. I believe that the people of this country have had enough of the policy of confiscation."

The Government were beaten on the Irish University Education Bill; Mr. Gladstone resigned; but Mr. Disraeli declined to take office. Mr. Gladstone was therefore compelled to carry on the Government. Early in 1874 he suddenly appealed to the electorate; which, however, chose to give his opponents a majority. Mr. Gladstone resigned, or partly resigned, his leadership, and plunged into the esoteric joys of a controversy dealing with the doctrine of Papal infallibility. It would seem that a great ecclesiastic was sacrificed, when the young Gladstone chose to give to politics talents which would have won him the Archbishopric of Canterbury.

In Mr. Disraeli's Cabinet Lord Cairns was Lord Chancellor; Lord Derby, Foreign Secretary; Lord Salisbury, Secretary of State for India; Lord Carnarvon, Colonial Secretary; Mr. Cross, Home Secretary; Mr. Gathorne Hardy, Secretary of State for War; Mr. Ward Hunt, First Lord of the Admiralty; Sir Stafford Northcote, Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Duke of Richmond, as Lord President of the Council, led the Conservative party in the House of Lords. The Liberal leader, walking in the Gladstonian shadow, was Lord Hartington.

In 1874 the Bill for the Regulation of Public Worship was passed. In the following year Mr. Plimsoll, by the exercise of that dogged determination and gallant defiance of Parliamentary conventions, by means of which Parliament can sometimes be goaded into acts of justice, forced the Government to pass the Merchant Shipping Bill. Mr. Cross, the Home Secretary, introduced the useful Artisans' Dwellings Bill, which was passed. Upon 25th November, 1875, the Government, at the suggestion of Mr. Frederic Greenwood, purchased from the Khedive of Egypt, 176,000 Suez Canal shares for the sum of £4,000,000.

In the same year, the Prince of Wales, afterwards King Edward VII, went to India, whither he was accompanied by Commander Lord Charles Beresford, M.P., as A.D.C. (Lord Charles was promoted to the rank of commander on 2nd November, 1875.) The Prince received a telegram informing him of the purchase of the Suez Canal shares when his ship was passing through the Canal on the way to India. Lord Lytton was appointed Viceroy of India. In 1876 it was announced that the Queen was to assume the additional title of "Empress of India."

In July, 1875, there was trouble in the Near East, which, nearly two years later, in April, 1877, resulted in the declaration by Russia of war against Turkey. The Mediterranean Fleet was ordered to pass the Dardanelles. In March, 1878, Lord Derby resigned, and Lord Salisbury succeeded him at the Foreign Office. Mr. Gathorne Hardy went to the India Office, Colonel Stanley to the War Office, and Mr. James Lowther became Chief Secretary for Ireland. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach had already succeeded Lord Carnarvon at the Colonial Office.

In the Parliament of 1875-80, young Mr. Parnell began his career. Indomitable, subtle, cold and inscrutable, he speedily became a power. A Protestant in faith, he had his foot on the necks of the Irish Roman Catholic Nationalist members; half an Englishman by birth, he was an implacable enemy of England. Utilising the tactics of obstruction, he succeeded in bringing discredit upon a Government which was powerless to control him and his led captains. He forced the Government to pass a Bill for University Education in Ireland; and as the measure was no better, if no worse, than the Gladstonian scheme which had been rejected, so the result upon the Conservative administration was equally injurious.

Mr. Gladstone emerged from his studies in Papal infallibility to denounce Bulgarian atrocities and the like. But the country declined to become excited on the subject. In the meantime the Russian army was approaching Constantinople. The British Government took public measures of military and naval precaution clearly implying that Russia would not be permitted to occupy Constantinople. Prince Bismarck thereupon intervened, and invited the nations concerned to discuss matters at Berlin. Lord Beaconsfield (he had received his peerage in 1876) and Prince Bismarck were the two most powerful men in Europe. Beaconsfield chose himself to represent Great Britain at the Congress, which opened at Berlin on 13th June, 1878. Lord Beaconsfield returned in triumph, bearing with him "Peace with Honour."

The advance of Russian influence in Afghanistan induced the British Government, in 1878, to dispatch an expedition to Cabul, which was occupied by British troops, and from which the Amir, Shere Ali, fled. Followed, the signature of the treaty of Gandamak by Yakoob Khan, son and successor of Shere Ali; the treacherous murder of Sir Louis Cavagnan, British Envoy, and the greater number of his staff; and the recapture of Cabul by British troops. The true history of the whole affair, much distorted at the time (and since) by political malice, is lucidly set forth in Lord Roberts's Forty-one Years in India, by the great soldier who took so distinguished a part in it.

Another frontier war broke out in 1879. In South Africa, Sir Theophilus Shepstone had annexed the Transvaal; Sir Bartle Frere, Lord High Commissioner, announcing to the Zulu king Cetewayo, that Cetewayo was entitled to a strip of territory claimed both by Cetewayo and the Transvaal Republic, ordered him to disband his army. The advance of British troops was checked by their total defeat by the Zulus on 22nd January, 1879, at Isandhlwana. Lord Chelmsford the commander-in-chief, prosecuted the campaign, defeated Cetewayo and took him prisoner. During the war the young Prince Louis Napoleon, son of the Empress Eugenie, lost his life.

In the meantime, the trade of the country had been profoundly depressed, with the natural result that there was much discontent. On 24th March, 1880, Parliament was dissolved; and the Liberal party were returned with a majority of some hundred and twenty. The Queen sent for Lord Hartington; sent for Lord Granville; and finally, for Mr. Gladstone.

The Russo-Turkish war of 1877 had brought Russia into opposition to Austria-Hungary, thus destroying the alliance of the three Emperors; and although Bismarck made peace between the two Powers at the Congress of Berlin, Russia became estranged from Germany. In order to restore her security, Germany concluded an alliance with Austria-Hungary and shortly afterwards with Italy, which had quarrelled with France concerning her occupation of Tunis. Thus was formed the Triple Alliance. Its counterpoise was the drawing together of France and Russia, in view of whose possibilities Prince Bismarck in 1887 increased the German Army. In 1900 Germany passed the Navy Law, which ordained that the German Fleet should be so strong that any attack upon it would be dangerous to the attacking party.

Nothing but the strength of the British Fleet, which had been largely increased by the action of Lord Charles Beresford in 1888, and again by the naval programme of 1893, and whose organisation had been brought to a high state of efficiency by Admiral Sir Frederick Richards (afterwards admiral of the Fleet), prevented the outbreak of war between England and France at the time of the Fashoda incident in 1897.