Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 54.djvu/70

 his party by declining to vote against the Irish Land Bill of 1870. In fact his general tendency at this time was towards projects of administrative reform. He thought that, until it had a substantial majority, the conservative party should avoid office, and seek to check the extremer measures of its opponents and support their moderate bills. He had long been conspicuous for his knowledge of and interest in such non-party matters as sanitary reform, technical education, the regulation of mines, the acquisition of people's parks, and the growth of co-operative societies, and he was surpassed only by Lord Shaftesbury in the time, thought, and trouble that he gave to them. His influence in the country generally was in consequence perhaps higher than in his own party, though even there he was much esteemed, and, had he chosen, might have led his party in the House of Lords from 1869, when his father's death conferred on him the earldom of Derby.

Disraeli took office in February 1874, and Derby again became foreign secretary. The eastern question was once more the disturbing factor in European politics. Between his conviction that the integrity of Turkey was a most important British interest and his passion for peace Lord Derby soon found himself in a position of perplexity from which it was difficult for him in office to emerge satisfactorily. At first he was sanguine of success in his efforts to preserve England from the risk of war, and, ignoring the possibilities of failure, was perhaps more tolerant of diplomatic rebuffs than the situation warranted. He was a party, but not very willingly, to the purchase of the Suez Canal shares; he accepted the Andrassy note urging reforms on the sultan of Turkey, but only after considerable delay. Count Beust, the Austrian ambassador to the court of St. James, pursued him to Knowsley, and there and in London spent three weeks in a siege of persuasion before obtaining the despatch of 25 Jan. 1876 to Sir Henry Elliot, the British ambassador to Vienna, which secured the adhesion of Great Britain to the Austrian proposals for the reorganisation of the Turkish government. Suspecting secret arrangements between Russia and Austria, he declined to join in May 1876 in the Berlin memorandum, which urged upon Turkey the necessity of fulfilling her promises of reform. In September he wrote to Elliot, then ambassador at Constantinople, ordering him to demand of the Porte the punishment of those responsible for the Bulgarian atrocities. The Constantinople conference of December 1876, which was intended to compel reforms in the government of the Porte, was due to his initiative, and he sought in general to assist and encourage the Porte to carry out reforms, while giving it warning that military protection from England was not to be looked for should Turkey be attacked by other powers. In April 1877 Russia invaded Turkey. Public opinion was divided as to the part that England should play in the struggle. The Bulgarian outrages, on the one hand, excited in one half of the population an hostility to Turkey which diplomacy could not control, while, on the other hand, an equally large party in England, suspicious of Russia, urged an armed defence of Turkey, and was the more powerful in the ministry and among the influential classes of society. Derby's efforts to bring the Russo-Turkish war to a close failed, and in a despatch of 6 May 1877 he defined the conditions in which England must intervene and take the offensive against the enemies of Turkey. Russia's continued successes seemed to make war for England inevitable, and Derby, unready to face that possibility, found himself increasingly in disagreement with the prime minister. The result was the appearance of vacillation in the government policy. When the order was given, at the prime minister's instance, for the fleet to pass the Dardanelles on 23 Jan. 1878, Derby felt that the die had been cast for war, and tendered his resignation; but when this advance was countermanded, he returned to office. He concurred in the policy of refusing to recognise the treaty of San Stefano, by which Russia imposed her own terms on Turkey (March 1878), but disapproved of the vigorous menaces of war with Russia which Beaconsfield made thereon. Accordingly, having reluctantly supported the credit of 6,000,000l., he suddenly resigned again on 28 March 1878, ostensibly, but far from solely, upon the policy of calling out the reserves (, ccxli. 1793). It was asked why, if he was only to resign at last, he had consented to resume office after his recent resignation. His attitude failed to become clearer when on 11 July his statements, in announcing his resignation in the House of Lords, and those of Lord Salisbury, who succeeded him at the foreign office, were in flat contradiction of each other. His actions certainly bore an appearance of indecision, owing doubtless to his natural disposition, in matters of emergency, to temporise rather than to strike. But his main object was at all hazards to keep England out of a European war, and it was at any rate in part owing to his efforts that that result was achieved. After quitting office, he drifted further and further