Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 131.djvu/424

418 of the Turkish government were unable to suppress the insurrection, unable to overcome the resistance of that little band of warriors, warriors worthy to rank with the men who gathered round Alfred at Athelney, or round Hereward at Ely. Down to this moment the insurrection has not been suppressed; Herzegovina has not been won back by the barbarian. The native heroes of the land, strengthened by their brethren from the Black Mountain, still stand victorious on the soil which they have won from the barbarian, and which the barbarian has failed to win back from them. The suppression of the insurrection which Lord Derby wished for is still, in September, 1876, as it was in August, 1875, a thing which diplomatists may long for, but which freedom has but little reason to fear.

But meanwhile another insurrection has been suppressed; and now the world knows what Turkish suppression of insurrections means. The tale of Bulgarian wrongs need not be told again. Lord Beaconsfield himself perhaps knows by this time how "an oriental people" have done what all the world, except Lord Beaconsfield, knows to be the manner of "an oriental people." They have done as the barbarians of the East have ever done, since the Hebrew put his Ammonite captives under saws and under axes of iron, and made them to pass through the brick-kiln. The Turk has done after his kind; and the voice of England, the voice of mankind, has pronounced sentence on him and his abettors. Servia, which for a moment seemed to have been overthrown in her glorious struggle, still holds her own, and every moment that she holds her own makes it more certain that she will not long be left without a helper. The mightiest people of her race will soon be on the march for her deliverance. Lord Derby, who, thirteen months back, was thinking of suppressing insurrections, will soon have to think what he will do when the myriads of Russia come to the help of their brethren in blood and faith. They have come already; despotism itself has its bounds, and the peace-loving czar either cannot or will not keep back his people from what in their eyes is the holiest of crusades. It has come to this, that Englishmen are prepared to see Russia step in and do the work that England should have done. If the Russians ever occupy Constantinople, it will be Lord Derby who has placed them there.

It is hardly worth while to go again through the whole tale of ministerial incapacity, to use the mildest words. Lord Beaconsfield is true to his creed of Asian mysteries. He seeks his models among the ancient worthies of his own people. Truly he looks to Abraham his father and unto Sarah that bare him. Like his great ancestress, he takes such pains to assure us that he did not laugh as to provoke the retort, "Nay, but thou didst laugh." He recalls too at least one exploit of his great ancestor in the zeal with which he flies to the help of the rulers of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is hardly needful again to refute the base slanders of the tongue which spoke of the doings of the tyrant and of the patriot as equal in guilt, and which affected to see nothing but hankering after "provinces" in the high resolve of the Servian people to do or die for right. Over and over again has Lord Derby told us that he did not, and could not, have directly instigated the Turkish doings in Bulgaria. Over and over again has it been explained to him that nobody ever thought that he had directly instigated them, that he is the last man whom anybody would suspect of directly instigating anything. But over and over again has it also been explained to him that he has none the less made himself an abettor and an accomplice after the fact, by keeping the English fleet in a position which all mankind but himself believed to be meant as a demonstration in favor of the evil cause. There is no need again to answer such fallacies as the memorable argument that, because Christians, Mahometans, and Hindoos could live peaceably together under the English government of India, therefore Christians and Mahometans can peacefully live together under the Turkish government of south-eastern Europe. Lord Derby's earlier talk has become a thing of the past. In the process of his education he may already have got beyond it; he may be educating himself backward to the days when his words on Turkish matters were somewhat different from his recent acts. But Lord Derby himself is unhappily a thing of the present, and some of his later sayings are still matters of practical importance. At the moment when I write Servian and Turk are resting on their arms. An effort is being made to bring about peace between them, a peace in the negotiation of which a representative of England cannot fail to take a leading part. It is a matter for anxious and painful thought that the representative of England at such a moment should be a man who, with whatever motives, through whatever 