GLADSTONE SAGACITY UNFOLDING.
Last month we ventured to say that "Mr Gladstone's Administration must avoid a war with Russia at any price which it may be possible to make this country pay;" also, that "by the time war is fairly declared, he" (that is, Mr Gladstone) "will have been tricked and bullied out of more than the whole stake originally contended for."[1] These predictions have not waited long for their fulfilment. Already the nation has been called upon to pay in money, to pay in territory, and (what is far more grievous) to pay in honour – and for what? for anything that we have enjoyed, for anything that we have acquired, for anything even that we may have said or done? For none of these things; we have paid simply for the indulgence which prisoners before the judge call "a long day" – for the permission to sneak in servile quiet through a few months, until it shall please our assailant to make fresh demands, and to make us pay afresh for his acquisitions. After all the loss and humiliation to which we have submitted, our position is morally and materially far worse than it was a few weeks since. We have given up what no sensitive nation could possibly have yielded, and we have made that which remains to us immeasurably less secure than it was before.
Our disgrace has been patent to the civilised world. We have suffered in opinion most injuriously, perhaps fatally. The papers published on 16th May, though they do not show the whole, and probably not the worst, part of the story, condemn our Ministers only too forcibly. We cannot afford – no Power can afford – to pass for recreant and submissive, to pocket up wrongs, without even turning as the worm will turn. So to suffer must in the end bring far worse calamity than resistance would have brought – even than unsuccessful war. The experience of all ages of the world upholds this contention, let sects or sophists prattle as they will.
It is quite admitted that when the matter in dispute may be trifling, when the quarrel may be on the ninth part of a hair, when by yielding a point of minor importance war may be averted and peace secured, then it is wise and generous to bear something more than is our due, to smother some not unreasonable complaint of ours, rather than seek redress by arms. But the predicament in which the British Empire at present stands is in no respect one for a high-minded and generous forbearance. The Empire has been subjected to gross insult. The particular grievance by which we have been last mortified is only one in a long series of such, all menacing to our possessions, all ruinous to our reputation. The breach of a "sacred covenant" to which we have just submitted is only the last of a long line of wrongs, – only a crowning perfidy to those by which Khiva, Merv, and Saraks were occupied by our shameless foe. We must look at the whole schedule of the offences against us before we pronounce upon the magnitude of the question. We must remember that,
- ↑ Vide 'Blackwood's Magazine' for last month – Art., "Curiosities of Politics," section, "The Ministry or the Country: which shall we Save?"
