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people get more and more familiarised with this idea, the easier you will find its extension; and only in some further devolution, subject, as I have said, to the Imperial Parliament, will you find it possible to work that vast and complicated organisation which is called the British Empire. It has been by such a system of devolution that we have been able to found, outside these kingdoms, the greatest Empire that the world has ever seen; and we shall find in the same principle the solution of many, if not most, of our difficulties inside. In that respect the cause of Ireland stands first, but not last. The Liberal party, in my opinion, will never find its full strength until it has enlisted all the power and sympathy and freedom which it would gain in every part of the United Kingdom by the systematised devolution of local business to the localities themselves.

"Well, that is as much as I can say on that head. But there is another and more permanent barrier which opposes itself to your wishes in respect to Welsh Disestablishment. I need not mention to this assembly the attitude of the House of Lords. You know how it treats Welsh matters, how it treats those Welsh popular schemes of education which have been sent up to it during the past two sessions. I have no time to-night to deal with the House of Lords, and there really is not the slightest necessity for my doing so."

CHAPTER XXX

THE ARMENIAN

ATROCITIES-THE DIFFICULTIES WITH TURKEY—MR. GLADSTONE'S ATTITUDE-LORD ROSEBERY AND THE LIBERAL PARTY -RESIGNATION OF LEADERSHIP-HIS GOOD-BYE" SPEECH-OUR POLICY IS PEACE-THE CONCERT OF EUROPE-A PEER LEADER'S DISADVANTAGES-" IF I HAD BEEN IN THE COMMONS "-RESIGNATION TO PROMOTE UNITY

WHE

HEN Lord Rosebery appeared in the House of Lords at the opening of the new Parliament, he appeared to be in much better health and spirits than for the last few months during which he had been in office. The relief from the cares of office must have been most welcome. The new Government had come into office at no easy time. In South Africa the Jameson raid had been conceived, and was being prepared. It took place at the end of the year. In the East the atrocities committed by the Turks upon the Armenians filled the heart and conscience of the nation with horror and indignation. The real facts, long and carefully hidden, were becoming known. Englishmen would gladly have torn the Sultan Abdul Hamid from his throne, and have made the power of Turkey a thing of the past. But the Turks were-and are

Abdul Hamid and Europe

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-a strong and powerful people, claiming to act as they please within their own territories; and to destroy the Turkish power meant the disintegration of the Turkish dominions and an inevitable squabble amongst the European Powers over their distribution. No one knew that better than the Sultan. Successive foreign Ministers in England might protest and persuade and warn and threaten the Sultan; but Abdul Hamid turned his eyes to the Courts of Europe, and saw in the jealousies and disputes of the Powers the opportunity of proceeding as he pleased with his cruelties, practically unchecked. The British Government, whether that of Lord Rosebery or of his successor Lord Salisbury, protested as firmly and strongly as they could, and did not hesitate to threaten.

Lord

Reforms were demanded, but not made. Rosebery and Lord Kimberley just before they left office had been considering the sending of an ultimatum to the Sultan. Lord Salisbury shortly afterwards said:

"If, generation after generation, cries of misery come up from various parts of the Turkish Empire, I am sure the Sultan cannot blind himself to the probability that Europe will at some time or other become weary of the appeals that are made to it, and the factitious strength that is given to his empire will fail it. . . . The Sultan will make a grave and calamitous mistake

if, for the sake of maintaining a mere formal independence, for the sake of resisting a possible encroachment on his nominal prerogative, he refuses to accept the assistance and to listen to the advice of the European Powers in extirpating from his dominions an anarchy and a weakness which no treaties and no sympathy will prevent from being fatal in the long run to the Empire over which he rules."

Lord Rosebery, speaking on this gloomy subject at the opening of Parliament in 1896, said:

"I cannot believe, and there are millions of my fellow-countrymen who cannot believe, that all has been done that might have been done. We do not live in an age of crusades. The inspiration and perhaps the faith which impelled embattled Christendom to rescue the Cross from the dominion of the Crescent are not present in these days. But between that chivalrous exaltation and the position of apathy, and, I would add, of degradation, in which we now find ourselves, in reference to the Christian populations of the Sultan, there is a wide abyss. I cannot but believe that between these two extremes some middle course might have been found, and that we might have been spared a page in our history to which we shall never look back without compunction, and the humiliation of seeing those Christians whom we were

A Gloomy Subject

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pledged to protect massacred and plundered and harried under the sublime gaze of the European Concert, complete in itself and directed by one of the authors of the Treaty of Berlin."

On several other occasions Lord Rosebery spoke on this subject, always expressing the most sincere sympathy with the suffering Armenians, but apparently at times greatly depressed by the hopelessness of helping them.

No amount of protest on the part of the European Powers for a time seemed to have the smallest effect upon the Sultan, for the massacres of Armenians still went on. Doubtless they would speedily have been stopped if the Concert of Europe could have been brought to more actual work—if jealousies and hatred of England could have been destroyed. At last Mr. Gladstone, who for long had been silent, came out from his retirement to speak of the atrocious cruelty of The Great Assassin." He said:

a

"Let us consider what was the massacre of Bulgaria in comparison with the massacre of Armenians. It created in Europe a greater sensation. Was it worse and more atrocious? On the contrary, I don't hesitate to say that, abominable and execrable and unpardonable as it was, yet it was of paler colour than those massacres which have taken place in the recesses of the Armenian hills. It was of a paler colour