ANNUAL REGISTER

FOR THE YEAR

1880.

PART I.

ENGLISH HISTORY.

CHAPTER I.

Suspension of Diplomatic Relations with the Porte-The Ahmed Tewfik incidentState of Affairs in Afghanistan and in South Africa-The Prospect of Famine in Ireland-Mr. Parnell in America-Distress in England-Extra-Parliamentary Speeches-The Liverpool Election-The Sheffield and Southwark Elections-The Meeting of Parliament-The Queen's Speech-Prolonged Debates on the Address-The Government and the Anticipated Irish Famine-Debates on the "Relief of Distress Bill "--The Policy of the Government in Afghanistan -Conversation in the Lords-Blue Book-Motion for production of papers relating to Russian intrigue at Cabul-Lord Northbrook's Speech-Proposal for dealing with Obstruction-Mr. Plimsoll's Breach of Privilege-Anti-Obstruction Standing Order- Mr. Grissell's Punishment--The Army Estimates-The Navy Estimates The Lord Chancellor's Land Bills-The Metropolitan Water Works Purchase Bill--The Game Laws--Local Option.

ENGLAND was half-startled, half-amused on New Year's Day, by an announcement that official relations with the Porte had been suspended. It was hardly possible to believe that any serious consequences could follow from the rupture, and yet so strong a measure could not fail to cause some uneasiness. The Austrian and the German ambassadors, it was said, were exerting themselves to heal the breach between Sir H. Layard and Said Pasha, the Turkish Prime Minister. But the former had put his foot down, after long forbearance, and was not to be moved. He remained in semiofficial relations with the Sultan, but he would hold no official communication with the Sultan's Ministers till certain demands had been complied with.

These demands had reference to an incident petty enough in itself to be the cause of such a commotion. Several months before, a German Missionary, Dr. Köller, had been arrested and searched,

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and in a carpet bag which he was carrying was found a copy of a book containing disrespectful remarks about the Mohammedan religion, and two manuscript translations from the New Testament and the Book of Common Prayer. Dr. Köller's papers were seized; and a Turkish schoolmaster, Ahmed Tewfik, who had been employed to supervise the translation, was thrown into prison, and threatened with the extreme penalty of the sacred law, for having put his hand to an infidel document. So gross a breach of the Sultan's promises of toleration could not pass unnoticed, and as long before as in September Sir H. Layard had demanded the release of Ahmed Tewfik, the restoration of Dr. Köller's papers, and the dismissal of Hafiz Pasha, the Minister of Police, who had ordered the arrest of the Khodja. Satisfaction being put off on various pretexts, our Ambassador had declared that if his demands were not complied with by December 31, he would withdraw from official relations with the Porte. It was the performance of this threat that produced the startling New Year's Day news to which we have referred.

The breach did not last long; and in the end, Sir H. Layard had to put up with a very incomplete satisfaction. A letter from a "Nonagenarian" in the Times, who was at once identified as the veteran Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, gave a more serious aspect to the affair than it had worn at first. People had been somewhat puzzled by the importance attached to the arrest of the poor khodja till a "Nonagenarian" explained that Ahmed Tewfik was really a Ulema of considerable distinction, who had been tutor to a member of the Royal family, under Abdul Aziz; and held an important post in the Sultan's grammar-school-a sort of focus of enlightenment in Turkey. The persecution of this man as an apostate and a proselytiser, who had been simply employed as a scholar to correct a translation, was significant as an index to the temper of the fanatical party predominant in the Sultan's councils. It was of the utmost importance, a "Nonagenarian" urged, that they should not be allowed to secure a victory.

The progress of the incident was therefore watched for some days with curiosity, though the general interest quickly subsided when it appeared that the difficulty would be patched up. At the instance of his brother ambassadors, Sir H. Layard consented to a compromise: Dr. Köller's papers, which it was pretended had been lost, were restored. A harsh sentence of death or imprisonment, which had been pronounced on Ahmed Tewfik, was cancelled, and he was deported to the island of Scios, on the pretext that it was necessary for his own safety that he should not be left in Constantinople, exposed to the fury of fanatics among the population. In the official notification of his pardon, the Sultan made no acknowledgment of his breach of promises of toleration. He affirmed that Ahmed Tewfik was punishable under the law of the Koran, but that he owed his pardon to the Sultan's clemency and desire to be on good terms with his allies. Hafiz Pasha was not dismissed, but he

resigned his office, and immediately afterwards was decorated with the order of the Medjidie, and appointed one of the Sultan's own aide-de-camps. With this doubtful victory Sir H. Layard had to be satisfied; and tried in vain, in subsequent correspondence, to obtain from the Sultan's Ministers any abatement of his pretensions. Between this disturbing creak in our strained relations with Turkey, the echoes of which had not died away by the end of January, and the opening of Parliament on February 5, the current of public affairs ran with tolerable smoothness; though there were angry spots here and there over the huge area of our Imperial system which needed anxious tending. The New Year had opened with good news from Afghanistan-the complete dispersal of the armed gathering by which Sir F. Roberts had been beleaguered at Cabul; and the apparent collapse of the attempt of Mahomed Jan to rally the Afghan cause at Ghuznee, under the green flag unfurled by the aged Mollah, Mushki-Alam. But this clearing of the sky on the North-west frontier of India did not last long. The clouds which had been dispersed soon began to gather again as threateningly as before. From the Transvaal on the 3rd came a welcome report that Sir Garnet Wolseley had accomplished his mission of restoring order, and that his return had been fixed for the month of February. But this was followed a few days afterwards by the less satisfactory intelligence that telegraphic communication with Pretoria had been cut, and that two of the Boer leaders, Burgers and Bok, had been arrested on a charge of high treason or exciting their countrymen to revolt.

A livelier interest was taken in the disturbed state of Ireland. The belief in the reality of the distress with which the Irish peasantry were threatened would probably have been less dashed with scepticism if the language of agitators had been less heated, and an attempt to make political capital out of the distress had not occupied the foreground of their speeches. In particular, attention was directed from the facts of the Irish distress to the anti-landlord, anti-rent campaign in America, for which the distress furnished Mr. Parnell with a pretext. Mr. Parnell, indeedwho arrived at New York in the "Scythia" on January 2, and was received with addresses of welcome from Reception Committees of Irishmen in the United States-affirmed that one of his objects was to collect funds for the relief of the distress; but he declared from the moment of his landing that this object was subsidiary to another the seizure of the unexampled opportunity for making war upon the land system; to the operation of which he believed the distress to be due. The New York Herald had advised Irishmen in America to subscribe liberally, to save people in their mother country from starvation; and proposed the appointment of a committee to collect funds for the purpose. Mr. Parnell was invited to join this committee, but he refused. He would have nothing to do, he said, with a scheme for the relief of distressed landlords and the British Government. It was for them to see that

the people did not die of famine. "If you want to help us," he said to his audiences, "help us to destroy the system which produces famine." Which was to say that Mr. Parnell wished to collect funds to carry out the purposes of his Land League, and enable small tenant-farmers to become the owners of the soil of their holdings. Irishmen in the United States, however, were more impressed with the necessity of making provision against immediate distress. Mr. Parnell was received with great courtesy. The halls of the Representative Assembly at Washington and of several State Legislatures were placed at his disposal, in order that he might fully explain his case. But he wore out his welcome by his wall-eyed pertinacity in urging his own nostrum, and the virulence with which he spoke of the Relief Funds organised by the Duchess of Marlborough and the Lord Mayor of Dublin. He not only described these funds as means for relieving landlords and the State from their just obligations, but indulged in bitter personalities against all connected with them. The American newspapers were especially severe regarding his attacks on the Duchess of Marlborough. They described Mr. Parnell's mission as a failure, and attributed the failure entirely to himself.

It was natural that the prospect of famine in Ireland should be supposed to be more or less a rhetorical "bogey," when Mr. Parnell, instead of urging that immediate relief should be sent, sneered at the relief agencies already in operation. Another circumstance which went to encourage the same impression was a quarrel between the managers of the two relief funds, whose head quarters were in Dublin. The Duchess of Marlborough complained that subscriptions were sent by mistake to the Lord Mayor, which were intended for her fund, and the Lord Mayor resented this as an imputation upon the honour of himself and his secretaries.

The symptoms of keen distress in England were less marked than last year, but the Revenue Returns furnished a significant index of the state of the national prosperity. Except on the supposition that the nation had taken a sudden fit of thrift, it was obvious that people had less money to spend when the Revenue showed such a falling off from the previous year. In the month of January, nearly a million less was collected from the various sources of revenue than in the January of 1879, and the first week of February presented the unparalleled phenomenon of a deficiency of more than half a million. The chief falling off was in the Excise. There was a decrease in January in the receipts from this source as compared with the previous year of 485,0007., and in the first week of February a decrease of 342,000l. Although less was said about the distress in England, a great deal undoubtedly existed throughout the month of January, and quiet and unostentatious measures were taken for its relief. At a conference of unemployed labourers held at the Mansion House, on January 23, at which delegates from thirty-four districts were present, various schemes of relief were discussed. The idea of holding a meeting

in Hyde Park to make known the destitute condition of unskilled labourers was mooted, but local meetings were recommended instead. Such signs of the pinching of the industrial system made themselves felt, but Lord Derby was probably justified in a remark which he made in addressing the Incorporated Chamber of Commerce at Huddersfield, on January 8, that in no previous industrial crisis had there been so little suffering.

near.

The oratorical battle between the leading men of the parties, which had been suspended about the time of the New Year, was resumed with fresh vigour as the reassembling of Parliament drew At Oxford, on January 13, Sir W. Harcourt defended himself brilliantly from the charge of saying the same things over again. Lord George Hamilton was also one of the first to break silence; he had gone to Edinburgh to encourage his party against the effects of Mr. Gladstone's Midlothian campaign, and made a dashing speech to the Edinburgh Conservative Association on January 14. On January 15, Mr. W. H. Smith spoke at Sutton, Sir S. Northcote at Stroud, Mr. Baxter at Forfar, and Mr. Stansfield at Halifax. This activity continued up to the eve of the meeting of Parliament. It was estimated that in the course of this recess more speeches had been made by Cabinet Ministers than in all the recesses of other Parliaments put together.

The death of Mr. Torr, one of the members for Liverpool, on January 16, gave rise to an exciting contest for the vacant seat. The result was eagerly looked forward to as a test of the feeling of the country, and both sides put forth all their strength. The Conservative candidate was a Liverpool solicitor, personally popular in the town; the Liberal candidate, Lord Ramsay, was unknown in Liverpool, but showed much spirit and ability in his electioneering speeches, and gained popularity so quickly, that his supporters, at first doubtful of winning a Conservative stronghold, began to be A peculiarity in the Liverpool constituency sanguine of success. is the size of the Irish vote, and out of this grew the most notable episode in the contest. It was announced at first that the Irish electors would abstain from voting, because Lord Ramsay would not go far enough to satisfy their Home Rule leaders. A day or two afterwards it was announced that Lord Ramsay had agreed to vote for Mr. Shaw's motion, affirming the expediency of an inquiry into the claims of the Home Rulers, and that in consequence the Irish electors of Liverpool would vote for him. A cry was immediately raised against Lord Ramsay's concession as a sacrifice of principle for the sake of winning a vote, and Lord Sandon, who was in Liverpool actively supporting Mr. Whitley's candidature, denounced him in strong language for thus identifying himself with those who wished to dismember the Empire. A report was circulated that Lord Ramsay, by his unworthy compliance, had forfeited the countenance of the Liberal leaders, and this report drew from Lord Hartington a letter in which he declared that while opposed to the demand for Home Rule himself, he did not consider it necessary to