That
which we would not allow Russia to do with Turkey, because we pleaded
the rights of Europe, we ourselves did with Russia, in contempt of the
rights of Europe. Nor was that all, gentlemen.
That act was done, I think, on one of the last days of May in the year
1878, and the document was published, made known to the world, made
known to the Congress at Berlin, to its infinite astonishment, unless
I am very greatly misinformed,--to its infinite astonishment.
But that was not all. Nearly at the same time we performed the same
operation in another quarter. We objected to a treaty between Russia
and Turkey as having no authority, though that treaty was made in the
light of day--namely, to the Treaty of San Stefano; and what did
we do? We went not in the light of day, but in the darkness of the
night--not in the knowledge and cognizance of other Powers, all of
whom would have had the faculty and means of watching all along, and
of preparing and taking their own objections and shaping their own
policy--not in the light of day, but in the darkness of the night, we
sent the Ambassador of England in Constantinople to the Minister of
Turkey, and there he framed, even while the Congress of Berlin was
sitting to determine these matters of common interest, he framed that
which is too famous, shall I say, or rather too notorious as the
Anglo-Turkish Convention. Gentlemen, it is said, and said truly, that
truth beats fiction; that what happens in fact from time to time is
of a character so daring, so strange, that if the novelist were to
imagine it and to put it upon his pages, the whole world would reject
it from its improbability.
Pages:
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388