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squadron at Salona. The news of this disaster had reached Ibrahim, and his determination to avenge it instantly had certainly some justification. The allied fleet had not maintained the peace on both sides, and Ibrahim may have felt entitled to punish the offender they had failed to restrain. He was, however, met as he was proceeding to sea, and ordered back into the Bay of Navarino, and on the 20th of October the allied fleet itself proceeded to enter and take up its position, ship against ship, over against the Turkish and Egyptian fleet. Such a proceeding was manifestly one of great hazard, and if Ibrahim had resolved to fight at the entrance of the bay, it might have been difficult for the fleet to have entered. But they had, in fact, almost completely proceeded to their stations when stray shots were fired—it is not easy to say how or why-musket shot was followed by a gun, broadsides were exchanged, in a short time the battle was completely in progress, which ended after four hours in the total destruction of the Turkish-Egyptian fleet. Mr. Canning could not have foreseen or prevented this destruction. It was not intended or designed by him or by any of the Powers, and its immediate result was the annihilation of the Turkish power at sea, and the reduction of Turkey to a condition of feebleness and helplessness which it had been his policy to prevent. Had he survived, he might have adopted, he could scarcely have quarrelled with, the language used in the Royal speech at the opening of Parliament, when Navarino was described as an untoward event.' But he might have gathered together his energies to deal with the new situation; he might still have sought to reconcile the triple aim of upholding Turkey, of delivering Greece, and of keeping back the power of Russia. The task might have been impossible of execution; his successors may be said to have abandoned it in sullenness, if not in despair. Nothing was done to mitigate the consequences of Navarino, or to recover the position which had been lost. The Porte felt itself confronted by Russia determined to advance, while England stood aloof, and France insisted on the return of Ibrahim to Egypt. In these circumstances it was not unnatural that a call should arise at Constantinople, rallying the Faithful to a 'jehad' or Holy War. Had there been a successor of Canning who knew exactly what he wanted, how far he would go in the liberation of Greece, and the line beyond which he would not advance in the reduction of Turkey, it might have been possible even at this juncture to force upon the Sultan a recognition of Greek independence, and while thus taking away the prime justification of Russian demands, have supported the Porte in resisting any further Russian action. The time passed, the word was not spoken, the opportunity was lost. The Russians found in the language of the appeal to the Faithful a sufficient ground for proclaiming war themselves in April 1828, confined however to operations on land and in the Black Sea, the neutrality of Russia in the Ægean being still somewhat strangely preserved.

The struggle did not, indeed, prove so one-sided as had been anticipated, and two campaigns were necessary to reduce Turkey to submission, yet the end was reached when peace was dictated at Adrianople in September of the following year (1829), and foremost among the terms of peace was the recognition of the independence of Greece. Everything that Mr. Canning desired to prevent was thus accomplished. The power of Turkey was broken, Greece obtained its freedom through Russia, and Russia became the paramount Power in South-eastern Europe. The result may not be a condemnation of Canning's policy; it was brought about partly by accident, and partly because no man of mental grasp and influence succeeded him to effect a recovery from the consequences of the accident. But the failure was complete, and looking back over the interval of seventy years we cannot regard the failure with unmixed regret.

It is not within my present purpose to pursue the subsequent fortunes of Greece. As it was Russia that had compelled Turkey to acknowledge its independence, it would have been neither unnatural nor unbecoming if Russian influence had predominated for at least the earlier years of its history. The enfranchised Greeks did, in fact, choose, as the first president of their now independent State, a man who, though born in the Ionian Islands, was a Russian by adoption and service. In his troubled administration Capo d' Istrias naturally leaned on the Power that had fostered him, whose forces were at hand to serve him in case of necessity. But when assassination put an end to his troubles, and the three Powers nominated a Bavarian prince in the hope that his kingly authority might terminate the anarchy of the country, it cannot be said that Russia had acquired any enduring predominant influence. Under the rigid rule of Otho traces whether of Russian or of English influence disappeared, whilst the generation that has since succeeded has developed a vigorous and independent national life, strong enough, it may be hoped, to pass through existing troubles, if not with uninterrupted material prosperity, yet with unbroken political vitality.

No

It is not of these things we may speak, but looking back to the moment of the first Greek uprising we may ask ourselves whether Canning's policy was fully abreast of his own convictions. It seems clear that he regarded Turkey as a waning Power. other opinion could well be held in view of the fact of the gradual retrocession of the Sultan's authority in Europe, and indeed of the general disorganisation of his Empire. The wave of invasion was slowly but continuously falling back, and the impotence of the attempts to put down the Greek rebels was in accordance with all recent experience. The continuance of the struggle rapidly became an offence to the rest of Europe, especially to those commercial nations whose trade in the Levant was disorganised, if not ruined, by the naval warfare, too often resembling piracy, continually

raging in its seas. The circumstances must be held sufficient to justify interference, and the real question must be whether interference should take the shape of persuasion or of command. Mr. Canning's dread of Russian growth made him eager to persuade, but it is at least debatable whether that growth could not have been better counteracted by a more authoritative attitude. The doubtful element in the combination was the sincerity and seriousness of the Greek determination to be free. Here it must be admitted there was ample ground for the scepticism of a Western statesman. The war was apparently waged with an unfaltering intention of purpose, yet it is difficult to say in what quarter absolute reliance could be placed. If the peasantry of the Morea were pertinacious, the peasants of Northern Greece seemed often too ready to acquiesce in the restoration of Turkish authority, if not to desire it, whilst the leaders in all parts of Greece showed no more coherence in the pursuit of national aims, and no more fidelity to one another, than we can recognise in the petty chieftains of Highland clans each fighting on his own account, and for his own hand. Yet it may be urged that Rob Roy McGregor had in him the elements of a patriot, and we should err if we could not detect in the confused records of the Greek rebellion some filaments of patriotism running through them. From our present standpoint, we can easily believe that all that has since developed in the making of the Greek nation should have been recognised as existing in germ and in promise seventy years since. But whilst enthusiasts believed it, and may be held to have proved themselves right, the responsible director of a nation's fortunes may have wanted larger assurance to support practical action. If Mr. Canning had not suffiçient reliance on reviving Greece to feel himself justified in overawing Turkey, he cannot be condemned. As it was, he stands out from his colleagues and his party, from those who went before him and those who came after him, by his courage and resolution. His intervention in Portugal was not supported by his successors. In the East they practically abandoned his policy when they made no effort to occupy the position he would have taken after Navarino. It may be doubted whether they would have been fired with the indignation which led him to muster the naval forces in the Mediterranean the moment he heard of the policy of Ibrahim. The idea of control was abandoned. They made no effort to check Russia, nor to influence the Sultan. They waited for a future the course of which they did not attempt to shape, and if we may hesitate now to say that Mr. Canning completely grappled with the situation as he found it, the vigour of his action is resplendent beside the inaction which followed.

LEONARD COURTNEY.

LAND AND LODGING-HOUSES

(A COLLOQUY WITH THE Duke of BEDFORD)

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'MR. BROADHURST is a very good sort of a man, who has not written a very bad book upon a very important subject.' In these guarded terms, Sydney Smith begins one of his pleasantest reviews; and, if for Mr. Broadhurst' we substitute the Duke of Bedford,' we may honestly apply the eulogy to The Story of a Great Agricultural Estate.1 The book which Mr. Broadhurst wrote, and which Sydney Smith reviewed, was called Advice to Young Ladies on the Improvement of the Mind; and the Duke of Bedford's book might be not inaptly styled Advice to Middle-aged Gentlemen on the Improvement of the Land.

The title of this paper is derived from a phrase of my lamented cousin Hastings, ninth Duke of Bedford and father of the present Duke. I think that he would have shared the fate of our acephalous ancestor sooner than take the general public into his confidence and exhibit his account-book and ledger to the admiring world; and my friend Mr. Escott would, I fancy, confirm this view from his experience when he was writing his chapter about land in England: its People, Polity, and Pursuits.

But, without entering into what Dr. Whewell called the 'disgusting details' of his income, Duke Hastings, when surveying the profound depression under which neighbouring landowners laboured, would pleasantly observe, And I, too, should be in a very tight place, only that I luckily own a few lodging-houses in Bloomsbury.'

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Land-its burdens, its sorrows, the outlay which it entails, the disastrous position in which it places its owner-this is the burden of the present Duke of Bedford's

Doleful song,

Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong.

Land plus Lodging-Houses is my more cheerful theme. 'He tempers the wind to the shorn duke;' and I shall endeavour to rouse the drooping spirits of my excellent kinsman by pointing out that, in spite

1 London, John Murray, 1897.

of bad seasons and Sir William Harcourt, he yet has no cause for despair as long as his 86,000 acres of agricultural land are balanced by the 'few lodging-houses in Bloomsbury' of which his father used to speak so feelingly. In working towards this end, I shall offer a few remarks on the most important points which the book contains, and then on some that it omits; and throughout the process I shall assume the book is actually written by the Duke-not merely compiled by agents and stewards, led-captains and polite-letter writers, and then sent out into the world with the Duke of Bedford's name on the title-page.

The origin of the book is not a little curious. It seems to have grown out of a speech delivered at a Unionist meeting. Outsiders have often speculated about the topics discussed at 'Unionist meetings, and wondered whether they were strictly relevant to the question of the Union. This book solves the doubt, and makes it perfectly certain that they are not; unless, indeed, we use the word 'Union' in its popular sense as a synonym for Workhouse '—that bourne to which the Duke of Bedford's possessions seem to be hurrying him.

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On the eventful day which gave birth to this book, the 13th of May, 1896 (for I love to be particular on great occasions), the Duke presided at a Unionist meeting at Thorney, and he tells us that, as his tenants and labourers were present, he took the opportunity to review the history of his estate at Thorney for eighty years, and to show that local and imperial taxation had increased, that rent had disappeared, and that the ownership of Thorney and Woburn now entailed upon their possessor a heavy loss. This was in itself a rather formidable programme for a village meeting, but he 'further attempted to show' a great deal more that went to illustrate his unhappy and impecunious position, and there can be little doubt that the dewdrop of sensibility twinkled in the eyes of the struggling farmers and laborious ploughmen who listened to this tale of woe. If, in addition to these more emotional themes, the Duke treated his hearers to the forty pages of closely packed statistics which I think his book contains, there is no wonder that his speech, as he himself naïvely remarks, 'attracted widespread attention.' The friends on whose judgment the Duke relies' thought that these lordly lamentations ought to have a wider circulation than that afforded by a village in the Fens. So they besought him to put his tears, not into a bottle, but into a book. And he gave them their heart's desire in the volume which lies before me.

The introductory chapter may be summed up very briefly. It might have been written by Dizzy's Lord St. Aldegonde. 'He was opposed to all privilege, and indeed to all orders of men except dukes, who were a necessity. He was also strongly in favour of the equal division of all property except land. Liberty depended on

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