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Catholic Opinion on the Eastern Question, 1876–1878

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

John P. Rossi
John P. Rossi
Affiliation:
professor of history inLaSalle College, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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Extract

In the middle 1870s British society experienced the greatest debate over foreign policy since the early days of the French Revolution: the dispute known as the Eastern question. For two years the British political world was divided by this issue as the country took sides between the Ottoman Empire, the oppressor of the Christian Slavic peoples of the Balkans, and Czarist Russia, the Slavs' protectors. What began as a diplomatic dispute became through its religious dimension a moral, even ideological, issue. Responsibility for this transformation belonged to a strange coalition made up of English radicals, a major portion of the Nonconformist community, and a considerable number of High Church Anglicans. They were joined later by the greatest Victorian exponent of moral force in politics, William Ewart Gladstone. Inexorably the Catholic community in Britain was drawn into this dispute.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , March 1982 , pp. 54 - 70
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1982

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References

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54. Hartington to Granville, 9 January 1878, Granville Papers.

55. The Home Rulers were deeply divided on the proper course to follow. The decision to abstain was made by a vote of 17 to 3; ten members of Parliament walked out of the meeting without expressing an opinion. Times (London), 1 02 1878, p. 8.Google Scholar

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57. Universe, 27 April 1878. A week later the author of one of its harshest lead articles declared, “We have no love for the Russians, neither have we for the Turk. If the one massacred the Bulgarians, the other tyrannized over Poland. As compared they are six of one and half dozen of the other. Between them there is little choice, and if any there be, we freely admit that it is in favour of the Turk, for he perpetrates his brutalities without the hypocritical pretence of Christianity. But that is no reason that we should attack and [sic] evil and formidable Russia without due and direct provocation; and all for the sake of propping up an evil and incapable Turkey” (Universe, 4 May 1878).

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59. Ibid., 4 May 1878.

60. On Hartington's lack of enthusiasm for offering these resolutions, see Esher's journal, 31 July 1878, Viscount Esher Papers, Churchill College, Cambridge University, Cambridge.

61. The Nation, 10 August 1878. Sixteen Home Rulers voted with the government, while the remaining members of the party abstained. David Thornley, in his life of Isaac Butt, makes the point that Butt's endorsement of the government at this point helped to destroy his hold over Irish public opinion. Thornley, David, Isaac Butt and Home Rule (London, 1964), p. 362.Google Scholar

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64. Lord Sefton to Granville, 18 March 1880, Granville Papers, file 30/29/27A. A. Chapeau, who for years worked on Cardinal Manning's career, reported to me in a letter of 24 January 1972 that his examination of the remaining Manning papers convinced him that the cardinal made no effort to help the Conservatives in the general election of 1880.

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