Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-sxzjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T09:05:38.887Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Blake, Robert, Disraeli (London, 1969), p. 603.Google Scholar

2. See Shannon, R. T., Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation of 1876 (London, 1963), p. 80,Google Scholar n. 2, quoting Voice Della Veritas.

3. Weekly Register and Catholic Standard, 22 July 1876.

4. Westminster Gazette, 29 July 1876.

5. Trevor, Merial, Newman: Light in Winter, 2 vols. (London, 1963), 2: 391–392.Google Scholar

6. “Catholic Aspects of the Eastern Question,” The Month, 08 1876, p. 394.Google Scholar

7. The Catholic Times, 6 October 1876. Also see his letter to Ambrose Phillips de Lisle, in Purcell, E. S., The Life of Cardinal Manning: Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, 2 vols. (London, 1896), 2:157.Google Scholar

8. “Catholic Aspects,” p. 405.

9. Gladstone to MacColl, 22 August 1876, in Russell, G. W.E., Malcolm MacColl: Memoirs and Correspondence (London, 1914), p. 248.Google Scholar

10. MacColl to Gladstone, 23 August 1876, Gladstone Papers, additional manuscript 44243, British Museum, London.

11. The most recent analysis of Gladstone's pamphlets on Vaticanism is by Altholz, Josef, “The Vatican Decrees Controversy, 1874–1880,” Catholic Historical Review 57 (01 1971): 593–605.Google Scholar

12. Purcell, , Manning, 2: 524.Google Scholar

13. Leslie, Shane, Henry Edward Manning: His Life and Labours (New York, 1921), p. 250.Google Scholar

14. Weekly Register and Catholic Standard, 30 September 1876.

15. The Tablet, 9 September 1876. Vaughan, an ultramontane like Manning, had passed on the editorship of The Tablet to his assistant, George Elliot Ranken, in 1872.

16. “The Impending War,” The Dublin Review, n.s. 28 (10 1876):503.Google Scholar

17. Ulster Examiner and Northern Star, 9 September 1876.

18. Shannon, , Gladstone, p. 150.Google Scholar

19. Gladstone to Granville, 18 October 1876, in Agatha, Ramm, ed., The Political Correspondence of William Gladstone and Lord Granville, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1962), 1: 14–15.Google Scholar

20. Manning to Ripon, 4 October 1876, Marquis of Ripon Papers, additional manuscript 43545, British Museum, London. Ripon to Manning, 6 October 1876, ibid.

21. Manchester Guardian, 7 October 1876.

22. Newman to R. W. Church, 5 October 1876, in Newman, John Henry, The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Dessain, Charles S. and Thomas, Gornall, 31 vols. (Oxford, 1975), 28: 123.Google Scholar

23. The Tablet, 7 October 1876.

24. A good brief survey of the conference can be found in Seton-Watson, Robert, Disraeli, Gladstone, and the Eastern Question (London, 1935), pp. 110–115.Google Scholar

25. Gladstone to Mundella, 6 November 1876, Papers, A. J. Mundella, fol. 3, University of Sheffield Library, Sheffield.Google Scholar

26. Shannon, , Gladstone, p. 196.Google Scholar

27. Ibid.

28. See his letter to the pro-Turkish sympathizer Lord Denbigh, 2 January 1877, Ripon Papers, additional manuscript 43626.

29. See Rossi, John, “Lord Ripon's Resumption of Political Activity, 1878–1880,” Recusant History, Spring 1971, p. 63.Google Scholar

30. Westminster Gazette, 16 December 1876.

31. Weekly Register and Catholic Standard, 9 December 1876.

32. Catholic Times, 15 December 1876.

33. Derby to Carnavon, [late 1876], in Hardinge, Arthur, The Life of Henry Edward Molyneux Herbert, Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, 1831–1890, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1925), 2: 340,Google Scholarn. 1.

34. Fullerton to Granville, 26 December 1876, Second Earl Granville Papers, file 30/29/26B, Public Record Office, London.

35. Gladstone to Gordon, 9 January 1877, in Paul, Knaplund, ed., “The Gladstone-Gordon Correspondence, 1851–1896,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s. 51, no. 4, p. 71.Google Scholar

36. Purcell, , Manning, 2: 525.Google Scholar

37. Seton-Watson, , The Eastern Question, p. 182.Google Scholar

38. The normally anti-Liberal Ulster Examiner and Northern Star was complimentary to Gladstone, for once, over his resolutions.“The country was drifting, and most probably into War. The country ought to be thankful that Mr. Gladstone saved her from another Crimea” (Ulster Examiner and Northern Star, 10 May 1877). See also “Review of Current Events,” The Month, 03 1877, pp. 390–394.Google Scholar

39. The Tablet, 5 and 12 May 1877. They were supported in this view by the Weekly Register and Catholic Standard, 5 MAy 1877.

40. In the 1874–1880 Parliament there were 52 Catholic members: 50 Home Rulers and two Liberals. See The Catholic Directory, Ecclesiastical Register, and Almanac (London, 1880), p. 78.Google Scholar

41. Westminster Gazette, 2 February 1878.

42. Dilke to Mrs. Mark Pattison, 11 February 1877, Sir Charles Dilke Papers, additional manuscript 43903, British Museum, London, summarizes an analysis of the situation made by Sir William Harcourt.

43. Gladstone to Madame Novikov, 6 February 1877, in Shannon, , Gladstone, p. 276,Google Scholar n. 4.

44. Irish Times, 15 May 1877.

45. See Shannon, , Gladstone, pp. 274–281.Google Scholar

46. Weekly Register and Catholic Standard, 26 January 1878.

47. Ibid., 2 February 1878.

48. The Tablet, 2 February 1878.

49. Jenkins, Roy, Sir Charles Dilke (London, 1958), p. 109.Google Scholar

50. Westminster Gazette, 26 January 1878.

51. Ulster Examiner and Northern Star, 2 February 1878.

52. Universe, 9 February 1878.

53. Hartington to Granville, 31 December 1877, Granville Papers, file 30/29/26A.

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

56. Irish Nation, 2 February 1878.

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).

58. Weekly Register and Catholic Standard, 27 April 1878.

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

62. Purcell, , Manning, 2: 609.Google Scholar

63. Southgate, Donald, The Passing of the Whigs (London, 1962), pp. 332–333.Google Scholar

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.

65. “Home and Foreign Affairs,” Fortnightly Review 27 (05 1880): 727.Google Scholar