In European Turkey 11,000,000 souls were transferred from Moham-medan to Christian rule, ...

In European Turkey 11,000,000 souls were

transferred from Moham-medan to Christian rule,

and the map of the Near East was settled for another generation. England emerged with a trifling addition to the National Debt, the Island of Cyprus, and an undefined protectorate over Asiatic Turkey and all its Christian inhabitants.

That results so gratifying to the imagination and the moral sentiments should have had so little effect on the General Election of 18 So is one of the most instructive facts in the

history of Victorian England.

Instructive and intelligible: because the Conservative rout can be interpreted as the last effort of liberal, detached England, the England of Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform, which still brought to its politics something of the shrewdness of a Lancashire board meeting, and something of the fervour of Exeter Hall, to save itself from the complications and costs of world empire, to cut the glory and get on with the business.

It was time to ring a halt: it was time to look at Ireland. But there is an epilogue to be disposed of first.

We stayed in Cyprus. In 1882 the Navy was called upon to perform what Mr Gladstone called 'the great and solemn act' of bombarding Alexandria, and the egg of a new Empire had been laid.

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