The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-09-23 00:00:00

THE BULGARIAN ATROCITIES.

MR. H. B. SHERIDAN, M.P., AT DUDLEY.

crowded town's meeting to protest against the
Tu -Irish atrocities in Bulgaria was held on Monday
evening, in the Public Hall, Dudley.
Mr. J. Stokes (Mayor of Dudley), by whom the meet-
ing was convened, occupied the chair, and amongst those
prerent were the Revds. G. McMichael, R. Harper, J.
Page, E. H. L. Noot, and G. Bradley; Messrs. G.
Thompson, F. Thompson, A. Thompson, D. Sheridan,
A Wright, A. Wood, J. Dolman, H. M. Wainwright,
Hancox, A. Jones, E. Wright, W. Cooper, J. Fiech,
W. Barradale, C. Lester, and H. C Roper.
The Mayor, in opening the proceedings, said there
was a ceriain advantage in the present meeting being
rather late, as it had given an opportunity to see the
manner in which the matter under discussion had been
dealt with in the large towos. lie deprecated the intro-
duetion of any political bias into the proceedings. It
most be recollected that they were about to make a
demand of an importance which could not be easily
estimated, and the force of that demand should not be
weakened by any party differences, but it should be the
unanimous voice of the nation. (dear, hear.) He
would take upon himself to state that their demand
should be no less than that the monsters who had made
such a foul page in the history of Europe should receive
punshinent which they so richly de,erved ; and,
further, that the inhuman Twits should be deprived
of the power to repeat such atrocities. (Loud applause )
The Rev. R. Harper moved the following reso.ution :
" That this meeting desires to express its horror and
indignation at the atrocities committed in Bulgaria and
other parts of Turkey, and its sympathy with the sur-
vivors in those provinces."
Aldeiman Russell having seconded the resolution,
Mr. 11. B. Sheridan, M P., spoke in support of it. He
said he congratulated the Mayor and those present on
the ready manner in which the t iwn had responded to
the summons to the present meeting. He was glad to
meet the people of Dudley to express their detestation
and abhorrence of the almost unparalleled cruelties com-
mitted by the crowd of barbarians who were honoured
with the name of the Turkish army—cruelties which
had been committed not in the ordivary course of war,
but to a large extent upon unoffendfug and defenceless
non-combatants, upon women, children, and aged men.
The people of Dudley, from what he knew of their
manly and independent character, had never been slow
to meet and express their sympathy with the oppressed,
and he felt sure they would always be amongst the
readiest and foremost to demand justice upon the wrong.
doer ; and further than that, to insist, now they ha 1
their own political and social freedom, that that birth-
right should be extended to all those races of men whose
fate the Government of this country could by its
diplomacy or influence control. (Applause) Such
meetings as the present were not too late; they should
be multiplied and continued, for even now those bar-
barities continued. He cut out of a newspaper that day
a letter from Colonel Mute, who wrote to his constituents
from Servia, where he had been some weeks, and who
said he could give a terrible picture of the cruelties
which were still being perpetrated by the Turhish
troops. Colonel More declared. that Lord Derby's pro-
testand Sir Arnold Kemball's presence with the Turkish
army had had no effect upon the troops in Servia, or, in
other words, that the cruelties continued in full force.
He was away on the Moselle, at the ancient city of
Treves, when he saw by the English newspapers that a
wave of feeling was rolling ever the country, and sweep-
ing before its honest and outspoken indignation all party
quibbles and diplomatic expedients. He decided that it
was his duty to make haste home, and to b 3 with his
constituents when they should assemble in their cona•
mon hall to express to each other and to the country
their indignation at those barbarous deeds. (Applause)
He was thankful he was back in time to take part in
their proceedings. Some six weeks ago, in anothe -
place, he expresstd his views upon the war which
had broken out, and upon the cruelties which even then
charucterised'it ; but since then events had taken place
wl ich had far exceeded all his anticipations, and which
had, by their long and dismal tale of murderous ferocity,
startled all Europe into amaze and angry wat:hfulness
But he believed that retribution would swiftly follow
upon the crime. He believed that the Turk, by his
recent acts, had with his own right hand sounded the
hour of his doom (Applauie.) He seemed to have
exasperated all mankind. Wherever he (the speaker)
had been—in France, in Belgium, in Germany—the
feeling was the same—uniform and universal. Italy had
sent her freedom-loving sons in large numbers to fight
on the side of Servia—(applause)—in Russia meetings
had been held in every town to express spmpathy
and to give aid to the suffering and oppressed,
while at home in England public feeling had
been evoked, which, he might say, was almost matchless
in its kind, amounting to and demanding a revolut on in
their foreign policy. (Cheers.) He quite agreed with
previous speakers that this was a national and not a
party question, and in that spirit he proposed to discuss
it. Ins for, ign policy of the present Government, he
might freely admit, was the policy of its predecessor.
The Minister of the day took his policy upon foreign
affairs from the pigeon-holes of the Foreign Office. Of
that there c .uld be no doubt; and whatever might be
the Minister's political opinions, it availed him little,
for the permanent officials, the Under Secretaries of
State, who inherited in their full force all the traditions
of foreign policy, insisted upon those traditions, and they
alone moved and controlled the ceaseless wheels of the
State machinery. If the present Government had been
wrong in what it had done, jilt bad been wrong in
aiding the oppressor against the oppressed, and turning
its eyes away from seeing that which the press and the
world saw too 'clearly and plainly, it had been wrong
because it followed the beaten track. That policy, how-
ever, was at an end ; those things were, lie hoped, for
once and for ever changed. The people of England had
risen in their power and in their majesty, end the
Government must take its foreign policy from them—
(cheers)--or if it did not it must take the consequences.
He was one of those who believed that the Conservatives
shared in the general feeling, and disapproved as much
as the Liberals of the coldness of the Government, and
of the want of clearness and frankness on the part of
those who spoke with authority on its behalf. The
Liberals assumed no monopoly of sentiment on the mat-
ter, but there were assembled that night men of all
shades of opinion, not for the purpose of turning out a
Government, but to destroy a policy which all believed
to have been a mistake, and which most persons held
to be a crime. (Applause.) If they demanded from
the Government that their foreign policy should be
amended, it became them to say what they wished to
put in its place. The resolution to which he was called
upon to speak hardly stated what it was they were to do.
He should say that the programme of Mr. Gladstone
was the one which they should adopt. (Loud cheers
and a few hisses.) He thought that within Mr. Glad-
stone's pamphlet was contained all that men who were
reasonable in their desires might wish to have carried
out. (Hear,. hear.) Mr. Gladstone's proposal was
characterised- by all the temperateness which belonged
to a man who had been Prime Minister, and might yet
again wield the destinies of this empire. (Loud cheers.)
Without using the word programme, what they wanted
was that the inhabitants of the Balkan Provinces should
have social and political freedom; that there should be
political unity for those Christian races who had been
engaged in the righteous struggle for the right to call
their wives, their children, their homes, and the pro-
ducts of their industry their own. (Applause) And
further than that, they should have the right to worship
God in their own fashion, Those ware in the con.

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