otion
that peoples rise in revolt merely owing to outside agitators. To revolt
against the warlike Turks has never been child's play.]

These events aroused varied feelings in the European States. The Russian
people, being in the main of Slavonic descent, sympathised deeply with
the struggles of their kith and kin, who were rendered doubly dear by
their membership in the Greek Church. The Panslavonic Movement, for
bringing the scattered branches of the Slav race into some form of
political union, was already gaining ground in Russia; but it found
little favour with the St. Petersburg Government owing to the
revolutionary aims of its partisans. Sympathy with the revolt in the
Balkans was therefore confined to nationalist enthusiasts in the towns
of Russia. Austria was still more anxious to prevent the spread of the
Balkan rising to the millions of her own Slavs. Accordingly, the
Austrian Chancellor, Count Andrassy, in concert with Prince Bismarck and
the Russian statesman, Prince Gortchakoff, began to prepare a scheme of
reforms which was to be pressed on the Sultan as a means of conciliating
the insurgents of Herzegovina. They comprised (1) the improvement of the
lot of the peasantry; (2) complete religious liberty; (3) the abolition
of the farming of taxes; (4) the application of the local taxation to
local needs; (5) the appointment of a Commission, half of Moslems, half
of Christians, to supervise the execution of these reforms and of others
recently promised by the Porte[92].

[Footnote 92: For the full text, see Hertslet, _The Map of Europe by
Treaty_, iv. pp. 2418-2429.]

These proposals would probably have been sent to the Porte before the
close of 1875 but for the diplomatic intervention of the British
Cabinet. Affairs at London were then in the hands of that skilful and
determined statesman, Disraeli, soon to become Lord Beaconsfield. It is
impossible to discuss fully the causes of that bias in his nature which
prejudiced him against supporting the Christians of Turkey. Those causes
were due in part to the Semitic instincts of his Jewish ancestry,--the
Jews having consistently received better treatment from the Turks than
from the Russians,--and in part to his staunch Imperialism, which saw in
Muscovite expansion the chief danger to British communications with
India. Mr. Bryce has recently pointed out in a suggestive survey of
Disraeli's character that tradition had great weight with him[93]. It is
known to