HOBART'S RE-INSTATEMENT.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1184, 30 September 1885, Page 3

HOBART'S RE-INSTATEMENT.

The re-instatement of Hobart Pasha ia the British Navy with the rank and pay of a vice-admiral is an event which took people here by surprise. It looked so much like a Tory job that it is not to be wondered at that Sir G-eorge Campbell should have quietly assumed that the new Board of Admiralty was responsible for it, and made a speech in that sense. It seemed incredible that Mr Gladstone, the champion o£ the Christians of the East against Ottoman misrule, should have gone out of his way to confer an exceptional, if not unprecedented, professional distinction upon a naval officer who quitted the British Navy more than twenty years ago to serve under " the unspeakable Turk." But so it was. Lord George Hamilton, the new First Lord, was able to assure the House of Commons that the new Government had nothing whatever to do with the transaction. Mr Came, the late Civil Lord, could throw no light upon it ; and Sir Charles Dilke, when he was appealled to for information, could only suggest that the inquiry should be repeated when Mr Gladstone was in the House. The ex-Prime Minister has made no explanation, but Mr Shaw-Lefevre undertook to perform that disagreeable duty for him. He related the wellknown circumstances under which Admiral Hobart's name more than once disappeared from the Navy List, only to reappear, and then let the cat out of the bag by stating that at a time when this country was making preparations for a possible outbreak of war, it was deemed not unimportant that the Government should be in a position to avail themselves of Admiral Hobart's services to obtain information on certain matters. Mr Bryce commented on the weakness and inadequacy of this defence. He also pointed out, what I regret to say Liberals are too apt to forget, that in this matter the late Government did what Lord Beaconsfield's refused to do, and that if the Conservatives had reinstated Admiral Hobart their opponents would have been vociferous enough in their protests. He showed that Hobart Pasha, by taking service with the Turkish Government in 1877, committed a breach of our neutrality laws, and that it was the imperative duty of our Government to maintain inviolate the Foreign Enlistment Act. Mr M'Coan, as an old editor of the " Levant Herald," stood up for Admiral Hobart, and Mr Labouchere, strange to say, pleaded that although the system might be a bad one, it was unfair to make Hobart a scapegoat — as if it were ever possible to get rid of a bad system, so long an men were allowed to profit by it. Sir Robert Peel, who has not been included by Lord Salisbury in his Administration, made a strong point of the fact that when Admiral Hobart was in the British Navy he never rose to a higher rank than that of Commander. Radicals like Mr Rylands and Mr Ulingworth expressed their disgust, and Mr Cooper pertinently asked whether the Admiral was still in the Turkish Navy. "It seemed to him," he said, " rather too much that an English Admiral should receive pay from Turkey, and at the same time an allowance as a retired officer of the English Navy." Lord George Hamilton was strained to admit that Hobart Pasha was still a full-blown admiral in the Turkish service ; but this made no difference, as the House by a majority of two to one refused to withhold from him his half-pay as an admiral on the retired list. Thus the question has been settled without any personal explanation from Mr Gladstone. But the incident speaks for itself. It shows that a species of political immorality of the most flagrant kind has crept into politics, and that Liberal statesmen, when in office, are prepared to do things which, if they were in opposition, they would be the first to denounce. The other day we were nearly at war with Russia, and it became an object of our policy at once to secure admission to the Black Sea. It seemed to the late Government that Admiral Hobart was a tool ready to hand, by which they could hope to move the Turkish Government to comply with their wishes, and therefore his reinstatement became in their eyes a question of high policy. But it is more than probable that Mr Gladstone might have obtained the Turkish alliance without descending to an action which it is impossible for him to defend.