Every one of Gladstone's principles had been violated by the Government. The welfare of the people had been subordinated to a costly display of energy abroad. The ordinary expenditure on armaments had increased by more than six millions in five years, and a special vote of credit had been required by the quarrel with Russia. The acquisitions in the Transvaal, in Zululand, in Cyprus, and in Afghanistan had increased our burdens without adding to our strength. Peace had always been in danger, and had more than once been broken. The Government had claimed a peculiar right to dictate to Turkey, had threatened Russia with war for appearing to claim a similar right, and had made international action impossible by refusing to join the Concert of Europe. They had prevented Russia from making a separate treaty with Turkey because it violated the Treaty of Paris, and they had themselves made a treaty with Turkey which violated the Treaty of Paris in the same way and to the same extent. They had made an indefinite engagement with Turkey to go to war in defence of her Asiatic territory, no matter how she abused her sovereign rights. They had been partial and capricious in their friendships and in their antipathies. Russia could do nothing right, Turkey could do nothing wrong. The claims of freedom had been ignored. The Transvaal had been annexed against the formally expressed wish of its inhabitants. { 279} The Afghans had been coerced into accepting an envoy. Nothing had been done to help the Bulgarians against the Turks, and when Russia undertook the work which England should have done, she had been opposed instead of helped. The worst thing that Gladstone said of his opponents is the worst thing that posterity can say of them. He quoted from a dispatch of the Turkish Government: "The Sultan's Ministers lay great stress on the maintenance of the Beaconsfield Cabinet, which has given so many proofs of its benevolent intentions for the Turkish Empire." The approbation of these men, whose praise was blame, is more damning to the Tory foreign policy of this period than any censure of their party enemies. Gladstone made some mistakes in his general attack. But posterity has seldom been so nearly unanimous as in its belief that on his two main lines, Turkey and Afghanistan, he was completely right.