As if upon the impulse of this transaction, Disraeli opened the next session of parliament with a bill to confer upon the queen the title of empress of India--a measure which offended the instincts of many Englishmen, and, for the time, revived the prejudices against its author. More important was the revival of disturbances in European Turkey, which, in their outcome, were to fill the last chapter of Disraeli's career. But for this interruption it is likely that he would have given much of his attention to Ireland, not because it was an attractive employment for his few remaining years, but because he saw with alarm the gathering troubles in that country. And his mind was strongly drawn in another direction. In a remarkable speech delivered in 1872, he spoke with great warmth of the slighting of the colonies, saying that "no minister in this country will do his duty who neglects any opportunity of reconstructing as much as possible our colonial empire, and of responding to those distant sympathies which may become the source of incalculable strength and happiness to this island." However, nothing was done in fulfilment of this duty in the first two years from 1874, and early in the third the famous Andrassy note, the Berlin memorandum, the Bashi-Bazouk atrocities, and the accumulative excitement thereby created in England, reopened the Eastern question with a vengeance. The policy which Disraeli's government now took up may be truly called the national policy. Springing from the natural suggestions of self-defence against the march of a dangerous rivalry, it had the sanction of all British statesmanship for generations, backed by the consenting instinct of the people. It was quite unsentimental, being pro-Turkish or anti-Russian only as it became so in being pro-British. The statesmen by whom it was established and continued saw in Russia a power which, unless firmly kept within bounds, would dominate Europe; more particularly that it would undermine and supersede British authority in the East. And without nicely considering the desire of Russia to expand to the Mediterranean, the Pacific or in any other direction, they thought it one of their first duties to maintain their own Eastern empire; or, to put it another way, to contrive that Great Britain should be subject to Russian ascendancy (if ever), at the remotest period allowed by destiny. Such were the ideas on which England's Russian policy was founded. In 1876 this policy revived as a matter of course in the cabinet, and as spontaneously, though not upon a first provocation, became popular almost to fury. And furiously popular it remained. But a strong opposing current of feeling, equally passionate, set in against the Turks; war began and lasted long; and as the agitation at home and the conflict abroad went on, certain of Disraeli's colleagues, who were staunch enough at the beginning, gradually weakened. It is certainly true that Disraeli was prepared, in all senses of the word, to take strong measures against such an end to the war as the San Stefano treaty threatened. Rather than suffer that, he would have fought the Russians in alliance with the Turks, and had gone much farther in maturing a scheme of attack and defence than was known at the time or is commonly known now. That there was a master motive for this resolution may be taken for granted; and it is to be found in a belief that not to throw back the Russian advance then was to lose England's last chance of postponing to a far future the predominance of a great rival power in the East. How much or how little judgment shows in that calculation, when viewed in the light of later days, we do not discuss. What countenance it had from his colleagues dropped away. At the end their voices were strong enough to insist upon the diplomatic action which at no point falls back on the sword; Lord Derby (foreign minister) being among the first to make a stand on that resolution, though he was not the first seceder from the government. Such diplomacy in such conditions is paralytic. It cannot speak thrice, with whatever affectation of boldness, without discovering its true character to trained ears; which should be remembered when Disraeli's successes at Berlin are measured. It should be remembered that what with the known timidity of his colleagues, and what with the strength and violence of the Russian party in England, his achievement at Berlin was like the reclamation of butter from a dog's mouth; as Prince Bismarck understood in acknowledging Disraeli's gifts of statesmanship. It should also be remembered, when his Eastern policy in 1876-1878 is denounced as malign and a failure, that it was never carried out.