Local-Government Act of 1894. Neither of these, however, was
directly his work, though he took a leading part in piloting the
former through the House of Commons.

His action in the field of foreign policy, though it was felt only
at intervals, was on several occasions momentous, and has left
abiding results in European history. In 1851, he being then still a
Tory, his powerful pamphlet against the Bourbon government of
Naples, and the sympathy he subsequently avowed with the national
movement in Italy, gave that movement a new standing in Europe by
powerfully recommending it to English opinion. In 1870 the prompt
action of his government, in concluding a treaty for the neutrality
of Belgium on the outbreak of the war between France and Germany,
saved Belgium from being drawn into the strife. In 1871, by
concluding the treaty of Washington, which provided for the
settlement of the Alabama claims, he not only asserted a principle
of the utmost value, but delivered England from what would have
been, in case of her being at war with any European power, a danger
fatal to her ocean commerce. And, in 1876, the vigorous attack he
made on the Turks after the Bulgarian massacre roused an intense
feeling in England, so turned the current of opinion that Disraeli's
ministry were forced to leave the Sultan to his fate, and thus
became the cause of the deliverance of Bulgaria, Eastern Rumelia,
Bosnia, and Thessaly from Mussulman tyranny. Few English statesmen
have equally earned the gratitude of the oppressed.

Nothing lay nearer to his heart than the protection of the Eastern
Christians. His sense of personal duty to them was partly due to
the feeling that the Crimean War had prolonged the rule of the Turk,
and had thus imposed a special responsibility on Britain, and on the