THE EARL OF BECTIVEasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, If Her Majesty's Government is aware that Lardi Zarruck, President of the Tunis Municipal Council, a gentleman well known to European residents for his integrity and administrative ability, has been driven into exile by the action of M. Roustan, because he advised the Bey not to sign the Treaty forced upon him by the French Government; if Her Majesty's Government is aware that M. Roustan is virtually for the present dictator of the Regency of Tunis, and has demanded the incarceration of seventeen Tunisians connected with the administration of the Regency; and, if, in consideration of the anomalous and humiliating position in which Her Majesty's Agent and Consul General, and the political Agents of other Powers are placed by the present confusion and action of M. Roustan, Her Majesty's Government will take steps pending their acknowledgment, or otherwise, of the Treaty imposed upon the Bey to 1207 come to some arrangement with the French Government and the Tunisian Government by which our diplomatic relations may be carried on in a manner more in accordance with the usages of European nations? He wished further to ask, whether among the 17 gentlemen who had been threatened with imprisonment in Tunis one is a British subject? For obvious reasons he did not wish to mention the gentleman's name.
§ MR. MONTAGUE GUESTasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether Her Majesty's Government is aware that Monsieur Roustan, in his new capacity of French Minister Resident in Tunis, has demanded of the Bey the arrest and punishment of seventeen high Tunisian officials, alleged to be unfavourable to France, among which is the Sheikh el Islam, or Chief Mufti, who is the supreme civil authority in the Regency, and under whose authority the right of pre-emption was originally exercised in the Enfida Estate case, by Mr. Levy, a British subject?
§ SIR CHARLES W. DILKESir, Her Majesty's Government have no official information on these points beyond having been informed by Mr. Reade that the President of the Municipality had taken refuge in the Consulate, in order, presumably, to avoid arrest by Tunisian officials. He left the Consulate after an amicable arrangement had been arrived at. In regard to the supposed arrest of a British subject, we have certainly heard nothing; and I am convinced that if Mr. Reade had reason to suppose any British subject had been arrested he would have informed us of the fact.
THE EARL OF BECTIVEasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, If Her Majesty's Government has received any intelligence that the German Government has offered to mediate between the Ottoman Porte and the French Government in the Tunis Question; and, if Her Majesty's Government will guard its interest in maintaining the Berlin Treaty by associating itself with the German Government in such mediation?
§ SIR CHARLES W. DILKESir, Her Majesty's Government have received no information to this effect, and have every reason to think the statement untrue.
§ SIR CHARLES W. DILKE,in reply, said, the Government had seen the statement in the Press, and they were convinced that if it was true they must have known of it.
§ MR. MONTAGUE GUESTasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether, notwithstanding that Mons. Jules Ferry had publicly declared in the French Chamber that the French expedition to Tunis had nothing whatever to do with the Enfida case, as reported by Lord Lyons to Lord Granville in his despatch received on 13th February 1881, Mons. St. Hilaire, in his Circular addressed to the French Representatives abroad, distinctly states that one of the motives assumed by France against Tunis was, "The attempt to snatch by illegal means the Enfida Estate from an honest and industrious Marseilles Company?"
§ SIR CHARLES W. DILKESir, my hon. Friend is correct in his statements, and Lord Granville drew attention in his Note to M. Challemel-Lacour of the 20th instant (Tunis, No. 3, page 10), to the inconsistencies in the explanations given at Paris as to the reasons for French intervention in Tunis.