Constructing Ionian identities: the Ionian Islands in British official ...

considered “that our Policy ought to be to mind our own business and to let them
mismanage their own affairs as they please”. 101
Accompanied by his wife, daughter and Arthur Gordon (the younger son of
Lord Aberdeen) as his private secretary, Gladstone travelled to the Ionian Islands via
Dresden, Prague and Vienna. In Vienna, Gladstone learned Young’s confidential
dispatch had been stolen and published in the Daily News. Gladstone was forced to
reassure the Austrian authorities the British government had no plans to transfer the
Septinsula to Greece. The publication of the dispatches overshadowed his arrival in
Corfu on 24 November 1858. In its welcome to Gladstone, the Ionian Senate spoke
of the Treaty of Paris and the Constitution of 1817 and admitted, after forty years of
British administration in the Islands, a new direction was urgently needed to break
the administrative deadlock. It placed its confidence in Gladstone’s abilities to
propose suitable solutions. 102
Gladstone believed Young’s views on abolishing the constitution and ceding
the southern islands and making Corfu a colony had become an obstacle for an
Ionian/British solution. 103 Gladstone had been with Young at Eton and Oxford, and
sat with him in Parliament. Young was a fellow Peelite whose liberal dispositions on
domestic policies Gladstone respected. But Young’s position in the Septinsula was
now compromised. Gladstone felt Young should be recalled and he himself should
101 Quoted as Gladstone's comment in a meeting between Gladstone and Talbot. See Talbot to
Gladstone, 4 November 1858, Gladstone Papers, Add. MS 44390.
102 See enclosures I, II, in Gladstone to Lytton, 26 November 1858, CO 136/165.
103 Gladstone to Lytton, 20 November 1858, CO 136/165.
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