10 FEBRUARY 1877, Page 2

In a subsequent portion of his speech, Sir Stafford Northcote

affirmed that Lord Salisbury's conduct at the Conference had the fullest approval of her Majesty's Government, that he had not ex- ceeded his instructions, and that the very sentences which had been quoted in the Times as proof of divergence between Lord Salisbury and the Cabinet were contained in his written instructions. In fact, according to Sir S. Northcote, nobody except Jonah in the whale ever was so unanimous as this Cabinet is. He also affirmed that Government did not regard the Treaty of 1856 as extinct, though it did not slavishly adhere to it, but intended to get what good out of it it could. The Treaty was not impaired by the Ottoman misgovernment of Christian subjects.