Of Lord Salisbury's mission Lord Beaconsfield said, " My noble
friend has the complete confidence of his colleagues. They have confidence in his abilities, in his complete grasp of the sub- ject, and in the tact and firmness of his character ; and I have no doubt that he will use and exercise all his abilities to bring about tat permanent peace in Europe which all statesmen agree can best be secured by adhering to the treaties which exist,"—that was the chord on which Lord Beaconsfield harped throughout,—" knowing well—and none know better than my noble friend—that the independence and integrity of Turkey are not to be secured by mere pen-and-ink work. Unless the great body of the people find they are under a Government which studies their welfare and is proud of their prosperity, even the inde- pendence and integrity of a country must themselves vanish." No doubt ; and the great body of the Christian populations of Turkey will probably feel that confidence about the Turkish Government on the Greek Kalends, and not sooner. Lord Beaconsfield did not close without a loud blast on the war-bugle : —" Although the policy of England is peace, there is no country so well prepared for war as our own. If she enters into conflict in a righteous cause,—and I will not believe that England will go to war except in a righteous cause,—if the contest be one which concerns her liberty, her independence, or her empire, her resources, I feel, are inexhaustible. She is not a country which, when she enters into a campaign, has to ask herself if she can support a second or third campaign " [a plain hit at Russia] ; " she enters into a campaign which she will not terminate till right is done." That indeed will again put every Pasha in Turkey who reads it on the wrong track as to the intentions of England, especially"when be remembers what Lord Beaconsfield means, and insists that he means, by adhering to the treaty of 1856,—namely, that he re- gards the Berlin Memorandum as a proposal to break the treaty. A more mischievous speech we can hardly imagine, under the circumstances. Lord Salisbury may probably make it of none effect, but it will be all the more misleading for that.
