Mr. Roebuck has delivered a pro-Turkish diatribe this week, not
only in the House of Commons, but to the members of a Provident Fund whom he met at Sheffield, and whom he exhorted to imitate the sobriety of the Turks. "We are surrounded," he said, —we quote from the Standard,—" by a violent and growing com- petition, and at this moment there is going on a most terrible struggle in the East of Europe, which, I think, in spite of all vaticinations to the contrary, must end in the glory of the really sober man, that sober man being the much-vilified Turk ; the hordes who are going against him are, like too many of our countrymen, given to much drink. These hordes are going to overrun a gentle, prudent, and sober people, whose very sobriety I think, bring them out of their difficulty ;" and he added that if this were his last speech, he should be " proud of having thus spoken to English workmen." Certainly that would be a political testament of a nature to excite surprise even in re- lation to Mr. Roebuck. We know that when Italy was trying to throw off the yoke of Austria, he sympathised with Austria ; we know that when the Southern Americans once attempted to make an empire founded on slavery, he did all in his power to get the Emperor of the French to aid them by his intervention ; we know that there has never been a noble cause in England for the last twenty years that he has not done all in his power to oppose, but we did not know that his ideal of a " gentle, prudent, and sober people" was a people who, without the excuse even of intemperance, plunder, ravish, and burn, impelled by no motives better than religious contempt and political fear. " Tear 'em" is indeed vindicating his ancient name.
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