Lord Beaconsfield moved on Monday, in the House of Lords,
an address to the Queen, thanking her for the Message in which she announced the necessity for calling out the Reserves. After a somewhat tedious recital of the proceedings which led to the breaking-off of the Congress, after explaining the way in which Egypt might be endangered through Syria, and pointing out that the calling-out of the Reserves is not our last resource, but practically our first military resource, in case of the expectation of war—a resource which would give us eventually 70,000 men, certainly not a force at all sufficient for a great war— and after a sneer at Lord Derby as something like a lunatic for objecting to so moderate a measure, Lord Beaconsfield described the British Empire as one of which there was "no oxample either in ancient or modern history." "No Caesar and no Charlemagne ever presided over a dominion so peculiar. Its flag floats on many waters. It has provinces in every zone. They are inhabited by persons of different races, different religions, different laws, manners, and customs My Lords, that Empire is no mean heritage, but it is not a heritage that can only be enjoyed ; it must be maintained, and it can only be main- tained by the same qualities that created it,—by courage, by dis- cipline, by patience, by determination, by a reverence for public law, and respect for national rights. My Lords, in the East of Europe, at the present moment, some securities of that empire are imperilled. I never can believe that at such a moment it is the Peers of England who will be wanting to uphold the cause of this country."
