Sir Michael Hicks-Beach has been " starring " it in
Gloucester- shire this week, and especially doing his best to secure a Con- servative success at Cheltenham at the next election,—which, perhaps, he may have reasons of his own for thinking nearer at hand than the public in general suppose it to be. He made a speech on Wednesday on the triumph of the Government foreign. policy, and a speech on Thursday on the triumph of its home policy, but in neither speech did he tell us much that was new, or much that was true, or much even that was interesting. However, in the first speech he did assure his audience that the policy of the Government at Berlin would be best defined by the general lines of Lord Salisbury's despatch,—that he hoped hardly any article of the Treaty of San Stefano would survive without grave modifications,—and that "he could assure them that care should be taken that the Porte should retain that independence which it was necessary for it to possess, to perform the functions of a Sovereign State,"—an assurance which does not tend much to confirm the rumours of an English Protectorate. Whatever an English Protectorate might mean, it would assuredly not mean independence for the Porte.
