Sir William Harcourt delivered an address at a dinner of
his Oxford constituents on Tuesday, which was full of his char- acteristic force and vivacity, and which has, of course, therefore been branded by the saturnine journals which deny that they are Tory, but which heartily detest the Liberals, as frivolous, and fatal to his character as a statesman. Sir William Harcourt declared that he did not mean to say anything new, that it was his main object to repeat once more what had been so often said before, for the purpose of dinning into the ears of the people that the bubbles with which the Government have deluded them were empty, the promises hollow, that "the grandiose pretensions which have passed current for high policy" had collapsed. " Out-voted, out-manceuvred, out-shouted," the Liberals still reiterate their old truths, and, from the depths of their minority, say, like Galileo from the depths of his dun- geon, " And yet it moves." He reviewed the result of the moral support given to Turkey, and its climax in menacing Turkey with the British Fleet and with suspended diplomatic relations on behalf of a Mahommedan schoolmaster,a scene resembling the finale of a Christmas extravaganza. As the result of our Asia Minor protectorate, Sir H. Layard had just threatened the Sultan with an Armenian question closely analogous to the Bulgarian question of 1876. Cyprus, the great "place of arms," was acknowledged to be unfit both for a naval station and for soldiers, and no attempt was to be made to render it suitable for either. The Greek question stands still. The Roumelian question is settled so as to ignore the supposed victory of Lord Beaconsfield at Berlin, concerning the right of Turkish troops to govern the Balkans. Every aim of the British policy had failed, or had directly diminished the influence of England.
