Mr. Leathern addressed his constituents at Huddersfield yesterday week, in
one of those conventional peace speeches which we know so well, and of which we are so thoroughly weary. He was almost as bitter against Mr. Gladstone's Resolutions and the "crusade,"' as he termed it, of last year, as a model Tory. He inveighed against Russia almost in the tone of the Pall Mall Gazette, though it was obvious that the motive was different, —the wish, namely, to counteract the effect of Liberal sympathy with Russia, not to stimulate Tory sympathy with Turkey ;—and he maintained that any additional taxation to enable us to interfere in the war would have directly involved the worst kind of war,—a war against the- poor. In other words, we suppose, while any nation contains a class of poor, it is wicked for that nation to offer assistance even. to the poorer poor of any other nation, and that, even though it be our negligence and selfishness which are in great part responsible for the sufferings of these unhappy wretches. On that principle a captain who had run another ship down should steam away without picking up the wretched crow and passengers,, if a juster and more compassionate course implied any risk of the lives of his own crew and his own passengers,—surely not a very noble doctrine.
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