LORD BEACONSFIELD AT GUILDHALL.
LORD BEACONSFIELD at Guildhall almost exactly fulfilled our prophecy. The icy glitter of his sneer barely relieved from absolute dullness a speech wanting in political interest, and almost devoid of traces of the Premier's genius for rhetoric and for putting things. Expectation had previously been excited to the utmost. So widespread was the report that the Premier would say something of grave moment, that transactions on 'Change were affected by it, and the Ambassadors of the greater Powers, remembering the heroics of 1876, thought it might be more dignified and con- venient to stay away from the festivities. Even the Austrian Ambassador, whom most Tories, in defiance of political statis- tics, believe to represent an anti-Slav Court, remained at home, and the most important Minister present was the stout and able Greek Christian, who quotes the "Iliad" so aptly, and nevertheless represents in this country the Ottoman caste. He was not destined on this occasion to be greatly pleased. He listened, no doubt with official gratification, to a lofty eulogium on the courage of the secular oppressors of his race, the men who made of Athens a " dirty village," and tried to stamp out the population of the Morea, and still hold down the Greeks of a hundred islands, but who, Lord Beaconsfield says, have now provided "half a million of warriors who have devoted their lives to their country, without pay and without reward," —and we may add, without surgical aid when they are wounded. He heard assertions that " whatever the fortunes of war— and war changes like the moon—the independence of Turkey is not doubted now," and that " his Government and his country have shown that vigour and resource which prove that they have a right to be recognised among the Sovereign Powers of Europe ;" and he doubtless noted, for report home, an exultant statement that "the Government of Turkey is not a phantom, that its people are not effete." He comprehended to the full and probably enjoyed the bitter sneer with which the Premier, who never respects the European courtesies, re. minded his audience how the Czar had affirmed " that his only object in commencing the war was to secure the happiness and safety of the Christian subjects of the Porte," and he must have understood most fully, if he did not enjoy, the sentence, uttered in the Premier's most convinced manner, that " his Highness the Sultan had in the most formal manner declared that he would himself secure that happiness and that safety." To an Ambassador of the Porte, who knows that though in London he has the rank of a King, in his 46 own country " his evidence would be refused by the smallest Cadi against that of the lowest Mussuiman street-porter, that last sentence must have given a high degree of inward satisfaction. And yet Musurus Pasha can hardly have been delighted. Turkey wants aid, and there was no promise of aid. On the contrary, the British Premier complimented Turkey on her demonstrated competence to take ample care of herself. Turkey is anxious about her integrity, and her integrity was markedly dropped out of the sentences in which the Premier asserted so broadly that she had shown—not that ha would maintain—her inde- pendence. And lastly, Turkey is uneasy about that very in- dependence, and she is assured not that Lord Beaconsfield will protect it, but that she has shown it ; and that his highest hope is, when the time arrives, to assist "in a settlement which will not only secure peace, but also the independence,— of Europe." Lord Beaconsfield is an orator who when ad- vancing scatters words like bullets, as from an inexhaustible store ; but in retreat weighs them, and doles them out as if he knew his magazines would shortly be far behind him. His foible is to say too much and then to explain it all as meaningless, not to say too little. He is not the man to have been so cautious in his expressions without ample reason, and the Greek Ambassador of Turkey, who knows so well and in so many languages what words mean, must have felt as he listened that the lingering expectation of aid from England was unjustified, and that though there might be hope for his nation, there was none for the nation he so faithfully but so very oddly represents. The whole speech, so far as the Eastern Question is concerned, is a cumbrous proclamation of an unwilling retreat, a retreat scarcely illustrated by one flash of genius, but discredited by many gibes, rather wrathful than effective, against the advanc- ing enemy. If the Turks care for a Giaour's praise, which is improbable, the speech may encourage them a little to hold on, sure that one man in Europe holds their courage in high respect ; but if they care only for gold and Armstrongs and recruits, it must have an effect of deep depression. What is the independence of Europe to them, when they want to re- conquer Armenia, and defend the Balkans, and recover their right of doing as they will with their own Christians? It will not cheer them to know that in Lord Beaconsfield's opinion, as in their own, cosmopolitanism is contemptible, and " cosmo- politan critics men who are the friends of every country save their own." They entirely agree with him, they also think cosmopolitanism—i.e., Christianity in action—very contempti- ble, and that any Ottoman who asks justice for a Greek is a traitor, but the fact that an Infidel approves a doctrine which is divine will bring them little consolation. Even the repetition of the epigram in another and weaker form, that the policy of defending British interests, though denounced as selfish, is only " as selfish as patriotism," will not cheer them, for they want an exhibition of unselfishness, an expenditure of British lives, and British capital, and British hopes for the future, on behalf of Turkey. There is nothing for Musurus Pasha to report, no reason, however temporary, for giving him the title of " Ghazi ;" nothing in the speech that can cheer the soul of an intelligent Ambassador, so cosmo- politan in his ideas that no one doubts his fidelity to a race which has crushed out all, save an indestructible history, be- longing to his own. On home affairs the Premier was a little more happy, though not, perhaps, more solidly successful. His retort on Lord Hartington for his denunciation of Tory subservience to class interests, that all the Leader of Opposition could find to say was that "her Majesty's Government made every class comfortable," was extremely neat, though entirely unjustified by facts ; and the quotation of his own expression that " Mr. Gladstone's Government had harassed every class " as if it had been an expression of national sentiment, had in it much of the audacity of his earlier years. There was courage also, not to say impudence, and there may have been political significance, too, in the sentence upon the concession of the franchise, a sentence which to at least least two Members of the Cabinet present must have been like a cut of a whip :—" It cannot be denied that the great mass of the population of this country, besides their ancient personal rights, have during the last half-century acquired political privileges which, as some have thought, were too. profusely offered to them, but which, in my mind, were offered with a wise generosity, and of which they have shown• themselves entirely worthy." But nevertheless, even Tories would have liked something more than a hint that Lord Beaconsfield personally would grant county suffrage, some• adumbration of the policy of Government in domestic matters, some cue on which to address the country,—some hint, for example, whether to eulogise the independence and foresight of Mr. Clare Read, or to denounce him as a revolutionary pest. It is rather hard upon men who are standing open- mouthed in order that opinions may be spooned into them, to see the spoon advanced with no medicine in it, and put up again quite clean. They would have so liked some political Liebig, or even a little social tonic, and they received nothing. Lord Beaconsfield is always " on the side of the Angels," as well as of the Turks, but there was nothing for the clergy ; his people sympathise with the publicans, but there was nothing for the tap-rooms ; his majority depends upon the agricultural interest, but there was nothing for the farmers, except, indeed, an official assurance, no longer pleasant to the corn-grower, that the harvest has been a bad one. Lord Beaconsfield's speech harasses no class, except, indeed, the few who doubt whether a bull-dog's courage is the best reason for turning him loose in a drawing-room, but it affords no class any hope that in supporting the Ministry they are advancing the interests either of their country or themselves. If it had been uttered by Mr. Cave instead of the Premier, it would have been pronounced a poor speech, very indefinite in meaning, and with a joke or two in it of a rather forced sort. So little brightness is there in it, so little glitter, so little sparkle, that the idea involuntarily rises in the reader that Lord Beaconsfield fancied as he prepared it that it was for the House of Lords,
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