Lord Kimberley addressed 500 Liberals who dined together at Ipswich
on Thursday, and made an able defence of the Minis- terial policy, in relation to Ireland, to Army reform, to the Wash- ington Treaty, and to financial economy. He did not deny that the Administration had made mistakes, but he maintained that on the whole it had redeemed all its greater promises thoroughly and with good faith. He expressly maintained that England had not lost her influence on the Continent of Europe. It was absurd to say that because our neighbours asked for our assist- ance and did not get it, therefore they think our assistance not worth having. When war broke out in 1870 we did not hesitate to take the proper measures for the security of Belgium. Europe knows us to be powerful, and the measure of the offence taken when any State cannot get us to lend it help in its quarrels, is the measure of the estimation of our power. Lord Kimberley related that when going on a mission to St. Petersburg in 1853, Lord Palmerston had warned him he would often hear that England's power was declining; hut, said Lord Palmerston, he never remembered a time when Eng- land's power was not supposed by numbers of critics to be declining, and yet be did not believe it had declined. Perhaps Lord Palmerston was right. But had he been living when we allowed Russia to tear up our treaty with her without asking any one's leave, he would probably have said our power was " rusting unburnished," and would not be long believed in, unless it was again made to ‘• shine in use."
