Mr. Bright's speech at Birmingham on Saturday was not one
of his best. We are somewhatweary of his self-glorifying rehearsals. of his own resistance to the Crimean war, and entirely decline to- admit that the Russian hectoring about the Holy Places,—the hardly disguised plea for aggression,—which marked Prince Menschikoff's mission, and led to that war, offer any parallelism at all to the moderation, the self-restraint, the anxious determination to consult the opinion of Europe—what Lord Salisbury himself terms "the almost tormenting desire for peace"—shown by the pre- sent Czar during the winter of last year. Mr. Bright only weakens the case against England's going to war now by trying to make it run on all-fours with his own protests in 1853-54. Mr. Bright's panegyrics on his own conduct twenty-five years ago may be deserved, but they are certainly not politic ; and though his wish to see all the traditions of the English Foreign Office utterly anni- hilated would, if it could be fulfilled, bring with it many good consequences, we very much doubt whether that is really the secret wish of his heart, and whether he does not mean that Great Britain should not simply break away from most of its old Foreign-Office traditions, but cease to have a Foreign Office and a foreign policy at all. That is very much the spirit of his speech, and we confess we sympathise with him, almost as little as we do with the thorough-going admirers of the Foreign Office as it is. And then, as to the self-glorification, it is all very well for those who have no one to admire them, to admire themselves, but Mr. Bright has earned too many sincere admirers—nay, too many faithful disciples—to need, or indeed to. benefit by, this constant self-gratulation on his peace-at-any- price speeches of a quarter of a century ago.
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