A great Tory meeting was held at Willis's Rooms on
Thurs- day, attended by all the heads of the party, but presided over by that political nondescript, Mr. E. P. Bouverie. The object was declared to be to assist in inducing the Government to main- tain its pledges and the traditional policy of England, and the note of the speeches was that it would maintain neither. Lord Salisbury pronounced, the policy of the Cabinet "dark, myste- rious, and unintelligible," and expected the country "to issue from the juncture with diminished authority and broken power, having accepted humiliations which will for ever jeopardise our position as a nation," "The honour of the country had been outraged," and no effort made to repair it beyond a reference to a Conference, which would not care about British interests. He believed that if Tewfik were abandoned, there would be a terrible impression produced in India, and that we should have "commenced to descend an inclined plane which leads from empire to contempt." Lord Russell or Lord Palmerston would have acted very differently. Lord Salisbury was as vicious as he could be ; and Sir Stafford Northcote, though milder in phrase, was equally strong in stating his conviction that the Govern- ment could not come out from the affair without discredit. The meeting agreed, cordially endorsing the Duke of Sutherland's opinion that this is "a jelly-fish Government." All which is doubtless intended to strengthen the hands of Lard Dufferin, whose very first argument with the Sultan must be that his Government has made up its mind.
