Lord Stratheden and Campbell on Thursday tried once more to
bring the Government into contempt by declaring its duties, which he assumed would not be performed. He held that the object of the Conference should be to prevent the Treaties of 1856 from being altered in a Russian sense, and advised that 10,000 men should be sent to Malta, that the Militia "should be made available by Act of Parliament for foreign service ;" that the British Fleet should enter the Black Sea ; that our foreign policy should cease to suffer from " duality "—from differences, that is, between the Premier and the Foreign Minister—and so on, and so on, in a long speech, to a disgusted or laughing House of Lords. Lord Granville replied in an amusing speech, in which he said that, after listening for an hour, he was wholly unable to understand the speaker's remarks. The proposals he had laid before the House were "nonsense," which it would not be dig- nified for the Peers even to discuss. Lord Hammond endorsed the rebuke in a speech in which he accepted the Con- ference, but hoped it would confer on Russia no right of protecting any Turkish subjects, and that the Porto would be induced to reform its treatment of its provinces, hopes which show bow incurable is the influence of political tradition. Lord Hammond is still thinking of Menschikoff, and still believes that Pashas may possibly govern justly. The Duke of Argyll followed in a manly speech, protesting against the results of the war being rendered nugatory, and expressing his opinion that the good government of both European and Asiatic Turkey depended on the autonomy of the Provinces, under wise Governors.
