We have said enough elsewhere of the encounter between Mr.
Gladstone and Mr. Chaplin, and need only add here that earlier in the evening, before Mr. Chaplin's " torpedo " was exploded, Mr. P. J. Smyth, the Member for Westmeath, made another of his singularly eloquent speeches, received with great cheering, in which he advocated the enlargement of Greece, a chain of autonomous States on the Danube, and that Russia should not be allowed to represent alone a cause in which we were equally inter- ested. England "stood benevolently neutral when Alsace and Lorraine were taken from France. If she continued to adopt a similarly ignominious policy, she might be debarred from appearing even as a gleaner in the field of the Danube." Mr. Courtney, too, made a promising maiden speech, in which he contended that the chief guarantee Treaty of 1856 was made not for Turkey's sake, but in the interests of Europe, and was not available for Turkish ends, but that we ought to determine publicly and by notice our obligations under the Tripartite Treaty of 1856. Our liability to have it appealed to, was by no means so remote as Lord Derby imagined. It was quite on the cards that Austria might appeal to it, and then we should be in great embarrass- ment. We ought publicly to withdraw from the treaty. Our rights as against Turkey were independent of all treaty,—they were the kind of rights which the public has against an un- vaccinated man who spreads danger and death around him. The "unvaccinated State" would indeed be a very happy name for the European possessions of the Porte.
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