The Duke also assailed sharply the Afghan policy of the
Government, restricting himself, as he said, wholly to the past, and avoiding ground likely to prejudice the pending negotia- tions in Afghanistan; but on this evidence of party spirit, after the appeal to him to leave our Afghan policy untouched, Lord Beaconsfield attacked him vehemently, declaring that he had come forward with a criticism which he would not call malevolent, but " which certainly was envenomed," at a moment when it was most prejudicial to the interests of the country to broach these questions at all. Lord Beaconsfield then went over the various points on which the Treaty of Berlin differed from the Treaty of San Stefano, in much the same wist- ful way in which a forlorn school-boy counts the currants in an unusually plain cake, trying to make the most of
them ; declared that the efforts of the Government to bring about reforms in Turkey were not made " out of vague philan- thropy, or any of that wild sentimentalism which is vomited forth in the society sometimes called political," but were made purely because the Government knew that without such reforms, the Ottoman Empire could not be maintained ; and concluded by twitting the Duke of Argyll with the mirage his thirsty imagina- tion had conjured up, when he dreamt that the country was coming round to the Opposition, while Parliament remained faithful to the Government. With this speech the interest of the evening rapidly waned, and after remarks from Lord Kimberley, Lord Salisbury, and Lord Granville, the motion was withdrawn.
