Sir Henry James made a powerful speech at Taunton on
Thursday, in which he brought out very strongly the miserable character of the tyranny which had driven the Herzegovinians into rebellion,—the treachery of the Turks, even under the very eyes of our Consuls,—the obstinate refusal of Lord Derby to inter- fere at all in their behalf, on the ground that any interference was an injury to the authority of the Porte,—his snubs to the Russian Ambassador when he asked England to bring forward some alternative proposal, better than the Berlin Memorandum, which might stop the war in the East,—his avowed convic- tion that Turkey and the insurgent provinces must fight it out,— and the uselessness of the tardy concession in September of what might have stopped the strife in May. All this was extremely well put and illustrated. But Sir Henry James did not advocate any policy for the immediate future, and held aloof from Mr. Gladstone's, while speaking of Lord Derby's as "too late." He doubted whether there had been any reaction in public opinion. If the Government was less blamed now than six weeks ago, it was because the public believed that the Government had come round to them, not because they bad come round to the Government. Some of our contemporaries world, we suppose, describe that se the illusion of insanity.
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