Sir Stafford Northcote made a speech on Saturday at Charl-
ton Park, near Greenwich, at a meeting of the West Kent and Greenwich Conservatives, of which the main drift was that Lord Beaconsfield's policy during the Russian war had been so badly imitated by the present Government, in regard to Egypt, as to make it their own. He quoted,—
" Jack stole his discourse from the famed Dr. Brown, But reading it wretched]y, made it his own ;"
which he paraphrased thus,—" The late Lord Beaconsfield saved Constantinople, and the present Government has destroyed Alexandria." However, the fact is not so. The late Lord Beaconsfield did not save Constantinople. If any power saved it from the entrance of Russian troops, it was the power of Germany ; and if the Turks, dis- gusted by the presence of the English Fleet, had chosen to burn Constantinople as Arabi Pasha burned Alexandria, the late Lord Beaconsfield could no more have prevented it, than he could have prevented the assassination of the Czar. Sir Stafford Northcote also designated the Arrears Bill the pro- duct of Kilmaiuham, and applied to what was called "the Treaty of Kilmainham," the nomenclature of a friend, namely, "A deed without a name." Even that criticism has no very formidable sting. When the deed is a good deed,—which it certainly is to let men out of prison when you have no longer any right to keep them there,—we do not mind its not having a name.
Previous page
