On Monday Lord Stratheden and Campbell moved a resolution declaring
her Majesty's Government justified in taking every pre- caution to discourage encroachments on the Treaties of 1856 and 1871, assailing Lord Derby with all the force of which he was capable,—no great matter,—and asking the noble Earl, " When will you be warned ?" He remarked on the recent inaugura- tion of a Palmerston Club amongst the Liberals, and invoked the genius of Lord Palmerston to guide England, if only for a week or a fortnight, at this great crisis. Lord Derby snuffed out his not too formidable adversary without much ceremony. The difficulty in answering him was, he said, chiefly the difficulty of apprehending his meaning. If he understood Lord Campbell rightly, it was his opinion that the Eastern Question would never be settled till something very disagreeable happened to himself (Lord Derby). The settlement of that question would certainly be difficult, but it would not be achieved by "high- sounding rhetoric and pompous platitudes,"—or as Lord Camp- bell seems to have understood him, " confused rhetoric and pompous platitudes." Lord Derby then went on to other querists, and said that if the demand of the Turkish war-ships had been made by Russia, it was one which " he hoped would not be per- sisted in by the Russian Government." Lord Derby threw some- thing like discredit on the supposed demand for the expulsion of Mohammedans from Bulgaria,—one, he said, of the truth or false- hood of which he had taken great pains to satisfy himself ; and said :—" I understand that, whatever the demand was, it has either been withdrawn, or greatly modified." Lord Derby went on to remark, with great force, that though many people said they were favourable to neutrality before they saw what neutrality really meant, they are inclined now to back out of their position, and prove that they never really intended to be neutral at all. But it was such men who, even if they had not changed their purpose, had originally called it by a false name, who were chargeable with vacillation, not the Government, which from the first declared its honest neutrality, and had adhered to it, even when it appeared that the practical results were unpleasant to persons loud in their cry for it while they did not realise what it meant.
