When these words came, they were certainly words of what
the Lord Mayor meant by "otherwise." Lord Derby was specific only about the demand for the punishment of the Turkish authors of the atrocities. AS for the Autumn Session, he decidedly snubbed the idea. The only thing in relation to which there could be any hurry was the deliverance of Parliamentary opinion as to the course of the negotiations, but for that the urgency was even too great to admit of Parliament's modifying it, for he expected that the terms of peace would be discussed and decided-on before even an Autumn Session could be summoned. Lord Derby declared that he thought the countenance given by England to Turkey had rather restrained than stimulated the ferocity of the Turks,—a view which suggests a picture of what he thinks the Turks would be without Sir Henry Elliot as guide, philosopher, and friend, which cannot be very encouraging to the sanguine writers who are promising everything for the Turks, if you will only give them time to soften gradually the character of their massacres, and the horror of their brutalities. Again, Lord Derby justly ridiculed the policy of non-intervention. But as for such an intervention as the English people desire, no Power, he maintained, desired that, not even, he suspected, Russia ; and of course the Turks could not be asked to give up empire as a mere polite concession to European opinion, without a display of force. In an appeal to force there would be no Power to join us,—while one—Austria, we suppose—would-be actively hostile. But though any real extinction of the political and administrative power of the Porte in the Christian provinces was not to be thought of, something might be done in the way of local autonomies, to which the Porte would not object, and which, as Lord Derby admitted, it would be exceedingly difficult to make effective. And with this crumb of "comfort or otherwise," to the effect that something might be done which it would be exceedingly difficult to make of any effect, just because the Porte would object to it, if it were of any effect, Lord Derby's oration closed. Cer- tainly the " otherwise " had much the best of it.
