Yet when the Duchess of Bedford now adds to her
great services the minor service of announcing a meeting, the
Weeeninster Gazette talks with fatuous inappropriate- ness of her "rushing into print." We agree that it ought to be made perfectly clear that the meeting will in no sense whatever be held in support of the Royalist cause in Portugal. But the Duchess of Bedford has always carefully guarded herself against that misunderstanding. She was doing so before most Liberal newspapers could be persuaded to express any appreciable intereet in the subject which she has made her own. We must suppose that some Liberals have got Dukes and Duchesses so much on the brain (even the Dukes and Duchesses of Whig families, like the Russells) that they have become incapable of referring to them except with an illiberality of expression which in any other political circum- stances than those of the moment would have to be described as offensive, To refer to the Duchess of Bedford as if she were a society Duchess with a fad, and not as what she is, a prison expert, is the height of prejudice or ignorance.
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