The only open sympathy which Lord Beaconsfield's Recess speeches on
the Turkish Question have elicited on the Liberal side of the House of Lords has been awakened apparently in the heart of Lord Stratheden and Campbell, who argued, on Monday, that we ought to go to war on behalf of Turkey, if needful ; and that Turkey ought not, as yet at all events, to be condemned even for refusing the terms pressed upon her by the Conference,—nay, that England was responsible for her refusal, if our representatives had failed to use all the arguments of a nature to make Turkey accept the terms offered. He justified the Turks, in short, and moved an address to the Crown, pray- ing that the 1856 treaties of guarantee, so far as they had been revived in 1871, should be re-established in all their original force. Earl Grey did not support this motion, but made a speech taking up a great number of impracticable positions, inveigh- ing warmly against Russia, and advocating the appointment of foreign Lieutenant-Governors in the Turkish provinces who should be recommended by the European Powers, and not dis- missed without notice to the Powers. Lord Grey, in short, will not hear of war against Turkey or for Turkey, nor will he hear of autonomy, nor will he tolerate Russian interference ; but what he wants is so to darn up the holes in the Turkish administra- tive system that Turkey may last a little longer. There are two difficulties in that proposal—(1) that you cannot darn up the holes in a stocking if there is nothing worth mentioning of the fabric of the stocking left to darn ; and (2) that you cannot darn a stocking which the owner insists on continuing to wear.
