On Monday Mr. Bright made a great speech at Manchester,
in the dining-room of the Manchester Reform Club-house, on the present crisis, a great part of which was devoted to areview and vin- dication of his old policy of opposition to the policy of the Crimean war, two-and-twenty years ago. This part of his speech we have criticised sufficiently elsewhere. For the rest, Mr. Bright evidently hankered after laissez-faire even in the situation as it is now. He suggested that, for one course, "we might tear the Treaty of 1856 into a thousand pieces," and say "we were fools ;" and "in that case we might leave Turkey to her fate,"—which would mean, we presume, leaving not only Turkey, but the Christian provinces of Turkey, to their fate. But if a laissez-faire policy were impossible, there must be a complete change of front in our attitude towards Turkey, and this there was no chance of getting from Lord Beaconsfield. The Prime Minister had always treated the stories of Turkish cruelty with levity, and had never expressed more sorrow than he would have expressed if he had heard that there had been a "sudden massacre of those multitudes of dogs which prowl about the streets of Constantinople." We needed a total change of policy,—to dissolve partnership with an insolvent Power "which curses every land that is subject to it ;" and we must get either from Parliament or from the constituencies a deliberate vote on the principle of that new policy,—which vote would cer- tainly declare for justice to Christian and Moslem alike, and for leaving the Ottoman Power to the fate which Providence has decreed to "corruption, tyranny, and wrong."
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