This day week, Lord George Hamilton made a speech to
a Conservative meeting at Sevenoaks, from which we extract the dollowing words :—" They all remembered the agitation which was carried on against the late Government with regard to certain atrocities in the East of Europe. Mr. Gladstone made wild appeals to the people on that subject ; he stirred the English people almost to madness by his reckless speeches. One of the wild things said or written by the present Prime Minister on the subject was There is not a criminal in a _European gaol, there is not a cannibal in the South Sea Islands, whose blood would not rise and boil over at the recital of that which has been done !' (Loud laughter.) Well, during the past few weeks this country had had full and reliable information of terrible crimes committed in certain parts of Russia. There was no doubt whatever that many thousands of Jews had been driven from their homes, many murdered, and their wives and children violated. He had waited with some anxiety, expecting to hear every morning that the Russian Ambassador had received permission to leave London, but he at length discovered that there was no need to be alarmed on that subject All he had to say was that if Mr. Gladstone was right now, it was the strongest possible censure on his own conduct when, a few years ago, Lord Beaconsfield was placed in a similar position." Lord George Hamilton does not know what he is talking about. In the first place, in 1876 Mr. Gladstone waited for official evidence—official evidence produced by the Conservative Government itself,— of the Bulgarian atrocities, before he said a word. No such evidence of any Russian atrocities of the same kind has as yet been produced, and there is grave reason to doubt whether, as to atrocities of that kind, it can be produced. In the next place, we were responsible for bolstering up the Turkish Govern- ment by our intervention, for it could not have stood without European guarantees, and we are not responsible at all for the existence of the Russian Government. But what we wish to call attention to especially is the Conservative "loud laughter." Did the poor creatures who listened to Lord George Hamilton, and who laughed so loudly at his jokes, really know what the special Commissioner of the Conservative Government had himself attested, as having happened at Batuk and many other places in Bulgaria ? If they did, they were hardly worthy of the name of men.
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