In the House of Lords, the Address was moved by
Lord Stanmore, and seconded by Lord Rosalyn. Lord Rosebery, who followed them, was exceedingly amusing; but his speech conveyed the impression of waspishness. After calling the Duke of Devonshire "a universal refrigerator," he passed and repassed his rapier through poor Mr. Curzon, and chaffed him unmercifully for the unfortunate speech in which he spoke of every foreign difficulty subsiding, as if by magic, on the return to power of the Unionists. After cavilling at the Siamese agreement, and sneering at the praise which Mr. Chamberlain had received from the newspapers over the Transvaal crisis, Lord Rosebery tried to make a point against the Government by the declara- tion that if they desired to dissociate themselves from the Jameson raid, it was a little unfortunate that shortly after it took place they should have taken occasion, in their official organ, through their official poet, to print and publish and circulate a glowing eulogium of that enterprise." After pointing out that the Venezuelan difficulty was lessened, not increased, by the intervention of the United States—it introduced into the controversy a guarantee for the per- manence of any arrangement arrived at—Lord Rosebery attacked Lord Salisbury's handling of the Armenian problem. ' Lord Salisbury menaced the Sultan, and treated his promises of reform with "cold derision," but when it came to action he did nothing. From the Prime Minister's last speech three deductions must be drawn,—(1) that he had been forced to abandon the cause of the Armenians ; (2) that the Concert of Europe was directed towards restraining not the Sultan, but the Prime Minister ; (3) that the Cyprus Convention was a delusion and a snare.
