Mr. Balfour, in his reply, which was as cordial as
Sir William Harcourt's speech towards the Government of the United States, guarded himself against approving of any general policy of accepting arbitration in all cases of difference, since that might. involve the desertion of our own fellow-citizens when we might be clearly bound to defend them. Arbitration,- he said, was not a remedy that could always be applied, when the issue at stake was one going to the very roots of our national life, and so far as it might be applied, it would require very careful limitation. On the Transvaal question, Mr. Balfour pointed out that if the Outlanders had had one- hundredth part of the rights which every Irish citizen now enjoys, we should never have beard of their grievances, and there never would have been any Jameson raid at all. On the Armenian question, Mr. Balfour did not take up any very strong line. He knew, what Sir William Harcourt also knew, that the Rosebery Government could not afford to throw stones at its successor.
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