Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville, questioned in the Houses of
Commons and Lords on Tuesday as to a despatch of Lord Gran- ville's asking Mr. Fish to concur in a joint request to the Geneva Tribunal for an eight months' adjournment, which had been transferred, as the spoils of some Yankee "literary enterprise," to the telegraphic columns of the Daily News of that date, admitted that the despatch was substantially accurate, though the sum- mary of Mr. Fish's objection was not so, and said that the period of adjournment suggested was for eight months in order to bring round not only the next ordinary meeting of the American Senate, which takes place in December, but the meeting of Parliament, which takes place in February. The Prime Minister, however, did not refer to the purloined despatch till the Parliamentary pres- sure compelled him ; having concluded a very meagre statement of the situation without allusion to it, when Mr. Bernal Osborne, while declining to read what he called a "humiliating despatch," demanded explanations, and elicited that it was a genuine despatch, betrayed on the other side of the Atlantic,—special facilities for betrayal have been given through General Schenck's omission to put it into cypher before sending it. Mr. Disraeli described Mr. Gladstone's explanation as" wanting in frankness," and said he knew "nothing more unwise and indiscreet and 753 nothing more to be deprecated than that the relations between the 753 7_54 two countries should be made the stalking-horse and chief subjects '54 of discussion" on all the American hustings during a Presidential 755 campaign. He added that he believed the Government to be
framing a policy which would end "in disaster and danger to England."
