Mr. Baxter, in a very interesting speech, delivered yesterday week
at the town-hall, Berne (ono of the Montrose group of boroughs), having refuted the absurd imputation cast upon him by the Times, that he wishes to have neither Army nor Navy, nor foreign policy of any kind,—sketched out what he desired the Liberal foreign policy in the East of Europe to be, in a few masterly sentences. "We Liberals," he said, "deeming Turkey disreputable and doomed, wish to have the influence of Britain cast into the scale on behalf of an undivided and powerful Slavic State on the Danube, a greatly extended Grecian empire on the Agean, and arrangements in Armenia and elsewhere similar to those in the Lebanon, which would pave the way for the Turks even in Asia making their final bow." The new policy of Lord Salisbury was, he said, a hobgoblin policy, for it turned on the panic felt and inculcated against Russia, as on its central pivot; though Lord Salisbury was, but a short
time ago, the first to expose the folly of such a panic. "If by having no foreign policy, our opponents mean' that we have no desire to hold up a bugbear before the British nation; and that we do not believe in the heathenish doctrine that every country has a natural enemy, then I plead guilty to the charge, and I pray that the next general election may scatter the people that delight in war;'"—to which prayer we believe the country will return a hearty "Amen."
Previous page
