Mr. Ashrnead-Bartlett delivered one of his wild harangues on foreign
politics on Wednesday, setting forth that the Ministry had alienated Germany, and interfered in Egypt, and allowed Russia to advance 600 miles,—Russia, which had 4,000,000 -soldiers, and could put 2,000,000 into the field ; and all that sort of thing. Sir Charles Mike, of course, ridiculed the speech, quoting with great effect a Russian newspaper on "lee insanites -de M. .Ashmead-Bartlett ;" but he took the occasion to state that in Egypt the Government, rightly or wrongly, had pursued -the policy of their predecessors, as Sir S. Northcote had publicly acknowledged ; that the idea of differences between Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville on the Joint Note was "idle and ridiculous ;" that if, as the honourable Member asserted, Europe had been on the brink of war, Lord Granville had been adroit in maintaining peace ; that Mr. Bartlett's remarks on the advance of Russia, the revolution in Herat, and, indeed, -the conduct of her Majesty's Government generally, "had been guided by that spirit of romance which was so conspicuously apparent in the majority of his observations." That is too hard. The Member for Eye is not romantic. He would be quite a useful Member in his way, only he knows nothing, not oven the map of Europe, and believes, therefore, like any other village politician, everything he sees in print. If he read a telegram stating that General Skobeleff had marched from Askabad to Lahore in twenty-four hours, he would found a motion on that "information."
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