The Duke of Bedford is signalising his early political career
by taking a very emphatic line against any intervention for Armenia. He spoke at the Bedford Corn Exchange on Tuesday, as he wrote two or three weeks ago, in strong dis- approval of running any risk on behalf of that miserable people whom we took power to defend under a clause of the Treaty of Berlin ; and on Tuesday he even went farther, and said that "the Armenians were well known in the East for craft and cunning," which is not unlikely, considering their long and bitter experience of tyranny and torture. The Jews were once well-known in England for craft and cunning, but it was King John's greed and cruelty, and the greed and cruelty of rulers resembling King John, that made them so. For our parts, we conceive that no worse plea for abandoning them to their fate could be put forward, than that their character has been distorted by the brutal despotism to which they have been subjected.
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