There was a singular Eastern-Question debate in the House of
Lords on Thursday, in which all the pressure came from the pro- Turkish side, and the only vestige of anything like fairness to the Christian provinces of Turkey was to be found in the speech of Lord Derby. • Lord Stratheden and Campbell began the debate with a proposal to declare the adhesion of Parliament to the policy of the Treaty of 1856. Lord Hammond followed, with a proposal to go back to Mr. Canning's declaration of 1826, to the effect that England would not endure to allow "foreign intrigue" to produce confusion and civil war in the country of an ally ; and then came Lord Napier and Ettrick, with a pane- gyric on the sort of tolerance of which Mahommedans " under. European influence" are capable, a vehement attack on the bar- barism of the Christian races of Turkey, and an appeal to Lord Derby to adhere resolutely to the "policy of Lord Palmerston,— without being debarred, we suppose, by the little fact that that, policy has failed. Lord Derby, thus conjured, made a very moderate reply. " We would gladly reunite, if we could," he. said, "the Porte with its insurgent provinces, but we have, as I conceive, no right and no wish to take part with one against the other in a purely internal quarrel. That is the. rule on which we have acted in times not remote, in the case of civil wars far more extensive and more sanguinary." And again,—" I have heard it suggested that we are supposed to be thinking too much of the interest of the Turks and too little of that of the non-Mahommedan races. I am utterly unaware of any foundation for that charge. No one supposes that the main- tenance of the Ottoman Empire in any form within Europe is possible, if there are to be permanent disaffection and discontent among the Christian races." All that is extremely good. But if that is the spirit of our policy, why do we make demonstrations at Besika Bay, and try to bully Servia into moderation ?
