Sir Henry James addressed his constituents at Taunton on 'Tuesday,
in one of his most graceful, and also most powerful, speeches,—a speech at once mellifluous and keen, at once persuasive and aggressive. He showed that the Government Allege that the troubles abroad have concentrated all their attention on foreign policy, as an excuse for doing no- thing et home, and then deprecate as unpatriotic any severe criticism of that foreign policy. Moreover, while it is 'unpatriotic to criticise their foreign policy before it is carried into effect, it is described as vexatious and unmeaning to criticise it after it has been carried into effect. It is then characterised as "the denunciation by an Opposition of a com- pleted act of State policy," and such a denunciation is declared to be idle verbiage." Sir Henry James refused to bow to this rather despotic canon, and freely criticised the Treaty of Berlin, creating great laughter by his announcement that a .churck in Taunton was actually being erected. "avowedly and purposely in honour of the Treaty of periiii.a He asked whether the Salisbury-Schouvaloff memorandum was to be the object of sacred commemoration in that church, or rather the admitted -outrages on the Christians of Turkish Armenia and Turkey's other provinces? But after all, why should. it be surprising to Sir Henry James that when Lord Salisbury describes a supposed. treaty between Austria and Germany in the words of the angel host, his humble supporters at Taunton should regard the Treaty of Berlin, for which Lord I3eac0n5field and Lord Salisbury are personally responsible, as a new Covenant, of which the glad tidings,—" peace, with honour„, —surpass those which only .heralded peace.aud good-will to men?
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