The blow to the existing Government of Great Britain is
very :severe. Supposing the Cabinet to be a unit, as Sir Stafford Northcote asserts, and Lord Beaconsfield to have approved and supported Lord Salisbury, a great effort to maintain peace and obtain relief for the Turkish Christians has ignominiously failed, from want of the courage to employ the necessary means. The Turks saw that behind the Conference was only Russia, and they meant to fight Russia, and they consequently treated all verbal representations with contempt. The Chinese would have done precisely the same. The moral pressure of united Europe, therefore, upon which the British Government relied has been futile ; and the British Government, in relying upon it, has shown itself inept, ill-informed, and timid. It has asked a protected Power, for which it fought a great war, and to which its people lent a hundred millions, to avoid a European war by nominal concessions ; and the protected Power has sneered in its face, and declared that it accepted war with willingness. The result of months of negotiation has been to produce the exact situation which Lord Derby declared to be most dangerous to the inter- ests of this country. Great Britain has hunted the " Snark " " with smiles and soap," and finding it a Boojum, has disappeared into nothingness.
