Sir Wilfrid Lawson, in delivering his annual address to his
constituents on Wednesday, dilated in his accustomed strain on the wickedness of taking any part in any war at all, and said he should have been shamed and humiliated if Great Britain had either joined the Turks to resist the Russians, or joined the Russians to invade the Turks. He ridiculed the idea that any concert of Europe would have prevented the war,—an idea which it is clearly very inconvenient for a peace-at-all-price man to accept. For if it be true, peace might sometimes be secured by readiness to go to war, whereas what he wants to produce is an absolute resolve on everybody's part never to go to war, and never to offer to go to war, for any pretext whatever. He talked a great deal of nonsense about alarmist feeling, predicting that if the Turks continued in the ascendant, we, should soon be told that the Mahommedans would be over in England, and forcing us all to marry seven wives apiece. The best part of his speech, which in its war portion was frivolous and jocular, was his attack on the French "Saviours of Society " and so- called friends of "Order," whom he termed "the fomen- ters of disorder, sohism, and conspiracy," and "the pests of the world." It is something to have a cause which Sir Wilfrid does not make light of. If, however, there were any fear of its involving a war, we would venture something on Sir Wilfrid Lawson's discovering the means of making a jest of French Republican liberty.
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