NEWS OF THE WEEK • T HE- country has been a
little amused, a little interested, and a good deal annoyed by a paragraph which was, at Mr. Disraeli's Tequest, inserted in the Times of Monday. The Premier in his speech at Guildhall on November 9 had stated that under the English Constitution a workman was less liable to arrest or domi- -ciliary visitation than nobles on the Continent. The words were, of course, understood to refer to the Arnim affair, but on Monday Mr. Disraeli explained that they should not and could not be so in- terpreted, Count Arnim's arrest having been quite legal, an explana- tion for which the semi-official German journals very kindly pat hint on the back. Of course everybody believes, truly or falsely, that Mr. Disraeli, who very rarely explains himself, acted in obedience to some hint from Berlin ; and the French papers, more especially the Debuts, censure him strongly for his subservi- ency. -We have discussed the affair elsewhere, but may say briefly here that one of two things seems certain. Either Mr. Disraeli had a hint, and took it, in which case his promises of a spirited foreign policy are mere election-cries; or—which is much more likely—he had no hint, in which case he has made a blunder calculated needlessly to lower the reputation of his country.
