Mr. Gathorne Hardy's motion of last night for an address
to Her Majesty requesting her, in bringing the " Three Rules" agreed upon in the Washington Treaty to the knowledge of foreign Powers, to declare Her Majesty's dissent from the inter- pretation put upon these rules by the tribunal at Geneva, was a fresh effort in this direction. Mr. Vernon Harcourt seconded it, and if it should have passed, it would be so plain a censure on the Government for their negligence in not having already taken this course on their own responsibility, that a new crisis must at once occur. We go to press before the result of the debate is known, but it is not at all likely that the Government will suffer a new reverse on this question. The Liberals are so afraid of a dissolution, and the leading spirits below the gangway are for the most part so grateful for the Geneva Arbitration, that Mr. Harcourt is not likely, we think, to have many Liberal supporters. indeed, he is hardly the kind of man to play the successful rebel. His hostility to the Government is more strategical than serious, and he would prefer to play the chief part in a losing rather than in a winning game. The disaffecteds below the gangway are rather in want of a supple and adroit mind, prolific of such fatal resolutions as those which Mr. Milner Gibson used to have the credit of drafting during the first two Governments of Lord Palmerston. We hardly know even a candidate for the office.
