The Duke of Argyll made by far the best speech
of the Session on the Eastern Question, on Tuesday night, pointing out with great force how perverted the policy of the Government had been before the Bulgarian massacres, and how feeble and vacil- lating after them ; how, when Austria wanted to dictate terms of peace to Turkey, England accepted a six months' armistice which was unwelcome to Turkey's foes, and excepted it without a protocol giving Europe an engagement for needful reforms ; and how, after entirely refusing a Conference from which Turkey should be excluded, she accepted one into which Turkey was to be admitted, and then engrafted on it a preliminary Conference from which she was excluded. The Duke of Argyll declared the Conference a failure, as it failed both to secure peace and to give the Christ- ians of Turkey a better Governments Lord Derby followed him in a very feeble speech, of which the drift was a pertinacious hope that peace might still be preserved, and that the Turkish Christians might gain something from the Constitution after all- At all events, said Lord Derby, we ought to give Turkey fair time to try her reforms before thinking of coercion, and this new dilatory plan seems to be the main policy of the Government. The chief merit of the Conference, in Lord Derby's eyes, was its dilatory operation. The Conference over, he grasps at the Constitution.
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