Yesterday week, a Hackney Conservative Club was founded, and at
the banquet held in honour of it, Lord Salisbury, the President, took the chair, and delivered a sharp, though not very effective, attack on the Liberals. After declaring that it was the duty of the House of Lords to represent "the per- manent as opposed to the passing feeling of the English nation," and that for the House of Lords to resist such a per- manent feeling would " not only be unseemly, but impossible," Lord Salisbury expressed his conviction that the foreign policy of this Government would be " harmless," that the European Concert had been tried, and " had not done anything in parti- cular." Lord Salisbury also repudiated any sort of responsi- bility for the agreement to surrender Dulcigno. That was not in the Berlin Treaty. It was an equivalent proposed by the Sultan himself for what was in the Treaty, and was not one to which the late British Government had given its assent. Lord Salisbury thought it a very " unfortunate " arrangement. The Sultan, no doubt, was committed to it, but Lord Beacons- field and he were not. Still, he hoped the Sultan would keep his engagement, as it was the only possible way of releasing the European Fleet from the very uncomfortable and unsafe anchorage in which it was now lying. Whether, however, Lord Salisbury really will be gratified by the surrender of Dulcigno is, we think a point on which his audience must feel the gravest doubts. When a man says to his rival, "I hope you won't get a fall in the mud," he probably means, " I hope you will, but think it only decent to keep that hope out of sight." And that, apparently, was Lord Salisbury's state of mind con- cerning the Turkish policy of the Government.
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