A -speech of the Right Hon. W. N. Massey's, delivered
last week to his' constituents at Tiverton, shows that one not regarded as among the most advanced members of the Liberal party is quite as heartily with Mr. 'Gladstone on the Eastern Question as Mr. Fawcett or Canon Liddon. Re maintained, justly enough, that for the purpose of snubbing such a movement as that ini- tiated by Mr. Gladstone, it is quite as absurd to say, with Sir- Stafford Northcote, that the people of this country do not under- stand foreign politics, as to say, for the purpose of checking a free-trade agitation, that they do not understand finance. Both statements are true, in one sense. Neither is true in any sense which throws any question on the deliberateness and firmness of the popular resolve on such *matters as these. When Mr. Massey compared Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet with Lord Beaconsfield's .A.ylesbury speech, and asked which of the two had the sympathy of England, the reply, "Gladstone !" was shouted, amidst great cheering. And when he went on to urge that the Russian de- mands were perfectly reasonable, and should be urgently sup- ported by England, the whole meeting was heartily with him. It will hardly be found, we think, that the St. James's Hall Confer- ence was such a "false, wandering light," in relation to popular English opinion, as it suited some of our Turkish contemporaries to declare, and try to believe, it to be.
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