The greater part, however, of.the debate oflionday night was languid
in the extreme. The amendment adopted by the Govern-
ment was moved, for instance, byMr.Plunket, in a speech of much less than his usual animation ; but Sir Charles Dilke's statement of the case against England in regard to Greece was made with con- siderable power. .He showed how long Greece had had to suffer from 'the atrocities of the Turks upon Hellenic populations, how completely the case for putting Greece in possession of Crete, Epirus, and Theaealy corresponded with the case for puttiug Bosnia and Herzegovina in the possession of Austria, and how England had snubbed the French proposals onhehalf of Greece. Mr. Grant Duff made a keen and graphic speech, in which. he described the Treaty of Berlin as the Treaty of San Stefano in disguise,—accused it of settling nothing, and of leaving the' great question of all, .the question of Constantinople, to be a standing menace to the peace of Europe. He illustrated the unprecedented use made by the Crown of the Treaty-making power to withdraw such a question as that of the Asiatic Protectorate from the consideration of Parliament, by a story of the Italian politeness of Torlonia to the late Prince Metternick—to whom, when he was praising the most valuable picture in his collection, 'rorlonia, in compliment, offered it, though he was horrified when the offer was accepted, and always ended in future his account of the transaction by saying, Et le coquin ra pris !" Constitutional historians would say the same of the Ministers who had used their technical right to make a treaty, for such a pur- pose as this. They would say of them that the rogues had availed themselves of a right which, in relation to such a matter as this, was not really, but only formally, theirs to use.
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