Lord Derby saw that it was not needful to say
very much in reply, and no one succeeds better than Lord Derby, when he so pleases, in economising superfluous declarations. And then the Duke of Argyll rose, to repudiate the suggestion of Earl Grey that he had exaggerated the misgovernment and the administrative horrors of the Ottoman Empire. The conduct of the Turkish Com- mission appointed to investigate the Bulgarian atrocities was alone a sufficient proof that the Turkish Government did not regret or disapprove those atrocities in the slightest degree; their whole object was to screen the miscreants who had been the perpetrators of those horrors, instead of to punish them. A proclamation had been issued in Bosnia to the effect that the Porte had dismissed the representatives of the Great Powers, for having dared to interfere between the Turkish Government and its subjects, and requiring that all the refugees from Turkish oppression should return to their homes under penalty of death if they refused to obey. The hopelessness of the suggestion of a year's delay, said the Duke of Argyll, to see what reforms the Turkish Government would make, had been sufficiently demonstrated by the Marquis of Salisbury. The Duke is the only English states- man who clearly sees at once how childish it is to expect to reform Turkey by a policy of limp remonstrances, and how immoral to make such childish expedients the excuse for renewing the lease under which the Turkish provinces are devastated and de- spoiled. The Duke means something, and says it ; Lord Stratheden and Campbell means something too, though what he means is almost as bad as his way of saying it ; but Lord Derby means nothing. His policy is all pulp.
