Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, who is certainly one of the most
moderate of the Conservatives, spoke at Lechlade on Tuesday, and said all that a reasonable Opposition orator is expected to 'say in the way of mildly disagreeable criticism. The asserted -calm in relation to colonial and foreign affairs was, he said, of the nature of a temporary and deceptive lull, for which we should have to pay heavily in future ; while the outrages on the -Jews in Russia were passed over by the Liberal statesmen who made so great an outcry as to the outrages on Christians in Bul- garia. Sir Michael Beach did not remark, however, either that the Russian Government is not depending for its support on the guarantees of Europe, as was the Turkish Government when it -committed those fearful outrages on humanity to which he re- ferred; or that the evidence as to what has happened in Russia is very defective, and that the trustworthy part of it, though fearful and discrediting enough, does not at all bear out anything that can be fairly compared to the Bulgarian atrocities, or prove the complicity of the Russian Government. Sir Michael Beach -concluded by deprecating the repeal of the malt duty and the Ground-game Act, a legislative egg, he said, over which there had been more cackling than he ever heard over any production -of the kind. If he is right, who caused the cackling P Was it not the hissing of the Tory geese over it that produced the -cackling of the Liberals ? There would have been no cackling if there had been no hissing.
Previous page
