Mr. Hall, the Conservative Member for Oxford, addressed the Oxford
"Druids" on Monday on the Eastern Question, attacking the Liberals bitterly for not supporting the Government, but yet throwing the whole of his own influence into the scale of the Salisbury section of the Government. Except that he was strongly anti-Russian, and expressed his belief in the complete insin- cerity of her disinterestedness in the most uncompromising terms, even a Liberal could hardly have spoken more strongly on the absolute necessity for taking solid guarantees from Turkey for the better government of her Christian provinces than did Mr. Hall, and especially he expressed very strongly his gratification that Lord Salisbury had been sent to Constantinople. If Mr. Hall feels that gratification strongly, his invective against the Liberal party is simply ungrateful. But for them and the agitation they raised, it is more than doubtful whether Lord Beaconsfield could have been persuaded into sending to Constantinople a colleague whose view of the question at issue was so different from his own. Moreover, if the accounts as yet received of the Conference are to be trusted, Lord Salisbury lends no sanction to Mr. Hall's violent RussophobiA, which is almost the political anologne of hydrophobia itself. At least, though not a fear of water, it is a violent fear of Russia when on the water ; and to bottle up Russian energies in the Black Sea seems to Mr. Hall the acme of good statesmanship. Mr. Hall is an able man, but yet his is a rather thick-headed view.
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