Sir Michael Hicks-Beach and Mr. Ward Hunt both made speeches
at Conservative banquets on Wednesday, the one at Gloucester and the other at Peterborough, and both of them very bad ones. Sir Michael Beach took credit to England for directing the whole policy of Europe in relation to the Turkish Question, and insisted, according to the hackneyed formula, that any armed intervention would lead " to a war of extermina-
they were," would " pale in the shade." Mr. Ward Hunt said much the same at Peterborough, but he added a moral apoph- thegm, namely, that " courage was one of the highest qualities a man could show, and n'o one could help admiring the indomitable pluck of the Turks." If animal courage — which is all the Turks show — be " one of the highest qualities a man can show," man has certainly not improved upon the animals from whom he is said to be descended. A tiger or a bull-dog certainly shows at least as much courage as a Turk, and de- serves just as much credit for it. "One of the highest qualities a man could show " is, oddly enough, shared by the less intelligent brutes with many of the less intelligent members of our criminal population. Mr. Ward Hunt, if not very original as a First Lord, is indisputably original as a moralist.
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