Mr. Balfour has been addressing great audiences this week both
in Glasgow and Manchester, in Glasgow twice on Tuesday, when he was presented with the freedom of the city, and in Manchester on Wednesday, when he met his con- stituents in the Artillery Drill Hall. In all three speeches he showed his patience and sweet reasonableness, but we must say we should have liked to see him fretting more visibly and more passionately over the inability of the Govern- ment to bring relief and help to the miserable Armenians, even if it should be granted to him that the Government did their duty in preserving the Concert of Europe, when they found that to attempt the rescue of the Armenians would break up that Concert and might plutge the whole of Europe is to war. Of the two speeches at Glasgow the earlier one in which Mr. Balfour compared the isolation of this country in the last years of the last century with the isolation in which we find our- selves now, and congratulated his audience that at least there is no section of the English people which sympathises with the foes of England now, as one considerable party sym- pathised with our French foes at the close of the last century, was much the most impressive. And Mr. Balfour added to its impressiveness by a cordial tribute to the Opposition, and an evidently sincere declaration that he does not love the attitude of political controversy, though he is compelled by our system of party government to take so large a share in it. That is perfectly true. Mr. Balfour's political mind is always serene,—sometimes we think, when we have undertaken a great public duty which the Government finds itself unable to discharge, rather too serene.
