Mr. Cross, the Home Secretary, has been starring it this
week in Birmingham, and trying to revive there the somewhat dejected hopes of the _Conservative electors. If a somewhat Liberal- Conservative be the beat kind of Conservative agitator in a borough which is so very Radical as Birmingham, Mr. Cross wtui well selected for his task, but we confess to some doubt whether a " moderate " man is ever quite the person to, make head- way against political wind and tide. Mr. Cross tried to talk like a good hot partisan, but the effect is rather like a ruffled ring-dove's attempt to play the character of a defiant and im- perious hawk. The coo breaks out after all, in spite of hood and bells. Even on the Eastern Question Mr. Cross was as "mild as new milk." "Treaty-breaking," he said, was playing with edged tools, and not to be thought of, but then the Powers who made a treaty could alter it ; the time had clearly come when all "the waste- paper currency of Turkish promises" must be paid in sterling coin, and it would be the duty of the Conference to Re what
measures were necessary to secure the good administration of the Christian provinces of Turkey, and to see that "adequate pro- vision is made that all these measures should be carried into effect." If that does not imply a military occupation of these provinces, we do not know what it means. Nothing short of it -would secure that the measures devised should be carried into effect. But even the Liberals would be quite satisfied with a military guarantee for a reformed Administration, and we certainly should have supposed that Lord Beaconsfield would be quite dissatisfied with it.
Previous page
