Mr. Gladstone is assailed, of course, for everything and anything
he writes, but we should hardly have thought it worth while to assail him for saying that, strongly as he had publicly recommended, and still recommends, the concession of complete civil equality with the Christian races, to the Jews of Roumania, Bulgaria, Servia, and the other independent provinces of Turkey, this recommendation will be in effect neutralised by the strong partisanship displayed by the many English, German, and Austrian Jews on behalf of the Turks, as illustrated in the reported meeting of the Jews of Sheffield in favour of the foreign policy of the Govern- ment. Mr. Gladstone carefully said in the letter assailed, that he hoped this rumour of the common action of the Jews of Sheffield might prove to be untrue, and it has since been denied ; but never- theless, the Tory papers have been snapping at Mr. Gladstone all the week for implying that the Jews are more bound to hold by his opinion on the foreign policy of the East, than any other section of her Majesty's subjects. Mr. Gladstone implied nothing of the kind. He only said that, as a matter of fact, the justice which the Jews want to get from the Christians of the East, they will hardly get by publicly taking a line which the Christians of the East think very unjust to themselves. We cannot see how that can be -denied ; and as for traversing the fact that the Jews all over the world have been largely defleoted from their Liberal con- nections by their resentment against the Christian populations of the East, it might as well be denied that the Christians in their turn have been biassed by their resentment against the persecutions of the Mahommedans. The fact is so, and it is far from surprising that it should be so.
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