THE INTERNATIONALISTS AND THE GOVERNMENT.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—In your number of July 13th you insert a letter from Mr. Maltman Barry, in which, under the heading of "The Inter- nationalists and the Government," he relieves his mind of various matters, summing them up in the conclusion that Lord Beacons- field has "betrayed the trust reposed in him by his countrymen, and wrecked his own reputation." Mr. Maltman Barry seems hurt in his mind about Lord Beaconsfield, as if any of his followers could be assured of a special following-out of Conservative politics, after his having " dished " the party by passing household suffrage in boroughs. Lord Beaconsfield's antecedents were erratic in home politics, they are also as erratic in Euro-Asiatic politics. The view of "What is truth ?" according to party, never troubles him.
But Mr. Barry, in his criticisms, proceeds to say of Lord Beaconsfield,—" Yet he denounced the fables of the massacres, the intrigues of Russia," &c. Men of ordinary intelligence, who have ordinary capacity for measuring evidence, are at a loss to understand the argument contained in a statement such as this. Does Mr. Barry possess sources of intelligence not possessed by other men ? If so, why does he not make them known ? "The fables of the massacres !" Are we, then, to set aside all that pain- ful narrative of poor McGahan as romance, as no better than the spicy tale in the "penny dreadful ?" The horrors of the spring of 1876, of slaughtered and defiled women, of massacred children of all ages, of emasculated youth and murdered manhood—all the horrible tale that made us gasp as we read it, and lay down the paper while the cold sweat ran down us,—was all this fable, Mr. Barry, and did Lord Beaconsfield, in the character of Mr. Disraeli, " denounce " the narrative ?—denunciation in this case being nothing, if less than disproof. If so, I, for one, should like to see the explosion of "the fable."
I am sorry, Sir, no known writer in your current number has said a word to Mr. Barry. I had hoped such would be the case. If a man may by a phrase to you blot out one of the foulest pages in modern or ancient history, the work of truthful news- paper correspondence must surely have come to an end, and McGahan rank as a liar.—I am, Sir, &c.,
[It is no novelty that the violent pro-Turks followed the Prime Minister in discrediting the facts of the Bulgarian massacres,— one of the best attested events in modern history. But if Mr. Maltman Barry had himself seen them, it is certain he would not have believed them, so passionate is his prejudice against any fact that tells on the Russian side.—En. Spectator.]
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