The speech with which Lord Stanley closed the debate was
very explicit as to the fixed wish and intention of the Government not to intervene or even to offer advice unsolicited on any of the „points at issue on the Continent. He defended the support which he had given to the first armistice proposed by the Emperor of the French,—the armistice based on the unaccepted cession of Venetia to France,—as a mere matter of humanity. But Lord -Russell, at the Cobden Club, criticized the support given by us to this proposed armistice as tantamount to a sort of sanction to the insult put upon Italy by Austria in ceding Venetia to France rather than Italy. In spite of the contempt we feel for that weak and apparently ill-tempered little mancenvre, it strikes us as rather a party-criticism to accuse Lord Stanley of lending it any sanction by his support- to a proposal for armistice.
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