The official Austrian and Turkish contradictions of Dr. Liddon's and
Mr. MacColl's account of what they heard and saw of impalement as still pursued on the borders of Bosnia, though their contradictions are confirmed by Consul Holmes,—the Consul whose reports to our Foreign Office have
Always earned him so much favour at Constantinople,—have been -very sufficiently criticised this week, first by Mr. MacColl, and then by Dr. Liddon himself. Count Andraasy's conjecture that no atrocities could be committed on the borders of Bosnia without Austria knowing of them, is pretty well met by the fact that nothing was known by Austria at the end of June of the atrocities which bad occurred in Bulgaria in the early part of May. Consul Holmes's remark that neither the Consuls, the Turkish authorities, nor the people at Bosnia-Serai knew anything of these matters is not surprising, considering that no one asserted that they had taken place at Bosnia-Serai, and that the friends of the Turks do not take pains to find out what happens at a distance when it is of a nature not creditable to Turkey. In fact, the sceptical ignor- ance of Count Andrassy, of Consul Holmes, and of Mr. Stuart Glennie cannot be regarded as weighing a feather against the posi- tive statements of witnesses, the deliberate assertions of Bishop Strosamayer, who said that he had recently known even a woman near her confinement impaled, and the optical phenomenon of a human body on a stake observed through a good field-glass within a distance of 200 yards, by Dr. Liddon and Mr. MacColl. Negative evidence applying to one frontier is about as germane to the refutation of positive evidence applying to another, as the evidence that there was not a cloud in the sky at Liverpool would be to disprove the assertion that there was a thunder-storm in Igndon.
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