The incapacity of the Jingo party to weigh evidence in
any matter relating to the Eastern Question received certainly a conspicuous illustration in the famous controversy on Turkish impalements in Bosnia. Dr. Liddon, the Rev. Malcolm MacColl, and a Croatian fellow-traveller, related in the Times that they saw a man impaled, at a distance of not more than one hundred yards. A British Consul, writing some weeks afterwards from a distance of three hundred miles from the scene of the impalement, and in total ignorance of the locality and circumstances, informed the Foreign Office that, after much reflection," he had come to the conclusion that with' the travellers saw was "a faggot of haricot beans fixed up to dry." This wild suggestion, utterly unsupported by evidence, was accepted by the whole Jingo party, as conclusive against the testi- mony of three credible English witnesses as to what they saw with their own eyes, at a distance of one hundred yards. Provoked by the persistence of the Pall Mall Gazette in describing the fact as an "amusing legend," Mr. Malcolm MacColl has pub- lished a summary of the controversy in this week's Guardian, and has quoted the decided opinion of Sir Samuel Baker and Captain Richard Buxton in support of the facts related by Dr. Liddou and himself. Neither of these distinguished Eastern travellers has "the slightest doubt" upon the subject. And assuredly neither of them belongs to the party to whom Christian prejudice has ever been imputed.
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