The Cannock Chase Examiner. — 1876-10-06 (Cannock, Staffordshire, England)

OCTOBER 6, 1867.  LORD DERBY ON THE GOVERNMENT POLICY.  No one can quarrel with the Earl of Derby's summary of the objects which English public opinion, so practically unanimous, has been aiming to secure during the last few weeks. These the noble Earl, in reply to the Mansion House Deputation on Wednesday, said were the punishment of the principal offenders concerned in the Bulgarian massacres, the early assembling of Parliament, and the practical independence of the Christian provinces; and to their consideration the noble speaker addressed himself. Respecting the first of these points, he said they would learn in a few days, from the publication of the despatches sent to Sir Henry Elliot, that Sir Henry had been charged to obtain an audience of the Sultan to lay all the facts fully and unreservedly before him, to denounce by name the authors of these atrocities, and to call for their punishment. So far the policy of the Government and public opinion are in unison, but the credit which is so persistently claimed by Conservative writers for this spirited action is due to the pressure which has been put upon the Government, too much at first enamoured of the scandalous levity of the Premier. So far then public opinion has produced a change for the better. What the country demands however is not the inauguration of a policy of revenge. What is done is done; and while the execution of a dozen scoundrels is necessary to satisfy the demands of legal justice, it cannot compensate the wrongs of violated women and murdered children. It would be a wicked mockery indeed, if English policy were directed to no better end; yet this in plain words is evidently the drift of Conservative diplomacy. Looked at in this light, it can produce no feelings of wonder that the Secretary of Foreign Affairs should throw the whole weight of his influence against an autumn session. It is nothing that the Government is entirely opposed to the policy of the nation; it is nothing that they are pledging the country to a course of action which it repudiates. The Government sees no necessity for the assembling of Parliament, and Parliament shall not be assembled, unless—and the noble earl wisely secured a loophole of retreat—in a case of emergency. That eontingency, we are afraid, is not so far off as the Speaker imagined when he made the statement.  The third and most important point of the address referred to the solution of this grave political problem, and this received the least satisfactory ' treatment. What is demanded by the constituencies is that Turkish villanies shall be made absolutely impossible in the future. In this direction it was hoped that our policy, in deference to public opinion, would tend. It is in this direction, however, that it does not tend. The old farce about the integrity of the Turkish Empire, and "effectual guarantees," is to be played over again, until massacre and conflagration re-arouse the indignation of Europe. The policy of the English Government is thinly veiled under the plausible, but misleading phrase of "local self-government." Load self-government in England answers admirably, and is one of the noblest outgx, cwths of civil liberty; but it is possible in such perfection only among people of the same blood, language and interests. How is it possible in a country in which none of these conditions exist ? How is it possible Ma country" with a bankrupt treasury, with a civil war widely extended, and to a considerable extent supported from abroad, with ministers and officials changed in the most arbitrary manner from post to post at a day's notice, and with an administrative anarchy in which almost all government has been in abeyance ?" Yet this picture is not painted by a " humanitarian politician" with " sinister " designs to accomplish. It is by the hand of the noble earl himself, and the picture is not only true of Turkey temporarily, but of it always. Rebellion superinduced by the most frightful system of oppression is chronic; a bankrupt treasury canoed by immorality and crime is nothing new; and yet to the tender mercies of these human tigers the Christians of Bulgaria are to be still consigned, protected (%) by " guarantees " that have repeatedly been given only to be repeatedly broken or contemned. If this is the only remedy English diplomacy can discover for so frightful a disease, humanity will be taint.d with an indelible stain. The plan that can bring about a settlement of the Eastern  question, is that which Mr. Gladstone fore.