Tue prevailing political weakness of England at the present time undoubtedly sentimentality, and it is becoming a matter of moment whether the malady is to be considered permanent, or is due only to temporary ' but removeable causes. It has worked itself so intimately into our modern methods of thought, that it obtrudes itself even where least suspected, and constantly peeps out, apparently without the consciousness of the writers themselves, in descriptions of our relations with the rest of the world. The Pali Mall Budget of the 20th October affords a curious instance of this unconsciousness.
Tt can see how utterly the sentimental lism of Mr. Gladstone has been at fault, and how he has contrived to weaken at a critical moment the influence of his country. It can speak very wisely about the condition of Tarkey, and the impossibility of our mending matters by weeping in the style of the Spectator, over the iniquities of the Turks; but the same number, with a strange inconsistency, has only approval to give to the poling sentimentality of Sir Charles Dilke in matters Chinese. Now, we have as great a horror of the misdeeds of the Turkish Government as Mr. Gladstone himself but we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that, for much of what has recently happened, successive British Governments, in the composition of which Mr. Gladstone himself took a leading share, are to a very great extent to blame. We undertook: to reform the Tark; we would hear no complaints against him; our Minister and Consula were taught as they valued their peace of mind to throw a couleur de rose over everything unpleasant, We went on Jending the Sultan money time after time, to all appearance with th fullest concurrence of the British Government, which evidently led the Turks to understand that ib was prepared to be wet-nurse ad me finitum, Yet, with all this, we fore got to do what the peculiar position we bad taken up with regard to Turkey called on us to pert were too good-natured to insist that Turkey should keep her engagements towards her subjects in Europe, and we allowed her finally to encroach on privileges granted to ourselves. Wo had assumed, in fact, the relation of sponsor; but we omitted, while making display of the relation, to perform the duties which sponsorship demanded. We made a spoiled child of our charge, whom we had undertaken to bring up in the right path; and then, with an inconsistency entirely our own, soon as we had found that it had turned out like all spoiled children, in place of setting ourselves to cor rect our own errors, we began to pul at the resalt of our own mismanagement, If the British Govern-bad told the Porte, any time within the last fifteen years, " we inter. fered in your behalf on condition that you should carry out certain reforms, and keep certain stipulations. Those reforms are not executed, nor are steps apparently being taken to execute them; and those stipulations are notoriously transgressed by you, while we as your sponsors are placed in a false position with regard to the rest of Europe. We must, therefore, either withdraw the countenance which we have hitherto afforded you, or take more effective steps to see that you on your side keep your engagements," the chances are that the Turkish Government would have found the means of setting itself right. What we did was a very different thing. Our sentimentality would nob permit us to injure the amour propre of our protégés—the Sultan and his Ministers, We had a vague idea that, in acting thus, were supporting the independence of Turkey, and strengthening the power of its Government; and so matters continued to drift from bad to' worse, till at Jast the explosion, which could be no longer averted, came with the utter collapse of Turkish credit last
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.