Ove of the principal topics of the week whose mails were brought by the Rosetta was the obstinacy of the Government in reference to the pay of the Indian troops sent to Suakim; question in which, on the division, they were only able to muster some 250 supporters, a large number of Unionists voting on the wrong side. Even the Government journals, with one or two exceptions such as the Globe, were against them, the Opposition papers, of course, unanimously condemning their action. It does seem extraordinary that, while India has to pay from the moment they leave our shore for English troops sent to India, the latter country should be asked to pay her troops while lent to England for service in the Red Sea. The Times says The Government, we regret. to say, have obstinately adhered to their policy of throwing a portion of the cost of the Egyptian expedition upon the Indian Treasury. Of course they have had their way, whatever that may be worth to them, but the reduction of their majority Irom 147 to eighty-five is a sufficiently clear indication of the price they had to pay for their triumph, It shows very plainly that for the course they have elected to follow on this question the Government can command only the partial and reluctant, support of their followers in the House of Commons, As to the Unionist Party at large, the most superficial study of the ordinary channels of information will suffice to show that, its opinions are most accurately expressed by the members who either voted against Ministers or abstained from voting. Mr. Balfour, with characteristic courage, put the whole matter ina nutshell, when he said that the root of the opposition to Lord George Hamilton's resolution lies in a general feeling that the policy of the Government is mean. That is a perfectly accurate diagnosis, and we would only amplify it slightly by stating that the policy is thought mean first because it is unjust, and second because it is on so paltry a scale that it cannot command even the respect yielded to vigorous and masculine error. The arguments used to show that it ig not unjust are so far from convincing that they are listened to with an impatience born of the feeling that it is shabby to raise them at all upon a question of at the outside £35,000. Mr. Balfour assures us, and we can easily believe him, that had the Government shared this view they would have been the last persons in the world to saddle India with the ordinary charges for her troops. But, unhappily, this does not mend the case much. In some respects it makes it worse, because it indicates a very wide divergence of feeling and sentiment as well as of policy between the Government and the Unionist Party and the country generally upon a question with unanimous. er Mr. Balfour nor Lor regard to which, public opinion is singularly George Hamilton, nor the Chancellor of the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.