Meanwhile the only member of the Government who has opened his lips on the subject has been Lord Selborne; and he was very esreful to explain that as a mere Under-Secretary he has no official knowledge of anything which is going on in any other Department than his own, the Colonial Office, and that he was iepeaking as a supporter and nob menier of the Government. His defence of Lord Salisbury, put briefly, amounts to this, Although' the de "the Government was to maintain the grity of China, this was impossible in view of the fact that China herself refused to make any attempt to preserve it. Our {great power being naval and not military are powerless to prevent the occupation of Manchuria by Russian land forees. To go to. war in order to prop up the sick man of the Far East would be as ill-judged a policy as events have proved it to have been in the ease of the sick man of the Near East at the time of the Crimean War. Since it ix obvious that the disinter of China has begun, British policy must he directed to ensuring that her interests do not suffer in the process; and ho asks us to believe that Lord Salisbury's efforts in this direction have not. been and will not be unsuccessful. In effect, we are to have adequate compensation for the acquisitions j of Russia and Germany.
THE CHANGED roLtcy.
All this may be true; and we hope it is. But it is evidently not the policy which Lord Salisbury was pursuing up toa very recent period. And that the policy which he did adopt has received a very serious check, and has indeed had to be abandoned, seems to he placed beyond a doubt. The fact that we asked China to deciare Talienwan a Treaty Port, that she refused request, and that the port was almost immediately afterwards practically ceded to Russia, cannot easily be regarded of wise than as a serious blow to British prestige. Lord Selborne took the House of Commons to task for having recently, at the instance of Sir Ellis Ashmend Bartlett, passed a resolution in favour of the mai nance of the integrity of China; but he jared the fact that the Government of Lord Salisbury cordially accepted that resolution, and in so doing made itself responsible for it.
warms For stm, patrour. ment before us it is impossible for us to But until we have Mr. Balfour's statojudge the Government fairly. Meanwhile, however, the general dissatisfaction has shown itself in- the results of the last two of the long series of by-elections which since the beginning of the vene. The have been going on without a break ever
Government have, it is true, succeeded in retaining both seats, Maidstone and East Berkshire, but in each case with a very Inrgely diminished majority—so largely in "fact na to show the low-water mark of Conservatism in these constituencies during the thirteen years which have elapsed since the last Reform Act was passed.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.