I am sorry to say, gentlemen, that I feel it my absolute duty to make this charge against the foreign policy under which we have lived for the last two years, since the resignation of Lord Derby.  It has been a foreign policy, in my opinion, wholly, or to a perilous extent, unregardful of public right, and it has been founded upon the basis of a false, I think an arrogant, and a dangerous assumption,—­although I do not question its being made conscientiously and for what was believed the advantage of the country,—­an untrue, arrogant, and dangerous assumption that we were entitled to assume for ourselves some dignity, which we should also be entitled to withhold from others, and to claim on our own part authority to do things which we would not permit to be done by others.  For example, when Russia was going to the Congress at Berlin, we said:  ’Your Treaty of San Stefano is of no value.  It is an act between you and Turkey; but the concerns of Turkey by the Treaty of Paris are the concerns of Europe at large.  We insist upon it that the whole of your Treaty of San Stefano shall be submitted to the Congress at Berlin, that they may judge how far to open it in each and every one of its points, because the concerns of Turkey are the common concerns of the Powers of Europe acting in concert.’

Having asserted that principle to the world, what did we do?  These two things, gentlemen:  secretly, without the knowledge of Parliament, without even the forms of official procedure, Lord Salisbury met Count Schouvaloff in London, and agreed with him upon the terms on which the two Powers together should be bound in honour to one another to act upon all the most important points when they came before the Congress at Berlin.  Having alleged against Russia that she should not be allowed to settle Turkish affairs with Turkey, because they were but two Powers, and these affairs were the common affairs of Europe, and of European interest, we then got Count Schouvaloff into a private room, and on the part of England and Russia, they being but two Powers, we settled a large number of the most important of these affairs, in utter contempt and derogation of the very principle for which the Government had been contending for months before; for which they had asked Parliament to grant a sum of L6,000,000; for which they had spent that L6,000,000 in needless and mischievous armaments.  That which we would not allow Russia to do with Turkey, because we pleaded the rights of Europe, we ourselves did with Russia, in contempt of the rights of Europe.  Nor was that all, gentlemen.

That act was done, I think, on one of the last days of May in the year 1878, and the document was published, made known to the world, made known to the Congress at Berlin, to its infinite astonishment, unless I am very greatly misinformed,—­to its infinite astonishment.