and supposing in that memorandum Lord Granville had, before the meeting of Europe in congress, pledged himself to give this concession to Russia unless he could convince the Russians by his argument, I want to know what then would have been our responsibility?  Gentlemen, I would not have been the man, under circumstances like those, to deny for one moment that virtually and practically the whole responsibility of the treaty rested upon our shoulders; and so I say now the responsibility for handing back free Bessarabia to despotic Russia rests upon the Cabinet that is now in power, and on the majority that is now soliciting your suffrages for re-election.

I cannot go through the whole of the matter; yet, at the same time, it is desirable that you should have it in your minds.  But while we thus handed over a free representative country to despotism, we likewise handed over a liberated country to servitude.  We recollect the vote for six millions was taken in order to act upon the Congress at Berlin.  It was taken in order to show, as was so much boasted of at the time—­to show that we were ready to support in arms what we recommended at the Congress at Berlin.  And what did we recommend, and what was the great change made at the Congress of Berlin, in deference to our representations—­that is to say, what was the great change purchased by your six millions?  I will tell you what it was.  The Treaty of San Stefano had relieved from the yoke of Turkish administration four and a half millions of people, and made them into a Bulgarian province.  With regard to one and a quarter millions of those people who inhabited a country called Macedonia, we at the Treaty of Berlin, by virtue of your six millions—­see how it was used to obtain ’peace with honour’!—­we threw back that Macedonia from the free precinct into which it was to be introduced for self-government along with the rest of Bulgaria, and we put it back into the hands of the Sultan of Turkey, to remain in exactly the same condition in which it had been before the war.

Well, gentlemen, I won’t speak of India.  I have spoken of India elsewhere.  I won’t speak of various things that I might enter upon, but one thing I must mention which I have never taken the opportunity of mentioning in Scotland, and that was the manner in which, those proceedings are justified.  I am going now to refer to a speech of the present Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Lord Salisbury.  He was meeting an allegation some opponent had made, that it was wrong to take the island of Cyprus; and he justified himself by an appeal to history for once, which is, however, a rare thing with him.  But he made out his case in this way:  ’Take the island of Cyprus?  Of course we took the island of Cyprus.  Wherever there is a great European controversy localized in some portion of the great European region, we always step in and appropriate some territory in the very heart of the place where that controversy raged.’  ‘Why, dear