What I have in view is not the particular merits of
Cyprus, but the illustration that I have given you in the case of the
agreement of Lord Salisbury with Count Schouvaloff, and in the case of
the Anglo-Turkish Convention, of the manner in which we have asserted
for ourselves a principle that we had denied to others--namely, the
principle of over-riding the European authority of the Treaty of
Paris, and taking the matters which that treaty gave to Europe into
our own separate jurisdiction. Now, gentlemen, I am sorry to find that
that which I call the pharisaical assertion of our own superiority has
found its way alike into the practice and seemingly into the theories
of the Government. I am not going to assert anything which is not
known, but the Prime Minister has said that there is one day in the
year--namely, the 9th of November, Lord Mayor's Day--on which the
language of sense and truth is to be heard amidst the surrounding din
of idle rumours generated and fledged in the brains of irresponsible
scribes. I do not agree, gentlemen, in that panegyric upon the 9th of
November. I am much more apt to compare the 9th of November--certainly
a well-known day in the year--but as to some of the speeches that have
lately been made upon it, I am very much disposed to compare it with
another day in the year, well known to British tradition; and that
other day in the year is the 1st of April. But, gentlemen, on that day
the Prime Minister, speaking out,--I do not question for a moment his
own sincere opinion,--made what I think one of the most unhappy and
ominous allusions ever made by a Minister of this country.
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