LORD DERBY,

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T is now nearly three years since the Liberals of England met in one of the greatest conventions' of our times to discuss the Eastern Question at what was popularly known as the St. James's Hall Conference. Probably no more united or enthusiastic meeting was ever held within the limits of Great Britain. The passionate indignation which had been excited a few months earlier by the full revelation of the atrocious crimes of the Turks in Rou. melia, and by the publication of Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet on the 'Bulgarian Horrors,'

had not yet had time to subside; a great part of the nation believed that Her Majesty's Ministers were disposed to view the offences of the Turkish Government leniently, and the influential politicians who took part in this convention were fully impressed with the idea that a strong utterance on their part was necessary in order to save their country from being involved in the shame and degradation of an active alliance with the Sultan. No bounds were set by the speakers to their indignant denunciations of Ministers who were believed to be capable of dragging the flag of England through the bloody mire of Batak; and those who listened were as full of heat and passion as were those who spoke. One man only ventured to utter a word, not of dissent, but of qualification, in the midst of the sweeping censures that were being poured forth. was Lord Shaftesbury, the illustrious philan

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thropist, who has conferred a new title to honour and respect upon the English nobility, who was courageous enough to take this course. The venerable Earl, who presided over the meeting, took occasion to remark that possibly Lord Derby, then Foreign Secretary, was not deserving of all the hard and bitter things which had been said of him. A shout of disappro bation burst from a thousand throats at the suggestion. It was in vain that the apologist for the Foreign Secretary tried to make himself heard. Those were not times in which the British public was inclined to listen to the voice of reason, when it ran counter to that full tide of feeling on which the nation was being borne along. apology for Lord Derby was drowned in the roar of the multitude, and, like the rest of the Queen's Ministers-always excepting the popular favourite of the hour, Lord

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Salisbury-he was loaded with the execrations of the St. James's Hall Conference.

Those who reflected upon what the people of England, up to that hour, had thought of Lord Derby, must have been struck by the change of opinion which this incident evidenced. During nearly the whole of a public life, which had not been a short one, Lord Derby had occupied an exceptional position in the regard of his fellow-countrymen. He had been the most striking specimen of all that great class of statesmen who, without deserving to be stigmatised as 'trimmers,' have yet been the recipients of the confidence of both political parties. So far back as 1855, he had been pressed to take the Colonial Office by Lord Palmerston, after the death of Sir William Molesworth; and ten years later, when Lord Russell became Premier in succession to Lord Palmerston, he had offered a seat in his Cabinet to him.

Still more recently, when Lord Derby first became Secretary for Foreign Affairs, it had been said by one of his Liberal critics that if all England were polled there would be a unamious vote in favour of his retaining that office for life. These marks of favour on the part of his political opponents had been secured by the eminent fairness, discretion, and good sense which Lord Derby had shown in public affairs. He was seen to be a man singularly devoid of prejudices, whether personal, political, or social; a man who was willing to treat even party questions and à fortiori all questions not of a strictly party character, upon their merits; a man who had the judicial instinct strongly developed, and who was consequently blessed with a rare faculty for seeing both sides of the shield. Added to this, it must be said that upon most social questions his liberality, I might almost say his Liberalism, had been