Paris. But that
also, if I remember aright, was argued on both sides, and, therefore,
I pass on from it, and I charge another breach of the Treaty of
Paris. That famous Anglo-Turkish Convention, which gave to you the
inestimable privilege of being responsible for the government of the
island of Cyprus without deriving from it any possible advantage; that
famous Anglo-Turkish Convention, which invested us with the right of
interference, and caused us to interfere both as to the integrity
and as to the independence of the Sultan by our own sole act; that
Anglo-Turkish Convention was a direct and an absolute breach of the
Treaty of Paris, which, bearing as it did the signature of England, as
well as the rest of the Powers, declared that no one of these Powers
should of themselves interfere in any matter of the integrity or
independence of Turkey without the consent of the rest. And here I
must tell you that I never heard from the Government, or any friend
of the Government, the slightest attempt to defend that gross act of
lawlessness, that unpardonable breach of international law, which is
the highest sanction of the rights of nations and of the peace of
Europe.

It is not, however, in matters of law only. We have been busy in
alienating the sympathies of free peoples. The free Slavonic peoples
of the East of Europe--the people of Roumania, the people of
Montenegro, the people of Servia, the people of Bulgaria--each and all
of these have been painfully taught in these last few years to look
upon the free institutions of this country as being for them a dream,
as being, perhaps, for the enjoyment of this country, but not as
availing to animate a nation with a generous desire to extend to
others the blessings they enjoyed themselves. In other times--it
was so when Mr. Canning was the Minister of this country, when Lord
Palmerston was the Minister of this country, when Lord Clarendon was
the Minister of this country at the Foreign Office--it was well known
that England, while regardful of her own just interests, and while
measuring on every occasion her strength and her responsibility,
yet was willing to use and willing to find opportunities for giving
cordial aid and sympathy to freedom; and by aid and sympathy many a
nation has been raised to its present position of free independence,
which, without that sympathy, would probably never have attained to
such a height in the order of civilization. The sympathies of free
peo