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