The foreign policy of Disraeli was equally obnoxious to his opponents. In one respect he was the lineal successor of Pitt, Canning, and Palmerston. Though he differed with many of the views held by those great foreign ministers, and did not shrink from criticising them with great severity, he was always in favor of a vigorous assertion of the rights and interests of Great Britain. This, in the opinion of his opponents, descended into a meddlesome interference with the affairs of other nations. In Afghanistan, in Abyssinia, in South Africa, and especially in the Eastern Mediterranean, his policy was thought to be aggressive, and provoked the most violent opposition of the Liberal party. By the treaty of San Stefano, concluded in 1878 between Russia and Turkey at the close of the war between these powers, Turkey was reduced almost to a cipher in the hands of Russia. In the opinion of Lord Beaconsfield this solution imperilled the interests of Great Britain in the Mediterranean. Russia was accordingly required by the English Government to submit the treaty to a congress of European powers. This at first Russia refused to do, whereupon the Prime-Minister moved an address to the Queen asking her to call out the Reserves. This was done, and was immediately followed by the still more vigorous step of bringing up to Malta a division of the Indian army. Russia at once began to lower her pretensions, and finally agreed that the treaty should be submitted to a European Congress. In June of 1878 Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury went as English Plenipotentiaries to the Congress at Berlin called to consider the whole question. The result was an important modification of the Treaty of San Stefano and a practical restoration of the independence of the Turkish empire. On the return of the Ambassadors, bringing back, as Beaconsfield said, “peace with honor,” they were received with an ovation which has not often had a parallel in English history. Three years later, Mr. Gladstone, in paying a tribute to his deceased rival, singled out his reception in the House of Lords as the culminating point of his greatness in the eyes of all those who regarded his policy with admiration; and applied to the Berlin triumph the well-known words of Virgil: Aspice et insignis spoliis Marcellus opimis Ingreditur, victorque viros supereminet omnes. LORD BEACONSFIELD. ON THE PRINCIPLES OF THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY; DELIVERED AT MANCHESTER, APRIL 3, 1872.