Gladstone removed the restriction from the Emperor of Russia. Now I repel that charge. What we did was--we considered the matter with the other Powers of Europe; we required Russia to admit that she had no power to make the change except with the consent of the other Powers. The other Powers could not deny that the change was in itself not unreasonable, and so the change was made. But I want to know what people would have said, supposing, in the middle of these deliberations, somebody had produced a Salisbury-Schouvaloff agreement. Supposing he had produced a memorandum signed by Lord Granville, the Foreign Secretary of England, and Count Brunow, the ambassador of Russia, and supposing in that memorandum Lord Granville had, before the meeting of Europe in congress, pledged himself to give this concession to Russia unless he could convince the Russians by his argument, 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.