Construe his words how you will, they amount to no more than this. Mr. Gladstone and his friends, by their factitious public demonstrations, partly did away with the natural effects of that grave intimation, and made it necessary for the Government to prove its seriousness by bringing troops from India, and actually risking the very war which Lord Beaconsfield had wished to avoid. But the Premier had the courage not only of his opinions but of a true policy, and he has had his reward. He successfully checked the sinister progress of Russia, restored the reign of public law in Europe, and while exalting the renown of his own country, he has pointed another empire--that of Austria--to a new career which will benefit the world as well as strengthen and ennoble herself. After the alliance between Germany and Austria-Hungary was proclaimed, only one thing was left for his Lordship's opponents to go on repeating,--namely, that he had, in upholding Turkey, spared no thought or feeling to the victims of her rule. In the very face of this there was the fact that he had made England the formal protector of the inhabitants of Asia Minor, and had demanded Cyprus as a nearer point of observation of the Turk; but the plain obvious meaning of those arrangements has been tried to be muddled away by misrepresenting the protectorate of Asia Minor as a new insult to Russia. These brave humanitarians got sorely entangled in their logic on all sides. They pleaded in one breath that England had rashly undertaken too much responsibility for these oppressed peoples, and in the next breath said that nothing would ever come of it. Lord Beaconsfield has made it all clear, and in the simplest way. It is not fully explained at the moment of our writing what is the actual extent of the pressure put upon the Porte, nor what precise orders were sent to our admiral, but when the recent news was first published here the opponents of the Ministry must have felt that Lord Beaconsfield had ordered the British Fleet to sail against them when they heard it was instructed to steam back for the Turkish waters. Kindly meant as it might be for those in Asia Minor, it was a very cruel step on the part of Lord Beaconsfield towards some of his own countrymen, for it will necessitate the altering of a good many already prepared electioneering speeches. In the end, as we venture to predict, it will be seen that his Lordship and his colleagues are the true humanitarians.