Lord Beaconsfield’s speech was made and was taken by Turkey to mean that she had the English Cabinet on her side, Lord Derby ordered Sir H. Elliot to go to the Sultan, and not only denounce the outrages in Bulgaria, but, in the name of the Queen, who was profoundly shocked by them, demand that the officials who perpetrated them be adequately punished. It is hardly necessary to say that the Sultan, imagining that the Prime Minister was all-powerful, paid no heed to remonstrances from the Foreign Secretary. On the 25th of September, the day after the war with Servia began, Sir H. Elliot pressed the Porte to make peace on terms which Lord Derby suggested, and which were most creditable to his diplomatic sagacity. Lord Derby’s proposals, if carried out, would have saved Turkey from the supreme disaster which was awaiting her, for they provided that the Porte should effectively guarantee administrative reforms in her Christian Provinces, while Servia and Montenegro should lay down their arms and return to the _status quo ante bellum_. The Porte would only accept an armistice which would have been unfair to Servia and Montenegro, and Servia would not accept a settlement which did not provide for the withdrawal of the barbarous soldiers of Turkey from Bulgaria. Whilst negotiations were pending, the Turks, on the 29th of October, beat down the Servian defence at Alexinatz, whereupon, to the mortification of England, the Czar effected in an instant that which Lord Derby, after many weary weeks of negotiation, had failed to accomplish. Ignatieff was instructed to tell the Porte that if it did not accept an armistice of six weeks within forty-eight hours, diplomatic relations between Turkey and Russia would cease. When the same threat had been delivered by the British Ambassador, the Turks ignored it; in fact, they were impudent enough to meet it with a counter-proposal so absurd, that the Italian Minister said they were obviously playing with England. Although strengthened by a great victory, they did not, however, dare to treat the representative of the Czar as if he were the representative of the Queen. They accepted his ultimatum without demur or delay, and thus owing to the feebleness of English diplomacy, Russia emerged with the honours of the game in which, up to the last moment, Lord Derby held the winning cards. This was, however, a minor matter. Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Derby had now given Russia not only a plausible pretext for taking the lead in dealing with the Eastern Question, but also an opportunity for intimating to the world that, in circumstances which extorted the sanction of the Continental Powers, she had the right, in case of a deadlock, to deal with it single-handed. In other words, the English Government, by allowing the Porte to trifle with it during September, 1876, flung away at one cast the only practical results won by the Crimean War. [Illustration: LORD BEACONSFIELD AT THE BANQUET IN THE GUILDHALL.]