spent their force in vituperative attacks on Sir William Harcourt. It was also the misfortune of Lord Beaconsfield, that at this juncture he became nervous over the growing hostility of the clergy of all denominations to his foreign policy, the tone of which they deemed anti-Christian. A desperate effort which was made to counteract this impression, displayed Sir Henry Layard at Constantinople--an Envoy who was supposed to be more Turkish than the Turks--figuring as a champion of the Cross against the Crescent. People, in fact, were startled at the beginning of the year to learn that the Government had suspended diplomatic relations with Turkey, because the Turkish authorities had threatened to execute a Mussulman schoolmaster for helping an Anglican missionary to translate the Bible.[153] Sir Henry Layard had been unmoved by the massacre and judicial murder of thousands of Christian subjects of the Sultan in Epirus, Macedonia, and Armenia, in defiance of Treaty law. It was, therefore, amazing that he should have suddenly burst into a convulsion of diplomatic wrath because a Turkish Court [Illustration: THE FIRST TAY BRIDGE, FROM THE SOUTH.] passed on a Turkish Mussulman the sentence appointed by the law of his race and creed for an act which, when done by him, was legally a crime. Still, from the point of view of the practical statesman on the eve of a General Election, the step taken by Sir Henry Layard would not have been open to criticism merely because of its inconsistency and injustice. The fatal objection to it was that, whilst it failed to conciliate the religious world, it made the Government seem ineffably ridiculous to the electors. The foreign policy that was to give England ascendency in the councils of Europe, had reduced her to such a poor pass that, at Constantinople, Sir Henry Layard had to threaten war ere the Porte would even listen to his appeal for clemency to the obscurest of offenders against the letter of a harsh and obsolete law. Nor was the situation improved as the quarrel developed. The Turks resolutely refused even to deliver up Dr. Köller’s MSS., which they hardly had any right to keep, and it was not till the German Ambassador interfered on behalf of the English missionary that they were restored. When Sir Henry Layard pressed for the dismissal of Hafiz Pasha, he was foiled by the Sultan averring that he, and not the Minister, had ordered the arrest of Ahmed Tewfik. After Lord Beaconsfield’s Guildhall eulogies on the Sultan, Ministers were seriously embarrassed by this new turn in the affair. Ultimately the intervention of Germany and Austria induced the Sultan, who listened to the menaces of the British Government with imperturbable serenity, to offer concessions. He still refused Sir Henry Layard’s demand for the annulment of the sentence of death on Ahmed Tewfik. But he offered to commute it by exiling Ahmed to a remote Turkish island with a Christian population. He also ordered