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EDWARD LORD Lytton NO W FIRST COL I, ECTED WITH soME OF HIS POLITICAL WRITINGs EIITEIERTO UNPUBLISEIED AND A PREFATORY MEMOIR BY HIS SON IN TWO WOLUMES WOIL. I. WILLIAM BILACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDCCCLXXIV tººk º ‘7- S - 3% 2. 3 £5, 3. v. C. J CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME, PAGE PREFATORY MEMOIR, III. CETEAP POSTAGE ON NEWSPAPERS AND OTHER PUBLICA- TIONS, 1832, º, - ſº . vii—Cxxxi ORIGINAL MATTER. LETTERS TO LORD JOHN RUSSELL ON SOCIAL REFORM, XXX. MEMORANDUM ON THE ANGLO-FRENCH ALLIANCE (1857- 1858), º º * ſº . . xlvi LETTER, TO A CONSERVATIVE FRIEND ON TEIE RUSSIAN WAR, tº . tº e º ly LETTER TO DELME RADCLIFFE, ESQ., ON THE SAME SUBJECT, . * º º º º lix NOTES UPON THE DANISH WAR, lxxiii ESSAY ON THE GENIUS OF CONSERVATISM, . ... lxxix LETTER. To SIR. G. BOWEN ON THE DUTIES OF COLONIAL GOVERNORS, e . cxxi REPRINT OF SPEECHES DELIVERED. I. THE REFORM BILL, 1831, l II. THE LAWS AFFECTING DRAMATIC LITERATURE, 1832, 7 17 vi CONTENTS. IV. SUPPRESSION OF DISTURBANCES IN IRELAND, 1833, . 34 V. REPEAL OF THE STAMP DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS, 1884, . . 44 VI. REDUCTION OF STAMP DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS, 1835, . 58 VII. THE ABOLITION OF NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP, 1838, o 68 VIII. AT FAREWELL DINNER TO MR MACREADY, 1851, & 83 IX. OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST, 1852, 89 X, IN HOUSE OF COMMONS, 10TH DECEMBER 1852, * 122 XI. THE INCOME TAX, 1853, tº w 135 XII. TO THE ASSOCIATED SOCIETIES OF EDINBURGEI UNIVER- SITY, 1854, e . ſe tº ſº 145 XIII. AT EDINBURGH BANQUET, 201H JANUARY 1854, e 164 XIV. AT THE LEEDS MECHANIOS' INSTITUTION, 1854, * 172 xv. THE Excise DUTIES, 1854, & tº º ſº I 90 XVI. THE BILL FOR THE ENLISTMENT OF FOREIGNERs, 1854, 202 XVII, CONDITION OF THE ARMY BEFORE SEBASTOPOL, 1855, . 219 xviii. THE STAMP DUTIES ON NEWSPAPERS, 1855, . * 232 XIX. THE CRIMEAN WAR, 1855, te º & & 246 PREFATORY MEMOIR, THE papers bequeathed to me by my father, as materials for a record of all that possesses public or permanent interest in the literary and political activities of his life, I have accepted as a trust; and its faithful dis- charge, to the best of my ability, I regard as a sacred obligation. The adequate biography of a life So full and various must, however, be the task of years. In the meanwhile, these volumes are offered to the public in compliance with a wish which I believe to be general, that my father's Parliamentary speeches and public addresses should be reprinted in Some form more convenient than the pages of Hansard, and the columns of county news- papers. The accuracy and great utility of Mr Hansard’s excel- lent Parliamentary reports are too widely appreciated to need any tribute from me. But they who may hence- forth desire to refer to my father's speeches will find them more conveniently arranged in the present reprint. It does not, indeed, contain the whole of his speeches; but it contains all which relate to the more important events in the political history of the last forty years. This reprint of them is justified, I trust, by the pre- VOL. I. C!, viii PREEATORY MEMOIR. diction of the Lord Chief Justice — that “they will remain as models of the highest and noblest eloquence, and of deep thought, such as should characterise the statesman.” They are here arranged in chronological order, with only such prefatory explanation as may refresh the reader's recollection of the circumstances in which they were spoken. My father's aims and opinions as a public man are best explained by the language in which he himself has recorded them. But to make the record more complete, I have added to the speeches actually spoken some few which were prepared for delivery, upon subjects of recent or durable interest—such as the Irish Church, colonial policy, &c. In strict adherence to the same principle, I propose to illustrate this short sketch of what was purely political in his many-sided life by occasional extracts and selec- tions from his posthumous political papers. Finally, it is here to be observed that, in that portion of his career which comes within the scope of the present notice, politics were so interfused with literature, that no specimens of his power as a speaker would be sufficient if they failed to include some of his extra-Parliamentary addresses upon literary or social subjects. The number of these is considerable; and I have only selected from them three or four, as illustrations of success in that kind of oratory for which our own age has created occasions not furnished to the orators of any previous age by the Senate, the Bar, or the Pulpit. These literary and social addresses are also reprinted in chronological order. |Mr Edward Bulwer entered public life as Member for the small constituency of St Ives in the year 1831. He had previously obtained some local reputation as a con- PREFATORY MEMOIR. ix scientious, rather than as an eloquent speaker, in the University Debating Society at Cambridge. The whole- some organic connection between university life and public life to which the English nation has been indebted for the rare vigour and youthfulness, not unrestrained by practical good sense, and for the high spirit, free from all sentimentality, which once characterised its interna- tional and imperial policy, was dissolved by the great Reform Bill of 1832, and has never since been restored or replaced. Whilst it lasted, it supplied the Legislature with an adequate number of young men of ability and ambition, who, without large independent fortunes, were enabled by it to enter Parliament with sufficiently inde- pendent opinions. The possibility of attaining to political eminence and influence at a comparatively early age, without heavy pecuniary expense, or a complete Sur- render of intellectual individuality, practically associated academic studies and honours with larger and manlier objects of immediate ambition. At the same time this ambition, while it gave to the university career a more practical character, was itself elevated and refined by the training of those studies in which it served to coun- teract the pedantic tendencies of all purely scholastic education. Thus, these young men began public life at the age, and with all the intellectual conditions, most favour- able to an early acquisition of the qualities which distin- guish senators from delegates, and statesmen from mere politicians. This salutary combination of circumstances had made of our universities the nurseries, and of our Parliament the training school, of imperial legislators. But it per- ished, undetected and perhaps unavoidably, in conse- X PREFATORY MEMOIR. quence of its implication with what was clearly con- demnable in a representative system of which it was the one felicitous accident. The Reform Bill of 1832 was inevitable, and on the whole it has been largely beneficial. The wisest statesman cannot anticipate all the teachings of time. Nor can we blame the authors of that great measure because they overlooked what no one then perceived—the national importance of providing the reformed representation with some equivalent for those means whereby the old representative system, in- directly but adequately, associated the young intelligence of the country with the practical conduct of its public affairs. Yet no State can practically exclude from the constitutional representation and management of its political interests all the intellect and energy of its edu- cated youth, without deteriorating the character of that intellect and that energy; on which, nevertheless, its poli- tical vitality depends. Divorced from the practical ob- jects, responsibilities, and restraints of active political life, intellectual culture grows Supercilious, earnestness degene- rates into priggishness, and enthusiasm exhales in crot- chets. To the majority of educated young men without long purses, the doors of Parliament are now virtually closed. The élite of our undergraduates, whose natural ambition would formerly have been a seat in the House of Commons, now look for political influence only to the exercise of their talents on the public press; and thus become the anonymous and irresponsible critics of a Legislature into which they cannot afford to pay the en- trance-fee. Thus, too, for the majority of Englishmen, public life begins at middle age, and is chiefly confined to the representation of local interests. The character of the imperial Legislature has consequently grown, and PREFATORY MEMOIR. Xi must continue to grow, more and more parochial. Every separate interest, locality, and class, even every in- dividual crotchet, is represented; but England herself, the national consciousness of imperial unity, is unrepre- sented in the national Parliament. Men of all parties contemplate with anxiety the gradual disappearance of those statesmen who were trained to public life in a school that no longer exists. It is obvious that the only young men who have now at their command the means of contributing to the prac- tical statesmanship of the future, qualities requisite for the administration of a vast, an ancient, and a highly complicated empire, are those who are exceptionally exempted, by the possession of great names or great fortunes, from all that impedes the early entrance of their contemporaries into public life. Hence, in that increasing body of young political intelligence which finds no direct utterance within the four walls of Par- liament, there is a permanent and perilous element of intellectual discontent. Hence, too, in its international aspects, the character of the nation itself is timid, uncertain, and lethargic. For the old consciousness of imperial unity is at present so dispersed into local or class interests (not always in harmony with each other), that no English Cabinet could now venture, in its deal- ings with foreign powers, to discount the national Senti- ment with reference to future events, and say distinctly to Europe, ‘England will never allow that,' or ‘England will always maintain this.’ Thus, for all practical inter- national purposes, it little matters what man or party may from time to time have the nominal direction of our foreign policy; since, by the nature of things, that policy must necessarily be the Malaprop policy of not xii PREEATORY MEMOIR. anticipating misfortunes till they are past. The demo- cratic force of the national life was weakened quite as much as its aristocratic mechanism, by a change which placed the preponderating political power in the middle class. But with a diminishment of that force, and a para- lysis of aristocratic tradition, there has grown up amongst us a power which in every other country has hitherto proved revolutionary—the power of irresponsible intellect. Between the opinions of the English press and those of the French Encyclopedists there is nothing in common. But between the political power of the English press and that of the French Encyclopedists there is abso- lute identity of conditions. It is a power legitimately and inevitably acquired by Superior intellect; but it is greater than has ever been accorded to any constitu- tional Government, and it can only be controlled by the public opinion it creates—a control wholly illusory in the conduct of public affairs. Such reflections are irresistibly suggested by any retrospect of the modifications through which our political system has passed since the date at which this Memoir commences. The debates of the Cambridge Union at that time attracted more than local interest. They were conducted by a very brilliant group of young men, all destined to future eminence. They were dis- cussed in the political clubs and Salons of the metro- polis, and often listened to with interest by men who were themselves already eminent in public life. It was in these debates that the genius of Macaulay first found expression, and indeed achieved (if we may trust the recollection of his contemporaries) some of its finest oratorical effects. “The greatest display of eloquence I ever witnessed at that club,” wrote my father many IPREFATORY MEMOIR. xiii years afterwards, “was made by a man some years our senior, and who, twice during my residence, came to grace our debates—the now renowned Macaulay. The first of these speeches was on the French Revolution; and it still lingers in my recollection as the most heart- stirring effort of that true oratory which seizes hold of the passions, transports you from yourself, and identifies you with the very life of the orator, that it has ever been my lot to hear—saving perhaps one speech delivered by O'Connell to an immense crowd in the open air. Macaulay, in point of power, passion, and effect, never equalled that speech in his best days in the House of Commons.”” Amongst my father's contemporaries at the Union were Winthrop Mackworth Praed; Alexander Cockburn, now Lord Chief Justice of England; Robert Hilyard, afterwards eminent at the bar; Benjamin Hall Kennedy, afterwards Head-master of Shrewsbury; Tooke, the son of the political economist, who died young, with great promise of future distinction; Charles Buller; and Charles Williers, one of the earliest, the ablest, and the most disinterested apostles of Free-trade. - It was at the instance of his friend Alexander Cock- burn that my father joined this club. His first speech, delivered late in the evening, was a defence of Praed, from a personal attack made upon him by his intimate friend Hilyard, for some alleged misdemeanour in the honorary office of treasurer to the club. This speech, short and simple, but spoken in earnest, was successful. In his next speech, however, not spoken till the following term, he fairly broke down. That failure induced him. to study, and endeavour to remedy, his defects as a speaker; but though his speeches were considered good * From an unpublished Note. xiv PREEATORY MEMOIR. by his contemporaries, on account of the knowledge and intellectual fulness they displayed, it was not till long afterwards that he succeeded in speaking them effectively. His first oratorical triumph was on the Conservative side of the question. The subject of debate was a comparison between the political constitutions of England and the American United States. Praed, and most of the crack speakers, asserted the Superiority of republican institu- tions; and the question was about to be put to the vote, when my father presumed to say a word in favour of the British constitution. He spoke with conviction, and a knowledge of the subject which surprised his rivals. This speech at once placed him in the foremost rank of the young debaters of the club; and he subsequently passed through all the grades of its official distinctions, as Secretary, treasurer, and president. fe His maiden speech in Parliament was, however, on behalf of Reform. Dr Arnold has divided reformers into two classes, one of which he calls popular, and the other liberal, distinguishing the latter as those who aim rather at improvement than at liberty, in the ordinary political sense. The distinction seems arbitrary; for all that promises improvement must augment the only liberty worth having. But it is, at any rate, in this latter Sense that my father was throughout his life a re- former. + Whether as an author — standing apart from all literary cliques and coteries; or as a politician—never wholly subject to the exclusive dictation of any political party; he always thought and acted in sympathy with every popular aspiration for the political, social, and in- tellectual improvement of the whole national life. PREFATORY MEMOIR. XV Thus, in a series of letters which in 1846 he ad- dressed to Lord John Russell on the prospects and policy of the Russell Cabinet (and which, though commenced with a view to publication, were never either printed or completed), he writes:— “Most Administrations enter office with a programme of the proceedings which are to characterise their policy and record its benefits. It is not your fault that this programme is less stirring and animated than that of your predecessors. It is not your fault if reforms with which you have identified an illustrious career are now effected, and you have reduced the number of abuses which you can promise to remove. “The utmost verge to which the spirit of progress will bear you, Supported by Property ever cautious, and In- telligence never rash, you have wellnigh reached—so far, at least, as that progress is directed to objects purely political, ameliorations purely constitutional. “Rightly, to my judgment, therefore, have you turned your attention to those evils which lie below the surface of party. The ground is clear of weeds, but the rich- ness of the harvest will depend on upturning the subsoil. Wisely have you seized the occasion, whilst party voices are mute, to address yourself to the wants of a nation. Nobly, if you fulfil the mission you announce, will you have crowned a life which, more than any other One man's life since the Restoration, has so connected itself with truths vindicated, and things done—that your biography is the history of great events. Nor will your latest be your least achievement, if you warm into action those words so dead and cold on the lips of Sciolists, and in the pages of dreamers—SOCIAL REFORM. - “Social Reform 1 Your Lordship could not be disap- xvi PREFATORY MEMOIR. pointed if the phrase created a languid expectation. It is a sound to carry delight to the heart of Some earnest philanthropist, or to set in movement the restless brain of some speculator in moral problems. But the mass of the public says ‘Good, and settles back to the business of life. You, with your large experience of mankind, were doubtless prepared for this apathy. You knew that interest in Ministerial announcements is proportioned, not to the gravity of the undertakings proposed, but to their con- nection with the questions which most angrily divided our opinions, or recently animated our passions. “The working classes in our towns have been hitherto aroused only by reforms connected with constitutional change. They have been so impressed by their favourite orators with the belief that you must change a constitu- tion in order to effect a reform, that they have neglected even to think about reforms which the present machinery suffices to effect. They have been told so often that the storm clears the air, that they look upon storms as the only purifiers of the atmosphere. - “The middle class, into which it has been the object of all recent legislation to throw the preponderating power, and for which, indeed, we have of late years almost exclusively legislated (rendering, it is true, benefits to other orders, but only indirectly, and as the contingent results of liberal concessions to the one essentially favoured)—the middle class, I say, engaged as it is in money-making, and not seeing exactly how social re- forms are to influence the money markets, or enlarge its sphere of pecuniary speculation, limits its expectations to some scheme for the regulation of railroads. “The more privileged orders—in whom the spirit of party is, rigidly speaking, the strongest—foresee in PREFATORY MEMOIR. xvii legislation for purely moral ameliorations no opening for the appeal to prejudice and the stimulus to passion which are the immemorial resources of party chiefs. “But below the surface-public, is ever that important and thoughtful essence of the life of nations—the tran- quil people. Too much do we confound the public with the people. As well confound the cuticle with the heart, or the wave with the ocean.” These words very fairly indicate the general point of view from which the writer of them, on all occasions and in every period of his life, regarded his own duties and responsibilities, both as a politician and a man of letters. To improve every class, to reconcile all classes, to injure and to alienate none; to elevate, by the sympathising efforts of each, the moral and intellectual level of all; such were the civic objects on behalf of which he laboured. At no period of his career as a public man did he obey the rule laid down for political life by “Honest Jack Lee, who, when some one praised the good looks of the Duke of Richmond, exclaimed, “Good- looking : What business have you to say that ? That is for his party to say, and for us to deny. He is hideous.’ Differing in his mental tendencies from many of the special aims appropriated to political action by Whigs, Tories, and Radicals, he had yet points of political sym- pathy with all of them ; and although he was never the mechanically subservient adherent of any party, yet he emergetically co-operated with each, according as he found in it, with regard to some practical definite question, a political force congenial with one or other of those principles which he never greatly modified. Thus, whilst acting with the Conservatives on other xviii PREFATORY MEMOIR. questions, he spoke and voted with the Liberals on the question of the newspaper stamp; and after cordially co-operating with the Liberals in their efforts to obtain representative reform, he refused to follow that party the moment it inscribed foremost on its banner a demand for the total and immediate abolition of the Corn-laws. When he first entered public life the national mind was deeply agitated by the question of Parliamentary Reform ; and being convinced that the people of this country had then outgrown its representative system, he at once enlisted in the ranks of those who carried the Reform Bill of 1832. Subsequent to the passage of that measure into law, he supported with zeal the leaders of the Whig party, because he mistrusted the capacity of those who had uncompromisingly opposed the measure to deal, advan- tageously for the highest interests of the country, with the political situation forced upon their acceptance by its enactment. In a private memorandum, which must, I think, have been written in 1837 or 1838, shortly after the accession of the present sovereign, he contrasts the state of the empire and of public feeling at that time with the condition of the country when Lord Grey's Government first came into power, and the happy auspices under which the young Queen had recently ascended the throne with the gloomy and Ominous circumstances in which William the Fourth succeeded to the crown. “Insurrection in the counties, self-elected parliaments in the towns, disorder and disloyalty in the metropolis,” replaced by a state of things which Satis- factorily proved that “all the progressive intelligence and all the augmented liberties of the people have only served to give tranquillity to the empire, and deepen PREFATORY MEMOIR. xix the popular veneration for the throne.” And then he adds, “The Ministers to whom we owe these guarantees of order and prosperity, so long as they remain sensible of their true position, the position of a mediating Government between perilous extremes, must continue to represent the only Administration worthy of public confidence.” In this sentence the Conservative principle is clearly defined and adopted as the motive for supporting a Liberal Government. And, indeed, at no time of his life had my father any intellectual sympathy either with the exclusively material aims and locally limited views of the middle-class Liberals, or with the programme of extreme Radicalism, which seemed to him unpractical, and in Some respects unpatriotic. Yet it was with the Radicals he acted in supporting the Ballot, which the Whigs at that time wisely refused to adopt as one of their watch-cries. As a young man, he advocated the adoption of the Ballot because he believed in its promised efficacy as a guarantee for purity of election. That is a desideratum which must be cherished by every honest politician, whether Con- servative or Liberal. Subsequently, however, he deprecated its adoption, because the result of its adoption in other countries appeared to him to contra- dict the promises, and belie the expectations, of its advocates in our own. To the best of my belief, this is the only question on which my father ever changed his mind. But in reality the question is a mechanical and not a constitutional one; and therefore the operation of the new mode of voting will, in all probability, correspond neither with the hopes nor the fears of those who have debated its adoption as a constitutional change. XX PREFATORY MEMOIR. If the country be Conservative, the Ballot will be Conservative; if the country be Radical, so will be the Ballot. It may perhaps intensify the expression of public opinion ; it can have no power to change the current of it. In such a country as ours, public opinion oscillates from time to time, and according to the circumstances of the moment, between stationary and motive tendencies. Its index will mark the degree of those oscillations, but cannot determine their direction. During this early period of his public life, my father was one of the Committee which investigated the monopoly of the East India Company. He also induced the House to appoint a Committee of Inquiry into the Drama, with a view to extinguishing the monopoly then enjoyed by the two Royal Theatres. It cannot be said, unfortunately, that this change has effected the object on behalf of which it was advocated. On the contrary, under the management of Mr Mac- ready, the last of our great actors, we had still at Drury Lane a well-trained and excellent company of first-rate performers, both in tragedy and comedy, who were willing to co-operate for the worthy representation on that stage of noble plays. To the conscientiousness and talents of such a company, dramatic authors could safely confide their reputation. Hence, in that depart- ment which criticism has ever recognised as the highest, our literature was enriched with many excellent acting dramas by men of intellectual eminence. Of the theatrical stars then collected into a single con- stellation, those which are not yet altogether extinguish- ed are now Scattered over the minor theatres, where, as lone stars, they glimmer with “ineffectual fires,” amidst the dense insignificance of inferior actors, ill trained even PREFATORY MEMOIR. xxi for the performance of inferior pieces. I trust that I shall not appear to underrate the literary ability which still finds expression in dramatic form, if I notice with regret that the many ingenious pieces which are now written for the best London theatres have no pretension to the higher order of poetry, and can hardly be regarded as conducive to the noblest uses and achievements of the stage; whilst, on the other hand, the so-called dramatic department of modern English poetry, as represented by those admirable works to which the genius of such writers as Mr Browning, Sir Henry Taylor, and Mr Swinburne, has given dramatic shape, is more or less unfit for effective stage representation, and has, prac- tically, added nothing to the acting repertoire of our theatrical managers. In those countries where a national stage still exists, supported by the State, it gives effective dramatic form to the highest literary genius of the nation. The refined power of a Delaunay can impart a peculiar charm even to the purely lyric pathos of an Alfred de Musset; and it would be difficult to mention many German poets of the first rank, since Goethe, who have not written for the German stage. Even Heine, an essentially lyric poet, was ambitious of fame as a dramatist. But what English poet would now instinctively turn to the English stage for the most effective expression, and the highest test, of his genius' and what Englishman, if he have any pride in the art and literature of his country, can contemplate, without profound humiliation, the present condition of that stage 2 To me it seems that those by whom such humiliation must be most deeply felt, because in their case it should be accompanied by self-reproach, are our statesmen and legislators. xxii PREFATORY MEMOIR. When Count Stephen Szechenyi devoted his life to revive the national spirit, and reconquer the historic constitution of his country (which will long remember him as “the great Magyar"), his first act was to found a national stage. We cannot shut up theatres. We must either tolerate them as places of public amusement, so coarse and so unintelligent as to be shunned with disgust by manly intellect and womanly modesty, or else we must employ them as worthy vehicles for noble poetry, lofty thoughts, and moral truths. Were the State to set apart but a single theatre for such a purpose, the expense would be small, and amply repaid by the gradual but sure effect—not upon the public taste merely (for that is a Small matter), but upon the public character—of those elevating and refining influences for which a national stage, when worthily occupied, has ever been the most effective vehicle. Pay the rent of one such theatre; intrust it rent-free to some manager of character and honour, upon condition that all vice shall be excluded from the side-scenes, and that the stage itself be devoted to the fitting representation of the higher drama. Let the public understand that the educational functions of such a drama are recognised by the State, like those of the pulpit and the school. Let the theatre thus distinguished be deserving of the countenance of the Sovereign. In no place of amusement will the presence of royalty be more welcomed, or more beneficent. A loyal nation loves to see that rank to which it renders the homage of a wise convention rendering in return a noble homage to those masterpieces of native genius and imaginative thought, which are both the representatives and the monuments of a people. It has been said by a German publicist that the history of a nation is often only the chronicle of its PREFATORY MEMOIR. xxiii national egotism, whilst a nation's literature is always the biography of its humanity. The favour bestowed by royalty on whatever enriches this national property is one of the light, but not ignoble, duties of the Crown. Is all this impracticable 2 If so, the degeneration of the English stage is hopeless. My father's speech upon this subject will be found in the present collection. But the chief efforts of his early Parliamentary life were di- rected towards the removal of the taxes upon knowledge —by the extinction of the newspaper stamp, bestowing copyright on original matter, and reducing postage for the transmission of journals and other printed papers. He was the first to agitate for this reform, and to suggest in full and definite detail the means by which it might be effected without loss of revenue. In 1832 he demanded a committee of inquiry upon the subject. In 1834, and again in 1835, he renewed the question with great energy. He lived to see his views adopted by the House, though not until long afterwards (in 1855), and to support by his vote from the Opposition benches the Minister (Sir George Cornewall Lewis) who finally carried them out. His early speeches on this subject, which are full of facts still interesting, were reprinted and widely circulated throughout the country by an association then formed to promote the movement he had initiated for the abolition of the obnoxious imposts; and at the next general elec- tion he received overtures of support from three different constituencies. He selected Lincoln; and in 1832 the electors of that borough returned him to Parliament as one of their representatives. What chiefly induced him to seek their suffrages, rather than those of any other Liberal constituency, was the VOL. I. b xxiv. PREFATORY MEMOIR. fact that the Liberal electors of Lincoln were, as he was himself, opposed to the repeal of the Corn-laws. On this economic question my father's opinions,” formed early in life, deeply entertained, and never modified, were always in strong and conscientious antagonism to those which were by degrees so generally adopted and So vehemently advocated by all Liberal politicians, as to dictate at last the exclusive shibboleth of the whole Liberal party. When he joined that party this question was an open question. When he withdrew from that party, it had become a test question. I shall venture to fortify this assertion by a short extract from one of the speeches addressed by him to his electors at Lincoln in reference to the circumstances which had just then placed the late Sir Robert Peel in Office. In alluding to the Budget, he pointed out that there was a great deficiency in the revenue. “That deficiency had been caused " (he said) “by four things. Firstly, seven millions of taxes had been taken off. Secondly, we had been obliged to go to war to preserve our trade and possessions in the Colonies. Thirdly, the Govern- ment had yielded to the unanimous wishes of the people in reducing the postage upon letters. Fourthly, the increased morality of the people, diminishing their con- sumption of spirituous liquors, had occasioned a falling off in the duties of excise. At the same time there was great distress amongst the commercial and manufactur- ing classes. What was to be done By a new tax you might repair the revenue, but you would only increase the distress. The Government therefore did not propose a tax. They proposed certain financial reforms which might at once recruit the revenue, give new energy to $. They will be found fully set forth in his ‘Letters to John Bull.” PREFATORY MEMOIR. XXV trade, and make some of the necessaries of life cheaper to the great body of the people. Now, I agreed cordi- ally to this general proposition ; but I differed on the Single detail of the Corn-laws. In this I contend that I was consistent. Mr Huskisson, the great advocate of Free-trade, once said—‘Give me Free-trade, but let the last thing in which I have it be the property in land.’” The speaker then entered into an elaborate defence of protection in corn, upon political as well as economic grounds. He was not himself a landlord at that time, and certainly his views, whether right or wrong, were formed with a conscientious regard to national and imperial, as apart from class or local interests. And he concluded: “These are my sentiments on the Corn-laws. I will not vote for the abolition of them ; I will not vote for the Government proposition of an eight or nine shilling duty, because I believe it to be but a step to that abolition. But I am ready to allow that you must take the matter of the Corn-laws into serious consideration; and I do believe that by a judicious mixture of the fixed duty and the graduated scale, you may give great relief to the manufacturers, and at the same time not diminish the proper protection to land.” Holding these opinions from the moment he joined the Liberal party, it is obvious that when adhesion to the economic doctrine of free trade in corn became the sole recognised test of adhesion to the party itself, my father's connection with it was suspended by the force of circum- stance and conviction. Nor was his subsequent final severance from that party provoked by himself. He quitted public life in 1841, and did not re-enter it till the year 1852. It is little to the credit of the Whig xxvi PREFATORY MEMOIR. party that during those eleven years its local agents and political leaders consistently endeavoured to prevent the return to Parliament of a man whose timely and eloquent support was acknowledged by Lord Melbourne as one of the causes which had expedited the return of the Whig Government to power. When, by the death of Earl Spencer in 1834, Lord Althorp was obliged to surrender the leadership of the House of Commons, the Whigs were abruptly dismissed from office by the king, and Mr (afterwards Sir James) Hudson was sent to Rome to summon home Sir Robert Peel, to whom his Majesty confided the task of forming a new Administration. At this moment Mr Bulwer was the only one of its supporters who rushed to the rescue of the fallen Government. His ‘Letter to a late Cabinet Minister on the Crisis,' which was then published, pro- duced an immense and immediate effect upon the public mind. The first edition of it was exhausted on the day of its publication, and fourteen other large editions within a fortnight afterwards. At the price of 3s.6d., it reached twenty editions, and was then reprinted with a yet wider circulation in a cheaper form. Lord Melbourne fre- quently assured my father that he attributed in no small degree to the influence of this pamphlet the result of the general election which took place shortly after Sir Robert Peel's return to England, and the subsequent restoration of the Liberal Government. In re-forming that Govern- ment, nothing could be handsomer, or more generously appreciative, than the terms in which Lord Melbourne pressed on my father's acceptance an offer of office. It was gratefully declined, partly from a disinelination to surrender political independence, but chiefly from a dis- inclination to suspend the literary labours in which he PREEATORY MEMOIR. ºxxvii was then engaged. During the ten years in which he had sat in Parliament on the Liberal side of the House, he had spoken and voted against the still tolerated property in slaves. He had, both by his speeches and his writings in the ‘New Monthly’ (which he then edited), energeti- cally opposed the Coercion Bill for Ireland, and the coercion policy in Canada. He had obtained an Act conferring copyrights on dramatic authors, and had Originated what ultimately led to international copy- right. He had obtained important ameliorations in the taxation of newspapers, and prepared the way for the complete abolition of all imposts upon public infor- mation. He had by his contributions to political litera- ture suggested many of those reforms which have since been effected in the Poor-laws. He had supported the amendment of the Factory Act of 1833, and had urged the removal of the site of the Royal Academy from the National Gallery—a change which was effected thirty years later. He had spoken and written in defence of the principle of an Established Church, but also as an ardent advocate of justice to Dissenters on the question of Church rates. He fully acknowledged the difficulty and delicacy of that question, but he considered it a pedantic frivolity to treat such a question solely from an antiquarian point of view. Whilst recognising the antiquity of the custom which laid upon parishioners the expenses of church repairs, he challenged on its own ground that appeal to antiquity which was raised by the opponents of all compromise on this question, by pointing to the greater antiquity of the law that the Church should pay its own repairs from the proceeds of its own pro- perty. On the whole, his position in regard to Church questions was substantially the same at all periods of his xxviii PREFATORY MEMOIR. political life. He cordially approved and supported the principle of Ecclesiastical Establishment. He believed that in the occasional abuses and incidental objections, to which (in common with all political institutions) this one is liable, men were too apt to lose sight of its advantages. Amongst those advantages he recognised the civilisation diffused throughout the country by a body of educated clergy; the schools established by them in the remotest rural districts; the capital introduced by them into the poorest villages; the emulation they excite among the Dissenters themselves—emulation in intelligence and respectability. But he conceived that the less obnoxious this principle could be made to Nonconformists, the better it would be for the interests of the Church; and therefore he strongly deprecated whatever tended to bring it into daily and hourly collision with the consci- entious scruples of sectarians, and the pecuniary inter- ests of lessees and ratepayers. He also supported the removal of Jewish disabilities; and, though himself a protectionist in corn, it was he who introduced to public notice the once popular “Corn-law Rhymer,” Ebenezer Elliot. It was at this period of his life (1833) that he published the political treatise entitled ‘England and the English,’ of which Mr Mill has remarked in his Autobiography, that it was much in advance of the time. His intellectual industry and fertility during these years were really astonishing. While assiduously attending Parliament, and sharing in its debates, he was not only editing a semi-political and literary periodical to which he himself largely contributed, but also rapidly throw- ing off that remarkable series of fictions which required for their composition constantly fresh reading, and an untroubled Serenity and freedom of pure imagination. PREEATORY MEMOIR. XXix During this period of his Parliamentary career he also made some effective speeches on behalf of municipal reform. But his greatest Parliamentary success was, no doubt, his speech urging the immediate emancipation of the West Indian slaves, which the Government, in deference to the Colonial Legislatures, had intended to postpone for two years. He carried this question by a majority of two only. But it was one of those rare occasions in which opinion has been converted by elo- quence in the course of a debate. The speaker was assured after the division by three members, who had intended to vote on the other side of the question, that their intention had been changed by his arguments. He received for this speech, which was printed and circulated by that association, the thanks of the Anti-Slavery Society. … -- * My father lost his seat in 1841; and by his mother's will he succeeded, at her death in 1843, to the estate of her family in Hertfordshire. During the eleven years of his absence from Parliament, though busily engaged in literary pursuits, and the management of a property which he greatly improved, he was not an indifferent spectator of public events; and, before resuming this short narrative of his Parliamentary life, I propose to illustrate his opinions upon questions of public interest, both at home and abroad, by a few extracts from some of the private papers in which I find them recorded by himself. 3r I have said that he was at all times an earnest and spontaneous advocate of every reform in the relations between the Government and the governed, the State and the people, which aimed at public improvement by moral and intellectual means. XXX PRIEFATORY MEMOIR, On this subject, in its relation both to popular instruc- tion and to literature and art, I find in those unfinished and unpublished letters to Lord John (now Earl) Russell, to which reference has already been made, some general reflections which may still, perhaps, be read with interest. They contribute nothing to the practical solution of the difficulties which, since they were written, have rendered the whole question of public education one of the most urgent, and yet the most delicate, with which statesmen have still to grapple; but, from a biographical point of view, I venture to think them not unworthy of preservation, as illustrations of their writer's intellectual temperament and tendencies. These letters I have found in a very fragmentary condition, without beginning or end. They were, apparently, never com- pleted or revised. They were certainly never published; and it is therefore to be presumed, either that the writer was dissatisfied with the form in which he had expressed his views, or else that he considered the moment inop- portune for their public expression. These considerations, however, cannot apply to the present publication, except in so far as they seem to indicate the point of view from which the following fragment should now be regarded. LETTER II. (Fragment.) Circa 1846. * * “To the people two kinds of education are necessary—1st, the intellectual; 2d, the industrial. It would be well if, in the last, one establishment in every district could, though not wholly maintained by the PREFATORY MEMOIR. xxxi Government, receive its encouragement and support. Such establishments would vary in the details of in- struction, according to the habits of the surrounding population. In provinces purely agricultural, the best modes of agriculture would be taught ; * in provinces bordering on manufacturing towns, the instruction would assume a higher class, and comprehend mechanical philosophy and the arts of design. “In the metropolis itself (too much neglected) such schools would inculcate various branches of industrial knowledge to the unfortunate children of both sexes who now are literally sent to the house of correction, or transported to penal settlements, “to keep them out of harm's way.’ It is but the other day that I read in the newspapers an account of three young girls charged with some petty theft for which one, as the oldest offender, was sentenced to transportation for seven years; the other two were let off with three months’ imprisonment. The one transported drops her most grateful courtesy; she thanks the Court for sending her from this country where she can come to no good; she declares that it was from the hope of that sentence that * “And even in provinces purely agricultural, the instruction would vary according to the main produce of the soil. In Kent, for instance, much attention would be devoted to the culture of hops. All that the ingenuity of Science could bring to bear upon lesseming the cost and the uncertainty of that most expensive and most precarious of crops would be diffused through lecture and experiment. So in Kent, Herefordshire, and other or- chard counties, such seminaries would render popular the best researches in orchard cultivation. So in Ulster or in Sussex, the improvement of flax would demand the attention of the tutors. Establishments thus founded would make much that is now partial in agriculture general, and thereby augment the wealth of the country. Experiment would show what other soils in England would bear the hops of Kent, the apples of Herefordshire, the flax of Sussex. A proprietor desirous of testing such improvements would know where to apply for persons duly and scientifically educated to carry them out with the least cost, and the best probability of success.” xxxii PREFATORY MEMOIR. she committed, and induced her accomplices to commit, the offence. The other two hear the mild sentence of three months' imprisonment with dismay ; they burst into tears; they implore the Court to send them abroad; they say in the same words as the envied convict, “We can come to no good; we are poor creatures, without father or mother; we can't get our bread honestly ; transport us.” Moved by this prayer the Court positively assents, and these poor young Englishwomen, whose very petition shows their hatred of vice, are sent out from our community. My Lord, if we had such establishments as I describe, do you not think it would have been better to have sent them to school, to have taught them how to get their bread in their own land, and to have taught their children after them to thank heaven that they had been born under a Government which aided the homeless and the orphan in the struggle not to sin 3 Such a Government you have the power to make your own. “I have the honour to be, &c., “EDWARD LYTTON.” LETTER III. “DEAR LORD JOHN,-Permit me now the natural corollary from the propositions in my last. “I enter upon a field hitherto generally neglected by statesmen, lying remote from party discussion, and not at the first glance comprehended in the chart of popular reform. “Yet this is the true nursery-ground from which all PREFATORY MEMOIR. xxxiii that can fertilise the mind, and enrich the industry of thought, is gathered and transplanted. “You do not complete by a sound scheme the moral and intellectual culture of the nation if you neglect the parent-ground of all cultivation. Consummate the Sur- vey of popular schools by considering the arch-normal School of all—the literature, the art, the Science, which furnish the materials of all education, which constitute the province and provide the mourishment of moral and intellectual growth. These are the domain of the mind. Instruction is but the implement that tills it. “Is it not a trick and a delusion to the young student to coax and decoy him on to that point in which he may become a useful craftsman, an intelligent drudge, but to hold before him, as a terrible example of punishment for excess, the rewards you will bestow on him if his zeal kindle him to genius, if his toils swell to the originality of knowledge Z Maintain your present modes of reward- ing literature, and you do not act fairly to the multitude if you do not proclaim that, if one of the pupils you Summon to your schools should so far excel the rest as to be in his turn the diffuser of instruction and delight, you have for him no employment in your State, no prize amongst its honours; and that when life, health, industry, and talent are fairly worn out, and the fragments of them left, all you can offer him is the chance of an annuity which you would apologise for offering to your valet ! “You count upon awaking a moral ambition for intel- lectual eminence amongst the people—you need their co-operation. Are these to be gained while you hold up the beggary of literature to public pity and dis- dainful wonder ? No, my Lord; if you invite your xxxiv. PREFATORY MEMOIR. acute and practical countrymen to share in the banquet of letters, you must give some honour to those who find the feast. Nor do I believe that a much more popular act even with the populace could be conceived than one which should deal with the peaceful civilisers of the nation in a spirit more worthy of their merits and our obligations. For the literary man, beset with rivals in his own sphere, persecuted as he often is by the opinions he disturbs, calumniated by the jealousies he provokes, is always popular with the masses. Like themselves, he is a workman. There is a Secret but an imperishable bond between the writer and the people. Not the silk- worm lives more for the Weaver than the author for man- kind. If in his own character he be the most selfish of egotists, in his character of writer he exists but for others. There is no people where there are no writers. I submit to you, therefore, my Lord, some extension of the Fund set apart for art, literature, and Science. It is not for me to presume to suggest the sum requisite for such a purpose, though I think a sum not larger than that devoted by the State to a single one of its principal officers will suffice. I would only venture to suggest a wider range between the maximum and the minimum of the existing limit. You cannot at present give more than £300 a-year to your greatest poet, or your ablest philosopher. You do not give to the last, and he is not necessarily the least upon the list, a smaller pittance than £50. Would it be too much to hope that the maximum might reach £500 a-year, and the minimum not dwindle below £100 % “Yet I cannot consider that this pension list, what- ever its amount, does of itself suffice for the object in view—viz., the exaltation of intellectual advantages in PREFATORY MEMOIR. XXXV the eyes of those whom you summon to cultivate them. Observe that here, and indeed throughout, I argue less on behalf of literary men themselves than of the people, whom you would allure to partake of the benefits con- ferred by them. Literature may exist in its highest forms, though a Government give no honour to the work, and though the nation starve the professor. ‘ Don Quixote’ is not the less genially produced, though Cervantes composes it as a prisoner, and goes to his grave a pauper. But it is wholly another question if you desire to make literature universal. In that case, the multitude are attracted by the honour it receives. No State can busy itself in exciting genius to masterpieces— all that it should do is to excite the people to mental exertions, and prove to them that whatever is excellent interests the State, and has a claim to its distinctions and rewards. - “I do not advance the absurd doctrine that because a man is a writer he is therefore fit for public employment. I only complain that it often happens that because he is a writer all public employment is shut out from him. I know a melancholy instance, not a rare one, of a man who had not only pleased the public, but who had materially served the Government by his compositions. A periodical in which he was engaged changed its politics; with that change (for he changed not) he lost the Sole certain source of his existence. I loved this man, and respected him, I knew from his inalienable probity, his intense application, his great adaptability of resources, his ready promptitude, and his docile under- standing, that he could become an invaluable public servant. My Lord, I wearied such friends as I possessed in the Government of that day on his behalf. They XXXVI PREFATORY MEMOIR. acknowledged his services, they recognised his talents; even for my sake, I believe, they were willing to assist him. But their answer was, ‘What is in our gift for a literary man : Had he been a lawyer, had he been a clergyman, had he been a soldier or Sailor, something might be found. For a writer we have nothing.’ And nothing my poor client obtained. “What are the results of education, carried to the highest ? Art, literature, science. These are the triple flowers of the divine plant, and these flowers in return give the seed from which the plant is eternally renewed. Do not deceive yourself with the belief that you can make intellectual culture the noble necessity of the com- munity, unless you can show to the community that you are prepared to honour the highest results to which culture can arrive. Is it so now ! Look to the en- couragement which the State gives to art, literature, and science. To art, beyond the mere grant to a society wholly irresponsible, it affords no encouragement at all. You have a National Gallery for the dead—a fitting institution to which I give all the homage that is due. But you have no gallery for the living. Of late (and this is an era) you have afforded some stimulus to one branch in art, that of fresco-painting. But this, you are already aware, is extremely partial in its effects. You do not find, I apprehend, the highest of your artists amongst the competitors, partly because it hardly suits their dig- nity to submit their works to a tribunal the judgment of which is not precisely as sound as that of the Medici; partly because fresco-painting is not perhaps that kind of painting in which their genius has been taught to excel. I do not blame this attempt to encourage one department of art—I applaud it. But do not think this PREFATORY MEMOIR. xxxvii is analogous to a generous and genuine homage to art's haughty and multiform divinity. We are told by an old Greek author of some wise man who thought to save his bees the trouble of a flight to Hymettus—cut off their wings and set the flowers before them. The bees did not flourish upon the allowance. Let art select its own flowers at its own will, then buy the honey if you please. In a word, add to your National Gallery for the old masters a gallery for the living. Be not led away by the notion that the public are all-sufficient patrons. The public buy what they require, and that is all. Those individuals that compose the public have no houses large enough for historical pictures. They have not always the taste for high art. They have not always the money to pay the high prices that modern painters are com- pelled to charge if they really devote long time and patient labour to their chefs-d'oeuvre. Hence most painters, depending solely on the patronage of the pub- lic, either turn portrait-painters (for every one likes a portrait of himself, his wife, his baby, or even his pet dog); or they find that, while the large or elaborate pic- ture obtains no buyers, the Small squares of canvas hastily struck off, coming more within the means of the public, bring large returns. The public love names. A man likes to say, ‘I have a picture by Tinto or Finto ; ’ and he thinks that equivalent to saying, “I have Tinto's masterpiece; or, ‘this picture took Finto three patient years to complete. It is but just to our artists to give them that higher field of emulation which every other State professing to honour art liberally bestows. * * * * “I have already touched, my Lord—as connected with this part of my subject—the main blot upon the justice of the State and the gratitude of the people. xxxviii PREFATORY MEMOIR. It is the provision at present allowed to the literature, art, and Science of three nations—a yearly pension list of £1200 a-year. * * * * “Just conceive the false position of a statesman call- ing aloud upon the people to read, and write, and study, while he is forced (if he speak truth) to acknowledge that the worst thing that can happen to any pupil So encouraged, is to read deeply enough to instruct others, write well enough to charm multitudes, grow entitled to the gratitude of his country, and be referred by it in old age and sickness to a claim upon the Pension List “Surely, if your Lordship will look somewhat narrowly into the various departments of State patronage, some places may be found for which literary capacities may be no disqualification, which, as a general rule, might be set apart for those familiarised to the habit of acquiring details with ease, and conveying information with vigour and precision. I should not expect to see such places fall to the lot of the higher and more popular authors, to whom, not from merit so much, but from the choice of subject, literature is an available profession; the choice would be better made from writers of a graver class, and to whom business would not be incompatible with the occasional exercise of their abstruse studies. His duties at the India Board have not unfitted Mr J. Mill for the composition of his noble History of Logic, and the History of Logic did not unfit him for the India Board. A few such selections made with judgment and discretion would do much to render literature a thing less apart from the State, would afford to the writer the easy leisure for many a valuable work, give to the Government many a competent and intelligent admin- istrant, and afford to the people no uninstructive ex- PREFATORY MEMOIR. xxxix amples of your sincerity in the homage you assert to knowledge. “Beyond this, and with far greater diffidence, Iventure to hazard two suggestions. 1stly, In any great scheme of national education, you will scarcely suffer, I think, your endeavours to cease with the age of childhood. Man, when engaged in labour, always remains a child. Always do we have something to learn ; but mostly those employed in practical pursuits, in which every day science hints some improvement, or startles prejudice with some innovation. Hence, imperceptibly—hence, in the recog- nition of this truth—arose the Mechanics’ Institutes, col- leges for the labouring adult. “Of these auxiliaries already founded, but far from maturely efficient, I apprehend your scheme for diffus- ing knowledge will scarcely neglect the valuable co- operation. There is nothing (your observation has doubtless already made you aware) which is more readily sought after in these societies than lectures by compe- tent persons. Would it be possible to establish a cer- tain number of professorships, with moderate salaries, but some social designations of respect, whose duty it might be to teach to audiences so prepared to favour, and So interested on the subject, all that science in its rapid progress can bring to bear upon their calling. In manu- facturing towns or in agricultural districts, I need scarcely say that such discourses from authorities of high repute would signally facilitate the admission of improvements, would communicate the experiences and inventions of other countries, would diffuse and circulate truths that come home to the business of the listeners, and add to the wealth of the nation. Salaries so given would be repaid to the public in every field where a new crop is VOL. I. C xl PREFATORY MEMOIR. produced or the old increased; in every factory where the improvement of a machine lightens the labour or refines the work. That in such an undertaking, if put on its right footing, and treated with dignity by the State, you would have the cheerful assistance of the first scientific teachers who have turned their philosophy to such prac- tical uses, I have no doubt. And here again you would effect that which to satiety I seek to impress—viz., con- nection between the highest intellect and the most pop- ular instruction. “2dly, My Lord—and this proposition I make still more timidly than the first; aware as I am of the ridicule which, in a system profoundly aristocratic, attaches to all attempts to claim for merit some slight share in the dis- tinction monopolised by rank—or in a community mainly occupied by traffic, to inculcate the doctrine, that there are other rewards than money. - “The distinctions of honour that England affords are twofold,—that of titles—that of decorations. “With the exception of knighthood, titles are heredi- tary. They require, therefore, and justly, the possession of a certain fortune to save any privileged order from the worst curse that can befall it—the sullen pride or the abject neediness of beggared rank. Necessarily, then, such titles are not open to all merit; they are open only to merit accompanied with wealth; they are almost at the command of wealth without the merit. “Sir Robert Peel offered Mr Southey a baronetcy, which Mr Southey sensibly refused on the plea of want of fortune to support the dignity. So obvious is it that these hereditary titles cannot answer the purpose of awarding merit or honouring intellect independent of fortune, that I need waste no words in support of so PREFATORY MEMOIR, xli evident a proposition. The order of knighthood uncon- nected with decorations has been so perverted from its original character and intention—so separated from all dignifying association, and appropriated to civic offices, to Some legal appointments, with now and then an ex- ception in favour of medical men—that it would be far easier to give weight to a new title than to restore its noble character to an old one so long degraded. “The Crown has next at its gift the decorations of the Garter and the Bath. The first, in its origin an essen- tially military distinction, is now almost the exclusive property of royal foreigners and the heads of our great houses. A Garter is vacant ; you have but to consider who is the man belonging to the party of the Minister of the highest rank, to be sure that the vacancy will fall upon him. He has a right to complain of slight if he is overlooked. The Order of the Bath, which was at its origin an almost purely civil dignity, now Supersedes the Garter, and becomes a military distinction, with some reservations in favour of diplomatists. The orders of Scotland and Ireland are the privileges of the nobles in those sections of the empire. “For the people there is, then, no distinction whatever. Everyother Government, even under absolute monarchies, has at its disposal various dignities, which are objects of emulation to the mass of the people. In that country which boasts itself most free, in which the people are professedly the most regarded—in which certainly the people are the real source of all greatness and all wealth —in that country alone the people are excluded from every participation in the testimonials to merit or the marks of honour. Howsoever a man may have adorned or served his country, unless he is comparatively rich, xlii PREFATORY MEMOIR. you can give him no title. Unless he is an earl, you can- not give him the Garter; unless he is soldier, sailor, or diplomatist, you cannot give him the Bath; and even the dignity of Doctor is conferred by the Universities, not the State. Would it be against the spirit of the constitution, against the temper of the age, against the principles by which ambition is stirred and emulation aroused, if the Crown were advised to institute a new order, open to the mass of this great people, and to which merit, com- prehending indeed birth and fortune, but wholly inde- pendent of them, should constitute the sole claim : An order which the Marquess of Northampton might share with Professor Airy or Mr Babbage ; Lord Mahon with Mr Moore; Lord George Hill, who has improved the population of a district, with the manufacturer who has invented some signal improvement in a machine. I pass over, as wholly irrelevant, the ridicule of would-be sages upon medals of silver and shreds of ribbon. All things, even to gold itself, have their value, as the tokens of what society admits them to represent. I could understand the ridicule, if in England you had no titles, and no decora- tions at all ; but I cannot understand that you should admit their partial application—that you should allow how powerfully such incentives act upon men of one rank, and yet suppose them no incentives at all to men of another ; that you should allow that their hope ani- mates the noblest heart that beats beneath a uniform, and suppose it would be silent in the heart which human nature influences under a frock-coat. The question is not whether the State should have the gift of conferring marks of distinction—it has them already ; but whether in a free country they should be confined to wealth, rank, and military achievements; whether, at a time when you PREFATORY MEMOIR. xliii exhort the people to intellectual cultivation, intellectual eminence should be excluded from the favour of the Sov- ereign; whether alone to art, letters, and the peaceful im- provers of mankind, the fount of honour shall be sealed. On these considerations I hazard the suggestion of an order to which merit shall give the claim—an order emanating from the Sovereign, but accessible to all her people—its decorations not given exclusively to the merit which is poor and low-born, or society, at once aristocratical and commercial, would not value them. But he indeed knows little of our higher orders who will not allow, that no aristocracy, except the Athenian, ever produced in all departments so large a proportion of eminent men. There will be selections enough from them to give to such a brotherhood whatever grace merit may take from high station ; only let these lists be open to all competitors who write upon their shield, ‘Service to Great Britain ;’—whether that service be rendered in arts, letters, inventive improvement, great virtue, or use- ful deeds, let no party favour promote the undeserving or slight the meritorious. Surely such an institution is in harmony with the age. When Napoleon made him- Self member of the Institute, he said—‘ I am sure to be understood by the lowest drummer.” If one distinguishes men into the classes of military and civil, one establishes two orders, while there is but one nation ; if one decrees honour only to soldiers, the nation goes for nothing— La nation ne serait plus rien;’ so said Napoleon when he founded the Legion of Honour—an institution which the subsequent abuses that have perverted its intention and lowered its dignity do not the less prove to have been based upon the profoundest views of human nature, and in the true spirit of generous legislation. xliv PREFATORY MEMOIR. “Here, my Lord, I close these suggestions,—all, from the establishment of a village School, to the honours due to those deserts which each pupil sent to that School may attain,_all belonging, I believe, to any scheme, wide, Sound, and comprehensive, for the encouragement of education and the diffusion of intelligence. Found schools, and starve the Scholar—declaim on the rewards of intellectual accomplishment and civil virtue, and then exclude the highest specimens your declamation can pro- duce from the service of the State and the honours of the Crown, and I warn you that you will place your edifice upon a hollow foundation, whilst you reject your surest co-operator in the moral spirit your system should animate and evoke ; and that the common-sense of mankind will see that your object is not for the advancement of knowledge, but to contract its height whilst demarking its circumference. As the Chinese dwarf their oaks, you place a hoop of iron round the roots which you plant; and thus you will have stunted into a toy the branches which should be vocal with the birds of heaven, and the stem that should shoot the loftier with every storm that assails it.—I have the honour to be, dear Lord John Russell, &c. &c. &c. “EDWARD LYTTON.” —w- In printing these suggestions I am fully conscious of how much can be said against the possibility of their adoption, and even of the numerous objections which may be urged against the arguments on which they are founded. But, on the one hand, their elevation of patri- otic purpose and nobility of aim are remarkable ; whilst, on the other hand, I venture to think they reveal a know- |PREFATORY MEMOIR. xlv. ledge of human nature too frequently absent from the modern school of politics. A Goethe administering a Weimar might have adopted these suggestions. An English Prime Minister, dependent on the support of a middle-class Parliament, might at least regret his in- ability to do so. And if the reader reject them as practical propositions, he may not the less respect them as the outlines of a picture formed by the writer in his own mind of that ideal State which no practical politi- cian can hope to realise, but of which every thoughtful statesman has probably cherished, according to his character, some abstract conception which supplies the animating spirit and general tendency of his practical work as a public man. I pass at once, however, to what I consider to be the most interesting and the most important of my father's political memoranda ; those, namely, which were written in reference to foreign politics. Amongst them I find some observations on the then recent Anglo-French Alliance, which appear to me eminently deserving of attention. I cannot but regard that alliance as the commence- ment of an epoch pregnant with diplomatic problems yet unsolved, and international revolutions yet incalcul- able ; and I have perhaps had exceptional opportunities of studying its effect upon the continent of Europe, and on our relations with other Powers. In England, peculiar difficulties impede the formation of a well-instructed public opinion, and more especially the effective expres- sion of it upon important questions of foreign policy, whilst there is yet time for such an opinion to control or guide the conduct of a Government in regard to them. In the first place, the English public takes no strong spontaneous interest in the general course of foreign xlvi PREFATORY MEMOIR. affairs. The complicated questions which eventually occasioned the outbreak of hostilities between Denmark and the two great German Powers, had for many years previously been a source of anxiety to every European Government; yet the English public was practically unconscious of their dangerous existence until our national honour had been seriously committed to a championship of one of the contending parties, from which our national prudence simultaneously recoiled. In the next place, the English Parliament has not yet succeeded in convincing any English Cabinet of its capacity to discuss foreign questions with advantage to national interests. When such questions are pending, Parliament is solemnly assured that by expressing any opinion about them, it will only embarrass or prevent the satisfactory settlement of them by her Majesty's respon- sible advisers. When such questions are settled, Parlia- ment is civilly reminded of the futility of expressing its disapproval of a settlement which it cannot undo. This mode of dealing with great international questions is not efficient. Fortune is a fair player, and never checkmates a Government or a people without having first audibly cried ‘Check l’ It is our fault if we listen late to her warning cry. But late is better than never; and the recognition of past mistakes assists the avoidance of future failures. It is in that belief that I give publicity to the subjoined memorandum. MEMORANDUM ON THE ANGLO-FRENCH ALLIANCE. BY SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. 1857-58. “There is no country from the ambition of which England has so much to fear as France—no people so PREFATORY MEMOIR. xlvii easily aroused to a hostile sentiment against her as the French—no other Power which, since the Spanish Ar- mada was scattered by the winds of heaven, has ever caused us to prepare against invasion. “On the other hand, however, England is in every way most fitted to check the preponderance of France ; because whilst she has the permanent interest, she has also, more than most nations, the permanent power to do so. And that not only by her fleets, but also by the Superiority of her fiscal resources. It is the wealth of England that Supplies the deficiencies of her own population and the Smallness of her own land force, if she were engaged in a life-and-death struggle with any other Power. Eng- land is now richer than she was when Chatham helped by her subsidies the flagging resources of Frederick the Great ; nor is she less able to gather round her the swords of other nations than she was when Marlborough defeated the armies of Louis XIV., with a force of which more than two-thirds were foreigners consolidated by English discipline, and commanded by English genius. “But if England be thus peculiarly adapted in the eyes of foreign States to be the soul and centre of European Organisation against any aggressive policy on the part of France, we may well conceive the dismay with which all such States would behold England suddenly with- drawn from their side, and united to the side of France. Nor were those who felt this dismay deceived by the reason for the alliance that created it which the ad- mirers and apologists of that alliance alleged. “England and France, thus united, it is said, can dic- tate to Europe the conditions of peace and war. But Europe does not like such dictation. Europe feels, moreover, that in such dictation it is France that would xlviii PREFATORY MEMOIR. dictate, and that England can only preserve the French alliance by ratifying the French decrees. Therefore, the inevitable effect of our alliance with France is to weaken our bonds with all other States. The only firm alliances are those founded on common interests. When England withdraws herself from the side of those States whose interest it has hitherto been to count upon her, not as the ally, but as the counterpoise of France, she inevita- bly loses their attachment, and excites, not their confi- dence, but their fear. - “This sentiment operates even beyond Europe. It is felt, though as yet obscurely, in Asia. It was expressed openly in America. Ask any American statesman why, at the commencement of the Russian war, there was so angry a feeling against England in the United States?— why So much of unreasoning bitterness was infused into the dispute about the enlistment of recruits on American Soil 7 and you will be told that it had been the desire of all American statesmen that France and England should each stand, not, indeed, hostile to, but aloof from, the other ; and that when England stood closely allied with France, she alienated herself from the instinctive policy of America.” - “Since then, gradually, almost imperceptibly, but Surely and ever more and more, this alliance with France has forfeited for England the position she held in the respect and affection of European Powers; because: * In connection with this statement I request the reader to recall to his recollection not only the facts of French policy in Mexico, but also the sentiment of French policy towards the misinterpreted phenomena of the Civil War between the United States of America, at a time when English Governments were still boasting of this unnatural, insincere, and embar- rassing alliance, in presence of their bewildered and discomfited well- wishers in both the New and the Old World,—L. - PREFATORY MEMOIR. xlix England no longer presents to those Powers the image of their natural and immemorial Safeguard. “Nor is this all the detriment we suffer. What we lose in authority and influence, France inevitably gains. This fact cannot but force itself on the minds of foreign statesmen. It is impossible but what they should say to themselves, ‘If England deserts us thus—if the first thought of England is to preserve her alliance with France, whose traditional and permanent object is to aggrandise herself by weakening her neighbours one after the other—then the aim of each of us should be to make the best terms we can with France ; and since England will not aid us, we must act as if England did not exist; for England cannot hurt us—France can.” “Thus Russia, though equally opposed by France and England, is now far more cordial to France than to us. Thus even Austria accepts French rather than English mediation. And at this moment, throughout all the Germanic nations, I know not one in which we are not viewed with resentful mistrust, or which does not hear with a scornful Smile of our own preparations against the danger for ourselves in which we have declined all sympathy with the fears of others. “And this consideration brings before us another con- sequence of the French alliance, which although more familiar, is, unfortunately, still more startling. “If for the sake of that alliance we had only lost our hold upon the confidence and respect of other Powers— if, in losing that confidence and that respect, we had only swelled to our own disadvantage the ascendant jurisdiction, I will not say of an hereditary enemy, but of an hereditary rival—if this were all, and if the counterbalancing advantages were those so sanguinely | PREFATORY MEMOIR. anticipated at the commencement of the alliance, then we might perhaps rest contented with the Sacrifices that accompany our new position in Europe. “But that is not the case. The advantages promised were twofold: first, to Europe; next, to ourselves. But both were comprised in one sentence: THE SECURITY OF PEACE. It was supposed that, if France and England were thus amicably allied, Europe might see in that alli- ance the guarantee for her repose; that nations would no longer exhaust their resources by great standing armies; and that the arts of industry would tranquilly improve under the united standards of two Powers that, when separate, vied with each other which should most civilise the globe. This blessing to all Europe would be also the special reward of England. England need henceforth fear no invader. England, having laid aside all rivalry with her great Continental neighbour, would be left to the undisturbed luxury of diminishing her taxes and economising her expenditure. “Have these promises been kept Ž Is not all Europe bristling with soldiers ? Are not all foreign nations Crippling their finances, and impeding their social pro- gress, by maintaining armies beyond their strength 2 Is not England rousing her population from one end of the country to the other, drilling her youth into rifle corps and volunteers, doubling her navy, and calling upon her Parliament, not to cut down, but to increase her military expenditure ? “And this, in spite of the French alliance not in spite, but on account of it ! “Were we restored to our normal position in Europe —not that of hostility to France, but in close connection with all the Powers by whom France is most dreaded— In0, PREFATORY MEMOIR. li standing, not as the enemy of France, but as apart from her, in the attitude of manly, frank, acknowledged vigilance,—would all Europe be half so alarmed as it now is ? Should we ourselves be half so near a quarrel with France as we now are, thanks to an alliance which pre- sents at every moment a thousand points of angry con- tact in national jealousy and ancestral pride : “Before the close of the Crimean war, every wise observer felt that French and English soldiers could not long fight side by side—that the laurels achieved could not be divided if we had had the capture of the Malakoff, and the French had known the disaster of the Redan. I believe that, in such a case, the French would never have rested till they had obtained revenge on the better for- tune of their fellow-soldiers.” It must not be supposed that the foregoing reflections were influenced by any national antipathy to the French people, or any personal animosity to their sovereign. In point of fact, my father was one of the earliest English friends of the late Emperor of the French, and probably the first Englishman of any eminence who detected in the character of that prince qualities not generally recog- mised till they were, perhaps, generally overrated. In the year 1839 he wrote on the fly-leaf of a copy of the ‘Idées napoléoniennes, given to him by the author of that book, the following prophetic criticism : “The book of a very able mind; with few ideas, but those ideas bold, large, and reducible to vigorous action. Very much depreciated at this day by the critics of a drawing-room, Prince Louis Napoleon has qualities that may render him a remarkable man if he ever returns to lii PREFATORY MEMOTR. France. Dogged, daring, yet somewhat reserved and close, he can conceive with Secrecy and act with prompti- tude. His faults would come from conceit and rashness; but akin with those characteristics are will and enthu- siasm. He has these in a high degree. Above all, he has that intense faith in his own destiny, with which men rarely fail of achieving something great ; without which all talent wants the mens divinior.—1839.” By an intimacy, moreover, which nearly resulted in a matrimonial alliance with one of the oldest families in France, my father, whilst yet a very young man, had been admitted into the home life of a people whose great domestic virtues and affections are strangely misrepre- sented in their popular literature, and very inadequately recognised by their foreign critics. In the fine and chivalrous character of that great people, in their sensi- tive sentiment of national and personal honour, in their capacity of enthusiasm for abstract ideas, their grace, their wit, their amiability, he felt throughout life the liveliest and most appreciative sympathy. His objec- tion, therefore, even to the simulacrum of an exclusive alliance with Imperial France (whether well or ill founded), was entirely free from personal or national prejudice. There is an old English comedy, in which the chief per- Sonage is a worthy city merchant who has married a young wife. To this young wife a French adventurer, a man of doubtful antecedents, makes love. The husband, Secretly alarmed for the Safety of his domestic hearth, is persuaded that his best policy will be never to lose sight of the fascinating foreigner, for whom he therefore pro- fesses the most extravagant friendship, and by whom he is led into company and circumstances which alienate from him the confidence of his neighbours and the PREFATORY MEMOIR. liii esteem of his old friends, without securing his domestic repose. It was some such result as this that my father apprehended from a complete reversal of the position which England had hitherto occupied in relation to the great Powers of the Continent. The readers of this memorandum, however, need hardly be reminded of the date at which it was written, and the events which have since then materially modified the political geography of Europe. The virtual dissolution of the French alliance has left England at the present moment without any acknowledged alliance at all ; and her statesmen of all parties appear to be generally of opinion that this posi- tion is the best and Safest for her permanent interests, as well as most conducive to the peace of Europe. That opinion I presume not to discuss. Apart from her colo- nial empire, which certainly needs no defensive alliance, England has only two material interests beyond her own shores. One of them is to prevent those shores from being overshadowed by the establishment of any great naval Power on the nearest Continental seaboard. The other is to prevent whatever might menace the security of, or interrupt the access to, her Indian dominion. These objects may, perhaps, be best attained, and the peace of Europe may be most efficiently promoted, by England's complete abstention from all Continental alli- ances. But such a position is certainly not imposed upon her as a necessity by the smallness of her military force. Her true force is, as it has ever been, the force in which every great Continental Power is comparatively deficient ; and whether as the head of a group of States, or as the acknowledged ally of any great military Power (in the defence of whose interests she might seek an additional security for her own), England has still two liv PREFATORY MEMOIR. mighty weights to throw into the balance of Fortune— her navy and her purse. The Treaty of Paris of 1856 (of which nothing now remains beyond the obligation of England to forego in any future naval war her exercise of one of the barbarous but effective privileges hitherto asserted by maritime belligerents) was the sole achievement of the Anglo- French alliance. My father, though on more than one occasion he dis- puted the wisdom of that war with Russia which occa- sioned the alliance, was, nevertheless, one of those who most ardently advocated the vigorous prosecution of it when once begun. - The ‘Press’ (a journal now extinct) was at this time commonly regarded as the organ of the Conservative party. The language of that journal in reference to the war then going on appeared to aim at the logical refine- ment of a pacific policy, too fantastic to gain support even from the peace party, whilst it greatly discouraged the martial fervour of the country. I have every reason to believe that this tone was not inspired by the chiefs of the Conservative party, and it certainly did not reflect the general sentiment of the party itself. But there were those who held that the Parliamentary function of an Opposition is to oppose the policy of the Government, whatever that policy may be ; and that it was therefore difficult, if not impossible, for the Conservative party, as an opposition, to support with ardour the prosecution of a war conducted by a Whig Cabinet. To combat this theory, my father addressed to one of his intimate Con- servative friends a private letter, from which the following extracts have been selected, because of the earnestness with which they give expression to opinions and senti- IPREFATORY MEMOIR. lv ments extremely characteristic of his habitual tone of mind. “These articles [in the ‘Press'] represent a school of thinking—not a great party. Pardon me, my dear friend, if I cannot attach the weight you seem to accord to any suggestion that the party which Disraeli So gallantly led through the last session shrank, or was supposed to shrink, from the responsibility of conducting the war. g “Certainly I never so considered it, or I could not have supported that party. And certainly that was not the tone we took after Lord Derby declined to accept office. * * * Unquestionably, the vast majority of the country had no such suspicion until these articles in the ‘Press’ fastened upon Palmerston the reputation of being now the only representative of the martial senti- ment that pervades the population. Now, as to your theory that an Opposition must have a policy; and, that if it represents the policy of the Ministry, it ceases to be an Opposition. “With all deference to your views, I think this theory may be pushed too far. The greatest good fortune that can befall an Opposition is, when it heartily and vigor- ously goes with the sense of the country, and has before it a Ministry that affects to do the same, but is so weak that it could not stand but for a disbelief in the possi- bility of forming any other Ministry which would espouse the same principles. Convince the country that the Opposition could form such a Ministry, and it must inevitably replace a Government so feeble as the one now in office. It will do so, moreover, with this advantage: VOL. T. d lvi PREFATORY MEMOIR. that the supporters of the present Administration could Scarcely, with any effect, oppose a Cabinet called in to give more life to their own policy. Our Liberals would not let them do so. My view is — not to oppose Palmerston himself, but to expose the grave defects in the conduct of the war by the Cabinet generally, and not to leave him the monopoly of the war-cry at a dissolu- tion. * * * Stick to the country, and the country will carry you through. The proper position to take is not that of Fox against the French war, (see what it did for his party () but Pitt's position versus Addington. * * * I am also of opinion that the country will never take peace from a peace party. A war party alone can give peace. But that war party should have, what Palmerston has not, a definite arrangement with France as to the terms to be accepted, no matter what be the successes of the war. Such a party will beware of leading the people to expect from it a peace that can- not be obtained. It matters little to England whether we be somewhat less hard than we might be upon Russia as to her concessions (once granted that Turkish inde- pendence be firmly secured), but it matters everything to England that her prestige in conducting the war should be restored. I see more reasons for peace, since I have been in France, than the peace party put forward, or than it would be wise to state publicly at present. But I see in all such reasons additional arguments for throw- ing our whole soul into the war, in order to conquer peace, and not merely to creep out of the conflict, leaving behind it such a sense of our incapacity as would be certain to plunge us, ere long, into a war far more terrible. These are my views hastily thrown out. * * * Believe me, it is no cant or humbug when I PREFATORY MEMOIR. lvii add that I feel so uneasy and so alarmed for England. I think it requires such judgment and such vigour to get her out of these difficulties with credit, and I think timidity and half measures would be so fatal, that I would rather go out of Parliament altogether than belie my conscience as to the right course for us to take. I am quite sure that a hearty sympathy with the honour of the country throughout the quarrel it is now engaged in, without reference to the persons for the moment in power, will best serve the true interests of the party, for the people will understand it by an instinct; just as, no matter what may be the ability and skill employed in clipping and piecing together peace policies for the moment, the people will see through it all in their rough way; and those who attempt the task will find themselves confounded with the various damaged reputa- tions from which England will never consent to accept a Cabinet, either for carrying on the war or for negotiat- ing the peace.” The sentiments thus expressed dictated another letter On the same subject to a neighbouring proprietor and friend. This second letter extends the point of view established in the first, and I therefore print it here as an illustration of the spirit by which he was animated in advocating the vigorous prosecution of the war of 1855, although many of his suggestions for promoting the object he had at heart appear to me to have been . impracticable. I cannot but think that to abandon the established principle and recast the entire struc- ture of the English army during the operations of a great war would have been a perilous experi- ment. We have not found the change recommended lviii PREFATORY MEMOIR. in this letter to be either so simple a matter or so beneficent in its effect upon the spirit of our army, even when carried out with great deliberation by an all-powerful Government in a time of undisturbed peace. The suggestion that England should furnish Only a military, and France a naval contingent—the former under the orders of a French general, the latter under the orders of an English admiral—is rather ironical than serious. But I believe that a similar proposal was seriously made by the French Emperor to Lord Palmer- ston at the time when the English press was most loudly deploring the breakdown of our commissariat in the Crimea. Lord Palmerston declined that proposal on the obvious ground that the war was inevitably a mili- tary, not a naval war, and that the laurels of the war could only be gathered by the land forces. In point of fact, moreover, the deficiencies of our commissariat were put to rights long before the war was over ; and when the war did at last come to an end somewhat Sooner than the public opinion of England desired, we had in the Crimea an excellent little army in perfect working order, whilst the military resources of France were in a condition that certainly did not diminish the desire of her Government for a speedy peace. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that Lord Palmerston's prudent and patriotic rejection of any such arrangement for Securing an undivided command by Sea and land, necessarily left France in possession of the nucleus of an increased naval power, occasioned by the necessity in which she then found herself of rapidly building transport-ships; and that this nucleus her Government was compelled, by the pressure of a very legitimate public opinion, to develop to an extent which greatly increased the naval estimates PREFATORY MEMOIR. lix of English Cabinets, without increasing their confidence in an ally who, before the conference of 1856 was over, appeared more anxious to secure the future friendship of Russia than to retain the continued co-operation of England. LETTER ON THE WAR TO DELME RADCLIFFE, ESQ. 1855. “MY DEAR RADCLIFFE,--I thank you cordially for your letter, and the compliment implied by the questions it contains. It is to the credit of those who are considered the special advocates of peace, that, at every risk of popularity, they have spoken out their homest senti- ments; just as fearlessly I speak out mine. It is no use, now, inquiring if the war could have been pre- vented : the question is, being in it, what we are to do. It is no use dwelling on past blunders: the Question is, how blunders in the past can serve as lessons for the future. Join with me in smiling at the timidity of those who make a catalogue of our errors and disasters, in order to infer that, because we have begun by failures, we must necessarily continue to fail. Did you ever know an Englishman of Superior intellect and persever- ance who failed, in the long-run, in anything on which he thoroughly set his heart 3 He may fail once, twice, thrice—he must succeed at the last. What is one Englishman to the English nation ? What his single intellect and perseverance to the combined intellect and perseverance of millions England is sure to come right at the end, by the inevitable law of her Surpassing civilisation; provided only that they who direct her lx PREFATORY MEMOIR. counsels and wield her powers are as thoroughly determined to succeed as you and I would be in any manly enterprise to which our honour was committed. And should we not be determined the more if we had previous failures to redeem : “But it does not suffice to be in earnest ‘for the vigorous prosecution of the war; that phrase has become a commonplace jargon. We must be also in earnest to reconstruct the machinery of the war upon sound principles, and grapple boldly with every pre- judice and every obstacle in the way of improvement. We are said not to be a military nation. Let me here distinguish. We are a warlike people—high-spirited and dauntless; but we are not Organised as a military community. We have not a Science in war commensu- rate with our valour, nor equal to the culture of our intelligence in the arts of peace. What then | Can we not learn ? Let us look to the systems in force among military nations, not servilely to borrow, but wisely to adapt to our social forms and habits, whatever military nations consider essential to military Organisation. If, then, we would render our ability in the management of armies as cheerfully acknowledged as is our courage in the field, the first two requisites are these : facilities for professional instruction, and an unobstructed career to professional merit. It is not enough to demand from young officers on entering the army the shallow cram of a holiday examination. Education, with a view to the military profession, should be PROVIDED for them. There should be great military schools on a very different footing from that of Sandhurst—schools similar to the Polytechnique at Paris, and the Royal Military Academy at Turin—from which the great staple of our PREFATORY MEMOIR. lxi officers should be drawn, and, of course, without pur- chase. Root and branch the system of purchase should be destroyed. It is a taint in the very fountain of honour—it is an outrage on common-sense. The present barrier to progressive advancement between non-commis- sioned and commissioned officers should be broken down. Every man who by bravery, steadiness, and trustworthy qualities, has worked his way from the ranks to the highest grade now vouchsafed to him, should pass by the established rule of promotion to the step of lieu- tenant. It might be a mockery, I grant, to class him with boys as an ensign. You might indeed require from him, if you pleased, in sending him to mix with gentlemen, to prove by an examination that he possesses the average degree of their education. Every colonel should, as in France, make to the War Office a quarterly report of the conduct and ability of all his officers, so that each officer, from a corporal upwards, should feel that he is under the eye of those who can advance his career according to his deserts. As a corollary from the principle of open competition to merit, the absurd ex- pense of the mess-room should be curtailed. It can be to the interest of none, that a lad, with perhaps 4:200 a-year, should pay more for his dinner and his wine than a man of large fortune, who does not set up for an epicure, would dream of paying for his own if he dined at a club. Every officer should have it in his power to live upon his pay. In one word, the army should have the same fair-play for emulation and energy as any other profession. What would become of the law, if a man who had never read Blackstone could purchase his way to the Bench : “I know the objections made to these changes. I have lxii PREFATORY MEMOIR. examined them with care, and am convinced they are futile. But it may be said that even if such reforms be expedient, they would be slow in effect. Not so. Put your army on a right system, and I am convinced that the very announcement of your intentions would be electrical. The results would be instantaneously visible in the ambition of young officers, and in the inducements to grown men of a higher class to enlist as soldiers. You call this a people's war. Make it a people's army. Rely upon it, gentlemen will be no losers. Gentlemen have no cause to fear fair competition in courage, instruction, sense of honour, with men born below them. But at present the best-born gentleman in England has no chance against the son of his tailor, if the last has more money to buy his promotion. “You may say that for the army in the Crimea pur- chase is suspended now. True, but it is only suspended. And the prospect of its return would still operate against Securing to a profession, in which ability does not suffice for advancement, the same amount of educated talent as is devoted to callings in which educated talent is more assured of its rise. - “Besides, if the constitution of the army be once rendered wisely popular, the interest of the people will guard our establishments, however reduced on the return of peace, from the parsimony and neglect of former times. And I own to you that, looking to the state of public opinion on the Continent, I consider it less important to the ultimate destinies of England to triumph in the Crimea by the aid of France, than to establish and bequeath, when the war is over, the incon- testable repute that her military efficiency is as for- PREFATORY MEMOIR. lxiii midable as her national courage. Success may end this war—reputation alone can preserve from others. “So much for the reconstruction of our army. Have we nothing to improve in our mode of providing for it ! I cheerfully acknowledge all that has been done to better our commissariat. But from what I see in public and hear in private, we are still far short of the mark. . Here there is an immense field for capitalists; have capitalists been sufficiently called in 4 Has the system of penal contracts been adequately tried ? Is it by penal contract that insufficient and crazy huts are again drifting their tardy way to Balaklava " It seems to me as a plain man, that if I said to a wealthy speculator, ‘I must have such and such articles, warranted of the best quality, in such a place, and on Such a day; hand- Some profits if you fulfil your contract, ruinous penalties if you fail,' I should have no lack of competitors, and hear small complaint of the goods. At all events, we English habitually possess great skill in the manage- ment of money and the transaction of business. We are willing to pay for this war whatever we are told is necessary. But we require that the skill we possess as a people should be fairly represented in the distribution of the funds we devote to the defence of our children. “Again, hideous tales of the drunkenness of our soldiers are told to us. I have little faith in the effect of barbarous punishments—little more faith in the effect of moral counteractives, such as Savings banks, &c. Young soldiers do not think of the future. But I have ample faith in the power of a commander-in-chief to banish the temptations. I have faith in the power of any man fit to sway numbers, to enforce the laws lxiv PREFATORY MEMOIR. necessary to their control and their Safety, partly by wise precautions, partly by appeals to generous emotions. It is much more difficult to cure an individual of a besetting sin, than to extirpate an evil habit from banded multitudes. I daresay I might preach to the winds if I tried to reform an individual drunkard ; but if you put 50,000 men addicted to drink under my absolute authority, I would forfeit my life if I did not make them habitually sober before the end of a month. Have we a drunken army Can those noble soldiers of whom we are all so proud, sink from the heroes we venerate into the Sots we must depise ? Impossible—I will not believe it. But if so, make your commander-in-chief responsible. And till your army is sober, be sure that the right commander is not found. - “Next, as to the amount of our forces in the Crimea. Look to it. Is it commensurate with the population, the wealth, and the dignity of England 2 Mr Cobden here is right. Certainly it is not. If France has 170,000 Soldiers in the field, and England has about 35,000, out of whom there are perhaps 22,000 effective bayonets, is that a proportion which justifies the phrase of the * Allied Armies ''. Of course it is not expected that we can have a number equal to the French ; but we ought, at least, to have half as many. We have but the force of a contingent, with all the responsibilities of an army. And England expects to claim, in the conduct and in the glory of this war, a share equal to that of a power which arms and risks five times the amount of her force This is preposterous. We are committing the national renown to such odds as no man in his senses would take at the Derby. For our national renown is not more engaged in defeating the enemy, by the help of the PREFATORY MEMOIR. lxv French, than it is in maintaining our rank in the estima- tion of all the Powers that share, and all the Powers that gaze upon, the contest. We have all heard that ‘ Eng- land cannot afford to have a little war.’ Let me hazard this addition to that immortal aphorism, England, when at war, cannot afford to have a little success. “But our generals do not want more soldiers ? They Say they would rather be without them 2 Yes, without Such boys as we send forth, untrained, unseasoned, and almost undrilled. This touches our mode of recruiting. I will advert to that presently. But we have an option before us. Let us face it manfully. If it be really true that we cannot get sufficient recruits of a suitable kind, cannot have an army adequate to our pretensions, let our Government tell us so fairly; and let us then be content to become bond fide a contingent. Pick out the best and most seasoned men we possess—men whose steadi- ness and discipline will be sure to do us credit—and place them openly and at once under a French com- mander-in-chief, to be conducted by a French strategy, and provided for by a French commissariat. Thus, at all events, we escape a responsibility which we have not the means to discharge. And meanwhile we can be preparing ourselves to collect and to train a force worthy of our nation, in case the war should continue, and we should deem it necessary to resume an independent action. Our navy, our national arm, would remain in our own hands; and in return, France might consent still, as she would have consented at first, to contribute to that navy her contingent, to be under our admiral, and Supplied by Our commissariat. But does the idea of sinking in name to what we are in substance—a subor- dinate auxiliary in the field—gall the pride of the coun- lxvi PREFATORY MEMOIR, try too much 7 Well, then, let the country take it up. And my belief is that the country would, if the truth were fairly told to it; if it were not misled by assur- ances that recruits come faster than we want them; that SO mighty an array never left these shores; that we have now 50,000 effective soldiers in the field ; that next spring we shall have 70,000; that we have nothing to do but to pay our taxes, and (borrowing Lord Chatham's Saying) “trust to vernal promises for equinoctial disap- pointments.” If these boasts of our force, and its means of fresh supply, be well grounded, then the Government must submit to the undivided responsibility such assu- rances entail. If not—again I say, I believe that the country would respond to a bold appeal to its manhood and metal. Not if you resorted to the enforced conscrip- tion, which has been menacingly suggested; but if you made the army such that a man of generous ambition saw his way to rise to the head, though he might enlist in the ranks. And for my part, if men are really wanted, and if the army be reconstituted somewhat in the way thus loosely outlined, I would ask leave to raise a regi- ment at my own expense (as in the last war my father did before me), though Heaven knows that few country gentlemen have less ready money to spare. I would come into our county of Hertford, and if in that county I did not rally round the Queen's standard, no beardless boys, no drunken boors, but such a body of picked men as an English general would be proud to welcome, I would throw up the seat in Parliament it is now my boast to possess, and I would say, that a constituency which told me to support the war, and could not, when every recruit who enlisted might win his hold of a mar- shal's baton, find a regiment to face the enemy, were PREFATORY MEMOIR, lxvii not worthy to be represented by a man of sincerity and spirit. “Well, now, as to terms of peace. It is my belief— shall I startle you if I say it !—that between those most thoughtfully bent upon peace and those most resolute for concluding the war, there is less essential difference than there seems at first. Both have an interest against dawdlers and dissemblers—against those who talk war, and, by not acting it efficiently, delay peace. For, with men of this temper, the terms to be demanded are ever shifting and changing, just as a despatch reports a victory or avows a disaster. I think that any Government, no matter how warlike, must ever have the aim of peace upon definite and practical terms steadfastly before it. But I think also that it is not for us, the independent members of Parliament, to enfeeble the executive to which we commit our quarrel, by assuring the enemy of our anxiety to make it up. I am Sorry to confess that in my younger days, before duelling was so much out of fashion, I was engaged in one or two “affairs of honour, as the phrase goes; and if when, as a second, I was meditating how to settle a difference upon terms most propitious to my principal's honour and repute, my principal himself had called out, in the hearing of the adversary, ‘Ugly affair awkward customer Dead shot, too, I hear ! Besides, fighting is so wicked Get me out of the scrape as fast as you can l’—I fear that the proffered terms of conciliation would have been so Scurvy, that my friend, in accepting them, must not only have lost caste with his equals, but incurred the risk of affront from every bully he met in his walks. Unques- tionably I consider that the English Ministers should (if they have not done so already) privately, but distinctly, lxviii PREFATORY MEMOIR. settle with our allies, the broad bases upon which peace is possible, no matter what our successes may be. Other- wise, if successes increase, the interests of ambition may gradually replace the cause of humanity; and new ob- jects may arise upon which England and France could not possibly agree. I do not say what should constitute those bases; nor have we a right to ask our Govern- ment publicly to state them. Nay, how can we presume to say we must have this or that, without the slightest reference to the opinions of an ally risking forces so dis- proportionably large, and honouring us hitherto with courtesies so chivalrous ! In justice to any Government, now or hereafter, we must remember that it is not for England alone to determine what terms of peace the conquerors of Sebastopol should accept. “But it is said, ‘Only let Russia know that her over- tures will not be met with affront.’ Heaven forbid that they should be By all means let the overtures come, Instead of pressing us to sue for peace, or intrigue for peace (I know not which), would that those eminent men, whose words will have weight with our enemy, would address their pacific adjurations to Russia Away with the idea that overtures must commence with us ! —away with it, because impracticable. Reflect on the present temper of our people. Could any Cabinet at this moment be constructed which could initiate proposals for peace as lenient as those which might be accepted if frankly volunteered to us? Away with Austrian and Prussian mediation | Let Russia herself appeal to the Western Powers—appeal to them as becomes a State that, despite its reverses, has shown the bravery which all brave men can respect. And if her proposals be but rational—do but concede by treaty half what we have PREFATORY MEMOIR. lxix already won by the arms that have swept the Russian flag from the Euxine and Azoff, and vindicated the Otto- man cause on every battle-field from Alma to Kars— where is the man so in love with carnage, so covetous of revenge, as to withhold from such proposals his most favourable attention ? I at least will say thus much now, that none may charge me with inconsistency here- after. Ardent as I am to carry on this war, till Russia concedes what I hold to be the end for which the war began ; convinced though I be, that upon that point all timidity, all wavering, would entail more fatal conse- quences upon our position and Our Safety than I deem it even prudent to foreshadow ; yet the moment Russia herself proposes a peace upon terms that my conscience and reason tell me this country should accept, no con- sideration whether those terms were popular or not, whether they were advocated by this party or denounced by that, should induce me to abet my countrymen in the profitless expenditure of human life. “But this is not the question before us. All that we now publicly know is, that Russia is not suggesting negotiations, but levying armaments—all that in pri- vate is whispered into our ears, is that Russia indeed may condescend to treat, but with such reservations as would plunge us again into the Serbonian bog of the Third Article, ignore all the successes we have purchased with the blood of our heroes, and still guard the couch of the ‘sick man by an eye that prognosticates his de- cease, and a hand that greeds for his property. With- out such reservations (and can we admit them 3) Russia is resolved to fight, and all we have to do is to fight and to beat her. Beat her | We are solemnly told that that would be a great misfortune. We are met by lugubrious lxx - PREFATORY MEMOIR. anticipations of victories too triumphant. We shall gain the Crimea, and not know what to do with it ! So that it would seem that all our aim in going to war, should be not to conquer, but to get conveniently conquered ; for while we conquer, Russia will be too proud to hear of peace, and what we conquer will be a sad embarrass- ment to our statesmen. These are prospects that need not daunt us. War, when decisive, has a quick and prac- tical philosophy of its own, and the difficulties that seem largest in its progress, usually vanish at its close. But ‘ venture upon another campaign, and Heaven knows how long bloodshed will last !—what new elements of strife must arise !—to what distant lands the battle-field must extend l’ These are mere words. If Russia will really not give peace until her power is exhausted, doubt- less there is no alternative but to exhaust her power. For my part, I think another campaign will go far to do so. That is a matter of conjecture. But though we may dispute as to the length of time it may take, we are all pretty well agreed that her ultimate exhaustion can only be prevented by the slackening of our own energies. Well, when she is exhausted, and inclines to peace, we are asked, what then ‘What material guarantee for the future tranquillity of Europe can she concede 7 Will they more secure that object than those she would con- cede now 4°. That I cannot say, for I know not what she would now concede. But I do know that every month in which she protracts a struggle that consumes her vitals, she is giving us a material guarantee more effective than the surrender of a fort or the limitation of a fleet: she is giving us the guarantee of wasted finances, of tottering commerce, and of lands robbed of their la- bourers, for the safety of her neighbours, and her adhe- PREFATORY MEMOIR. lxxi sion to future treaties. At the worst, then, let the formal parchments on which peace may be finally inscribed be ever so blurred by diplomatic blunders, we do in effect find a surety for Europe in everything that weakens the force of its aggressor. This must be our consolation to the degree in which the struggle is prolonged; and this consolation might well preserve us from exaggerated stringency in mere verbal provisions, even if we could dictate our terms on the banks of the Neva. “From what I have thus said, my dear Radcliffe, you may gather my views as to the policy which, in my humble judgment, it becomes us to adopt in the approach- ing session of Parliament. I speak only for myself. I pretend to no influence with others. That great party which commands my gratitude for the kindness with which it has received me since my return to public life, is led in the House of Commons by a man whose genius is known to all—whose many gallant and generous, many winning and cordial qualities, are perhaps better known to me than to most. We began life together as warm friends; and though then differing in politics, we estab- lished in literature that fellowship of toil and hope in which companions without envy (a vice not admitted into his temper, and I think not congenial to my own) learn that better, and, if I may use the expression, that more ideal part in each other, on which amidst the feuds of party the light only falls in glimpses. I am convinced that, though of a broad and liberal nature, and inclined, as in the year 1855 every wise Conservative should be, to widen to all new-comers the area on which Conserva- tism takes its ground, the brilliant leader I speak of is no less loyal to his friends than formidable to his oppo- ments. And whatever course he and Lord Derby may VOL. I. € lxxii PREFATORY MEMOIR. adopt, will, I doubt not, be worthy the eminence of their names and the gravity of the time. But I speak plainly my own conviction, that there never was a period in which a party comprising men who boast so large a stake in the country should more carefully distinguish its policy and acts from the character of faction. In moments of national peril we should merge all selfish objects in one unmistakable desire to consult the national Security and honour. A party in which the people can discover this elevated sympathy with their genuine interests need not hunt after converts. Converts will volunteer. Does it want numbers ?—constituencies will give them. Does it want orators?—a few manly sentiments, however artlessly spoken, will be oratory enough with an audience that feels our ambition is to be true to our country. Out of office or in it, let us have but this one thought : England is in difficulty and danger, and, by God's help, we will carry her through both in triumph, with cool English heads and stout English hearts.--I am, my dear Radcliffe, yours, &c., EDWARD BULWER LYTTON.” “RNEBWORTH, Nov. 12, 1855.” Not the least lamentable illustration of the sterility and hollowness of our alliance with Imperial France, is to be found in the attitude to which we were reduced during the Danish war, as well as in the fact of that war itself, which, though it was opposed to the wishes of both France and England, the Anglo-French alliance wholly failed to prevent. Upon this subject, I find amongst my father's papers some reflections (probably jotted down as notes for a speech never spoken) which appear to me both interesting and instructive ; because they refer to the PREFATORY MEMOIR. lxxiii whole question from a point of view which was not adopted at the time by any party or speaker in Parlia- ment, and still less by the English press, a point of view, indeed, which in all probability is not yet suffi- ciently, if at all, apprehended by our public, to whom the circumstances of that war (however painful they may be to remember) can still suggest wholesome lessons for the guidance of opinion in reference to future Continental questions. NoTES UPON THE DANISH WAR. “Cause of Denmark championed by England. Den- mark abandoned. Why is it that of all the European Powers who signed the Treaty of 1852, England alone has been held up to contumely and reproach by both the contending parties : How is it that she alone sees called into question her good faith, her courage, her honour ! “Because she is the Power that most interfered, most invited responsibility. - “Why : Because she had a greater interest in th quarrel than other neutral Powers ? Certainly not. Lord Russell to Sir A. Buchanan, 13th November 1863 : ‘Her Majesty's Government have no immediate interest in this question; their interest is bound up with the general interests of Europe.' But the fact is, our interest was not only not greater, it was obviously less than that of other European Powers. France and Russia. Den- mark, ally of France, not of England, in old French war. In event of any new war, France, if opposed to England, would by her traditional policy look, and reasonably, for aid to Scandinavian fleets, not German armies. Russia's interest, strong and conspicuous, to preserve Denmark an lxxiv. PREFATORY MEMOIR. integral State distinct from Sweden. For whatever tends to make Denmark too small for independent monarchy, tends to create, Soon or late, Scandinavian empire. Duty of English Minister, therefore, not to commit national honour of England beyond interests of England; and English interests less than those of France and Russia. But England had an interest in Sanctity of Treaty of 1852% Yes; an interest, but not a para- mount interest. Powers most directly interested in sanctity of treaties, Prussia and Austria. Without treaties, King of Prussia might still be Elector of Bran- denburg, and Emperor of Austria little more than Austrian Archduke who lost original patrimony of great ancestor, which happened to be in Switzerland. With- out treaties, England might lose a few small places, but would still hold an empire comprising that India which Alexander could not conquer, and that Australasia which Columbus did not discover. “Four years ago, any practical politician must have foreseen consequence of such interference. “Petition of Slesvig Diet for redress of grievances. Indignant sympathy excited by it throughout Germany immediately reported by all our diplomatic Ministers in Germany. “To understand almost famatical passion of every German State on this subject, remember popular senti- ment of Germany was opposed to Treaty of 1852, and only appeased by assurances of Austria and Prussia to Diet that they guaranteed fulfilment of Danish obliga- tions, including admission of Germans in the duchies to equal rights—a point on which German sentiment could not but be sensitively tenacious. In 1860, therefore, it became clear that, unless the Slesvig grievances were PREFATORY MEMOIR. lxxv. fully redressed, German excitement would sooner or later bring German armies not only into Holstein as a member of the Confederation, but also upon Slesvig, on the ground that non-fulfilment of Danish obligations cancelled Danish advantages secured by Treaty of 1852, annulled that Treaty, and constituted a casus belli. “But could Denmark remove those grievances Danish Minister, M. Hall, frankly said No. Some of them, indeed, were mitigated at request of England ; but enough left to vitiate concessions accorded. Children not compelled to receive confirmation in Danish language, but required to be examined in Danish before confirma- tion. Sir A. Paget states, concessions made cannot Satisfy complaints of Slesvig, and that nothing more can be expected from Danish Government. “N.B. — Candour, intelligence, ability, truth, and honour of Paget's despatches cannot be too highly praised. “Here, then, so far back as 1860, was a safe and hon- ourable escape. English Government asks Denmark to redress grievances which it thinks just. Denmark does not, cannot do so, to satisfaction of English Government. This being so, it is clear that Germany will move soon or late. English Government has only to explain cause of quarrel to English Parliament, and say, ‘We have withdrawn from all individual interference till Den- mark—weak compared to Germany, but strong compared to Slesvig — has redressed grievances which, if not redressed, may lead to war. And we cannot commit English honour to a cause that may demand all your resources of blood and treasure against Powers that com- prise all your hereditary Continental alliances, if ever France attacks you, unless the friend you are to serve lxxvi PREFATORY MEMOIR. first puts himself thoroughly in the right. He cannot put himself thoroughly in the right in English eyes unless he govern the State annexed to his sovereignty in accordance with those principles of justice which he recognises in the government of his own special domain.' “But now recognise the excuse of that brave and noble Denmark for her government of Slesvig. It is the excuse of necessity. Anomalous position of duchies. Both had been in revolt against her ; both assisted by German arms; both restored by Treaty of 1852, on two main conditions, – 1st, not to isolate Holstein from Slesvig and Denmark proper—2d, not to incorporate, or take any step tending to incorporate, Slesvig as provincial part and parcel of the Danish monarchy. Experience Soon proved Danish Government could not literally and rigidly fulfil these conditions. “Denmark nominally a monarchy; virtually a demo- cracy under monarchical forms. And if there ever was an ancient people fit for that democracy, which is the life-blood of young races, like colonies, it is the Danes. Wide diffusion and high standard of education. Poverty almost unknown. Pressure of population on rewards of labour corrected by habitual emigration. Wealthy classes no political influence by their wealth. People industrious, brave. How is it, then, that a nation so free, so intelligent, and, as this war has shown, so chivalrously humane, not only administered Slesvig on principles which they would resent if applied to them- selves, but also rendered it impossible for any Danish Government to stand if it adopted those suggestions of conciliatory policy which in 1860 Lord Russell tendered, as became the most illustrious inheritor of a name so dear to freedom, and yet tendered in vain : PREFATORY MEMOIR. lxxvii “Reason is—Danish democracy, like that of all Small States, intensely patriotic. But the Dane, patriotic not only as Dane but as Scandinavian; just as a Florentine is patriotic not only as Florentine but as Italian. “Of the two duchies appended to the Danish crown, Holstein is a German soil, and almost purely German population. King only holds it as member of German Confederation. At Copenhagen, King of the Danes; in Holstein, feudatory of the German League. Thus, as Duke of Holstein, he subjects monarchy and people of Denmark to the interests, the ambition, and the control of a formidable foreign Power. Therefore the instinct of the Danes, ever since they had a free constitution, has been to isolate Holstein from Denmark. Instinct irre- sistible. Had I been a Dane I should have felt it, just as, being an Englishman, I would, in like circumstances, have isolated England from Hanover. “But Slesvig, in Danish eyes, purely Scandinavian soil. Eider Scandinavian barrier since Charlemagne. Features of soil—village, hill, river—retain old Scandi- navian names. Runic monuments of Danish ancestors by now ruined walls of Dannewerke. “True that for centuries German immigrants have poured over boundary—form greater part of population up to Some line it baffles diplomatists to distinguish, and are more or less diffused, not only throughout Slesvig, but Denmark itself. sºr “But Danish patriots consider these foreign settlers on Danish Soil have no right to alienate soil itself from Denmark. [Danes allowed by King Alfred to occupy ten English counties (Sir F. Palgrave). Should we con- sider they thereby acquired a right to alienate those counties from the soil and destinies of Saxon England I lxxviii PREFATORY MEMOIR. Therefore political instinct tended to isolate Germanic Holstein—incorporate Scandinavian Slesvig. To effect this the means resorted to were rough, but not meanly or frivolously tyrannical. Danish liberty young; and the last thing liberty learns is the art of conciliation. Deep purpose under all the vexations of this policy. To de- Germanise, or, as Germans express it, Danify Slesvig ; root out German language, and separate citizens of Scandinavian Slesvig from those of German Holstein;– in short, accomplish that which they did at last peril- ously adventure in Constitution of November, whereby, in bold defiance of Germany, they did (in opinion of English Government, though they do not own it them- selves) merge individuality of Slesvig into a province of Danish kingdom.’ - “Key to Danish policy, therefore. Popular instinct to isolate Holstein because it was foreign soil, and incor- porate Slesvig because it was Danish soil. “Hence impossibility (overlooked by English Govern- ment) of successful negotiation by insisting, on the one hand, that Denmark should rigidly fulfil engagements to which Danish democracy was so opposed that it would have destroyed any Government, and shaken any throne that adhered to them ; and, on the other hand, calling upon Germany rigidly to respect a treaty which, in German eyes, was morally if not legally damaged by the non-fulfilment, for twelve long years, of those Danish engagements. The difficulty was so insuperable and so obvious, that no English Cabinet should have risked our peace and honour by meddling with it more than was done by other neutral Powers. For the moment the large image of England came on the scene, of course all Smaller considerations would vanish—original cause of |PREFATORY MEMOIR, lxxix quarrel be forgotten—no one care to inquire into petty squabbles between Slesvig and Denmark, but all the world exclaim, ‘What will England do for the Power whose cause she espouses 3’” In the foregoing extracts I have somewhat anticipated dates, because this is the place in which such extracts can be given with least interruption to the outlines of this short sketch of my father's political life. But I will now close the series of them with an Essay on the Genius of Conservatism, printed from his unpublished manuscripts, and which may, I think, be fairly entitled “Considerations for all Parties.” THE GENIUS OF CONSERVATISM. CHAPTER I. Origin of the word ‘Conservative’ as a Party Denomination.* “In 1831 there was introduced into the English language a new barbarism—“Conservative'—passed from a pedantic adjective into a familiar noun. No one knows by whom it was first applied to a political signifi- cation. It was heard of one day, and the next it was the popular title of a party. In vain Sir Robert Peel strove to discountenance the neologism. “I hate,’ said he, in the House of Commons, ‘that un-English name of Con- servative, which we have heard lately.’ The word tri- umphed over the man. A very short time afterwards Sir Robert Peel called himself a Conservative, and his party the Conservative Party. The first resistance and the Subsequent adoption were alike characteristic of the * This essay is undated; but I believe it to have been written about 1858. lxxx PREFATORY MEMOIR. mind which, doubting its own strength, invariably opposed innovation, until other men had accepted it. Sir Robert Peel submitted to the neologism, as he had done to the Corn - law repeal and Roman Catholic emancipation, with so good a grace, that his policy became identified with the word. To this day many believe that he originated its present signification; just as, abroad, many Suppose that he originated Free Trade. To originate was not his forte. “The word became thus popular and triumphant be- cause it supplied a want. The members of a power- ful party were without a distinct party name. By a very slight effort of the imagination the word Con- servative conveyed an idea of the attributes they desired to claim, and of the new position in which circumstances had placed them. The word came at the right moment, and was at once received as the watch-cry and inscribed On the standard. Long previously to the appearance of this fortunate neologism, another stranger of foreign origin had been naturalised amongst us. The word Liberal, wrested from its plain English signification, and borrow- ing its sense from the factions of France, had become the generic title of a great proportion of the political popula- tion. Henceforth, then, these two substantives, replacing the elder dynasty of Whigs and Tories, have fought for mastery at elections, and decided the empire of Parliament. “When we look back, we find that Necessity was indeed the mother of these inventions, and Liberal was naturally her elder-born. “The Tories, under their own venerable title, were the paramount party of the State. They had conducted to a glorious issue a mighty war—they monopolised the power of legislation in the peace that succeeded— PREFATORY MEMOIR. lxxxi they had the confidence of the sovereign— the prestige of lengthened authority—the fears of popular licence which the first French Revolution had bequeathed to the educated classes; and Parliament had adapted its boroughs to the accommodation of the politicians who had long been dispensers of the rewards of ambition. It was in vain to oppose to the moral power and numerical force of this great party the ancient antithesis of “Whigs.’ That title had become identified with the idea of a small minority; to the people it represented an aristocratic clique, which had never during the reign of George III. made itself national. With a kind of intel- lectual haughtiness, it had rather gone against the national prejudices. When most affecting popular principles, it had been rather French than English. It had welcomed the French Revolution; it had apologised for excesses which shook the foundation of property, and for crimes which had shocked the humanity so rooted in English habits of thought ; it had grieved or cavilled at the success of British arms; it had sympathised in each triumph of the enemy; it had seemed indifferent to Protestantism when Roman Catholic emancipation was unpopular at the hustings; it had assailed the Consti- tution at a time when Parliamentary Reform was, even by the statesmen who afterwards effected it, connected with the most extravagant changes, and defended by the most Jacobin arguments. The Whigs were not a national party; they did not represent the national feeling; even Charles Fox himself is not at this day a popular name with the masses. They were regarded not as hearty soldiers in the popular cause, but as a discontented section of the aristocracy, which, in spite of its ability, was unsafe on account of its ambition. lxxxii PREEATORY MEMOIR. “Yet there was a large mass of politicians who, if they did not sympathise with the Whigs, desired some bond of union against the Tories. Comprising various shades of opinion, they could not be denoted by any name then existing. All popular names, such as Friends of the People, had become discreditable and revolutionary. At this season there arrived from the Continent the word ‘Liberal; it had not the immediate vogue that attended the subsequent appearance of its eminent adversary Con- servative ; it was adopted at first only by an enthusiastic few, and rather to denote sympathy with foreign insur- rection against despotism than adherence to any definite domestic policy. Gradually it was recognised by a wider circle: but its career was suddenly stopped; for a while it became dormant. Lord Grey introduced the Reform Bill; Reformers became the popular party word; no one talked of Liberals. Reform carried, there broke out a schism in the host that achieved the victory. The Whigs were the minority in the camp that divided the spoils; the vast majority were the Radicals, to whom nothing was assigned but the gratifying spectacle of the trophies. Reformers thus split into two divisions — the Whigs and the Radicals; the Whigs being those that naturally remained satisfied with a reform that gave them the monopoly of office—the Radicals being those who quite as naturally pushed onward to other reforms, that might compel the Whigs to open that monopoly to themselves. “Afterwards came the cry of the Corn-laws—Reform was laid on the shelf—Radicals and Whigs compounded their distinctions and accepted the common appellation of Free - traders—a title which swelled their numbers by the admission of many respectable gentlemen who had been Tories from the cradle, but who, by accepting Free PREFATORY MEMOIR. lxxxiii Trade, became generally metamorphosed. But as Free Trade was virtually carried when Manchester prevailed over the country party, and as Free-trader was a name that would become very inconvenient after that date, since it would imply a rigid adoption of an impossible practice (Free Trade being still as remote from our laws as the millennium, continually approached, but indefi- nitely postponed, is from our social system), so, suddenly, the word ‘Liberal’ has been again taken up, furbished anew, in the service of a coalition which, appealing for Support to all who call themselves ‘Liberals, embraces all diversities of politics, from the colleague of Castle- reagh to the pupil of Bentham. Thus words owe their origin or their vogue to the want that their usage Supplies. “On the other hand, the Tories, well satisfied with their historical name, so long as that name rallied numbers around them, suddenly woke to find that the name which had been their tower of strength was converted into their pillory of shame. The desire of political enfranchisement had naturally grown up amongst the new communities of manufacturing towns. The desire was allowed to be just and natural by the country at large. The Duke of Wellington had granted Roman Catholic emancipation. When one party-cry is satisfied, another succeeds; when a Minister makes one popular concession, he is expected to follow it by another. All men expected that the Duke of Wellington would extend the franchise to the great towns not yet represented. He sturdily refused to do so; and having lost much support from the Tories by the enact- ment of Roman Catholic emancipation, he lost all chance of support from those who had favoured the Administration of Canning. His Government fell. Parliamentary Reform lxxxiv. PREFATORY MEMOIR. became the rage of the day; approved by the Sovereign, proposed by the executive, supported by many of the malcontent members of the aristocracy. It is no wonder that it seized hold of the people, and blended its image with all fantastic chimeras of national regeneration. “The Tories, as a body, opposed Reform, and the people gave them the hateful title of anti-Reformers. The new Parliament once chosen, the Tories shrank into a small minority, as the result of the first election under the altered system. It was certainly not desirable to retain a name which no longer signified anything it had signified before. In the reign of George I. the more eminent of the Tories had been distinguished for their attachment to Parliamentary Reform. From the reign of George III. to that of William IV, they had been no less distinguished for their opposition to all popular plans for effecting this object. Parliamentary Reform disposed of, one salient historical feature of Toryism was effaced. Again, the Tories, from having in the reign of Anne been supposed not inimical to Papacy, had become the especial advocates of the Protestant establishment, and the most united body against all Popish claims; but Roman Catholic emancipation carried, another great bond of their union, and another great characteristic of their policy as Tories, were swept away. Thus the word Tory no longer de- noted a fixed political theory, while the enemies of the party naturally sought to pin it to a position that had ceased to be tenable. With the usual unfair ingenuity of faction, the triumphant Reformers sought to identify their opponents with everything most hateful in the ancient system, and to represent them as hostile to every object of future hope. The corruption first introduced by Walpole, the archimandrite of the Whigs, was imputed PREFATORY MEMOIR. lxxxv solely to Tory practices. Wars, cheered on by the popu- lace, were the creations of Tory prejudice. Every abuse that time had sanctioned was laid to their door; to every reform that wisdom might suggest they were denounced as the inveterate obstacles. “Men who shared the general principle of Tories de- clined to accept the name. “I am for Sir Robert Peel,’ quoth a merchant, “but I am no Tory.’ ‘I go with Sir Edward Knatchbull,' said a squire, ‘but I am no Tory.’ Then appeared that opportune neologism ‘Conservative.’ And the moment it was adopted, the party widened in its range, increased in its influence, and continues at this day to constitute the largest single political Section in the State. Nay, so much does the sense it has received embody the general sentiment of the country, that those opposed to the party that act under the appellation, still grasp at the appellation itself. In his last speech, before acceding to his present office, Mr Gladstone exclaims, ‘I am a Conservative.’ ‘I am a Conservative,’ says the Earl of Aberdeen. Even the word ‘Liberal, popular though it be, does not suffice for popularity unless it be flavoured from the principle it opposes in act, and flatters in theory. And the Cabinet that would by its new Reform Bill unsettle every base of the old Constitution, and by its Oaths Bill would strike from the Legislature the recogni- tion of Christianity, still calls itself Liberal-Conservative. A word so much in the mouths of politicians must have taken deep root in the inclinations of the people. But the meaning of a word so contested and appropriated by opposite extremes should be fairly defined; or by at- tempting to mean too much it will soon fail to mean anything, and must fade from the language, as a circle, in widening, fades from the water. I propose, then, in the lxxxvi PREFATORY MEMOIR. following chapters, to examine the nature of Conserva- tism, its political objects and Social influence. CEIAPTER II. Meaning of the word ‘Conservative' as a Political Principle. “In every political Society there are certain organic principles more or less peculiar to itself. If these prin- ciples be sapped, the society begins to decay; though the decay may be long unnoticed by the ordinary observer. If they be destroyed, the society itself will perish ; it may be reconstructed in a new form, but its original identity is gone. The Roman Republic was not the same Society as the Roman Empire. The true Conservative policy is the conservation of these organic principles. It is not in itself either democratic or monarchical. It is one or the other, according as democracy or monarchy be the vital prin- ciple of the State in which it operates and exists. Conservatism would therefore be democratic in America, monarchical in England; but monarchical according to the form in which monarchy in this country has become tempered and admixed. It therefore differs essentially from the old spirit of Toryism, which inclined in the abstract towards the predominance of the kingly element, and abhorred popular government in itself, no matter in what country it was established by law, and interwoven with sentiment and custom. All that Conservatism regards is duration for the body politic. It is not averse to change—change may be healthful; but it is averse to that kind of change which tends to PREFATORY MEMOIR. lxxxvii disorganisation. Whatever there be most precious to the vitality of any particular State, becomes its jealous care. As but one thing is more precious to a State than liberty, So where liberty is established Conservatism is its stubborn guardian, and never yields the possession Save for that which it is more essential to conserve. But liberty is diffused throughout a people by many varieties of constitution—the monarchical, the aristocratic, the democratic, or through nice and delicate combinations of each. Conservatism tends to the conservation of liberty in that form, and through those media, in which it has become most identified with the customs and character of the people governed. And if it seems at times opposed to the extension of freedom, it is not on the ground of extension, but from the fear that freedom may be risked or lost altogether by an incautious transfer of the trust. Conservatism would thus have sided with Brutus and the patrician party against Caesar and the plebeian, because with the former was the last hope of Roman liberty. It is what we should now call the popular party—that is, the common people (headed by demagogues who, it is true, commanded armies)—that destroyed the Republic. In the empire of Augustus democracy erected its own splendid tomb. We have said that there is one thing in a State more essential to con- serve than political liberty—it is social order. Hence, if liberty and order are forced into mortal conflict, and one must destroy the other, order prevails by the ultimate decree of numbers. Life may be safe, property secure, arts may flourish, commerce extend, under a Richelieu; not under that chaos of Social elements in which Vergniauds and Marats, Dantons and Robespierres, struggle against each other. Despotism is often the VOL. I. f lxxxviii PREFATORY MEMOIR, effort of mature to cure herself from a worse disease. Conservatism will thus, in certain crises of history, be found in union with the masses, when both, equally in- terested against anarchy, exchange political freedom for Social order; as in physical diseases the physician en- courages the effort of nature, which in more healthful bodies he would strive to cure or prevent. The recent elevation of Louis Napoleon to the throne of France is an instance of this compelled and melancholy league. “And here, too, Conservatism in France was true to its hereditary attribute—viz., the conservation of those first principles of the State on which the national character has been formed. For the French are essentially by history and by temperament fitted to the government of a single executive authority—to the pomp which reflects the disposition of the nation from a height too remote for envy. They have been habituated to contemplate, through a long succession of imposing and brilliant kings, their own grandeur, in the majesty of a throne. They must be ashamed of a sovereign before they rebel against him; littleness in their monarch wounds their own amour propre. Regal authority in some form or other seems one of the necessary conditions of political Society in France; and all attempts to do without it have been unsuccessful, because a violence to the national character. The policy, therefore, that coincided with the choice of millions, in substituting an emperor for a turbulent and jarring democracy, liable at every moment to dissolution, was indisputably Conservative; and the ruler selected was a more Conservative choice than would have been the heir of the Bourbons, because veneration for Napoleon and contempt for the Bourbons had, whether right or wrong, become ideas so fixed in the mind of the nation, that the PREFATORY MEMOIR. lxxxix best chance for monarchy was with the one, and the worst chance with the other. “But suppose that French politicians had at the same time abruptly sought to restore what Conservatives main- tain in England—the principle of hereditary aristocracy, —they would have erred against the principle of Con- Servatism ; for hereditary aristocracy is, perhaps unfor- tunately, the principle of all others with which the French character has no sympathy, and upon which the French people would at present refuse to reconstruct Society. Aristocracy, in the proper political sense of the word, would be an innovation totally foreign, not only to the existent habits, but to the previous history, of the French. They have had a feudal nobility—they have never had a political aristocracy. For the word aristocracy includes the idea of government; and under their kings the nobles had no share in the government of the general State. Tyrants they might be in their petty fiefs, but they were ciphers in the corporate administration. They had no legislative chamber; they had entrées at court instead. After the wars of the Fronde, they were destitute even of political influence; they exercised a very small share in the ad- ministration of practicalaffairs. The Colberts and D’Aguis- seaus were not found amongst the noblesse d'épée, the ancient vassals of the Crown. Observe, then, this distinction between nobility and aristocracy: Nobility is an idea inherent in France; it reappears whenever it has been formally abolished. In vain have titles been twice proscribed by law—society hastens to restore them. But titles are no symbols of legislative authority ; in their political and social fabric the Corinthian columns may adorn the wings—they do not support the building. Aristocracy is foreign to the French. XC PREEATORY MEMOIR. “Conservatism, therefore, which is necessarily adherence to what actually exists, could not establish in France an aristocracy of which the foundations were wanting; its tendency has been to obtain the best available substitutes for it, as a barrier between autocracy and mob-rule. Hence its passion for military command, its long array of pre- fects and mayors, provincial and municipal authorities; its national guard at one time, its standing armies (so enlisted as to preserve a certain sympathy with civilians) at another. All these have been efforts to interpose Something or other between the force of one and the force of many. But the want of a powerful and popular class of gentlemen, accustomed to public affairs, and obtaining rewards of ambition through influence over public opinion, based upon the Solid foundation of transmitted and per- manent property, and continually receiving new blood by accessories from the ranks of the people, is the para- mount cause of insecurity to all forms of government established in France, and of the quick and violent changes from ochlocracy to despotism. The invention prompted by necessity has hitherto failed to find effec- tive substitutes for the natural objects fulfilled by such a class; and until either the class be created de novo, or the substitute practically found, the essential guarantees for the maintenance of any established constitution will be wanting. Conservatism in France is thus driven to the choice of temporary expedients; it cannot attempt a heroic cure of the evils it deplores, there being an organic defect in the constitution of society; it can only deal in palliatives, which it varies from time to time, according as the disease shows itself in exhibiting new symptoms. “Hence, perhaps, of all the nations of civilised Europe, France is that of which it is least possible to predicate the PREFATORY MEMOIR. xci future. A popular despot in all States is but a lucky acci- dent. In France, when the despotism loses popularity, the system it embodies is sure to perish. A democratic republic, on the other hand, in all old States soon culmi- nates into a dictatorship. Nothing in France interposes between the dictatorship and the democracy. Hitherto the astonishing natural resources of the country—depend- ing little upon foreign trade—have enabled the material prosperity of France to recover from shocks upon capital and credit,the least of which would have destroyed for ever the more artificial greatness of England. And throughout all vicissitudes, the French have hitherto preserved one of the most vital elements of social duration—viz., a pas- sionate love of country, and of all which can embellish and elevate their native land. As long as France re- tains its territorial integrity, one and indivisible, it is probable, therefore, that whatever the vices of its succes- sive constitutions, it will keep its organisation together by its native strength and its nervous energy, although subjected from time to time to fierce disorders, infecting the civilised world by their own virulence. But France is liable Sooner or later to that which is more fatal than such disorders—it is liable to subdivision, the death which comes from the dissolution of the parts. It mar- rowly escaped that fate in the first revolution; and it is at least probable that if the Allies had not been pledged to the restoration of the Bourbons, and therefore to the maintenance of an integral throne, the fall of Napoleon would have been followed by a dismemberment of his empire. e - “The ultimate danger to France of dissolution, as the leading State of continental Europe, is twofold, arising from two causes always at work within the national xcii PREFATORY MEMOIR. character, 1st, That rooted passion for equality which under all forms of government, accepted for the time, tends towards republican democracy; 2dly, that war- like and ambitious spirit, which, whatever the seeming change on the surface produced by the greater ascend- ancy of the bourgeois class, is still ready to ignite in the very core of the nation, and is kept inflammable by the laws of property itself, which in every rising generation throw loose upon the world a large number of well- born, well-educated men, with no vent for ambition and energy, save in the press which despotism stifles, or the army upon which despotism must depend. “If republicanism could exist fifty years in France, at the end of fifty years Marseilles would be the capital of one commonwealth, Paris of another. “If a military empire were compelled to maintain itself in power by perpetually administering to the popular desire of glory and conquest, all Europe would soon be- come enlisted by a common interest in destroying the power of France to molest its neighbours, a power that could only be destroyed by splitting up its dominions. These are the contingent perils to France as a body politic. 3. “On the other hand, with the increasing power of the trading classes, a new element of Conservatism is de- veloping itself, and may, by a fortunate combination of circumstances, become the salvation of the State. “The time for such combination seems at present far distant. It can only arrive when the habits of thought amongst the people bring naturally about the political revolution which convérts habits into laws. No class can retain power without union, and without legislative PREFATORY MEMOIR. xciii influence. To give union and legislative influence to the commercial class, it must become a recognised and represented order in the State. “It is a question, therefore, whether a commercial aris- tocracy on a very extensive basis may not naturally grow out of the wants and conditions of French Society, as it grew out of those of the Genoese. The French would not tolerate the creation of a feudal aristocracy; they would not repeal the laws that enforce testamentary sub- division of property for the sake of the ancient nobles. Possibly they might do so hereafter for the creation of an order to which they might all advance an equal claim ; and the grave inconveniences and perils of a com- pulsory dispersion of capital, which must increase with the increase of population, may at length permit the man who has accumulated a fortune, the freedom to dis- pose of it as he pleases. Until then, not only the soil cannot produce a third of what it is capable of producing, but there can be no permanence in the capital of any commercial house. Territorial rights once lost are ever difficult to recover—commercial inconveniences are likely Sooner or later to be repaired. A commercial aristocracy appears therefore to be the only form of intermediate authority left to France; and it cannot be created until the commercial body are fitted to claim, and the habits of the population prepared to accord it. No doubt such contingencies are remote and precarious, and to human foresight seem more dim and improbable than the evils which they would be calculated to meet. xciv PREFATORY MEMOIR. CEIAPTER III. Elements of Conservatism in the English Commonwealth. “We come now to apply Conservatism to Great Britain, the empire in which the principle is stronger, with the exception of the Swiss republics, than in all ancient communities, from the obvious reason that in Great Britain liberty and order are alike established, according to the habits of the people, on surer founda- tions and in a higher degree than in any other ancient political community, except that of the Swiss republics. In these republics Conservatism is so predominant that it is difficult to conceive any internal causes that could lead to the decay of the body politic. Of all common- wealths in Europe, the Swiss Federations present the greatest likelihood of durability, provided only that foreign force be not brought to bear against them. “In examining the vital principles of the English State, the characteristic that will most strike an intelligent observer, is the prevalence of aristocracy. But it is an aristocracy very peculiar in practice, and realising to a considerable extent the ideal apwortokpateva of the Greeks. It is the government of the best, in the politi- cal sense of that superlative, in which property, birth, intellectual energy, and moral character have each their respective share. Aristocracy with us embraces nobility, but is yet distinct from it. Every provincial town, every rural village, has its aristocracy; though perhaps it cannot boast of a single person whom in our language we call noble. Nobility with us is extremely restricted : PREFATORY MEMOIR. XCV aristocracy is ubiquitous. And it is noticeable that everywhere this aristocracy presents much the same combinations. In the rural district, in the manufacturing town, the men who are most influential, unite—if not individually, yet collectively as a class, and in similar averages—energy and character with property and station. Of course here, as in all communities, wealth alone is power; and a millowner employing several hundred hands, or a landed proprietor with a numerous tenantry, exercises a certain influence in right of that power which his capital bestows, whatever the grade of his intelligence or repute. But that power will be considerably aug- mented or diminished according to his individual capa- cities and merits. And many, very inferior to him in fortune, will exceed him in influence (that is, in the political ascendancy which is comprehended in the word aristocracy) if his fortune be his sole title to respect. A tyrannical millowner, an unpopular landlord, will often indeed injure the political party that he serves, by re- flecting on it his own odium, to a degree more than equivalent to the votes that he brings to it. In all elections, legislative or municipal, down to the officers of a parish, the working of the aristocratic tendencies of the English are visible ; the best persons are thrown uppermost, not from one attribute of aristocracy alone, such as birth, property, or intellect, without reference to the other components, but in a fair proportion col- lectively of each several attribute. “This is not the case in other countries that have adopt- ed the representative system. In America the opposite democratic principle is almost as evidently marked as at one time it was in Florence. Men of large property and ancient descent in the United States have a less chance xcvi PREFATORY MEMOIR. of the popular suffrage than those who unite poverty with ambition, and in whom the electors think they will find the most supple delegates or the most vehement talkers. The man whom in an English borough the candidate would employ to address the audience from an open window, or at a public-house, in America would himself be the popular candidate. There, in fact, the higher orders in property and station, as a body, shrink from the contest, and the members of these Orders are found in very small proportion amidst the representatives of the State. In the new constitution which exists in the kingdom of Sardinia, few of the larger landed proprie- tors find, or indeed can stand for, seats in the national chamber. In the Germanic States, the representative system did not advance the ambition of the Edelmann or well-born, but of the professor and the lawyer. In France, the Chamber, when free, had a larger sprinkling from the ancient noblesse and the great mercantile families, than in the States referred to. But still the aristocratic proportion was not for a moment to be com- pared to the relative members in the English House of Commons; and the essential attribute of aristocracy, as it prevails in England—viz., the weight of unblemished public character—was almost unknown. The homme d'esprit of France, like the Smart man of America, was in no degree mulcted of the influence due to his cleverness by a reputation not favourable to his honesty. But character with us is not only indispensable to the man who aspires to high command in the State, but some- times, if accompanied with very ordinary business-like capacities, obtains an ascendancy denied to the largest possessions and the most eminent abilities. In no other country but England could an Althorp have acquired an PREFATORY MEMOIR. xcvii ascendancy denied to the vast possessions of * * * * and the brilliant eloquence of * * * * “This spirit of aristocracy pervades the interior senti- ment of all parties, even those which aim at the destruc- tion of its legislative foundations. The mob is accustomed to be addressed by the title of ‘Gentlemen,' and is extremely alive to all that realises or offends the ideal which the peer and the cobbler alike comprehend under that national appellation. The popular candidate lowers himself in the eyes of the populace if he exhibit rudeness or vulgarity, utter a mean and Sordid sentiment, or indulge, unprovoked by attack, in personal abuse of some decorous opponent. On the other hand, the populace is proud of a champion in proportion as he represents in his birth, his station, his chivalrous bearing, his courteous manners, his fearless spirit, his spotless honour, the dis- tinguishing features of the English aristocrat. The rea- Sons that have grafted the aristocratic propensity in our habits of thought, lie deep and spread far. Their germs are in the first rude commonwealth of the Anglo-Saxons. Aristocracy was the essential character of their polity, and aristocracy of the most popular and durable char- acter. Property and service were then as now qualifica- tions, as well as hereditary birthright; and every man, whatever his origin, had an interest in the preservation of the ranks to which he himself might aspire. This principle rose gradually again, as the distinction of race between Norman and Saxon became effaced, and it is still one of the main reasons why aristocracy has taken root amongst the people, whom it has not excluded from the sun. Another cause for the strength and endurance of aristocracy has been its incorporation with the Legis- lature from the remotest period ; and in proportion as xcviii PREFATORY MEMOIR. the people have become more powerful, so aristocracy, relaxing its hold on the hereditary chamber, has widened its authority in the elective, the greatest noble desiring to conciliate electors, as he anciently desired to attract retainers, his sons canvassing their votes and contending for the most laborious offices of State. Thus, perhaps, the highest class is the one which interest and ambition render the most sensitive to public opinion; and of all aristocracies that have existed, the English is perhaps the most remarkable for its identity with the tastes and habits, the Social life and the moral doctrines, of the general population. Hence arises a third cause, for the prevalence of the aristocratic sentiment amongst us— viz., in the great epochs of national liberty, it is amongst the aristocracy that the leaders or idols of the people have been found, so that history itself is made their title- deed to popular affection. . “Much of these benefits, whether to the higher class or to the general condition of English society, must be ascribed to the felicitous commixture of the hereditary with the elective principle that pervades the constitution. Were there no hereditary chamber, there would have been those constant shocks to public Security in the ambition of the great which finally destroyed the commonwealth of ancient Rome. If men of colossal fortunes and lofty ancestral names had no influence on public affairs, except through popular elections or court favour, they would become the most terrible of demagogues or the most servile of courtiers. The House of Peers, inde- pendent by theory both of the hustings and the throne, yet in practice reflecting the shadow of both, has been the great Safety-valve of those evils that otherwise result from the existence of an opulent patrician order. For PREFATORY MEMOIR. xcix the Security of the people it answers the purpose of the Greek ostracism, which was justified on the necessity of expelling the men who possessed a disproportionate influ- ence over the State; while in presenting a fair field for the exercise of manly intellect, and offering honours derived yet more from the esteem of the people than the favour of the Crown, it has preserved the British nobles as a class from that indolence and effeminacy which have corrupted the nobility of other countries, when civilisa- tion destroyed their martial attributes without proffering in substitute a civil career for energies rusted by disuse. In fine, perhaps we cannot better sum up the advantages effected by an hereditary chamber, than in the concise and pregnant sentences of Bentham. Nº. Az yº. ..Sº. º •jºr 3: *S ** + CEHAPTER IV. The Aristocratic Principle further explained. “It seems clear, then, that the principle and the sentiment of aristocracy are deeply imbedded in the various strata of our political and social system ; that aristocracy, in short, is inseparable from the organisation of the English commonwealth ; and that, if it were to be destroyed, the destruction would neces- f The manuscript of this Essay contains no indication of the passage here referred to. But Bentham's testimony to the advantages of an hereditary chamber must have been as reluctant as Balaam’s benediction upon Israel. He was the vehement and invariable opponent of second chambers, and especially of hereditary ones. He exhorted the Portuguese, and his “fellow- citizens” of France, on no account to incorporate such a deformity as a Second chamber into their new and model constitutions; and in reiterated denunciations of the English House of Lords, he “rid his bosom of much C PREFATORY MEMOIR. sitate an entire change in the national character as well as the political system. It would be a new people under a new polity, no more resembling the existing race than the contemporaries of the Horatii resembled those of Tiberius. It is unnecessary at this moment to argue the question whether such a change would be for the better or the worse. We are now but discussing the true genius of Conservatism, and it is sufficient to show why Conser- vatism, ever adhering to the original elements of the commonwealth in which it exists, must inevitably tend to conserve aristocracy, as the condition which, through all vicissitudes of government, has maintained the identity of the English people. “But if Conservatism were to seek by direct laws to strengthen the outward power of aristocracy, it would instantly defeat its own object. For the influence of our aristocracy consists, not in its demarcation from, but its fusion, with the people. Like Sparta, its real strength is in the absence of fortified walls. If it were possible to give to an English peer the French droits du seigneur, that aristocracy which the English peer represents would become feeble in proportion as it became odious. Such privileges as peers now possess are not accorded to them as nobles, but as legislators. It is not a question of caste, it is a question of political expediency affecting the whole empire, whether the members of a senate, perilous stuff.” The only passage in all Bentham's works to which the words of this Essay appear applicable, occurs in the ‘Essay on Political Tactics.” In the section of that treatise which discusses the “division of the legislative body into two assemblies,” the advantages of a second chamber, as illustrated by the hereditary branch of the British Legislature, are summed up in sentences both “concise and pregnant.” But I believe these sentences to have been written, not by Bentham, but by Dumont. —Wide Sir John Bowring's edition of Bentham's Works, vol. ii. p. 308- 310.—L. PREEATORY MEMOIR, ci which could maintain no authoritative character if it lost the weight of personal and corporate dignity, should be free from arrest by civil process (as are the represen- tatives of the people while Parliament is sitting), and in criminal cases should be tried by their own body. Did they inherit such privileges, not as legislators, but as nobles, the privileges would be shared by their sons, who, by blood and race, are equally noble with them- selves. What Conservatism aims at is not the mainten- ance of nobility, except so far as nobility forms an ele- ment in the grander organisation of aristocracy ; it aims at preserving the general influence, both on laws and on society, of the chief men or the best, whether in character, intelligence, property, or birth, taking pro- perty as one of the guarantees, but only as one, that gives to a citizen a stake in the welfare of his country and the preservation of order—taking birth as one of the guarantees, but only as one, of that attachment to reputation for honour and integrity which is the natural Sentiment of men brought up to respect an ancestral name, and aware that the more conspicuous their station, the more they become exposed to censure. “To the merely political influence of birth and property alone in the conduct of affairs, the adherents to Conser- vatism have been always more indifferent than the party opposed to them. No party in the State has had leaders so frequently selected from the ranks of the people. The ideal aim of Conservatism in its relation to popular liberty would be to elevate the masses, in character and feeling, to that standard which Conservatism seeks in aristocracy—in other words, to aristocratise the com- munity, so that the greatest liberty to the greatest number might not be the brief and hazardous effect of a cii PREFATORY MEMOIR. sudden revolutionary law, but the gradual result of that intellectual power to which liberty is indispensable. This brings us to the vexed question of Popular Education. CHAPTER V. National Education. “It is scarcely satirical to say that the first persons whom we should like to see duly educated are those who have ranted the loudest on our national deficiencies in education. That which tests the amount and quality of national education is the general intellectual standard of a nation. This standard is higher in Great Britain than in any country in Europe. They who have sought to institute comparisons unfavourable to us with Prussia or Holland, have relied on statistics as to the relative proportions of population that can read or write, or that have received school instruction. But the edu- cation of a people does not depend solely on reading and writing; and only a small portion of intellectual ideas are derived from schools. Education is derived from four sources: 1st, the example and precepts of home ; 2d, the lessons acquired at School; 3d, the knowledge obtained in practical life from observation and converse; 4th, those additions to wisdom which reflection and experience enable the individual to make for himself. School education is therefore but one of four sources of national and individual instruction. Of all instruction for a community, that which inculcates in early child- hood a clear sense of moral obligations is the most val- uable. This is, for the most part, acquired at home. PREEATORY MEMOIR. ciii Parents may be unable to read and write, but their lives may teach their children to be honest and industrious, faithful to trust, and patient under trial. Honesty, in- dustry, fidelity, fortitude—these are ideas that pre- serve a commonwealth, and secure the Superiority of races more than a general diffusion of the elements of abstract science. No doubt schools at Athens were more numerous, and scholars more instructed in doctrinal learning, at the time of Demosthenes than in the age of Themistocles. But the moral qualities of the Athenians were immeasurably deteriorated. The ideas prevalent in the latter age were less valuable to the State than those of a generation with hardier virtues and ruder culture. There was more learning amongst the Romans at the time of Petronius than at the time of Cato the Censor; but who would prefer the ideas prevalent amongst the contemporaries of Petronius to those which formed the contemporaries of Cato ? ‘I have learned but three things,’ said Cyrus; ‘to ride, to bend the bow, and to speak the truth.” The Medes, whom Cyrus subdued, had listened to the learning of the Magi, and the learn- ing had not fitted them to cope with the comparative handful of mountaineers trained to activity and valour. Some ten thousand of English sailors who may never have read a page of one of our great authors, might per- haps suffice to overturn the empire of China, in which education is universally diffused, and in which the great officers of State pass through college examinations. “National instruction comprehends, therefore, those national ideas which, in the emulation or contest between one people and another, secure a superiority which the Schoolmaster alone does not bestow. The qualities essential to the freedom or hardihood of a VOL. I. 9 civ PREFATORY MEMOIR. people are sometimes, from the mere habit of association, dependent on what appear to the ordinary observer trivial peculiarities or antiquated prejudices. Thus Cyrus was advised to change the dress of the Lydians for the loose robes worn by the Medes. The womanly garments were supposed to affect the manly spirit of those who wore them ; but it is more probable that the sense of subjugation and desire of liberty were kept alive by the mere distinction in dress between the con- querors and conquered; and the idiosyncrasy of the people became gradually lost as the outward and heredi- tary signs of it became abolished. For the same reason, the Highlanders were forbidden their ancient Celtic COstume. “Ideas very unphilosophical in themselves often ex- ercise a salutary influence over human actions. Lord Nélson deemed it the first article of belief in his naval catechism that one Englishman could beat three French- men. A physiologist would certainly be unable to prove by any course of lectures that there was just founda- tion for this dogma; but if the unreasoning belief in it made the Englishman face, cheerful and undaunted, three times his own numbers, it was a prejudice that his country would not have thanked any physiologist for correcting. A celebrated philosopher justly says, that the belief in our own force is the Secret of force itself. “The ideas that Englishmen in general acquire at home, from the talk, life, and example even of uneducated parents, form a considerable portion of their eminence among races. It would be invidious to institute a com- parison between ourselves and the members of other civilised communities in the various details of Social morality. Perhaps in each individual detail we are PREFATORY MEMOIR. CV excelled or equalled by others. The Italian and the Spaniard are more sober and abstemious ; the Frenchman is more sensitive on the point of honour—more affec- tionate, too, in the relationship between parent and child; the American unites the same fidelity in the conjugal relations with a more enterprising desire of improving their condition. The German, on the other hand, if more slothful, is more mild. But, on the aggregate, the English are remarkable for their attachment to the domestic ties; for charity, less in their judgment of each other than in their active sympathy with material ills; for a strong sense of justice, which creates in the remotest village a public opinion to counteract oppression; for plain honesty and for dogged patience; and, except in rare cases of excitement, for a singular respect to estab- lished law, which does not in any way lead to inert sub- mission, or chill their active efforts to alter the law, whenever they deem its operations iniquitous or injurious. All these characteristics are insensibly transmitted from parent to child, and are almost wholly irrespective of formal scholastic tuition. The liberty of opinion which has prevailed amongst us since the Reformation, has also engendered an element of Conservatism in what at first glance may appear wholly anti-Conservative—viz., the influences of religious dissent. In a community such as France,in which, with the comparatively smallexception of the Huguenots, one theological creed alone stands between religion and infidelity, there is always this practical evil, that when an individual rejects that single creed, he passes at once to infidelity. This evil is greatest in large populations, especially manufacturing towns. In rural districts, the priest there, as the clergyman of the Establishment here, does not lose his spiritual authority, cvi PREFATORY MEMOIR. unless he has the misfortune to become personally un- popular. But as in all congregations of men, in which old thoughts are constantly brought into collision with new ideas, in which the mental operations of skilled labour lead the mind to question whatever exists, while they do not leave sufficient leisure for dispassionate and profound inquiry, the disturbing element is necessarily introduced into religious faith. Here in England, as in America, the varieties of dissent become of inestimable value to the great bond of modern civilisation—Christi- anity itself. They present safety-valves for minds dis- satisfied with Church doctrine—they open a field within the pale of the Gospel for that pride of reason and love of casuistry which came with awakened knowledge. The Dissenting clergyman has the advantage of being more on familiar terms with his flock than the State pastor. His flock adhere to him from a spirit of partisanship, as well as from religious convictions. It is rarely that a Dissenter, in England at least, quits his communion; still more rarely that he becomes an avowed sceptic. The scandal which indecorum of life would entail upon a whole sect, not too numerous and too ancient to disregard single instances of frailty, conduces to a certain austerity of morals. And even if this be sometimes accompanied by hypocrisy, hypocrisy is still the Salutary homage paid by vice to virtue. Thus, while in Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles, those who are not Roman Catholics may be said to have no religion at all ; in our great urban and manufacturing communities—though of course there are proportions of the population which are infidel—the Wesleyans, the Baptists, the Independents, the Unitarians themselves, preserve a common reverence still to the broad morality of the Gospel. PREFATORY MEMOIR. cvii “It is obvious that this respect for Christianity is not valuable only upon Sacred grounds, nor only for that influence on individual conduct which conduces to the Safety of the State in its control over individual crime and vice, but also in its check upon such social and polit- ical theories as the various ministers of religion would discountenance as inimical to Christianity. Thus the Socialism and communism which have had proselytes so numerous in France, and, indeed, in the Germanic States —and which, though now awed into silence, are liable at any time to rise again into formidable force, whenever the popular mind in those countries is again free to un- lock all the stormy ideas that lie within its prison-house— have never been much favoured by the leaders of English democracy. And all the virtues and energies of Mr Owen have failed to lift into the dignity of danger those theories that tend to emancipate the human race from the golden chain which, in linking man to his Maker, effects the Surest bond of Society, by associating the natural aspira- tions to perpetual progress with that faith in immor- tality above which enforces the sense of responsibilities below.” - Here ends this sketch of an Essay on Conservatism, but not without having clearly indicated the directions in which the subject of it might have been further de- veloped. Imperfect though it be, it is an eminently characteristic expression of its writer's political philo- sophy. Throughout life, to use his own words, his “ideal aim, in all relation to popular liberty, was to elevate the masses in character and feeling to the standard which Conservatism seeks in aristocracy; in other words, to aristocratise the community, so that the greatest liberty cviii PREFATORY MEMOIR. to the greatest number might not be the brief and hazardous effect of a sudden revolutionary law, but the gradual result of growth in the intellectual power indis- pensable to permanent political liberty.” ” “ ” It is in accordance with this “ideal aim " that, as a writer belonging to no literary coterie, and always endeavour- ing at least to enlist the greatest sympathies of the greatest number, he yet never stooped to write down to a low standard of popular taste. - In 1852 my father re-entered Parliament (from which he had been absent eleven years), without having changed his political opinions on any question except that of the Ballot. But whilst his political opinions remained un- altered, the political circumstances of the country had been profoundly modified. - The Liberal party had long carried into law all those measures on behalf of which my father's sympathies had been given to its efforts. The programme of its Whig leaders was played out. The aims and instincts of its Radical supporters had become less national, and either more democratic or more exclusively commercial. On the other hand, the old Tory party had been shivered to pieces by what the majority of its adherents still resented as the betrayal of their confidence in Sir Robert Peel. Some of his most experienced followers, and not a few of his most promising disciples, had openly joined their old opponents, the Liberals. They joined them, however, as Xenophon's Greeks offered to join the army of Artaxerxes—not as conquered, but as allied, forces. In the Liberal party itself, the influ- ence of the Manchester school was already predominant. That party was now less directly identified with the constitutional reforms which the Tories had opposed, PREFATORY MEMOIR. cix than with the principles of economic reform to which some of them had been converted. The fiscal policy of the Liberal party received from the alliance of the Peel- ites an accession of zeal and power. Its movement in the direction of further constitutional change was sus- pended for lack of popular pressure; and political move- ment, unenforced by popular pressure, was not one of the doctrines of that illustrious statesman in whose School the Peelites had been trained. The other remnant of the Once formidable Parliamentary phalanx broken up by Sir Robert Peel, continued, however, to mistrust the moderation of a party whose motive power was still supplied by its least moderate members. This group of politicians, who could no longer be called Tories in the full and original sense of that appellation, now appealed to popular sympathy as the Conservatives of a reformed constitution, which had, twenty-nine years before, been presented by their opponents to the nation as the perfec- tion of popular freedom and political Sagacity. Such a party would naturally recommend itself more than any other to the sympathies of a man who had, throughout his life, disapproved the fiscal policy which now united Peelites and Whigs; who had as consistently approved the constitutional reform effected by the union of Whigs and Radicals; and who apprehended more dan- ger to the constitution, thus reformed and established, from the Radicals who were still anxious to disturb, than from the Conservatives who now desired to maintain, it. Emancipated from all party pledges, standing apart from active political life, reviewing without passion and without prejudice in the maturity of middle age, the practical results of that great constitutional change in which the political enthusiasm of his youth had been CX PREEATORY MEMOIR. invested, he probably found in their unanticipated im- perfection much to moderate the confidence which should be accorded to the Sanguine predictions of reformers; whilst, at the same time, in their general adequacy he would doubtless recognise sufficient reason to deprecate further experiments in representative government. My father's Liberalism had always been national, never democratic. The consolidation of our colonial empire, the maintenance on high ground of our imperial power, the generous acceptance of our international duties, the dignified assertion of our international rank, the foremost place in the movement of mankind for English intellect, English humanity, these were the objects for which he fought and marched under every political standard that offered a symbol round which to rally or to organise the social and intellectual forces that seemed to him most conducive to the advancement or defence of England's highest greatness. From the point of view whence he had always, without reference to the circumstances of the moment, regarded the abstract question of party honour, it was impossible that he should not keenly sympathise with the resent- ment of those Conservatives who considered themselves betrayed by their recent leader. With the cause of the landed gentry, when this class of the community was specially singled out for the most bitter attack by the Manchester manufacturers, under the leadership of a coterie of Whig converts, he was identified no less by his interests as a landowner than by his principles as a politician. Thus, true to convictions unchanged by a complete change of political circumstances and party programme, he re-entered as a Conservative the Legis- lature which he had quitted as a Liberal. PREFATORY MEMOIR. cxi During the intervening period he had declined invita- tions to stand for Westminster and other Liberal con- stituencies, in consequence of his dissent from the eco- nomic doctrines of the Liberal party. In the exposition of principles on this and other questions with which the late Lord Derby subsequently identified the policy of his party by a remarkable speech, my father so entirely sympathised, that he no longer hesitated to offer it his public support. This he did by the publication of opinions which he had entertained for seventeen years, in a pamphlet entitled ‘Letters to John Bull.' That pamphlet, published in the year 1851, rapidly ran through ten editions. A general election took place in the follow- ing year ; and he was then returned to Parliament, after a sharp contest, as one of the three Conservative members for Hertfordshire, his own county. His first speeches in the new Parliament were on subjects connected with the prosecution of the Crimean war, in which the country was then engaged. I know not whether it was in con- Sequence of the European eminence to which he had attained in literature during his long retirement from public life, or of other circumstances more appreciable by an assemblage of local delegates, but certain it is, that from the moment he entered it, he occupied in the newly elected Parliament a position of greater weight and authority than had been accorded to him by the Par- liament of which he ceased to be a member in 1841. In the mean time, moreover, he had carefully studied and greatly improved the management of his voice as a public speaker. And although to the last, even in his most felicitous oratorical effects, the utterance and de- livery were greatly inferior to the intellectual attributes of his eloquence, such as its wit, its sound common-sense, cxii PREFATORY MEMOIR. its graceful and conciliatory courtesy—the large famili- arity with books, and the immense knowledge of human nature which it invariably evinced ; yet, judging of his speeches, without partiality, as a frequent listener to the debates in which they were spoken, I cannot hesitate to claim for him a foremost rank amongst the ten or twelve best Parliamentary orators of my own time. He was, dur- ing the latter years of his Parliamentary career, a great speaker. He was never a debater. And this was owing, not to any intellectual incapacity for quick reply (for some of his happiest oratorical effects were the consequence of interruptions that arrested his attention), but to a phy- sical affliction from which he suffered during the whole of his life, and which at last prematurely terminated his laborious and beneficent existence. It was a disease of the ear, accompanied by deafness, which increased with increasing years. This physical infirmity, added to an intellectual temperament contemplative rather than dis- putatious, and which became still more so as the surplus energy of youth subsided, made public life extremely uncongenial to him. “The exulting sense, the pulse's maddening play That thrills the wanderer of that trackless way, And, for itself, can woo the approaching fight,” he never felt. The “rapture of the strife,” for the strife's sake, which enables so many English statesmen to “live laborious days,”—the love of power which made Lord Pal- merston find office the best of anti-dyspeptics, were quite incompatible with a temperament little cheered by person- al success, and singularly sensitive to personal failure—a temperament more oppressed by the responsibilities, than animated by the charms, of office. Parliamentary life was to him an uncongenial element, and he only plunged PREFATORY MEMOIR. ' cxiii into it with a painful effort, much as Peter the Great used to plunge into the Neva in winter—not because he liked it, but because he was conscious of powers in himself which could not be otherwise developed; and this con- Sciousness made him the despot of his own dislikes. At the age of forty-three he thus described his own deficiencies as a man of action. “I am too irresolute and easily persuaded, except when my honour or sense of duty makes me obstinate. I have so great a dread of giving pain, that I have often submitted to be cheated to my face rather than wound the rogue's feelings by showing him that he was detected. I am indolent of body, though active of mind. I am painfully thin-skinned and susceptible; less so than I was in youth, but still too much so. Ifind it difficult to amalgamate with others and act with a party. The acting man should never be con- scious of the absurdity and error which are more or less inseparable from every path of action. I am too impa- tient of subordination, an immense fault in the acting man. In all situations of command I act best when I have to defend others, not serve myself. I do not possess, or rather I have not cultivated (for no man can distin- guish accurately between deficiencies from nature and those from disuse), the ready faculties in any proportion to my slower and more reflective ones. I have little repartee, my memory is slow, and my presence of mind not great.* My powers of speaking are very uncertain, * In this, I think, he underrates himself. Instances of effective Parlia- mentary repartee will be found in the contents of these volumes. I might mention many others more pungent and entirely impromptu. But he suffered such acute discomfort whenever he thought that, by some unpremeditated rejoinder, he had without justifiable provocation given painto an opponent, that, in deference to what I know would have been his own wishes, I suppress them. His wit, however, was thoroughly spontaneous. cxiv PREEATORY MEMOIR. \ tº and very imperfectly developed. I have eloquence in me, and have spoken even as an Orator, but not in the House of Commons." I cannot speak without either preparation or the pressure of powerful excitement. It would cost me immense labour to acquire the ready, cool trick of words with little knowledge and no heart in them, which is necessary for a Parliamentary debater. I might have acquired this once. Now it is too late.” In connection with this singular self-analysis, I shall here venture to give a curious illustration of that inten- sity of excitement under which the writer of it always suffered when speaking in public. Grillparzer, the great Austrian poet, was in London in the year 1836, and a frequent visitor to the gallery of the House of Commons during the debates on the Irish Tithes Bill. His im- pressions of those debates are thus given in his autobio- graphy : “My ear being unused to the language, I could only understand about half of what I heard; but the spectacle itself was exciting. I know not how the English Houses of Parliament are now arranged; but at that time the chamber of the House of Commons was a long and com- paratively narrow one. The two great Parliamentary parties were ranged opposite to each other, with but a narrow space between them, like two armies drawn out in order of battle ; and the Orators on each side, like the Homeric heroes, occasionally advanced, and hurled their oratorical javelins into the ranks of the opposing host. The best speaker, or at least the most vivacious, was Sheil. Peel, the Minister, was cold; but he spoke fluently, and with the force of conviction. O'Connell and the * His greatest orations were, however, delivered in the House of Com- mons—but Subsequent to this date. PREFATORY MEMOIR. CXV others were less effective than you would suppose from their reported speeches. “The frequent “Hear, hear!” of the House, which have the effect of an intermittent chant with a certain tune in it, are often only dictated by party tactics, to cover the hesitations of the speaker, and give him time to col- lect his ideas. The whole effect, however, is decidedly grandiose and heart-stirring. “I commonly attended these debates alone. But one evening a Viennese friend” accompanied me. The crowd was immense, and we had to wait a long while in the lobby. M. F. left my side for a few moments, and returned with a look of embarrassment, the cause of which I only dis- covered afterwards. In order to obtain our admission, he had told the door-keeper that he was accompanied by a German author, who was a friend of Mr Bulwer's. I was not aware of this little stratagem, however, when the door- keeper presently approached us, followed by a young man dressed to perfection, and wonderfully good-looking (wunderhübsch). ‘Here is Mr Bulwer,’ said the door- keeper ; and then turning to him, ‘This, sir, is your friend, the German gentleman.’ “Bulwer, however, at once freed me from all embarrass- ment by putting his arm round my shoulder, and draw- ing me with him into one of the waiting-rooms. ‘The house is crammed this evening,' he said, ‘and I fear I cannot find you a place ; but come again to-morrow.’ Soon afterwards he left us; and I then observed that he staggered in his gait like a drunken man. I presently learned, however, that he had just been speaking, and that what I had taken for intoxication was in fact the reaction (Nachwirkung) of nervous tension. I was all * M. Figdor (a Viennese merchant, I believe). cxvi PREFATORY MEMOIR. the more resolved to conceal my name from him. If a German poet is not called Schiller or Goethe, he may travel over the whole world unknown.” The passage above translated from Grillparzer's auto- biography is, in this last sentence, extremely charac- teristic of that writer himself. Certainly one of Ger- many's greatest poets since Goethe and Schiller, he was hypochondriac, Sensitively reserved and proud, acutely suffering indeed from many wounded and unrevealed susceptibilities, but withal as sternly high-minded, brave, truthful, and self-dependent as Beethoven. It was to the exercise of moral rather than intellectual faculties that my father owed whatever success he attained to in public life, notwithstanding the disadvantages of a temperament that enormously increased the labour com- monly requisite for such success. But labor omnia, vincit ; and he was so fully justified by his own expe- rience of life in preaching this maxim to others, that in all his views of education he set far less store upon the acquisition of knowledge than upon that of courage, industry, and will. Thus, in some remarks addressed in 1856 to the scholars of the High School at Bishop's Stort- ford, he says: “Boys, when I look at your young faces I could fancy myself a boy once more. I go back to the days when I too tried for prizes, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing. I was once as fond of play as any of you, and in this summer weather I fear my head might have been more full of cricket than of Terence or even Homer. But still I can remember, that whether at work or at play, I had always a deep though a quiet determi- nation that sooner or later I would be a somebody, or do a something. That determination continues with me to this day. It keeps one hope of my boyhood fresh, when PREFATORY MEMOIR. cxvii other hopes have long since faded away. And now that we separate, let it be with that hope upon both sides— on my side and on yours—that before we die we will do something to serve our country that may make us prouder of each other; and if we fail in this, that at least we shall never wilfully or consciously do anything to make us ashamed of each other.” In such a strain as this Epictetus might have spoken to his young Stoics. And, indeed, the words just quoted are singularly in accordance with a striking passage in the discourse of that philosopher upon the ‘Preservation of Character.” “You,” says Epictetus, “ have no care but to resemble the rest of mankind; one thread in a garment desires not distinction from the other threads. But I would be the purple, that small and brilliant part which gives lustre and beauty to the rest.” I have never lost the impression made upon me, when I was yet a youth, by an Oratorical success of my fa- ther's, achieved solely by personal courage and presence of mind. I have said that his first election for Herts was hotly contested. I should add that the opposition tactics of the Liberal agents were chiefly directed against him- self, as being the newest and also the most eminent of the Conservative candidates. The farmers who supported those candidates had ridden into Hertford early on the nomination day, and endeavoured to occupy the ground in front of the hustings. But this heavy cavalry was ignominiously routed by a Severe fire of stones and brick- bats, and the field of battle remained in possession of a body of roughs from Ware — the foot soldiers of the Liberal army. The attempts of the two senior Conservative candidates to obtain a hearing from this hostile audience failed cxviii PREFATORY MEMOIR. lamentably ; but when, after some helpless gesticulation in dumb show, they retired to the back of the booth, and my father advanced to the front of it, the storm of yells and execrations broke out with redoubled fury. Under the hustings and on a level with the crowd was a small balcony erected for accommodation of the reporters of the London Press; and in it those gentlemen, having nothing to report but inarticulate noise, were seated like the gods of Epicurus, who “Smile, and find a music centred in a doleful song, Like a tale of little meaning, though the words are strong.” Suddenly there broke from the crowd a cry of surprise, succeeded by a silence of curiosity. On to the reporters’ table in this balcony my father had leapt down from the hustings above it, upsetting the ink-bottles, and scatter- ing the pens uplifted to record his discomfiture. He was determined to be heard, and he was heard. He had gained all he needed,—a moment's silence. Wisely refrain- ing from any attempt at a set speech, he entered into con- versation with the noisiest of the hostile ringleaders, molli- fied the man by a good-humoured joke, shook hands with him, drew him into a humorous argument, and then slid imperceptibly from personal conversation into public speech. He spoke, I think, for an hour or more; and was listened to in the most respectful silence, interrupted only by the most cordial cheers. Re-entering Parliament, my father opposed the enlist- ment of foreign levies for the prosecution of the Crimean war; and had his warnings been successful, we should certainly have been spared one of the most humiliating of the many humiliating episodes in our relations with the American Government. Every one of his predictions were distressingly verified by the results of that ill- PREFATORY MEMOIR. cxix advised measure. On various occasions he severely criti- cised both the conduct of the war and some of the negotiations for the peace. Posterity will certainly not remove from the memory of Lord Panmure the merited Stigma with which he branded it in his speech upon the fall of Kars. For the first time in his life he spoke and acted with the Manchester Liberals in those denunciations of the Chinese war which are the subject of some of his best speeches in Parliament. He also protested ener- getically, on grounds similar to those which have been developed by Mr Mill, against the extinction of the East India Company's government. When in February 1858 Lord Derby returned to power, he intrusted to my father the Colonial affairs of his Government, although my father had never before held any office. His official life as Secretary of State for the Colonies, though brief, was active, and pregnant in results. He attended with the most scrupulous exactitude to every detail of his administrative duties. He did nothing vicariously. And although his personal relations with the experienced and exceedingly able men who perma- nently preside over the chief departments of the Colonial Office were at all times marked by the most cordial con- fidence and mutual respect, yet on no question, whatever its comparative unimportance, did he ever leave the Office to “work itself.” Immediately after his assumption of office he got rid of the old and ineffectual mail contract with Australia. He gave to the West Indian colonies the advantage of an Encumbered Estates Bill. He removed a long-stand- ing cause of dispute with France by the exchange of Albuda and Portendio. He terminated the monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Company, and called into existence VOL. I. h CXX PREEATORY MEMOIR. the magnificent colony of British Columbia, with the very soil of which his name is still identified.” To relate the circumstances which occasioned the cre- ation of this valuable colony, or the steps so vigorously and successfully taken to establish law, order, and pros- perity, amidst a fortuitous population of immigrant adventurers from all parts of the world, would exceed the purpose and the scope of the present Memoir. Nor can I here attempt even the most cursory record of my father's colonial administration. His general views upon questions of colonial policy will be found in his speeches on such subjects. But I cannot forbear from citing here, as evidence of the spirit which he carried into every detail of his administrative work, the flattering testimony of an eminent colonial governor. Sir George Bowen, the present Governor of Victoria, was in 1859 Government Secretary in the Ionian Islands, from which post he was, on purely public grounds, pro- moted by my father (who had no personal acquaintance with him) to be the first Governor of Queensland. Allud- ing to this fact (in a letter dated Melbourne, 4th Decem- ber 1873, for which I am all the more indebted to his Excellency, because I have not myself the honour of being personally acquainted with him), Sir George adds, that “on this occasion he ” (my father) “wrote me the admirable compendium of the duties of a colonial governor, of which I send you herewith a certified copy—for publication, if you desire it. I assure you that I attribute, in no slight degree, the success of my career to my strict adherence to the advice given in the * “I have lately received intelligence from Mr Assistant-Commissioner Travaillot, dated ‘Lyttom,’ 19th December 1858, &c. &c.” — Governor Douglas to Sir E. B. Lytton; Victoria, 21st January 1859. PREFATORY MEMOIR. cxxi accompanying letter. It would be well that it should be published, if it were only that future colonial gov- ernors may have the advantage of studying it.”” I subjoin the letter which I have received Sir G. Bowen's permission to publish. SIR E. B. LYTTON TO SIR G. BOWEN. “GREAT MALVERN, 29th April 1859. “DEAR SIR GEORGE Bow EN, I have the pleasure to inform you that the Queen approves of your appointment to Moreton Bay, which will henceforth bear the appella- tion of Queensland. Accept my congratulations, and my assurances of the gratification it gives me to have promoted you to a post in which your talents will find ample Scope. “There is not much to learn beforehand for your guid- ance in this new colony. The most anxious and diffi- cult question connected with it will be the “squatters.’ But in this, which is an irritating contest between rival interests, you will wisely abstain as much as possible from interference. Avoid taking part with one or the other. Ever be willing to lend aid to conciliatory settle- ment ; but, in Order to Secure that aid, you must be strictly impartial. Remember that the first care of a governor in a free colony is to shun the reproach of be- ing a party man. Give all parties and all the ministries formed the fairest play. “Mark and study the idiosyncrasies of the community; every community has Some peculiar to itself. Then, in * Sir George Bowen, after serving for eight years in Queensland, was promoted by the Duke of Buckingham in 1868 to New Zealand, and in 1873 by Lord Kimberley to Victoria; which I believe is generally called the “Blue Ribbon" of the Colonial service.—L. cxxii PREFATORY MEMOIR, your public addresses, appeal to those which are the noblest —the noblest are always the most universal and the most durable. They are peculiar to no party. “Let your thoughts never be distracted from the par- amount object of finance. All States thrive in propor- tion to the administration of revenue. “You will, as soon as possible, exert all energy and persuasion to induce the colonists to see to their self- defence internally. Try to establish a good police; if you can then get the Superior class of colonists to assist in forming a militia or volunteer corps, spare no pains to do so. “It is at the commencement of colonies that this object can be best effected. A colony that is once accustomed to depend on imperial soldiers for aid against riots, &c., never grows up into vigorous manhood. Witness the West Indian colonies. “Education the colonists will be sure to provide for. So they will for religion. “Do your best always to keep up the pride in the mother country. Throughout all Australia there is a sympathy with the ideal of a gentleman. This gives a moral aristocracy. Sustain it by showing the store set on integrity, honour, and civilised manners ; not by preferences of birth, which belong to old countries. “Whenever any distinguished members of your colony come to England, give them letters of introduction, and a private one to the Secretary of State, whoever he may be. This last is not sufficiently done in colonies; but all Secretaries of State who are fit for the office should desire it. You may quote my opinion to this effect to my successors. “As regards despatches; your experience in the PREFATORY MEMOIR. cxxiii Ionian Islands will tell you how much is avoided in despatches that may be made public, and done in pri- vate letters. This practice is at present carried to in- convenience and abuse. Questions affecting free colonies may come before Parliament, of which no public docu- ments whatever afford the slightest explanation. “The communications from a Government should be fourfold:— f “Ist, Public despatches. “2d, Confidential—intended for publication if at all required. - “3d, Confidential—not to be published unless abso- lutely necessary for defence of measures by yourself and the Home Department. “4th, Letters strictly private ;-and these, if frank to a Minister or to an Under-Secretary like Mr Merivale, should be guarded to friends;–and touch as little as possible upon names and parties in the colony. A Government may rely on the discretion of a Department, never on that of private correspondents. “5th, As you will have a free press, you will have some papers that may be abusive. Never be thin-skinned about these : laugh them off. Be pointedly courteous to all editors and writers — acknowledging socially their craft and its importance. The more you treat people as gentlemen, the more ‘they will behave as such.” - “After all, men are governed as much by the heart as by the head. Evident sympathy in the progress of the colony; traits of kindness, generosity, devoted energy, where required for the public weal; a pure exercise of patronage; an utter absence of vindictiveness or spite ; the fairness that belongs to magnanimity;-these are cxxiv. PIREFATORY MEMOIR. the qualities that make governors powerful, while men merely sharp and clever may be weak and detested. “But there is one rule which I find pretty universal in colonies. The governor who is the least huffy, and who is most careful not to overgovern, is the one who has the most authority. Enforce civility upon all minor officials. Courtesy is a duty public servants owe to the humblest member of the public. “Pardon all these desultory hints, which I daresay may seem to you as old as the hills; and wishing you all health and enjoyment in the far land, believe me yours very truly, E. B. LyTTON.” “P.S.–Get all the details of the squatter question from the Department, master them thoroughly. Convert the jealousies now existing between Moreton Bay and Sydney into emulation. Your recollection of the old Greek States will tell you what strides States can take through emulation. I need not say that the sooner you go out to the new colony the better. “You are aware that since I have been in this office I have changed the old colonial uniform for the same as that worn in the imperial Service. I consider it a great point to assimilate the two services in outward emblems of dignity. The Queen's servant is the Queen's servant, whether at Westminster or at the antipodes. You will have therefore to get a new dress. When do you wish to go? E. B. L.” “The more you treat people as gentlemen, the more they will ‘behave as such.’” This was the instinct of his nature; and in it is the explanation of all that was both Liberal and Conservative in his political aspira- PREFATORY MEMOIR, CXXV tions. Not to pull down the highest, but to exalt the lowest class of the community; to elevate the Soul of the whole nation; to induce every man born the free citizen of a great empire to feel that he is by birth a great gentleman. - Thus, in addressing the boys of a public school, he says: “You will have observed, my young friends, that I have addressed you more than once to-day emphatically as gentlemen. I think you are brought up to deserve that lofty title. What is a gentleman in our English sense of the word 4 Does his claim to the title rest only On his estates and his pedigree ? Heaven forbid Like all civilised Societies, we give due weight to rank and wealth. And wealth has perhaps even more influence than it deserves. But the name gentleman is neither inherited nor bought. Where we see a man of superior education, of courteous manners, and, above all, of high honour, we call him a gentleman, though he be the son of a peasant : and when a man wants all these qualities we say he is no gentleman, though he be the Son of a duke.” And again elsewhere he says, as the highest praise he can bestow upon a school : “Greatly as I have been pleased with their” (the pupils') “admirable recita- tations from Terence and Homer, yet I think that Schools which procure for the majority of their pupils such broad elements of Sound instruction, physical health, and manly character, work better for the nation than if they could produce in a century Some boy who wrote plays like Terence and verses to compare with Homer. What has most pleased me is, that whilst addressing my young audience, Inever more elicited their sympathy than when appealing to those high Sentiments which make men brave, honourable, and patriotic.” cxxvi PREFATORY MEMOIR. The same spirit breathes through his admirable Essay on the “Efficacy of Praise,”—one of the wisest and most thoughtful of those papers which, under the title of ‘Caxtoniana,’ contain the reflections of his matured expe- rience upon men and books. I have already said that my father belonged to that class of reformers whose object is improvement. Improvement of one kind or other was indeed the unceasing occupation of his life. His instinct was to improve everything which came under the influ- ence of his mind. Himself, his house, his property, his country—the comfort of the poor, the humanity of the rich, the means of knowledge for the ignorant, the rewards of knowledge for the learned, the prosperity of the people at home, the influence of its Government abroad. No man since Goethe ever laboured so inces- santly at the improvement and completion of his own intellectual, moral, and even physical being all round, totus, teres, atque rotundus. But between him and Goethe there was this essential difference: In my father's temperament the incentive to self-improvement was always an intense desire to be instrumental in the im- provement of his fellow-creatures. He was a thoroughly civic being. Goethe lived in a time less discouraging than the present to all enthusiasm on behalf of the general improvement of the world. But from the height of his own Olympus he beheld the world around and beneath him, with little sympathy in its social and politi- cal agitations. He was Selbstandig ; but neither patriot- ism nor philanthropy actively influenced his scheme of self-culture. My father lived late into an age when philanthropy is deservedly discredited by the want of common-sense with which its professors have associated PREFATORY MEMOIR. cxxvii it, and when patriotism appears to be repudiated by the latest political Sages, as an old-fashioned prejudice, incompatible with free trade and free labour. In such an age, a wise man, perhaps, if he be not the dupe of its promises, will best secure the freedom and dignity of his own individuality by disentangling it as much as possi- ble from the moral, social, and political surrounding in which he lives. It may be that the less he attempts to improve what he deplores in the world around him, the less mischief he will do. But this was not possible to my father. He could not think or feel without reference to the thoughts and feelings of those around him ; he could not live and move and have his being wholly out of the Social and political world to which he belonged. He was sensitive to the opinion of others, and vibrated quickly to its touch. Praise for mere ability gave him little pleasure, and the absence of it little pain; but praise for any kind of moral goodness, the ready recog- nition of a generous motive or a lofty principle in his conduct, would almost overpower him ; and I have frequently seen it bring the tears to his eyes. Similarly he writhed under calumny, or any misinterpretation of his moral character. “It is more than injustice,” he once exclaimed—“it is ingratitude. Men calumniate me, and I would lay down my life to serve them.” Consequently, whenever he felt himself out of harmony with the tone of the social and political world around him, he suffered. Everything that tended to lower his pride in his country, or alienate his sympathy from his countrymen, gave him positive pain. His own efforts, whether in politics or in literature, were constantly di- rected towards the maintenance of an heroic standard cxxviii PREFATORY MEMOIR. in the national mind. In a letter to the late Mr Herman Merivale, containing some remarkable criticisms upon the ‘Historical Studies’ of that able writer, he says, speaking of Goethe and Schiller: “Although we are com- pelled to allow the low standard of man (and Ought, indeed, to admit it, because it enforces charity), yet Surely it is our interest as men to preserve the high standard. That is the true question as regards their influence on practical human life, between Goethe and Schiller. Just as, if they had lived in the same day (and that day a serene artistic one), it would have been the question between Shakespeare and Milton—a question between width and height. Schiller preserves for us what is most valuable to men—the heroic standard. You admit that we prefer Schiller in youth, but take to Goethe in our maturer age. But as a reasoner for your country, would you not wish it to be always in its youth 2 What Nelson is among captains, Schiller is among poets. If I could enforce upon a practical, sceptical, commonplace, energetic people like the English, any one doctrine, it would be this: ‘Your morbific tendency is to run into the vulgar type; in order to counteract that tendency always revere the heroic one.’ But how are we to revere the heroic if we are told by our literary authorities that Schiller is all wrong; that he is at best only one of the smaller divinities; and that a realism with which we are already overloaded in England is something immeasurably more entitled to veneration than that ideal conception of excellence which three centuries ago Roger Ascham thought necessary in order to keep man up to the ordinary level ? In our time and land there is no fear of some imaginative vagary PREFATORY MEMOIR. cxxix in favour of heroic types. The tendency is all the other way. Anything more low than the standard of modern criticism it is impossible for a creature above the rank of a caterpillar (who denies the possibility of a butterfly) to conceive.” & - During the latter part of my father's Parliamentary career, his greatest oratorical efforts were the speeches spoken by him on the subject of Parliamentary Reform. One of these speeches elicited from an illustrious oppo- ment the most cordial and generous expressions of ad- miration. Lord Palmerston told the Queen that he con- sidered it one of the finest speeches he had ever heard spoken in the House of Commons. But though my father's tenure of office was short, it tried his health severely; and when he retired from office, he found that he had put an excessive strain upon the nervous energies of a frame muscularly strong, but constitutionally delicate. When Lord Derby formed his last Cabinet, my father was for this reason unable to join it. And though he entered the Upper House with every desire and inten- tion to give more than a passive support to his political friends in it, circumstances prevented him from ever addressing that House. Once, indeed, he moved the ad- journment of the debate on the second reading of the Irish Church Bill; and so great was the desire to hear him speak on that question, that the next evening both the House and all its galleries were crammed with ex- pectant listeners, who were much disappointed when Lord Grey rose to resume the debate. The speech then unspoken I am now able to present to the readers of these volumes, at the close of which it will be found. This, and the few others which I have selected from CXXX PREFATORY MEMOIR. amongst numerous drafts of speeches prepared for de- livery in the House of Lords, will at least suffice to prove that, though a silent, he was not an intellectually inactive, member of that assembly. But his old infirmity of deaf- ness, occasioned by an affection of the right ear, from which he had suffered since boyhood, now greatly in- terfered with his power to follow a debate; and bronchial cough, occasioning him constant discomfort, grievously affected his general health by obliging him to discon- tinue those habits of daily bodily exercise which had hitherto enabled him to undergo, with comparative im- punity, the fatigue of constant brain-work, and more Sedentary labour than is good for any man. During the last years of his life he contemplated, with great discouragement and despondency, the per- vading spirit, or want of spirit, in English politics, as it appeared from the political utterances both of Parlia- ment and the Press. Yet most sincerely he admired the genius, and cordially respected the personal char- acter, of the great Minister who was then governing England, with the support of an almost unprecedented . Parliamentary majority; nor, indeed, have I received from any of my father's political contemporaries expres- sions of regard for his memory more generous, or more grateful to my feelings, than those with which I have been honoured by Mr Gladstone. To his intellectual temperament, however, no less than to his political opinions, the chief measures and general bearing of the late Administration were repugnant. But it was not the tone of the Administration—it was what, rightly or wrongly, he supposed to be the tone of the English nation itself in reference to all the great PREFATORY MEMOIR. cxxxi issues of national life at home, and international pol- icy abroad, that filled him with dismay and alarm. To protest against it was the last act of his life; and this he did in the posthumous romance of ‘Kenelm Chil- lingly,’ his latest, and not his least earnest, appeal to his countrymen. LYTTON. PARIs, 2d May 1874. I. A S P E E C H IDELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 5TH OF JULY 1831. ON Monday, the 4th of July 1831, Lord John Russell moved the Second Reading of the Bill to amend the Representation of the People of England and Wales. The member for Sudbury, Sir John Walsh, moved as an amendment that the Bill should be read that day six months. The discus- sion upon this having lasted for three nights, a division was taken upon the amendment, which was rejected by 367 votes to 23.1—the original motion being then carried. The following Speech was made on the second night of the Debate by Mr Edward Lytton Bulwer, then M.P. for St Ives. SIR.—So far as the people are concerned, it is not denied that the Bill is already carried; and the late election alone has ren- dered it idle and superfluous to insist on those more popular measures which, though founded at first on just reasoning, might now assume the appearance of unnecessary declamation. But I am glad to perceive that it is chiefly on the supposition that it is the tendency of the proposed Bill to affect not only the illegitimate influence but the due and wholesome power of the aristocracy, that the more enlightened and independent of the anti-Reformers are disposed to consider the question. It is on WOL. I. A. 2 THE REFORM BILL. this ground that I am desirous of meeting them. I will not challenge their premises, I will only combat their conclusion ; and since, notwithstanding some remarks that have fallen from the noble Lord, the member for Wootton Basset, I am not yet so imbued with that spirit which must more or less pervade all political parties, as to feel my regard for principles at once strengthened and embittered by an habitual conflict with persons, I trust that I shall not lose the attention of the hon. Gentlemen on this side of the House, if I refrain from exciting it by the harsh vituperations that have been so lavishly bestowed on our opponents. On the other hand, I trust that I shall be judged by the hon. Members opposite by the general tenor of the few observations I am about to make, and not by the verbal inaccu- racy, or the unguarded heat of expression, which are necessarily incident to a want of practice in public speaking in general, and to a want of knowledge of this House in particular. I shall pro- ceed, without further preamble, to what has long seemed to me the strongest, and is now the most Ostensible, ground on which the anti-Reformers rest—namely, the probable manner in which the proposed Bill will affect the power of the aristocracy. And when we speak of the power of any political body distinct from the people, we must remember that that power is at this day solely the creature of public opinion ; and that it is only in pro- portion as it loses or gains in public opinion that that power can really be said to be lessened or increased. Admitting this fact, which is so indisputable as to have passed into a truism, and glancing over the aspect of affairs, will any man say that the power of the aristocracy is now so safe, so secure in public opinion, that it ought, at once, to resist the idea of change On the contrary, can any man note the commonest signs of the times, attend any political meeting, read any political writing, have the most shallow acquaintance with the organs of political opinion, and not confess, that so deep is the demarcation between the aristocracy and the people, that it has become sufficient alone to obtain popular suffrage, to declaim, however ignorantly, against aristocratic privilege The anti-Reformers complain of this more loudly than the Reformers, and yet they refer us to THE REFORM BILL. 3 causes much more terrible and irremediable than those which really exist. Again and again—usque ad nauseam—they have referred us to the first French Revolution, and libelled the Eng- lish aristocracy by comparing its situation with that of the French. But at this moment, when the English aristocracy are not popular, it will be well to remember that there is no ana- logy in the cases. The people of this country have not, as the people of France had, a long and black sum of offences against their superiors, to be scored off on the great reckoning day of revenge. The English aristocracy may occasionally be charged with a haughty neglect of the people, and with too obstinate a stand upon harsh laws and ungracious prerogatives. But they cannot be charged with the same terrible misuse of power that absolutely characterised the French; not with the same grasping oppression, not with the same unblushing venality, not with the same degrading sycophancy to royal vices, or the same ruthless indifference to national distress. The great wealth of the Eng- lish aristocracy (and their consequent independence of the Court) has preserved them, as a body, from the double necessity of meanness and extortion, and enabled them, as individuals, to purchase popularity at the cheap cost of pecuniary expense. And if the cause of any odium they may have incurred, has no analogy to those causes which directed the vengeance of the French people against their nobleSSé, neither, on the otherhand, can it be vaguely referred, as some hon. Gentlemen have attempted to refer it, merely to the general growth of liberal opinion. For it would be an assertion altogether without proof to Say, that there has ever existed a period in this country, at least, since the time of Jack Cade,-when the doctrine of equalisation of rank or property has obtained so extensively, that the people have formed a hatred to their superiors, merely from their Superiority, or that they have cherished an animosity to power Solely from a love for experiment. Whatever arguments may be alleged in favour of the Lostwithiels and the Old Sarums, it is not attempted to be denied that they have made not only the Parliament, but the aristocracy thus influencing the Parliament, unpopular to so great an excess, that not only all the ills of the State, the wars, 4 THE REFORM BILL. the expenditure, the debt, but even the very calamities inflicted by Providence, the scarcity, and the drought, have been laid to the charge of this noxious influence; and the very extravagance of these attacks, if matter of ridicule to the defenders of the system, is a proof at least of the extraordinary odium which the system has incurred. Here, them, at Once is the cause of that great and growing division between classes which is so deeply to be feared: it is obvious, for the sake of the aristocracy alone (for if I am right in Saying their power is the creature of public opinion, it is the aristocracy alone who can lose by a violent collision with public opinion), for the sake of the aristocracy alone, we ought to healthe division: and it is equally obvious, that in order to heal the division we must remove the cause of it. And thus, even if the people, whilst suffering under the disease, had not clamoured for the remedy, if the irritation felt under the present system had excited no agitation for any definite question of reform,-every true advocate, not of the people's in- terests only, but also of the interests of the aristocracy, ought, nevertheless, to endeavour to carry into effect, as soon as possible, the great main principle of this Reform. It has been said that, if you remove the nomination boroughs, you bring the House of Lords into direct collision with the House of Commons ; and that the influence of the House of Lords, felt on the floor of that House, often preserves the former from the odium of rejecting popular measures before their own immediate tribunal. But was there ever anything so glaringly inconsistent as the application of this argument 2 Hon. Gentlemen are willing that the House of Lords shall now be brought into direct and violent collision with the House of Commons, lest it should be brought into col- lision with it hereafter. Hon. Gentlemen are willing that the House of Lords shall now incur the certain and collected odium of the country, for fear it should incur its possible and partial odium hereafter, in Some imaginary epoch in futurity. But, passing over the notable inconsistency of the application of the argument, and granting the argument itself its full force— granting that there are times and occasions in which it is well that the influence of the House of Lords should be felt in this THE REFORM BILL. 5 | House, and that it does serve to prevent any collision between the Assemblies—is it not evident that that influence would still remain, only exercised through a constitutional, not an invidious channel ? Do hon. Gentlemen imagine that, after the passing of the Reform Bill, the aristocracy will suddenly be left alone in the world, without a single tenant possessed of a vote, or a single friend to whom that vote can be given 3 To hear such hon. Gentlemen one would suppose that we, the hard-hearted and ruthless reformers, are not meditating the petty victory of parliamentary Reform, but the much grander stroke of shipping off the whole of the aristocracy to Van Dieman's Land ; or, at least, that by schedule A we shall not leave them an acre, and that by schedule B we shall cut them off with a shilling; and yet, is it not perfectly clear that these miserable victims of radical atrocity will still have sons and brothers, and cousins, and friends in this House ? that they will still exercise a great and para- mount influence in the towns near which they reside, and the counties which are now about, in receiving additional Members, to give the certainty of additional seats to the aristocracy 2 If hon. Members insist that the moment this House mirrors in Some degree the opinions of the majority of the people, the House of Lords must succumb and perish, they do not prophesy its future, they utter its present condemnation. If this were true, the House of Lords is gone already ; while we debate on its defence, the seal is put upon its abolition. A celebrated philosopher has felicitously observed, “that the greatest dis- coverer in science cannot do more than accelerate the progress of discovery.” So in the career of nations, as of knowledge, you may advance, but you cannot contradict the genius of a people. The most democratic law cannot do more than hasten a demo- cracy, which, before that law could be received, must have al- ready become inevitable. At a time when authority can no longer support itself by the Solemn plausibilities and the cere- monial hypocrisies of old, it is well that a government should be placed upon a solid and sure foundation. In no age of the world, but, least of all, in the present, can any system of govern- ment long exist which is menaced both by the moral intelligence 6 THE REFORM BILL. and the physical force of a country. In the present instance, we behold a system thus menaced, and therefore thus feeble, modified into one, placed not only on the affections of the popu- lace, though at this juncture I should scarcely consider him wise who holds even the affections of the populace in contempt; but also on the opinions of that class which, in this country, fills up the vast space between the highest and the lowest, and whose Members are opposed to every more turbulent revulsion by all the habits of commerce and all the interests of wealth. But so en- tirely do I agree with the hon. Gentlemen opposite on one principle—namely, that it is the practical stability, and not the theoretical improvement of the commonwealth, that ought to be our first object—that I would become a willing and a cheerful convert to the rest of their sentiments on this great measure, the moment they can show me, amidst the tumults of neigh- bouring nations and the crash of surrounding thrones, a better security for the institutions of power than the love and confi- dence of an united and intelligent people. II. A S P E E O H DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 31ST OF MAY 1832. ON Thursday, the 31st of May 1832, pursuant to notice, the Member for Lincoln, Mr Edward Lytton Bulwer, moved the House for a Select Com- mittee for the purpose of Inquiring into the state of the Laws aſſecting Dramatic Literature and the performance of the Drama. The motion was agreed to and the Committee appointed. On submitting his proposition to the House, the following speech was delivered. SIR,--I rise to move for a Select Committee for the purpose of inquiring into the State of the Laws affecting Dramatic Litera- ture and the performance of the Drama. We all know that there is a patent granted to the two great theatres for the per- formance of the drama. The extent and power of these patents, with the laws by which they are strengthened, have long been a matter of dispute; but by the late decision of a high judicial authority, it seems that elsewhere all performances worthy of the attendance of persons pretending to a reasonable degree of edu- cation—all performances, except those of the most mountebank and trumpery description, fit only for the stages of Bartholomew Fair—are to be considered as infringements of the law, and as 8 THE LAWS AFFECTING DRAMATIC LITERATURE. subjecting those who assist in them to serious penalties. The minor theatres are, therefore, at this moment—with their many thousand actors, proprietors, and decorators, who depend for Sup- port on their existence—without the pale of the law; and the question is, therefore, forced before the public in the following shape:-" How far is it expedient for the public, that privileges and enactments of this monopolising description should be con- tinued: how far is it expedient that the minor theatres should be suppressed, and the exclusive patents of the two great theatres should be continued ?” Sir, in the first place, I contend that the original reason for suppressing the minor theatres has long since ceased to exist; and, in the second place, I contend that the only possible ground upon which these patents are given in trust to the metropolitan theatres has not been fulfilled. Now, the reason for suppressing the minor theatres appears both by Act of Parliament and in the literary history of these times. In the licentious period in which the first patents were granted —viz., the time of Charles II., in all the umbridled reaction and intoxicated ferment of the Restoration—it seemed that the minor theatres were the scene of very disorderly and improper exhibi- tions; and it became necessary to suppress them—not so much for the sake of preserving decency as of protecting the drama. But does that reason exist at present 2 Can any one who has ever by accident attended the Smaller houses, assert that the performance and the audience are not of the most decorous and orderly description ? So far as that consideration goes, the minor theatres are fully as entitled to a license as the two great theatres themselves; and the original reason, therefore, for sup- pressing the minor theatres has, amidst the growing good taste and civilisation of the age, entirely ceased to exist. On the other hand, why is a patent granted to two theatres alone 2 There is but one possible ground—there is but one alleged ground—for the preservation of the dignity of the national drama. Now, how has the patent obtained that object It hap- pens, Curiously enough, that no Sooner were the two great theatres in possession of this patent, than the national drama began to deteriorate, and a love for Scenic effect to supersede it. THE LAWS AFFECTING DRAMATIC LITERATURE. 9 It is a reproach made to Sir Wm. Davenant, it is a reproach made to all the stage-managers under the new patents, that they have always looked, as their chief object in theatrical decora- tion, to a mechanical improvement. This reproach, with more or less justice, has constantly existed—this reproach, with pecu- liar justice, exists at the present time. Indeed, it is impossible to look back to the last fourteen or fifteen years without being struck with the extraordinary poverty of intellect which has been displayed in the legitimate drama, compared with that which any other department of literature has called forth. There have been exceptions, very honourable exceptions; but never has any general rule had fewer exceptions; and I am tempted to ask, with the Lord Chancellor, not how many plays have been produced in our literature, but rather, how many plays have been produced fit for grown-up men and women to go and See ? When the Legislature has given so vast a privilege to two theatres, solely for one object—viz., the preservation of the dignity of the national drama—it is bound in justice to see if that object has been effected. It is bound in justice to say, “where are the plays to produce and encourage which we gave you this exclu- sive privilege 7 Where are the immortal tragedies, where are the chaste and brilliant comedies 2 You were to preserve the dignity of the drama from being corrupted by mountebank actors and absurd performances; you have, therefore, we trust, driven jugglers and harlequins from the national stage; you have ad- mitted no wild beasts; you have introduced no fire-eaters and sword-swallowers; you have preserved the dignity of the na- tional drama inviolate; you have left it such as it was when you took it from the hands of Ben Jonson or Shakespeare; for if you have not done this, then you have not fulfilled that object for which we took from your brethren those privileges we have intrusted to you.” When we look round and behold the diora- mas, and the cosmoramas, and the jugglers, and the horses, and the elephants, and the lions, which have been poured forth upon the stage, we cannot but feel that the dignity of the drama has not been preserved, and the object of these patents has not been fulfilled. Seeing, then, that the reason for suppressing the minor 10 TEIE LAWS AFFECTING DRAMATIC LITERATURE. theatres no longer exists, seeing that the object of these patents has not been realised, we are enabled to take a broader view of the question, and to recognise the monstrous injustice that the law in- flicts on the public ; for is it not absurdly unjust to say to the im- mense and scattered population of this metropolis, you shall go only to two theatres for the harmless recreation of a play—no matter how remote the habitation of the playgoer—no matter how inconvenient for the purposes of hearing and Seeing, the arrange- ment of the theatre 2 Paddington and Pimlico, Westminster and the Tower Hamlets, Mary-le-bone and Shoreditch, are all to disgorge their play-going population in the direction of Covent Garden or Drury Lane; where, when they have at last arrived, they will find, not perhaps a tragedy, not perhaps a comedy, but a very fine scene in a very bad melo-drama—Or perhaps, if they are in eminent luck, a couple of lions and a diorama by way of keeping up the dignity of the national drama. Is not this, indeed, unjust to the public, whom it de- prives of all the numberless advantages of competition? Is it not unjust to the author and the actor, whom it limits to so overstocked and narrow a market 2 But it may be said that the minor theatres, notwithstanding their illegality, continue to exist, and that this injustice to the public is not, therefore, committed. But does not that fact alone afford sufficient ground for inquiry 2 The small theatres are liable to serious penalties. They are told that those penalties will be enforced. If enforced, what injustice on the part of the law If not enforced, what mockery of the law In either case amendment is necessary. Laws that are iniquitous should be altered; but so also should laws that are impracticable. Why expose the laws to be at once hated for their doctrine and laughed at for their impotence 2 Why have all sound and fury in the theory, signifying nothing in the practice? Besides, if the law cannot, in the teeth of pub- lic opinion, shut up the Small theatres, why not let them assume a respectable, a lawful character? What encourage- ment does it give to the proprietors of the minor theatres for a regular and continued spirit of enterprise, while this uncertainty hangs over their head 2. What injustice this precarious uncer- THE LAWS AFFECTING DRAMATIC LITERATURE. 11 tainty of the law causes . One proprietor breaks the law with impunity. The Lord Chamberlain, however, honours the illegal theatre with his presence—sanctions the illegality by his patron- age—and another proprietor, as at this moment is the case, may be suddenly prosecuted and cast into prison for the crime of earning his bread exactly in the same manner as his brethren, but not exactly with the same fortunate impunity. Let, then, these laws be defined, and let them be clear and uniform in their application. Let the public be informed what theatres shall exist, and the actors what performances they shall be allowed to act; and do not let the law keep up iniquitous uncer- tainty, which, while it renders the property of the minor theatres So precarious and illegal, fritters away by contraband far more than it could by open rivalry, the property of the great theatres— involves them in constant prosecutions, and constant litigations, and makes the public ridicule as impotent, or hate as tyrannical, those who enforce the law, and sympathise as martyrs or he- roes with those who defy it. A great cause of the deterioration of the drama, it is universally acknowledged, is to be found in the size of the theatres. It is in vain to expect plays that shall not depend upon show in theatres where it is impossible to hear. The enormous size of these houses renders half the dialogue lost to half the audience, and thus the managers have been compelled to substitute noise, and glitter, and spectacle, and the various ingenuities of foil and canvas, for wit which would be three- parts inaudible, and for pathos which would scarcely travel beyond the side-boxes. It is absurd to hope that the drama can be restored until it is exhibited at houses of a convenient size. But what is the cause of the overgrown size of these theatres 2 Why, the patents | No Sooner were the proprietors of the two great houses in possession of the exclusive right of entertaining the town, than they naturally enlarged their houses, to take in as much of the town as possible. The patents encouraged them to hope for unreasonable profits, and their only care was, to find room for all the new comers whom they thought would be driven into their net—quite forgetful, that though the law might shut up a commodious theatre, it could not force the public to yawn 12 THE LAWS AFFECTING DRAMATIC LITERATURE. and shiver in an inconvenient one. But it is said that the proprietors of one, or both, of the large theatres intend to diminish the size of the theatres, and to make them reasonably less: but while that would be a very fair arrangement for One part of the public, would it be fair to the other part 2 While it would be very fair to those who were admitted, would it be fair to those who were excluded ? Would it be fair to the public to say, “You shall go only to two theatres,” and then to reduce the size of those theatres, so that only a very Small part of the pub- lic might be admitted ? But, as the size of the houses is dimin- ished, the character of the drama will be elevated—a new impetus will be given to the stage—people will be able to hear and see better—many more persons than at present will be de- sirous of going, but where are they to go? Exactly at the time that you would increase the number of the frequenters of the theatre, you will diminish the accommodation afforded them, So that the two houses are in this dilemma; either they must retain their present size, and the legitimate drama must con- tinue debased or banished, or they must lessen their size, and commit a greater injustice to the public, exactly in proportion to the greater improvement they make in the stage. No : while we reduce the size of the theatres, in order to restore the drama, we must increase the number of the theatres in order to receive the public. Now there is also another point I will just touch upon—viz., the authority of the Lord Chamberlain, and more especially that of the Dramatic Censor. It may, per- haps, be remembered, that when Sir Robert Walpole brought in the bill, commonly called the Play-house Bill, in which the authority of the Censor was for the first time settled and defined, Lord Chesterfield said, in his celebrated speech on that bill, “That we were about to give to the Lord Chamberlain, an officer of the household, a power more absolute than that which we would extend to the Monarch himself.” I am at a loss to know what advantages we have gained by the grant of this almost unconstitutional power. Certainly, with regard to a Censor, a Censor upon plays seems to me as idle and unnecessary as a Censor upon books. Let us look back for a moment; although THE LAWS AFFECTING DRAMATIC LITERATURE. 13 until Walpole's Bill the powers of a censorship seem to have been unsettled and doubtful, it is certain, at least, that the Master of the Revels at first, and the Lord Chamberlain after- wards, exercised a right similar to that of a censor. Whole passages in Davenant and in Massinger were expunged by the Master of the Revels. And now mark how really useless, so far as morality was concerned, were the pains he took upon the subject. We know what those passages were ; they contained only Some vague political allusion, and did not contain a line of the indecencies and immorality that might be found in those plays. And why Z Because a Censor sees only with the eyes of his contemporaries, and because the custom and temper of the times Sanctioned the indecency and the immorality. The only true censor of the age is the spirit of the age. When indecencies are allowed by the customs of real life, they will be allowed in the representation of it, and no censor will forbid them. When the age does not allow them, they will not be performed, and no Censor need expunge them. For instance, when the Licenser at this moment might strike out what lines he pleases in a new play, he has no power by strict law to alter a line in an old play. The most indelicate plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, of Wych- erly or Farquhar, may be acted unmutilated, without submitting them to the Censor; but they are not so acted, because the good taste and refinement of the age will not allow them ; because, instead of attracting, they would disgust an audience. The public taste, backed by the vigilant admonition of the public Press, may, perhaps, be more safely trusted for the preservation of theatrical decorum, than any ignorant and bungling Censor, who (however well the office may be now fulfilled) might be ap- pointed hereafter; who, while he might strain at gnats, and cavil at straws, would be without any other real power than that of preventing men of genius from submitting to the caprice of his opinions. There are two other points for the Committee to consider—viz., the number of theatres that shall be allowed, and the performances they shall be permitted to exhibit. With re- spect to the first, I will read a short passage from Sir Walter Scott's Life of Dryden, which is applicable in itself, and 14 THE LAWS AFFECTING DRAMATIC LITERATURE. emanates from no common authority. “I do not pretend,” says Sir Walter Scott, “to enter into the question of the effect of the drama upon morals; if this shall be found prejudicial, then two theatres are too many; but, in the present woful decline of theatrical exhibition, we may be permitted to remember, that the gardener who wishes to have a rare diversity of a certain plant, sows whole beds with the species; and that the monopoly granted to two huge theatres must necessarily diminish, in a complicated ratio, both the number of play-writers, and the chance of anything very excellent being brought forward.” Now, I must confess, for my own part, that I think the public likely to be the best judge as to the number of theatres. On the one hand, I do not think there would be more theatres than could find audiences to fill them ; on the other hand, I think there ought to be as many theatres as the public are willing to support. With regard to the performances, I do not think it would be wise to lay any restrictions on the legitimate drama; for, putting out of the question the difficulty of defining what the legitimate drama really is—a difficulty that would open the door to new disputes and new litigations—I think it is absurd to allow what is frivolous and to forbid what is great ; to allow vaudevilles from the French, and not to allow tragedies from Shakespeare. It is unjust to the public to suffer what is indif- ferent of its kind, and to forbid what is best of its kind; to allow what might lower and enervate the public taste, and not to allow what might refine and exalt it. I would wish the stage to be left altogether free from Such restrictions; and in so say- ing, I do not ask the House to try any novel experiment—I only ask it to leave the drama such as it was in the days of Massinger, and Beaumont and Fletcher, and Jonson and Shakespeare, when seventeen theatres were constantly open to a metropolis a tenth part of the size of London at present, and a population by a hundred degrees less wealthy and intellectual. I now come to the last point I will touch upon—viz., the state of the laws re- garding dramatic copyright. As we have heard a great deal in this House of the advantage of the close boroughs, in returning to Parliament men of intellectual habits, whom some hon, mem- THE LAWS AFFECTING DRAMATIC LITERATURE. 15 bers declare are the representatives of literature, I may ask, what have we done for the literature we represent 2 The state of the law regarding literary property is infinitely more harsh and inconsistent than that existing in France; but the state of the laws regarding dramatic copyright alone, will long be a proof how indifferent this House has been to the general claims of that property, which ought to be the most Sacred of all, because it en- courages all—because it ennobles all—because it produces all— the property that is derived from intellectual exertion. The in- stant an author publishes a play, any manager may seize it— mangle it—act it—without the consent of the author—and with- out giving him one sixpence of remuneration. If the play is damned, the author incurs all the disgrace; if the play succeeds, he shares not a farthing of the reward. His reputation lies at the mercy of any ignorant and Selfish managerial experiment; he may publish a play that he never meant to be acted—that he knows would not bear to be acted ; but if, as in the case of Lord Byron, his name alone would attract an audience, he is dragged on the stage, to be disgraced against his will, and is damned for the satisfaction of the manager, and the dignity of the national drama. He has no power—no interest in the re- Sults of his own labour—a labour often more intense and exhausting than the severest mechanical toil. Is this, I ask, sir, a just state of things? The commonest invention in a calico—a new pattern in the most trumpery article of dress—a new bit to our bridles—a new wheel to our carriages—may make the fortune of the inventor; but the intellectual invention of the finest drama in the world may not relieve by a groat the poverty of the inventor. If Shakespeare himself were now liv- ing—if Shakespeare himself were to publish a volume of plays, those plays might be acted every night all over the kingdom— they might bring thousands to actors, and tens of thousands to managers—and Shakespeare himself, the producer of all, might be starving in a garret ! The state of our laws in this respect is Scarcely credited in foreign countries. In France, no work of a living author can be performed at any theatre, provincial or metropolitan, without his formal consent, on the penalty of for- 16 THE LAWS AFFECTING DRAMATIC LITERATURE. feiting the whole profits to the author. In Belgium, the same law exists, and in both countries the author's family, his widow, his children, succeed to his intellectual property, and for a certain number of years share in its profits. By this a twofold purpose is served; justice is done on the one hand and emulation excited on the other. Shall we, then, be more backward—more unjust than our neighbours; and shall these poor authors who have so much to struggle against, in the common literary calamities of a slender income and a diseased frame, be the only men in the whole community literally denied that necessary blessing pledged by every free State to its subjects—viz., the security of property 2 I trust I have established sufficient ground for the appointment of a Committee ; but, as one of the English public, and as a Member of this House, I am desirous that the age, the nation, and the Legislature may be freed from the disgrace of these laws on the one hand, and this want of law on the other, which are So glaringly unjust in themselves, and so pernicious to one of the loftiest branches of intellectual labour. Sir, I now move for a Select Committee to inquire into the law respecting Dra- matic Literature and the performance of the Drama. III. A S P E E C H I)|ELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 14TH OF JUNE 1832. ON Thursday, the 14th of June 1832, the Member for Lincoln, Mr Edward Lytton Bulwer, moved the House for a Select Committee to consider the propriety of establishing a cheap postage on Newspapers, and other Publications. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Wiscount Althorp, having in the course of the debate which arose thereupon intimated his agreement with the principle of the proposition, the motion was withdrawn. In sub- mitting that proposal to the House the following speech was delivered. SIR-In rising to move certain resolutions for the repeal of the principal taxes on knowledge, I trust that my deep and con- scientious conviction of the necessity of the measure I am about to propose, will be a sufficient excuse for undertaking a task which, if as important as I believe it to be, is equally above my abilities and my station in public life. Those are not light or ordinary motives which, supporting as I do the pre- sent Administration, could induce me to bring forward a measure, not, I trust, opposed, but certainly not sanctioned by them, and which must necessarily be of a nature that it would doubtless better suit their convenience to leave to their own time and their own discretion to determine. But the motives by which YOL. I. B 18 CHEAP POSTAGE ON NEWSPAPERS I am actuated have been so long nursed, and are so strongly felt, that I conscientiously believe they leave me no alter- native. For, when I look round and see the dangerous effects of those taxes in daily operation ; when I see the num- berless pernicious and visionary publications which are cir- culated in defiance of laws, which, having lost the sanction of public opinion (as his Majesty's Attorney-General So justly re- marked some time ago), have lost the power of being carried, With prudence, into effect; when I see that, while the cheap dangerous publication is not checked, we have at least Sup- pressed the cheap reply—for those who would reply are honest and well-affected men; and men honest and well-affected will not break, while they lament, that law which at present for- bids the publication of cheap political periodicals; when I look round and see the results of that ignorance which the laws I desire to abolish foster and encourage, breaking forth not only in wild and impracticable theories, but, as the experience of a few months since has taught us, in riot, and incendiarism, and Crime—when I see them written in the fires of Kent, and stamped in the brutal turbulence of Bristol, I feel that, in this parliament, and at this period of the session, I do but fulfil my duty in pointing out the evils of the present system, and the manner in which, I conceive, they may best be remedied. Can it possibly be said the time is unseasonable for the con- sideration of any question which relates to national morals and to the waste of human life? Sir, I shall proceed, at once, to call the attention of the House to certain facts, which will tend to show why it is our duty and our policy to diffuse cheap instruction amongst the people, and I shall then show in what manner that instruction is, by the existing taxes, checked and obstructed. From an analysis, carefully made, of the cases of those persons who were committed for acts of in- cendiarism, &c. &c., in 1830, and the beginning of 1831, it ap- pears that in Berkshire, of 138 prisoners, only 25 could write, and only 37 could read ; at Abingdon, of 30 prisoners, 6 only could read and write ; at Aylesbury, of 79 prisoners, only 30 could read and write; of 50 prisoners tried at Lewes, one in- AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS. 19 dividual only could read well! Now, when we remember that it is not sufficient to read, but that, to derive any advantage from that ability, there must also be the habit of reading, how Small a proportion of these unfortunate men can be said to have pos- Sessed any positive instruction . The same connection between crime and ignorance exists in France. In 1830, it appears that in the French courts of assize there were 6962 accused persons. Out of this number 4519 were entirely ignorant of reading and writing, and only 129 had received a superior education. It may be said that, as ignorance and poverty usually go together, it is in these cases the poverty that sinned, while the ignorance is only the accident that accompanies the poverty. But this notion I can contradict from my own experience. My habits have necessarily led me to see much of the condition of those men who follow literature as a profession, and I can say that this city contains innumerable instances, among well-informed and well-educated men, of poverty as grievous, as utter, and certainly as bitterly felt, as any to be found among the labouring population of Kent or Norfolk. Yet how few among these men are driven into crime ! How rarely you find such men retaliating on Society the sufferings they endure | The greater part of offences are offences against property; but men, accustomed to inquiry, are not at least led away by those superficial and dangerous notions of the injustice of the divisions of property, which men who are both poor and ignorant so naturally conceive and so frequently act upon. The knowledge which cannot, in all cases, prevent them from being poor, gives them at least the fortitude and the hope which enable them to be honest. If, then, it is true, as the facts I have stated seem to me sufficient to prove, that there is an inseparable connection between crime and ignorance, it follows as a necessary consequence that it is our duty to remove all the shackles on the diffusion of know- ledge—that poverty and toil are sufficient checks in themselves —that the results of any checks which we, as legislators, volun- tarily impose, are to be traced, not only in every violent and dangerous theory instilled into the popular mind, but in every outrage the people ignorantly commit, and every sentence of 20 CHEAP POSTAGE ON NEWSPAPERS punishment, transportation, and death, which those outrages oblige us to impose ! It is, then, our duty to diffuse instruc- tion in all its modes. Yet I think it will be scarcely neces- Sary for me to contend that newspapers are among the readiest and most effectual instruments for diffusing that instruction. In the first place, they have this great advantage—they are the most popular. A certain traveller relates that he once asked an American why it was so rare in America to find a man who could not read? The American answered, “Because any man who sees a newspaper always in his neighbour's hand, has a desire to see what pleases his neighbour, and is ashamed not to know what forms the current topics of conversation.” In fact, no man can have lived in a city without observing the extra- ordinary appetite for intelligence on passing events, which the life of a city produces among all classes, from the lowest to the highest ; and it has been justly said, that you may note even a greater crowd round a newspaper office, with the day's journal at the window, than at the most alluring of the caricature shops. A newspaper is, in truth, almost the only publication (religious ones excepted) that the poorer classes are ever tempted to read; and, above all, it is the only one in which they can learn those laws for the transgression of which ignorance is no excuse. Thus, it has been well remarked that every account of a trial, every examination at Bow-Street, every dogma of my Lord Mayor, has for them not only an interest and an amusement, but also a warning and a moral. A newspaper, then, is among the most popular and effectual modes of instructing the people. And now mark the interdict laid on the newspapers: the pre- sent taxes upon newspapers consist first of a duty of 3d. per pound weight on the paper, or about a farthing a sheet; second of a duty, nominally 4d., but subject to a discount of twenty per cent; * and, third, a tax of 3s. 6d. upon every advertise- ment. The whole duties, with the price of printing and the news agency, amount to 5%d. for every sevenpenny copy of a * That is, on the daily, but not on the weekly, papers; the weekly papers paying at the date when this speech was delivered the full duty (4d.) without discount. AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS. 21. London paper. Now, let us glance rapidly at Some of the Con- Sequences of the high price at which newspapers are sold. In the first place, owing to that price, the instruction they contain does not travel extensively among the poor. In the second place, as only the higher and the middling orders can afford in general the luxury of these periodicals, so it is chiefly to the tastes and interests of those wealthier orders that these journals address themselves. They contain, it is true, much that is valuable, much that is necessary to the poor, but they do not give to them that advice, and those frequent suggestions and admonitions upon matters of trade, or points of law, which would necessarily be the case were the poor among their cus- tomary supporters. Even in mere style, that which suits the richer is not always attractive to the poorer people; and thus, as in this free country you cannot prevent men of all ranks from seeking political intelligence, the poorer people, finding themselves debarred from the general use of these expensive papers, and finding, when they do obtain them, that they are not often addressed in a style seductive to them, are driven almost inevitably to those illegitimate, those dangerous pro- ductions, cheaper in price, and adapted almost exclusively to themselves. It is thus that the real political education of the people is thrown into the hands of the wildest, and sometimes the most pernicious teachers; and while we are erecting new props and new buttresses to the gorgeous palaces and Solemn temples of the Constitution, we are suffering that dark and stealthy current of opinion to creep on, which, if not speedily checked, must sap both temple and palace in the very midst of our labours. I should like honourable Members to know the real nature of publications thus circulated. I will not read any extracts to the House, because I know the House objects to that course: but I deny that there is much justice in the argument that by So doing we should give notoriety to publications other- wise obscure. The fact is, that for the class to which they are addressed they are not obscure. Are honourable Members aware that many of these publications circulate to the amount of several thousand copies weekly 7 that their sale, in several 22 CHEAP POSTAGE ON NEWSPAPERS instances, is larger than the sale of some among the most popular legitimate papers ? that their influence over large bodies of the working classes is much greater ? A very in- telligent mechanic, in a manufacturing town, with whom I have recently had occasion to correspond, writes to me in one of his letters, “We go to the public-house to read the sevenpenny paper, but only for the news; it is the cheap penny paper that the working man can take home and read at Spare moments, which he has by him to take up and read over and over again, whenever he has leisure, that forms his opinions.” “You ask me,” said another mechanic, “if the ‘Penny Magazine’ will not counteract the effect of what you call the more violent papers. Yes, in some degree: but not so much as is supposed, because poor men, anxious to better their condition, are always inclined to politics, and the ‘Penny Magazine’ does not touch upon them. To correct bad politics you must give us not only liter- ature, but good politics.” Do honourable Members know the class of publications thus suffered to influence the opinions of our fellow countrymen 2 I speak not about such as are aimed at mere forms of government: who indeed shall say what opinions on such subjects are pernicious or not ? But are honourable gentlemen aware that some of these publications strike at the root of all property, talk of the injustice of paying rents, insist upon an unanimous seizure of all the lands in the kingdom, declare that there is no moral guilt in any violation of law, and even advocate assassination itself . Thus, then, it is clear that the stamp duty does not prevent the circulation of the most dangerous doctrines. It gives them, On the con- trary, by the interest which the mere risk of a prosecution always begets in the popular mind, a value, a weight, and a circulation which they could not otherwise acquire. Above all, let it be borne in recollection, that while these are circulated in thousands the law forbids all reply to them—or if, in despite of fact, you call the legitimate papers a reply to them, then, even by your own showing, you sell the poison for a penny, and the antidote at sevenpence. My proposition is not at present to touch the paper duty; it is a tax which, in the present state AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS. 23 of the revenue, may be fairly spared, and which, though a grievance, does not fall nearly so heavily on the public as the two taxes I am desirous of abolishing : the first of these is the stamp duty—the second is the advertisement duty. Take away the stamp duty, and the 7d. paper will fall at once to 3}d: but I am inclined to believe—and in this I am borne out by many impartial practical men on the subject—that owing to the great increase of sale which the cheapness of the article will produce, the newspapers will be enabled to sell at a much lower rate than 3%d., and will probably settle into the average of 2d. each. The great point, and the first to consider, is, will the number of newspapers published through the year increase to any very large extent 2 All my argument rested upon that point— partly as relates to the diffusion of knowledge—partly to the profits of a postage. To me it seems a self-evident proposition that when it no longer requires a vast capital—a capital from between £30,000 and £40,000—to set up a daily newspaper, when it is open to every man of literary talent, with a moderate sum, to attempt the speculation, there will be a great and Sudden increase of newspapers. To me it seems equally evi- dent, that when newspapers are so cheap as to be within the reach of almost any man, there will be an enormous addition to the present number of readers—that many who hire a paper now will purchase it *—that many who now take one paper will then take two—that the intelligent mechanic, who now, in every town throughout the country, complains that he cannot afford to purchase a paper, will spare, at least once a-week, his twopence or his threepence from those ale-house expenses he is now induced to incur for the very sake of reading or hearing read the paper he will then be able to buy—that, in short, when a weekly paper shall cost only twopence, there will Scarcely be, in this great political community, a single man who can read, who will not be able and willing to purchase one. But I shall rest no part of my case on propositions only —however evident they may seem to me—I will not stir a step * The hire of a morning paper, for a time scarcely sufficient to read one-half of it, was at the period of the delivery of this speech, 2d. 24 CHEAP POSTAGE ON NEWSPAPERS without the support of facts. Honourable members have often heard of a certain contraband paper, set up by Mr Carpenter, called ‘The Political Letter’—it is published at fourpence : of this paper the average sale weekly is 6000 copies. Made Sanguine by his success, Mr Carpenter took out a stamp; * and his paper became sevenpence. What was the consequence 2 Why the paper could no longer exist; from a sale of six thou- sand copies it fell in the very first week to a sale of five hun- dred. Surely that is a most important fact : for here is a journal in all respects exactly the same, except in price, but it can sell six thousand copies one week when sold for 4d, and only five hundred the next week when sold for 7d. There has lately been a sensible falling off in the sale of these illegitimate papers. Why? Not from any increased severity of the law— not from any want of political excitement—not, Surely, from any great prosperity in trade, which usually deters men from any inflammatory speculations. No, but because of late a great number of penny literary papers have been set up, and these have been found to interfere with and contract the sale of the contraband journals. Now, as literary papers, after all, are not what the poor particularly want, how much more would the Sale of these illegitimate journals have been crippled, had some of these innocent literary papers been innocent political ones? But the great sale even of these cheap literary papers (‘The Penny Magazine,' for instance, is said to sell 120,000 copies) proves how general is the desire of the people for such perio- dicals as they can afford to buy, and how great would be the increase of political periodicals, were they made as cheap as my motion would make them. But, besides these proofs that the cheapness of periodicals will incalculably increase their sale, we have the experience of other countries that it actually does. In America a newspaper sells on the average for 1%d. What is the result 2 Why, that there is not a town in America with 10,000 inhabitants that has not its daily paper. Compare Boston and Liverpool: Liverpool has 165,175 inhabitants; * Mr Carpenter took out the stamp because he would not continue his pub- lication without one, when a jury had determined that doing so was an illegal act. AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS. 25 Boston had, in 1829, 70,000 inhabitants. Liverpool puts forth eight weekly publications; and Boston, with less than half the population, and with about a fourth part of the trade of Liver- pool, puts forth eighty weekly publications ! In 1829, the number of newspapers published in the British Isles was 33,050,000, or 630,000 weekly, which is 1 copy for every 36th inhabitant. In Pennsylvania, which had only in that year 1,200,000 inhabitants, the newspapers amounted to 300,000 copies weekly, or a newspaper to every fourth inhabitant What is the cause of this mighty difference 2 The cause is plain. The newspaper in one country sells for a fourth of what it sells for in the other. The newspapers in America sell for 1%d., and in England for 7d. From all these facts (to which I could add innumerable others), we have a right to suppose that, if newspapers were as cheap—as they would be, if my object were carried—the number of copies would be prodigiously in- creased. Thus, information would circulate far more exten- sively; thus, matters connected with trade, Science, and law, would become more familiar; thus, there would be a thousand opportunities for removing those prejudices among the poor which now so often perplex the wisdom and benevolence of legislators. A great number of trades would have journals of their own; a great number of the more temperate and disin- terested friends of the people would lend themselves to their real instruction, and, by degrees, ºthere would grow up that community of intelligence between the Government and the people which it is the more necessary to effect at a time when we are about to make the people more powerful. It is thus that Ministers would have it in their power to reply to those honourable gentlemen, who have said the working classes are too ignorant to be trusted with the elective franchise—at the same time that we grant the trust we should dispel the ignor- ance Ministers have been told they have created a monster they cannot control. On the contrary, they have won the monster to themselves. Instead of making a ferocious enemy of a gigantic and irresistible power, they have softened it by kindness. Let them, at the same time, enlighten it by know- 26 CHEAP POSTAGE ON NEWSPAPERS ledge | Lord Eldon, on the 29th of November 1830, at the time of the agricultural insurrections, made use of these re- markable words—“Many, very many of the agricultural ill- surgents are not aware of the criminality they have been led to commit. There could not be an act of greater mercy to the misled and deluded people, than to have the nature and provi- Sion of the criminal law explained. I do hope that those learned men who are to be sent into the disturbed districts, will take the trouble of explaining to their deluded and mistaken fellow-countrymen, the law of the land, and the reason of the law, and the reason why it is for their interest and the interest of the community at large that it should remain the law of the land.” In those words Lord Eldon did but adopt the principle I am desirous of expressing. But there is this difference be- tween us; Lord Eldon adopted the principle when it was too late | He made the warning go hand-in-hand with the punish- ment, and he sent the people instructors, and a special Com- mission at the same time. Sir, I have One more argument for urging the immediate adoption of my proposal—one reason for considering it a necessary appendix to Reform—we have passed the Reform Bill. Suppose we do not break the present mono- poly of the five or six newspapers, which now concentrate the power of the press, what will be the consequence % Why, this. In a reformed parliament, will not a ministry too entirely de- pend on some one or two of the most influential newspapers for support 2 What the close boroughs have been, may not the existing journals become 7 Do I Speak against the respect- ability of the present press 7–No, considering the vast power they possess, the wonder is not that they have so often, but so seldom abused it. Am I, then, opposed to granting that power to the press 2 Such a notion as that would be nothing less than ridiculous ! While types and paper exist, that power must continue. But then, it ought to be a free press, and not a mere monopoly. Every shade of opinion should find its organ. Power should exist, but that power should be a re- presentation, not an oligarchy. Why exchange an oligarchy of boroughs for an oligarchy of journals 2 But might we not AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS. 27 injure the interests of the existing papers?—Injure their sale 2 I think we owe too deep a gratitude to their Services for any of us willingly to do so. The competition will divide their power, but the cheapened price will increase their sale. If the stamp duty is the pernicious tax I am attempting to show it, what ought we to say of the advertisement duty 2 Advertise- ments are the medium of commercial intelligence of sale and barter. The first principle of a statesman is to encourage that intelligence. Yet here are we laying an interdict of 3s. 6d. On every announcement of it. In the excellent letters which the editor of ‘The Scotsman’ has addressed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the ill effects of this tax on our commerce is shown by a reference to America, in which country advertising is un- taxed. In one year, twelve of the daily papers in New York have published 1,456,416 advertisements. In the same year, the four hundred papers of Great Britain and Ireland published 1,020,000 advertisements: so that there are nearly one half more advertisements published in the twelve daily papers of New York, than in all the four hundred papers of Britain and Ireland, including the London journals. What is the cause of this preposterous disparity? Is it not the price? The price of an advertisement of twenty lines, in a London paper, if pub- lished every day throughout the year, will amount, at the year's end, to £202, 16s. In New York, the same advertisement, for the same period, will be £6, 18s. 8d. Is not that a sufficient cause for the difference? Need we look further ? May we not call this tax, in the words of ‘The Scotsman, an engine for ex- tinguishing business, and for obstructing and depressing all the various branches of trade 2 If such is the effect of this duty on our commerce, how does it affect our literature ? A book must be advertised largerly in order to sell: advertising is the chief expense. What is the consequence 2 Why, that, as it costs as much to advertise a cheap book as to advertise a dear one, the bookseller is loth to publish a cheap one. He cares more about the number of pages in your work than he cares for the number of your facts. You tell him of the materials you have collected, and he asks you if he can sell 28 CHEAP POSTAGE ON NEWSPAPERS them for a guinea. This operates two ways: 1st, It degrades literature into book-making; 2dly, It is a virtual interdict upon cheap knowledge. In both ways, the public are irrepar- able losers; and all for what? For the sake of about £157,000 to the revenues of the wealthiest country in the world ! So much, Sir, for the taxes I would repeal.-I now come to that which I would substitute. I do not think, however, that it will be a sufficient argument from the noble lord to say the revenue cannot bear the loss of these taxes, while there is any other conceivable source from which revenue can be drawn. It is not the amount of taxation under which we groan, it is the method of taxing. It is too much, for instance, that we should make knowledge as dear as possible and gin as cheap ! that we should choke the sources of intelligence, and throw open the means of intoxication | What volumes in the mere fact that at Manchester there are a thousand gin-shops, and that at Manchester there is not one daily paper | Squeeze, then, new profits from the excise duties, augment the assessed taxes, odious and unwise as those taxes are. Any tax is better than the one which corrupts virtue, and the other which stifles commerce. It is not, then, enough to reply that the Govern- ment cannot spare these taxes, and therefore, even if my sub- stitute be doubtful, the doubt makes in no way against my main proposition. The plan I would propose is a cheap post- age, in the following manner: namely, that all newspapers, poems, pamphlets, tracts, circulars, printed publications of whatsoever description, and weighing less than two ounces, shall circulate through the medium of the general post at the rate of one penny; and if through the 2d. Or 3d. post, at one halfpenny. I would also propose that all works under five ounces shall circulate through the same channels, and at a low and graduated charge. The principle of this plan has been al- ready successfully adopted in France and America. In France, we may see how little it operates as a check on the circulation of the metropolitan papers. For, if we look at home, we shall find that from 1825 to 1829 there has been little variation in the number of copies sent from London into the country; AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS. 29 while in France, where the cheap postage is adopted, the num- ber of papers sent daily by post from Paris in 1825 is 25,000 copies; in 1829 it was 58,000 copies; and it is well stated by Mr Chadwick, a gentleman admirably acquainted with these matters, that while, during those years, letters have increased 50 per cent, newspapers have increased more than 80 per cent. Certainly a most important fact, in answer to those who contend that persons will be unwilling to pay a postage, and that such a plan will operate against the diffusion of the me- tropolitan newspapers. It has been proved to demonstration in fact that there would be a vast increase of papers if only the stamp duty were but once abolished. What might that in- crease reasonably be supposed to amount to ? In America there is one newspaper, weekly, to every fourth person. Sup- pose one newspaper, weekly, to every eighth person in England. I take that calculation from the reading proportion of our population. The publication of weekly papers throughout the year would then be one hundred and fifty million copies. But the present total number of sheets, weekly and daily, published throughout the year, is thirty millions. So that the increase of weekly papers alone over all now published would be 120 million sheets yearly. Now, the weight of daily papers of the largest size is 881b, per 1000 copies, which pay a duty of 3d. per lb., or 22s. per 1000 copies (say 20s); this makes the paper duty £1000 sterling for every million sheets. Now, we find at present that two-thirds of the London papers go by post. Suppose for one moment this ratio to continue with the increased number, the account to the revenue would stand thus: Postage of weekly papers . & tº . £416,666 Extra paper duty for the extra 120 million sheets 120,000 Total & . £536,666 But this is only for weekly papers; add now all the daily papers —those published twice or three times a-week—the pamphlets —the tracts—the prospectuses—the various publications sent through the post, and if you only calculate these at an equal Sum to that produced by the weekly papers, the results will be 30 CHEAP POSTAGE ON NEWSPAPERS more than a million sterling; from which, if you took £300,000 to pay the expenses of carriage, distribution, &c. (a most extrav- agant calculation), you would still leave more than the profits of the two taxes I am desirous of repealing ! A more minute cal- culation would produce, I am satisfied, even a far higher result. When we remember all the complicated interests, the vast trades, the numerous intellectual wants, of England—that the average talent and enterprise here is at least equal to that in the United States—capital greater, printers’ labour cheaper, and that increased appetite for intelligence would be produced by increased freedom in our institutions, is it unreasonable to suppose that the demand for papers might at length equal that in the United States ? But there, to every 10,000 inhabitants there is a daily paper, sell- ing at the lowest ratio 2000 copies. Suppose the same in Great Britain and Ireland, and for a population of 24 millions you would have 1440 millions of sheets published yearly. Now, reckoning that two-thirds of these would be transmit- ted by post, the result would be 4 millions sterling; add extra paper duty of £1,440,000, and the total would be £5,440,000. And now Suppose two-thirds of the papers should not go through post—I do not believe they would ; suppose not one went through the post—suppose they did away with the postage altogether, still the extra paper duty alone would be £1,440,000—viz., more than double the whole of the two taxes I am asking you to re- peal. So profitable, sir, might be the diffusion of information If knowledge is power to its possessor, its diffusion is wealth to a State. Sir, I come to the last consideration—the method of transmission through the post. In France the plan has been so systematically arranged, that the best way would be to borrow their details. The main machinery is already formed; if extra expenses in distributing should be required, the enormous profits would cover those expenses. And you may readily see what those profits would be to Government by simply ascertaining what they are to an individual speculator. The average weight of the largest-sized daily papers is 88 lb. per 1000 copies; say 90 lb. Now, persons engaged in transmitting luggage by the AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS. 31 Swiftest conveyances, compute the charge at 1d. per lb. for every 100 miles; this for 90 lb. would be 7s. 9d., the price of carriage; but the 1000 newspapers, at 1d. each, would be £4, 3s. 4d.—cer- tainly an ample profit to allow for the expense of distribution, which would leave a clear profit, after all the expenses are paid, of £3, 15s. 10d. This, sir, is all I deem it necessary to say of the plan of a postage at present, for my resolution only goes to ap- point a committee to consider the propriety of adopting such a plan, and farther details are, therefore, at present unnecessary. I have been the more anxious to submit my calculations on this head to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, because at one time it was understood that the noble lord contemplated not the repeal, but the reduction of these taxes. Now, I would consent to a large reduction in the advertisement duty (though I think the total repeal most desirable), but I could conceive no reduction in the stamp duty which would not leave in equal, if not greater force, the obnoxious principle, the tempting premium, and the unjust prosecution. What could be so monstrous in principle as that any tax should be requisite for a man to publish his opinions? A tax on Opinions is a persecution of opinion,--it is a persecution of poverty also. If we say that no one shall declare his senti- ments without paying a certain sum, and if not being able to afford that sum he yet does publish his sentiments, and is fined (that is, in consequence of his poverty, cast into prison) for the offence, you make war on his poverty, not on his principles. You punish him not for the badness of his principles—you punish him not for the badness of his opinions; but you punish him, because, being poor, he yet dares to express any opinions at all. Is truth confined to the rich 2 Who were the great fathers of the Church 2 Could they have expressed their opin- ions if a tax had been necessary to allow them that expression? We have been monopolising the distribution of other blessings; let us, at least, leave opinion untaxed, unquestioned, unfettered, the property of all men. Sir, I have now nearly finished. I have attempted to show that the stamp duty checks legitimate know- ledge (which is morality—the morals of a nation), but encourages 32 CHEAP POSTAGE ON NEWSPAPERS the diffusion of contraband ignorance; that the advertisement duty assists our finances only by striking at that very commerce from which our finances are drawn—that it cripples at once Our literature and our trade—that the time in which I call for the repeal of these taxes is not unseasonable—that it would be no just answer that the revenue could not spare their loss, and yet that I am provided with an equivalent which would at least re- place any financial deficiency. Do not let us believe that there is anything in the diffusion of information which is hostile to Our political security At this moment, when throughout so many nations we see the people at war with their institutions, the world presents to us two great, may they be impressive, examples In Denmark, a despotism without discontent—in America, a re- public without change The cause is the same with both—in both vue people are universally educated. What consoles man- kind for inequality in condition like the consciousness that there is no barrier at least to equality in intelligence 2 We have heard enough in this house of the necessity of legislating for property and intelligence; let us now feel the necessity of legislating for poverty and ignorance At present we are acquainted with the poorer part of our fºllow-countrymen only by their wrongs, their murmurs, their misfortunes, and their crimes; let us at last open happier and wiser channels of communication between them and us... We have made a long and fruitless experiment of the gibbet and the hulks; in 1825 we transported 283 persons, but so vast, So rapid has been our increase in this darling system of legisla- tion, that three years afterwards (in 1828) we transported as many as 2449. During the last three years our jails have been sufficiently filled; we have seen enough of the effects of human ignorance—we have shed sufficient of human blood; is it not time to pause ?—is it not time to consider whether, as Christians and as men, it is our duty to correct before we attempt to instruct whether, by sentencing to criminal penalties men ignorant both of the nature of the offence they commit and of the penalties to which they are subject, we do not reduce for them all legislation into one great ea post facto law Is it not time to consider whe- AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS. 33 ther the printer and his types may not provide better for the peace and honour of a free state than the jailer and the hang- man 7–whether, in One word, cheap knowledge may not be a better political agent than costly punishment? Deny my motion, you cannot deny my facts; by these facts alone, and the atten- tion which they have received, I have made no inconsiderable progress towards the attainment of that object I have so dearly at heart. VOL. I. C IV. A S P E E C H DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 27TH OF FEBRUARY 1833. ON Wednesday, the 27th of February 1833, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Wiscount Althorp, moved the Second Reading of the Bill for the Suppression of Disturbances in Ireland. The member for Lambeth, Mr Charles Tennyson (afterwards the Right Hon. Charles Tennyson D'Eyncourt) thereupon moved that the Bill should be read again that day fortnight. A discussion upon this arose which lasted for five nights—the amendment being rejected at its close by 466 votes to 89. The following speech was delivered on the first night of the debate in seconding the amendment. § I STIALL accept the hint of the noble Lord, and take the least dispassionate, if not the most constitutional, view of the argu- ment. I shall leave it to others to oppose these laws, because they are tyrannical and oppressive. I will oppose them on the ground to which the noble Lord invited me, because they will be inefficacious—because they will not obtain the objects for which they are demanded. Hon. Members must not suppose, because I or other English members oppose these laws, that they deny the crimes that exist in Ireland—or that they are unwill- ing to co-operate with Government in devising some remedy for those offences. What we complain of is—first, that these SUPPRESSION OF DISTURBANCES IN IRELAND. 35 powers will not contain the remedy; and, secondly, that even if they did, the remedy will be worse than the disease. I con- tend that the remedy is worse than the disease : a violation of law is a terrible evil—a suspension of law is a still greater one. It is useless to read a catalogue of crime—that is not the ques- tion; prove to us how these laws will be applied to the crime —it is useless to tell us that in the present system there is evil and danger; prove to us that there will be less evil and less danger in the law you demand. I say these laws will not ob- tain their object: in the first place, what are the crimes for which the noble Lord demands them 7 Not for ordinary offences —no, for the crime of murder. It is instances of murder that the noble Lord has adduced. Will it be believed that murder is the very crime these laws do not embrace 2 Your Court Martial is to sit upon capital offences, but can only transport for life. Murder is not a transportable offence. It does not receive, them, its sentence from the Court to be established. You deal only with subordinate offences—you attack the mis- demeanour, and you leave the crime. Again, what is the great grievance complained of by the noble Lord in the administration of justice? That the witness dares not give evidence in a Court of law—that a son shrinks from arraigning the murderer of his own father. A terrible proof of the disorder to which a legis- lation of long and unvaried coercion has brought that unfortunate country. I join in lamenting it—I will join in devising cures for it ; but there is no cure for this contemplated in your new powers. The witness would be exposed to exactly the same danger under the Court Martial as in the Court of Taw. You may compel him to give evidence by the threat of imprisonment; but when he has given his evidence, how will you protect him 2 He will be exposed to the same danger—the same, did I Say? No, to a much greater danger. For the new tribunal will be more odious than the old; and in proportion to the odium of the tribunal, will be the vengeance against the witness. Oh but say his Majesty's Ministers, we shall pacify the country, and thereby disarm in- timidation, and then the witness will become safe. Before you 36 SUPPRESSION OF DISTURBANCES IN IRELAND. have pacified the country, I apprehend that some half-a-dozen witnesess will be shot at, in order, perhaps, to encourage the rest. But pacify the country—pacify it by domiciliary visits, by Court Martials—by O rare pacification The right hon. Gentleman has not been to Ireland in vain. He has learnt, at least, the science of practical bulls—he would pacify a country by maddening its people ! But what is this tribunal itself Ż You take away the Court of Law because you say it cannot, under existing circumstances, be a fair Court for the plaintiff. You appoint, in its stead, a Court Martial, which, by no possi- bility, can be a fair Court for the accused | Sir, I will not say, as my Lord Holland did—my Lord Holland, one of his Majesty's Ministers, upon the proposition of continuing Martial Law in Ireland—I will not, like him, speak of a Court Martial as a Court which, under no circumstances, could be legally adopted —I will not speak of it as a Court governed only by passion and caprice; but I say, on the contrary, that more humane and honourable men than British officers do not exist. Yet, how, with all their high and strict code of opinion—how with that spirit of discipline which with them is a principle of virtue— how is it possible that they can be impartial judges in political offences—in offences of insubordination ? If there be a man in the world more proverbially gentle and humane than another, it is Major Wyndham—the defendant in Somerville's memorable case; and if in political offences—offences of even supposed in- subordination, passion could lead even such a man to injustice, how can you hope that the same causes will not operate to pro- duce partial bias against peasantry accused of the same offences of political audacity and insubordination to their superiors ? But how much more will this unconscious partiality—still more dangerous, because unconscious—be increased by actual events 2 The military are to assist the police in conflicts with the people, and then they are to judge the people; they are to be in the contest to-day, and on the Bench to-morrow ; with all the passions of antagonists, they are expected to have all the mo- deration of judges. Why, Sir, what sort of tribunal is this This impartial—this cool—this unbiassed ? You Say that these SUPPRESSION OF DISTURBANCES IN IRELAND. 37 officers are free from the prejudices of the Magistrates. It is an error: it is with the Magistrates—with the provincial gentry, that they will habitually mix. From whom can they, ignorant of the country, take information, but from those persons with whom society brings them into contact 2 They will see with the eyes of the Magistrates—it is their opinion they will re- present, and according to their partialities will they judge. Thus, then—I beg hon. Members to mark this—thus you are about to suspend the Constitution, to inflame all Ireland, to out- rage all liberty, for the sake of appointing a tribunal which does not possess the requisite qualities fairly to adjudge the offence —which does not give the necessary protection to the witness— which does not meet the very crimes for which alone you ask us to appoint it. If these laws only touched, only threatened the guilty, I should recoil from so terrific a precedent ; but they menace the innocent also. If you suspend the Constitution, you Suspend it for all alike—you make no exemptions from the dread ban of general excommunication. You subject the inno- cent and the guilty alike to spies and informers—to the arbitrary perils of Suspicion—to those dark uncertainties of terror in which every man stands in fear of his neighbour. You give temptation to the accusation of private revenge; you give a field to all the mercenary, all the malignant, all the individual motives which are ever brought into operation by the suspension of law, and the insecurity of political freedom. The right of petitioning—is that the right of the guilty alone 2 Have not the innocent grievances to complain of ? If not, why do you pass your remedial measures 2 Why do you reform the Church? Why do you amend the Jury Laws? Why do you allow that these are but the commencement of more comprehensive redress 2 You allow there are great grievances remaining, and you take away from those who endure them the simple privilege of com- plaint. Does that law touch the guilty alone? Does the right of forcibly invading houses by night where you merely suspect the inhabitant—does that touch the guilty alone 7 When this law was in force before, men turned it to the most fearful pur- poses; it was not the peasant who was invaded in his own person 38 SUPPRESSION OF DISTURBANCES IN IRELAND. —he was outraged in that of his sister or his wife. It was a law that operated not for a trembling landlord, but for the daring violator—not in behalf of the security of property, but against rights still more Sacred than even property itself. It is in recollection of this state of things that the Chief Justice of Ireland—a man whom I name with all respect, and an authority of weight, I presume, with the right hon. Gentleman opposite— said, in his address to the jury, that he remembered the date of the summary Insurrection Act, and the still more summary Court-Martial, and that no description could convey an adequate notion of the horrors that then existed. And by whom is it decreed that these horrors, of which no description can convey an adequate notion, are to be revived ? By the most liberal and enlightened Ministry that, with respect to the affairs of England, this empire has ever known—by the very men who, in times of greater danger—times not of peace, but of war—not of robberies but of rebellion—stood foremost, and boldest, and loudest, against the enactment of the very laws they now call upon us to pass. We take the time for exercising new coercions at the very mo- ment when, by our new experiment of conciliation, we have virtually declared that seven centuries of coercion have been unavailing. Why, Sir, not embrace the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman? Why not wait to try the result of that experiment 2 Why not wait to see the consequence of our new measures of Reform 2 I am sure that no people on the face of the earth can be governed by the system his Majesty's Ministers propose. To-day concession—to-morrow coercion. This quick alternation of kicks and kindness—this coaxing with the hand, and Spurring with the heel—this system, at once feeble and ex- asperating, of allowing the justice of complaint, and yet of stifling its voice—of holding out hopes and fears, terror and conciliation, all in a breath, is a System that renders animals and men alike —not tame, but Savage—is a system that would make the most Credulous people distrustful, and the mildest people ferocious. Your object is to govern Ireland. I allow it is no easy matter. Wherever a highly civilised people is united under the same Constitution with one less prosperous and less enlightened, the SUPPRESSION OF DISTURBANCES IN IRELAND. 39 task of Government is no sinecure. We must, as practical states- men, in Such a case look not only to abstract measures, but to the complex and varied state of those parties on whom the measures must operate. Ireland is divided into two parties—the Protestant aristocracy and the Catholic population. You must govern Ireland by one or the other of these parties, unless, by a happier policy, you can procure the united confidence of both. But the system proposed by his Majesty's Ministers, instead of making friends of either party, makes enemies of the two. By your measures of Church conciliation you offend the Orange aristocracy—by your measures of military coercion, you incense the body of the people—you pass a scythe under your power in both parties—you make one enemy of all Ireland. Can any- thing be less politic or less statesman-like 2 You throw away the conciliatory measures—you get the odium for them, and not the gratitude. Do what you will—if you pass these laws, Iwarn you that it will be in vain. You can never counterbalance, in the opinion of the Irish people, this attack upon the vitals of their freedom. No individual reforms, however salutary, can pacify or content a nation that you rob of its Constitution. It would be much wiser to be consistent in a harsh policy than weak and contradictory in a mild one. If you make these laws, you ought to suit your other laws to them—if the country is in a state to require these powers, it is not in a state to receive the benefits you offer it ; it cannot be fit at the same time for an improved code of laws and a Court Martial as a judicial body. It is said that these powers will be placed in merciful hands, and be administered with all the mildness of arbitrary benevo- lence. But how can his Majesty's Ministers answer even for this? How can they answer for the mercy of their military delegates? Mercy and these laws are incompatible. The mildest administration of Such powers would be severe, because their victims will never recognise them to be just. Mercy, too, would be an inhumane policy. If you obtain these powers, exercise no mercy. If you allow the people a hope of escape, you may be sure that they will tempt great dangers to resist so obnoxious a state of law. An unpopular law mercifully ad- 40 SUPPRESSION OF DISTURBANCES IN IRELAND. ministered is only an excitement to crime. No, you can show no mercy. The most humane policy will be to gorge the law as expeditiously as possible, so that we may return the Sooner to the natural and healing tranquillity of the Constitution. After the reception that has been given to the right hon. Gentleman's disavowal of hostility, it might be useless in me to state, that, however weak and ineffectual my opposition to this Bill may be, it ought, at least, to have this weight—it comes from one who does not oppose his Majesty's Government generally. I do not agree with some hon. Members in suspecting their future policy with regard to England; nor do I agree with other hom. Members in attributing to them dishonest motives with regard to their conduct in Ireland. I support the Government when I conceive them right. I give them the same support when I think their conduct doubtful, for I will then give credit to their intentions, and estimate their difficulties. I oppose them only when I do from my conscience believe and feel them to be dangerously Wrong. I would wish, even in this Bill, to meet as far as I can their views and objects. I do not ask you to alter the Bill— only delay the Bill—try what even three weeks will do; if then there is no progress to a better state of things—(I say progress, for you cannot expect more than progress even if you pass the Bill—you cannot cure the evils of centuries in a day), come down to this House and pass the measure. I do not say, then, that I would ask for no amendment of the detail; but only show me this decorous and honourable reluctance to pass the Act, and I, for one, will, though I may still condemn, no longer op- pose the principle. In this haste there is no show of moderation. A bill that changes liberty into despotism is hurried through the Lords in one week, brought down to this House, and you refuse us the delay—the inquiry of a fortnight. With what consistency can this House oppose itself to so trifling a conces- sion ? It required two years to amend the Constitution of England. Shall we not wait two weeks before we unmake the Constitution of Ireland. You will lose nothing by delay. Ministers allow that if they obtain this law they will not call it into operation at once; they will not use it unless Some neces- SUPPRESSION OF DISTURBANCES IN IRELAND. 41 sity demands. Why not let it rest in this House as well as in the hands of the Government 2 Why should the Ministers rush so hastily into the odious responsibility of this dangerous power ? Let it rest, unaltered, unmutilated, in this House; postpone it Only from week to week, ready to be passed the instant it is re- quired; passed too with less delay and less acrimony than at present ; with much less excuse for prolonged and detailed op- position—much less reluctance in the English Members—much less procrastination—much fewer adjournments and debates—I will venture to say, even from the most indignant of the Irish Members themselves. The same purpose of terror will be an- Swered ; the Irish people will equally see this armed law hanging Over their heads—they will see what penalty they must incur by crime. Thus perhaps you will obtain all the good that the passing of the law can secure, but without the same actual and formal violation of liberty—without provoking the same exas- peration, or incurring the same responsibility. Let us, then, try this experiment—let the Government make this wise pause —they will lose nothing by it; they may gain much. No One can blame them for cowardice, for reluctance, in a little while sus- pending a law by which the Constitution itself is suspended. In the observations I have made, I have endeavoured to show that these new powers are not effective because they are violent ; that they will not constitute an impartial tribunal, nor protect the witness, nor meet the crimes for which they are demanded; that they confound in one blind punishment the innocent with the guilty; and that, forming part of a contradictory and jarring system, they suffice to annihilate the benefits of conciliating one party without the advantage of conciliating the other. This is not all. You desire them to put down the Political Associations as well as those that are combined only for plunder. You may do so, but you will only throw the eruption into the Constitu- tion—you will only destroy the outward sign of the disease by increasing its inward violence. We are the true quellers of agi- tation, who would give no cause to agitate. We are the true tamers and masters of the learned Member for Dublin, who would take from his hands his only Substantial power—the 42 SUPPRESSION OF DISTURBANCES IN IRELAND. power of just complaint. You flatter yourselves that under shelter of those laws you will be able, with effect, to apply your remedial measures: it is just the reverse—they will blight all your remedies, and throw their own withering shadow over all your concessions. I do not fear an open rebellion against the armed force and discipline of England; but if you madden the people, it is impossible to calculate the strength of insanity. But I allow that an open rebellion is the least evil to be feared—I fear more a sullen, bitter, unforgiving recollection, which will distrust all our kindness, and misinterpret all our intentions— which will take all grace from our gifts—which will ripen a partial into a general desire for a separate legislation, by a settled conviction of the injustice of this; so that at last the English people themselves, worn out with unavailing experi- ments—wearied with an expensive and thankless charge—and dissatisfied with a companionship which gives them nothing but the contagion of its own diseases, will be the first to ask for that very dismemberment of the Empire which we are now attempt- ing to prevent. I shall conclude with a very few words, to be found in One of the most splendid orations that adorn our time —I mean the speech of Lord Brougham on the second reading of the Reform Bill. I quote it not as an instance of inconsist- ency—this question is far too wide to be reduced to the petty criteria by which individuals are acquitted or defended. I quote it only as an instance of that large and Catholic wisdom which is applicable to all circumstances and all times. In answer to Some observations which had been directed against political associations, Lord Brougham Said, “Those portentous appear- ances, the growth of later times—those figures that stalk abroad, of unknown stature, and strange form—unions, and leagues, and musterings of men in myriads, and conspiracies against the Exchequer—whence do they spring, and how come they to haunt our shores? What power engendered these uncouth shapes — what multiplied the monstrous births, till they people the land? Trust me, the same power which called into frightful existence, and armed with resistless force, the Irish Volunteers of 1782—the same power which rent in twain your SUPPRESSION OF DISTURBANCES IN IRELAND. 43 empire, and conjured up thirteen republics—the same power which created the Catholic Association, and gave it Ireland for a portion. What power is that ? Justice denied the right of petitioning—rights withheld—ay, Trial by Jury—wrongs perpetrated—yes | domiciliary visits —the force which common injuries lend to millions. This it is that has conjured up the strange sights at which we now stand aghast ! And shall we persist in the fatal error of combating the giant progeny, instead of extirpating the execrable parent 2 Good God! Will men never learn wisdom, even from their own experience 2 " From their own experience I repeat the interrogatory of Lord Brougham, and I add, will you not learn wisdom from the speeches of Lord Brougham himself. He added, “Nor can you expect to gather in any other crop than they did who went before you, if you persevere in their utterly abominable husbandry, of sowing injustice and reaping rebellion.” W. A S P E E O H DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 22D OF MAY 1834. ON Thursday, the 22d of May 1834, the Member for Lincoln, Mr Edward Lytton Bulwer, moved in the House:– *- “That it is expedient to repeal the Stamp Duty on Newspapers at the earliest possible period.” After a good deal of discussion the House was divided, when the motion was rejected by 90 votes to 58. On bringing forward his resolution the following speech was delivered. SIR,-The great pressure of business in the last Session, and a variety of those incidents which so often and so unexpectedly start up in the way of any independent Member bringing for- ward a motion in this House, has obliged me to defer the ques- tion now before the House from time to time until this evening. I am at length enabled, however, to fulfil a pledge which I gave to the country, and a duty which I owe to myself: I am not sorry for the delay—truth never loses by delay. The question is not now what it was when I first introduced it to this House —a new question, coldly agitated without, Supported only by the inquiring and speculative few, and screened from the eyes of the people by a variety of other objects, more clamorous and REPEAL OF THE STAMP DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS. 45 more exciting. Since then it has been taken up throughout the country; it has been made a test of principle at the general election; and if hon. Members remember this evening the wishes of their constituents and their own pledges, I shall not fear the result of the decision to which they are about to come. Let the House consider, then, the small amount of the tax; let it listen patiently to the statements and the facts I shall adduce as to the substitute I propose; let it remember the importance attached to the subject in the last election ; count the number of petitions that have been presented to the House from every large town throughout the kingdom; and then, as an additional argument in favour of the motion, recollect that it has obtained favour and support throughout the country without any en- couragement from the newspapers (the greater part of which naturally incline to a tax which confers the monopoly and the market upon themselves), without the excitement of tumultuous meetings or inflammatory harangues. It is from the quiet and deep heart of the people themselves that has come forth the prayer I am now supporting for the free circulation of opinion— for the enlarged and the untaxed diffusion of knowledge, not of politics alone, but of the debates of this very Assembly—of the proceedings of the Courts of Law—of the affairs of foreign states, and of that vast miscellany of information connected with a thousand branches of utility and morals which newspapers furnish to the world. And when the people themselves come forward, even amidst the pressure of financial distress, with this generous and hearty desire for their own intellectual improve- ment, I know of no popular request which is more worthy the character of a great nation—which ought to be more gladly welcomed by a Representative Assembly, or more frankly acceded to by an enlightened Government. When the noble Lord, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, brought forward his budget last year, I was surprised to hear no less a person than the right hon. Baronet, the member for Tamworth, observe, in excuse for the noble Lord in repealing the stamp duty upon newspapers, that he believed the newspapers were not loudly complaining of the burthen they endured—that they seemed tolerably con- 46 REPEAL OF THE STAMP DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS. tented with the imposition, and would probably be acquiescent in its continuance. The right hon. Baronet was cheered in that remark, and, therefore, there must be hon. Members in that House who supposed, what I can scarcely believe the right hom. Baronet unaffectedly supposed, that the stamp duty is a tax of which only the existing newspapers have a right to complain. Why, did any one ever hear of any monopolists complaining of a monopoly % When the House opened the trade of India, was it the East-India Company that insisted upon a repeal of their charter ? This tax is a charter to the existing newspapers—it is not they who suffer from it—it is the public—it is the Government—it is order—it is society that suffers Just let the House consider—the stamp and paper duties, with the price of printing and the news-agency, amount to 5%d. for every 7d. copy of a newspaper. The consequence of this heavy taxation is this, the capital required to set up a newspaper (what with the expense of reporting, of acquiring foreign intelligence, &c.) is so enormous as to be estimated for a morning paper at from £30,000 to £40,000; this extravagant demand frightens away new competitors, and thus the papers already established enjoy a monopoly. They are quite contented to pay a heavy tax which Secures to themselves the public market, and are naturally eager to resist a repeal of the burthen which would immediately sur- round them with a crowd of rivals. The existing papers, there- fore, do not suffer by the tax, but I will tell the House who does—the people suffer, and that to an extent which few men have sufficiently considered. In the first place, the high price of the legal papers prevents, in a great measure, their reaching the poor—I mean the operative and the mechanic. What is the consequence? why this, it is an axiom in our excise legisla- tion, that whenever a commodity is taxed above fifteen per cent, Smuggling necessarily ensues. But you tax the newspaper more than 100 per cent; and the result is, the enormous circulation of all manner of contraband publications. The writers in these papers can scarcely be well affected to the law, for they break the law ; they can scarcely be reasonable advisers, for they see before them the penalty and the prison, and write under the REPEAL OF THE STAMP DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS. 47 angry sense of injustice; they can scarcely be safe teachers, for they are excited by their own passions, and it is to the passions of a half-educated and distressed population that they appeal; in fact, I have seen many of these publications—nothing could be more inflammatory or dangerous. One paper takes a particular fancy to the estates of the Duke of Bedford—another paper has been remarkably anxious for the assassination of the Duke of Wellington (a laugh). Gentlemen may laugh at these notions; they are contemptible enough to us, but it is not to us that they are addressed ; they are addressed, week after week, to men who have not received any education, and whom poverty naturally attaches to the prospect of any violent change. These notions might be easily controverted; they might be scattered to the wind, for the English operative would listen to reason, or he would not ask you to repeal this tax; but the Legislature will not allow them to be controverted—will not allow them a reply —they never are replied to—the legal newspapers (addressing a higher class of readers) do not condescend to notice them; even if they do, the cheap newspaper is read where the dear one does not penetrate. You either forbid to the poor by this tax, in a great measure, all political knowledge, or else you give to them, unanswered and unpurified, doctrines the most dangerous. You put the medicine under lock and key, and you leave the poison on the shelf. You do not create one monopoly only, you create two monopolies—one monopoly of dear newspapers, and another monopoly of smuggled newspapers. You create two publics; to the one public of educated men, in the upper and middle ranks, whom no newspaper can, on moral points, very dangerously mislead, you give the Safe and rational papers; to the other public, the public of men far more easily influenced— poor, ignorant, distressed—men from whom all the convulsions and disorders of society arise (for the crimes of the poor are the punishment of the rich)—to the other public, whom you ought to be most careful to Soothe, to guide, and to enlighten, you give the heated invectives of demagogues and fanatics. I might stop here and say that I have made out my case. What more need be said to prove that this is a tax that ought to be repealed? 48 REPEAL OF THE STAMP DUTY ON 'NEWSPAPERS. What greater curse can a Government bring upon itself than that which it must experience if it permits the circulation of the most dangerous opinions and suppresses the reply to them 2 Of what greater crime can a Government be guilty than that of allowing the minds of the poor to be poisoned?—than that of pandering to their demoralisation?—and, if demoralisation leads to guilt, and guilt to punishment, of encouraging the wanton sacrifice of human life itself? When it is said that, if we open the market to cheap papers, all kinds of trash will be poured in, those who say it are not aware of the trash that now exists, that is now circulated in defiance of laws, of fines, and of jails. During the present Administration, from 300 to 400 persons have been imprisoned for merely selling unstamped publications in the streets—have been punished with the utmost rigour— sent to herd with felons and the basest outcasts of Society; and what has been the consequence 2 Have we put down the publications themselves? No! We had only raised their authors into importance among that part of the population they address; and, instead of silencing fanaticism, we have exalted the fanatic into the martyr. If there is one true axiom in the world, it is this—that opinion only can put down opinion; and if bad doctrines are afloat, we can only refute them by the propagation of good doctrines, and, therefore, it was wisely said the other day by a noble Lord (the Secretary of State for the Home Department) in answer to Lord Winchilsea, who urged him to prosecute the unstamped publications, “that prosecution might only give them a double publicity.” But in what a con- dition, then, are the Government placed? They leave a law on their Statute-book to which they dare not apply—a law which, when dormant, gives a monopoly to the disaffected; and when exerted, only feeds still more the disaffection. If we do not use it, we are injured; if we do use it, we are injured doubly. We are like a man who keeps a bull-dog so fierce that it is good for nothing; it worries both friend and foe ; when chained, the robber escapes; when let loose, it turns upon its master. And a worthy task it is for the Minister of England to be waging this petty war with bill-stickers and hawkers . To let the paper REPEAL OF THE STAMP DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS. 49 itself go free, to pounce upon the man who sells it—to level the thunders of the law upon some ragged itinerant, Some pedlar of the Press, and then skulk behind the Stamp-office Commis- Sioners, and say, “They did the deed—it is not we who prosecute —it is our agents at the Stamp-office.” Miserable subterfuge — pitiful excuse ! The Ministers have the law in their own hands; and they are answerable for every prosecution instituted in the name of the law. But how much worse is it, how much more indefensible, if they who attack cheap knowledge are themselves the members of a society for the diffusion of cheap knowledge If it is with a penny magazine in one hand that they attempt to strike down the penny newspapers with the other, it is carry- ing into the State the jealousies of trade; it is saying, “We will give you information; but whoever else gives it to you, him we will punish and destroy ; we will tell you about animals and insects, and give you pictures of ruins and churches, with all Such infantine trumpery—the hobbyhorse and rattle of educa- tion; but whoever unfolds to you the Secrets of your laws, the machinery of your State, the mighty events that inspire the age and animate the world, him we have the Stamp Commissioners to prosecute, and the laws of our Reformed Parliament to con- demn.” But them comes an important question—if newspapers are allowed to be cheap, shall we have good doctrines propagated in answer to the bad? I have every authority for Saying we shall. [Here the hon. Member quoted a speech of Dr Birkbeck, in which he mentioned that Dr Arnold of Rugby, Dr Whately of Oxford, and other men of high eminence, were willing to instruct the poor on matters of trade and political economy, &c., if the stamp duty were removed.] In fact, we may perceive by the sale of the ‘Penny Magazine,’ and of Chambers's excellent ‘Edinburgh Journal,” that the poor have a disposition to instruct themselves, if the instruction be only placed within their reach. Nay, what to others seems most dry is often to them most in- teresting, for the poor live by labour and by trade, and all that enlightens them as to the direction of labour and of trade has a charm, and even an amusement, which the gentlemen of this House are scarcely able to comprehend. In looking to France, VOL. I. D 50 REPEAL OF THE STAME? DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS. where newspapers are so cheap in comparison to ours, and yet where a much Smaller proportion of the poor are educated, we cannot but observe, 1st, that a much larger number of the eminent men of that country are engaged in instructing the people through the medium of the Press; and, 2d, the difference in the number of journals in the two countries devoted to solid instruction upon useful points. Besides its political papers, Paris has ten journals devoted to advertisements, judicial notices, and commercial announcements; twenty journals de- voted to jurisprudence, eight to education, twenty-One to Science, and twenty-two to medicine. Who can doubt that these are of the most eminent advantage to the people % Who can assert that this country, embracing a much larger reading public, would not have, at least, an equal number, if newspapers were equally cheap, and it were permitted, by the intermixture of news, to attract the poor to the graver portions of the journal? But the advantage of cheap newspapers is not only in giving to the poor such instruction as the newspapers might contain; but it is even greater in habituating the minds of the poor to read and to apply themselves to information generally. It is a remarkable fact, that nearly all the popular reading-Societies in the kingdom are first formed by the desire to read the news- papers. In a part of the evidence on the late Poor-Law Com- mission, one very intelligent witness being asked if he did not think the ‘Penny Magazine' had been useful in giving an intel- lectual bias to the poor, answered, “Undoubtedly; but I think cheap newspapers would do much more good, in training their minds to the desire of reading, and paving the way for general information.” Thus, then, the advantages of cheap legal news- papers are, first, that to every bad opinion a good opinion (the natural effect of competition) is opposed—that the poor obtain all the instruction that newspapers contain—that they are thereby stimulated to seek other information of a more Solid kind; and I might add that by newspapers alone they learn the nature of the laws and the punishments of Crime. This, then, is a tax operating in favour of bad opinion and against good opinion—operating against information, not of politics only, REPEAL OF THE STAMP DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS. 51 but of laws; not against knowledge only, but virtue; it gives per- quisites to the jailer and fees to the hangman; sowing the seed in ignorance, that they may reap the harvest in crime ! The noble Lord allows it to be a bad tax, yet he does nothing to repeal it ! Shame on the Reformed Parliament, if it sanction these laws any longer | When I look round this House, and observe the apathy with which hon, gentlemen listen to this subject, I cannot withstand drawing this parallel. In the worst times of modern France, with a Bourbon on the throne, with a Villèle in the administration, when it was proposed by a despotic Government to a servile Chamber to tax the press in France as it is now taxed in England, in order to prevent the circulation of knowledge, and to put down by the tax-gatherer the enlighten- ment they dared not assail by the soldier, the whole Chamber, subservient as it was, rose against the proposal They would not war upon knowledge Are Englishmen less free or less enlightened, that they can support, with patience, that which in the French Chamber was rejected with indignation and scorn ? In the remarks I addressed to the House in the Session before last, I proved, I cannot but think, to the Satisfaction of the noble Lord, that, both by the evidence in this country, and that through Europe generally, we find that ignorance and crime universally go together; and that, on examining the education of felons committed to jail and sentenced to transportation or death, the vast majority of criminals possess not even the ele- mentary knowledge of reading or writing. This fact has been universally borne out by the evidence on Secondary punishments —on the Poor-Laws Commission—on the Sabbath Committee; and if this, then, be true, I tell the noble Lord that it is not enough to improve the laws, to amend the representation, if he continue taxes which he himself acknowledges are a premium to ignorance, and through ignorance the avenue to death. It is said that the schoolmaster is abroad; I can see his rod, but not his books. We seem to reverse the old story of Dionysius; the tyrant has not become a schoolmaster, but the schoolmaster has become a tyrant. When Louis XVI. was condemned to the Scaffold, his defenders besought the judges to recollect by how 52 REPEAL OF THE STAMP DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS. Small a majority that unfortunate monarch was condemned. “True,” replied the judges, “but it is by a small majority that the most important decrees are enacted,” “Yes,” said one Solitary voice in that assembly; “but decrees, if unjust, can be repealed; but the life of a man can never be restored.” So I say to the noble Lord: if, in his high capacity of Minister of State, he commits some error in mere legislation, the error can be retrieved ; but if, after being duly warned, he suffers one peasant's mind to be misled, and one peasant's life lost, by the darkness and demoralisation of these laws, he commits a fault which cannot be atoned—a bad law may be repealed, but the life of a man can never be restored. I will say no more of this tax itself, but I will come at once to the substitute I pro- pose for it. I propose to repeal the stamp duty on newspapers altogether; and, in the first place, I suggest the propriety of laying a cheap postage, not upon newspapers only, but upon all tracts, periodicals, and works of every description under a cer- tain weight. I propose that this postage shall be equal, what- ever may be the distance, so that the remote parts of the country may possess the same advantage in obtaining knowledge as those immediately in the vicinity of the metropolis; and, there- fore, requiring information less. I do not know that on this point I could add much to the calculations that I had the honour to submit to the House in the Session before last. I beg leave to say that those calculations have never been to my knowledge contradicted or impugned. The debate was very widely published ; several thousand copies were circulated; it was submitted to many practical men. Yet despite this pub- licity, despite the notice it received generally from the Press, no contradiction was given to the facts I then urged. I have, therefore, a right to assume, until Such contradiction is made and proved, that my calculations were correct. In America, owing to the absence of this tax, newspapers are so numerous, that there is one weekly paper to every fourth person. I will only take half that proportion for this country. I will suppose, that if we abolish this tax, there will be a weekly newspaper only to every eighth person. The result will be, for the popula- REPEAL OF THE STAMP DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS. 53 tion of Great Britain and Ireland, 150,000,000 sheets of weekly newspapers throughout the year. Now, two-thirds of the London papers (it appears by the Returns) are sent at present through the post. . Suppose, for one moment, that this ratio continued with the increased numbers, what will be the amount at 1d. postage % Why, the amount will stand thus:—Postage of weekly papers, £416,666. But this is for weekly papers only. Now, calculate the daily papers, and those published two or three times a-week; calculate also the tracts, the prospectuses, the pamphlets, sent through the post, and reckon all these only at as much again; the total would be £833,332—that is to say, the produce will be just double the amount of the tax I now ask you to repeal, and this calculation is formed upon the Sup- position that the newspapers in this country, if as cheap as those in America, will yet be only, in proportion to the population, one-half of the number of the American papers. And this must be allowed to be a moderate calculation, when it is con- sidered that capital is greater in this country, that printers' labour is cheaper, and that everywhere the appetite for know- ledge, even among the poorest part of the people, is on the daily increase. But the noble Lord made, on a former occasion, one objection to this plan: he argued, that since the newspapers would be sold without the charge of postage in London, the effect of the plan would be to tax the provinces for the benefit of the metropolis. With all due submission to him, I think he there suffered himself to be led away by a commonplace fallacy. In the first place, a postage is not a tax upon newspapers, it is the price of carriage; it is the necessary result of living at a distance from town, that the carriage of anything must be paid for, not newspapers only, but books, luggage, parcels of all descriptions. This is the unavoidable consequence of situation; and you might just as well call it a tax to charge a man for the carriage of coals from Newcastle to London, as call it a tax to charge a man for the carriage of a newspaper from London to Newcastle. In the second place, if it be thought a hardship to pay a penny for a newspaper in the shape of postage, how much greater is the hardship to pay, 4d. in the shape of duty . If 54 REPEAL OF THE STAMP DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS. you dislike to tax the provinces a penny, ought you not to dis- like much more to tax them 4d. 2 or did you fancy, that when the cost was one-fourth part of what it is at present, that the people will acquire an additioual right to complain Besides it will, in effect, weigh pretty evenly on both the metropolis and the large provincial towns, for, at present, not one large manu- facturing town can afford a daily paper. Take away the tax, and every large town will have its paper—a paper of its own, at all events, the town would enjoy without the burthen of postage; and in the large towns, many papers will be devoted to particular branches of commerce or trade, which will be im- portant to those who live in the metropolis, so that if many papers are sent from London, many also will be sent to it. Thus, then, by the postage alone, and according to a moderate calculation, I have attempted to prove, that we should receive double the amount of that trumpery tax; I have endeavoured to prove also, that the only objection against it is fallacious. But that I may not seem wedded to any particular plan, I will now, if the noble Lord wishes it, concede to him all he could desire; I will suppose that the postage of newspapers will not bring in what is expected; I will suppose that it brings in no- thing, but merely covers its expenses—nay, I will throw the whole scheme aside altogether. Well, I should even then be on equally strong ground, for by the mere removal of this tax, three other sources of revenue Suddenly arise; the first, indeed, depended also upon the plan of postage—I mean the profits arising from the postage, not of newspapers, but of all light works under a certain weight, all tracts, circulars, &c. I do not think the noble Lord is aware of what an immense source of revenue this may become. In the first place, look at all the religious tracts that will be circulated if they may be sent to every part of the country at one penny each Look at the number of societies of every description, Scientific, trading, moral, religious, that will correspond by such circulars Observe at public sales alone the expenses sustained in advertising ! Every auctioneer, every Robins of the rostrum, will send forth circulars announcing the treasure he is about to dispose of. REPEAL OF THE STAMP DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS. 55 Take the prospectuses of booksellers alone. In a very able Letter which has been addressed to the noble Lord by Mr Whiting, head of a respectable printing establishment, in the Support of postage for light works, he calculates that of pub- lishers' prospectuses (if they come within the weight admissible) 2000 postages will be created daily. Another source of revenue by simply repealing that tax, will arise from the great increase of advertisements. Most of the newspapers set up will obtain Solne advertisements, more or less—some of them will probably be devoted to peculiar trades and callings, and into such papers a vast increase of advertisements connected with those trades and callings will be poured. At present the reduction of the advertisement duty is not so profitable to the public as it ought to be, because the monopoly of the London papers enables them to keep up a disproportionably high price on advertisements. The effect of a vast competition will be, to lower the proprietor's profit on advertisements, to make advertisements considerably cheaper, considerably more plentiful, and, therefore, while most advantageous to the public, most profitable also to the revenue. But the principal source of profit that will arise to the Ex- chequer from the mere repeal of this tax, is in the increase of the paper duty alone, and this, I am persuaded, will be so enormous as of itself to do more than compensate to the re- venue. Just let the House compute what the increase of the paper duty will be. I suppose that you abolish the tax, and make papers as cheap as they are in the United States; we shall then have—shall I say—as many ?—newspapers in pro- portion to the population. - No, let us suppose only half as many as there are in the United States. There, to every 10,000 in- habitants, there is a daily paper, selling at least 2000 copies. I will suppose that in Great Britain and Ireland there is a daily paper to every 20,000 inhabitants, selling at the same pro- portion. What in that case would be the result 2 Why, for a population of 24,000,000 you would have 720,000,000, sheets of paper published yearly. Now, then, papers pay a duty of 22.S. per 1000 copies—let me say 20s-that is £1000 for every 1,000,000 papers; the produce in that case will be £720,000 56 REPEAL OF THE STAMP DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS. for the paper duty of the 720,000,000 papers; but at present there are only 30,000,000 papers published throughout the year —that is, the profit they yield to the paper duty is only £30,000. Deduct that £30,000 from £720,000, and there remain for the extra paper duty, for the new profit to the revenue, £690,000, or about £150,000 more than the whole profit of the tax I am asking you to repeal. So that I can now say to the noble Lord, “Throw aside, if you please, the plan of the postage; believe, if you like it, that not a paper will be sent to the post ; believe that not a pamphlet, a tract, or a circular, but what will be sent by the coach at the charge of 1s., rather than by the post at the charge of 1d. Suppose, too, that not a single advertisement will be obtained by any of the newspapers, and that the advertise- ment duty remain the same, and yet, by the increase of the paper duty alone, you will gain £150,000 more than the present tax, which you allow to be a barrier to knowledge and a premuim to immorality.” Have I made out my case ? Is it necessary to say anything further? One or two observations alone remain. In the first place, I shall propose my resolutions in the most moderate and general terms possible. I shall merely propose to repeal the stamp duty on newspapers at the earliest possible opportunity. I shall say nothing about the postage (I have merely thrown that out as a suggestion); the certain substitute to the revenue in the repeal of the tax itself is the increased amount of paper duty, and I am unwilling that any man object- ing to a postage shall pretend thereby to excuse himself from voting against the tax upon knowledge itself. If the resolution be carried, the noble Lord will not be put to any immediate in- convenience; it will only establish the principle, which the next Session will suffice to carry into effect. When the hon. member for Bath last Session brought forward his motion for Na- tional Education, what was the reply made by the noble Lord to his hon, friend ? “I doubt,” said he, “if a Government should establish education. Its duty ought to be not to enforce know- ledge, but to give every facility to knowledge.” I now call upon the noble Lord to discharge that duty upon the principle which the noble Lord himself then laid down. I call upon the noble REPEAL OF THE STAMP DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS. 57 Lord to give every facility to knowledge, I call upon the noble Lord to remove the tax because it is the great national obstacle to knowledge. I am no alarmist; I do not behold a storm in every cloud, or a revolution in every change. A great nation is not easily made, and a great people are not easily undone. But oppressed as we are with financial difficulties—old and new principles at war—the elements of our legislative con- stitution almost at open discord with each other, it is above all things necessary that whatever changes may be forced by the multitude upon their rulers, shall emanate from their en- lightenment and not from their passion or their blindness. If there is a spectacle which all true patriots, all statesmen of large views, behold with exultation or delight, it is the gradual rise of a great people into power by the necessary and Safe consequence of knowledge alone. But if, on the other hand, there is one prospect from which all honest men recoil with dread, it is, in times of difficulty and trouble, the advance of the giant force of a democracy from whom the opportunities of knowledge have been carefully excluded; who, therefore, have only the stimulus of want, without the perception of relief, and who are exactly calculated to frustrate the objects of liberty, because they are impatient of restraint. I call upon the noble Lord to preserve us from that danger—I call upon the noble Lord to fulfil the pledge which his public character, for nearly thirty years, has given to the country in favour of his attach- ment to the diffusion of knowledge—I call upon the noble Lord to be alive to the high ambition worthy his principles and his name—to open the prison-house of the mind—to remove the fiscal chains that now fetter and Cramp Opinion—and finding knowledge the monopoly of the rich, to leave it the inheritance of the poor. The hon. Gentleman concluded by moving the following resolution:—“That it is expedient to repeal the Stamp duty on newspapers at the earliest possible period.” WI. A S P E E O H DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 21ST OF AUGUST 1835. ON Friday, the 21st of August 1835, the Member for Lincoln, Mr Edward Lytton Bulwer, pursuant to notice, moved that the House should resolve itself into a committee to consider the question that for the more general diffusion of knowledge it is expedient that the Stamp Duty on Newspapers be reduced to One Penny. During the discussion which ensued the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer (Wiscount Althorp) having pledged himself to repeal the tax, if the revenue could bear it, the motion was withdrawn. On bring- ing forward his resolution the following Speech was delivered. SIR,--I can assure the right hon. gentleman that I am exceed- ingly glad of the delay that has taken place in the bringing forward of this motion. I am exceedingly rejoiced at the con- versation which has just taken place, and which, I am satisfied, will be hailed with the greatest pleasure by the country. I am also glad that my motion has been delayed until so many and so respectably-signed petitions have been presented in favour of it. The present motion is not a novel one, as on two former occa- Sions a similar one has been brought forward, and therefore I can assure the House that I will not occupy its time for more than a few moments. I am sure the right hon, gentleman (the Chan- REDUCTION OF STAMP DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS. 59 cellor of the Exchequer) will acquit me of the least desire to embarrass the Government. I have supported the Ministers out of power humbly, zealously, but disinterestedly ; but I support them with still greater pleasure now that they are in power, be- cause hitherto they have nobly justified the grounds on which I desired their restoration to office, and never, I believe, more than by their speeches of this evening. That considerable ex- citement prevails upon this subject throughout the country, it is in vain to deny. I will appeal to the member of any manufac- turing town, and ask him if the Repeal of the Taxes on Know- lede is not one of the most popular demands among his consti- tuents 2 I have looked at the Report of the Select Committee on Public Petitions, and Ifind that the number of petitions presented upon this subject, during the present session, greatly exceed the number in favour of Municipal Reform, and are double the num- ber praying for the abolition of tithes. More, in fact, have been presented praying for the repeal of this than have been presented for the repeal of any other tax. The right hon, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said the other day, with great propriety and great eloquence, that he would not consent to purchase popu- larity upon false and unreal grounds; but I would ask the right hon. gentleman one question—What has made the real, lasting, and merited popularity of the present Government 2 Has it not arisen from their consistent advocacy of liberty of opinion? In Catholic Emancipation—the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts—in Parliamentary and Municipal Reform Bills? This has been the main principle of their policy, and it has had its reward. Is it, therefore, on unreal grounds that I ask of my right hon. friend to repeal this tax? The Ministers have given voice to opinion, and that voice has supported the power which created it. All I ask of my right hon. friend is, to give the same liberty of opinion to writing which he and those associated with him have obtained their influence and reputation by giving to speech and action. The whole expression of public opinion, in a peri- odical shape, is at present confined to the narrowest oligarchy that ever disgraced a free Country. No man can publish a news- paper—that is, no man can Write periodically upon the news of 60 REDUCTION OF STAMEP DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS. the day, or the debates in Parliament, or any domestic or foreign affairs, without paying fourpence upon every sheet in the shape of a tax. The result is, that the legal market is altogether con- fined to great capitalists and exclusive monopolists, while a large and cheap market is opened to smugglers. I am aware that if you take away the whole duty, papers such as the ‘Times’ will still require an immense capital; but still a number of papers, upon a thousand subjects interesting to the great bulk of the population, will be published, which will not require so much capital. It is perfectly absurd to see only five or six morning papers for the active, thoughtful, and stirring population of this country. This is not the case in America, where a single district supports as many morning and evening papers as the whole of England. But I need only refer to England itself to show the operation of this tax. In 1792 there were thirteen morning and twenty evening papers published in London—although at that time the population numerically must have been much less, and the reading population not one-half what it is at present. It is absurd to talk about the liberty of the Press in England so long as the taxes on knowledge continue as at present—it is in vain to make holiday speeches about it saying, “it is the very air we breathe, and if we have it not we perish,” when the Press is the only means of expressing the opinions of which the condition is a large capital and the result a severe monopoly. It has been urged that if the newspaper press is rendered cheap, it will be- come bad and worthless, and that if the market is widened, the commodity will be deteriorated. Why, if this argument were used as to any other article of trade, a man would be set down as an idiot. If a dozen persons only were allowed to sell spec- tacles, and a proposition was made to allow every person to sell them, would not the statesman who told you that in that case . spectacles would be good for nothing, deserve to be laughed at 2 The analogy holds good with everything—the greater the compe- tition the greater the chance of excellence, and the wider the market the better the commodity. But this truth obtains more with respect to literature than anything else. Does the history of literature tell you that a man writes well in proportion as he REDUCTION OF STAMEP DUTY ON NIEWSPAPERS. 61 is wealthy, and that the extent of his knowledge or genius is in proportion to his stock in the three per cents 2 I am afraid you will find that the reverse is the fact. If a tax of 200 per cent, which is that now imposed upon newspapers, were placed upon any other species of literature, it would long since have put an extinguisher upon all the best literature in the country. What extinguished the ‘Spectator’? Was it not the tax of one penny ? The eloquence of Addison and the wit of Steele could not make head against a penny tax. How many “Spectators’ in politics of equal talents may you not have extinguished by a tax of four times the amount 2 I will ask my right hon, friend what difference is there between political periodical writing and any other writing 2 Are they not subject to the same laws—created by the same intellect—influenced by the same competition, and improved by the same causes 2 There is only this difference between them, that political, and particularly periodical political writing, is much more generally useful and important than any other description. If I was a poor man, and had not read the ‘Rambler,' or the ‘Spectator,' or Shakespeare, or Milton, I do not well see how I should stand a greater chance of being impri- soned, or transported, or hanged. But were I a poor man, and did not read the newspapers—if I did not know what new laws were passed surrounding me with punishments—if I did not know what was legal and what was illegal—I should be liable to suffer through ignorance, and thus this tax of fourpence which keeps numbers of persons from obtaining the more useful knowledge, subjects them to crime and exposes them to the gallows. I can compare the system to nothing but the mon- strous tyranny of shutting men up in a dark room, and declar- ing that they shall be severely punished if they stumble against the numerous obstacles by which they are surrounded. I con- fess I do not share in the feelings entertained by some hon. Members against the present newspaper press. Where a great power exists it is sometimes abused, but the wonder appears to me to be that its powers have been so seldom abused. I hope I have shown that I am above the meanness of flattering or fawn- ing upon this formidable engine of praise or censure, by having 62 REDUCTION OF STAMP DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS. been the first person to bring forward a substantive motion for the repeal of the existing monopoly; and therefore it is that I think I may be allowed to bear witness to the talent, respecta- bility, character, and accomplished education of the great mass of the gentlemen connected with the periodical press. I use this, not as a compliment, but as an argument in favour of my motion. It is precisely because the press is thus able and ex- cellent that we ought to extend its advantages as widely as possible. Can any one suppose that these gentlemen will write worse when they have a larger community to address 2 But it is said, “if they write for the multitude they must pander to their base passions.” Whoever makes that assertion knows very little about the multitude. Look at the papers which please the great mass of the people, and you will find articles on science, trade, education, the steam-engine, and matters which would appear tedious to us. They do not desire their bad passions to be aroused—they seek to have their minds enlightened. They live by labour and seek to know how that labour may be best directed. I am afraid it is we—the idle rich—“the lords of luxury and ease,” who require a false and meretricious excite- ment—who alone support the disgraces of the press—who encourage the slander and scandal, the venom and frivolity, which were first wrought into Sundry libels, not by a radical journal, not by a heartless demagogue print, but by a paper professing a hatred of democratic principles and dignifying by its support the Tory cause. It pretends to furnish the gossip of the Court, and the tittle-tattle of the aristocracy. If you look at the large news- papers which circulate among the great mass of the people, you will find in them the most varied information, the most argu- mentative writing, and a great freedom from private calumny, vulgar slander, and personal abuse. But it may be said—if you make the press free, many dangerous and revolutionary political doctrines may be published. Doubtless, there will be, as now, doctrines of all sorts—the good and the bad 2 But who is to decide what is good and what bad 2 Some hon. Members on the other side of the House tell us that the doctrines of the present Government are revolutionary and dangerous; whereas, from REDUCTION OF STAMP DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS. 63 what I have heard this very night, if I were asked what doctrines were most likely to weaken the just influence of the Crown, separate the different classes, incense the people, and produce and hasten the course of revolution—I should say that it was the doctrine of the Conservatives. Who then shall decide the question as to what is good and what is bad—what is useful and what is revolutionary 2 None can do so : scarcely time itself can decide it. In the words of an able writer, “Truth requires no inscription to distinguish it from darkness; and all that truth wants is the liberty of expression.” Has not the terror of the propagation of dangerous doctrines been used against the progress of enlightenment 2 Is it not for this that censors have been placed upon books, and inquisitors upon opinions ? What effect have these prosecutions produced ? The Erench Court prohibited the works of Voltaire, and Voltaire became at once endowed with the power to shake old opinion to its centre. Geneva burnt the Social Contract of Rousseau, and out of its ashes arose the phoenix of its influence. Tom Paine had not sold ten copies of his notorious work, when the English Government thought fit to prosecute him, and within a week from that period there were sold 30,000 copies. Government never has prevented, and never can prevent, the propagation of dangerous doctrines by prohibitions, either in the shape of a tax or a law—the only effect of persecution is to render the doctrines more dangerous and the people more eager to learn them. If I want a new proof of the truth of this argument, do I not find it in the very tax I ask you to repeal 2 For how many years have you been endeavouring to put down the unstamped press, whose doctrines are alleged to be dangerous, and for how many years has it enjoyed impunity, and deluged every manufacturing town 2 The market has been literally overstocked with its pro- ductions. If you were to repeal the whole tax to-morrow, there would not be a single new publication of these dangerous in- flammatory doctrines; for during the last seven or eight years every one who wished to publish them has done so with im- punity. By the imposition of the tax upon the more respectable class, you have prevented any reply to these dangerous publica- 64 REDUCTION OF STAMP DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS. tions. You have given up the field to those who have sown it with noxious weeds, and prevented the good husbandman from labouring in it. You are now at last embarked in an obstinate war with the unstamped Press—a war in which I am sure you will not succeed. I ask the right hon. Gentleman, does he think for a moment that he can succeed so long as the tax is 200 per cent upon the article Smuggled ? My right hon. Friend is aware, better than myself, that the only way to diminish Smuggling, where it has arisen to an enormous height, is to reduce the tax, and that is what I now urge upon my right lion. Friend. I do not ask a total repeal, but only a reduction to one penny. By this reduction, I think, a very great advantage will be gained. We shall materially extend the advantages of knowledge, with- out in the least diminishing the amount of revenue. The stamp duty at present produces (after allowing for the discount) three pence and a fraction upon each paper; and if it were reduced to one penny, we should require Only three times the present num- ber of papers to be sold to replace the loss suffered by the re- venue. Does not every man acquainted with the habits of the working classes know—does not every man who is aware of their extraordinary desire for knowledge, Scientific and political, feel, that we should then have three times as many papers published as at present 2 Besides, my right hon. Friend having made this concession, would then be justified in coming down to this House and demanding new and more efficient laws for the suppression of smuggling—the result of which would bring all, or nearly all the slippery fish that at present creep out of the meshes into my right hom. Friend's met. In addition to the increased circulation, there would be the increased advertisement duty, and the in- creased paper duty; so that without being at all Sanguine, I Say that the revenue would not, by any means, be a loser. Suppose the stamp duty reduced, as I have proposed, to one penny, such papersasthe Times’ and “Chronicle' and the ‘Herald, which require a large capital, would not be able to sell for less than fourpence. But new papers not requiring so large a capital would be called into existence—papers partly literary, and containing the news of the day—half scientific and half commercial, which would BEDUCTION OF STAMEP DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS. 65 thus attract many readers. Above all, many religious publica- tions would-be called into existence, supported by different religious Societies, and coming forth two or three times a-week. Thus a new class of periodicals would be called into existence, and all productive to the revenue in three ways—by the stamp duty, the advertisement duty, and the paper duty. It was Stated in a periodical, a short time since, that if the whole duty Were taken off, ten times as many papers would be published as at present ; and, therefore, with only a tax of a penny, I have a right to assume that three times as many would be published. The amount of a penny tax upon three times the present num- ber of sheets, would be £400,000. I greatly underrate the paper duty if I take the increase at £30,000, and the increased advertisement duty at £20,000, making a total of £450,000, which equals the sum produced by the present fourpenny tax The increased paper duty I have greatly underrated, as a high duty diminishes the profit and the sale to a very considerable extent. In a calculation made respecting the ‘Penny Magazine' it has been shown that if a tax of one penny was imposed, the Sale would be decreased one-tenth; and comparing the increased duty on the stamp with the loss of revenue on the paper, it has been clearly ascertained that the Exchequer would lose, on that paper alone, £400 a-year. Apply this argument generally, and you will see how much the revenue loses by the present high rate of duty. The system has robbed the revenue on the one hand of more than it has paid into it on the other. I shall not detain the House much longer; but, before I conclude, I must say that the present Government owes something to the pro- vincial Press; and, with few exceptions, the provincial Press has petitioned for some relief. The provincial Press has Sup- ported the Government nobly, and without its assistance I doubt much if any liberal Government could have made head against the determined and vehement attacks of three morning papers of great circulation and influence. Yet the provincial papers are Cramped in their exertions, and limited in their power, by the audience they address being narrowed and limited by the stamp duty. You owe something also to those who, adopting VOL. I. E 66 REDUCTION OF STAMP DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS. opinions more (I should say) determined and dreaded than your own, have yet supported you frankly and generously. The panegyric which my right hon. Friend has to-night pronounced upon that class who, professing these opinions, have yet com- promised them to a certain extent, and given to the Government their independent and undivided support, is another argument in favour of my motion; for there is no concession which will be looked upon as a greater boon, nor none which will be repaid more largely and generously by the party who, whether in praise or blame, are called the Radical party, than a concession upon this point. If any body of men have ever acted from the purest public motives, patriotically and disinterestedly, I believe it is that party, and, therefore, I do say that my right hon. Friend owes them some concession. The last argument I shall use is, that the Government owe it to themselves and to their own consistency, to make some concession to the Press. They will not in such a case be Sacrificing their own opinions to please a great body of the public and of their supporters—they will be merely following up those Sentiments which they have expressed on former occasions. There are few now on the Treasury Bench who have not, on Some former Occasion, expressed themselves favourable to the measure. The right hon, the President of the Board of Trade, the noble Lord the Secretary for Ireland, the right hom. the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and even his Majesty's present Attorney-General, have given dignity to the question by their acknowledged affection to its principle. I have the greatest confidence, therefore, in the present Govern- ment, and I hope upon this question, as upon all others, I shall live to see them faithful to the great principle of Reform which proportions power to intelligence, and which, while it renders the Constitution more popular, prevents the danger by rendering the people more enlightened. So strong is my reliance upon the objects and intentions of the present Government, that I am satisfied the more widely their sentiments are diffused and known, the more generally will they be approved. I regret to see them shut themselves out from half the national enthusiasm, and half the popular support which would be theirs, were the REDUCTION OF STAMP DUTY ON NEWSPAPERS. 67 laws they enact, and the principles they advocate, brought cheaply, easily, and familiarly before that great class of the Community for whose benefit they have laboured, and in whose cause they have won their most imperishable renown. It is with this hope that I now move that the House do resolve itself into a Committee of the whole House, to consider the question that, for the more general diffusion of knowledge, it is expedient that the Stamp Duty on Newspapers be reduced to one penny. WII. A S P E E O H DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 22D OF MAY 1838. ON Tuesday, the 22d May 1838, the Member for North Warwick- shire, Sir Eardley Wilmot, submitted to the House of Commons a re- solution for the immediate abolition of Negro Apprenticeship. After a brief but animated debate the House divided, when the motion was carried by 96 votes to 93. Immediately before the division was taken, the follow- ing Speech was delivered. SIR,--I do not dispute the good effects produced by the agita- tion of this question without the walls of Parliament. I agree with my hon, friend, the Member for Wolverhampton, that agi- tation without is often the result and the corrective of indif- ference within. It is an excitement of which no man can com- plain, unless he complains of the strongest instincts and the holiest sympathies which Providence has implanted in our nature, it is the excitement which in all ages has existed where Humanity could lift its voice against Oppression—it is the agita- tion which never can be allayed in a free and generous people, while they feel for the sufferings which they have it in their power to relieve. To deprecate agitation in the cause of men THE ABOLITION OF NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 69 who have been wronged, is to mourn over all that is active in virtue—over all that is charitable in religion. But though I rejoice in the almost universal feeling which exists upon this subject, and which makes the people of England more anxious, more importunate, more resolute, in behalf of others, than they have ever been in demanding justice for themselves, I am not insensible of the disadvantage under which those who agree with me labour on this solemn occasion. The agitation that may swell the number of votes in favour of our motion, diminishes the influence of the arguments by which it is supported. Too often jealous of our rights as deliberate legislators, we forget our first character of responsible representatives; and where a man is supposed to be influenced by his constituents, we are inclined to doubt the sincerity of his own opinions—as if Truth were discovered only by individuals, and lost in its value in propor- tion as it penetrated the multitude. I know—I painfully feel— this disadvantage in your secret prepossessions; the friend of the negro, in these walls, addresses a languid audience; and it is almost a hopeless prayer when I ask for that patient and un- prejudiced attention which you have refused to men whose abilities would, on other subjects, have enforced the claim. I enter not into the abstract inquiry, whether there was a con- tract with the planter, or whether we only passed a law with conditions attached to it. Heaven forbid that England should resort to casuistry whenever there is a question of her faith ! I allow at once that the honour of Parliament was pledged to the planter; [Hear /] ay, but are there no other parties in the bond 2 —our honour is pledged to the planter, but it is pledged with no less solemnity to the negro-population, and to the British people, whose gold we obtained upon the most explicit pro- mises—upon the most definite understanding. Those promises and that understanding were, first, the English Act of Parlia- ment, which announced that slavery should cease; and, secondly, the speeches of the Government in explanation of that Act, especially of the noble Lord the member for North Lancashire, in which he declared, that after the passing of that Act, “every slave should enjoy every right and every privilege of a freeman, 70 THE ABOLITION OF NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. subject to this restriction only, that he should, for a certain time, remain under contract to labour industriously in the Ser- vice of his employer.” Now this is the question from which the opponents to the present motion shrink. They talk of preserving a compact and keeping faith solely with one party—the planters —and seem quite to forget the two other parties to whom they had given equal promises, with whom they had entered into equal obligations—namely, the negroes and the English people. Has faith been kept with the two last; have the promises of the noble Lord been fulfilled? The hon. Baronet the Under- Secretary for the colonies, says—yes, by the majority; he says that “ in the great majority of instances there has been on the part of the West-India proprietors a bona fide adherence to the spirit as well as to the letter of the Emancipation Act.” But I contend that the act or the compact has been violated, not by a minority—not even by a small majority, but by the whole body of the planters in every colony where legislative assemblies exist. For how can nation deal with nation, or a mother country with her colony, except through the medium of the legislative assemblies in those places where legislative assemblies exist? When you suspended the constitution of Canada you said, justly, that it was not so much on account of the revolt, as because of the conduct of the Legislative Assembly. The As- sembly, where it exists, is the legitimate organ, not of a minority, not of a majority, but of the whole community which elects its members as agents and trustees. Well, then, is it not of the Legislative Assemblies freely chosen by the white population— the voice of all the planters—that your governors the most bitterly complain 2 For the Assembly of Jamaica, containing the largest slave-population of all, you have not a word of de- fence. You have the evidence of your own governor that that Assembly violated the law or the compact in almost every par- ticular—in the hours of labour, in the allowance of food, in the flogging of females. You have Lord Sligo's evidence not only that the members of that Assembly violate the law or the compact, but that when the violation is pointed out, they do not pay the Smallest attention to his remonstrances. Mr Jeremie, THE ABOLITION OF NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 71 in the appendix to the report of the select committee on negro apprenticeship, after comparing the Jamaica Act with the Eng- lish Act, states (p. 5 of the appendix) that “nearly every one of the enactments of the Jamaica Act is directly opposed to the Spirit and letter of the British Act, and therefore that they are legally null and void ab initio.” Who is Mr Jeremie 2 Why, the prime, favourite, selected, panegyrised authority of the Government. Mr Beldam, after analysing the Jamaica acts, states, “that the passing of the act No. 3, and the subsequent conduct of the Jamaica House of Assembly on the question of the revival of the act No. 2, which, notwithstanding the remon- Strances of the home Government and the colonial Governor, had been suffered to expire, removed all further motives for delicacy in treating with this refractory colony, as it plainly demonstrates the want of good faith so long and so loudly com- plained of by the friends of the enfranchised negroes. It now remains to be decided by a competent tribunal whether laws of the character already exhibited in the preceding analysis are to be accepted as an adequate and satisfactory fulfilment of the conditions upon which twenty millions sterling have been paid by the mother country 2” And is Jamaica a single instance 2 No! Pass on to page 83 in the same report—we come to Bar- badoes. “The Barbadoes abolition acts, even in their amended form, exhibit most of the glaring defects already noticed in the Jamaica abolition acts,” these defects being nothing more nor less than violations of the English law—in other words, of the mutual compact. But are Barbadoes and Jamaica Solitary in- stances 2 Not so. For the same authority (your own authority, mind) goes on to state “that the laws of nineteen colonies, in many respects equally objectionable with those already com- mented upon, must undergo the same inquiry.” So, then, not by individuals, not by minorities, but by the constituted dele- gates of their whole bodies, the planters have been guilty of Systematic, general, deliberate, formal violation of your boasted compact. Even in the first flush of their pecuniary triumph, with the British gold yet heavy in their hands, with the ink Scarcely dry on the Imperial Act, we behold these men making 72 THE ABOLITION OF NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. their own assemblies the systematic defeaters of the law and the fraudulent violators of its conditions. Well, but are the legisla- lative assemblies the only criminals? Where next should we look to see if the planters have broken faith as a body? Not to individuals; no, but to their subordinate authorities, their officials—these are the next representatives of their opinions and conduct. What does your favourite Mr Baynes say (Part IV., p. 314) of the local magistrates? Why, that “the illegal commitment of apprentices to the house of correction by the local magistrates is a practice prevalent throughout the island of Jamaica, though a manifest violation of the first principle of the abolition law.” What can we say of a coroner's jury who, in the celebrated instance of the woman tortured to death at the treadmill, returned a verdict—“Died by the visitation of God”? What can we say of constables, generally selected for their quali- fications as slave-drivers? What of grand juries, charged by Sir Lionel Smith himself with disregard of their oaths? The fact is clear, from the highest to the lowest, the officials are not dispensers of law, but the legalised tools and instruments for consummating oppression on the negro, and completing the fraud upon British credulity. But, well said the seconder of the motion in that acute and luminous speech which, if it fell cold on the House, would not fall cold on the country—well said the Member for Wolverhampton, that we could not want a stronger proof of the universal violation of the compact than your own bill, which is to be universally applied. What does your bill propose ?—merely to enforce the former Act, which in all its pro- visions had been evaded; and what was that Act, but the parch- ment of the very contract upon which you insist? I then throw back upon you your own assertion of breach of faith. I assert that with the planter we have kept faith; that there was no adulteration, no paring and filching of the gold he received; perfect it was in tale and weight. You have kept faith with the planter; but I tell you with whom it is you ask us to break faith—with the thousands and tens of thousands whom you mocked with the name of free—with the majesty of the Im- perial Parliament, whose acts have been trampled under foot— THE ABOLITION OF NEGRO APPRENTICESEIIP. 73 with the people of England who paid their millions, not to abolish the name slavery, but the thing slavery. You ask us to break faith with justice, with humanity, with Heaven itself, in order that you may keep faith with Mammon. But the hon. Member for Newark, in that speech the ability of which is above all praise, but the arguments in which are happily not beyond all reply, claims exemption for British Guiana | Bar- badoes, Jamaica, the Mauritius, you cannot exonerate or defend; the first lawyer in England (Sir E. Sugden) has allowed that Jamaica violated the compact. Well, then, what is Jamaica Ż Why, the colony possessing the largest slave-population of all. Jamaica has four times the slave-population of Guiana; Barba- does has nearly the same population as Guiana. What, then if we were to meet the Member for Newark at once by making him a present of Guiana 2 What if we were to say, this is but one colony; is it subordinate to Jamaica, the colony which it is impossible to excuse 2 Its population sinks into absolute insig- nificance when to Jamaica you add Barbadoes and the Mau- ritius. Grant that Guiana is immaculate—grant that your facts are true—and still the innocence of one colony is never to be held as an exemption for the guilt of the others—or at most, all you can do is to make a special case for Guiana; and I call on the House to observe, that all the hon. Member can say on that Subject may be at most to vindicate one colony; but till he has proved Jamaica, and Barbadoes, and the Mauritius innocent, he Cannot prove anything against the passing of the present resolu- tion. But is Guiana innocent 2 The hon. Member for Newark On a former night complained of ea parte and unproved state- ments. Did he indulge in none himself? Have not some of his facts—have not most of his deductions—been denied in pub- lic meetings, and in the face of day—denied by eyewitnesses of the state of Guiana—denied by references to Parliamentary documents?—[Mr Gladstone shook his head and smiled.]—Ay, and though it may suit hon. Members to sneer at the zeal of the friends of the negro, I say that, according to all the laws of tes- timony, it is more likely that men having no sinister and selfish interest to serve will give more faithful accounts than the 74 TEIE ABOLITION OF NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. planters, who have a direct personal interest to bias their judg- ment. I grant that in Guiana the negro is much better off than in Jamaica. I grant that it is the colony in which slavery seems least odious. But is Guiana innocent 2 Has not Guiana violated the law 2 Has it not invaded the contract 2 Listen again to your own beloved authority in the report upon the system of apprenticeship. Does not your own analyst assert that in many most important points the British Guiana Act violates the compact, that is the Imperial Act, for the Act and the compact you allow are one and the same:—“The power of inflicting un- limited extra labour as a punishment for grievous complaints is repugnant to the Imperial Act, and would of itself explain much of the apparent content of this colony.” So again, sections 9 and 10—“These classes contain direct infringement of the rights of manumission, and are plainly repugnant to the Imperial Act.” But is this all ? I will concede to the hon. Member that pun- ishments in Guiana have greatly decreased of late. But in the returns before the House, the third table, from the 1st of June 1836 to the 31st of May 1837, gives a total of punishments of 7596, which averages one in every nine apprentices throughout the colony; and if you will compare this with any return from Jamaica (for that or any other year) you will find it (compared to the relative populations) equal in the average to the number of punishments in Jamaica—viz., to the most barbarous of all the colonies. But punishment has decreased since. Yes! and why? I call in Sir James Carmichael Smyth, who is your authority for maintaining the apprenticeship, as my witness for its abolition—because (according to Sir James Smyth's uniform testimony), not of the leniency of the planters, but because of the exemplary conduct of the negroes. He tells you that what- ever complaints have been made against the labourer, it has ap- peared on investigation that the fault arose from the fraud or illegal exactions of the planters. He asserts that in no part of the globe are the labouring population more peaceable, more in- dustrious, than in Guiana. In his speech of January 1836 (2. Part III., p. 120), he says, “I ask if any gentleman can point out any part of his Majesty's dominions where fewer crimes are THE ABOLITION OF NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 75 committed, where greater tranquillity is enjoyed, or where the labouring population is more industrious !” Well, will the House believe that in the very year—the very month—in which he pronounces this eulogium on the population, the returns of punishment—yes, in that very month of January 1836—amount to 922, which would give an average of 11,064 for the whole year, being nearly a sixth part of the whole population—a popu- lation thus industrious, thus orderly, thus free from crime, and yet thus punished under the orders of the special magistrate | Oh, blessed inversion of all the laws by which society redeemed from barbarism is bound ! Behold the maximum of punishment accompanying the minimum of crime ! What do Sir James Smyth's statements prove 2 Why, that this admirable popula- tion is fit for liberty, and every word in favour of that popula- tion is a testimony in favour of the motion before the House. We remember the effect produced by the Member for Newark, when he told us of the slaves on an estate clubbing together, and sending to their white brethren in these realms who were in distress the contribution of their savings. And when I heard that touching instance of humanity and beneficence in those poor negroes, I did compare them with us; I did ask whether those men had not proved themselves by that very act fit for emancipation, and I blushed to think that the genius of one of our ablest Members was at that instant citing their very virtues as an argument for their continued degradation. And you assert that the slaves are not fit for immediate freedom | Will two years of additional misery render them more fit 2 What a school for liberty you found and defend —treadmills on which females are tortured for twenty hours at a stretch—dropping from that wholesale rack, bleeding, mangled—exhausted—dying; hospitals for the sick characterised by such inventions as Spanish cruelty may have hatched in the Inquisition for the prisons of the guilty;-dungeons more desolate and foetid than feudal tyranny ever built in ages when liberty was a forbidden word;— the pitiless planter—the brutal overseer—the iniquitous judge— the perjured jury—the blaspheming coroner—the slave-driving constable;—oh, what noble aids and appliances, what tutors, 76 THE ABOLITION OF NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. and what textbooks for the education of destined freemen | Not fit for liberty, when in Guiana your governor tells you that there is no more improving and industrious population—not in the colonies alone—no, but in all her Majesty's dominions. Not fit for freedom, when in Jamaica your own special magistrates de- clare that, in respect for the law and in religious Sentiments, the negroes are superior to the planters! Not fit for freedom – Let the new freemen of Antigua answer the calumnious charge There you have at once the comparison and contrast between apprenticeship and emancipation. Say what you will of appren- ticeship, you must confess, at least, that the experiment has failed of entire success—say what you will of it, you confess the hardship, the cruelty, the injustice, the fraud which it has failed to cure. But will one of you dare to tell us that imme- diate emancipation has failed in effect—that there is one stain of human blood upon the Act of Antigua which made men free? Is not Antigua a fair instance?—you slur it over—you pass it by. What is Antigua? a colony possessing but a hand- ful of whites—a whole population of negroes. Property and life were at the mercy of the enfranchised slaves. Look to the result. Not an estate abandoned; not an outrage committed; not a hair on the white man's head that was not sacred Danger from the free negro ! Why, in Antigua, who are the police themselves?—who are the constables —Negroes; and if there be no danger in Antigua, where the whites are so few and the negroes so numerous, how can there be danger in Jamaica, where the white population could at any moment master any insurrection of the blacks 7 But would you insist still on some mystic differences between Antigua and Jamaica? Would you still say that the parallel is not fair? would you still assert that emancipation, Safe in Antigua, would be perilous in Jamaica 2 'Well, then, I nail you to Jamaica itself! What does Sir Lionel Smith, in One of his last despatches, November 13, 1837—what does he tell you? Why, that so far from the Jamaica planters thinking there would be the the least danger in emancipation, “all parties would agree to abandon the system to-morrow for further compensation.” But we are not provided with laws for THE ABOLITION OF NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 77 the apprentices after they become free, and they will be in a worse condition if you emancipate them than they are now. Oh, how this argument condemns the colonial government, for are you not going now to emancipate the non-praedial labourers ? On the 1st of August 1838, you will turn loose on society, thousands and thousands of men absolutely and abruptly made free. Where are the laws to provide for them? And you can- not draw any distinction between them and the praedials, with- out also condemning yourselves. For though no laws are passed, you have been yet recommending to the various states to enfranchise the praedials. The Isle of Nevis has already done so, Tortola will follow the example, Dominica and Grenada ap- pear disposed to obey your wishes; and if, therefore, your argument were good, you yourselves would have recommended the very measure which you tell us would be more injurious to the negroes than the present system. But then you say there is a difference whether the colonists do this of their own accord or whether we compel them to do it. And how does Barbadoes (the third greatest slave colony) meet this assertion? Why, the House of Assembly tells you, that it would be placing itself in an Onerous position with the British Parliament, were it to Supersede by an act of its own one of the most important pro- visions of the abolition law, and thereby assume to itself the re- sponsibility of a measure which could be carried into effect with more Safety and with greater chance of success by that august body. The fact is, that the very colonies that hold out are the very colonies that have most insulted the mother country, most duped the English people, and most flagrantly violated the com- pact. And they hold out avowedly in the hope of extorting a large ransom, and doubling the pieces of silver they have already received as the price of blood. It is not to them—it is to us you owe an account; we have paid the ransom—it is for you to obtain the redemption. Farther compensation —yes, indeed, by your act, your compact, farther compensation is due. Compen- sation, not to the planter—he has been paid in full; but com- pensation to the people of Great Britain for wasted millions, for violated faith ! Can the Under-Secretary for the Colonies, can 78. TEIE ABOLITION OF NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. the Member for Newark, rise and tell us that we have attained the object for which we counted out our gold 2 Can you tell us fairly and boldly that this apprenticeship has been that mild and hopeful interval between slavery and freedom which you contemplated when the Act was proposed ? Can you tell us, that if we had possessed the gift of prophecy, and foreseen with what records these Parliamentary documents were to be filled— can you tell us, that one man in this House would have dared to insult the English people with the proposition of purchasing such a system at such a cost 2 Will the noble Lord the Mem- ber for Lancashire say, on the pledge of his reputation and his honour, that when he made this bargain for the English people, he anticipated this species of fidelity from the planter ? In these despatches, these reports, these tables of hideous affliction, these summaries of the monthly average of human groans, can he find the rigid fulfilment of that promise which he made to the millions who hung upon his word, “that the slave should retain no taint of his former servile condition,” and called upon the name of Wilberforce to attest the promise and to Sanctify the deed! Yes, to us compensation is indeed due ; but if to us, how much more to the negro !—No, not to him—the very mag- nitude of his wrongs denies even the possibility of compensa- tion? No gold can buy back to him the agonised years al- ready wasted since that act of mockery was past; no gold can buy back human life itself! Will twenty times twenty millions compensate to the son for the mother who has died beneath the torture, and whose very death the officers of planter-justice have imputed to the visitation of God? Compensate to the mother, who, in the very agonies of childbirth, found no exemption from the grinding, toil and the lifted scourge, and who has been robbed of a hope, cherished, perhaps, amidst all her own anguish of giving birth to an offspring happier than his sires? No 1 we cannot demand compensation for the negro—we can- not call back the past. But justice and sympathy for the future—these at least are in our power But only two years re- main. Why, you ask, make this stir and commotion for two years—two little years? What are two years nothing in the THE ABOLITION OF NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 79 life of man? Do we not know—we who have constituents— that when one individual in whom those constituents are in- terested, is tried, found guilty, condemned, sentenced to the prison or the hulks—do we not know what interest is made to strike two years from the term of punishment? Two years of loss of liberty, two years subjected even to the discipline of re- sponsible and mild control—what efforts do we make to save a fellow-creature from that affliction But now we ask the boon, not for one man, but for thousands—not for guilt, but for inno- cence—not for exemption from legal penance, but from irrespon- sible oppression | Complete the picture—add to the loss of liberty all the whips and stings which power can inflict on weakness, and, then, will you dare to tell us that two years are nothing in the aggregate of human existence? You say this System shall not be abolished; but will you explain to us how it shall be continued—continued in defiance of the loud and indignant voice of the English people 2 How can you expect Security, and peace, and Order, when the negro on one estate sees the negroes on another (no better than himself) are free, When father and son are separated by your unintelligible verbal barbarisms of praedial and non-prædial—when you yourselves are recommending their legislators to emancipate them, and when, if they were to rise (which heaven forbid), you would not dare to interpose a military force from this country between mutual massacre and revenge 2 And the colonial government hope that the parchment of the Act passed through this House Will serve to remedy all evils. If so, why do you urge upon the colonies the propriety of immediate emancipation ? But you know it cannot. Four sheets of paper never yet built a wall between tyranny and weakness. Your bill devises two reme- dies:—1st, you propose to give to proclamations the force of law; Secondly, you arm your Special magistrates with new authority. As to proclamations, your own governors tell you that the planters laugh them to Scorn. As to giving them the force of law, law itself is a dead letter, when the public opinion of those on whom it is imposed does not breathe into it the only principle of life it can receive. Special magistrates! why, what 80 THE ABOLITION OF NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. have they been 2 Either the mere tools of the planter, or else, where they have been the friends of the negro, they have only Succeeded in embroiling matters, and exciting false hopes in the negro, new tyranny in the planter. Take the case of Judge Palmer. He was superseded: for what offence 2 Will the House believe it !—because the Commissioners of Inquiry de- clared that “he administered the law in the spirit of the Eng- lish Abolition Act, and that the present state of St Thomas-in- the-Vale was to be attributed to such a mode of administering the abolition law.” So, here is a special magistrate condemned and punished for administering the law in the spirit in which we framed it, and according to the object for which the English people paid their gold. But few magistrates commit the same offence and incur the same fate as Judge Palmer: oh no, I find the “Jamaica Standard’ (the organ of the planters) loud in praise of special magistrates as men who have done their duty, and Calling upon the planters to contribute money to the widows and families of such of them as have died. See then on One side the special magistrate who befriends the negro, harassed by commissions of inquiry, Calumniated by the planter, aban- doned by the Government, superseded solely for the offence of keeping faith with England; and behold on the other side the special magistrate who lends himself to the planter, who reports in his favour—who applauds the system and vindicates its in- struments, quoted by Ministers as an admirable authority—ad- mired by planters as an exemplary judge—praised and flattered —patronage here—pensions there—and can you doubt for an instant on which side your dispensers of law will lean? De- pend upon it, all attempts to relax and mitigate slavery are hope- less and absurd. There are no ways of patching up the ever- lasting distinction between slavery and freedom ; all that you can do is to diminish the interest of the planter in the health and life of the negro, and leave the wretch more exposed to the jealousy, because more obnoxious to the fears, of the tyrant. I cannnot understand this one-sided niceness of conscience, this terror of violating by a hair's breadth your compact with a planter, and this deaf and blind indifference to the equal obliga- TEIE ABOLITION OF NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. 81 tions due to the other parties of the compact, the negroes and the people of these realms. You know that our law, which was the compact, has been violated in all the colonies; you know that the English people have not got that for which they paid their money, and yet you give up the rights of two parties for the sake of the third, you betray the innocent on behalf of the guilty;-you see no justice but where you confess oppression;– you venerate no sanctity but where you discover fraud! The hon. Member for Newark would represent the planters as men equally merciful and maligned. [Mr Gladstone: No.] What did you not attempt to defend their general conduct; to prove them innocent of the charge of cruelty?—if you did not, where is the answer to our accusations? But if you did, what then 2 Is it not the old reply to the earliest advocates of emancipation? Let not the House be carried away by assurances that the planters are merciful masters and injured men:—such were the assurances with which Wilberforce and Clarkson were met at the threshold of their great design. Had Parliament listened, in former years, to such declarations, with the same respect and cordiality with which it greets them now, Wilberforce would have lived in vain I accuse not the planters; I accuse the system : men are but the tools of the circumstances that sur- round them. Where tyranny is made legal, I execrate the tyr- anny, but I acquit the tyrant. You have heard from me no in- dividual cases, branding individual persons—you have heard from me no doubtful references to anonymous authorities. My charge is against communities, not persons—my facts are in the books you appeal to as undeniable records. If the despatches of your governors, if the reports of your magistrates, if this whole mass of parliamentary evidence be not one lie—I tell you that your arguments against this motion are shivered to the dust 1 I have proved, that not individuals, not minorities, but (where legislative assemblies exist in your colonies) whole com- munities have been, from first to last, invaders of your law, vio- lators of your compact. I have proved that faith is due, not to the planters, but to their victims and their dupes. I have proved that there is no danger in the course we recommend— WOL. I. F 82 THE ABOLITION OF NEGRO APPRENTICESHIP. proved it by reference to actual experience in Antigua, to the assertions of your governor in Jamaica, where all parties would abandon the system for compensation—proved it by your own recommendations to the colonies. Answer all this if you can ; if you answer it to your satisfaction, you belie your governors, you impeach your witnesses, you condemn yourselves. Year after year, and session after Session, we debate on the mere forms and ceremonials of our religion, whether this oath may be abolished—whether this distinction may be removed—whether by one law or by another we can best preserve the husk and shell of religion—its ecclesiastical establishment; I honour all men's consciences upon these points; but here we come to the fountain of Christianity itself—its all-protecting brotherhood, its all-embracing love. When scholars and divines have summed up the blessings that our common Creed has conferred upon mankind, first and foremost of those blessings they have placed the abolition of that slavery which stained and darkened the institutions of the Pagan world. I know of no Pagan slavery worse than this Christian apprenticeship. Here, then, we fight again the same battle as our first fathers, the primitive Christians, from whom all our sects and divisions have emerged. Here is a ground upon which Catholic and Pro- testant, and the wide families of dissent, all may unite; and I do believe that he who votes against this dark hypocrisy of slavery in disguise will obtain Something better than the appro- val of constituents—something holier than the gratification of party triumph and political ambition—in the applause of his own conscience, and in those blessings that will not rise the less to the Eternal Throne because they are uttered by the victims of human avarice and pride. [In Lord Lytton's political life a gap occurs here of eleven years—namely, from the 30th June of 1841 to the 22d July of 1852, during which interval he was out of Parliament.] VIII. A S P E E O H IDELIVERED IN T H E H A L L O F C O M M E R C E ON THE 1ST OF MARCH 1851. ON the evening of Saturday, the 1st of March, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton presided as Chairman at the Public Dinner given to Mr Macready, in the Hall of Commerce, by way of Farewell, on the occasion of the tragedian's withdrawal from the stage. In proposing the toast of the evening, the fol- lowing speech was delivered. GENTLEMEN,+When I glance through this vast hall, and feel how weak and indistinct is my voice, I feel that I must frankly throw myself upon your indulgence, and entreat your most patient and courteous attention while I approach that subject which unites to-day an assembly so remarkable for the numbers and distinction of those who compose it. We are met to do honour to an eminent man, who retires into private life after those services to the public which are almost most felt at the moment we are about to lose them. There are many among you far better qualified than I am to speak critically of the merits of Mr Macready as an actor, but placed as I am in this chair, I feel that I should justly disappoint you if I did not seek to give Some utterance to those sentiments of admiration of which you have made me the representative. Gentlemen, this morning I read in one of the literary journals some qualifying remarks as 84 SPEECH AT FAREWELL DINNER TO MR. MACREADY. to the degree of Mr Macready's genius; and now, as I recog- mise here many who are devoted to literature and art, I will ask them if I am not right in this doctrine—that the true measure of the genius of an artist is the degree of excellence to which he brings the art that he cultivates. Judge of Mr Macready by this test, and how great is that genius that will delight us no more ; for it is because it has so achieved what I will call the symmetry of art that its height and its breadth have been often forgotten. We know that it is the uneven and irregular surface that strikes us as the largest, and the dimensions of a genius, like those of a building, are lost in the justness of its proportions; and therefore it is that in recalling the surpassing excellence of our guest as an artistical performer, one is really at a loss to say in what line of character he has excelled the most. The Titanic grandeur of Lear, the human debasement of Werner, the frank vivacity of Henry V., the gloomy and timorous guilt of King John, or that—his last—personation of Macbeth, in which it seemed to me that he conveyed a more correct notion of what Shakespeare designed than I can recollect to have read in the most profound of the German critics; for I take it, what Shake- speare meant to represent in Macbeth was the kind of character which is most liable to be influenced by a belief in supernatural agencies—a man who is acutely sensitive to all impressions, who has a restless imagination more powerful than his will, who sees daggers in the air and ghosts in the banquet-hall, who has moral weakness and physical courage, and who—as our guest repre- sented him—alternates perpetually between terror and daring— a trembler when oppressed by his conscience, and a warrior when defied by his foe. But in this and in all that numberless crowd of characters which is too fresh in your memories for me to enumerate, we don’t so much say “How well this was spoken,” or “How finely that was acted,” but we feel within ourselves how true was the personation of the whole. Gentlemen, there is a word that is often applied to artists and to authors, and I think we always apply it improperly when we speak of a supe- rior intellect—I mean the word “versatile.” Now, I think the proper word is “comprehensive.” The man of genius does not SPEECH AT FAREWELL DINNER TO MR MACREADY. 85 vary and change, which is the meaning of the word versatile, but he has a mind sufficiently expanded to comprehend variety and change. If I can succeed in describing the circle, I can draw as many lines as I please from the centre straight to the circumference, but it must be upon the condition—for that is the mathematical law—that all these lines shall be equal, one to the other, or it is not a circle that I describe. Now, I do not say our guest is versatile; I say that he is comprehensive; and the proof that he has mastered the most perfect form of the Com- prehensive faculty is this—that all the lines he has created within the range of his art are equal the One to the other. And this, gentlemen, explaims to us that Originality which even his detractors have conceded to him. Every great actor has his manner as every great writer has his style. But the originality of our guest does not consist in his manner alone, but in his singular depth of thought. He has not only accomplished the obvious and essential graces of the actor—the look, the gesture, the intonation, the stage play—but he has placed his study far deeper. He has sought to penetrate into the subtlest inten- tions of the poet, and made poetry itself the golden key to the secrets of the human heart. He was original because he never sought to be original but to be truthful; because, in a word, he was as conscientious in his art as he is in his actions. Gentle- men, there is one merit of our guest as an actor, upon which, if I were silent, I should be indeed ungrateful. Many a great per- former may attain to a high reputation if he restrains his talents to acting Shakespeare and the great writers of the past; but it is perfectly clear that in so doing he does not advance One inch the literature of his time. It has been the merit of our guest to recognise the truth that the actor has it in his power to assist in creating the writer. He has identified himself with the living drama of his period, and by So doing he has half created it. Who does not recollect the rough and manly vigour of Tell, the simple grandeur of Virginius, or the exquisite sweetness and dignity and pathos with which he invested the self-sacrifice of Ion; and who does not feel that but for him these great plays might never have obtained their hold upon the stage, or ranked 86 SPEECH AT FAREWELL DINNER TO MR. MACREADY. among those masterpieces which this age will leave to posterity? And what charm and what grace, not their own, he has given to the lesser works of an inferior writer, it is not for me to Say. But, gentlemen, all this, in which he has sought to rally round him the dramatic writers of his time, brings me at once from the merits of the actor to those of the manager. I recall, gentlemen, that brief but glorious time when the drama of England appeared Suddenly to revive and to promise a future that should be worthy of its past; when by a union of all kindred arts, and the exer- cise of a taste that was at once gorgeous and severe, we saw the genius of Shakespeare properly embodied upon our stage, though I maintain that the ornament was never superior to the work. Just remember the manner in which the supernatural agency of the weird sisters was made apparent to our eye, in which the magic Isle of Prospero rose before us in its mysterious and haunted beauty, and in which the knightly character of the hero of Agincourt received its true interpretation from the pomp of the feudal age, and you will own you could not strip the scene of these effects without stripping Shakespeare himself of half the richness and depth of his conceptions. But that was the least merit of that glorious management. Mr Macready not only enriched the scene, but he purified the audience ; and for the first time since the reign of Charles II., a father might have taken his daughters to a public theatre with as much safety from all that could shock decorum as if he had taken them to the house of a friend. And for this reason the late lamented Bishop of Norwich made it a point to form the personal acquaintance of Mr Macready, that he might thank him, as a prelate of the Church, for the good he had done to society. Gentlemen, I can- not recall that period without a sharp pang of indignant regret, for if that management had lasted some ten or twelve years, I know that we would have established a permanent school for actors—a fresh and enduring field for dramatic poetry and wit —while we should have educated an audience up to feel that dramatic performances in their highest point of excellence had become an intellectual want that could no more be dispensed with than the newspaper or review. And all this to be checked SPEECH AT FAREWELL DINNER TO MR MACREADY. 87 or put back for ages to come ! Why? Because the public did not appreciate the experiment Mr Macready has told us that the public supported him nobly, and that his houses overflowed. Why then 2 Because of the enormous rent and exactions for a theatre which, even in the most prosperous seasons, made the exact difference between profit and loss. Gentlemen, it is not now the occasion to speak of remedies for that state of things. Remedies there are, but they are for legislation to effect. They involve considerations with regard to those patents which are Secured to certain houses for the purpose of maintaining in this metropolis the legitimate drama, and which, I fear, have proved the main obstacle to its success. But these recollections belong to the past. The actor—the manager—are no more. Whom have we with us to-day ? Something grander than actor or manager: to-day we have with us the man. Gentlemen, to Speak of those virtues which adorn a home, and are only known in Secret, has always appeared to me to be out of place upon public occasions; but there are some virtues which cannot be called private, which accompany a man everywhere, which are the essential part of his public character, and of these it becomes us to speak, for it is to these that we are met to do homage. I mean integrity, devotion to pure ends, and a high ambition, manly independence, and honour that never knew a stain. Why should we disguise from ourselves that there are great prejudices to the profession of an actor ? Who does not know that our noble guest has lived down every one such prejudice, not falling into the old weakness of the actor, and for which Garrick could not escape the sarcasm of Johnson, of hankering after the Society and patronage of the great ž The great may have sought in him the accomplished gentleman, but he has never stooped his bold front as an Englishman to court any patronage meaner than the public, or to sue for the Smiles with which fashion humiliates the genius it condescends to flatter. And therefore it is that he has So lifted up that profession to which he belongs into its proper rank amid the liberal arts; and therefore it is that in glancing over the list of our stewards we find every element of that aris- tocracy upon which he has never fawned uniting to render him 88 SPEECH AT FAREWELL DINNER TO MR MACREADY. . its tribute of respect. The ministers of foreign nations—men among the noblest of the peers of England—veterans of those professions of which honour is the lifespring—the chiefs of literature and Science and art—ministers of the Church, sensible of the benefits he has bestowed upon Society in banishing from the stage what had drawn upon it the censure of the pulpit—all are here, and all unite to enforce the truth, the great truth, which he leaves to those who come after him—that let a man but honour his calling, and the calling will soon be the honour of the man. Gentlemen, I cannot better sum up all I would Say than by the words which the Roman orator applied to the actor of his day; and I ask you if I may not say of our guest as Cicero said of Roscius—“He is a man who unites yet more of virtues than of talents, yet more of truth than of art, and who, having dignified the scene by the various portraitures of human life, dignifies yet more this assembly by the example of his own.” Gentlemen, the toast I am about to propose to you is connected with many sad associations, but not to-day. Later and long will be cherished whatever may be sad of these mingled feelings that accompany this farewell—later, when night after night we shall miss from the play-bill the old familiar name, and feel that one source of elevated delight is lost to us for ever. To-day let us only rejoice that he whom we so prize and admire is no worn-out veteran retiring to a rest he can no longer enjoy—that he leaves us in the prime of his powers, with many years to come, in the course of nature, of that dignified leisure for which every public man must have sighed in the midst of his triumphs, and though we cannot say of him that his “way of life Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf,” yet we can say that he has prematurely obtained “that which should accompany old age, As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends;” and postponing for this night all selfish regrets, not thinking of the darkness that is to follow, but of the brightness of the sun that is to set, I call upon you to drink with full glasses and full hearts, “Health, happiness, and long life to William Macready.” IX. A L E C T U R E DELIVERED AT THE ROYSTON MECHANICS INSTITUTION ON THE 3D OF JUNE 1852. ON Thursday, the 3d of June 1852, the following Lecture was deliverd by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton at the Mechanics Institute in Royston, Hertfordshire. It gave the “Outlines of the Early History of the East, with explanatory descriptions of some of the more remarkable nations and cities mentioned in the Old Testament.” Prefixed to the address afterwards in its printed form was the subjoined note :- “In a popular Lecture, it is often necessary to decide peremptorily be- tween very conflicting authorities as to facts and dates, without entering into those arguments on behalf of such decision that would necessitate a display of learning wearisome to the audience and unsuited to the occasion. In many such vexed questions, I have adopted views in accordance with those of HEEREN, in his great work on the Principal Nations of Antiquity. It would seem an idle ostentation to cite, in long array, the names of other writers, ancient and modern, to whom the professed scholar will easily recognise my obligations.” GENTLEMEN,+In assuming, for the first time, the capacity of Lecturer at an Institution dedicated to the noble task of popular instruction, I could not yield to your request without advanc- ing some claim to your indulgence. For you are all aware how little leisure I have had since I entered into the engagement which I shall endeavour this evening to fulfil. It is only at brief and hurried intervals that I have been enabled to refresh 90 OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. my memory by reference to the best authorities—to condense into the bounds of a single lecture the large range of history and research which the subject before me comprehends—and to give familiar effect to such observations as I would desire to impress upon your minds. After much hesitation as to the subject I should choose for my lecture, suddenly I said to myself, “The Eternal Book of the People is The Bible.” Now in the Old Testament the names of Nations and Cities constantly occur, which in my own boyhood excited in me a dim wondering curiosity to know more about them—to learn what in truth were those great cities of Sidon and Tyre—what was that mysterious Egypt, what was that mighty Babylon. And I said again to myself, “What thus interested me before I had the leisure and opportunities to instruct myself, may interest, also, all those who follow the history of the chosen people of Jehovah, from the tents of Abraham and the bondage of Egypt to their settlement beneath the Mount of Olives and amidst the ivory palaces of Solomon. Therefore, my listeners, this is the theme I have chosen ; pro- posing to give you a general if brief view of those lights which the learning of Scholars has thrown upon the places and the nations more especially referred to in Sacred History. Gentlemen—I begin from the beginning. Let us suppose how the Deluge has altered the whole face of the habitable earth—let us see the generations of Noah, wander- ing to and fro, bearing with them vague reminiscences of the arts and inventions that existed before the Flood. Now where would it be natural that men thus wandering would fix their earliest settlements? Think for yourselves, and you will make this answer: “They would settle where they could obtain the most plentiful subsistence with the least labour.” And that region of the globe would be Asia. If you cast your eyes on the map of the World, you will see that this quarter of the globe (the area of which is four times as large as Europe) fills the whole extent of the temperate zone— it is only its extremities which suffer from intense heat or rigorous cold; it contains not only all the productions of nature OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. 91 to be found in Europe, but at infinitely less cost of labour; and it has produce the most luxuriant, which is all its own; it is surrounded by seas and intersected by rivers which facilitate communication and suggest the interchange of commerce. But of all Asia the Southern Division is the most alluring to the tastes and the wants of man; it comprises the most fertile regions of the earth; here the cotton plant and silkworm are indigenous; only here, it is said, can corn be found growing wild, as if here, from the kind parental soil, had sprung forth the original germ of the common food of man; here the air is fragrant with spices, the earth teems with gold, and the seas with pearl. Accordingly we find, both in sacred history and in all traditions of profane history, that the Southern Division of Asia is the district of the earth in which, after the deluge, cities were first founded and civilisation first arose. But what part of Southern Asia would have the earliest pre- ference 2 Think again, and you will answer: “That district where wandering men, subsisting by their flocks and herds, would find the widest pasture plains, and in the neighbourhood of great rivers that would furnish that ample supply of water So necessary and indeed. So rare in the Sunny climates of the East.” Just such a situation we find for the site of that city which is recorded to be the earliest city after the flood. BABYLONIA is one vast level country—between two great rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris—and Herodotus (who is the father of profane history) says, that “of all the countries with which he was acquainted, Babylonia was by far the most fruitful in corn; the soil was so adapted for corn, that it never produced less than two hundred-fold, and in very favourable seasons even three hundred-fold.” Here at once was an inducement to settle in such a country. But however man may desire to escape labour, still Providence has wisely decreed that labour shall find him out, and that to labour alone he can owe all that constitutes the difference between barbarism and civilisation. According to our received chronology, it was in the second century after the deluge that the Divine Will interrupted the builders of Babel and dispersed the families of men. But to the 92 OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. site of Babel the more intelligent descendants of Noah still re- turned; and no sooner had they fixed their settlement in this favoured region, than they found that the river Euphrates, which contributed to the fertility of the soil, was liable to constant in- undations. They had to wrest their country from a perpetual flood—it was a country worth saving—and the task which necessitated their labour stimulated their skill. Necessity, we all know, is the mother of invention: so they early began to cut canals, in Order to receive the overflow of the waters; then they perceived that these canals would serve the purpose of irrigating the pastures, which in a climate so warm and dry was essential; gradually these canals served for defence against the inroads of other wandering hordes; and gradually also, as civili- sation increased, the same canals bore merchant vessels from river to river. Dams and embankments were constructed— Labour triumphed—Babylonia became the garden of the East and the centre of primeval commerce. Nature here too pro- vided the inhabitants with materials that suggested the building of towns: all around the earliest city of the world, this great Babylon, stretched layers of a clay so perfect, that when merely dried in the Sun it became so durable as to exist at the present day, retaining even the very inscriptions impressed on the bricks. Eight days’ journey from Babylon was a place called Is, in which wells still smoke and boil up with a kind of bitu- men, that forms the most incomparable lime or cement. It was the custom to place layers of rushes or palm-leaves between every thirtieth row of bricks as a binding material; and these very leaves are found so fresh, that you would not think they had been there a year, though the buildings in which they are placed were erected in the time of Nebuchadnezzar. Now you can understand why the races of men first settled in Babylonia, and why Babylon was naturally the earliest city; namely, because the land yielded the amplest means of subsis- tence, and the readiest materials for building. For Several ages we now lose sight of the progress of this nation; both Sacred and profane history give us but little information, upon it, until about 600 years before Christ, when it began to blaze OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST, 93 forth and assume that special aspect of pomp and magnificence which we still attach to the idea of Babylon. This new era commences with a conquest. And before I speak of this conquest, I must pursue somewhat further the general idea of the progress of the human race. We have seen that the first settlers would obtain the most fertile plains, as in Babylonia; others, expelled from these more alluring regions, would select the next best situations they could find; others, inferior in strength or numbers, or desirous of preserving their religion or their freedom from the despotism of the monarchies that became gradually established, would take refuge in moun- tains and defiles. These last nations would grow hardy and vigorous by their mountain life, which necessitates robust and simple habits; at the same time, as their population increased, they would be impelled by hunger and by envy to descend upon the settlers in the more fertile plains. Thus we nearly always find, in the early history of the world, that the conquering tribes are mountaineers. Now, one of these tribes, called the CHAL- DAEANS, Sweeping down from the mountains of Taurus and Caucasus, overwhelmed Southern Asia, captured Babylon, and there established a new throne of the East. And the king of these Chaldaeans was the famous Nebuchadnezzar. He con- quered Asia to the shores of the Mediterranean, triumphed over the king of Egypt, destroyed Jerusalem, established what is called the Babylonian-Chaldaean Empire, and from his reign we date the full majesty and splendour of Babylon. We have still extant a description of this city, by the waters of which the exiles of Israel “sate down and wept; ” a descrip- tion of it by an eyewitness, as enlarged and adorned by Nebu- chadnezzar. It was built in the most exact regularity; it was a square; each of its sides fifteen miles in length—its whole circuit, therefore, was sixty miles; twenty-five gates of shining brass, on each of the four sides, admitted to the same number of streets, intersecting each other at right angles, so that each street was fifteen miles long and a hundred and fifty feet wide ; the houses were very lofty; open Courts and gardens abounded; right through the city ran the river Euphrates, spanned by a 94 OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. bridge of magnificent dimensions. In the midst and probably on the very site of the old tower of Babel, rose the temple of the national god, Bel or Belus. At one extremity was the palace of Belshazzar. And here were those hanging gardens of which you may have read ; they were composed of several vast terraces, the highest rising to the summit of the city walls; on these terraces were planted the stately trees of the East ; animals of all kinds, and birds of all plumage, were found amidst the palm-trees and cedars; the verdure of the gardens was maintained by a mighty aqueduct, that watered all the trees. The walls of the city were encompassed by a vast ditch; those walls were so thick that several chariots could run abreast along their summit; and their height was 350 feet. Now then exert your imagination, and try and picture Babylon to your- selves. Fancy that you are approaching to it—amidst vast level plains, covered with corn and gleaming with rivers and lakes; and there, in a blue cloudless atmosphere, you see rising up this enormous city, the “lady of kingdoms ”—her brazen gates glittering in the Sun—her gardens overhanging the walls—and high in the midst soars up, story on story, the lofty temple of Bel, as if, like the earliest tower, it sought to escape from a deluge. Such was the city that was rebuilt by Nebuchad- mezzar, the conqueror of the East; such was the pomp on which he gazed when a voice fell from heaven, saying, “O king Nebu- chadnezzar, the kingdom is departed from thee; and they shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field; they shall make thee to eat grass as oxen, and seven times shall pass over thee until thou know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whom- soever He will.” The renewed glory of Babylon was of brief duration. The grandson of Nebuchadnezzar was Belshazzar; and it was at the very time that Daniel was interpreting the mystic writing on the wall, that a conqueror had turned the bed of the Euphrates into the great lake which received the overflow, and a dry path was given up to the armies of the Medes and Persians. From that date Babylon became but a province of the Persians— OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. 95 various revolts only accomplished its ruin; its walls were dis- mantled, its towers overthrown; in 600 years from the date of Nebuchadnezzar, it was already a desert. So were fulfilled the words of Isaiah, “the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses.” - I shall now pass on to tell you something about those MEDES and PERSIANS who conquered Babylon. But I must first glance over another city akin to Babylon, and a people who ruled in the East before the Persians were yet known as a conquering I’8,063. - - You open the book of Jonah, and you find that “Jonah arose and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord; and Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey”—that is, it took three days to go from one extreme of the city to another. Now we are told in Genesis (ch. x.) that out of the land of Shinar (that is, Babylonia, the early kingdom of Nimrod), went forth Ashur and builded Nineveh. NINEVEH was the capital of the people called the Assyrians. . This city, long before the time of Nebuchadnezzar, had attained to all that outward splendour, and all that internal corruption, which brought on it the envy of man and the wrath of heaven ; its history, in profane writers, is so obscure and so beset with fable, that I will not fatigue you by dwelling on it, since I can give you no information upon which you can rely. But it was conquered by the Medes, in alliance with Nabopolassar, father of Nebuchadnezzar, and the Assyrian empire was given partly to the Babylonians, principally to the Medes. The site of Nine- veh itself seemed forgotten a very few centuries after its fall; yet our countryman Layard has lately brought its buried halls into light; and by the sculptures which he has discovered, we have a juster notion of the luxuriant civilisation to which the people of Nineveh had attained at a remote period, than any profane historians can afford to us. We discover that they had gained considerable knowledge in Architecture, in Art, in Mechanics, and in all the luxuries of Ornament and dress. And what is very remarkable, the earliest sculptures of Nineveh are the best. But Layard's work upon Nineveh is so recent, and so 96 OuTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. accessible, that I refer you, for further descriptions of that city, to a book which all may read with as much pleasure as profit. Thus then the kingdom of Assyria had passed away—Babylon had fallen—and a new people, the MEDEs, begin to be the prominent ruling nation of the eastern world. Now the Medes appear first to have formed but a part of the great Assyrian empire; they had revolted under able and warlike chiefs, whose history and dynasties are involved in hopeless dispute; and they had formed a powerful kingdom of their own, when they in turn were subjected by the conquest of a tribe akin to them- selves, called the Persians. These PERSIANs were a very remarkable race, and by far the manliest and the noblest that has yet appeared in our view of eastern history. They were the inhabitants, not of luxurious plains, but of rough highlands; their habits were rendered hardy by long winters and constant exercise; as hunters and herdsmen, they wandered to and fro their mountainous region; and a traditional saying of their most celebrated chief announces a simplicity of rude manhood, which contrasts indeed the effemi- mate corruption of Babylon and Nineveh : “I learned three things in my youth,” says this chief, “to ride, to bend the bow, aud to speak the truth.” The very religion of the Persians, how- ever erring, was less gross than that of the worshippers of Bel. We may imagine these mountaineers, after a long dreary winter, beholding the sun of the eastern sky burst forth on their hill- tops, and changing Snow and barrenness into flowers and fer- tility; and, seeing in that sun a symbol of beneficence and joy, we can perhaps understand how they came to consider it as the emblem of God. They recognised indeed, as we do, two prin- ciples; one of good and of light (of which the sun was the type or symbol), and one of evil and eternal darkness. They seemed, as far as we can discover, to have believed also in the immor- tality of the Soul; in guardian spirits; and it has been supposed that our notion of fairies was first borrowed from the Persians. They had strong national feelings; were divided somewhat in clans like our Scotch Highlanders; and had one tribe of heredi- tary mobility, who claimed the right to fight in the post of OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. 97 danger, or round the person of the king, whom these clans elected as their general in war. You can understand how a people like this, though small in numbers, would be destined to become the new conquerors of the East. Somewhat before the fall of Belshazzar, this people had united under a prince whom we call Cyrus, and who is still renowned in the songs and traditions of Asia as Khosroo the Conqueror. He appears to have been connected to the king of the Medes—Greek history makes him that king's grandson ; he attained to the throne of that rising and mighty kingdom, which, though in reality it now passed to the sway of the Per- sian, was henceforth generally styled the kingdom of the Medes and Persians. This was the Cyrus * who overthrew Babylon and founded a monarchy which comprehended nearly the whole of Asia. Now each of these great and predominant empires, the Baby- lonian, the Assyrian, the Persian, had subjected most of the smaller kingdoms of which you read in scripture to the payment of tribute: they did not interfere with those kingdoms in other respects—it was enough for the imperial monarchs of the East to extort from the smaller sovereignties a recognition of their Supreme power, and a contribution to the imperial treasury. Among these states was that DAMASCUS of which there is such frequent and interesting mention in the Bible—Damascus which alarmed even the fearless David ; which was captured by Jeroboam ; and finally (being brought into contest between the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel), was taken by Tiglath Pile- * “It is not necessary, in relating this part of the Jewish history, to plunge into the intricate and inextricable labyrinth of Assyrian history and chronology. It is unimportant whether we suppose, with Prideaux and most of the earlier writers, that the fatal night which terminated the life of Belshazzar, witnessed the fall of Babylon, and that Darius the Mede was Cyaxares, the uncle of Cyrus: or with Larcher and others, that Belshazzar was overthrown, and put to death, by a conspiracy within the city, headed by Darius, a man of Median extraction; and that from this Darius opens a new dynasty of Babylonian kings, which ended in the Persian conquest by Cyrus. “At all events, the close of the seventy years' Captivity found Cyrus the un- disputed monarch of all the territories, or rather of a more extensive and power- ful Empire than that of Assyria.”—Milman, ‘History of the Jews,' Book ix. WOL. I. G. 98 OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. ser the Assyrian monarch, and became from that time a mere tributary province. But this city is still more endeared to us by the later associations of the New Testament. Here it was that Paul, the grand Apostle of the Gentiles, was converted to the faith that he was destined to spread over the heathen world, “in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.” And still this City of Gardens blooms up from the plain of Syria in the preservation of its marvellous beauty; you pass for days along chains of dreary hills, until there bursts on your sight—here a forest of almond trees, Oranges, citrons, and apricots—there a thick plantation of rose trees, from which is made the celebrated attar of roses, with four or five small rivers glittering through the intervals of flower and fruits—and, clear against the warm purple sky, rise the domes and minarets of Damascus. And when you enter the city you are on ground still sacred by beau- tiful traditions—you are in the street, still called “Straight,” where St Paul is said to have lived—you still see, in a tower to the east, the window from which the apostle escaped in a basket the death which threatened him—and still on the road between Damascus and Jerusalem is shown the spot in which, as Saul journeyed, “suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven, and he fell to the earth and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me !” This city yet remains amongst the most flourishing of the East—its bazaars swarm with life—the beauties of the harems recline amidst the trellises of vines and roses: -- But farther on—what rises on your eye 2 A dead disburied city of tombs and Sepulchres. In a valley of red sandstone— Mount Hor and Mount Sinai rising grey at the distance—lies this strange skeleton of the city that was founded by Esau, called SELAH, and subsequently PETRA, that is, the “City of the Rock.” This was the capital of the Edom which you so often read of in Scripture. And here, amidst monuments of all ages, still stands, on the Summit of a mountain, the Supposed tomb of Aaron the brother of Moses. Here, too, are still the remains of a temple, of a palace ; the rocks are hollowed into innumerable OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. 99 chambers, and nothing can equal the magical effect of the bril- liant colours of the rocks in which those monuments are formed. A traveller says, “that these colours are seen in successive layers of every shade and hue, as brilliant and soft as they ever appear in flowers, or in the plumage of birds, or in the sky when illuminated by the most glorious Sunset.” Such are the remains of the city and the mount of Esau; and thus are fulfilled the prophecies, “The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock,”—“I laid the mountains of Esau and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilder- ness.” But now we approach a country that not only appeals to our more Sacred associations, but has a vital claim upon our notice as the earliest parent of commerce and maritime enterprise—a people whose merchants visited our own shores, and whose blood still flows, perhaps, in the veins of one portion of the Irish popu- lation. I speak of the country called PHOENICIA. It is remark- able that the most celebrated commercial countries in history have been comparatively small in extent. Commerce is, in fact, the Successful attempt of human energies against the boundaries of space. Along a short line of the eastern coast of Asia, at most 120 miles in length and nowhere twenty miles wide, bounded by the mountains of Libanus and Antilibanus, once arose, close to each other, a succession of stately cities and crowded seaports. There flourished SIDON, called even in the time of Joshua “the Great Zidon;” and there was the mighty TYRE. All these cities and this coast belonged to the people called the Phoenicians, who were closely allied to the Jewish race and spoke a dialect of the same language. The character of a people is always influenced by its geographical situation. This people at a very early period in the dispersion of races, having obtained possession of a sea-coast at the extremity of the Mediterranean, proffering singular advantage of harbours and commerce, would maturally be tempted to maritime adven- ture. The mountains around them were covered with forests, the forests supplied them with timber for ships—the earth teemed with the useful metals of iron and copper, these gave 100 OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST, them the materials for mechanical art—a kind of fish that abounded on the coasts furnished a brilliant purple dye, the celebrated Tyrian purple—and the Sands on the sea-shore were well adapted to the fabric of glass. Thus you see that on the intelligence of this people had been forced, as it were, the ele- ments of navigation, interchange, and manufacture. But Com- merce always tends to produce liberty; and another reason for the astonishing energy of these Phoenician traders was, that they were under forms of government infinitely more free than the surrounding despotisms of the East. To them indeed we are still largely indebted. They left colonies in Africa, in Sicily, in Spain, in Great Britain, in Gaul (or France), and in Ireland. Above all, they are said to have been the inventors of letters, of the alphabet ; for this, which seems to us so simple and natural an invention, was long unknown among the earlier nations: and thus the alphabet, and possibly even the plain rules of arith- metic, which your children learn at this day by the knees of some English mother, are derived from the inhabitants of that remote and narrow Sea-shore; and it is to the children of Tyre that I owe the very letters in which I read to you of their gran- deur and their ruin. There was an Old Tyre and a New Tyre. Old Tyre was besieged for thirteen years by Nebuchadnezzar; during the blockade the inhabitants took refuge in a neighbour- ing island, which ultimately, under the name of New Tyre, far exceeded the opulence of the Old. This New Tyre was captured by Alexander the Great. Nothing in Scripture is more startling than the fulfilment of the prophecies of Ezekiel, concerning the capture and the fate of Tyre. For Alexander the Great took the city (which as I have Said was on an island) by constructing a wall or causeway across the Sea, with the ruins of the old city and the timber of Mount Libanus. And thus runs the prophecy: “And they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water; and thou shalt be no more I’ And again the prophet says of Tyre, that it “should be as the top of a rock for fishers to dry their nets on.” And thus writes Bruce the traveller: “Passing by Tyre two wretched fishermen, with miserable nets, have just given over their occupation, with very OUTLINES OF THE EARLY EIISTORY OF THE EAST. 101 little success. I engaged them at the expense of their nets to drag in those places where they said shell-fish might be caught, in hopes to have brought out one of the famous purple fish.” The attempt was in vain. And here, on taking leave of these Phoenician states, so con- nected with the origin of modern civilisation, pardon me if I pause to make some remarks that appear to me applicable to all countries and all ages. I have said that “Commerce is the suc- cessful attempt of human energies against the boundaries of space.” Unfortunately, however, where, in the progress of this grand attempt, a state so disproportions its foreign commerce to its natural strength as to become mainly dependent upon the foreigner not only for the luxuries but the necessaries of life, all history, ancient and modern, tells us that it prepares a rapid way to its own inevitable decline : the national spirit becomes relaxed—the desire of liberty grows subordinate to the desire of gain. In such states, the trading capital, as well as the repro- ductive power of the country, rests so entirely upon artificial foundations, that with the first shock of some internal revolu- tion, or with the first signal defeat in war, the power is shaken, and the flow of the trading capital is at once cut off from its sources. Thus the whole system falls at Once into ruins, which no skill and no time can ever permanently restore. Let me bring this ancient truth home to you by modern examples. France has an immense territory which suffices to a formidable population; it relies chiefly upon resources within itself—not only for the necessaries but even the luxuries of life; it has appropriated to its own soil the silkworm of China, the tobacco plant of America, the vines of Italy; it makes even from betroot a substitute for the Sugar-cane of the tropics. And, therefore, whatever the follies or errors of its political govern- ment, though it be threatened with war, though it be maddened by revolutions, the physical existence of France thus complete in itself, recovers and survives every shock it receives. Not so Genoa, not so Venice, not so Holland,-all states the splendour of which was purely derived from foreign interchange. If Eng- land, which holds together its vast maritime and colonial empire 102 OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. by the finest and most delicate threads, which derives its monied capital from a thousand distant and complicated resources, were once to undergo such domestic convulsions or such invading wars on its own soil as France has known—all that artificial capital which now employs so many million hands, but which rests its sole Security upon public confidence and public order, would suddenly melt away; all that power over the ends of the earth which is maintained, not by the might of our arms, but the belief in our wisdom, would suddenly snap asunder ; and England could no more recover herself from such a paralysis of all the organs of her intricate vitality, than Sidon could again see the caravans of the East pass through her ruined gates or Tyre exchange in her desolate markets the wheat of Egypt for the gold of Ophir. -, But we must resume our survey of the Past. I now carry you on from Tyre to Egypt; I shall then return to sum up the general history of the East, which we have still left under the rule of Cyrus—give a brief outline of the character, government and religion of the early Oriental nations—and conclude with a view of Jerusalem and the chosen people of Jehovah. Many scholars have overestimated the antiquity of EGYPT as a social and civilised State. Egypt was unquestionably very ancient, but certainly less ancient than the states of Nineveh and Babylon. And this appears at a glance, if we exert our common sense. The countries in which men would first settle, are, as we have seen, those in which they could obtain the most subsistence with the least labour: this was the character of Babylonia, and could not have been the character of Egypt when the first colonisers came there. On the contrary, the land of Egypt is one vast triumph of Art over the elements of Nature; and men must, therefore, have been already considerably skilled in the arts of civilisation, when they resolved to settle in the land. Egypt itself is within the limits of Africa, but there is good reason to suppose that the Egyptians were of Asiatic origin. We may therefore presume that an Asiatic tribe—expelled from its native home by war or by want—emigrated into the valley of the Nile. Now Egypt is enclosed by two chains of rocks, OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. 103 between which the Nile precipitates itself; to the right are wide deserts—to the left uninhabitable sands. Such a valley would have presented to emigrants, already skilled in mechanical arts, a favourable spot for settlement: the soil was fertile, but it is overflowed for four months every year by the Nile; the land could only be redeemed by cutting canals to receive the over- flow. But we have seen that the people by the plains of Babylon were accustomed to the construction of canals and reservoirs; and the difficulties of controlling the Nile, though far greater than those of curbing the Euphrates, would not have seemed insuperable to emigrants from Babylonia. These difficulties Once mastered, Egypt became habitable, and would soon rise to considerable civilisation. Colonisers civilise much more rapidly than the inhabitants of the native country: for instance, it took us, Englishmen, more than a thousand years to have glass win- dows to our houses, and shirts to our backs; but if a party of English emigrants go and settle in the wilds of Australia, I need scarcely say that their houses will have windows, and their wardrobes will contain shirts. Therefore Egypt, once colonised by a skilful and industrious tribe, would soon rise into a civili- sation equal to that of the parent state. The soil once saved from the marshes by dams and canals, the river itself so pre- pares that Soil for culture that the husbandman has only to scatter the seed. Agriculture, in all inland countries, is the Origin of wealth. Egypt was the great granary for corn; it lay in the neighbourhood of the land of gold and spices; it com- manded Asia on the one hand—Africa on the other: hence it was naturally fitted to be a chief seat of the inland trade of the East. Accordingly, at a very early period of the world (though far less ancient than the date of Babylon), the patriarch Abraham finds a luxurious and gorgeous monarchy established in Egypt. - * The History of the Egyptians may be divided into three great €I’8,S. * - Pirst—from the earliest times, on to those in which it is visited by Abraham, down to that in which Joseph becomes chief minister. Then you find in the first chapter of Exodus, after: 104 OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. Joseph died, that there arose up a new king over Egypt which knew not Joseph. Who and what was this new king 2 Why, during this interval the land had been overrun and conquered by a wandering race, probably the Bedouin Arabs, and called the Shepherd Kings; and the chief of this race founded a new dynasty “which knew not Joseph.” These kings set task- masters over the Jews, and they built for Pharaoh treasure cities. Here I should say that Pharaoh was the general title which the Egyptians gave to their kings, as Czar or Caesar is the general title the Russians give to their emperors. This dynasty—which did not conquer all Egypt, but rather rent it into two monarchies, Upper and Lower Egypt—lasted between two and three hundred years, and was then expelled. The second period comprises the most brilliant age of Egyp- tian power. It comprehends the great conqueror Sesostris and his race of Pharaohs; during this period the great monuments of Thebes were probably erected; and about this time that which emphatically distinguished the character of the Egyptian people was completed. I mean the division into castes, as is now the case in India—the caste of priests, of soldiers, of agri- culturists, trades, shepherds, &c. Every man followed the calling of his father—no man could ever rise above his caste. I need not tell you that, while this policy, if So it is to be called, insures a certain mechanical precision in the arts and a certain dura- bility to forms of government, it excludes all originality, all progress, all true liberty, and all generous Sentiment in social life. Therefore, from this time the Egyptians remain stationary; they reach a certain point of civilisation—they never go beyond it. They never rise to the glorious beauty of Greek art—they leave us monuments of Stone, but none of literature. Other nations borrowed from them, and advanced on what they borrowed—the Egyptians condemned themselves never to ad- vance Therefore, in the third period of their history, we find the Egyptian monarchy already nodding to its decline. And the * Heeren's hypothesis is here adopted. But the date for the Shepherd Kings is extremely disputable. OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. 105 rise of the Persian Cyrus is the sign of a conqueror, who shall avenge on the Pharaoh and his priests the sufferings and bond- age of the Israelites. Those vast structures still existing, called the Pyramids—and that art of embalming the dead, which gives to our curious sight the mummies of those who, three thousand years ago, laughed, wept, lived, and loved, like ourselves—both had their origin in a peculiar doctrine of the Egyptian religion. The Egyptians believed—not in the immortality of the soul, but that the soul existed as long as the body remained: hence their special care for the preservation of the mortal remains—hence their skill in embalment. The body being thus preserved, the next considera- tion would obviously be, to deposit it in some sacred receptacle most secure from time and decay: hence then the pyramids were constructed for the bodies of kings and priestly chiefs, upon the most durable of all architectural principles. Little could those stately Pharaohs have dreamed that an age would come, when the travellers from a northern isle, whose very existence was unknown to them, would penetrate the labyrin- thine chambers of those solemn piles—seize upon the Sacred coffins—transport them to distant shores—unrol to the eyes of the profane the effigies of the royal dead—and bare, as a public show, the brows before which nations had bowed in homage But we must now pass back from Egypt and return to Cyrus, the conqueror of Babylon, and the new monarch of the East. Cyrus was a politician as well as a conqueror: he succeeded in establishing an organisation of the various sections of his vast empire ; he placed the collection of tribute on a regular basis, and enforced it by standing armies; he was severe but not cruel; he restored the Jewish captives of Babylon to their coun- try. But his manners, and those of his Persian Soldiers, became corrupted by the luxury of the Medes with whom they were united. After extending his empire to the Indus, he was en- gaged in a war with rude and wandering tribes, inhabiting the steppes of central Asia, and fell in battle. He was succeeded by Cambyses, who conquered Egypt, persecuted its priests, and insulted its worship. Dark intrigues were formed in the Seraglio 106 ouTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. with a view of restoring the Median dynasty; Cambyses was murdered, or fell by accident. An impostor, who pretended to be his brother, a sort of eastern Perkin Warbeck, was placed by the priests or magi on the throne; seven Persian nobles con- spired against him, penetrated the Seraglio, and slew him. And as the race of Cyrus was extinct, one of these nobles, named Darius the First, was elected to the empire. This reign lasted thirty-six years, and was the most flourishing period of the Persian empire. Indeed Darius was a man of masterly genius, and a perfect king according to the motions of the East. He divided the kingdom into twenty Satrapies or vice-royalties; he placed the royal finances on a solid basis; he established the first rude elements of a post-office—that is, he employed couriers to travel night and day from end to end of his enormous empire, in order to communicate to the various satraps and officers the commands of the great king. To his reign we may refer the most splendid buildings of Persepolis, still extant. He invited Europeans to his court—received their exiles with munificent favour—and profited by their intellect and counsels. But this intercourse with Europeans occasioned the downfall of the Persian empire. On the borders of this great empire lay the country of Greece, the nearest and the fairest territory of Europe. Greek colonies had sprung up on the opposite coast of Asia Minor; these colonies, which were rich and flourishing, Darius resolved to Subject to tribute. In this at- tempt his ambition became enlarged; he desired also to render tributary to his throne the free states of Greece itself. Athens, one of the Greek states, had expelled a tyrant—Darius ordered the Athenians to receive him back. The Athenians refused either to receive a domestic tyrant, or to acknowledge tribute to a foreign king. What was Athens then 2 A small city, in a small territory not larger than an English county—with a popu- lation of free citizens not exceeding, by the largest estimate, 20,000. But Athens resolved to be free. And Freedom gave to its sons a power that could cope with all the armies of the East. Darius died at the commencement of his ambitious pro- jects; his young Son, Xerxes, led into Greece myriads of men, OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. 107 that are said to have exhausted even great rivers on their march. It were too long now to enumerate those glorious conflicts: suffice it to say that the bulk of the invaders perished by land and by sea ; their remnants were chased from the soil, escaping the Sword, but dying in thousands and tens of thousands by fatigue and famine. - Then, flushed with the victory of freedom and intellect over numbers and brute force, rose Greece in all her imperishable splendour—a splendour not like that of Oriental courts, in mighty palaces and armies of gorgeous slaves, but a splendour of poetry and art, of Science, of gränd thoughts and sublime in- ventions, of which at this day we are the inheritors. You can Scarcely name anything which attests some triumph of genius and knowledge but what unconsciously you speak Greek: Astronomy—Geography—Philosophy—Poetry—Music—Archi- tecture—the Drama—Tragedy–Comedy—History—all are Greek words, showing the language from which you derive the wondrous learning that distinguishes the civilised man from the barbarian. - - The history of Greece is the history of the Human Mind; it is also the record of every experiment in civil government— of Monarchy, Aristocracy, Democracy—of all the strife of parties which divides us at this day. The history of the East, when we leave the sacred records and explore the profane, is like a marvel and a fable—remote, unfamiliar; interesting be- cause it appeals to our imagination like a tale of fairy land. But the history of Greece is for ever modern—it must be the manual and text-book of real statesmen to the end of time. And, alas, short indeed was the duration of the brilliant and flourishing state of Greece crowded as it is with the deeds of heroes, and radiant with intellectual light. Greece fell, a suicide as it were by her own hand—fell by the wild divisions of par- ties in her different states—fell by the contests between aris- tocracy and democracy—fell by the licence which followed the brief success of each contest—fell, finally, by abuse of the divine heritage of freedom, and by reckless tamperings with an emi- nently artful and complicated system, which had raised small 108 OuTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. states into great nations, but which crumbled away when states- men could only act according to the impatience, the caprice, and the fickle violence of the popular mobs to which they were forced to appeal. - - And just at the time when the Greek states were thus divided and enfeebled, there arose an able and subtle king in a country bordering Greece, and called Macedon. This king, whose name was Philip, desired to place himself at the head of Greece; and where he could not invade the states, he sought to corrupt the statesmen. He had already succeeded in undermining the in- dependence of Greece, when he fell by the hand of an assassin; and was succeeded by his son, who was yet but a boy. That boy was Alexander the Great. Perhaps nature never endowed one human being with gifts so numerous and so dazzling, as were combined in this young prince of Macedon. And educa- tion had done all to accomplish and perfect what nature had bestowed. In war he had learned his art from his father Philip, the most scientific general of the age; in arts and letters he had been the pupil of the famous Aristotle, whose mind embraced the whole range of knowledge, whether in the phenomena of nature or the experience of life and the lore of government. To an intellect thus carefully tutored, Alexander added a boundless enthusiasm and fire of soul. He had, as a child, the same pas- sion for glory and disdain of fear, which we find in the anecdotes of our own Nelson. He slept with the poems of Homer under his pillow — he dreamed of heroes, and waked to read of them. His form was fitted to the activity of his mind—he was small and slight, but of extraordinary agility and strength—he could ride the wild horse which no one else could approach with safety, and the wild horse became his docile charger Bucephalus. On foot he could outrun the swiftest ; he was asked to run at the Olympian games—“Yes,” said he, “provided my competi- tors are the sons of kings.” He had all the generosity which attaches men to their leaders: once, in dividing the spoils of conquest, he portioned the whole among his followers—“What have you left for yourself?” asked one of his generals; “Hope,” said Alexander. He had two great faults, in the midst of so OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. 109 many sublime qualities of valour, genius, learning, generosity, and consummate practical intelligence; those two faults were an irascible temper and an inordinate self-esteem. Such was the youth, who at the age of twenty ascended the throne of a small mountainous half-civilised region called Macedon; such was the wondrous hero whom Providence reared and reserved for the revolution of Asia, but for the preservation of Europe. For when Alexander, after spending two years in assuring his own kingdom, and confirming his power in Greece, resolved to invade Persia, he is not to be regarded as a mere reckless conqueror—as, what the poet has called him, a glorious “mad- man; ” on the contrary, his enterprise was dictated by the most profound and far-seeing wisdom. Although the Persians had suffered, under Xerxes, such disastrous defeat in their attempt on Greece, the danger was not over. The Persian kings never resigned their ambitious hope of annexing Greece to their throne. They intrigued with the various states, fomented the divisions of party, tendered the most magnificent bribes to powerful traitors and discontented chiefs. At any time might rise some bolder or abler Oriental despot, who, having absolute command over the myriads whom he ruled, might again pour into Greece; and Greece, alas, had no longer the manhood and public virtue which could resist both the iron and the gold. If Greece were once conquered, the key to Europe would be gained —and what boundary then to the ambition of the Persian king? If Alexander had not arisen, all Europe at this day might be under the yoke of Oriental slavery. - It was not then with the intention merely to conquer Persia, that Alexander, 334 years before Christ, at the head of a com- parative handful of men (about 35,000), marched into the plains of Asia; he entertained a far grander design; he saw that neither Greece nor Europe was safe, while that Oriental despotism ex- isted close on the frontiers; and he cherished the sublime idea, not of overrunning and devastating the Persiam realm, but of changing the whole polity and character of the East—in one word, of converting Asia to the civilisation of Europe. I cannot follow him through his dazzling progress; but wherever he went, 110 OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. he conquered, and wherever he conquered, he attempted to civi- lise; if he destroyed, he reconstructed; he founded everywhere new cities, with a marvellous eye to trade and commerce. At this day, when the old cities of Egypt are ruins, the city of Alexandria, which has its origin in his genius, is the most flourishing in Egypt. Finally, after campaigns which included that part of India called the Punjab, now under the English dominion, he resolved to settle on the site of the dismantled and ruinous Babylon. His eye of king and of statesman recognised in that spot, where the earliest city of the world had arisen, the fittest and most central place for the capital of the known uni- verse. Here he resolved to fortify his superb metropolis, and here, in the vanity of human desires, he intended to place, as his bride, the daughter of the last of the Persian kings, whose sceptre had passed into his mighty hands. But the Divine Curse still rested upon Babylon; and the Disposer of kingdoms had ordained that there should be no throne for “the daughter of the Chaldaeans.” In draining the marshes, and tracing the new walls round the city, Alexander was seized with a disease which perplexed the ancient historians—but which the late Sir Henry Halford, in a lecture to the College of Physicians, proves to have been pleurisy—and died after a short illness. And so, if I may translate a Greek epitaph, upon this astonishing hero, “Six feet of earth to-day are too wide for him—for whom yesterday the whole world was too narrow.” Still the constructive nature of Alexander's intellect showed itself; and still, though his general design was but imperfectly begun, its fragments sufficed to change the whole character of Asia. That quarter of the globe was no more united under one Eastern despot; it was broken up and divided amongst the generals of Alexander. New monar- chies under European dynasties thus arose, including even the mysterious Egypt; and the history of Asia. Soon melts away into the history of Rome, which finally subdued the Macedonian monarchies into Roman provinces. Thus, Gentlemen, I have given you a brief outline of the general history of the Ancient East, from the building of Baby- OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. 111 lon, to the fall of the Persian empire by the arms of Alexander, about 300 years before Christ. - - - We must now take a rapid survey of the general character of these ancient monarchies, and we shall see at once the natural causes of their downfall. , - - But first I must point out to you, as a most remarkable and interesting fact, that, from the very earliest period, we find in the East cities of such splendour and nations possessed of such knowledge of the arts, as we nowhere can perceive in the mo- dern East. A very few centuries after the received date of the deluge, we discover that men were acquainted with all the ele- ments of the Social state, resided in vast communities, had con- structed buildings of prodigious architectural magnificence, were necessarily acquainted with mechanics, with the exact sciences, with the fine arts of painting and Sculpture, with manufactures of silk and tapestry, works in gems and precious metals. And when we consider how many ages it has taken any modern na- tion, including our own, to advance beyond the first stage of barbarism—even to the inhabiting of rude villages, and the con- struction of clay huts and garments of hide-this startling fact seems to open us a glimpse of the World before the Flood; it leads us to infer that the children of Noah left behind them, in the devouring waters, the ruins of some perished civilisation— that even now, hurled beneath the roots of Alpine rocks or under the fathomless caves of the ocean, lie the fragments of cities which had heard the harp and organ of Jubal, and gleamed with brass the artificers of which had been instructed by Tubal Cain. And, indeed, we may well suppose that the hands which built the ark of gopher wood, that floated over the roaring deep, might be skilled in many a craft and many an art, which still connects the family of man with the mystic race before the deluge. - Next, when we look over all these early governments of the East, we find them all characterised by absolute despotism—ab- solute power of the Sovereign over the actions and lives of his subjects. Such a power would grow naturally out of the earliest condition of wandering men; for the first authority is the Pater- 112 OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. mal. Suppose a man leading his children from pasture to pas- ture, with his flocks and herds—he would naturally exercise ab- solute authority over these children. Again, suppose that he set- tles in some situation, where the pastures are fertile and the fountains are pure; and suppose Some other stragglers come up, and not being strong enough to expel the first settler, ask his permission to dwell in the same place; his natural answer would be, “’Yes, provided you always acknowledge my authority and obey my will” Thus the despotic power of the father over his family would gradually extend over a clan; and still, as the circle increased by settlement or conquest, still you see the character of the first authority would remain absolute. This seems to me the origin of that despotic monarchy which we find everywhere established in the early history of the world. And this, which first cemented the infant bonds of society, would finally rot them away. As clans became nations and patriarch chiefs became mighty kings, so all ties of affection and family that first softened the despotic character would disappear. The monarch would behold, with supreme indifference or disdain, the human thousands submitted to his will; and hence arose that singular inhumanity, that contempt of life, which charac- terised alike all those ancient kings—Sacrificing their slaves, now to the construction of the palaces and monuments of their pride, and now to wild and ferocious invasions of neighbouring principalities. The next feature in these monarchies is, that always in pro- portion to their splendour and luxury was their frightful cor- ruption in manners. And this arose, partly from the circum- stance that all the refining influences of knowledge, all those in- tellectual pursuits which occupy time so harmlessly and so calmly, where wholly monopolised by the priests: in all these empires the priests alone arrogated knowledge, and kept it to themselves as a power over both king and people. Another cause of corruption is to be traced in the universal disregard for the natural law of marriage, which has always ex- isted in the East. The law that binds the one man to the one woman, is so indelibly written by Nature, that wherever it is OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. 113 violated on general system, the human race is found to deterio- rate both in mind and in form. The ennobling influences of Women cease: the wife is a companion—a hundred wives are but a hundred slaves. Nor is this all: unless man look to Woman as a treasure to be wooed and won—her Smile the charm of his existence—her single heart the range of his desires—that which deserves the name of Love cannot exist, it is struck out of the healthful system of society. Now if there be a passion in the human breast, which most tends to lift us out of egotism and self—which most teaches us to live in another—which purifies and warms the whole mortal being—it is love, as we of the North hold and cherish it. For even when the fair spring of youth has passed, and when the active life of man is employed in such grave pursuits, that the love of his early years seems to him like a dream of romance; still that love, having once lifted him out of egotism into sympathy, does but pass into new forms and development—it has unlocked his heart to charity and benevolence—it gives a smile to his home—it rises up in the eyes of his children—from his hearth it circulates insensibly on, to the laws which protect the hearth, to the native land which spreads around it. Thus, in the uniform history of the world, We discover that wherever love is created, as it were, and sanc- tioned, by that equality between the sexes, which the perma- ment and holy union of one heart with another heart proclaims; there, too, patriotism, liberty—the manly and the gentle virtues —also find their place: and wherever, on the contrary, polygamy is practised, and love disappears in the groSS Satiety of the senses; there, we find neither respect for humanity, nor reverence for home, nor affection for the natal soil. And One reason why Greece so contrasted in all that dignifies our nature the effemi- nate and dissolute character of the East which it overthrew, is, that Greece was the earliest civilised country in which, on the borders of those great monarchies, marriage was the Sacred tie between the one man and the One Woman—and man was the thoughtful father of a home, not the wanton lord of a Seraglio. A third feature of these Eastern states was their idolatry and VOL. I. H 114 OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. the debasing superstitions which subjected the multitude to their priests. Now it may seem at first strange that, So Soon after the deluge, we find the sublime and almost self-evident notion of the One Divine maker and ruler of heaven and earth, so darkly disappearing amidst the most strange conceits, and the most preposterous and grotesque absurdities. That men, wise enough to build such cities as Babylon or Thebes, should be dolts enough to worship a golden calf or a hideous crocodile, appears such a perversion of understanding as to be almost in- credible. But let us look to the origin of these idolatrous religions, and we shall see what were their sources, and how they gradually arose. When the races of men were scattered, and their Origi- nal language was confused and split up into various tongues, after the vain attempt to build the tower of Babel, we can readi- ly conceive how the grand idea of the One Supreme Being, re- vealed in Paradise to Adam, would become shadowy and obscure. The very confusion of languages would alone suffice to confuse the ideas. But still the notion of some divine powers beyond mortality, and influencing the intricate mechanism of events and the destinies of man, universally remained. Now we have seen that the first settlers possessed themselves of the broad and level plains of Babylonia or Chaldaea; there, the nights are sin- gularly cool and Serene, and after the heats of the day invite to contemplation rather than to sleep. These plains, and this at- mosphere, were especially calculated to the study of the stars; the Chaldaeans thus became the earliest astronomers, and towers intended for observatories were among the first buildings they erected. They soon perceived the influence of the heavenly bodies upon the Seasons of the year, and began naturally to ex- aggerate that influence, till astronomy led to astrology—that is, into the belief that the stars ruled the fate of nations and the actions of men. Thus, nearly all sound philosophers are agreed, that the earliest idolatry was the worship of the stars, the moon, or the Sun. But as there is always in man a disposition to re- present to the external sense what he conceives in the inward mind, So these star-worshippers next Sought to create symbols or OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. 115 images of the powers they held to be thus predominant over the earth. Thus the signs of the zodiac were signified by images of a lion, a bull, a ram, a crab, &c.; and the habit of using hiero- glyphic or picture-writing would render this mode of represent- ing philosophical ideas by actual forms and embodiments fami- liar to the ordinary populace. Then and thus would arise graven images—meant originally by the Sages and priests as symbols of the powers of nature, but which soon became adored by the multitude as if they were divine in themselves. The priests probably found that this was an easier mode of sustain- ing the popular faith and enriching the temples than they could find by teaching scientific problems which the mere vulgar would be far too ignorant to understand. Any blockhead could worship a golden calf; but it required a very intelligent mind to understand that a golden calf was but a sign of Some natural phenomenon, or a type of some celestial influence. Thus the idolatry of images became the second form of false worship ; it was common with the people, and though despised, still en- couraged, by the wiser priests. Various artful impostures of chemistry or mechanism would soon invest such images with miraculous powers; and as fire amongst flax, so is Superstition amidst enthusiastic ignorance. Now, just as this idolatry pre- vailed universally through the East, we find the Almighty guarding, in one chosen race, the sublime belief in One Maker of heaven and earth, whose likeness is in no graven image ; and bearing up as it were in a second Ark, over the deluge of heathen darkness, the destined fathers of the Christian world. And it is only in proportion as you can notice how stubborn, strong, and universal was idolatry throughout the East, amongst all the tribes and nations, through which the Jewish people wandered, by whom they were led into captivity, with whom they held trade and intercourse,_that you can perceive how marvellous a thing it was, that that Jewish people, notwith- standing their backslidings and aberrations, still clung fast as a race to the idea of the One God. For this, Providence gave them laws, governments, opinions, wholly distinct and different from those of any other states in the then existent world. They 116 OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. Were indeed, whatever their errors, justified in their boast, that they were the one people under the special protection of the Most High ; for they were the only people in whom the Most High preserved, as in a sanctuary, the idea of the One Creator and the Eternal Father. The history of the Jewish people is to be divided into three periods. The first under Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ; in which the Jews appear as a wandering pastoral family, which increased, during its subjection to the Pharaohs of Egypt, to twelve tribes. The Pharaohs wish them to build and inhabit cities—this is Contrary to their free and roving habits; they fly from Egypt, led by Moses, and under him and Joshua, conquer Palestine the Land of Promise. The Philistines, with whom you find the Jews often engaged, are the warlike inhabitants of Palestine Whom they subdue, but never thorougly extirpate. This period Spreads from two thousand years to fifteen hundred years before Christ (that is, five centuries). The second period is that of a federative republic ; each tribe has its separate patriarch—the cities are governed by magis- trates. This period comprises the Book of Judges. Samuel re- established the worship of Jehovah; the people desired a king— Saul is appointed. This period occupies about four centuries, from fifteen hundred to eleven hundred years before Christ. The third period is that of the monarchy—the nation becomes great and formidable under David, who, independently of his Sacred character, was a man of genius for action and command, equal to his dauntless valour. He conquers Syria and Idumaea; he extends a kingdom, hitherto insignificant, from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean, from Phoenicia to the Red Sea; he reigns thirty-three years; and the reign of his successor, Solomon, is that of the most splendid and flourishing period of the Hebrew history. At the close of Solomon's life, decay begins to be ap- parent ; the admixture of strange gods demoralises the whole state. After his death the Jewish people are rent into two kingdoms, Judah and Israel. Their stormy history and mourn- ful close are familiar to you all. OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. 117 Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, terminates the kingdom of Israel 722 years before Christ, and transplants the inhabitants to Media. Nebuchadnezzar conquers Judah, 588 years before Christ, and leads the scattered remnant of its inhabitants to captivity in Babylon. Here, with the extinction of their freedom, the loss of their very land, other nations would have been erased from the globe. Not so the Jews; even in captivity, they tower above the sons of men—they are not prisoners, they are prophets. Amidst the pomp of Babylon, the exiled Jew is still grander than the king upon his throne. Here Ezekiel awes the East with his inspired visions, here Daniel interprets the mystic characters On the wall, and dooms the empire of Belshazzar to the Medes and Persians. And amidst all the terrors of that awful night, when Belshazzar was weighed in the balance, when the river was turned from its channel, when the hosts of Cyrus poured into the fated city—the Jews but beheld the fulfilment of the prophecies of Jeremiah—the period of seventy years, foretold as the term of captivity, was at an end. And Cyrus, who was the destroyer of Babylon, was the deliverer of Israel, Cyrus re- stored the Jews to their ruined city; some indeed remained in Babylon, but more than 40,000 returned; they regain Jerusa- lem, and their first task was to rebuild the temple of Jehovah. Now it is from this period that we see how Providence prepared the way for the coming of our Saviour. For now the hope of a Messiah, which had existed indeed, though dimly, from imme- morial ages, became far more popularly held, and more insisted upon by inspired writers. Now, too, the doctrine of the immor- tality of the soul became more solemnly and distinctly an- nounced; you see it set forth in the visions of Ezekiel, and in the last chapters of Daniel. Nothing is ever Sudden in the ways of Heaven; it prepares the Souls of men to receive its light, long before the flash bursts upon their eyes. After the death of Alexander the Great, Palestine became an- nexed to the Syrian kingdom ; new captivities, oppressions, con- quests, ensued. The Maccabees, a race of heroes, asserted and 118 OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. for a time regained the independence of the Hebrew kingdom; subsequently, it fell under the yoke of the Roman state, which now indeed spread its dominion over the known globe. Herod, governor of Galilee, a man of great ambition and abilities, gained the favour of Augustus, and established a new throne in Jerusalem : in the last years of his reign—according to some the very last year, but probably four years previously—is the date of our Saviour's birth. The sons of Herod had neither his talents nor his fortunes; six years after the birth of Our Lord, Judaea and Samaria became a Roman province, under subordi- nate governors, the most famous of whom was Pontius Pilate. These governors became so oppressive that the Jews broke out into rebellion; and seventy years after Christ, Jerusalem was finally besieged by Titus, afterwards emperor of Rome. No tragedy on the stage has the same Scenes of appalling terror as are to be found in the history of this siege The city itself was rent by factions at the deadliest war with each other—all the elements of civil hatred had broken loose—the streets were slippery with the blood of citizens—brother slew brother—the granaries were set on fire—famine wasted those whom the sword did not slay. In the midst of these civil massacres, the Roman armies appeared before the walls of Jerusalem. Then for a short time the rival factions united against the common foe; they were again the gallant countrymen of David and Joshua– they sallied forth and scattered the eagles of Rome. But this triumph was brief; the ferocity of the fated Jews soon again wasted itself on each other. And Titus marched on—encamped his armies close by the walls—and from the heights, the Roman general gazed with awe on the strength and Splendour of the city of Jehovah. Let us here pause, and take, ourselves, a mournful glance at Jerusalem, as it then was. The city was fortified by a triple wall, save on one side, where it was protected by deep and im- passable ravines. These walls, of the most Solid masonry, were guarded by strong towers; opposite to the loftiest of these towers Titus had encamped. From the height of that tower the sentinel might have seen stretched below the whole of that OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST, 119 territory of Judaea, about to pass from the countrymen of David. Within these walls was the palace of the kings—its roofs of cedar, its floors of the rarest marbles, its chambers filled with the costliest tapestries, and vessels of gold and silver. Groves and gardens gleaming with fountains and adorned with statues of bronze, divided the courts of the palace itself. But high above all rose the temple, upon a precipitous rock fortified and adorned by Solomon. This temple was as strong without as a citadel— within, more adorned than a palace. On entering, you beheld porticoes of numberless columns of porphyry, marble, and ala- baster; gates adormed with gold and silver, among which was the wonderful gate called the Beautiful. Further on, through a vast arch, was the sacred portal which admitted into the in- terior of the temple itself—all sheeted over with gold, and over- hung by a vine tree of gold, the branches of which were as large as a man. The roof of the temple, even on the Outside, was set over with golden spikes, to prevent the birds Settling there and defiling the holy dome. At a distance, the whole temple looked like a mount of snow, fretted with golden pinnacles. But, alas, the veil of that temple had been already rent asunder by an inexpiable crime. And the Lord of hosts did not fight with Israel. But the enemy is thundering at the wall. All around the city rose immense machines, from which Titus poured down mighty fragments of rock and showers of fire. The walls gave way—the city was entered—the temple itself was stormed. |Ramine in the meanwhile had made such havoc, that the be- sieged were more like spectres than living men; they devoured the belts to their swords, the Sandals to their feet. Even nature itself so perished away, that a mother devoured her own infant; fulfilling the awful words of the warlike prophet who had first led the Jews towards the Land of Promise—“The tender and delicate women amongst you, who would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and ten- derness—her eye shall be evil toward her young one and the children which she shall bear, for she shall eat them for want of all things Secretly in the siege and straitness wherewith thine I 20 OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. enemy shall distress thee in thy gates.” Still, as if the foe and the famine were not scourge enough, citizens Smote and mur- dered each other as they met in the way—false prophets ran howling through the streets—every image of despair completes the ghastly picture of the fall of Jerusalem. And now the temple itself was set on fire, the Jews rushed through the flames to perish amidst its ruins. It was a calm Summer night—the tenth of August ; the whole hill on which stood the temple was one gigantic blaze of fire—the roofs of cedar crashed—the golden pinnacles of the dome were like spikes of Crimson flame. Through the lurid atmosphere all was carnage and slaughter; the echoes of shrieks and yells rang back from the Hill of Zion and the Mount of Olives. Amongst the smoking ruins, and over piles of the dead, Titus planted the standard of Rome. Thus were fulfilled the last avenging prophecies—thus per- ished Jerusalem. In that dreadful day, men still were living who might have heard the warning voice of Him they had cru- cified: “Verily, I say unto you all, these things shall come upon this generation. . . . O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent to thee, . behold your house is left unto you desolate 1”" And thus were the Hebrew people scattered over the face of the earth, still retaining to this hour their mysterious identity— still a living proof of the truth of those prophets they had scorned or slain — still vainly awaiting that Messiah, whose divine mission was fulfilled, eighteen centuries ago, upon the Mount of Calvary. Here I close this history of the earlier East, which rises be- fore you like the ruins of a former world disinterred from the Soil—with the strange and romantic splendour of its “Cloud-capt towers—its gorgeous palaces— Its solemn temples; ” the fragments of a luxurious but rude and imperfect civilisa- tion, in which, amidst the grandeur of kings and the might of * See, for a popular account of the details in this fearful siege, Milman’s eloquent ‘History of the Jews.’ The lover of poetry should not fail to read also the grand drama on the ‘Fall of Jerusalem,” by the same author. OUTLINES OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE EAST. 121 cities that seem built for a race of giants, we look in vain for the freedom that alone gives dignity to man, and strength to embattled towers. If we would recognise the source of the purer influence which now prevails over modern civilisation, and trace the origin of that tender humanity, which makes the guiding principle of our milder policy and legislation; which breaks asunder the chain of the slave—covers the land with asylums for poverty and hospitals for disease—imposes a check on the ambition of conquerors—and opens to the Sorrows of earth the gates of heaven; if we would recognise the first cause of that benignant influence, we must seek it, not in the pyramids of Egypt, not in the halls of Nineveh–we must pass through the Smouldering ruins in which Titus planted the perishable pomp of his Roman eagles—we must pause within the lowly shed to which the star of Bethlehem conducted the princes of the East—we must ascend the hill on which, surviving the relics of imperial power, the trophies of remorseless war, we see in the Saviour's Cross the everlasting signal of peace to earth and good will to man. May this influence, which pervades you all while you hear me, continue to spread with the progress of knowledge, and the expansion of freedom ; may it blend with the hope which makes us struggle towards improvement below —the faith which may unite us hereafter as one family above —and the charity which teaches us to forgive even those who oppose us by the way. Wherever we labour or strive, in our private relations, in our public contests, may there still float down to us from the hill that commands the ruins of Jerusalem, those divine accents which Summed up all that can save the his– tory of the future from the crimes and horrors of the past, in the simple and touching words, “LOVE ONE ANOTHER.” |X. A S P E E C H DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 10TH OF DECEMBER 1852. ON Friday, the 10th of December 1852, upon the order in the House of Commons for the Committee of Ways and Means being read, the Member for Finsbury, Mr Thomas Duncombe, threatened to take the sense of the House on the preliminary question that Mr Speaker do now leave the chair. After some discussion the motion was withdrawn, and the Committee duly formed. In the course of the debate thus provoked the following speech was delivered. SIR,--I shall not follow the hon, gentleman who has just sat down through all the points on which he has touched. It is true that the whole Budget is indirectly open to our considera- tion; but I do not think it necessary to touch upon those parts on which the House are agreed, such, for instance, as the measures connected with the colonial or the shipping interest, which other gentlemen are far more competent to discuss than I am. With respect to the income and property tax, to which reference has been made by the hon, gentleman who has just sat down, the question is so large in itself, and by the Amend- ment of my hom. friend the Member for Montrose (Mr Hume) it is become so complicated, by a variety, not of details merely, but of principles, that it is impossible now to discuss the ques- IN HOUSE OF COMMONS, 10TH DECEMBER 1852. 123 tion fairly, and it must be left to some later occasion, specially Set apart for the purpose. But, as in the meanwhile the princi- pal objection to the Government measure in regard to this tax relates to the extension of its area, it may be well for the country to be aware that my right hon, friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as far as the extension of the area is concerned, has acted not in harsh, but in mitigated conformity with all the most valuable evidence which was given before the Committee on the property tax ; and he also acts, as far as that extension is concerned, in conformity with the sugges- tions of that unquestioned champion of the industrious classes, my hon. friend the Member for Montrose. But I shall not enter into that question to-night, nor into that question which has been raised by my right hon, friend the Member for the University of Oxford (Mr Gladstone), how far the speech of Mr Pitt can induce this House to believe that it is a fraud upon in- come derived from the property of the fundholder to diminish the tax upon income derived from profits. I take it for granted that the majority of gentlemen on the opposite side of the House, as well as gentlemen on this side, are agreed upon this, that you can no longer tax in the same proportion an income which a man, without any fault of his own, may lose in a mo- ment, and income which is derived from capital which a man enjoys for his life, and which he may bequeath to his children. But then, let me suggest for a single moment this serious con- sideration to gentlemen on both sides of the House—for we heard the other night speeches from two gentlemen so pre-emi- ment in this House that one or other of them must be a leading Member in any Administration which may replace the present— I mean the speech of the right hon, gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford, in which he declared that the very distinction which you desire to enforce was a positive dishonesty; and the speech of the noble Lord the Member for London (Lord John Russell), in which he declared his apprehension of the great dangers that would accrue if we depart from those princi- ples of the income tax that have been established by successive Parliaments. This is matter for grave reflection, and may sug- 124 IN HOUSE OF COMMONS, 10TH DECEMBER 1852. gest to gentlemen on both sides of the House how far by their present vote it may be desirable to destroy the first Government which has ventured to establish a distinction so important to the industrial portion of Our constituencies, and to abandon that principle to the hostile feelings, or at any rate to the uncertain mercies and divided counsels, of the gentlemen who may succeed them. And now I shall come to the main question before the House, namely, to the consideration of the indirect duties which it is proposed to reduce, in connection with the house tax, which it is proposed to double. Sir, if any philanthropist desired to confer Some Special boon upon the industrious classes, the reduction of the duties on malt and tea are precisely those which he would select; and though I have seen it stated in some quarters that it would be better to prefer the reduction of some other excise duties than that on malt, such as the excise duties on paper or Soap, yet that is said now by the very parties who have all along up to this period contended that the first articles to be selected for reduction ought to be those affecting the physical sustenance of the people. Now, though certain learned men have gravely informed us that sawdust may be made a very nutritious substitute for potatoes, yet I do not know that any one has ever attempted to induce the people to eat paper or Soap. It was said, most forcibly, in a former de- bate, by the hon. Member for Montrose, that “from whatever source you derive your revenue, you ought not to raise it from the beverage of the working man and the middle classes. The question is one which affects the whole population. You have cheap meat and cheap bread, why should you not also have cheap beer?” These are sentiments worthy of the benevolence of my hon. and respected friend. But a Chancellor of the Ex- chequer cannot afford to be actuated by benevolence alone; he must indulge his philanthropy only according to the rules of political economy; and, therefore, in the selection of duties for reduction, he must look to those which press most upon the commercial and industrial energies of the country, and the re- moval of which will tend most to the reproduction of national wealth, and therefore he selects the tea duties because a reduc- IN HOUSE OF COMMONS, 10TH DECEMBER 1852. 125 tion of those duties tends at least to augment our trade with China, and to promote the interchange of our goods. Directly the reduction of this tax is a benefit to the consumer, while indirectly it benefits Manchester and Liverpool,the merchants and manufac- turers of the country, and we, the country gentlemen, sincerely rejoice to think so. Now let us in the same manner look at the malt tax, because, though it is not directly before the House, yet it is impossible to hear the speech of the hon. Member for Nottingham, and the cheers with which it was received, and it is impossible to read what has been said and written out of doors upon the subject, without perceiving that it is the reduc- tion of the malt-tax, taken in connection with the doubling of the house duty, which is now prominently before the minds of hon. gentlemen opposite. Let us see, then, if the reduction of the malt duties does not proceed upon precisely the same princi- ple as the reduction of the duties on tea. I grant that we shall not obtain anything like a proportionate advantage from the reduction of half the malt-tax that would accrue from its total repeal. I grant that we shall still retain the costly and vexa- tious machinery of the excise restrictions, and that by retaining half the tax you will still Cripple the farmer in the direction of his capital, and in the preparation of malt, whether for fattening his cattle or for brewing his own beer. But what then 2 It is still a bold step in the right direction. It is so, considering the state of the revenue, and considering the feelings of gentlemen on this side of the House, who never desire to forget the claims and interests of other parties. But I frankly tell my right hon. friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that So long as a revenue is drawn from this duty, so long as the farmer is im- peded in the direction of his industry and capital, so long, hon. gentlemen may rely upon it, will the country party endeavour to obtain for the farmer, through the means of free trade, fair and impartial justice. Still, while I admit this to the hon. gentleman the Member for the North Riding of Yorkshire, and while I agree with his arguments in favour of a total repeal of the malt duty, I would remind him that a diminution in the amount of this tax so far lessens the great financial difficulty of 126 IN HOUSE OF COMMONS, 10TH DECEMBER 1852. getting rid of it altogether. But even suppose you were to doubt the benefit of the reduction of this tax to the farmer, surely no one will be absurd enough to deny that the reduction of this tax by one half will cheapen the price of beer—that no monopoly of the brewers can altogether defeat this intention of the Legislature, in the face of public opinion—and that if they should attempt to do so, it would only unite all parties in favour of an alteration in the system of licensing. I remember the hon. Member for Derby (Mr Bass), who is a great practical authority on this subject, and who is the great reformer of the principles of British ale, on a former occasion brought forward a motion for a reduction of the half of this tax, and he rested his whole case on the argument—which he accompanied with his own personal guarantee as an eminent brewer—that the reduc- tion of the half of this tax would give good beer to the people at a more moderate price. I myself, since the Budget, have had an opportunity of speaking to persons eminent in the trade, and their calculation is that a reduction in the tax would cause a reduction in the retail price of Superior beer to the extent of a penny a quart. [“Oh, oh!”]. Well, but I have a right to my calculation, if you have a right to yours, and do not forget your own arguments with regard to the corn laws. You said, “we do not pretend to fix the point to which the price of bread will be reduced by the repeal: all we can do is to legislate so that our legislation ought to reduce the price.” The reduction of the duty on malt, therefore, is the same in principle with the re- duction of the duty on tea. It is intended directly as a benefit to the consumer, and indirectly as a benefit to the farmer, just as the reduction of the duty on tea is intended directly as a benefit to the consumer, and indirectly as a benefit to the merchant and manufacturer; and in order to see how far this reduction will benefit the farmer, I shall read to the House a short extract from that great finance and free-trade authority, Mr. M'Culloch. He states that though the malt-tax falls directly upon the con- sumer, “still, however, it must be admitted that indirectly it is an especial injury to the agriculturist;” and he says, “Suppose a high duty were laid upon calicoes and broad cloths, it would IN HOUSE OF COMMONS, 10TH DECEMBER 1852. 127 fall upon the consumer, but not the less it would be a serious injury to the manfacturer. In point of fact, a duty of 3%d. per yard was imposed previous to the year 1831 upon printed cottons; it fell directly upon the consumer, but indirectly it was so injurious to the manufacturers that, in consequence of their well-founded representations,the duty, which produced £600,000, was repealed, and the results have been sufficient to testify to the policy of that measure. The case of malt is precisely analo- gous, and may be stated to show that the injuries produced by a duty on cotton may, mutatis mutandis, be applied to describe the injuries produced by a duty on malt.” Now, it may be said that all this goes to prove the advantages of a total repeal of the malt-tax ; but subsequently Mr. M'Culloch, despairing of the total repeal, suggests the very measure that is now before the House, namely, a reduction of one-half the duty. But, be- cause this question is accompanied indirectly with benefit to the farmer, and is accompanied by a double house-tax, we are told that this is a question of town against country. No, Sir, it is a question of free trade against restriction: it is a question whether you will attempt to lower the price of an article of popu- lar subsistence—whether you will remove a check which operates directly against an important branch of the industry of the country—and it is accompanied with a direct tax which would be fair and just, and as such is recommended by all political economists, even if it were not accompanied with any reduction of the malt-tax at all. But I suspect that what deprives this reduction in the duty on malt of all merit in the eyes of hon. gentlemen opposite, is the very reason that should induce them to support it, namely, because it removes Some weight from that class which has the most cause to dread competition. I fear that if the measure proposed inflicted some new hardships on the agriculturists, and gave to hon, gentlemen opposite a new triumph of class and party—and if all the agriculturists were therefore combined against them, we should hear of nothing but the selfishness of Squires and farmers, who refused to cheapen the price of beer for the benefit of their poor countrymen. Bet- ter at once support the doctrine that because the farmer con- 128 IN HOUSE OF COMMONS, 10TH DECEMBER 1852. tends that he is suffering partial distress, therefore he is not to be impartially relieved; that because in the cultivation of wheat he is subjected to unrestricted competition, therefore his indus- try is to be fettered in the cultivation of barley. And what is this grain thus selected for fiscal harassment and discouragement 2 Why, the grain which, above all others, is adapted to the climate and soil of this country. In wheat we are equalled, perhaps ex- celled, by other countries—in barley we are unrivalled; and this article in which we are unrivalled is the very one which you specially select for impediments in the employment of in- dustry in its most profitable channel. This is more than an in- jury to the farmer—it is more than a grievance to the consumer —it is a perverse and elaborate rejection of one of the most fer- tile sources of national wealth which Providence has conferred upon this country. If hon. gentlemen do not object to the malt-tax considered in itself, what is it to which they do object 2 You say you object to the house-tax being doubled for the bene- fit of the farmers; but that is simply to say that you object to the further extension of free trade when it operates against the other classes whom you represent. What is it you object to in the house-tax 2 Do you object to the tax itself? You cannot do that, because it is a tax which has been specially selected by all authorities on the subject as a tax which they would recom- mend for almost indefinite extension. Mr Mill says, that of all possible taxes a house-tax is one of the fairest, because it falls upon a man in proportion to his expenditure; and Mr M'Cul- loch, almost anticipating the measure now before the House, years ago advised that we should commute the tea-duties, the more obnoxious excise-duties, nay, half the malt-tax—what for 2 —for a tax upon houses; and this, too, at a time when the win- dow duties were still in existence. The only point worthy of consideration is that which has been suggested by the hon. Mem- ber. But the hon. Member for Lambeth (Mr Williams) suggests that instead of the house-tax we ought to impose the legacy duties upon realised property. Now I frankly own to the hon. gentleman that the feeling out of doors on this subject is so strong, and partly so reasonable, that if you are to continue IN HOUSE OF COMMONS, 10TH DECEMBER 1852. 129 these duties at all, Sooner or later they must be applied to all descriptions of property. I grant that; but then in return I think you will grant me this—that the question is, which is the best tax of the two 2 and I think I shall show that on sound financial principles the tax which you propose is infinitely more objectionable in itself than the house-tax. All political economists, and indeed all educated men, agree that taxes ought to fall, not upon capital, but upon expenditure. When a tax falls upon expenditure, you supply a stimulus to the person paying it to make it up in Some other way; but when the tax falls on capi- tal, that stimulus is not given, the tax is not made up, and the loss is one which falls upon the very wealth of the nation. But of all taxes upon capital, that which directly taxes capital itself is the worst; and, therefore, Mr Ricardo singles out the legacy duty for unqualified condemnation. His argument, if I remem- ber right, is somewhat this: “Suppose I have a legacy of £1000, and the State takes £100 from me in the shape of a legacy duty; I should only consider that I have received £900, and I have no particular motive to make up the loss by lessening my expendi- ture. But if I have received a legacy of £1000, and £100 is taken away in a variety of other taxes, such as a tax on house, servants, horses, wine, &c., in all probability T shall decrease my expenditure to that amount, and so the national wealth will re- main unimpaired.” So that, this tax being bad in principle— bad on all the principles relied on by hon. gentlemen opposite —surely it is wise not to increase that tax to such an extent as that it can never be taken off from the national revenue. Be- sides, it is obviously unjust to inflict this new burthen on land and real property until you have first taken off all the stamp duties that at present press unequally on the transfer of that de- scription of property. For landowners are not, as a class, those great leviathans they have been represented. On the con- trary, it has been proved in statistical evidence that the average income of all the landed proprietors of the kingdom amounts only to £150 a-year; and as this average includes all the great landholders, it follows that there must be a great many land- owners whose incomes are much below that average. Therefore VOL. I. I 130 IN HOUSE OF COMMONS, 10TH DECEMBER 1852. a legacy duty on these small properties would necessitate sale or mortgage; and the abolition of the stamp duties must in com- mon justice accompany the imposition of the legacy duty. So, then, you see that these operate against your substitute of the legacy duty, or level first the objections to all legacy duties whatsoever, and next the necessity of first abolishing all stamp duties on the transfer of that property in particular; while the house-tax is one which political economists approve in itself, and can be adopted as a single proposition on its own merits. But you object to the extension of the area. Yet no man can deny that the same principle which you apply to the income and property tax you must apply in a still more rigid manner to the tax on houses. The only exemptions you can allow are the classes who live on the wages of unskilled labour; the only limit should be that at which it becomes unsafe or impossible to collect the tax. But then we are told that the tax will interfere with the elective franchise. This, no doubt, is a grave consideration; but there is a consideration before the House which is still more grave, and it is this—the £10 householders now form a large portion of the electoral con- stituency, and it becomes a matter of great danger if a class which exercises So great an influence on all the taxation of this House, is itself altogether exempted from the taxation which it has the power of inflicting upon other classes. Now, if the House should resolve to Sanction and enforce such a principle as this exemption by a deliberate vote, they will affirm the principle by which the old republics were first corrupted and then destroyed; they will Sanction a principle which justifies the people of France in preferring an absolute monarch to the workings of an unrestrained democracy; and that principle is the confiscation of property—confiscation for the benefit of numbers. And now, one word for the farmer. I wish hon. gentlemen opposite would dismiss altogether from their minds the spectre of compensation; for if compensation were sought for by the reduction of half the duties on malt, it would indeed be a miserable dole, altogether unworthy the House of Commons. But still the relief would be real, though I grant it would not be large; it would be a real IN HOUSE OF COMMONs, 10TH DECEMBER 1852. 131 and practicable relief to agriculture, and that I will show if the House go into Committee on the subject. But it is not always the amount of relief given, but the mode and spirit in which it is offered, that allays dissatisfaction, and reconciles those who suffer from the crises which the changes in our mational policy Sometimes compel classes to undergo. We feel this when we have to deal with Ireland; one Government can often do very little more for that country than another; but it is the animus in which the offers of relief are made—the desire to do something— that makes all the difference between the Government which the Irish people are prepared to approve, and the Government which they are prepared to detest. So it is in England. All men are governed by their feelings as well as their interests. Men are not leather bags or strong boxes—but living beings, with hearts in their bosoms and blood in their veins—who can ap- preciate kind intentions as well as resent the systematic disdain of their complaints. I entreat you, then, not to treat the British farmers as if they were your enemies. You are not political economists only—you are politicians—you are English states- men; and even supposing that the distress of the farmers is exaggerated—suppose that the farmers are the only persons in the world who never know whether their pockets are full or empty, still you cannot deny that they believe they are dis- tressed—they assert that they have been injured, and that im- pression tends to produce disaffection; I put it to you whether it would not be wise and politic to remove the impression which alienates your countrymen from the laws. And what is this class 2 Why, that in which you have hitherto found, in times of danger and in case of war, that cheap defence of nations which consists in the ancient loyalty and the love of the native soil. It is seldom that the removal of disaffection can be pur- chased at too dear a rate ; but now that you can do it so cheaply, and strengthen your country in the affections of its best de- fenders, how can you hesitate to accept the advantage 2 But the fact is, that behind all these questions there is to be found another which forcibly presses itself upon the consideration of the House. I should be the last person to impute to hon. 132 IN HOUSE OF COMMONS, 10TH DECEMBER 1852. gentlemen a single factious or unworthy motive; but you have been so severe on the inconsistency of hon. gentlemen on this side of the House, that you will allow me to ask you respect- fully whether consistency of principle, independent of party, be precisely that virtue of which you set us an example—when, having first desired that we should recognise free trade as the guide of our future proceedings, no sooner is that concession made by the Government than the very gravamen of the charges against that Government is the concession it has made. Surely never before were men who were in earnest about a principle, So angry when they heard that their principle was not to be opposed. You have specially invited the Government, by the Resolution of my hon, friend the Member for Wolverhampton, to a farther extension of the principles of free trade; and now that measures in that direction have been prepared, accom- panied by a direct tax so sound in its principle that there is not a single political economist whom you can cite against it, at once free trade is given up, political economy is thrown aside, and restriction on industry becomes the cry of the towns, in order to prevent free trade being carried out for the benefit of the country. It is so impossible to ascribe all this to unworthy or paltry motives, that I ascribe it rather to that honourable ambition which induces you to substitute a Government com- posed of the men you prefer, for a Government whose measures you are compelled to be inconsistent in order to disapprove. Now, one word with regard to myself, for it applies equally to gentlemen on this side of the House whose adherence to the cause of free trade you have somewhat ungraciously received. The opinions which I entertained upon the subject of a repeal of the corn laws gradually estranged me from a party to which I formerly rendered some trifling service—a party in which I still recognise not only private friends, but many accomplished politicians and statesmen—of consummate talents and experience. But it was not on that single question alone that I transferred my very humble support to the party and policy represented by the present Government. I did not make that transfer so long as the late Administration lasted. I did not do so till that IN HOUSE OF COMMONS, 10TH DECEMBER 1852. 133 Administration—I hope I may say so without offence—died from its own exhaustion. Not until the noble Lord the late Premier, looking at the state of parties, could see no other person but Lord Derby to suggest to her Majesty as his suc- cessor—not till, regarding the position of affairs at home, still more the position of affairs abroad, I myself believed that it might be for the welfare and perhaps for the safety of the country, to give to Lord Derby's Government a fair and a cor- dial trial. It was first to that trial that I bounded my support; but I did so with full allowance for all the difficulties which the Government would have to encounter, and a firm belief that it would unite a conciliatory policy towards a class in which prolonged distress had produced a deep-seated sense of injustice, with that rational respect for public opinion which Lord Derby frankly expressed so soon as he acceded to office. In that school where I learnt the meaning of constitutional liberty, it was never considered a disgrace to a Minister of England to regulate, not indeed his private doctrines, but his political con- duct, according to the opinions of his time. Nor did I ever think I should hear a taunt on the expediency of bowing to public opinion from the very men who have threatened to change the constitution itself in order to bring us still more under the influence of popular control. But that which has sanctioned and confirmed the support which I now tender to the Government is not any question connected with agriculture; it is not any party consideration ; it is simply this—the dis- position they have shown to promote general measures for the improvement of the laws, and for advancing the welfare of the people. I do not allude alone to reforms of the Court of Chancery, nor to the progamme of useful measures announced in her Majesty's gracious Speech, nor to the financial projects now before the House—of which I sincerely approve—but I must look also to the liberal and enlightened speech of the right hon, the Chancellor of the Exchequer the other evening. I see there, for the first time, the pledge from a Minister of the Crown for economy and retrenchment, in the implied promise of large administrative reform. I see there a capacity to deal 134 IN HOUSE OF COMMONS, 10TH DECEMBER 1852. with the most complicated of social questions—that connected with criminal punishment. I see a general understanding of what I conceive to be the great want of this time—for I believe the great body of the intelligent public is disposed to favour the policy of a Government which, while it will be conservative of the great principles of the constitution, will make that con- stitution suffice for all purposes of practical reform. It is by measures and sentiments like these that the Government have shown already that they do not come into office as the exclusive advocates of a single class, or the inert supporters of a retro- grade policy. On the contrary, the more they can mitigate the sufferings of every class, whether commercial or agricultural, the more worthy they will be of the support of that House of Commons to which every section of the community that con- tributes to the supplies has a right to come for the redress of grievances; and if they can so contrive that no large portion of the community shall be left excluded from that prosperity which is paraded before our eyes, the more they will unite all classes and interests to co-operate with them in that calm but continuous progress in which it is the duty of every Ministry to maintain our hereditary place in the foremost rank of Euro- pean civilisation. Therefore, for my part, I declare that the Satisfaction with which I shall give my vote in accordance with the intrinsic merits of the question immediately before us, will be increased by thinking that it is one vote amongst many which may serve to continue this Government in its career of useful and liberal legislation; believing, as I do, that those same causes of dissension which before rendered a Ministry formed from the opposite benches so weak and ineffective, in spite of the honesty, the virtues, and the genius of the men who composed, and the Premier who presided over it, do still exist, and will still prevent that unity and firmness of purpose which can alone render effectual the desire to preserve —perhaps against attacks from its own supporters—that balance between Safe reform and hazardous experiment on which I believe, in my conscience, depend the continuance of our prosperity and the stability of the Empire. - |XI. A S P E E O H DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 25TH OF APRIL 1853. ON Monday, the 25th of April 1853, upon the House of Commons going into Committee of Ways and Means on the Income Tax resolutions of the Budget, the member for Hertfordshire, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, moved by way of amendment— “To leave out the words ‘towards raising the supply granted to her Ma- jesty there shall be raised annually during the terms hereinafter limited the several Rates and Duties following, in order to insert the words: ‘the con- tinuance of the Income Tax for seven years, and its extension to classes heretofore exempt from its operation, without any mitigation of the inequali- ties of its assessment, are alike unjust and impolitic, instead thereof.” A discussion thereupon arose which lasted four nights, the amendment being rejected at the close of the last sitting, on Monday the 3d of May, by 323 votes to 252. In submitting the amendment to the consideration of the House in Committee the following Speech was delivered. SIR,--I will endeavour to condense, as closely as possible, the arguments I propose to use to enforce my amendment. The right hon. gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer has in- formed the House he regards the income tax as the keystone of his financial scheme; and the right hon. gentleman has requested the House not so much to give attention to the keystone as to 'bestow their admiration on the various superstructures it is in- 136 TEIE INCOME TAX. tended to bear. But I think it is necessary that the House should first examine the keystone, to find out whether it is quite perfect or whether it needs repairs; by doing this it will be able to look with more satisfaction at the superstructure. I will ad- mit that there is much in the Budget worthy the high reputation of the right hon, gentleman, and of the approval of the country. And I will grant, also, that the income tax may fairly be retained for a certain period, in order to enable the right hon. gentleman to develop his financial scheme. But if the tax is necessary, it is not necessary to renew also all its defects; there is no reason that the country should not possess all the good things in the right hon. gentleman's budget, in combination with that reform in the income tax which is demanded by justice and the Sense of the country. There is this marked difference between the right hon, gentleman and those who have supported Lord Derby's Government, namely—that when the late Government proposed to deal with the income tax, they made it an indispensable con- dition to remove from that impost the elements of unpopularity, and to establish a clear distinction between precarious income and income derived from realised property. The right hon, gen- tleman the present Chancellor of the Exchequer refuses to make that distinction. He proposes to leave the principal objections untouched. Now it is precisely because I concur in the two fun- damental premises of the right hon. gentleman that I am com- pelled to come to a different conclusion. I agree with the right hon. gentleman, first, that the income tax is a mighty financial resource, which should be kept available in all times for future need; and, Secondly, that it ought not to be regarded as an habitual feature of our taxation. But exactly because I wish to have this tax available, with the ready assent of the people, in any future need, that I ask the House to remove from it those features which now make it so unpopular; Or, if it be held unwise to correct the machinery of the tax, we should at least endeavour to console those who are ground down by this tax, by showing them we will not maintain it a single year longer than we can help. The right hon. gentleman, however, determines to do exactly the reverse, for he retains all the inequalities of the THE INCOME TAX. 137 impost, and postpones its suspension to the furthest possible period. Seven years may be a short period in the history of a people, but it is a long period in the lives of a generation; and at the end of seven years what guarantee is there that the tax will be abolished ? The right hon. gentleman candidly says he does not wonder at the incredulity of the people on the subject of the repeal of the income tax, when he recollects the promises of his predecessors; but, says the right hom. gentleman, “I will state the calculations and resources on which I rely for the ex- tinction of the tax, and then leave the public to judge for them- Selves.” The right hon. gentleman, accordingly, luminously Sums up the amount of his financial expectations, if not to our Satisfaction at least to his own, and shows that in 1860 there will be a balance arising from his scheme, which will enable par- liament to dispense with the £6,000,000 contributed by the in- come tax to the revenue. But the right hon. gentleman does not take into the account the per contra, that all this time Mem- bers on both sides of the House will be doing their best to fore- stall his balance-sheet. If hon, members, even on the right hon. gentleman's side of the House, refused towait four days before they embarrassed his whole Budget by the repeal of the advertisement duty, how can the right hon. gentleman possibly suppose that his opponents or the independent members will wait seven years without interfering with that balance with which he proposes to pay off the income tax by propounding reductions of their own 2 Every class has some particular interest against Some particular tax, stronger than its share in the general interest against the income tax; and the right hon. gentleman may rest assured that these particular interests will not wait to make themselves heard till the precise period which the right hon. gentleman has marked for the full development of his plans. And just in proportion as the revenue is most flourishing—just as the terminable annui- ties are falling in-the advocates for the repeal of the paper duties, for the abolition of the stamp duty on newspapers, for the repeal of the malt tax, and so on, will the more eagerly press forward their claims, deaf to any pathetic appeal not to derange the balance that is to pay off the income tax. So that when the 138 THE IN COME TAX. time comes to slay the giant, the giant will have grown bigger and stronger than ever—be cased in the same impenetra ble brass—and not a pebble will be left in the brook that will fit into the sling reserved to kill the Goliah. But supposing all these fears to be vain, and supposing no taxes be taken off, still the right hon. gentleman is compelled to base all his calculations on the bold assumption that the remissions of taxes will have replaced themselves by 1860—that, from analogous experience, he has a right to assume that after the reductions the amounts received from the various articles in 1860 will be nearly the same as now. The public income, the right hon. gentleman tells us, by the remissions he proposes, will be diminished to the ex- tent of not less than £5,384,000; but then, says he, by the com- mercial law of reproduction, the amount of loss to the taxes will have replaced itself by 1860, and at that time he will have an available surplus of £5,959,000, which will enable the House to do away with the income tax should it think fit. The right hon. gentleman's scheme all depends on that assumption. Now, I grant that a reduction of duties on articles largely consumed does ultimately replace itself by increased consumption; but the House must recollect that that rule applies to duties reduced, and has obviously no application to articles the duties on which are absolutely repealed. And yet the right hon. gentleman proposes to abolish altogether the duties on soap—in amount £1,120,000, and on certain other articles of Customs, amounting to £53,000; making a total of £1,179,000 of taxes absolutely abolished, and which, therefore, as a matter of course, will not be subject to the commercial law of reproduction. How can the duty be replaced when it is altogether abolished ? Looking further, I find other items which the right hon. gentleman expects will be restored to the revenue in six years. I find colonial postage £400,000; but this is an absolute expenditure, not a duty to be reproduced. Then the law of reproduction is not applicable to articles of luxury—such as carriages, horses, &c. The duty on these articles is to be sacrificed to the extent of £340,000. Then, with respect to spirits, what becomes of the law of reproduction there 2 It is calculated that the duty will not be diminished but increased THE INCOME TAX. 139 by £436,000, in consequence of the proposed change ; but who can say that the increase, whatever it may be, will not be sup- plied by illicit distillation, and that the augmented receipts will not go into the pocket of the illicit distiller, instead of enriching the Exchequer ? Together, these items amount to two millions —of which one portion is not subject to the commercial law of reproduction, and the larger portion is made up of duties abol- ished altogether ; yet the right hon. gentleman relies on these items to produce him one-third of that surplus which, in 1860, is to get rid of the income tax. I may be told that, though in- dividual reductions should not replace their loss to the revenue individually, yet that their effect in stimulating the general energy, and in consequently promoting the general prosperity, will operate equivalently. But there will be another operation going on at the same time; the greater the general prosperity, why, the greater the amount paid in the shape of income tax, and the greater, therefore, the unwillingness of any Chancellor of the Exchequer to part with so productive an impost when the time comes. Thus there is this double risk for the country—first, that, in prosperity, the Chancellor of the Exchequer will not part with the income tax, because it is so rich and ready a resource; and, secondly, that in adversity it will become a matter of ne- cessity to retain it. I object, then, to the continuance of the income tax for the period of seven years, without any guarantee that it will be abolished at the end of that time ; and if I had any doubt on that point, and if I wished for proof that the right hon. gentleman himself doubts the realisation of his hopes, I should find a confirmation of those doubts in a letter which has appeared in one of the journals of this morning. The letter is written by the right hon. gentleman in reply to a question from a clerk at Birmingham, asking him how he is to be benefited by the income tax 2 The right hon. gentleman, in one part of his letter, informs the sceptical clerk—“The tax collector, should Parliament adopt the Government proposition, will, about Jan- uary, call upon you for the half-yearly payment of £1,0s. 10d,” pleasantly adding that the visit “will be repeated in July, and this for seven years—when, unless Parliament, in consideration 140 THE INCOME TAX. of other public benefits or necessities not yet foreseen, should prolong the tax, it will drop altogether.” Upon such a qualified assurance as this, I think the House will hardly consent to Con- tinue this tax for seven years—to continue it, moreover, with all those characteristics of unfairness and inequality which so tend to demoralise the public. The right hon, gentleman has admitted, with his wonted frankness, that the fraud and falsehood engen- dered by the operation of the impost in men engaged in trade and business who make out their own returns, constitutes one reason, and a main reason, against the tax. But why, I would ask, are this fraud and falsehood found in classes before pro- verbial for their straightforward integrity ? Why, but because those who have to pay it see in it so much inequality and injustice as to reconcile their consciences to every method which can evade the intention of the law. It is a property in human nature, that evasion of the law becomes general the moment the operation of the law becomes over-harsh or unjust. Thus, when death is the punishment of offences not grave enough for that ex- treme penalty, jurymen have belied their consciences, and ac- quitted the offender. Thus the old severity of the game laws has enlisted sympathy on the side of the poacher ; the same principle has bonded together the whole peasant population of Ireland against laws which they feel to be partial, and that same principle now will gradually rot away the honesty of the British tradesman. But I contend that all the objections to the income tax, as it now stands, applies with increased force to its proposed extension. The late Government proposed to extend the tax to incomes of £100 a-year, but they determined the tax should be placed on that equitable footing required by the great body of the public. The present Government proposes to extend it to the same incomes, whether justly or unjustly assessed; they propose to extend it to that class whose humble subsistence is drawn from their daily labour; they propose to extend to men whose humble circumstances must more tempt them to evade it, that same law, perfectly unmitigated, which has already corrupted the morality of men much better off; they propose to give injus- tice a wider circulation, to create a wider hatred than that which THE INCOME TAX. 141 already prevails—to sink deeper still into the heart of the nation, not only a hatred of the tax, but the demoralising effects which it produces. The Government says, “We will extend the tax to Ireland.” I will not argue whether Government are doing right in inflicting another burden on that country at the very period when a revolution in all the tenure of real property is yet going on ; but I think no greater insult could be offered to the common sense of that country than to propose to do away with a partial debt as a compensation for the obligations of a general tax. One could be no compensation for the other. What consolation, for instance, would the landlords of Clare feel on being told by Gov- ernment, “You are wiping out a debt incurred by a parish in Limerick l’ So that instead of making the extension of the tax a matter of fairness and justice, it is only an extension of iniquity. It is for the plain reason that in great measures of taxation it is necessary to go with the great intelligence of the people, that I shall not follow the right hon. gentleman through all those inge- nious arguments and references to Special instances and examples by which he has vindicated the present adherence to the income tax; because, even if I grant that the right hon. gentleman has made out his case to the Satisfaction of highly-educated logicians, still I fear that the stubborn prejudice of less scholastic persons will rebel against his reasoning, and that the tradesman, after puzzling his head with all the ingenious definitions and distinc- tions of the right hon, gentleman, will still blunder back to his old position, and will say, “That may be all very fine, but I can’t for the life of me conceive that it is just that that income which a man enjoys for his life upon secured capital, and may give to his heirs, shall pay the same as mine, which I may lose by a casualty or by a stroke of paralysis to-morrow, leaving my children to the care of the parish.” The right hon, gentleman must remember that it has been said by the highest authority— that it is never enough to prove that a tax is just in the abstract, but that it is much more important for the Safety of the common- wealth to convince those who pay it that there is justice in its application. I do not allow, however, that the right hon, gen- tleman can make out his case to the Satisfaction of logicians, and 142 THE INCOME TAX. I deny altogether the accuracy of the deductions which he has drawn from the special instances he has cited to show what may be called “the latent impartiality” of the burden. If you de- duct legal expenses, management charges, and repairs from real property, it actually, says the right hon. gentleman, pays 9d. in the pound, while the tradesman pays but 7d. If you look, how- ever, with equal liberality to the reductions which should be made to traders, in the shape of bad debts and matters of that description, I apprehend that that difference will vanish altoge- ther. But is there no other property besides that in houses and land with which the tradesman comes in comparison 2 There is no reduction for repairs upon the property of the fundholder, for example: he receives his income net and clear, yet he is taxed at the same rate only as the man who has no capital Save his industry, and no security save his health. That the right hon. gentleman is aware there is injustice in this is perfectly clear, because, after having told us that land is the most Se- verely taxed of all, he nevertheless proceeds to say that he shares in the feelings of those who consider that the tax presses too hard upon intelligence and skill, and not hard enough upon property; and he then sets to work to repair that injustice by laying the additional burden upon the owners of real property of a new tax amounting to no less than £2,000,000 a-year. But the right hon. gentleman says, “See what difficulties you involve yourselves in if you attempt to classify incomes; the incomes from some trades are better than those derived from land, and in trades themselves Some are worth only three or four years' purchase, while others are worth twenty-five years’ purchase.” Of course, those dis- parities will exist, and it was very hard to deal with them strictly; but the same disparities exist in all phases of life, and these small petty matters of detail must be discarded, and broad distinctions only must be recognised. The same thing must ex- ist, for instance, in the case of assurance on lives; but if actu- aries are possessed of the same finely-discriminating genius as the right hon. gentleman, I believe that the scruples which will be engendered will prevent any assurances being effected at all. Fancy a grandfather and a grandson presenting themselves at the TEIE IN COME TAX. 143 Same office : According to general tables, the grandfather's life may be worth five years’ purchase, the grandson's twenty-five; but suppose the actuary to be of the ingenious and discriminat- ing turn of mind of the right hon. gentleman, he may say— “Oh, but youth runs more dangers than age—the young man may hunt, and may fall from his horse, or he may shoot, and be killed in a battue : I really don’t know that the young gentle- man's life may not be worse than his grandfather’s.” And so it may be in Some individual cases; still, if it were not pretty clearly established that grandchildren lived longer than grand- fathers, assurance Societies would have been ruined long ago. By the same argument some incomes derived from trade may be more valuable than incomes from real property; but you must lay down a broad principle in dealing with these questions, and that is the one broad general principle, that income that is de- rived from Secured capital is, on the whole, incontestably more valuable than income that depends upon the accident of health. I promised to be brief, and I have been so. I believe I have touched upon all the main points of the question, and I am wil- ling to leave to others the filling up of the details. I have en- deavoured to show that, if the tax is continued as a temporary tax, it is continued far too long—until there will be instilled into the hearts of our countrymen both a hatred, derived from a sense of injustice, and the demoralisation that belongs to a war between conscience and law. But if it is intended to be permanent, or rather easily susceptible of revival, then the first step ought to be to remove that which most tends to induce opposition, and allure to fraud. I have endeavoured to show that the tax is un- just in itself, and that these extensions are not politic, when with the tax you extend also that injustice which those who have paid it have hitherto complained of. I have endeavoured also to show that the right hon, gentleman has given us no guar- antee that the income tax should cease in 1860, and that the surplus on which he relies is exposed to great hazards; and, lastly, that the arguments of the right hon, gentleman, founded upon special instances and examples, are not of a nature to satisfy or console those who pay the burden. The right hon. 144 TELE INCOME TAX. gentleman will believe me that I should be the last man to de- preciate his high powers and attainments. On the contrary, I hope, if defeated in this measure, that the right hon, gentleman will do as others have done before him—will correct his measure, but retain his position. It has sometimes been represented that the country gentlemen are indifferent to all taxes that do not op- press themselves. I rejoice that, upon this occasion at least, we can triumphantly rebut that charge. It may be true that some have thought it their duty—and I believe correctly thought—to vindicate the claims of British industry upon the part of the farmer. It is something of the same principle that we should defend now in the case of the British tradesman, because we be- lieve that the rights of industry are invaded whenever Govern- ment taxes at the same rate the precarious earnings of labour and our own hereditary possessions. There has been, I believe, Some vague intimation of a dissolution, in case this measure shall be lost. I and those with whom I act are quite ready to encounter such a calamity. I cannot pretend to judge how many gentle- men, the representatives of towns, may be disposed to vote against this resolution. I cannot doubt their honest motives if they do ; but if they do, and if the threatened dissolution occurs, let them go back to their town constituencies, canvass them on behalf of the income tax, and tell those whose sole fortune is their toil and skill how they have been opposed by those selfish aristocrats, the country gentlemen of England, and the supporters of Lord Derby's Administration. |XII. A S P E E CH THE QUEEN STREET HALL, EDINBURGH, ON THE 18TH OF JANUARY 1854. ON Wednesday, the 18th of January 1854, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton was installed in the Queen Street Hall, Edinburgh, as the Honorary President of the Associated Societies of the University in that city. Immediately after the ceremony had been performed the following address was delivered. GENTLEMEN,+I may well feel overcome by the kindness with which you receive me, for I cannot disentangle my earliest recollections from my sense of intellectual obligations to the genius of Scotland. The first poets who charmed me from play in the half-holidays of school were Campbell and Scott—the first historians who clothed, for me, with life, the shadows of the past, were Robertson and Hume—the first philosopher who, by the grace of his attractive style, lured me on to the analysis of the human mind, was Dugald Stewart—and the first novel that I bought with my own money, and hid under my pillow, was the Roderick Random of Smollett. So, when later, in a long vacation from my studies at Cambridge I learned the love for active adventure, and contracted the habit of Self-reliance by Solitary excursions on foot, my staff VOL. I. K 146 TO THE ASSOCIATED SOCIETIES OF in my hand and my knapsack on my shoulders, it was to- wards Scotland that I instinctively bent my way, as if to the nursery-ground from which had been waſted to my mind the first germs of those fertile and fair ideas which, after they have come to flower upon their native soil, return to seed, and are carried by the winds we know not whither, calling up endless diversities of the same plant, according to the climate and the ground to which they are borne by chance. Gentlemen, this day I visited, with Professor Aytoun, the spot on which, a mere lad, obscure and alone, I remember to have stood One starlight night in the streets of Edinburgh, gazing across what was then a deep ravine, upon the picturesque out- lines of the Old Town, all the associations which make Scotland so dear to romance, and so sacred to learning, rushing over me in tumultuous pleasure ; her stormy history, her enchanting legends—wild tales of witchcraft and fairyland—of headlong chivalry and tragic love—all contrasting, yet all uniting, with the renown of Schools famous for patient erudition and tranquil science,—I remember how I then wished that I could have found Some tie in parentage or blood to connect me with the great people in whose capital I stood a stranger. That tie which birth denied to me, my humble labours and your gene- rous kindness have at last bestowed; and the stranger in your streets stands to-day in this crowded hall, proud to identify his own career with the hopes and aspirations of the youth of Scotland. - Gentlemen, when I turn to what the analogous custom of other universities renders my duty upon this occasion, and offer Some suggestions that may serve as hints in your various studies, I feel literally overshadowed by the awe of the great names, all your own, which rise high around me in every department of human progress. It is not only the illustrious dead before whom I have to bow—your wonted fires do not live only in their ashes. The men of to-day are worthy the men of yesterday. A thousand rays of intellectual light are gathered and fused together in the varied learning of your distinguished Principal. The chivalry of your glorious annals EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY. 147 finds its new Tyrtaeus in the vigorous and rushing verse of Pro- fessor Aytoun. Your medical schools, in all their branches— pathology, medical jurisprudence, surgery, anatomy, chemistry —advance more and more to fresh honours under the presid- ing names of Simpson, Alison, Christison, Goodsir, Traill, Syme, and Gregory. The general cause of education itself is identified with the wide repute of Professor Pillans. Nature has added the name of Forbes to the list of those who have not only examined her laws but discovered her secrets; While the comprehensive science of Sir William Hamilton still corrects and extends the sublime chart that defines the immaterial universe of ideas. And how can I forget the name of one man, whose character and works must have pro- duced the most healthful influence over the youth of Scot- land—combining, as they do, in the rarest union, all that is tender and graceful with all that is hardy and masculine—the exquisite poet, the vigorous critic, the eloquent discourser, the joyous comrade—the minstrel of the Isle of Palms—the Christo- pher North of Maga º How I wish that the plaudits with which you receive this inadequate reference to one so loved and honoured might be carried to his ears, and assure him that— like those statues of the great Roman fathers in the well-known passage of Tacitus—if he be absent from the procession he is still more remembered by the assembly And since I See around me many who, though not connected with your college, are yet interested in the learned fame of your capital, permit me On this neutral ground to suspend all differences of party, and do homage to the great orator and author, whose luminous genius, whose scholastic attainments, whose independence of spirit, whose integrity of life, so worthily represent not only the capital, but the character of the people who claim their countryman by descent in Macaulay. When I think of those names, and of many more which I might cite, if time would allow me to make the catalogue of your living title-deeds to fame, I might well shrink from the task before me; but as every man assists to a general illumination by placing a single light at his own window, so, perhaps, my individual experience 148 TO THE ASSOCIATED SOCIETIES OF may contribute its humble ray to the atmosphere which genius and learning have kindled into familiar splendour. - Gentlemen, I shall first offer some remarks upon those fundamental requisites which, no matter what be our peculiar studies, are essential to excellence in all of them. Nature indicates to the infant the two main elements of wisdom— nature herself teaches the infant to observe and to inquire. You will have noticed how every new object catches the eye of a young child—how intuitively he begins to question you upon all that he surveys—what it is ? what it is for 2 how it came there 2 how it is made 7 who made it 2 Gradually, as he becomes older, his observation is less vigilant, his curiosity less eager. In fact, both faculties are often troublesome and puzzling to those about him. He is told to attend to his lessons, and not ask questions to which he cannot yet under- stand the replies. Thus his restless vivacity is drilled into mechanical forms, so that often when we leave school we ob- serve less and inquire less than when we stood at the knees of our mother in the nursery. But our first object on entering upon youth, and Surveying the great world that spreads before us, should be to regain the earliest attributes of the child. What were the instincts of the infant are the primary duties of the student. His ideas become rich and various in proportion as he observes—accurate and practical in proportion as he inquires. The old story of Newton observing the fall of the apple, and so arriving by inquiry at the laws of gravity, will occur to you all. But this is the ordinary process in every department of intelligence. A man observes more attentively than others had done something in itself very simple. He reflects, tests his observation by inquiry, and becomes the dis- coverer, the inventor; enriches a science, improves a manufac- ture, adds a new beauty to the arts, or, if engaged in professional active life, detects, as a physician, the secret cause of disease— extracts truth, as a lawyer, from contradictory evidence—or grapples, as a statesman, with the complicated principles by which nations flourish or decay. In short, take with you into all your studies this leading proposition, that, whether in active EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY. 149 life or in letters and research, a man will always be eminent according to the vigilance with which he observes, and the acuteness with which he inquires. But this is not enough— Something more is wanted—it is that resolute effort of the will which we call perseverance. I am no believer in genius without labour; but I do believe that labour, judiciously and continu- ously applied, becomes genius in itself. Success in removing obstacles, as in conquering armies, depends on this law of mechanics—the greatest amount of force at your command concentrated on a given point. If your constitutional force be less than another man's, you equal him if you continue it longer and concentrate it more. The old saying of the Spartan parent to the son who complained that his sword was too short, is applicable to everything in life—“If your weapon is too short, add a step to it.” Dr Arnold, the famous Rugby schoolmaster, said, the difference between one boy and another was not so much in talent as in energy. It is with boys as with men ; and perseverance is energy made habitual. But I forget that I am talking to Scotchmen; no need to preach energy and perseverance to them. Those are their national characteristics. Is there a soil upon earth from which the Scotchman cannot wring some harvest for fortune; or one field of honourable con- test on which he has not left some trophy of renown 2 We must now talk a little upon books. Gentlemen, the objects and utilities of reading are so various, that to suggest any formal rules whereby to dictate its subjects and confine its scope, would be to resemble the man in a Greek anecdote, who, in order to improve his honey, cut off the wings of his • bees, and placed before them the flowers his own sense found the sweetest. No doubt, the flowers were the best he could find on Hymettus; but, somehow or other, when the bees had lost their wings, they made no honey at all. Still, while the ordinary inducement to reading is towards general delight and general instruction, it is well in youth to acquire the habit of reading with conscientious toil for a special purpose. Whatever costs us labour, braces all the sinews of the mind in the effort; and whatever we study with a definite object, fixes a much 150 - TO THE ASSOCIATED SOCIETIES OF more tenacious hold on the memory than do the lessons of mere desultory reading. If, for instance, you read the history of the latter half of the last century, simply because Some works on the subject are thrown in your way ; unless your memory be unusually good, you will retain but a vague recol- lection, that rather serves to diminish ignorance than bestow knowledge. But suppose, in a debating society, that the Sub- ject of debate be the character of Charles Fox, or the Admin- istration of Mr Pitt, and some young man gets up the facts of the time for the special purpose of making an ample and elaborate speech on the principles and career of either of those statesmen, the definite purpose for which he reads, and the animated object to which it is to be applied, will, in all pro- bability, fix what he reads indelibly on his mind; and to the dry materials of knowledge will be added the vivida vis of argument and reasoning. You see now, then, how wisely the first founders of learning established institutions for youth on the collegiate principle; fixing the vague desire for knowledge into distinct bounds, by lectures on chosen subjects, and placing before the ambition of the student the practical object of honourable distinction—a distinction, indeed, that connects itself with our gentlest affections, and our most lasting interests: for honours gained in youth pay back to our parents, while they are yet living, some part of what we owe to their anxiety and care. And whatever renown a University can confer, abridges the road to subsequent success, interests our contem- poraries in our career, and raises up a crowd eager to cheer on our first maturer efforts to make a name. The friendships we form at college die away as life divides us, but the honours we gain there remain and constitute a portion of ourselves. Who, for instance, can separate the fame of a Brougham or a Mackintosh from the reputation they established at the Univer- sity of Edinburgh? The variety of knowledge embraced in the four divisions, which are here called Faculties, allows to every one an ample choice, according to the bias of each several mind, or the profession for which the student is destined. But there is one twofold branch of humane letters in which the EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY. 151 Universities of Scotland are so renowned that I must refer to it specially, though the reference must be brief—I mean moral and metaphysical philosophy, which, in Edinburgh especially, has been allied to the Graces by the silver style of Dugald Stewart, and taken the loveliness which Plato ascribes to virtue from the beautiful intellect of Brown. Now, it would be idle to ask the general student to make himself a profound meta- physician. You might as well ask him to make himself a great poet. Both the one and the other are born for their calling ; not made by our advice, but their own irresistible impulse. But a liberal view of the principal theories as to the formation of the human mind, and the latent motives of human conduct, is of essential service to all about to enter upon busy practical life. Such studies quicken our perceptions of error and virtue, enlarge our general knowledge of mankind, and enable our later experience to apply with order and method the facts it accumu- lates. I need not remind those who boast the great name of Chalmers, or who heard the lectures of your Principal two years ago, that Moral Philosophy is the handmaid of Divinity, She is also the sister of Jurisprudence, and the presiding genius of that art in which you are so famous ; and which, in order to heal the body, must often prescribe alteratives to the mind— more especially in these days, when half our diseases come from the neglect of the body in the overwork of the brain. In this railway age the wear and tear of labour and intellect go on without pause or self-pity. We live longer than our forefathers, but we suffer more from a thousand artificial anxieties and cares. They fatigued only the muscles; we exhaust the finer strength of the nerves; and when we send impatiently to the doctor, it is ten to one but what he finds the acute complaint, which is all that we perceive, connected with some chronic mental irritation, or some unwholesome inveteracy of habit. Here, them, the physician, accustomed to consider how mind acts upon body, will exercise with discretion the skill that moral philosophy has taught him. Every one knows the differ- ence between two medical attendants, perhaps equally learned in pharmacy and the routine of the Schools; the one writes in 152 To THE ASSOCIATED SOCIETIES OF haste the prescription we may as well “throw to the dogs ;” the other, by his soothing admonitions, his agreeable converse, cheers up the gloomy spirits, regulates the defective habits, and often, unconsciously to ourselves, “ministers to the mind diseased, and plucks from the memory a rooted Sorrow.” And the difference between them is, that one has studied our moral anatomy, and the other has only looked on us as mere machines of matter, to be inspected by a peep at the tongue, and regu- lated by a touch of the pulse. And in Order to prove my sense of the connection between moral and metaphysical philosophy and practical pathology, and to pay a joint compliment to the two sciences for which your college is so pre-eminent, I here, as a personal favour to myself, Crave permission of the heads and authorities of the University to offer the prize of a gold medal, for the current year, for the best essay by any student on some special subject implying the connection I speak of, which may be selected in concert with the various Professors of your medical schools and the Professors of Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy. Gentlemen, allow me to preface the topic to which I now turn by congratulating you on the acquisition your scholarship has recently made in the accomplished translator of AEschylus, Professor Blackie—who appears to have thrown so much light on the ancient language of the Greeks by showing its substan- tial identity with the modern. I now proceed to impress on you the importance of Classical studies. I shall endeavour to avoid the set phrases of declamatory panegyric which the subject too commonly provokes. But if those studies appear to you cold and tedious, the fault is in the languor with which they are approached. Do you think that the statue of ancient art is but a lifeless marble 2 Animate it with your own young breath, and instantly it lives and glows. Greek literature, if it served you with nothing else, should excite your curiosity as the picture of a wondrous state of civilisation which, in its peculiar phases, the world can never see again, and yet from which every succeeding state of civilisation has borrowed its liveliest touches. If you take it first as a mere record of events, EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY. 153 —if you examine only the contest between the Spartans and the Athenians—the one as the representative of duration and order, the other of change and progress, both pushed to the extreme, there instantly rise before you, in the noblest forms— through the grandest illustrations of history—through the col- lision of characters at once human and heroic—there instantly, I say, rise before you lessons which may instruct every age, and which may especially guide the present. For so closely does Grecian history bear on the more prominent disputes in our own day, that it is not only full of wise saws, but still more of modern instances. I pass by this view of the political value of Grecian literature, on which I could not well enlarge without, perhaps, provoking party differences, to offer some remarks, purely critical, and for which I bespeak your indulgence if I draw too largely on your time. Every Professor who encourages the young to the study of the Classics will tell them how those ancient masterpieces have served modern Europe with models to guide the taste and excite the emulation. But here let us distinguish what we should mean when we speak of them as models—we mean no check to originality—no cold and sterile imitation, more especially of form and diction. The pith and Substance of a good English style—be it simple and severe, be it copious and adorned—must still be found in the nervous strength of our native tongue. We need not borrow from Greek or Roman the art that renders a noble thought transparent to the humblest understanding, or charms the fastidious ear with the varying music of elaborate cadence. The classic authors are models in a more comprehensive sense. They teach us less how to handle words than how to view things;–and first, let us recognise the main characteristic of the literature of Greece. The genius of Greek letters is essentially Social and humane. Far from presenting us with a frigid and austere ideal, it deals with the most vivid passions, the largest interests common to the mass of mankind. In this sense of the word it is practical— that is, it connects itself with the natural feelings, the practical life of man under all forms of civilisation. That is the reason why it is so durable—it fastens hold of sympathy and interest 154 TO TEIE ASSOCIATED SOCIETIES OF in every nation and every age. Thus Homer is immeasurably the most popular poet the world ever knew. The Iliad is con- structed from materials with which the natural human heart has the most affinity. Our Social instincts interest us on both sides, whether in the war of the Greeks avenging the desecration of the marriage hearth, or the doom of the Trojans, which takes all its pathos from the moment we see Hector parting from Andromache, and unbinding his helmet that it may not terrify his child. Homer makes no attempt at abstract subtle feelings with which few can sympathise. He takes terror and pity from the most popular springs of emotion—valour, love, patriotism, domestic affections—the struggle of Man with fate—the con- trast, as in Achilles, between glorious youth and early death— between headlong daring and passionate Sorrow ; the contrast, as in Priam, between all that gives reverence to the king and all that moves compassion for the man. Homer knows no con- ventional dignity; his heroes weep—his goddesses scold—Mars roars with pain when he is wounded—Hector himself knows fear, and we do not respect him the less, though we love him more, when his heart sinks and his feet fly before Achilles. So essentially human is Homer, that it is said that he first created the Greek gods—that is, he clothed what before were vague phantoms with attributes familiar to humanity, and gave them the power of divinities, with the forms and the hearts of IOleI). Civilisation advances, but the Greek literature still preserves this special character of humanity, and each succeeding writer still incorporates his genius with the actual existence and warm emotions of the crowd. AEschylus strides forth from the field of Marathon, to give voice to the grand practical ideas that influenced his land and times. He represents the apotheosis of freedom, and the dawn of philosophy through the mists of fable. Thus, in the victory hymn of “the Persae " he chants the de- feat of Xerxes; thus, in the “Seven before Thebes,” he addresses an audience still hot from the memories of war, in words that rekindle its passions and re-echo its clang; thus, again, in the wondrous myth of the “Prometheus Bound,” he piles up the EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY. 155 fragments of primeval legend with a Titan's hand, storming the very throne of Zeus with assertions of the liberty of intellectual will, as opposed to the authority of force. In AEschylus there is always the very form and pressure of an age characterised by fierce emotions, and the tumult of new ideas struggling for definite expression. Sophocles no less commands an everlasting audience by genial sympathy with the minds and thought, and the hearts that beat, in his own day. The stormy revolution of thought that succeeded the Persian war had given way to a milder, but not less manly, period of serene intelligence. The time had come in which what we call “The Beautiful” developed its ripe proportions. A sentiment of order, of Submission to the gods—a desire to embellish the Social existence secured by victorious war—pervaded the manners, and inspired the gentle emulation. All this is reflected in the calm splendour of Sophocles. It seems a type of the difference between the two that Æschylus, a bearded man, had fought at Marathon—and Sophocles, in the bloom of youth, had tuned his harp to the paeans that circled round the trophies of Salamis. The Prome- theus of Æschylus is a vindication of human wisdom, made with the sublime arrogance of a Titan's pride. The GEdipus of Sophocles teaches its nothingness to Wisdom, and inflicts its blind punishment upon Pride. But observe how both these great poets inculcate the sentiment of Mercy as an element of tragic grandeur, and how they both seek to connect that attri- bute of humanity with the fame of their native land. Thus it is to Athens that the Orestes of AEschylus comes to expiate his particide—it is the tutelary goddess of the Athenians that pleads in his cause, and reconciles the Furies to the release of their hunted victim. But still more impressively does Sophocles inculcate and adorn this lesson of beautiful humanity. It is not only amidst the very grove of the Furies that CEdipus finds the peaceful goal of his wanderings—but round that grove itself the poet has lavished all the loveliest images of his fancy. There, in the awful ground of the ghastly sisters, the Nightin- gales sing under the ivy—there blooms the Narcissus—there Smiles the olive—there spring the fountains that feed Cephisus. 156 TO THE ASSOCIATED SOCIETIES OF Thus terror itself he surrounds with beauty, and the nameless grave of the outlawed CEdipus becomes the guardian of the benignant state, which gave the last refuge to his woes. A few years more, and a new phase of civilisation develops itself in Athens. To that sentiment for the beautiful which in itself discovers the good, succeeds the desire to moralise and speculate. The influence of women on Social life is more admitted—statesmen and Sages gather round Aspasia—love occupies a larger space in the thoughts of men—and pity is derived from gentler, perhaps from more effeminate, Sources. This change Euripides—no less practical than his predecessors in representing the popular temper of his age—this change, I say, Euripides comes to depict in sententious aphorisms, in scholastic casuistry, accompanied, however, with the tenderest pathos, and enlisting that interest for which he is ridiculed by Aristophanes, the interest derived from conjugal relations and household life—the domestic interest ; it is this which has made him of all the Greek dramatists the most directly influ- ential in the modern stage. And it is Euripides who has sug- gested to the classic tragedy of Italy and France two-thirds of whatever it possesses of genuine tenderness and passion. In a word, the Greek drama is not that marble perfection of artistic symmetry which it has too often been represented to be, but a flesh and blood creation, identifying itself with the emotions most prevalent in the multitudes it addressed, and artificial rather by conventions derived from its religious origin than by any very deep study of other principles of art than those which sympathy with human nature teaches instinctively to the poet. The rules prescribed to the Greek dramatist, such as the unities, were indeed few and elementary, belonging rather to the com- mencement of art than to its full development. There are few critics nowadays, for instance, who will not recognise a higher degree of art in Shakespeare, when he transports his willing audience over space and time, and concentrates in Macbeth the whole career of guilty ambition, from its first dire temptation to its troubled rise and its bloody doom, than there can be in any formal rule which would have sacrificed for dry recital the EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY. - 157 vivacity of action, and crowded into a day what Shakespeare expands throughout a life. In fine, then, these Greek poets became our models—not as authorities for pedantic laws, not to chill our invention by unsubstantial ideals or attempts to restore to life the mere mummies of antiquity—but rather, on the contrary, to instruct us that the writer who most faithfully represents the highest and fairest attributes of his own age has the best chance of an audience in posterity; and that whatever care we take as to the grace or sublimity of diction, still the diction itself can only be the instrument by which the true poet would refine or exalt what?—why, the feelings most common to the greatest number of mankind. We have heard too much about the calm and repose of classic art. It is the distance from which we take our survey that does not allow us to distinguish its force and its passion. Thus the rivulet, when near, seems more disturbed than the ocean beheld afar off. At the distance of two thou- sand years, if we do not see all the play of the waves, it is because we do not stand on the beach. The same practical identification with the intellectual attributes of their age which distinguished the poetry, no less animates the prose, of the ancient Greeks. The narratives of Herodotus, so simple yet so glowing, were read to immense multitudes—now exciting their wonder by tale and legend—now gratifying their curiosity by accounts of barbarian customs—now inflaming their patriotism by minute details of the Persian myriads that exhausted rivers on their march, and graphic anecdotes of the Grecian men whom the Medes at Marathon saw rushing into the midst of their spears, or whom the Scout of Xerxes found dressing their hair for the festival of battle in the glorious pass of Thermopylae. No less does the graver mind of Thucydides represent the intense interest with which the Grecian intellect was accus- tomed to view the action and strife, the Sorrow and triumph, of the human beings, from whom it never stood superciliously aloof. Though the father of philosophical history, Thucydides knows nothing of that cynical irony which is common to the modern spirit of historical philosophy in its cold Survey of the follies 158 TO THE ASSOCIATED SOCIETIES OF and errors of mankind. He never neglects to place full before you whatever ennobles our species, whether it be the lofty sentiment of Pericles or the hardy valour of Brasidas. It is his candid sympathy with whatever in itself is good and great which vivifies his sombre chronicle, and renders him at Once earnest yet impartial. Each little bay or creek, each defile or pass, where gallant deeds have been done, he describes with the conviction that the deeds have hallowed the place to all pOS- terity, and have become a part of that xrigo, ag &st which he pro- posed to bequeath. This is the spirit which returns to life in your own day and in your own historians, which gives a classic charm to the military details of Napier, and lights with a patriot's fire the large intelligence and profound research that immortalise the page of Alison. - Pass from history to oratory. All men in modern times, famous for their eloquence, have recognised Demosthenes as their model. Many speakers in our own country have literally translated passages from his orations, and produced electrical effects upon sober English senators by thoughts first uttered to passionate Athenian crowds. Why is this 2 Not from the style—the style vanishes in translation—it is because thoughts the noblest appeal to emotions the most masculine and popular. You see in Demosthenes the man accustomed to deal with the practical business of men—to generalise details, to render com- plicated affairs clear to the ordinary understanding—and, at the same time, to connect the material interests of life with the sentiments that warm the breast and exalt the Soul. It is the brain of an accomplished statesman in unison with a generous heart, thoroughly in earnest, beating loud and high—with the passionate desire to convince breathless thousands how to baffle a danger, and to save their country. A little time longer, and Athens is free no more. The iron force of Macedon has banished liberty from the silenced Agora. But liberty had already secured to herself a gentle refuge in the groves of the Academe—there, still to the last, the Grecian intellect maintains the same social, humanising, practical aspect. The immense mind of Aristotle gathers together, as in a treasure- EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY. 159 house for future ages, all that was valuable in the knowledge that informs us of the earth on which we dwell—the political constitutions of States, and their results on the character of nations, the Science of ethics, the analysis of ideas, natural his- tory, physical Science, critical investigation, omne immenswm, peragravit; and all that he collects from wisdom he applies to the earthly uses of man. Yet it is not by the tutor of Alexander, but by the pupil of Socrates, that our vast debt to the Grecian mind is completed. When we remount from Aristotle to his great master, Plato—it is as if we lookod from nature up to nature's God. There, amidst the decline of freedom, the corrup- tion of manners—just before the date when, with the fall of Athens, the beautiful ideal of sensuous life faded mournfully away—there, on that verge of time stands the consoling Plato, preparing philosophy to receive the Christian dispensation, by opening the gates of the Infinite, and proclaiming the immor- tality of the soul. Thus the Grecian genius, ever kindly and benignant, first appears to awaken man from the sloth of the senses, to enlarge the boundaries of Self, to connect the desire of glory with the Sanctity of household ties, to raise up in lumin- ous contrast with the inert despotism of the old Eastern world, the energies of free men, the duties of citizens; and, finally, accomplishing its mission as the visible Iris to states and heroes, melts into the rainbow, announcing a more Sacred Covenant, and spans the streams of the Heathen Orcus with an arch lost in the Christian's Heaven. I have so exhausted your patience in what I have thus said of the Grecian literature, that I must limit closely my remarks upon the Roman. And here, indeed, the subject does not require the same space. In the Greek literature all is fresh and original; its very art is but the happiest selection from natural objects, knit together with the Zone of the careless Graces. But the Latin literature is borrowed and adopted; and, like all imitations, we perceive at once that it is artificial—but in this imitation it has such exquisite taste, in this artificiality there is so much refinement of polish, so much stateliness of pomp, that it assumes an originality of its own. It has not found its 160 TO THE ASSOCIATED SOCIETIES OF jewels in native mines, but it takes them with a conqueror's hand, and weaves them into regal diadems. Dignity and polish are the especial attributes of Latin literature in its happiest age; it betrays the habitual influence of an aristocracy, wealthy, magnificent, and learned. To borrow a phrase from Persius— its words sweep along as if clothed with the toga. Whether we take the sonorous lines of Virgil or the Swelling periods of Cicero, the easier dignity of Sallust or the patrician simplicity of Caesar, we are sensible that we are with a race accustomed to a measured decorum, a majestic self-control, unfamiliar to the more lively impulse of Small Greek communities. There is a greater demarcation between the intellect of the writer and the homely sense of the multitude. The Latin writers seek to link themselves to posterity rather through a succession of Select and well-bred admirers than by cordial identification with the pas- sions and interests of the profane vulgar. Even Horace himself, so brilliant and easy, and so conscious of his monumentum cere perennius, affects disdain of popular applause, and informs us, with a kind of pride, that his Satires had no vogue in the haunts of the common people. Every bold Schoolboy takes at once to Homer, but it is only the fine taste of the scholar that thoroughly appreciates Virgil; and only the experienced man of the world who discovers all the delicate wit, all the exquisite urbanity of sentiment, that win our affection to Horace in proportion as we advance in life. In short, the Greek writers warm and elevate our emotions as men—the Latin writers temper emotions to the stately reserve of high-born gentlemen. The Greeks fire us more to the inspirations of poetry, or (as in Plato and parts of Demosthenes) to that sublimer prose to which poetry is akin; but the Latin writers are, perhaps, on the whole, though I say it with hesitation, Safer models for that accurate construction and decorous elegance by which classical prose attains critical perfection. Nor is this elegance effeminate, but, on the con- trary, nervous and robust, though, like the statue of Apollo, the strength of the muscle is concealed by the undulation of the curves. But there is this, as a general result from the study of ancient letters, whether Greek or Roman,—both are the litera- EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY. 161 ture of grand races, of free men and brave hearts; both abound in generous thoughts and high examples; both, whatever their Occasional licence, inculcate, upon the whole, the habitual prac- tice of manly virtues; both glow with the love of country; both are animated by the desire of fame and honour. There- fore, whatever be our future profession and pursuit, however they may take us from the Scholastic closet, and forbid any frequent return to the classic studies of our youth, still he whose early steps have been led into that land of demigods and heroes will find that its very air has enriched through life the blood of his thoughts, that he quits the soil with a front which the Greek has directed towards the stars, and a step which imperial Rome has disciplined to the march that carried her eagles round the world. Not in vain do these lessons appeal to the youth of Scotland. From this capital still, as from the elder Athens, stream the lights of philosophy and learning. But your countrymen are not less renowned for the qualities of action than for those of thought. And you whom I address will carry with you, in your several paths to fortune, your national attributes of reflec- tive judgment and dauntless courage. I See an eventful and stirring age expand before the rising generation. In that grand contest between new ideas and ancient forms, which may be still more keenly urged before this century expires, whatever your differences of political opinion, I adjure you to hold fast to the vital principle of civilisation. What is that principle 2 It is the union of liberty with order. The art to preserve this union has often baffled the wisest statesmen in stormy times; but the task becomes easy at once, if the people whom they seek to guide will but carry into public affairs the same prudent con- sideration which commands prosperity in private business. You have already derived from your ancestors an immense capital of political freedom ; increase it if you will—but by solid invest- ments, not by hazardous speculations. You will hear much of the necessity of progress, and truly; for wherever progress ends, decline invariably begins: but remember that the healthful progress of society is like the natural life of man—it consists in the gradual and harmonious development of all its constitutional VOL. I. L 162 TO THE ASSOCIATED SOCIETIES OF powers, all its component parts, and you introduce weakness and disease into the whole system, whether you attempt to stint or to force the growth. The old homely rule you prescribe to the individual is applicable to a State—“keep the limbs warm by exercise, and keep the head cool by temperance.” But new ideas do not invade only our political systems; you will find them wherever you turn. Philosophy has altered the directions it favoured in the last century—it enters less into metaphysical inquiry; it questions less the relationships between man and his Maker; it assumes its practical character as the investigator of external nature, and seeks to adapt agencies before partially concealed to the positive uses of man. Here I leave you to your own bold researches; you cannot be much misled, if you remember the maxim, to observe with vigilance, and inquire with conscientious care. Nor is it necessary that I should admonish the sons of religious Scotland that the most daring speculations as to Nature may be accompanied with the hum- blest faith in those Sublime doctrines that open heaven alike to the wisest philosopher and the simplest peasant. I do not presume to arrogate the office of the preacher; but, believe me, as a man of books, and a man of the world, that you inherit a religion which, in its most familiar form, in the lowly prayer that you learned from your mother's lips, will save you from the temptations to which life is exposed more Surely than all which the pride of philosophy can teach. Nor can I believe that the man will ever go very far or very obstinately wrong who, by the mere habit of thanksgiving and prayer, will be forced to examine his conscience even but once a-day, and remember that the eye of the Almighty is upon him. One word further. Nothing, to my mind, preserves a brave people true and firm to its hereditary virtues, more than a devout though liberal Spirit of nationality. And it is not because Scotland is united with England that the Scotchman should forget the glories of his annals, the tombs of his ances- tors, or relax one jot of his love for his native soil. I say not this to flatter you—I say it not for Scotland alone. I say it for the sake of the empire. For sure I am that, if ever the step EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY. 163 of the invader should land upon these kindred shores—there, wherever the national spirit is the most strongly felt—there, where the local affections most animate the breast—there will our defenders be the bravest. It would ill become me to enter into the special grounds of debate now at issue; but permit me to remind you that, while pressing with your accustomed spirit for whatever you may deem to be equal rights, you would be unjust to your own fame if you did not feel that the true majesty of Scotland needs neither the pomp of courts nor the blazonry of heralds. What though Holyrood be desolate—what though no king holds revels in its halls 2—the empire of Scotland has but extended its range; and, blended with England, under the daughter of your ancient kings, peoples the Australian wilds that lay beyond the chart of Columbus, and rules over the Indian realms that eluded the grasp of Alexander. That em- pire does not suffice for you. It may decay—it may perish. More grand is the domain you have won over human thought, and identified with the eternal progress of intellect and freedom. From the charter of that domain no ceremonial can displace the impression of your seal. In the van of that progress no blazon can flaunt before that old Lion of Scotland [pointing to the flag Suspended opposite]. This is the empire that you will adorn in peace ; this is the empire that, if need be, you will defend in war. It is not here that I would provoke one difference in political opinion—but surely you, the sons of Scotland, who hold both fame and power upon the same tenure as that which Secures civilisation from lawless force—surely you are not the men who could contemplate with folded arms the return of the dark ages, and quietly render up the haven that commands Asia On the one side and threatens Europe on the other, to the bar- baric ambition of some new Alaric of the north. But, whether in reluctant war or in happier peace, I can but bid you be mindful of your fathers—learn from them how duties fulfilled in the world become honours after death; and in your various callings continue to maintain for Scotland her sublime alliance with every power of mind that can defend or instruct, soothe or exalt humanity. XIII. A S P E E O H DELIVERED IN THE HOPETOUN ROOMS, EDINBURGH, ON THE 201EI OF JANUARY 1854. ON Friday evening, the 20th of January 1854, a public banquet was given in the Hopetoun Rooms, Edinburgh, in honour of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, the newly installed President of the Associated Societies of the TJniversity. In returning thanks for the toast of his health—proposed by the Chairman, William Stirling, Esq. of Keir, M.P. for Perthshire—the following speech was delivered. MR CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN,+I use no idle phrase when I say that I want words adequately to express the gratitude and pride with which I receive the honour that you have done me this evening. I here experience more than the proverbial hospitality for which your countrymen are famous; for wher- ever I look I See a host, and when I listened to the applause which you gave to the too flattering comments, rendered agree- able to you by the remarkable eloquence of our Chairman, I felt that in every host I had to greet a benefactor. For what benefit can be bestowed upon an author, or upon a public man, like that nobler sort of charity which forgets all faults in the desire to confer a kindness? In the earlier stages of Our career we derive as much good from censure as from praise, and praise AT EDINBURGH BANQUET, 201EI JANUARY 1854. 165 like that which I have heard this evening might only blind us to our errors or relax our emergies. In old age praise comes too late to stimulate or console, and might only sour us by its con- trast with the years of toil and despondency that it might have Soothed and cheered; but when honourable distinctions, the approval we most covet, reach us in the middle of our course, then they atone for all past disparagement and disappointment, and nerve all our emergies to justify that opinion which pledges us to future efforts for improvement. In this sense of the word, you, my hosts, are my benefactors; and the liberal bounty with which you reward former labours will enrich the remainder of my days by grateful thoughts and hopeful aspirations. It would become me to make only one or two observations upon those works to which your Chairman has referred with so much grace of expression, that I could almost have wished that I had not been the subject of his praise, in order that my enjoyment of its eloquence might have been unchecked by my consciousness that the thesis did not merit the ability displayed in the discourse. Your Chairman has singled out for elogium the variety of the literary objects I have attempted, however feebly, to execute. Upon this I would wish to make one obser- vation. When I first commenced the career of authorship, I had brought myself to the persuasion that, upon the whole, it is best for the young writer not to give an exclusive preference to the development of one special faculty, even though that faculty be the one for which he has the most natural aptitude, but rather to seek to mature and accomplish, as far as he can, his whole intellectual organisation. I had observed that many authors, more especially, perhaps, writers of imagination and fiction, often excel only in one particular line of observation; nay, that, perhaps, they only write one thoroughly successful and original work, after which their ideas appear to be exhausted; and it seemed to me that the best mode to prevent that contrast between fertility in one patch of intelligence and barrenness of the surrounding district, was to bring under cultivation the entire soil at our command. This subjected me at first to what was then a charge, but which I have lived to hear as a compli- 166 AT EDINBURGH BANQUET, 20th JANUARY 1854. * ment—namely, that I had attempted too great a variety of authorship ; yet, perhaps, it was to that conviction that I owe the continuance of whatever favour I have received from the public; for that favour no writer can hope long to retain unless he prove that he is constantly taking in a fresh supply of ideas, and that he is not compelled to whip and impoverish invention by drawing from the same field a perpetual succession of the same crop. And perhaps it may encourage younger writers, if I remind you that I was not successful at first in any new line that I thus attempted. My first efforts at prose composition were refused admittance into a magazine. My first novel was very little read, and it is not included in the general collection of my works. My first poetry was thought detestable, and my first play very nearly escaped being damned. Thus, perhaps few writers have been less intoxicated with the rapture of first success; and even when I did succeed, perhaps few writers, upon the whole, have been more unsparingly assailed by hostile critics. If I had relied solely upon my intellectual faculties, I must long since have retired from the field disheartened and beaten; but I owe it to that resolution which is at the command of all men who will only recollect that the first attribute of our sex is courage, the resolution to fight the battles of literature and life with the same bull-dog determination with which I, and no doubt all of you, fought our battles at school—never to give in as long as we had a leg to stand upon, that at last I have succeeded so far as to receive this honour in a capital renowned for its learning, and at the hands of a people who may well sympathise with any man who does not rely so much upon his intellect, no matter what the grade of that intellect may be, as upon his stout heart and his persevering labours. Only one other remark I shall make upon a subject upon which no man can be expected to speak well—himself. I do trust that I have not lowered our common dignity as men of letters by the views I have entertained and advocated with respect to that lofty vocation. If letters are to be called a re- public, it should be an aristocratic republic in the best sense of the term. We should observe a high standard of honour in all AT EDINBURGH BANQUET, 201EI JANUARY 1854. 167 our commercial transactions. Money may be as requisite to us as it is to all other classes of men, but money must never bribe us to the prostitution of talent, or to the debasement of con- Science. If, like the ancient Genoese, we are traders in the sale of our produce—like the ancient Genoese, we should feel nobles in right of our Order; not debasing our own aristocracy by fawning Servility upon the more worldly distinctions of wealth and rank, which we assume the right boldly to censure or un- enviously to support. In all our contests with each other, how- ever manfully urged, we should still observe something of the gallantry and decorum of knighthood, not bespattering our opponent with mud from the kennel, nor assassinating a rival by a stab in the dark. These are some of the views with which I first entered upon literature in early youth—entered upon it as a profession—and I trust that, making generous allowance for indiscretions of judgment and temper, you will be of opinion that, upon the whole, my theory has not been belied by my practice. I think I have some excuse for my egotism in the latter obser- vations I have addressed to you, in the toast which I shall have to propose; for although that toast may be given by a man of no very elevated rank in literature, it should be given by one who has a full sense of the more than regal influence which literature exerts over the character and destiny of nations. The toast which I shall have to propose is, “The Literature of Scot- land;” and, if I desired to convey to you some idea of its value to the Society it adorns, I would ask you to compare it for one moment with the contemporaneous literature of France. When in the last century the chilling and comfortless influence of Material Philosophy spread from the French Encyclopedists to disorganise one world and to get rid altogether of the other, sheltering itself under the high authority of Locke—then arose that great school of Scotch metaphysicians, which, whatever may be its faults and shortcomings, at least restored to matter the necessity of Soul, and proved that ideas were not merely fleeting impressions upon perishable brains. When, in France, poetry consisted only of frigid bombast or of insipid imitation, 168 AT EDINBURGH BANOUET, 20IH JANUARY 1854. then suddenly was heard “the bold free” song of Burns, calling poetry back to nature; and, later, the vivid romance of Sir Walter Scott restored to this grey nineteenth century the gene- rous sentiments and healthy vigour of chivalric youth. Even now, when, in France, History has decked herself out in all the gewgaws of rhetorical artifice, in Scotland she has observed that severe exactitude without which she had better renounce the name of History, and call herself Fiction at once. It is in this fidelity to fact, which is to History what conscience is to a man, that Mr Burton has treated the History of Scotland ; while a Prenchman—as Frenchmen have owned to me—can better learn the later history of his country in the pages of Alison than in those of Thiers and Lamartine. While, if you will look to that popular literature which, for the time being, most affects the moral character of the people, compare the healthy and manly interest of the ‘Waverley Novels’ with that glittering but corrupt series of French fictions, which only serve to show to what base uses genius can stoop to be applied. I do not deny the extra- ordinary brilliancy and force of recent French imaginative literature; but I do deny that it has been either the faithful mirror to ordinary nature, or fulfilled that higher task of ideal art, which seeks, by Selecting from nature more than ordinary attributes of sublimity and beauty, to refine the taste and exalt the sentiments. And, false to that mission which the Poet, whether of prose or verse, is born to accomplish, it has contri- buted neither to the Social happiness, the political wisdom, nor the national virtues of the French people; while, on the other hand, this praise at least must be given to the literature of Scotland, that it is not more valuable on account of the delight which it administers, than because of the lessons which it inculcates. I see present three of your great Scottish publishers, and I can conceive the pride with which they would hear any comparison between Scotch and French literature. I can conceive with what pride my friends, the Messrs Blackwood, would recall the great share they have had in the elevation of our national literature, by the production of histories like those of Alison—by such fictions as those of Warren and Galt—by AT EDINBURGH BANQUET, 201H JANUARY 1854. 169 the universal genius of Professor Wilson—and by that time- * honoured Magazine which, though it has dealt some hard blows in Support of his literary, critical, and political canons, yet has charmed its opponents themselves—it was an opponent to me once—by its hearty and genial tone, and by its unrivalled com- bination of solid erudition with unrestricted fancy. I can con- ceive the pride with which Mr Black will reflect upon that immense undertaking, the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ and upon those immortal works, the ‘Waverley Novels, which I under- stand have now passed into his hands; and when I refer to popular instruction, why, the very heart of Mr Chambers must leap within him, and he must think how much Great Britain really does Owe to those who extend philosophy, instruction, and delight to the working classes, without one single appeal to any passion that can demoralise or pervert. Let me here for a moment remind you that I am a Conservative, in order to say on behalf of that party that we too can be Liberals with Mr Chambers whenever the object is not to pull down one class, but to elevate the other. - If I were to speak of the obligations which I myself owe to Scottish literature, I should only have to imitate the friar who came to a French town in order to preach a sermon upon a cer- tain occasion. His sermon went off tolerably well, and the friar was hospitably received and Sumptuously regaled. The next day, to his great dismay, he was told it was a holiday in honour of the patron saint of the town, and that all the congregation were assembling in the church in order to listen to the new sermon which he was expected to deliver. The poor friar had only brought one sermon with him, and that was already de- livered. What was he to do? He got into the pulpit, and, mark what the friar said: “My brethren,” said he, looking very solemnly round the church, “ certain malignant persons have said there was heresy in the sermon I delivered to you yester- day; and, in order to show you how false is this accusation, I propose to preach it to you all over again.” Now, I am afraid I cannot imitate the felicitous Self-possession of the friar, nor repeat here all I said in Queen Street Hall the other evening 170 AT EDINBURGH BANQUET, 201EI JANUARY 1854. with respect to my own obligations to the learning and genius of Scotland, but still I cannot deny myself the pleasure of Say- ing a few words that may serve to show how closely connected is the literature of Scotland with the romantic impressions of my youth. Irecall the joyous sensations with which, while yet in my boyhood, I entered Scotland for the first time; I recall the pride with which I leaped over that part of the Clyde which leads to the Cave of Burley—Morton's Leap, I think it was called—pride to think that I had something in common with a hero of Walter Scott's. I recall the enthusiasm with which I explored the scenes of the Lady of the Lake, fancying that I saw the Knight of Snowdon upon the bank, and the Lady herself upon the water. I recall still more vividly the night on which I lay down to rest under a hedge on the field of Bannockburn, exulting to think that I was upon the very ground which Bruce had hallowed to freedom, and Burns to immortal song. And it is well in mature life, when the world is too much with us, to revive the freshness of young emotions, and to rekindle—what, I trust, for my part, will never die within me till my grave—the passion for that real freedom, without which races have no history, and for that genuine poetry, without which man, in resigning imagination, knows not the nobler half of his own soul. A toast was given in the early part of the evening which re- ferred to our army and navy, and which was acknowledged by a gallant admiral” whom, I trust, we shall never see cruising in the Black Sea. It reminds me that we are apparently on the eve of a conflict with a great Power, which, if it could obtain its ultimate object in the keys of the Bosphorus, would open to civilised Europe the risk of that irruption by hungry and bar- barous tribes, which we had hoped the strong hand of Charle- magne had checked for ever. The wisest statesman cannot fore- see what might be the issue of that war, if it should extend from a conflict for territory to a strife of opinion. When we look at the inflammable materials in Italy, in Germany, throughout con- tinental Europe, and, in fact, through a great portion of Russia herself, we cannot fail to call to mind, with some anxiety, that * The Sheriff and Vice-Admiral of Orkney, W. E. Aytoun. AT EDINBURGH BANQUET, 201EI JANUARY 1854, 171 old prophecy of Napoleon—“The day will come when Europe will be all Republican or all Cossack.” But for my part I do hope that the spirit of our people will bring this war to a prompt, short, and decisive issue—before the original cause is lost sight of in the complicated objects which all unnecessary procrastina- tion, all feebleness and half measures, only serve to bring into new and menacing existence; so that before this time next year, the cause of civilisation which Great Britain supports with her arms, may achieve that full triumph which can alone lead to the permanent re-establishment of peace, and that (returning to the toast I have to propose) our deeds may then be such as an Aytoun may not blush to sing, nor an Alison to record. As long as Providence permits this empire to endure, may every Englishman whom you receive as a guest in your capital, feel the same pride that I do in an equal union with the children of Scotland. We are bound together by ties stronger than Acts of Parliament or treaties of parchment. We have, in common, the fame of our writers and the glory of our arms; and I do not believe that anything can dissever or alienate those who have a common heritage in Milton and in Scott, and a history, one and indivisible, in every page which speaks of Trafalgar and Waterloo. Fill your glasses to the brim, and drink with me fresh honours to that literature which, always hardy and mascu- line even when most thoughtful and refined, will render men braver under the necessities of war, as it has made them Wiser amidst the tranquillities of peace. - XIV. A S P E E O H DIGLIVERED AT THE LEEDS MECHANICS' INSTITUTION ON THE 25TH OF JANUARY 1854. ON the evening of Wednesday the 25th of January 1854, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton was introduced to the assembled members of the Leeds Mechanics' Institution by their President, Mr Wheelhouse. Upon this occasion the following speech was delivered. [M.P. for Hertfordshire from General Election, 22d July 1852, until raised to the Peerage on the 13th of July 1866, by the title of Baron Lytton of Knebworth.] LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,+A few days since I had the honour to address the students of Edinburgh (an intellectual and noble audience it was) upon questions defined by their academical course of study, or Suited to the professions to which they were severally destined. I now address not so much scholastic pupils, with paths through knowledge prepared and guided, and with ample leisure to follow up the studies they may select ; but youths, and mature men of every age, engaged in active prac- tical pursuits, Snatching at Such learning as books may give in the intervals of recreation or repose. Knowledge there is the task-work; knowledge here is the holiday. But in both these communities, in the quiet University and in the busy manuſac- * AT THE LEEDS MECHANICS' INSTITUTION. 173 turing town, I find the same grand idea; I mean the recognition of intelligence as the Supreme arbiter of all those questions which, a century ago, were either settled by force or stifled by those prejudices which are even stronger than law. And it is no wonder that every class nowadays strives for its fair pro- portion of knowledge. In ancient times nobles demanded the right to fortify their castles: citizens demanded the privilege to bear arms. But now the claims of both are conceded; it is education that fortifies the castle of the noble, and it is education which supplies to the citizen his arms. And don’t let us believe that this sense of the vital necessity of knowledge to every class that would hold its own, is confined to the middle and the work- ing classes alone—it no less acts upon those orders most Set apart for indolence by rank and wealth; and I have been amazed to see the advance which has been made since I was a boy (though I am now but in middle life) in the quality and degree of instruction bestowed upon the heirs to princely fortunes or illustrious names. I rejoice to see this generous ambition per- vading all classes. I rejoice, for the sake of the middle class, when I see it warm and enlighten the two extremes of our Social system—for the atmosphere is healthy in proportion as the Sun- light is equally diffused; when no stormy cloud rests on the mountain-top above you, and no vapour, charged with pestilence and fever, arises up from the marshes below. Gentlemen, I am not come here to speak of the advantages of knowledge. If I were addressing some infant institution, struggling for existence in remote rural districts, I might enlarge on a subject grown a dry commonplace to you ; but prate of the advantages of know- ledge to this great assembly, to the foremost institute of the kind which our country boasts | No ; it becomes me here rather to remind you that if by knowledge were meant only that which books and schools can bestow, it requires something more to make a man virtuous or a people great. Human reason, at the best, is but human reason still ; and we have all had the first Prench Revolution sufficiently dinned into our ears to remember that it was flattery which drove Reason out of her five senses, and she became only fit for a madhouse the moment she was I 74 AT THE LEEDs MECHANICS INSTITUTION. set up as a goddess. There are two things I daresay you are often condemned to hear treated with ridicule and contempt ; the one is the wisdom of our ancestors, and the other is the character and pretensions of the age in which we live. Nay, perhaps you have heard the very same persons who disdain the generations that have gone before, as dull Savages without rail- ways and steam-engines, still sentimentally despise the present time as commonplace and Vulgar—complain that we have no great men, and no great ideas, and that railways and steam- engines are all that we care for. When I hear either of these two things said, I am reminded of the jest of the celebrated wit who exclaimed, “How rich I should become if I could buy those persons, so wise in their self-conceit, at their just market value, and then sell them again at the price they set upon themselves!” That would be to buy at the cheapest market and to sell at the dearest. Now, as to the wisdom of Our ancestors, we may, I think, leave them to speak for themselves. Their intellect has left us writers whom we may strive to emulate, but can never hope to surpass; a political constitution which we may enlarge or repair, but which we can never perhaps altogether change for the better; and an empire on which, it is said, that the Sun never sets, though it commenced from these small northern islands on which, I am sorry to say, the Sun Seldom condescends to shine. The divine commandment tells us to honour our par- ents that our days may be long in the land. But the parents of a people are the first great fathers who made them free, and this people will live long in the land according as they hold in grate- ful veneration those who redeemed that land from the wilder- ness, and left their descendants to become the civilisers of the world, not more by the pomp of London than by the industry of Leeds. With these brief words on behalf of our ancestors, let us take a glance at some of the characteristics of the age in which we live, and see if it deserves the contempt with which it has been treated. And first, gentlemen, we hear a great deal said as to the vast progress which mankind has made. Now, let us here pause and examine; there is quite enough to justify us as Englishmen. There is no doubt of the progress we have AT THE LEEDS MECHANICS' INSTITUTION. 175 made in England, but let us moderate our conceit as members of the great family of man. Take down a map of the world, and see how small a portion of it is yet civilised at all. Look at the three ancient quarters of the globe: Africa remains the same domain of Savages and wild beasts; Asia has fallen back from the civilisation which produced such cities as Nineveh and Babylon; and even in Europe what vast and fertile territories, Once the Seats of empire, now present only a crude or degenerate civilisation. In Spain you pass through valleys of the richest soil; the corn where it is lazily sown withers as it stands. You ask why 2 “No use to cut it down—no markets, and no roads.” In Italy the arts languish, literature is stifled, men's minds are divided between the most lifeless infidelity and the most abject Superstition. In that Tuscany which gave to modern Europe the earliest lessons of literature and freedom, the very shape of your hat might condemn you to the Austrian's Sabre; and the royal representative of the learned Medici thinks heaven and earth are coming together if an English gentlewoman drops a Bible in the cottage of the poor. While on the borders of the civilised world, happily as yet divided from us by the barriers of nature, the Emperor of all the Russias rules over barbarous millions, and shocks alike the civilisation and religion of this century, by affecting the zeal of the Crusader to disguise the ambition of the Vandal. Out of all Europe there are only three great races which are in the full vigour of progressive life. The Great Germanic race—in which I include the kindred population of the Baltic, such as Sweden and Norway, and the populations, also kindred, of Belgium and Holland—the people of France, and the people of Great Britain. Well, then, if you look back to his- tory you will find that ever since Greece arose, much the same proportions of mankind attain to civilisation at the same period, and the vast populations of the universe remain very little changed. Civilisation obeys the same law as the ocean ; it has its ebb and its flow, and where it advances on one shore it re- cedes from the other ; thus, while it has left, dry and sterile, the Italy which had boasted the empire of the ancient world, and Spain which had seized the treasures of the new, it flows with a 176 AT THE LEEDs MECHANICS' INSTITUTION. vigorous wave towards the American and Australasian shores, which we ourselves have peopled; and if ever the time should come when Europe shall grow old as Asia, and London shall become to posterity what Tyre and Sidon are to us, we may still hope that our spirit will survive in young races whose lips will speak our hardy language, and in whose veins will roll the blood of the men whom I see around me, warming hearts which beat loud and high with every thought that can ennoble freedom and exalt humanity. But what moral results are we to gain from the fact that civilisation never spreads over the earth in equal and impartial tides 2 Any check to our desire of progress 2 No, but some caution against those vague yearnings for the indefinite perfectibility of the whole human race, which misled the dreamers of the last century. Let us be content to leave the question of the absolute perfectibility of mankind to the wisdom of the Creator, and let us, like men of Sense, attempt, as far as possible, to civilise—and if the word be not too strong for mortals—to perfect ourselves. That is why I like the old word patriotism, which has gone out of fashion, much better than the many new words which have come into vogue, and which have often so wide a signification that half the duties of life slip through them. For my part, I have no grudge against the Polynesians; I have a distant respect for the Chinese ; I should be glad if the Caffres and Bushmen eat beef and mutton instead of grubs and opossums. But as for all the vivid and intense emotion which, out of the nearer circle of my life, would fire my heart and nerve my arm, I am content, if they preserve full vigour and life no further than the limits which embrace the freedom, the safety, the happiness and renown of my native country and her glorious people. And let me not be told that this is a narrow illiberal sentiment, at variance with that more expanded philanthropy which can behold with equal love—per- haps with equal indifference—the Englishman and the Cossack I say, on the contrary, the more we can strengthen the moral character and power of England, the more we advance what is really practical in the ends of universal philanthropy by the civilisation that our commerce extends from shore to shore, and AT THE LEEDs MECHANICs' INSTITUTION. 177 by the successful and contagious example of freedom too wise for licence, and religion too pure for persecution. Well, these three great European races, the German, the French, and the English, differ in certain aspects of civilisation ; but they all have some great principles in common, and the first that I shall refer to as honourably distinguishing this age from those who have gone before it, is the milder spirit of humanity. Now, even abroad, in spite of intervals of civil discord and convulsion, we may observe the advance which has been made within the last sixty years. Take but a single instance. Compare the Reign of Terror in France at the close of the last century, with that Sublime and awful moment when law and order were rent asunder round the fallen throne of Louis Philippe, and murder and rapine, seized with horror at their own first impulse, drop- ped the red flag of blood at the feet of Lamartime. But happier circumstances have perhaps allowed this country to take prece- dence here. It is this milder spirit of humanity which has raised up all those new questions, not heard of before this cem- tury, affecting the condition of the people; it is this which seeks to carry health and cleanliness into the abodes of misery and squalor; it is this which has directed merciful attention even to the foes and outlaws of Society, seeking to reform criminals rather than punish them ; it is this which has introduced hope- ful discipline into our prison-houses, and, except in the rarest cases, has struck the punishment of death out of our criminal code. Naturally then, and concomitant with this development of humanity, philosophy takes a more material and less specu- lative direction than in the last century. I grant that we direct philosophy towards nature in order to improve the actual condi- tion, the material existence of man, and therefore we have been called a material age—an age at variance with Spiritual objects, or what is called the poetry of life. I cannot see the justice of this reproach. I cannot see, for instance, how the working man should be less inclined to spiritual objects when he breathes pure air, in a comfortable house, than when he wrestled with ague in a miserable hovel. I don’t see why we should be less spiritual or poetical either in proportion as we discover that VOL. I. M 178 AT THE LEEDS MECHANICs' INSTITUTION. the Divine beneficence has stored universal Nature, even to the gas which had for countless ages escaped from us in smoke— with agencies which surpass the wildest tales of the Eastern genii—agencies that are the poetry of Nature herself, and which we can only subject to our control according as we task the sublimer faculties which separate us from the brute; and let me not be told that the occupations of the mechanic, who, like Alad- din, rubs the lamp that bids the genii rise, are at variance with the poetry of life. Why (to-day as I passed through the mill of Messrs Marshall), I asked myself, “What is poetry in its high- est form, in the drama or the epic 3’ It is contrivance and design. It is selecting from Nature her raw material, her scat- tered objects, drawing from them new beauties unknown before, and weaving the desultory threads into one artistic whole. As all colours come from the rainbow, so each variety of skilful and observant labour—whether it adorn the loom or animate the printed page—come from the same prismatic source of intelli- gence, which reflects upon the cloud—no matter what shape that cloud itself may assume—the rays that embellish the world. Gentlemen, naturally again, as Science takes a more practical direction, there comes forth another principle which honourably distinguishes this age from the century that went before. In the last century, the common object of philosophers and reform- ers was bent upon destroying. All Schemes in politics were vague and indefinite, except the one passionate desire to get rid of whatever existed. That was caught from Voltaire and Paine. But the object of this is to construct rather than to destroy. The practical is the first thing we think of. Why, we did not even destroy the stage-coaches—they died a natural and peace- ful death of themselves, after we had constructed railways. But if the last century had discovered the steam-engine, I believe they would have destroyed all the coaches before a single girder had been put down upon a single line. The last century sought to level. Well, we seek to level also ; but our levelling is in a different spirit, I trust. Not by pulling down the one class, but by lifting up the other. And in this is seen another great prin- ciple that is most honourably characteristic of our age. Ever AT THE LEEDs MECHANICs' INSTITUTION. 179 since the peace, there has grown up in these three great races whom I have indicated as in the full progress of civilisation, a great desire to educate the masses—in other words, to level the disparities of instruction. Now, of these three great communi- ties—the German, the French, and the English—the Germans are pre-eminent, especially in the kingdom of Prussia, for the attention the State has devoted to school instruction. And this School instruction is on the whole most beneficial to the moral condition of the German people. Nevertheless, this uniformity of the State drill has given rather a tameness and monotony to the national character ; and the education bestowed upon the boy is not sufficiently carried out to the man by the civil institutions, that keep ideas ever fresh, and energies always braced. The Germans are very good, but perhaps—out of Leeds, at least— they are rather slow. Now, in France, education is far less diffused than it is in Germany, and it is also inferior in quality. But as far as it has gone, it has not been attended in France with that benefit to the moral elevation of the people which we might have anticipated. Indeed, it appears from the statistical tables of Mons. Gueray—and though these returns have been disputed, the fact is really unquestionable—that France is per- haps the only country in the world where upon the whole there has been a greater proportion of criminals well educated, who have been guilty of the worst offences, than there have been criminals who are altogether ignorant. But I will by-and-by show you that this fact must not be taken as proving anything against the great question of extended education. In Great Britain school education is far less advanced than it is in Ger- many; and we are told—but I doubt whether we are told cor- rectly—that the school education of Great Britain is inferior, as regards reading and writing, to that of France. And yet, I don’t know if I shall startle you when I state that all the ends of a sound national education are even now far more efficaciously attained in England than they are either in Germany or France. For what is the object of instruction, unless it be to elevate our nature by great moral qualities, or to enrich our experience by Sound, vigorous, and practical ideas 2 And do you suppose this 180 AT THE LEEDS MECHANICs' INSTITUTION. comes from reading and writing only, from grammars and copy- books, excellent things though grammars and copy-books are ? Why, the ancient Athenians were the most intelligent community the world ever saw ; and yet there were few of those who had conquered the Persians, or gazed on the Parthenon, or listened to Pericles, or applauded the works of Æschylus and Sophocles, who knew how to write or read. What was it that taught them to be aspiring, yet practical, to be vigilant, and yet humane 7 Why, that which teaches the Englishman—the talk and the habits of everyday life, the custom of self-government, the con- sciousness of liberty, and the electrical transit of stirring ideas, that comes from the common interest in public affairs—the Con- stant intercourse between man and man; that frank publicity of opinion, and that sympathy of united numbers, which carry to the multitude, even to the umlettered multitude, every more useful and vivid thought which genius or study originates in the few. It is all this which teaches the Englishman, and gives to our people their vast superiority in the real enlightenment of their common ideas, and the masculine energy with which they carry those ideas into practice. We must judge of the instruc- tion of a people as we do of the intellect of a man—by the fruit it displays. And if we were behind the rest of the world in that knowledge which best becomes a nation, do you think in those political contests, when the humblest among us—yes, the masses, most called the ignorant—have been stirred up to the very depths, we should have left such signal examples of moderation combined with firmness 2 Look at the ease with which our English intelligence has gained by reforms, all which German mystics and French fanatics have lost by revolutions. Is not this of itself a proof that there is a silent education, distinct from that of the Schools, always at work within the people of these realms, and which, when it comes into action, exhibits an intellectual power not yet found in those whom State policy may more instruct as children, but whom civil institutions less nerve and discipline as men ; But do not think that I am in- different or lukewarm to education in the common meaning of the Word—to the diffusion of cheap books, or cheap schools. AT THE LEEDS MECHANICs' INSTITUTION. 181 No. If we gain so much from the mere fact that we are born in England, accustomed to a free voice in all our affairs, and trained by inventive labour to reflect on what we would do to- day and hope to do to-morrow, how much more shall we gain if, in addition to these primitive sources of masculine idea, we could add the refinement and the method which come from early syste- matic education 1 Sooner or later we may have this question brought before us, and examined in all its details. For my part I trust that education in this country will never be altogether paid for and altogether regulated by the State. I hope in this, as in all, that we shall never part with the vital principle of Self-government in contradistinction to centralisation. But I hope I shall live to see the day when here in England, as in America, the education of the people may come from the desire of the people, consenting in local districts to levy a rate upon themselves for education, thus interested in seeing that the edu- cation is of the best kind that their money can produce, and adapted not to some rigid and unflexible State machinery, but open to every improvement which the experience of one district can suggest to the emulation of another. But do not let us forget, when summing up the causes why we are more practically instructed than other countries, notwithstanding our deficiency in school education—do not let us forget what I conceive to be the foremost cause of all—I mean the familiar acquaintance of our whole people, from the palace to the cottage, with the Scrip- tures; and to the profound reverence with which men of the highest intellectual culture, and the most daring speculation as to science, still acknowledge in the Bible the purest standard of all excellence to which human virtue can aspire. And I hold it to be another honourable distinction to this century, that although there was never a period when we were less inclined to fly to the law for a prosecutor, yet there never was a period in our history when public opinion would more disdain those ribald attempts to smeer down the Gospel, which disgraced the so-called philosophy of the last century. And now, Ladies and Gentle- men, we may perhaps see why education in France has not been productive of that moral good we might have anticipated. 182 AT THE LEEDS MECHANICS INSTITUTION. Though France has recovered her churches and her priesthood, she has not recovered from the wholesale infidelity of the last century—from that time when she exchanged the Saviour for Voltaire. The Bible is not in the cottage of her peasants, in the parlour of her traders; and a few years ago it was even tra- vestied upon the stage. It is not only the comparative absence of that familiar teacher of right and wrong that we may, lament throughout France, but it is because one clear and acknowledged standard of morality is not thus before the eyes of the great bulk of the population; that the public have accepted a popular literature which only serves to corrupt the intelligence it appeals to. What does it signify if a whole people can read and write, if the books most thrown in their way only serve to stimulate the baser passions, to set class against class, to loosen the ties of hearth and home, of property and order; and though they may thus excite to revolutions, that possibly may be just in them- selves, yet the moment the revolution comes, make democracy frightened at its own shadow; and every man who has a rood of ground, or a shilling in the Savings bank, or a wife that he would prefer to keep to himself, fly at the first thunderclap which fore- tells the tempest of social anarchy to the grim shelter of despotic force 2 Had the people of France possessed less of what they call philosophy, and more of the common-sense which the Scrip- tures teach in their lessons of fortitude and temperance, their political opinions would not have excited the terror now taken from wild social doctrines; nor would the French people have passed through three revolutions to find that, at the end, they are not a step nearer to real freedom than they were when they first began. Well, them, I think you will see that a good educa- tion includes the School—but it requires something more ; and here don’t let me forget, amongst our other advantages, the habits of our domestic life. Whatever may be the faults of our men, all countries agree that our women are pre-eminent for the con- centration of thought and affection in the circle of their homes. I turn to the fair faces that I See around me, and say gratefully that two-thirds of what have made us Englishmen what we are —many a quiet lesson, never to be forgotten, of fortitude under AT THE LEEDS MECHANICS' INSTITUTION. 183 childish trouble; of self-sacrifice and control of temper, from motives, not of fear, but of affection; of simple honesty and plain truth ; of reliance on Heaven in hours of temptation and moments of despondency—we owe to the English mothers who soothed our infant sorrows, shared in our boyish hopes, and taught us in our earliest prayers to pray that our Divine Father would bless others beside ourselves. There are few of us who have succeeded honourably in the world that will not acknowledge that we owe far less to the school than to the pre- cepts and example that we found at home, and especially to the gentle precepts of a mother's lips and the stainless example of a mother's life. I am rejoiced, therefore, to comply with the request of a gentleman who said to me, on entering the hall— “Say Something in favour of adding a female class to this insti- tution.” Perhaps there is not a town in this country in which the females of the working classes appear less to require new facilities for education than they do at Leeds. I am told that there is Scarcely a manufactory to which there is not a school for girls attached. Nevertheless, it would be an honour and a Credit to this institution if you could add female classes, and endeavour as far as possible to fit women to be the worthy com- panions of intelligent men. Only I would say, if you should be able to comprehend those who are to be the wives of mechanics and Working men, I would entreat you not to be too elevated in your notions—I would entreat you to remember the useful duty of teaching the wife of the working man how to make the money go as far as possible and the home as comfortable. Well, then, Ladies and Gentlemen, it seems there are two kinds of educa- tion: there is one I call life education, which we acquire at home, in the streets, in the market-place—behind the counter, the loom, the plough—the education we acquire from life-and this I call life education; there is also what I call school edu- cation—the education we acquire from books. I have endea- voured, and I hope not unsuccessfully, to show that in the first kind of education—life education—we are far in advance of all countries in the ancient quarters of the globe; but it appears we are behind some countries in School education. You, as English- 184 AT THE LEEDS MECHANICS INSTITUTION. men, will never let this be so. You are Englishmen, and I am sure will never consent to be beaten by any country whatever. Let us, then, put our shoulders to the wheel, and see that we are here also in our proper place in the world. I turn now to this great Institute at Leeds, and I think we are on the fair road to it. I have always been a cordial admirer of the principle of Mechanics' Institutes. I think they combine all those best signs of the age to which I have referred. The milder humanity—the practical purpose or desire to construct rather than to destroy, and lift up the one class, not pull down the other. All these are to be found concentrated in Mechanics' Institutes: and I dis- cover in the very humblest of such societies the germ of much good. I do assure you without flattery, that I feel prouder of England and of this calumniated nineteenth century when I look at the printed report of the present condition of this great Insti- tution at Leeds, for I see there the fullest comprehension of what a great intellectual institute ought to become: the library, the lecture-room, and the class-rooms—offering to the child, the adult, and the grown-up man, not only the meagre rudiments, but the amplitude of a generous and liberal educa- tion. And you here do that which they have failed to do in Germany and France. You don't merely give to the child a hasty education, and then send him loose upon the world, but you remember that education is the work of a life, and you con- tinue that education to the man. Now there is another sugges- tion which I should like to make, though I do it with some little apprehension as to how you will take it. You are all agreed that you would like to make education as perfect as possible: if you are, do recollect that we happen to have a body as well as a mind, and that it is not enough that a people should have thought and reflection unless they also have health and vigour. Now it is an old saying, “That all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” and therefore to every good School there is attached a play- ground. Well, why should you not have a playground attached o this institute at Leeds 2 Why not, as your funds increase, pur- chase a piece of ground in your immediate neighbourhood, which may serve hereafter for specimens of natural history, but at once, AT THE LEEDS MECHANICS' INSTITUTION. 185 and more especially for gymnastic exercises, for quoits and prisoners' bars for the young, and bowls and skittles for the more sedate—health and exercise for all ? You might dress the ground with booths and summer-houses, so as to allure the pre- sence of such ladies as I now survey; and by the simple rules, to separate at proper hours and exclude spirituous liquors, these amusements would never, I am sure, be abused by indecorum. By doing this, you will increase the number of your pupils in the summer months, when they must fall off; and would tend to promote your own object by cultivating a friendly intercourse in the ease and familiarity of lively sport between the million- aire, the tradesman, and the mechanic. You would help on that lagging Sanitary question, by calling the nerves and muscles into cheerful exercise ; and many a man before so bilious and melancholy as to take the gloomiest view of things in general, and especially of his own position in the town of Leeds, would rise blithe to his Monday’s work, from his Saturday recreations, and look forward with the pleasure of a child to his next half- holiday. If you think me too theoretical in that suggestion, you must excuse me for two reasons: first, because I happen to be a bit of a Scholar, and I remember that the ancient Greeks were the finest race of antiquity, because they considered that a Sound mind was only half a blessing unless it was accompanied with a sound body; and secondly, because I have been brought up and reared in the country, and I learnt there a love for those old English sports, which has done me good service through life; for I never could have gone through the brain-work which I have contrived to do, in spite of a constitution naturally delicate, if I had not, while the frame was yet growing, braced the nerves and sharpened the energies, by all the runs and leaps, by all the balls I hit at cricket, and all the kicks I received at football, and all the wild laughter and joyous mirth which I owe to the dear old playground. That reminds me that I am here not only as the member of a class which must always have the deepest sympathy with intellectual labour—I mean the class of authors, —but I am here also as a member of another class, which is supposed to be less acceptable in manufacturing towns: I am one 186 AT THE LEEDs MECHANICS' INSTITUTION. of the agricultural vampires—I am guilty of being a country gentleman, and even a county member; still, Somehow or other, I feel quite at home here. Now, shall I tell you the truth ? I daresay you and I may differ upon many political Subjects; but upon this neutral ground I am sure—no matter what books I had written—you would not be so kind to me, nor I feel So much at my ease with you, unless by this time we had both dis- covered that we have got sound English hearts; and that though we may quarrel as to the mode of doing it, still we are all equally resolved to keep this England of ours the foremost country in the world. In a free state it will happen that every class will strive to press forward what it conceives, rightly or erroneously, its own claims and interests, but in proportion as we instruct all, each will in time acquire its due share of influence; and far from that hypocritical cowardice which often makes a man throw over in one assembly the class which he is bound to advocate in another, I own to you, wherever I look I see so much merit in every division of our people, that whatever class I had been born and reared in, of that class I should have been justly proud. There is not a class of which I should not have said, “I belong to those who made England great.” If I had been born a peasant, let me be but self-taught and self-risen, and I would not have changed my brotherhood with Burns for the pedigree of a Howard. If I had been born a mechanic or manufacturer —for allow me to class together the employer and the employed —they fulfil the same mission, and their interests ought to be the same ; I say if I had been born one of these, I should have said, “Mine is the class which puts nations themselves into the great factory of civilisation; mine is the class which has never yet been established in any land but what it has made the poor state rich, and the Small state mighty.” If I had been born a trader, the very humblest of that order, I should have boasted proudly of the Solid foundation of public opinion, and of na- tional virtues, which rest upon the spirit and energy, upon the integrity and fair dealing, by which that great section of our middle class have given a tone and character to our whole people. Why, we have been called a nation of shopkeepers, and AT THE LEEDS MECHANICS' INSTITUTION. 187 shopkeepers we are whenever we keep a debtor and creditor account with other nations; Scrupulously paying our debts to the last farthing, and keeping Our national engagements with punctuality and good faith. But it is owing much to the high spirit and sense of honour which characterises the British trader, that the word “gentleman” has become a title peculiar to us, not as in other countries, resting only upon pedigrees and coats of arms, but embracing all who unite gentleness with manhood. And nation of shopkeepers though we be, yet we all, from the duke in his robes to the Workman in his blouse, become a nation of gentlemen, whenever some haughty foreigner touches our common honour, whenever Some paltry sentiment in the lips of princes rouses our generous scorn, or whenever some chivalrous action or noble thought ennobles the Sons of peasants. If I had been told that the habits of trade made men niggardly and self- ish, I should have pointed to the hospitals, to the charities, to the educational institutions which cover the land, and which have been mainly founded or largely endowed by the munifi- cence of traders. If I had been told there was something in trade which stinted the higher or more poetical faculty, I should have pointed to the long list of philosophers, divines, and poets that have sprung from the ranks of trade, and, not to cite minor names, I should have said, “It is we who share with agriculture, have the glory of producing the woolstapler's son who rules over the intellectual universe under the name of Shakespeare.” This pride of class I should have felt, let me only be born an English- man, whether as peasant, mechanic, manufacturer, or tradesman; but being born and reared amongst those who derive their sub- sistence from the land, I am not less proud that I belong to that great section of our countrymen from whom have proceeded so large a proportion of those who have helped to found that union of liberty and intellect which binds together the audience I survey—from whom came the great poets Chaucer and Gower, Spenser and Dryden, and Byron and Scott; from whom came the great pioneers of Science, Worcester and Cavendish, Boyle and Bacon; from whom came So large a number of the heroes and patriots who in all the grand epochs of constitutional pro- 188 AT THE LEEDs MECHANICS' INSTITUTION. gress, from the first charter wrung from Norman tyrants, from the first resistance made to the Roman pontiffs, down to the law by which Camden (the son of a country squire) achieved the liberty of the press—down to the Reform Bill, by which Russell, Grey, and Stanley, and Lambton, connected Leeds for ever with the genius of Macaulay,+have furnished liberty with illustrious chiefs, and not less with beloved martyrs ? Out of that class of country gentlemen came the Hampden who died upon the field, and Sydney who perished on the scaffold. Why do I say this? Because I would not pass from this town with- out adjuring you never to believe, whatever may be our faults, and defects, and prejudices, that as a general body we rural Thanes and cultivators could desire to destroy or arrest the work which our fathers assisted you to build, or that we are so dull as not to know that if the spare capital from land first called manu- facturers into existence, so in return manufactures increased the value of the land according as they add to the wealth of the community. But I will own to you fairly—for by this time you must have seen that I am here to speak out my whole mind— that the class and the party to which I belong do regard, not with grudge and hostility, but with anxiety and some awe the im- mense power which every year, as civilisation expands, congre- gates more and more in the dense population of manufacturing towns; we do feel that with populations like yours, may rest the ultimate solution of some of the gravest of our political and social problems. But sure I am that the surest mode, under Providence, of bringing all problems of existing civilisation to a favourable issue, is to proportion intelligence to power. And perhaps it may be through institutions like this that every year Leeds and Manchester may contrast more and more the alternate ferocity and submission which have been the reproach of Lyons and Marseilles. I have often thought that the ancients endea- voured to convey to us a type of the true moral force in their sublime statue of Hercules in repose. You see there the gigantic strength which has achieved such glorious labours evincing the consciousness of its power by the majesty of its calm; while in those mighty arms which have purified earth from its monsters, AT THE LEEDS MECHANICs' INSTITUTION. 189 the artist has placed an infant child smiling securely in the face of the benignant God. Keep that image ever before you—it is the type of that power which should belong to knowledge, and which is always gentle in proportion to the victories it achieves. I feel while I am speaking as if the anxiety and awe that I had before expressed were already melting away in that confidence with which I think we Englishmen may trust the future not only to the School education which we are met here to encourage and diffuse, but also to our experience of a thousand years in self-government, to the mildness which our domestic habits should communicate to our political conflicts, and, above all, at least in my opinion, to our secure inheritance of that Divine Book which teaches humanity to nations, and will whisper to us all, in the fever of strife, or in the flush of triumph, “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath; ” and “Do unto other men what you would that they should do unto you.” XV. A S P E E C H DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 15TH OF MAY 1854. ON Monday, the 15th of May 1854, the Order of the Day for the Second Reading of the Excise Duties Bill gave rise to a lengthened debate, at the close of which the motion was carried by 303 votes to 195. About mid- way in the discussion the following Speech was delivered. SIR,--I cordially concur in the desire expressed by all gentle- men who have risen on this side of the House to assist the Ministers of the Crown in providing the necessary means to carry on with vigour and effect the war in which we are un- happily engaged; and as all that may weaken the Government by party disputes on matters of domestic policy would, in my judgment, be injurious to that aspect of moral power which this country should present to Europe, I rejoiced when the noble Lord the Member for London—much, I think, to his credit, and with the respectful sympathy of the House—withdrew from discussion a Reform Bill which must inevitably have provoked a most determined opposition. I did hope that opposition it- self might remain dormant during the rest of the Session. I was not prepared to expect that the dispute which the leader of THE EXCISE DUTIES. 191 the Government in this House so patriotically forbore would be forced upon us in another shape by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. That right hon. gentleman is too experienced a politician not to know that he has deliberately introduced into his Budget the very item that must revive the most bitter resentment of the class against which it operates, and that most of us on this side of the House would be traitors to our con- stituents if we submitted to it without a struggle. The issue of that struggle may be against us, but I fear that the very pro- position of the right hon. gentleman will materially weaken the hands of the Government in the fitting conduct of this war, because it elaborately tends to create the deepest dissatisfaction in that very portion of our people upon whom for the endurance of war all Governments must proverbially depend. I shall imitate the example of those who have preceded me, and refrain from discussing the general propositions of the Budget. With respect to the proposed duplication of the income and property tax, however, I must at least enter a strong demur against the assertion so glibly made by the right hon, gentleman that it is impossible to reconstruct it upon a more equitable basis; but, whether this be or be not possible, I say that a direct tax in which the whole mass of the public complain of anomalies and injustice, not rendered more tolerable by your assertion that they are not susceptible of mitigation, and avowedly to be con- tinued for the whole duration of the war—maintained, as it were, upon that tenure—is precisely that tax which the Em- peror of Russia will rejoice to hear that you have doubled. However, there is at least this consolation left to those who are to pay the income and property tax, that its anomalies and injustice are fairly parcelled out among the wealth and industry of the community down to those whose incomes reach the limit of £100 a-year; while the right hon. gentleman then proceeds to select an especial article of home production, and with a complacent eulogium on the principle of fair distribution, cal- culates to raise from the additional tax—which, if finally paid by the consumer, particularly affects one single department of industry—a sum, a third in amount of all which, he calculates 192 THE EXCISE DUTIES. to obtain from his fresh demand upon the united property and and income of the entire community. The right hon. gentle- man thinks the malt-tax a duty which combines all those features that should determine his choice in selecting it. “You can raise it,” he says, “without additional expense, and collect it without additional machinery.” In this he was followed by the hon. Member for Westbury (Mr Wilson) appending to the broad assumption a supplement of Small details. I think the hon. Member for the North Riding of Yorkshire (Mr Cayley), who moved the amendment on this measure, has rather proved the contrary; but, grant that it be so, the reasons alleged are very well for a mere tax-gatherer, or even a Secretary of the Treasury; but there are other reasons—reasons of policy and justice—which should weigh more with a gentleman of such lofty pretensions to the character of a statesman. And I Say that all such reasons combine to make this tax one of the very last you should have thought of. The right hon, gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in proposing this additional malt-tax, spoke only of making the general consumer pay his fair share of the burdens necessary to carry on the war. He spoke only of the general consumer; not one single word did he condescend to say of the effect of the tax upon agriculture. He spoke as if there were no persons in this country engaged in the cultivation of land—he seemed to ignore their existence. But the right hon. gentleman need not have looked deeper than into the familiar pages of Mr M'Culloch—whom he after- wards quotes with deserved respect as high authority — to have known the injury to agriculture which the malt-tax, even without an addition, inevitably inflicts. What says Mr M’Culloch, in his ‘Principles of Political Economy?’ “The malt-tax, like other taxes on commodities, falls wholly on the consumer; still, however, it must be admitted that it is, indirectly at least, if not directly, especially injurious to the agriculturist. Barley is a crop that is peculiarly suitable to light lands, and may be introduced with the greatest advantage in an improved rotation after green crops. But it is obvious that by imposing a duty of 20s. 8d, (that is the present duty) per TEIE EXCISE DUTIES. 193 quarter on malt (the produce into which barley is almost wholly concocted), the demand for the latter is materially diminished, and the farmer is in consequence prevented from Sowing barley, where, but for this circumstance, it might be more Suitable than any other variety of corn. It is not easy to estimate the injury which this indirect influence of the malt- tax inflicts upon agriculture; but the fact of its inflicting an injury is undeniable. Suppose such a high duty were laid on bread as would lessen the demand for wheat, would any one presume to say that was not especially injurious to agricul- turists 2 or suppose a high duty were laid on calicoes and broadcloths, is it not clear that it would be a serious injury to the manufacturers engaged on it !” Nay, Mr. M'Culloch goes further; for while he thinks, never- theless, that it may be a tax in case of necessity which you might increase, yet, even as it now exists, he thinks it entitles the farmer to a compensation. And what is the compensation this eminent free-trader insists on ? Why, he says— “The peculiar pressure of the malt-tax upon land gives the agriculturist a peculiar claim—though all claims on account of tithes were abolished—to have a certain fixed duty imposed upon foreign corn. It would be unjust, seeing that the malt- tax, by narrowing the demand for barley, and obliging the farmers to adopt imperfect rotations, is especially inimical to their interests, to expose them, without any corresponding protection, to the competition of foreigners. Perhaps it might require a fixed duty of Is. 6d. to 2s. a quarter to counteract the unfavourable circumstances alluded to.” That is the malt-tax So that here, after you have abolished all duties on foreign wheat, you select the very burden which, according to political economy, entitles the grower to some protection, and add to it 50 per cent. The hon. Member for Westbury conceives that an excise duty on malt is very dif- ferent in effect from an excise duty on soap. He can reduce the duty on soap and yet increase the revenue. On malt, on the other hand, he thinks he can increase the duty without diminishing consumption. But the facts of the past are against VOL. I. N 194 THE EXCISE DUTIES. him there. We know that, notwithstanding the increase of wealth and of population, the consumption of malt varied little for 100 years, until the duty on malt was reduced in 1822, when, even before the beer duty was repealed, it rose from more than 26,000,000 bushels in 1821 to more than 30,000,000 bushels in 1828; and since the repeal of the beer duty in 1830 it has risen to more than 40,000,000 bushels. Now I am opposed to all taxes that fall more upon one class of industry than another; but if the stern necessities of war compel you to violate this strict rule, and some class must be partially affected by your burdens, we might regret it less if it were that class who have a paramount interest in bringing the war to a speedy close by vigorous and effective military operations. What is that class Why, obviously the mercantile and manufacturing— the class engaged in foreign interchange, which war, in pro- portion as it spreads, must impede and Cripple. The produce of land which is consumed at home, not exported, the domestic exchange in retail trade, the profits of professions, are not so vitally interested in the suppression of a distant war as those sublime departments of industry which distance itself the more develops, and which enrich the manufacturer and merchant wherever they can find a friendly shore and an open sea. One might suppose, then, that the Government, if it be unhappily compelled to call upon any class more than another to contribute to the expenses of war, would look naturally to that class to which the restoration of peace is so essentially important. And it would do so in this case the more reasonably, not only because of the comparative wealth of those great members of the corporate state, but because no class during the forty years' peace thus abruptly terminated has been so largely benefited by fiscal reductions. No one can deny that the main spirit and effect of all our reliefs since the Reform Bill, and even before, have been to favour our mercantile and manufacturing interests in preference to any other. It therefore might be supposed, that the class which has most benefited by the reliefs afforded in peace would most willingly co-operate in the means necessary for the termination of war. Yet it is not to this class THE EXCISE DUTIES. 195 the Chancellor of the Exchequer looks for the burdens he re- Solves to impose. Out of the whole community he selects for a special infliction that special class which has had the hardest Struggles, has had the slightest share in the mitigation of taxes, has recently been mulcted of a large portion of its capital for an experiment mainly intended to promote the success of manufactures, and according to frank avowals of the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer himself, and equally frank avowals by the noble Lord who leads the Government in this House, was entitled to some compensation, if compensation could have been found for them. Now this is the compensation you give them . They asked you a year ago to reduce the malt-tax ; your reply is to add to the malt-tax £2,500,000. This is not all; besides money, there is something else which a people must contribute to the dreadful necessities of war. They must contribute their sinews and their blood. The heaviest tax of all is that of human lives. Now, of all classes, which are here spared the most 2 It is Surely the population of great mer- Cantile and manufacturing towns. It is not there that the recruiting sergeant beats for recruits. It is in the agricultural districts, it is in the rural population, that you principally find the Soldiers that man your armies; it is there that fathers will most mourn their children. But this is the class to whom the Chancellor of the Exchequer goes hand in hand with the re- cruiting sergeant. The one asks for money, the other for life. In the ordinary laws of conscription for military service, if the man decline service, he is bound to find the money that pro- vides a substitute. But these laws you reverse; you press into the military service the inhabitants of the rural districts, and from the rural districts you take, again, the money that is to find substitutes for the denizens of the manufacturing towns. T cannot conceive a greater injustice than the One you propose in the malt-tax, nor one that—under all circumstances, all the recollections, embittering class against class, connected with the repeal of the corn-laws—will be more gallingly felt, both as an injustice and as an insult, by the agricultural body, upon whom it will mainly fall. It will affect that body in all its 196 TEIE EXCISE DUTIES. gradations. The hon. gentleman (Mr Cayley) who moved the amendment treated the question in a very able manner; but there were one or two points that he only partially touched upon, with regard to which I will beg leave to make a few observations. Of course the increased price of beer will tend to diminish the demand for barley; but it will do something more than that. Already the high price of bread has diminished the consumption of beer, and has therefore tended in Some degree to check the cultivation of barley; and now comes your new tax to discourage altogether the cultivation of the Ordinary barley, for your tax falling alike on all qualities of barley, the price of the inferior barleys will sink much below the present proportion to the superior barleys, and there will therefore be a tendency to cultivate none but that of a Superior quality. Again, your tax necessitates increase of capital by the maltster, and whatever necessitates increase of capital tends to restrict trade and brings fewer purchasers into the market. There is, however, another and a stronger reason against the Selection of a special tax bearing so markedly upon a special class. Upon entering into this war, which, no doubt, does require all our united energies, it certainly would be wise to forbear whatever tends to create or reopen all class grievances and all class con- tests among ourselves; and this would be the more especially wise with regard to the agricultural class, because you know perfectly well that an angry excitement has long existed in that class in consequence of that change in your commercial policy as to which I will not now argue whether it was right or wrong; and you must remember that the only boom or mode of conciliation proffered to that class was the proposition for the reduction of the malt-tax. Upon the failure of that pro- position, a party, Supposed to be not very friendly to the landed interest, came into power, and now your attempt to add 50 per cent to this tax, which the friends of the agricultural interest desire to reduce, will be regarded as a fresh blow, as a new humiliation; it will exasperate those feelings which it was desired to extinguish, and, by damping the ardour with which the war should be prosecuted, it is calling in the exciseman to THE EXCISE DUTIES. 197 be the ally of Russia. Farmers, like all other Englishmen, Will readily submit to taxes, however onerous, provided you can convince them that they are fair ; but I ask you whether any farmer can upon any principle look upon this tax as a fair One 2 You force on him free trade, by which you concede that he has been a sufferer; you refuse to retract your steps by a single import duty, and when he asks you for free trade for himself to enable him to cultivate that crop which he prefers, you not only refuse his request, but add 50 per cent to the tax upon the only article in which he conceives that free trade would be desirable to him. Why did the Government decline to proceed with the Parliamentary Reform Bill? It was not so much because they could not find time to deal with it on account of being so much occupied with the details of the war—it was not so much be- cause the public mind was distracted from all such considera- tions by the idea of the war—as it was because the Bill con- tained provisions affecting agricultural constituencies, which could not be discussed at a popular hustings without reawaking the division of classes, without raising the mischievous cry of “Town and Country.” But what you could not effect by your Reform Bill you are resolved to effect by your Budget ; for where you proposed to increase the franchises of the great towns, you now propose to exempt them from all partial burdens, and to throw those partial burdens upon the agricul- tural constituencies, which you proposed by your Reform Bill to enfeeble and deluge with an inundation of urban voters; SO that it does seem as if you desired to justify the Suspicion that you have some determined hostility against the cultivators of the land. [Mr OSBORNE–“ Hear, hear.”] Oh you grant that. The hon. gentleman has the courage to avow what his Superiors disguise. You have a determined hostility against the culti- vators of the land, and you carry on a party warfare against them, now against their political influence, now against their pecuniary interest. I must say that the whole proceedings connected with this war and with this war Budget do invite one to inquire whether we have really gained so much by that stupendous sacrifice of private inclination which the public 198 TEIE EXCISE DUTIES. virtue of our Ministers induced them to make when they Con- sented to share among them the disagreeable fatigues of office. Most Governments have been formed by the combination of opinions, but this Government was formed upon the grander principle of the diversity of talent. Great men, long rival and antagonistic statesmen, consented to act together. Lord Aber- deen announced himself as a Liberal Conservative—the noble Lord the Member for London as a Conservative Liberal; but until we saw those great men acting together we should no more have supposed that a Liberal Conservative in One House was the same thing as a Conservative Liberal in the other, than that a horse chestnut was identical with a chestnut horse. But what has this talent done for us? Where and how have these wonderful capacities, this extraordinary experience of public affairs, been displayed ? The First Lord of the Ad- miralty evinces his remarkable sagacity and foresight by enter- ing office with a vehement invective against the Emperor of France, whose flag now sails beside our own. The Ministers who undertake our foreign affairs can only exonerate themselves from the charge of having taken in the Emperor of Russia, by lamentable complaints that they were egregiously taken in themselves. The domestic genius of this incomparable Cabinet is shown in the preparation of a Reform Bill, for which you are compelled, even before war was announced, to own the ungrate- ful apathy of the people; and your experience in practical affairs is thus evinced by being as blind to the temper of the English public as you were to the designs of the Russian enemy. And now, in that department of finance, on which the right hon. gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been so severe a critic upon his predecessors, from William Pitt to Lord Monteagle, and from Lord Monteagle to my right hon, friend the Member for Buckinghamshire (Mr Disraeli), what have been all your fiscal operations? A series either of fallacious promises or costly blunders. Where was the statesman's pro- phetic eye when last year the right hon. gentleman based all his calculations upon the removal of the income-tax in seven years; when he would not listen a moment to the possibility THE EXCISE DUTIES. 199 of war? What has become of the cheerful complaisance with which he replied to that inquisitive clerk who complained of his income-tax; and what was at least one-half of the right hon. gentleman's speech the other night composed of? Why, an eloquent vindication of what the world still believes to be mistakes. Now, Sir, I do not pretend to be a competent judge of the right hon, gentleman's financial schemes. But let me put an analogous case, more in my own way. If I were to publish a new book, and I prefixed to it a preface that would Occupy three or four mortal columns of the ‘Times’ newspaper, tending to show that the three books I had last written were not the notable failures which, whether through ignorance or malignity, the public had been led to suspect, sure I am that I could not give a greater triumph to hostile critics, or take a course more likely to make the friendly infer that I had some misgivings on the subject myself. One thing is clear—success never needs an excuse. The right hon, gentleman was pleased to flavour the compliments that he bestowed the other might on Mr Pitt with a sarcastic reproach on the errors of that Minister. I am not Mr Pitt's apologist. Errors he may have committed, no doubt ; but of all defects, what is that which the right hon. gentleman selects for his censure ? Why, that Mr Pitt did not see the war at a distance ; that Mr Pitt was short-sighted. And this charge comes from a gentleman who was the only man out of his own Cabinet who could not fore- see the war which he has now to provide for—from a gentle- man who converts stocks and can't foresee the results—who has one Budget in March, and another in May,+this is the gentleman who sneers at Mr Pitt as short-sighted | Sir, whether Mr Pitt did or did not commit an error by his system of loans is not that very easy question to decide which the right hon, gentleman presumes it to be on Mr. M'Culloch's authority. Mr. M'Culloch was no authority for the right hon. gentleman with regard to the malt-tax; but, Sir, whether as a political economist Mr. M'Culloch be right or not in censuring Mr Pitt's financial policy in the earlier years of the French war, there are other and grander views than those of political 200 THE EXCISE DUTIES. economy and finance involved in the Government of mankind and the safety of nations. On entering into war with a formi- dable Power, Mr Pitt may have reasonably supposed that it was not wise to discourage the people by onerous measures of taxation in the first instance. He may have thought, as an Englishman and a patriot, that his first duty was to maintain the spirit of his countrymen, and that posterity would pardon the loans he raised in return for the ample remuneration of interest he secured — remuneration in extended empire, aug- mented commerce, imperishable honour. And these were our returns when at the close of the war England emerged the first State in that Europe her arms had freed and delivered, and so lightly shook off from her shoulders the burden of these loans you have the ungrateful arrogance to condemn, that every year throughout the peace we have increased in wealth and re- Sources, and since 1831 almost every year has seen Some vast diminution of taxes accompany the payment of debt. So much has been said about our not saddling posterity, that it seems as if it were intended to insinuate that this is not a war to be waged on behalf of posterity, but for some fleeting and selfish purpose of our own. If that be so, I call on Our Ministers to recall our fleets, and to disband our armies—a war which is not for posterity is no fitting war for us. But Surely if ever there was a war waged on behalf of posterity, it is the war which would check the ambition of Russia and preserve Eu- rope from the outlet of barbarian tribes, that require but the haven of the Bosphorus to menace the liberty and the civilisa- tion of races as yet unborn. It is not our generation that need fear if the flag of Russia waved to-morrow over the ruins of Constantinople. The encroachments of Russia are proverbially slow ; it would require a quarter of a century before she could recover the exhaustion of her own victories and tame into con- venient serfs the brave population she had conquered. It is for all time that we wage the battle. It is that the liberties of our children may be secured from some future Attila, and civilisation guarded from the irruptions of Scythian hordes. On this ground, then, we might fairly demand the next gene- THE EXCISE DUTIES. 201 ration to aid us in the conflict we endure for their sake. Into that question in all its bearings I will not at present enter—it is complicated and difficult : but at least my plain common- Sense makes me sure of this, that if you desired to make the people as reluctant to proceed with the war as you were slow and blind to prepare for it, you could not take more effective means than by Such speeches as the right hon. gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer delivered at Manchester; and such taxes—derived, at the very first commencement of military operations, from Sources the most direct, palpable, odious in themselves, and unfair in their assessment—as you propose by this Budget to create. XVI. A S P E E O H. DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 197H OF DECEMBER 1854. ON Tuesday, the 19th of December 1854, the President of the Council, Lord John Russell, moved the Second Reading of the Bill for the Enlist- ment of Foreigners in aid of our troops in the Crimea. An amendment was thereupon moved by the Member for Herts, Sir Edward Bulwer Lyt- ton, that the Bill should be read a second time on that day six months. An animated discussion ensued, which lasted until early on the following morning, when, a division having been taken, the original motion was carried by 241 votes to 202. In proposing his amendment the following Speech was delivered. SIR-In rising to oppose the Second reading of this Bill, I feel, indeed, that I require more than the Ordinary indulgence of the House ; for if even upon trivial occasions it would be with great diffidence that I would offer any comment or reply to a speech from the noble Lord, that diffidence must be painfully increased upon an occasion so important, and when the task I have under- taken compels me to rise immediately after so eminent an au- thority and so consummate a debater. But I trust, at least, that it will not be necessary for me, or for any gentleman on this side of the House, or indeed on either, to declare our readiness to support the Crown in the resolute prosecution of a war in which THE BILL FOR THE ENLISTMENT OF FOREIGNERS. 203 the honour of England is pledged to a cause which we believe to be identified with the interests of civilisation itself. But if the honour of England be pledged to this quarrel, I am not willing that other nations and posterity should receive our confession that, at its very Onset, our own native spirit, nay, even our own military training, were incompetent to encounter the struggle. The noble Lord has carried us back to former wars, on which he has expatiated with complacency on the aid we derived from the employment of foreign mercenaries. I shall follow him, as I proceed, through the precedents he advances, and I trust to prove that they served less to advance his argument than to divert the House from the question that is really at issue. Meanwhile he cannot deny that in this war, at least, up to the present moment, with inadequate numbers, and at every dis- advantage, we have sufficed to fight our own battles and earn our own laurels; and the noble Lord has vouchsafed not one reason to show why we should henceforth prefer to win our victories by proxy. That expression may seem exaggerated, considering the small proportion of foreign force to be employed; but honour is not so intolerable a burden that we should fee foreign soldiers to ease ourselves of the slightest portion of that load. My objections to this Bill are very broad but very few, and I shall endeavour to state them in as few words as possible. What is it on which you now mainly rely to continue this war with vigour, no matter at what sacrifice and cost 2 Not so much on the extent of our territory, the amount of our popula- tion, the wealth of our resources, as on the ardour of the people; on that spirit of nationality which, we are told by the Minister of War, rises against every danger, and augments in proportion to the demand on its energies. It is that ardour you are about to damp—it is that spirit of nationality to which this Bill ad- ministers both discouragement and affront. The noble Lord says our difficulty is at the commencement. What is the commence- ment 2 One burst of popular enthusiasm And in the midst of that enthusiasm, at a time when we are told by the Secretary at War that you get recruits faster than you can form them into regiments—you say to the people of this empire, “Your rude and 204 THE BILL FOR THE ENLISTMENT OF FOREIGNERS. untutored valour does not suffice for the prowess of England, and we must apply to the petty principalities of Europe for the co-operation of their more skilful and warlike subjects.” I say that this is an unwise and, I maintain it to be, an unnecessary blow upon the vital principle that now sustains your cause, and brings to your army more men than you know how to employ. And if anything could make this war unpopular, it would be the sight of foreign soldiers quartered and drilled in any part of these kingdoms, paid by the taxes extorted from this people, and occupying barracks of which the paucity is your excuse for not having embodied more of the militia of our native land. Do you mean to say it will not make a difference in the temper of the middle and working classes, now nobly prepared for any pecuniary sacrifice, whether they pay the cost of an army of their own countrymen, who repay them by deeds which make us more proud of the English name, or whether they are to pay foreigners, who may be equally brave, may perform equal Ser- vice, but whose glory will only compliment our wealth at the expense of our manhood—only prove that we were rich enough to consign to foreign hirelings that standard which a handful of English soldiers had planted on the heights of Alma, and rescued from barbarian numbers on the plains of Inkerman 2 What, Sir, is the reason assigned for this Bill besides that learned array of historical precedents to which I shall come afterwards—that, whatever the ardour of Our people, it requires time to drill them, to convert raw recruits into disciplined sol- diers ? Sir, there is some force in that argument, but it confers a grave censure on the Government ; it proves all that has been said of their want of activity and foresight, that during the eigh- teen months in which war—this great, this “protracted war” —was foreseen by all England, except its chief Minister, that, during the nine months or so in which we have been actually engaged in hostilities, the Government should not already have raised and drilled a sufficient number of reserve to dispense at least with this first instalment of 10,000 foreigners. Why, if you will compute the time elapsed even since the battle of the Alma—the time devoted in preparing this thoughtful and delib- THE BILL FOR THE ENLISTMENT OF FOREIGNERS. 205 erate Bill — in corresponding with foreign princes (if the Bill pass), in enlisting your foreign soldiers, bringing them hither, and then, it seems, fitting them for service,—if you would com- pute all this time, from first to last, employed in getting together these foreign troops, you would have leisure to drill and send out double the number of your own countrymen. I ask you this question—I press for a reply—you say you require these foreign Soldiers for an immediate emergency—that you want them to Send out in the interval which you employ in drilling English recruits; that is your main argument : tell me then, plainly, in how short a time do you calculate that they will be raised, im- ported, organised, despatched to the Crimea. ? You are bound to show that it will be within a shorter time than you can raise, drill, and send out an equal number of native troops. Can you show this? I might defy you to do it; but until you have shown it, your argument has no ground on which to stand. But it seems to me strange that these practised warriors—so superior to ourselves in all military craft and discipline — are first to be imported to England, and finish their martial education upon English ground. As it has been pertinently said elsewhere, “this is not the shortest road to the Crimea. " — you can send these troops from the Continent without coming to Parliament at all; why, then, not send them at once to the Crimea from whatever place abroad you collect them 2 Make your depot any- where you please out of the British dominions. There is this advantage in that course—you have reasons of your own to draw these mercenaries from quarters which you do not think it dis- creet to state openly to Parliament. Well, then, you should have sufficient confidence in those reasons to act entirely on your own official responsibility; thus you will neither openly exhibit to the public that spectacle of foreign hirelings within these realms, all ways so intolerable to the national feelings, nor Callupon the House of Commons to sanction, for reasons not plainly before it, a degra- dation to the spirit of the people we represent. Sir, now look to the extraordinary want of consideration, and, I must say, to the slovenly haste with which the provisions of this Bill are devised and matured. Its first introduction led at once to the 206 THE BILL FOR THE ENLISTMENT OF FOREIGNERS. alarm that these foreigners were intended to supply the place of the native defenders, not only of English honour abroad, but of English security at home; that, in short, they should supply the place of the militia and the British forces removed from this country. That supposition was indignantly denied. In spite of such denial, the Minister charged with the conduct of the Bill finds the public persist in that alarm, for he says that “he hears with surprise from several quarters that such an impression un- questionably prevails out of doors;” and then he condescends to look into the Bill itself, and is bound to confess that, by the wording of it, it might be perverted to such a purpose. What in a Bill embracing such delicate questions, so nearly touching the keystone of all free institutions, Surely the wording ought to have been so deliberately concocted that it should not harbour a phrase which a people jealous of freedom could misinterpret, and which some future Ministers, of more dangerous character than these, might distort into a precedent that would jeopardise the liberties of the country or risk the Security of the throne. And then, even as to the number of men required, so little calculation was made—although the noble Lord tells us that this is a main reason why we are now summoned, and we might presume that your calculations would be somewhat carefully prepared—that it is an object of indifference whether it be 15,000 or 10,000, and the latter number is at once exchanged for the former. How, then, can you blame us if we presume to doubt your prudence, your deliberate foresight, your practical ability to conduct this war, when, even in this Bill which you have had such leisure to prepare, we see all this blundering in the terms that involve a momentous constitutional principle, and all this careless inde- cision as to the amount of the force you require ? And still more may we doubt your prudence, when, for the sake of so miserable a succour as 10,000 foreign bayonets, or rather for the object of landing and drilling them within these dominions, you, who tell us of the advantage of unanimity, resolve to force on a measure which you were blindindeedifyou did not foresee would be unpop- ular out of doors—which at once necessitates the strongest opposi- tion—which you carried by a petty majority through one House of THE BILL FOR THE ENLISTMENT OF FOREIGNERS. 207 Parliament — and which, if you carry it through the other, will be such a thorn in your side that I venture to doubt whether you will ever have the courage to use the power you now ask at your hands. Nay, Sir, so little had the Minister who introduced elsewhere the measure even examined the constitutional princi- ples which it involves, that he prefaced the Bill by observing that the power to enlist and introduce into this country foreign Soldiers, without application to Parliament, was formerly con- sidered to be vested in the Crown. I am sure that the Lord President of the Council would warmly deny that our great con- stitutional authorities have admitted that this was ever, at any period of our history, the acknowledged prerogative of the sover- eigns of this country. We all know that William III. sent a mes- Sage to this House, requesting, somewhat in humble terms, that his Dutch troops should be allowed to remain, and that the House of Commons refused the request. You may say, that was in time of peace; but I know that Lord Camden held the doctrine that, neither in peace nor in war, could foreign troops be admit- ted into this country without the sanction of an Act of Parlia- ment. I know that Mr Fox declared that, if the Crown ever did possess such a power, we had a constitution in words and not in reality. I can well conceive the indignation with which the Whigs of the last age, who are authorities so high with the Lord President of the Council, would have heard, if now living, such a doctrine, such a remark, emanating from a Minister of War who sits in the same Cabinet with the leader of the Whigs. Sir, I could not pass over that rash assertion of a great officer of the Crown on a point essential to the vindication of the freedom of our ancestors and the principles of our ancient constitution. But your Bill is amended — the more obnoxious clause is re- moved; I grant now that all constitutional forms are complied with ; I find no fault with you there. But I say that, while ad- hering to all constitutional forms, you ought not to tamper with something so hostile to the constitutional spirit as the introduc- tion of foreign troops, unless you can establish the closest prece- dent in parallel cases, or make out a plea of paramount and urgent necessity. Now, first, as to the precedents cited by the 208 THE BILL FOR THE ENLISTMENT OF FOREIGNERS. noble Lord. I am almost ashamed to repeat what every One knows—namely, that the precedent you would draw from the enlistment of Germans in 1804 and 1806 is wholly inapplicable to the present case. Look to the period of the great French war. Our sovereign was not only King of Great Britain — he was Elector of Hanover. His interests and ours were identified with the German Powers, except, indeed, Prussia, which at that time, influenced first by her guilty designs on the partition of Poland, and afterwards by the hope of obtaining Hanover as a reward for neutrality, did, in the opinion of all dispassionate historians, by her selfish inertness and procrastination, paralyse the arms of the other allies, and give to the common foe that gigantic power of which Prussia was afterwards the most signal victim. I trust that Prussia is wiser now ; that she will not again amuse other and nobler confederacies by her tortuous diplomacy, cripple their energies by dissimulating lethargy, nor require, at the last, the assistance of their arms to free herself from the ruin in which selfish indifference to the common cause once involved her very existence as a nation. But at that time the enlistment of Ger- man soldiers in this country was at least natural enough, though even the memory of their gallantry in the field, which deserves all we can Say of it, has not, you see, sufficed to render that en- listment popular. The noble Lord refers to the debate of 1804, in which Mr Francis, afterwards Sir Philip, took part. Ay, but he did not tell you the excuse which the then Secretary at War made to the objections Mr Francis indignantly urged. The ex- cuse was this: “The enlistment of German soldiers was only a measure of providing for a certain number of men who were sub- jects of the same Sovereign, and had been forced to leave their country.” Who can say that this is a parallel instance 2 It is true that other foreigners were enlisted, but they were chiefly from those German nations which had the most cordial sympathy with the English cause. But now, indeed, although we should be proud to have a sincere and hearty alliance with the German courts, it is at least premature to believe that their interests, their objects in the war, are cordially and permanently identified with our own. And if we would render the Germans as popular THE BILL FOR THE ENLISTMENT OF FOREIGNERS. 209 in England as I hope they may yet be, we could not more defeat that object than by exhibiting German soldiers as substitutes for English valour upon English ground. But the noble Lord goes back to the time of Marlborough—nay, he says that in all our former wars foreign troops have been employed. Yes; but when they were employed with honour, they were the auxiliary forces of our open allies, and officered by the rank, the chivalry, the military renown of nations in the closest sympathy with our- selves, and were not mere free lances, under unknown and mer- cenary captains. I say, when they have been employed with honour. For where, indeed, an aid similar to that which you now demand has been obtained—wherever foreign princes have been subsidised, and their subjects hired by English gold to take part in the struggles with which they had no English sympathies —there the historian pauses to vent his scorn on the princes who thus sell the blood of their subjects, and his grief at the degradation of England in the blood-money she pays to the hire- lings: these are not precedents to follow, but examples to shun. The noble Lord reads to us the speech of the Duke of Welling- ton, and, by a most ingenious perversion of logic, wishes us to believe that, when the Duke said only one-third of our army was British, the rest were mercenaries, like those whom your Bill would enlist. Why, Sir, they were the Spanish and Portuguese, fighting in defence of their native soil. Who rejects the assist- ance of worthy allies 2 who maintains that England should fight for the world single-handed ? & Can the noble Lord not compre- hend the distinction involved ? Here, armies of various states combine in a course dear to all. There, one state contributes to the general standard, not its own native valour and zeal, but a mercenary band, whose valour gives it no glory, whose zeal has no motive but pay. This is what I meant when I said “Honour was not so intolerable a burden that we should fee foreign sol- diers to ease ourselves of its load.” We are proud to share hon- our with the Frenchman, with the Turk, with any people that co-operate in our cause and participate our feelings. That is to share honour with others. Here you ask us to sell a part of that honour which were otherwise our share. The noble Lord has VOL. I. () “210 THE BILL FOR THE ENLISTMENT OF FOREIGNERS. stated the advantages conferred on our own army by the German troops in the French war. I grant them fully. I have heard great military authorities say that the German cavalry—especi- ally under the command of the consummate officers it then pos- sessed, such as Arranschild and Victor Alten—taught us how to charge and when to pull up. But the times are changed. Surely since them we have learned all that they could teach us. How could German officers improve the charge of the Greys and Ennis- killens at Balaklava, or that wondrous and steadfast gallantry of the Light Brigade, which brought 200 out of 600 men from the midst of the Russian cavalry, and squares of infantry supported by cross batteries of twenty pieces of cannon 2 Sir, we have learned more from the Germans. than instruction in the art of war. We have been indebted to them for noble lessons in the arts of peace. Every cultivator of literature and science must cherish a deep and grateful affection for the German people, and a warm hope in their ultimate coalition with ourselves. Of this initiatory treaty with Austria I will say nothing at present ; but if it does lead to an earnest and binding alliance, no man but must welcome a Power which can bring to the common cause from 300,000 to 500,000 men, and which—always assum- ing it to be sincere — would be our most convenient and our strongest guarantee for the maintenance of those territorial con- ditions on which any future peace must be based. I should rejoice yet more to learn that Prussia adopts the example of Austria — an example alleged, but still prospective — and con- trasts, by her future sincerity, the guileful policy her Court espoused at the commencement of the French war. Between ourselves and the German people, of which Prussia is one of the great representatives, there is so kindred a community of race, of commercial interests, of all that belongs to intellectual inter- change, that it would seem to me something monstrous, some- thing out of the course of nature, if Prussia, the great centre of Germanic intelligence — Prussia, with that glorious capital of Berlin, in which philosophy and sciênce have ripened every thought that could most ridicule and abhor the fanatic pretences with which a mock crusader would mask usurpation — that THE BILL FOR THE ENLISTMENT OF FOREIGNERS. 211 Prussia should sink from the rank among civilised States to which she was raised by the genius of Frederick the Great, and affect to have no vital interest in a war that would roll back from the borders of Europe the tide of a Tartar inundation. . The Sup- position is preposterous ! And I will not yet believe that a people which boasts universal education could be induced by any king, however able or beloved, to desert the ramparts which now protect from Attilas and Timours the destinies of the human race. But if we are to bring about a cordial friendship with the families of the German people, in heaven's name let it be in a mode worthy of them and us. Let us have nations openly for our allies, and not this contraband levy from the surplus forces of their petty princes. Sir, indeed no one has yet told us where these troops are to come from, and, what is still more im- portant, where, after all, these foreign soldiers have really learned anything more than the holiday part of war—where have been the recent campaigns and wars in which they have exhibited their prowess and acquired their military experience. To hear what is said of the superior merits and Seasoned hardihood of these foreigners, one might Suppose they were the identical 10,000 who accomplished the retreat of Xenophon, instead of being merely, I suppose, men who have gone through the formal routine of the Landwehr, and seen no more of actual Service, nor encountered any greater trial to the nerves, than the stout labourers you enlist in Kilkenny or Yorkshire. But are you sure you will get even trained soldiers—even the men who have gone through the drill of the Landwehr 2 I doubt it. From all Ihear of the composition of that body Isuspect you will obtain only raw recruits—recruits as raw as you can raise in England at less cost and in a shorter time. But it has been sought to gain some sort of popular favour to this measure—sought not, in- deed, by Ministers, for they will not condescend to court popu- larity, but by their friends out of doors — by implying that the furtive and ulterior object of the Bill is to enlist men who are actuated by a nobler motive than that of Ordinary soldiers, and first among all unfortunate refugees, the exiled Poles. But this idea has been so completely scouted by the First Minister of the 212 THE BILL FOR THE ENLISTMENT OF FOREIGNERS. Crown—it has been so expressly declared that the consent of foreign sovereigns for the enlistment of their subjects is to be ob- tained—that I shall not waste the time of the House in arguing that supposition. I know not, indeed, what sovereigns now sharing among them the ancient kingdom of Poland you could apply to for permission to form Polish recruits into separate bat- talions, with all the hopes that Polish recruits would entertain. But on this point I would only say, that if in spite of the present intention of Ministers—seeing that their intentions are more lia- ble to change than those of ordinary mortals—if you do hereafter establish a legion of Polish or other refugees, at least beforehand make up your mind what are to be the definite objects of the war. If, indeed, among those objects, as the war proceeds, you do see your way to the restitution of Poland among the free States of Europe, Say So manfully, and there are few Englishmen who would not rejoice at the possibility of such a barrier to Russian encroachment, and such a reparation to the fraud and violence of a former age. Then, indeed, Poles would be more than our soldiers—they would become our allies, and they would be as welcome to our country as they would be to our brothers in the field. But, if you have no idea of such an enterprise, or if you would indolently trust the resuscitation of Poland in the pages of European history to that chapter in human fate with which you appear most familiar---the chapter of accidents—then I say, beware how you wilfully lend yourselves to false hopes, or incur the stain of insincerity with all whom you invite to your standard, not for the sake of pay, but from the expectation of freedom. It would be in vain to say you did not deliberately Sanction such hopes; that the Poles must silence their beating hearts, and be but the unreasoning machines of your military drill. That idea is against the first law of human nature. Every Pole whom you form into regiments would say that you had led him to unavailing slaughter, unless you had made it one object of your war to plant your standard on the citadel of War- Saw. And, do let the House remember that the number of these foreign soldiers, from first to last, is unlimited. It is the peculiar- ity of this Bill, that while for the commencement of the war, in THE BILL FOR THE ENLISTMENT OF FOREIGNERS. 213 which you say they are alone required, the force is most paltry and inadequate, yet hereafter, when you say they will not be wanted, the number swells and increases, and is altogether undefined; it is 10,000 men at a time; but the Bill establishes a perpetual depot of reserve, and as soon as one set are despatched to the field, another may be prepared here to succeed them ; so that we can form no conceivable guess as to the number you will employ and ultimately disband. Suppose, then, hereafter, you do form Polish battalions—and peace comes, and the Poles have still no country; what is to become of the large bands of armed malcon- tents you will leave on the surface-of Europe, and who cannot quietly melt, like your own soldiers, into the ranks of peaceful citizens? Whatever you do, then, I implore you, for the sake of justice to Poland—for the honour of English sincerity and plain- dealing—and for the cause of social order throughout Europe— to decide before you may enlist battalions of exiled patriots, how far you will venture to extend the definite objects of this war. Sir, it may be quite competent to hon. gentlemen to extend the discussion of this Bill, which is one cause that now brings us to- gether, into a survey of the general conduct of the war, of which you call this an essential measure. I have no such intention —I do not desire to reiterate former charges, nor set into adroit display every casual inexperience or omission; on the contrary. I heard with pleasure the eloquent speech the other night of the Secretary at War—a pleasure, not only at his eloquence, but caused by a feeling more worthy of him and me, because he seemed to me Satisfactorily to dispose of many charges connected with his own department, not, indeed, made in this House, but which had excited a painful impression out of doors. I cheer- fully recognise in the Cabinet many who have won those high names in the service of their country which give them the noblest stake in its honour and its welfare; nor is there, indeed, one in the Cabinet—I might say in all the Government—of whom I would speak in other terms than those of personal re- spect. But still, it is not always a motley, and, possibly, some- times a discordant, combination of able and worthy men which suffices to constitute an able and worthy Cabinet, even in times 214 THE BILL FOR THE ENLISTMENT OF FOREIGNERs. of peace; and for the fitting and spirited conduct of war it does require a promptitude, a decision, a rapid and comprehensive foresight, which can only come from a unity of purpose and of object; and that unity the conflicting speeches of Ministers have already notoriously belied. Take but a single instance—take the last : compare the Sanguine terms in which the treaty with Austria is paraded by one Minister elsewhere, with the cautious scepticism as to its actual value, “its important results,” which has been expressed by the Organ of the Government in this House. And here I must make one observation in connection both with all that this treaty may lead to, and also with the conduct of the war. It has been assumed, on a recent occasion, by the First Minister of the Crown, that Government was blamed for its re- luctance to go to war, as exhibited in preliminary negotiations. This is not strictly the fact. What we presume to regret, if not to blame, is that, in those preliminary negotiations, the Senti- ment of the people, which so deeply resented the first disguised aggression on Turkish independence, was never fairly represented to the Russian Emperor ; and that, if the language held by our Ministers at the first, without being at all more threatening, had been more frank and plain-spoken, you would have had a better chance of preserving peace than you could have by compliment- ing the Russian Czar on his moderation and sincerity, after he had openly proposed the subdivision of the Turkish dominions, and after he had deceived your credulity by representing large military preparations as an innocent mode of moral coercion. It may be well to remember this, should a treaty with Austria lead to new overtures for peace. If so, Government are sure of success. They have only carefully to remember the spirit with which they conducted former negotiations, and to conduct the future in a spirit diametrically the reverse. It is not true that we blame the Ministers for not going to war till all parties were prepared to support it; but what we regret, if we dare not blame, is, that the only persons unprepared for the war are the very Ministers charged with its conduct; and so unprepared were they, that the best excuse for all deficiencies is, that they engaged in an indefinite war against a formidable enemy, with THE BILL FOR THE ENLISTMENT OF FOREIGNERS. 215 military preparations so little raised above the ordinary establish- ments of peace, and on the niggard hypothesis that its cost could be defrayed out of our annual income. And now, when the public are perhaps indulgently disposed to receive your tardy assump- tion of energy, braced up at the last moment, at the commence- ment of winter, as a partial indemnity for your, at least, com- parative indolence during the precious months of Summer and autumn—who could foresee that one of the gigantic efforts of your Collective patriotism, reserved as a surprise, so pleasing and prodigious, that although we are now told by the noble Lord it is the main reason why we meet, it is not even alluded to in the Speech from the Throne,—who could foresee that this gigantic effort—this grand surprise—was to be this begging petition to petty potentates for 10,000 soldiers? What has it come to this 2 In an empire on which we are told that the Sun never sets, the national Council is hastily summoned to pre- pare and parade all its military power. One Minister tells us his recruits are more than he can manage; another says he could bring a million soldiers in the field—some day or other; and then, when all the world is breathless to know what you are about to bring forth, nascetur ridiculus mus—Out Creeps this proposal to borrow or crimp from the foreigner 10,000 troops to be drilled in these realms. This grand profession of redundant strength, and this curious confession of absolute want, remind me of the adventurer, who boasted to an acquaintance he picked up at a coffee-house of the immense wealth he possessed at a distance—his castles in the north, and his lands in the West, and his shares in the copper-mines of Cornwall and the gold-mines of Peru, and when he had worked up his listener to the highest point of prospective gratitude as to what he might expect from the munificence of a friend of such boundless resources, Sud- denly clapped his hand to his pocket and said, “By the by, I have a little bill to pay at the bar; you don't happen to have such a thing as tempence-halfpenny about you?” Whatever way I look at this proposed Bill I can see nothing to justify and excuse it. I have said that there is no parallel case of precedent. Now, let us ask, what is your plea of necessity ? And here, Sir, 216 THE BILL FOR THE ENLISTMENT OF FOREIGNERS. I find my own opinions so lucidly and moderately stated by a great man whose authority must have the utmost weight with gentlemen opposite, that I will read what was said in this House by the late Lord Grey, then Mr Grey. He said—“On urgent occasions it may be proper to introduce foreign troops into this country, but it should never be done except in cases of extreme and proved necessity, and never should be suffered to be done without being watched with that constitutional jealousy which is the best part of the character of this House; and the best security for the rights and liberties of the people.” Now, let me pause, and appeal to the generous candour of hon. gentlemen opposite, if these words from One of the greatest statesmen who ever adorned your opinions, do not justify the jealousy with which we regard this Bill, and whether we are right or wrong in that jealousy, if they do not amply vindicate us from the unworthy charge of wishing to obstruct the general preparations for the war, because we cavil at the introduction of foreign soldiers. Mr Grey went on to observe that—“Though he was not ready to deny that for the purpose of our own defence we should sometimes employ foreign troops, yet he could not help thinking that the wisest course for us would be to rely on what had been emphatically called the energy of an armed nation.” So, then, where is this case of urgent and proved necessity— necessity for our own defence? You have not argued it as a necessity; the noble Lord has not done so: he is too much of an Englishman for that. It is only argued at most as a ques- tion of convenience—the convenience of drilling or organising the troops in this country; and I say that it does not seem to me a convenience that is worth the purchase. Sir, it was not unreasonably asked elsewhere, “How will this proposition be regarded by the enemy?” What a pretext do you give to the Emperor of Russia to represent to his subjects the correctness of his estimate of the shopkeeping spirit of Great Britain “Com- pare,” he will say, “their braggart talk in their Houses of Par- liament, their boast of the popular enthusiasm, their willingness to contribute their best blood to the cause for which they fight, with the simple fact that before the first year is out they are : THE BILL FOR THE ENLISTMENT OF FOREIGNERS. 217 compelled to apply to the fifth-rate Powers of Europe for 10,000 foreign soldiers, on the pretence—may, on the confession—that they are not a military nation; that they have not had time since this war began to drill a sufficient number of recruits for an army which, at the battle of Inkerman, could only bring 8000 men fit for service into the field.” I do not desire to stand thus either before the enemy or before our allies, and I Say that this is not the best mode to remove the hesitation of Austria and Prussia. I am convinced that we have men of our own, even at this moment, in spite of all previous delays, pre- pared to fight our own battle. You tell us you have already sent large reinforcements to the Crimea. You sent them weeks and months ago. Of course, ever since you have been raising and drilling more. You have had ample leisure. You have leisure still to drill into active service the recruits you obtain from a population so brave, so robust, and so proverbially quick of comprehension as that of Great Britain and Ireland. I deny altogether that the drafts you will take from our labouring population will derange the channels of agricultural or other industry. We have plenty to spare from a population of nearly thirty millions. The suspension of many industrial occupations on railways and elsewhere, caused by the war, releases a large number of the stoutest portion of our labourers. You may find employment in the army for many more of the marines now idle at a distance; you may make use of the native forces in India; above all, you have only to rely on our militia—to give fair play to that magnificent nursery of soldiers. I do not presume to offer you advice in details—I say only, go into the market of war with the best spirit of trade. Your best and nearest market is at home. Get there the best article you can—it is the cheapest in the long-run. I remember that in 1779, when the ports of France and Spain bristled with hostile ships, when American privateers were seen with impunity in the Channel, that Lord Harcourt offered to Ireland 4000 foreign troops in lieu of a greater number sent to America. What was the answer of the Irish Parliament? Sir, they rejected the proposal; they de- clared “that they were competent to defend themselves, or that 218 THE BILL FOR THE ENLISTMENT OF FOREIGNERs. they were not worth defending.” That noble answer which became the representatives of Ireland may equally become the united Parliament of the three kingdoms; and what was the practical result of that refusal? Why, the result of refusing 4000 foreign soldiers was, that 50,000 volunteers immediately presented themselves. Talk of our men being raw recruits: why, how many of those who dashed through the Russian arma- ments, who braved with equal fortitude unparalleled sufferings, of disease, of climate, of a defective commissariat, were the new recruits you affect to depreciate 2 That material which a British army has so successfully tested is the material on which a British Parliament may be content to rely. Those labourers and sons of labourers whom the leader of this House eulogised in terms of such just and Such noble eloquence; those men— those raw recruits, equally daring in the charge, and calm as veterans under the attack; those men, so patient in their suffer- ings and so humane to the foe;—those are the material for your army. You have tried it—keep to it. Without disparagement to the soldiers you may collect from Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Poland, anywhere abroad, I say we have proved suffi- ciently that this is not the moment in which we need tax our countrymen in order to arm the foreigner for our defence. Do you ask me what proof? Alma, Balaklava, Inkerman I say that any deficiencies in the mere mechanism of the drill are quickly got over with officers so skilful as Ours; I say that even the raw recruits, before they have joined your standard, have already gone through a more precious discipline than three years of lifeless ceremonials can give to the Soldiers of a despotic con- Scription. They have gone, from their cradles, through the dis- cipline of hardy habits, of patient endurance, of indomitable conviction in the strength of their own right arms—that is the discipline with which armies soon learn to be invincible, and without which men may be faultless in the drill, but valueless in the field. Sir, with these views, and trusting they may not be altogether distasteful to the patriotism of the House, I move that this Bill be read a second time this day six months. XVII. A S P E E O H DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMM on S ON THE 29TH OF JANUARY 1855. ON Friday, the 26th of January 1855, the Member for Sheffield, Mr John Arthur Roebuck, moved in the House of Commons “That a Select Com- mittee be appointed to inquire into the condition of our army before Sebastopol, and into the conduct of those Departments of our Government whose duty it has been to minister to the wants of that army.” Thereupon a discussion arose which lasted for two nights, at the close of it the motion being carried against the Government by 305 votes to 148. During the second night of the Debate the following Speech was delivered. SIR-I shall dismiss very briefly that part of this discussion which refers to the abstract propriety of appointing the Select Committee of Inquiry moved for by the hon, and learned Mem- ber for Sheffield.* I shall leave the Government to direct their answer upon that point not so much to us as to their late col- league, who resigned office rather than resist that inquiry, and who, I conclude, would vote for it but for the natural delicacy of his position towards the Cabinet he so lately adorned. The right hon. gentleman the Secretary at War and the right hon, baronet the Secretary for the Colonies, have dwelt on the * Mr Roebuck. 220 CONDITION OF THE ARMY BEFORE SEBASTOPOL. danger of establishing such a precedent as the appointment of this Committee might furnish. They may dismiss that appre- hension, for nothing but the extremity of the case can justify this motion; and I trust, for the honour of the country and the Sake of humanity, that a case so extreme may never occur again. If it does not, the motion will be no precedent; if it does, a similar motion will be understood to bear the same interpreta- tion that the common-sense of the House puts upon this: for I agree with Ministers that they cannot grant this Committee without a virtual transfer of the power and responsibilities of the Queen's Government, and the question, therefore, simply is —Has the conduct of her Majesty's Ministers in this war been Such that this House should quietly acquiesce, not only in the continuance of their power, but in the mode by which their responsibilities have been discharged ? I, for one, feel that such an acquiescence would be to make us the servile accomplices in the sacrifice of what remains of that noble army of whose deeds the country are so proud, and of whose sufferings, so touchingly described by the hon. Member for North Northamptonshire,” the Government should be so ashamed. The noble Lord the Member for London has refused to make himself that accom- plice, although the pain of deserting his colleagues in the hour of their imminent need must have been almost intolerable to so gallant a spirit, and I give him the more credit for the pain on account of the Spartån fortitude with which he has concealed its pangs. Shall this House be more complaisant than the noble Lord, although it has not the countervailing scruples which must have weighed upon a Cabinet Minister, the late organ and leader of the Government in these walls, now standing alone in his abandonment of office? If we could not feel for the public calamities, we must still be roused by our own private anxiety and sorrow. I myself have two near relations in this war; many of us have near relations among the sufferers. It is our boast, as a portion of the gentlemen of England, that wherever danger is to be braved or honour is to be won, there some of our kindred blood is flowing or may flow ; and after the miseries so * Mr Stafford. CONDITION OF THE ARMY BEFORE SEBASTOPOL. 221 simply told by the hon. Member for North Northamptonshire, shall we be deprived of a remedy for the evils you admit, of an inquiry into the abuses you deplore, because of some paltry technical objections to the words of the only motion that pro- mises relief—because it is a vote for inquiry, when the Govern- ment assert that it should be a vote of censure ? Take it, then, as a vote of censure, and let it so stand as a precedent to other times, if other times should be as grievously afflicted under a similar Administration. I shall not enter into all the details on which the Secretary at War always tries to rest the case of the Government, partly because I have been here anticipated by those who so ably preceded me, partly because I wish to lay clearly before the House the broad principles of the charge which we make against the Ministers. And first, we accuse you of this: That you entered—not, indeed, hastily, but with long deliberation, with ample time for forethought, if not for prepara- tion—into the most arduous enterprise this generation has wit- nessed, in the most utter ignorance of the power and resources of the enemy you were to encounter, the nature of the climate you were to brave, of the country you were to enter, of the sup- plies which your army would need. This ignorance is the more inexcusable because you disdain the available sources of infor- mation. This is the fundamental cause of our disaster, and not the comparatively petty and collateral causes to which the Secretary at War would assign them. The ignorance, indeed, on a former occasion, the Government confessed ; and when we were convened on the 12th of December, we heard that synod of veteran statesmen—those analecta majora of the wisdom and genius of Parliament—actually make their ignorance the excuse for their incapacity. We might accept that excuse for the sake of its candour; but the Government have asked more—for, as I will undertake to show, they have asked us to acquit them of disasters when they took no pains to acquire the information that was necessary for success. It has, indeed, been said that the public were no wiser than the Government—that the public underrated the power of Russia, and demanded the premature siege of Sebastopol. If this were true, what then Why do 222 CONDITION OF THE ARMY BEFORE SEBASTOPOL. we choose Ministers—why do we give them salaries, patronage, honours—if it is not to have some men wiser than the average of mankind, at least in all that relates to the offices they hold 2 It may be a noble fault in a people to disregard the strength of an enemy when a cause is just. Who does not love and admire this English people more when they rose as one man to cry, “No matter what the cost or hazard—let us defend the weak against the strong”? But if to underrate the power of an enemy was almost a merit in the people, it was a grave dereliction of duty in a Minister of War. But I deny that the public, fairly considered, were not wiser than the Government; and there is scarcely a point which you have covered with a blunder on which some one or other of the public did not try to prepare and warn you. I shall first notice a subject hitherto little touched on in this House, but which seems to me intimately connected with the condition of our troops in the Crimea. The war had begun; our fleets were on the seas—the noblest fleets that ever left these shores—and it was on those fleets, much more than our land force, that the public relied for any advan- tage over Russia. Well, the ships were on the sea, and Odessa lay before them, Surprised and almost defenceless—Odessa, the great depot of the Russian enemy, the depot of ammunition, provisions, troops for that Crimea which you had already re- solved to invade—and you content yourselves with the holiday bombardment of a single fort. And we may judge of your private instructions to your naval commanders, when for the audacity of that notable achievement your Admiral almost makes an apology. Is Odessa, I ask, spared for the sake of humanity ? Humanity | Why, you were told that Odessa was the feeder of Sebastopol. You have found it to be so to your cost. The Secretary at War expressed his amazement at the celerity with which Russian troops were moved from Odessa to Sebas- topol, and to spare the arsenals, the granary, the market, the nursery-ground of a hostile fortress, was the grossest inhumanity to the army that now rots before the walls which your own laches has manned and supplied against it. If you were influ- enced by care for the British trade connected with Odessa, you CONDITION OF THE ARMY BEFORE SEBASTOPOL. 223 knew little indeed of your countrymen, if you did not feel that you might have come to Parliament with confidence for the most liberal compensation to all British subjects whom the occupation of Odessa—there was no occasion to destroy it— might have injured. This first proof of feeble incapacity links itself with all that has followed. You thus forbear the easiest and the wealthiest conquest of all, in order afterwards, in the very worst time, at the very worst season, to attempt an achieve- ment the most difficult in itself, and which that forbearance to Odessa rendered more difficult still. Why, Sir, how the whole fortunes of the campaign would have changed if Odessa had been your depot instead of the Russian—may, if when you found you could not invade the Crimea before the end of September, you had postponed that expedition till the Spring, and instead of sending your troops to moulder piecemeal, ragged and roofless before Sebastopol. But if you had some reason which we cannot divine for not prosecuting the attack at that time, why did you not later effectively blockade Odessa and the Sea of Azoff? You have thirty ships of the line, forty steamers on the Euxine, and you do not so much as blockade the great magazine of the enemy Well, your troops went to Gallipoli. I must here con- tradict the statements both of the Minister and of the Secretary at War. I will show you even there, at the first, how utterly you had failed in the simplest provisions of which the Secretary of War has so vainly boasted. I have here some short extracts from the letters of an officer written to his father, not intended for publication. I read them because I can, if necessary, state his name to any member of the Government, without, alas ! the fear of injuring him in his profession. He is now no more. His father came to me and said, through his tears, “I would proudly have given my son's life to the service of his country, but he was murdered by the neglect of the Government, and without any real aid to his country.” This young man had just bought a step in his profession; he was full of life, health, and ardour; athletic in his habits, no raw recruit, but accustomed to military hardship, the last man in the whole army to murmur without a cause. He belonged to that band sf heroes famous even in the 224 CONDITION OF THE ARMY BEFORE SEBASTOPOL. ranks of English warfare—the Welsh Fusiliers. His first letter is from Gallipoli, April 23. Here let me observe, that on the 7th of April the Duke of Newcastle had declared that never was an army So well provided for—in food, in all necessaries, even in articles that might be considered luxuries. On the 23d of April an officer at Gallipoli writes thus: “There are 20,000 French troops encamped a short distance from our troops. They are in every respect better equipped and provided for than ours. Their Government have provided their officers with mules for the conveyance of their baggage and everything else they require. We have to buy mules for ourselves, which cannot be done at Gallipoli, as the French Government have already bought them all up.” Why was this? If the French could find mules, even at Gallipoli, why were you less active than the French 7 “The French soldiers fraternise freely with ours, and to-day we saw them giving ours some of their bread, of which they have a most bountiful supply, while ours have not enough.” At Gallipoli, in April, at the opening of the campaign, the soldiers of the Queen of England eating the bread of our ally Is that a posi- tion which is worthy her throne, or our pride as a nation, and how does this agree with the Duke of Newcastle's statement of the 7th of April? Now let us pass from Gallipoli. You pro- ceed to Varna, not to fight, not to assist the Turks at Silistria— you have not, indeed, the necessary transports for that—but because Omar Pacha says that the presence there of your army will have a moral effect upon the Russians. Now, Sir, I think that this was a request on the part of Turkey which, so far as the selection of a site to encamp, we had a right to refuse. We came to defend them and to fight, but not to remain stationary, and melt away by pestilence in a climate notoriously pestilen- tial in that special time of the year—pestilential, not from an accidental cause, but from One periodical and invariable—and which, if your Minister had asked any traveller, or consulted any authority, he must have known. Well, Sir, from the camp there, this officer writes, July 28: “I hope something will be done Soon, as I should look forward with horror to another sum- CONDITION OF THE ARMY BEFORE SEBASTOPOL. 225 mer in this country. We have now considerable difficulty in getting supplies, and frequently have to live on bread-and-cheese for a day or two, as ration meat cannot be eaten, though the officers eat it when the men will not.” - Now comes the reason why that climate was pestilential, and why you ought to have known it : “July and August,” says the officer there encamped, “are unhealthy months, as they are all dry and very hot, and the deposits from the lakes, which overflow in the spring, dry up and create miasma. Nearly all our cases of cholera occur in the night, and are mostly fatal in six hours.” This young man has the cholera himself—he partially recovers —he rouses when the report comes that something is to be done —something, no doubt, which it was necessary to do ; but was it the impression that that something should be the siege of Se- bastopol 2 Then hear what he says:—“Of course they keep secret where we are going; but we believe that it is to take Odessa, which is full of corn granaries, &c. I think this is the best thing we could do, and winter there both army and navy. It is too late in the year to attack Sebastopol.” That could not have been the solitary notion of that young Soldier; it must have been the talk of his comrades—“too late in the year to attack Sebastopol!” But no, out of all the twelve months in the year you had taken the worst to encamp at Varna, and it was of course equally consistent to take the worst to besiege Sebastopol, that Gibraltar of the East. You take the worst time not only for military operations, but for Sanitary conditions. Open even so common a work as M'Culloch's ‘Geographical Dictionary,’ and you will find it was the un- healthiness of the Crimea which frustrated its colonisation by Germans; open the “Gazetteer of the World,' and you will find that it is in autumn the climate is more especially unhealthy, and subject to the epidemics you have found there. Yet there you land without ambulances, without waggons, without hospital provision, without even tents. Here ends this young soldier's correspondence. Scarcely Saved from cholera at Varna, cholera seized him at the first breeze from those new and more fatal shores—seized him while his comrades were landing in the VOL. I. P 226 CONDITION OF THE ARMY BEFORE SEBASTOPOL. Crimea. Without common comforts, without common medical aid, he died—calling out in his delirium to be set on shore, so that he might at least perish in the field. I charge you, then, with this—that twice in one campaign you expose your army in situations notoriously pestilential at the precise seasons which you choose for both encampments. Considering this alone, we need not pause to weigh the reasons for disasters alleged by the right hon. gentleman the Secretary at War—namely, that our staff-officers had no experience of active command, and that our soldiers, selected from the peasantry, had not learned to take care of themselves. The main cause is this—the situations in which the army has been exposed, and the destitution in which it has been left ; and the fault is the worse for the reasons that have been stated, namely, that our officers were not accustomed to invent resources, nor our soldiers inured to encounter hard- ships and disease. The defence of the Secretary of War has been chiefly directed to show that, wherever omissions were dis- covered and blunders made, he hastened to repair them. That excuse may avail for his department ; but I maintain it is the duty of the Government, taken as a whole, not only to repair, but to foresee—to provide beforehand what may probably be wanted, and not to wait till the consequences of their own neglect start up and defy reparation. You cannot repair the loss of life; you cannot repair constitutions ruined for ever, because men were exposed to disease and deprived of proper medical attendance—because men were sent to brave all the rigour of a dismal climate, without clothing to cover and roofs to shelter them. Now even with regard to a road from Balaklava, early in the campaign we read every day in the papers that the whole region between Balaklava and Sebastopol was exposed to columns of dust. A moment's reflection would have told you that dust in the summer becomes mud with the first rains of winter; and when, after the battle of Alma, it became clear that you would have to invest Sebastopol, you should have seen to the construc- tion of a road between your camp and your harbour. Here indeed, at first glance, Lord Raglan may seem chiefly to blame. But he told you in his despatch after the battle of Alma, that CONDITION OF THE ARMY BEFORE SEBASTOPOL. 227 he wished he had more men ; and it might have occurred to you that with young recruits—many of them mere boys, weakened by disease, and not enough for the heavy work of the trenches —Lord Raglan might have no force to spare for the Supplement- ary labour of roads, and also that he was deficient in the neces- sary animals and vehicles, and you ought not to have waited for Mr Peto's offer—your patriotism should have been no less in- ventive than his. It has been said, “How are Government to blame for winds and hurricanes, rains and mud : " But you are to blame for taking no pains to learn that your army would be exposed to a climate that is subject to winds and hurricanes, rains and mud. You are to blame for not resorting to the Ordi- nary inventions of art to counteract the hostile Operations of nature. When the clouds gather, a prudent man takes out his umbrella; when the wind sets in the east, he will see that his coat can button ; and a man attacked by cold and disease for neglecting such everyday precautions, might as well exclaim, “How could I foresee that it would rain or that it would blow 2° as you exclaim, “How could we foresee that there would be winds, rain, or mud 2’-in a climate in which winds, rain, and mud are the ordinary phenomena of winter. Attempts have been made elsewhere to fix blame upon our military commanders. It was wisely as well as generously said on this score by the Secre- tary at War—“What generous man would indeed attack the absent agent not here to answer for himself, when there sit before us, face to face, the employers responsible for his errors so long as they continue him in office 2" But here what Lord Grenville said on the subject of the Walcheren Expedition is so apposite that I will venture to quote it—“I am disposed,” said Lord Grenville, “to believe that in the situation of the commander he did all that could reasonably be expected, or was possible to accomplish. The error was in the plan, and the want of foresight and information on the part of His Majesty's Ministers. . . . The place, the situation, may the season of the year, were chosen by them. There is a season of the year when the air of that place is most pestilential and dangerous; yet, to that place, and at that time, say His Majesty's 228 conDITION OF THE ARMY BEFORE SEBASTOPOL. Ministers, we will send the flower of the British Army—we will not send it at a time when its operations may be advantageous, but we will send it when from every information it will be de- stroyed more by disease than by the Sword.” [1 Hansard, XV. 19.] Does this apply 2 But it is said in defence of the War Minister, that the fault is not in himself, but the nature of his office. I am too happy to accept any palliation for his errors. But if I accept that excuse for the Minister of War, it becomes another grave charge against the collective Government, for you created that office, and why did you leave it so imperfect 2 Here you had no want of advice and information. You had the re- commendations of a celebrated Commission, the advice of some of the ablest men, who had thoroughly examined the subject, and your excuse for not grappling with the question was, that the commencement of war was not the proper moment for a thorough reform in the War Administration, and that the proper time to make a War Office efficient was the moment of return- ing peace. But, at all events, the reform, as far as it went, was, according to you, an improvement on the old system; and yet under the old system we fought the wars of the Peninsula and gained the victory of Waterloo. But if the complications of this office were so mischievous, you must have discoveredit long ago. Why, when you summoned Parliament for the 12th of December, could you not have reformed the office, even if you did not change the Minister, and propose to us that reform for which you are now prepared That would have been worth calling us together for ; but no, you then completed your cardi- nal sin of short-sighted incompetence by confining all your exertions to save the remnant of your army to two Bills, for which you said not a day was to be lost, and one of which has remained a dead letter to this hour. Here again the same eternal want of information You go to Germany for foreign troops, and Germany declares your overtures illegal, and rejects them with scorn. I ventured to tell you that if you carried the Foreign Enlistment Bill you would never be able to use it. And now Parliament meets again, meets with fresh accounts of al- CONDITION OF THE ARMY BEFORE SEBASTOPOL. 229 most incredible suffering—9000 of our surviving soldiers en- feebled, I fear, by disease; the huts that should shelter the rest still at Balaklava; and Lord Raglan, according to the despatch we read this morning, still without men and vehicles to land and fix them. Men look to us, half with hope, half with despair. “What is to be done?” is the cry of every voice. No man is a more shrewd observer of public opinion than the noble Lord the Member for London, and his resignation significantly tells us what ought to be done. But if this motion succeed, if this incomparable Ministry retire, and, like the hon. Member for Middlesex (Mr B. Osborne), lose a place and find a constituency, who is to replace them ż Where can we find their equals, in the unity of their councils, the foresight of their policy, and the good fortune that attends their measures 3 Let us compose our terrors, and face the possible calamity of such a loss with manly courage. The hon. Member for Richmond (Mr Rich) chides my right hon, friend the Member for Midhurst (Mr Walpole), be- cause, on Friday night, he condemned the Government for basing its existence on the principle of coalition. The hon. Member for Richmond is historically correct. Looking through our modern history, I find that most of our powerful, even popular Administrations, have been more or less coalitions. Both the Administrations of Mr Pitt were coalitions; and the last was very remarkable, for he first turned out the Addington Govern- ment, and then coalesced with six of its members. Nay, he was not contented till he had netted the expelled Prime Minister himself, and made him Lord President of the Council. But then there is one indispensable element of a coalition, and that is, that its members should coalesce. Now, Sir, it is that ele- ment which seems to me wanting in the present Cabinet. It has been an union of party interests, but not a coalition of party sentiment and feeling. It was a jest of Lord Chesterfield's when a man of very obscure family married the daughter of a lady to whom Scandal ascribed a large number of successful admirers, that “nobody's son had just married everybody's daughter.” If I may parody that jest, I would say of this Government, that everybody's principles had united with nobody's opinions. It 230 CONDITION OF THE ARMY BEFORE SEBASTOPOL. is dimly intimated that the noble Lord—now in a state of transi- tion, but, after all, he is equally illustrious as the hon. Member for Tiverton—it is intimated that the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton is intended for an appointment that some months ago would have satisfied the country, and possibly have Saved the Government. I fear now that it may be too late, and among his greatest dangers will be the armed neutrality of his unsuc- cessful advocate and noble friend. The noble Lord the Member for London, on Friday last, attempted, not very triumphantly, to vindicate the Whigs from the charge of being an exclusive party that required all power for itself; and he found a Solitary in- stance for the refutation of that charge in the magnanimity with which the Whigs had consented to that division of power which his desertion now so emphatićally recants and condemns. But, in plain words, his vindication only amounts to this—that where the Whigs could not get all the power, they reluctantly consented to accept a part. Now, gentlemen opposite will perhaps par- don me if I say, that I think the Secret of Whig exclusiveness and Whig ascendancy has been mainly this—you, the large body of independent Liberal politicians, the advocates for pro- gress, have supposed, from the memory of former contests now ended, that while England is advancing, a large section of your countrymen, with no visible interest in existing abuses, are, nevertheless, standing still ; and thus you have given, not to yourselves, not to the creed and leaders of the vast popular body, but to a small hereditary combination of great families, a fictitious monopoly of liberal policy—a genuine monopoly of lethargic government. It is my firm belief that any Administra- tion, formed from either side of the House, should we be so unfortunate as to lose the present, would be as fully alive to the necessity of popular measures, of steady progress, of sym- pathy with the free and enlightened people they might aspire to govern, as any of those great men who are demagogues in opposition and oligarchs in office. But to me individually, and to the public, it is a matter of comparative indifference from What Section of men a Government at this moment shall be formed, so long as it manfully represents the great cause to CONDITION OF THE ARMY BEFORE SEBASTOPOL. 231 which the honour and safety of England are committed, and Carries into practical execution the spirit that animates the humblest tradesman, the poorest artisan who has sent his Scanty earnings to the relief of our suffering army. It has been Said, as the crowning excuse for the Government, that all our preceding wars have begun with blunders. Were this an arena for historical disquisition I should deny that fact ; but grant it for the sake of argument. How were those blunders repaired and converted into triumphs 2 I know a case in point. Once in the last century there was a Duke of Newcastle, who pre- sided over the conduct of a war, and was supported by a league of aristocratic combinations. That war was, indeed, a series of blunders and disasters. In vain attempts were made to patch up that luckless Ministry—in vain some drops of healthful blood were infused into its feeble and decrepit constitution—the people, at last, became aroused, indignant, irresistible. They applied one remedy ; that remedy is now before ourselves. They dismissed their Government, and saved their army. XVIII. A S P E E C H DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 26TH OF MARCH 1855. ON Monday, the 9th of March 1855, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, submitted to the House of Commons in Committee a series of Resolutions for the amending of the Laws relating to the Stamp Duties on newspapers. On Monday, the 26th of March, the Bill founded upon these resolutions came on for its Second Reading. Thereupon an amendment was proposed by the Member for East Kent, Mr William Deedes, to the effect that the Bill should be taken into consideration on the 30th of the following April, because of the extreme unfitness of the moment chosen for making this change by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. After an animated discussion, the amendment was rejected upon a division by 215 votes to 161. Early in the debate the following speech was de- livered. I CAN, Sir, assure my hom. friend the mover of the proposed amendment, that it is with great pain that on this question I am conscientiously compelled to differ from him, and, I fear, from some other gentlemen on this side of the House with whose opinions on most subjects I cordially concur. Before I sit down I shall examine the validity of the arguments on which my hon. friend has based his amendment ; but I am glad to hear from him that he would not restrict the debate to the cramped and narrow ground on which his amendment would place it—that THE STAMP DUTIES ON NIEWSPAPERS. 233 he would not reduce to a question of pounds, shillings, and pence a principle which I will endeavour to show to be one of the most important, and, in point of time, one of the most pres- sing, which a House of Commons can entertain. I can, indeed, advance some claim to the original paternity of the measure my hon. friend considers to be so mischievous. I believe I was the first person who ever introduced into this House a motion for the repeal of the taxes on knowledge, including the stamp duty on newspapers. Sir, when my hon, friend says that this subject has not been sufficiently long before us, he must allow me to tell him, that it is more than twenty years ago that I first brought this question before the House. I was then a very young man, but the opinions I then entertained in favour of the total repeal of the newspaper stamp duty are not removed—they are strengthened by the lapse of time; for within the last twenty years there has been a great increase of intelligence among the people, and any danger to be apprehended from the sudden diffusion of cheap newspapers is, therefore, considerably less now than it was then. But why is the danger less? Why has intelligence increased ? Because within the last twenty years all kinds of cheap publications have abounded, and the public have had the wisdom to choose the best and reject the worst. The very arguments now used by my hon, friend against cheap newspapers were once used much more boldly against the principle of cheap publications altogether. We were then told that the common mass of the people would prefer worthless and inflammatory works, and that to adapt the market to their pockets would be to corrupt their understandings. Now what has been the fact ' Why, that in proportion as good books have been made cheap, bad books have retreated from circulation. Ask anywhere what books most please the artisan or mechanic, and you will find it is either elementary works of Science, or if books of amusement, the very books of amuse- ment that scholars and critics themselves prefer. And now that the people have thus nobly disproved the fear of cheap publica- tions which prudent men might once have entertained, have we a right to listen for a moment to such assertions as I see the 234 THE STAMP DUTIES ON NEWSPAPERS. newspaper proprietors have put forth, and my hon, friend has condescended to echo-that any newspapers cheaper than their own must necessarily appeal to the worst passions and pre- judices of the lowest class 2 Now, Sir, is it the cheapness of the newspaper that will corrupt the artisan, or is it the baseness of the artisan that must gorrupt the newspaper? What are these assertions but the most groundless declamation, disproved by all the experience we have now obtained of the taste and in- climations of the working class, disproved by the thousands and hundreds of thousands of cheap publications which have brought to the cottage and the loom—what ?—a debased and contaminat- ing literature ? No, the same refined and elevated knowledge which delights and instructs ourselves. I beseech the House to Separate the details of this measure from the broad principle. On the second reading of the bill, it is to the principle we should look. I agree with my hon. friend” that there are provisions in the measure that require alteration, but those portions of the bill that are objected to can be altered in committee. Many details may require hereafter our most serious consideration, but I will now only make upon some of them one or two passing remarks. For example, I think it an act of justice and sound policy not only to Secure the copyright of all original matter to newspapers, but to give a cheap and summary mode of protect- ing that copyright similar to that which exists for copyright in manufacture under Sir Emerson Tennent's Act. I think, too, that the complaint of ‘The Times’ as regards itself is just. When you are introducing a general law by which newspapers are to go through the post at a penny, it seems to me fair and reason- able that you should take as your standard of weight or size that newspaper which has the largest circulation and in which the public feel the deepest degree of interest. I am told that the right hon. gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer means to recur to the principle of weight. If so, I say, weigh ‘The Times’ as your standard— “Expende Annibalem—quot libras in duce summo Invenies.” * Mr Deedes. THE STAMP DUTIES ON NEWSPAPERS. 235 And it seems to me not a worthy distinction in So wholesale a change to separate ‘The Times’ from the Supplement, which is an integral part of the paper, and that, too, a part of which the unrestricted diffusion is of so great an importance to the intel- lectual and commercial community. I agree in all that my hon. friend has said with regard to the high character of the press of this country. Far from entertaining any grudge to the existing newspaper press, far from Seeking to undervalue its signal merits, I grant that it is an honour to the country from the ability of its compositions, the integrity of the men who adorn it, the vast and various information it diffuses, and, making fair allowances for the heat of party Spirit and the temptations of anonymous power, for its general exemption from wilful calumny and personal slander. And if I desired to leave to remote posterity some memorial of existing British civilisation, I would prefer—not our docks, not our railways, not our public buildings, not even the palace in which we now hold our sittings—I would prefer a file of ‘The Times’ newspaper. Could I, then, believe that the change proposed would deteriorate the moral and intellectual character of the newspaper press, I fear I might have the weakness to cling to the existing system, if it had not so crumbled away that I can find nothing to cling to but an Attorney-General who dares not prosecute, and a jury that would not convict. But, them, it is the taste of the public that forms the newspaper, not the newspaper that forms the taste of the public; and if the press is an honour to the country, it is because it represents what honours the country still more—the good sense and civilised humanity from which the press takes its colour and its tone. Now, you have been told that this change will degrade our press to the level of the American, and you have been led to infer that the American press is left solely in the hands of ignorant adventurers, whereas the remarkable peculiarity of the American press is that it represents nearly all the intellect of that country. There is Scarcely a statesman of eminence, an author of fame, who does not contribute to the American period- ical press; and, therefore, the editor of one of their journals says on this very subject, “If the American press is inferior to 236 THE STAMP DUTIES ON NEWSPAPERs. the English, it merely argues that the intellect of the country is inferior, for nearly all the available intellect of the United States is engaged in their press.” This serves to show you that if our press is superior to the American, it does not depend upon fiscal laws, but upon the general standard of civilisation; in other words, the press can but reflect the public. Upon the financial part of the question, on the alleged loss to the revenue, I will touch later; but I cannot consent to allow the grand principle involved in this Bill to be dwarfed down to the level of a budget. What is that principle 2 I will place it upon broader ground than that taken by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who, indeed, seems to regard the bill rather with the reluctant and frigid toleration of a stepfather than the glowing love'of a parent. The principle is this—that you ought not in a free country to lay a tax on the expression of political opinion—a tax on the diffusion of that information on public affairs which the spirit of our constitution makes the interest and concern of every subject in the State. Still more, you should not, by means of that tax, create such an artificial neces- sity for capital that you secure the monopoly of thought upon the subjects that most interest the public at large to a handful of wealthy and irresponsible oligarchs. That is the principle at stake; that is the question before you. Turn it as you will, you cannot get rid of the fact that as long as this newspaper stamp duty exists, no man, whatever his knowledge, his honesty, his talent, the Soundness of his conservative opinions, can set up a daily journal on the affairs of the country without an enormous capital—not even a weekly one without a capital of Some thousand pounds; and, therefore, the stamp duty does con- fine the liberty of expressing opinion as much as if the State actually sold for a large sum of money the right to monopolise the market of public information. Now, one result of thus narrowing the representation of opinion is, that large sections of opinion are either not represented at all, or represented very in- adequately. And I doubt very much if there are ten thoughtful men on either side the House who can say that, on many of the most important questions, there is now one daily newspaper THE STAMP DUTIES ON NEWSPAPERS. 237 with which they can cordially agree. Take the great Conserva- tive party; consider, first, its numbers throughout the kingdom —in the counties generally a large majority; in the towns, even most hostile, generally a large and influential minority; compute its strength, not in numbers alone, but comparative intelligence; consider how large a share of the highly cultivated classes—in the learned professions, in commerce, among the gentry—enter- tain Conservative opinions. Now turn to the daily newspapers, and ask yourselves if those opinions are represented in any pro- portion to the numbers and intellectual eminence of their sup- porters throughout the country 2 There are two ways of repre- senting public opinion—one through Parliament, the other through the press. Now, I ask, how are the Conservatives re- presented in Parliament? My hon, friends will tell me that they are confessedly the largest single and integral body in the House of Commons. How are they represented in the press % Why, no single subdivision of political opinion is represented so sparingly. Compute the number of Conservative journals, compute the number of copies they sell, at the price you are told to keep up, and you will be perfectly astounded at the disparity between the influence of the Conservative party in the country and their representation in the press. But if this stamp duty were re- moved—if every able man among you had the right to defend your cause in the form of a journal without this necessity for capital—can you doubt that all which talent or knowledge can bring to bear on behalf of your political creed would find its fair and natural channel? And though the best newspaper, as a record of news, will be always that which has the largest capi- tal, yet the best opinions are not always found in the best news- papers; and many readers who would take one journal for the sake of its general news would take another on account of their sympathy with its political doctrines. No doubt all opinions— those you condemn as well as those you approve—would obtain their utterance. But twenty years ago I assured myself that on the Liberal side of the question safe and Sound thinkers would hold it an imperative duty to stand forward and counteract the danger of all socialist and revolutionary doctrines; and, on the 238 TEIE STAMIP DUTIES ON NEWSPAPERS. Conservative side, are we so barren of literary talent, or so in- different to the spread of our principles, that free competition will not yield us additional advocates? No; a host of writers would appear to divest the popular mind of those prejudices against existing institutions which are now left to circulate in defiance of this law, and without any answer at all; for I cannot learn that there is at this moment a single Conservative journal which penetrates the mass of the working class. Sir, I am con- vinced that if this stamp duty, this obstacle were removed, many an eminent public man, many an eminent man of letters, would start Small cheap papers, not attempting to vie or inter- fere with the special province of ‘The Times, but conveying opinions stamped by the responsibility of his avowed name. You would thus call in the principle of cheap competition, not to lower, but to elevate still more the character of the news- paper press; for nothing would so exalt the Social position of gen- tlemen engaged in newspaper literature as some signal excep- tions to that anonymous mystery which now shrouds all attacks on the characters of public men. I do not mean to say that the preservation of the anonymous system may not at times be use- ful and even necessary; but I do say that its rigid and uniform use is the only power of the press which I hold to be invidious and derogatory. No more able, no more accomplished gentlemen than the contributors to the higher departments of the press can adorn our circles; yet it is in vain to deny that we feel a certain uneasiness in the social intercourse with men to the exercise of whose talents Secrecy is so imperative a law that the man who clasps us by the hand to-day may, in the discharge of his pro- fessional duty, sting us to the quick to-morrow, darkly and in secret. Mr Fox once told this House an anecdote of a witness— on a trial, I think, for murder—who gave his testimony against another man on the ground that a ghost had appeared to him, and said so and so. “Well,” said the judge, who was a person of considerable humour, “I have no objection to take the evi- dence of the ghost ; let him be brought into court.” These anonymous newspaper-writers are as ghosts. We do not object THE STAMP DUTIES ON NEWSPAPERS. 239 to take their evidence, but there are times when I should like them brought into court. - This subject has been far too much argued as if it were a question between the tax collector and the newspaper proprietors. I could not help smiling when the other evening I heard an hon. member say that they did not complain of the law, and why, then, should it be changed? What corporate body, I ask, ever did complain of a law which restricted competition, and secured to itself a virtual monopoly 2 And I am perfectly amazed to See these journals, most of which honoured us poor Protection- ists with such hard names, now arming themselves with all the antiquated arguments in favour of protective duties, amounting to absolute prohibition, which during the last ten years of the discussion on the corn laws the stoutest friend of the farmer would not have ventured to use. Sir, the question really is between the tax collector and the public; and it is this—whether it is not time that we should enforce that great principle of the constitution of civil liberty, and of common-sense, which says that opinion shall go free, not stinted nor filched away by fiscal arrangements, but subject always to the laws of the country against treason, blasphemy, and slander. Those laws will still remain, though the question has been argued as if they were to be swept away. But thus much it is just to say on behalf of the working classes, to whom we are told that cheap libellous periodicals will especially appeal—that no class hitherto has so little supported newspapers of a libellous and gossiping charac- ter as the working classes of this country. I remember when certain Sunday journals profaned the Sabbath by hebdomadal ribaldry and scandal. Who supported them ? I fear it was the clubs and the drawing-rooms. Certainly it was not the working class; and those journals ultimately perished, because they could obtain no circulation among the common people, and no sympathy from the public in the actions that were brought against them. It is a remarkable fact, and one that shows how little the danger of publications depends on their price, that pro- fligate and licentious literature always begins by corrupting the 240 THE STAMP DUTIES ON NEWSPAPERS. higher class before it reaches the lower. I know no instance to the contrary in the history of all literature, ancient or modern. Take the examples with which we are most familiar. It was the nobles and wits, the well-born abbés and great ladies of Paris, who brought into fashion and introduced to the artisans of France the chimeras of Rousseau, the infidelity of Voltaire. And I do not believe that the inflammatory catchpennies that now, in defiance of your law, circulate through our manufactur- ing towns, would last six months after the repeal of the stamp duty had removed the morbid attraction which belongs to things proscribed and forbidden, and exposed them to the com- petition of sound and healthful writings at the same price. This is not a mere theory, it has been partially tried. It appears in the evidence of the Committee of 1851, that the appearance of one or two legal threepenny papers in London, though they were by no means first-rate, sufficed to destroy an immense swarm of unstamped pernicious publications which had before circulated throughout the metropolis. Let us, then, do with this field of letters, what we country gentlemen are learning to do with our fields at home; if we want the corn to have fair play, we clear away an unnecessary hedgerow full of thorns and brambles, and expose the ground well to the Sun and to the air. But at this time of day it is Superfluous to argue the principle that opinion should not be indirectly suppressed by a tax, when the boldest man among us dare not invade it by an open law; and, indeed, if we desired to do so, we have no longer the power. The right hon. gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer has told us, without any exaggeration, though perhaps rather reluc- tantly, that the stamp duty has broken down in all directions. There are not, as he states, only 100, for there are no less than 250 publications subject to the Statute, only partially stamped, and all liable to prosecution. If you do not prosecute them all, with what justice can you prosecute one. It is all very well for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say, with that grim complacency, if you don't pass this bill you must arm the Government with new laws—with new powers of prosecution. Now, Sir, I feel confident that this House of Commons will do THE STAMP DUTIES ON NEWSPAPERS. 241 no such thing ; if we did frame new laws for checking the cir- culation of knowledge, or if we did make what is asked—a new arbitrary distinction between political journals and those of a different nature, we should do more to expedite the march of a democratic Reform Bill than all which the restless spirit of the noble lord the Member for London—that is to say, when out of office—could effect. And if we were blind and harsh enough to frame such laws, I should like to see the Attorney-General who would have the courage to enforce them, or the Government that would have the insanity to allow him. While we discuss, the law for all good purposes is virtually dead. You may retain the Sword for a time in its nerveless hand; I defy you to renew the energy of its muscles; I defy you to strike the blow. I now come to my hon, friend’s amendment. He says, “Will you hazard the loss of £200,000 of revenue at a time when you will require new taxes for carrying on the war with Russia 2° But against what do ye wage war Ž It is not against Russia as Tussia. In commercial interchange Russia is our natural ally. It is against Russia when she appears as the symbol of barbaric usurpation and brute force. Why, then, out of the millions you devote to secure the distant boundaries of civilisation, grudge a paltry fraction towards the service of those two great agents of civilisation at home—freedom of opinion and popular know- ledge 2 I ask my hon, friend, is there any usurpation more barbarous than that which usurps the utterance of thought upon public affairs? Is there any type of brute force more odious than that which an Attorney-General will embody if he is to say to a jury, “This publication is harmless—nay, its contents are most valuable; but the proprietor was not rich enough to pay a duty imposed on the liberty of printing, and I call upon you, in the name of the law, to stifle the knowledge you admire, and to ruin the man who has a claim to your gratitude” 7 Now, Sir, I do not believe the Chancellor of the Exchequer will lose one single farthing, if he adds to his bill, as is proposed, the pri- vilege of transmitting all printed papers by the post at the same proportional charge as periodical journals. More than twenty years ago I went carefully into the details on this very subject, VOL. I. Q 242 THE STAMP DUTIES ON NEWSPAPERS. for it formed a part of my own scheme, and I convinced myself that the number of tracts of all kinds, religious, literary, or com- mercial—of catalogues of booksellers and land agents—of writ- ings purely intended for diffusion—would, under the plan pro- posed by the right hon. gentleman the Member for the Univer- sity of Oxford * yield a sum far exceeding the deficit now alleged, while the addition to the paper duty itself will, I think, prove sufficient compensation. But even if it were otherwise—I put this question to my hon. friends as Conservatives—are £200,000 too dear a purchase for restoring authority to laws that no more stringent provisions will enable you to enforce : Should the dignity and efficacy of the law be to Conservatives mere items of revenue ! No ; they are objects beyond all price: and I am persuaded that we should not have heard a word on the fiscal part of the question—never have had this amendment—if hon. gentlemen were but convinced that the measure itself were Safe and prudent ; if certain interested parties out of doors had not sought to alarm us by assertions of another kind of danger than that of loss to the revenue—assertions so absurd to the sense of all who are acquainted with the practical conditions of our literature, that those who make them would be the first to laugh at our credulity if we believed them—assertions that a five- penny journal must be respectable, and a penny journal must be licentious, and all such trumpery as I find in this notable eclec- ticism of twaddle and bugbear which has been circulated among us, and called “Objections to the Newspaper Stamp Act.” This was against the first bill, but it is meant equally to apply to the present. Here I find it stated that among the most active agents for a change are persons whose avowed object is the diffusion of opinions adverse to religion and subversive of the rights of property. And this courteous insinuation against those who differ from themselves is put forth by the very inno- cents who have such a horror of libel ! Whom they mean, I know not. Among the most active for a change are the hon. Members for Manchester and the West Riding, who hold doc- trimes Some of us consider extreme, but at least they express * Mr Gladstone. THE STAMP DUTIES ON NEWSPAPERS. 243 their doctrines openly and plainly, and I have never yet heard that they avowed opinions adverse to religion and subversive of property. Among those whom I have remembered most favour- able to a repeal of this duty were the late Lord Althorp, Lord Brougham, Lord Campbell. Lord Lyndhurst has, I think, ex- pressed himself in favour of it. There is also that very natural enemy to the rights of property, the heir of the house of Derby.” There is that notorious foe to religion, the representative of the University of Oxford. And the most active agents for a change are her Majesty's Ministers, who, whatever their faults, are, I presume, tolerably well satisfied with what is called the estab- lished Order of things. I have looked well through this paper; all its arguments are comprised in two libels; one against those who advocate cheap newspapers, the other against those who will read them. It reminds me of what Horace Walpole said of a lady, “That she had as fine a set of teeth as any one could have who had only two, and both of them black.” Do not let hon. members be thus led away. Do not let Conservatives continue to be cheated out of all fair chance to explain their opinions to the working class. My right hon, friend the Member for Droit- wich, f in the course of his luminous speech on introducing his noble bill on education, alluded to the letters of our private soldiers in the Crimea, which have excited such just admiration. Let me ask, Sir, how have the minds of these soldiers been trained to love and defend their country 2—trained to those great conservative principles, humanity, discipline, fortitude, and patience? Is it not, in part, by the cheap publications that have instructed the childhood of the present generation; and ought not that to teach you how little, as Conservatives, you have to fear from any department of cheap knowledge? Do not fancy that this penny tax is a slight imposition. Do not fancy that a penny paper is necessarily low and bad. Once there existed a penny daily paper—it was called ‘The Spectator.” Addison and Steele were its contributors. It did more to refine the manners of this people than half the books in the British Museum. Suddenly a halfpenny tax was put on that penny Lord Stanley. + Mr Gladstone. f Sir John Pakington. 244 TEIE STAMEP DUTIES ON NEWSPAPERS. paper, and so one fatal morning the most pleasing and graceful instructor that ever brought philosophy to the fireside had vanished from the homes of men. True that it survived the first stroke which laid low its feebler contemporaries; it doubled its price—it did not immediately decline in its circulation; Dean Swift believed that it would still lift up its head, and march gallantly under its burthen. But no; it began to stagger —to droop. On the third month from the day it first took the load, with So, haughty a crest, it fell to the ground: an attempt was made by its writers to raise it under a new name, and strengthen it by the tonic of party politics; that attempt, too, finally succumbed. It then, after a long interval, resumed its old appellation—‘The Spectator’ appeared again. Addison put into it the noblest efforts of his strength—in vain. The fatal tax was too powerful for Addison. In a few months it sank, never to revive. Yes, Sir, a halfpenny tax sufficed to extinguish “The Spectator,’ and divorce that exquisite alliance which genius had established between mirth and virtue. I turn to my hon, friends around me. I say that I am convinced, earnestly and con- Scientiously convinced, that a penny journal, containing moderate Conservative opinions, managed by Some gentlemen as familiarly acquainted with the tastes and feelings of the humbler classes as, for instance, many of our plain squires and country clergy are, would do more to popularise Conservatism, than half the party speeches we make in this house. For what is Conser- vatism 3 Surely not that which its enemies, surely not that which three-fourths of these fivepenny journals, represent it to be? It is not a stern and lifeless system of restraint and terror, but a warm and generous love for the free laws, the liberal altars, and the glorious people of the land in which we live. Is it the con- stitution you would conserve 2 What is this English constitu- tion ? Not a crazy and decrepit form that must shrink from every breath of air, that cannot face the rude popular gaze, nor stand the manly shock of contending opinions. No ; it is a robust organisation of Sound principles, which has received its life and its Soul not more from the wisdom of statesmen than from the courage of dauntless patriots: as such, are we not THE STAMP DUTIES ON NIEWSPAPERS. 245 bound, we lovers of the constitution, to prove that we do not fear discussion ? Are we not bound, we Conservatives bound especially, to justify resistance to wanton inroads on that con- stitution, by showing that it needs no hazardous Reform Bill to give to the people every access to knowledge—every facility to make themselves better and wiser ? And it is because I believe this to be our duty and our policy as true Conservatives ; it is because I hail an occasion to show that we do not dread the good sense of the humblest class of our countrymen in any fair discussion between them and us; it is because I am convinced that, as we widen the field of literature, we raise up new cham- pions for ourselves, and best counteract the poison to which a worthless law now forbids the antidote—that I give to the main principle of this measure my most cordial and hearty Support. XIX. A S P E E O H IDELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 4TH OF JUNE 1855. ON Thursday, the 24th of May 1855, the leader of the Opposition, Mr Disraeli, moved, in the then crisis of the Crimean War, the subjoined reso- lution— “That this House cannot adjourn for the recess without expressing its dis- Satisfaction with the ambiguous language and uncertain conduct of her Majesty's Government in reference to the great question of peace or war; and that, under these circumstances, this House feels it a duty to declare that it will continue to give every support to her Majesty in the prosecu- tion of the war, until her Majesty shall, in conjunction with her allies, obtain for the country a safe and honourable peace.” After a discussion which lasted for six nights, a revised resolution was accepted by the Govern- ment and assented to without a division by the Commons, to the effect, “That this House, having seen with regret that the Conferences of Vienna have not led to a termination of hostilities, feels it a duty,” &c., in the closing terms of the original resolution. On the third night of the debate the following speech was delivered. SIR-The right hon. gentleman the Member for Manchester,” towards the close of his able speech, Summed up his strongest objections to the continuance of the war, by asking how it would profit the country. In answer to that question, let me remind the right hon. gentleman of the laudable earnest- * Mr Milner Gibson. THE CRIMEAN WAR. 247 ness with which, in a recent debate, he assured the House that he and those with whom he concurred in the policy to be adopted for the restoration of peace, were no less anxious than we are for the due maintenance of the national honour. I cordially believe him; and when he asks how the continuance of the war can pro- fit the country, I answer, because the continuance of the war is as yet essential to the vindication of the national honour, and because the national honour is the bulwark of the national in- terests. For there is this distinction between individuals and nations: with the first a jealous tenacity of honour may be a mere sentiment, with the last it is a condition of power. If you lower the honour of a man in the eyes of his equals, he may still say, “My fortune is not attacked, my estate is unimpaired, the laws still protect my rights and my person, I can still com- mand my dependants and bestow my beneficence upon those who require my aid;” but if you lower the honour of a nation in the eyes of other states, and especially a nation like England, which owes her position, not to her territories, but to her character—not to the amount of her armies, nor even to the pomp of her fleets, but to a general belief in her high Spirit and in- domitable will—her interests will be damaged in proportion to the disparagement of her name. You do not only deface her scutcheon, you strike down her shield. Her credit will be affected, her commerce will suffer at its source. Take the awe from her flag, and you take the wealth from her merchants; in future negotiations her claims will be disputed, and she can never again interfere with effect against violence and wrong in behalf of liberty and right. These are some of the consequences which might affect the interests of this country if other nations could say, even unjustly, that England had grown unmindful of her honour. But would they not say it with indisputable jus- tice if, after encouraging Turkey to a war with her most power- ful enemy, we could accept any terms of peace which Turkey herself indignantly refuses to indorse ? Honour, indeed, is a word on which many interpreters may differ, but at least all in- terpreters must agree upon this, that the essential of honour is fidelity to engagements. What are the engagements by which 248 THE CRIMEAN WAR. we have pledged ourselves to Turkey 2 Freedom from the ag- gressions of Russia / Is that all? No;-reasonable guarantees that the aggressions shall not be renewed. But would any sub- ject of the Ottoman empire think such engagements fulfilled by a peace that would not take from Russia a single one of the fort- resses, a single one of the ships by which she now holds Con- stantinople itself under the very mouth of her cannon? Sir, both the Members for Manchester have the merit of consistency in the cause they espouse. They were against this war from he first. But I cannot conceive how any member of that Government which led us into this war, and is responsible for all it has cost us, should now suddenly adopt the language of Peace Societies, and hold it as a crime if we push to success the enterprise he and his colleagues commenced by a failure. I ap- proach the arguments of the right hon. gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford” with a profound respect for his rare intellect and eloquence, and still more for that genuine earnestness which assures us that if he ever does diverge into Sophistry and paradox, it is not till he has religiously puzzled his conscience into a belief of their simplicity and truth. The main argument on which the right hon. gentleman rests the vindication of the views he entertains is this: He says, “I Supported the war at the commencement, because then it was just ; I would now close the war, because its object may be attained by negotiation.” That is his proposition; I would state it fairly. But what at the commencement was the object of the war, stripped of all diplomatic technicalities? The right hon. gentleman would not, I am sure, accept the definition of his ex-colleague the right hon. Member for Southwark,+ that One object of the war was to punish Russia for her insolence— a doctrine I should never have expected in so accomplished a philosopher as my right hon, friend, the pupil of Bentham and the editor of ‘Hobbes.” Either in war or legislation punish- ment is only a means which has for its object the prevention of further crime. The right hon, gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford will no doubt say with me, the object was * Mr Gladstone. t Sir William Molesworth. TEIE CRIMEAN WAR. 249 the independence and integrity of the Ottoman empire. But how did he describe that object in his speech at Manchester in September 1853? He said then to that important audience, I quote his very words— “Remember the independence and integrity of Turkey are not like the independence and integrity of England and France. It is a Government full of anomaly, of difficulty, and distress.” This is the mode in which, simultaneously with those articles in the ‘Times’ quoted by the right hon. Member for Manchester* at the very eve of a war that the right hon. Member for the Uni- versity of Oxford then believed to be just, and when he would naturally place the object in the most favourable light his con- victions would permit before the people whose ardour it became his duty to rouse, whose pockets it was his office to tax—this is the laudatory mode in which the right hon. gentleman warmed the enthusiasm of his listeners to acknowledge the justice of his object; and is the statesman who at the Onset could take so chilling a view of all the great human interests involved in this struggle, likely to offer us unprejudiced and effective counsels for securing to Turkey that independence and integrity in which he sees anomaly and distress, and in which we see the safeguard to Europe? The right hon, gentleman complains that the terms in which our object is to be sought are now unwisely extended ? Who taught us to extend them 2 Who made not only the terms, but the object itself, indefinite 2 Was it not the head of the Government of which the right hon, gentleman was so illustri- ous a member? Did not Lord Aberdeen, when repeatedly urged to state to what terms of peace he would apply the epithets “safe” and “honourable,” as repeatedly answer, “That must depend on the fortune of war; and the terms will be very dif- ferent if we receive them at Constantinople or impose them at St Petersburg.”? Sir, if I may say so without presumption, I al- ways disapproved that language ; I always held the doctrine that if we once went to war it should be for nothing more and nothing less than justice. [Mr M. Gibson—Hear, hear.] Ay, but do not let me dishonestly catch that cheer, for I must add, and also * Mr Milner Gibson. 250 THE CRIMEAN WAR. for adequate securities that justice will be maintained. No re- verses should induce us to ask for less—no conquests justify us in demanding more. But when the right hon, gentleman, being out of office, now also asserts that doctrine, why did he not refuse his sanction to the noble earl, who took the whole question out of the strict limits of abstract justice, the moment he made the indefinite arbitration of military success the only principle to guide us in the objects and terms of peace? And if the right hon. gentleman rigidly desired to limit our war to one of pro- tection, how could he have consented to sit in a Cabinet which at once changed its whole character into a war of invasion? All the complications which now surround us—all the difficulties in the way of negotiation which now so perplex even the right hon. gentleman's piercing intellect—date from the day you landed on the Crimea, and laid siege to Sebastopol. I do not say your strategy was wrong; but, wrong or right, when you invaded the Crimea, you inevitably altered the conditions on which to re- establish peace. The right hon. gentleman was a party to that campaign, and he cannot now shrink from its logical conse- quences. Those consequences are the difficulties comprehended in the third article—the lie that your policy would give to your actions if you accepted the conditions proposed by Russia; for why did you besiege Sebastopol, but because it was that fortress which secured to Russia her preponderance in the Black Sea, and its capture or dismantlement was the material guarantee you then and there pledged yourselves to obtain for the inde- pendence of Turkey and the Security of Europe 2 And if the fortunes of war do not allow you yet to demand that Sebastopol be disfortified, they do authorise you to demand an equivalent in Russia's complete resignation of a fleet in the Black Sea; for at this moment not one Russian ship can venture to show itself in those waters. If the right hon. gentleman is perplexed to deter- mine what mode of limiting the Russian preponderance can be invented, one rule for his guidance at least he is bound to con- sider imperative—namely, that the mode of limitation must be One which shall content not England alone, but the ally to whom the faith of England was pledged by the Cabinet which the THE CRIMEAN WAIR. 251 right hon, gentleman adorned. It is strange to what double uses the right hon, gentleman can put an ally. When we wished to inquire into the causes of calamities to an army purely our Own—calamities which the right hon. gentleman thinks were so exaggerated—an exaggeration that inquiry has not served to dis- pel—then we were told, “What are you doing? Take care To inquire into the fate of an English army may offend and alienate your ally, France.” But now, when the right hon. gem- tleman would have desired us to patch up a peace, he forgets altogether that we have an ally upon the face of the globe. He recommends us singly to Creep out of the quarrel with Russia, and would leave us equally exposed to the charge of desertion by Turkey and of perfidy by France. But it has been insinu- ated—I know not on what authority—that France would have listened to these terms if we had advised it. If this be true, I thank our Government for declining such a responsibility. For if, in that noble courtesy which has characterised the Emperor of the French in his intercourse with us, he had yielded to your instances, and consented to resume and complete negotiations based upon terms he had before refused, who amongst us can lay his hand on his heart and say that a peace which would have roused the indignation even of our commercial and com- paratively pacific people, might not so have mortified the pride of that nation of soldiers to which the name of Napoleon was the title-deed to empire, as to have shaken the stability of a throne which now seems essential to the Safety and social order of the civilised globe 2 “Oh,” says the right hon. gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford, with a solecism in logic which I could never have expected from so acute a reasoner, “see how Russia has gradually come down to terms which she before so contemptuously Scouted. In February 1853, she de- clared such and such terms were incompatible with her honour; she would dictate terms to Turkey only at St Petersburg, under the frown of the Czar, or at the headquarters of the Russian camp; and now see how mild and equitable Russia has become.” Yes; but how was that change effected ? By diplomacy and negotia- tion ? By notes and protocols 2 No–these had been tried in 252 THE CRIMEAN WAR. vain; the result of these was the levying of armaments—the seizure of provinces—the massacre of Sinope. That change was effected by the sword—effected in those fields of Alma and Inkerman to which the right hon. gentleman so touchingly ap- pealed—effected by those military successes inspired by the passion for fame and glory, on which, as principles of action, his humanity is so bitterly sarcastic. The right hon. gentleman dwelt in a Christian spirit, which moved us all, on the gallant blood that had been shed by us, our allies, and even by Our foes, in this unhappy quarrel. But did it never occur to him that, all the while he was speaking, this question was irresistibly forcing itself on the minds of his English audience—“And shall all this blood have been shed in vain? Was it merely to fertilise the soil of the Crimea with human bones? And shall we, who have buried there two-thirds of our army, still leave a fortress at Sebastopol and a Russian fleet in the Black Sea, eter- nally to menace the independence of that ally whom our heroes have perished to protect?” And would not that blood have been shed in vain? Talk of recent negotiations effecting the object for which you commenced the war ! Let us strip those negotiations of diplomatic quibbles, and look at them like men of common-sense. Do not let gentlemen be alarmed lest I should weary them with going at length over such hackneyed ground— two minutes will suffice. The direct question involved is to terminate the preponderance of Russia in the Black Sea; and with this is involved another question—to put an end to the probabilities of renewed war rising out of the position which Itussia would henceforth occupy in those waters. Now the first proposition of Russia is to open to all ships the passage of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. “That is the right thing,” says the right hon. Member for Manchester. Yes, so it would be if Russia had not the whole of that coast bristling with her fortresses; but while those fortresses remain it is simply to say, “Let Russia increase as she pleases the maritime force she can direct against Turkey, sheltered by all the strongholds she has established on the coasts; and let France and England keep up, if they please, the perpetual Surveillance of naval Squadrons in THE CRIMEAN WAR. 253 a sea, as the note of the French Minister well expresses it, ‘where they could find neither a port of refuge nor an arsenal of supply.’” This does not, on the one hand, diminish the pre- ponderance of Russia; it only says you may, at great expense, and with great disadvantages, keep standing navies to guard against its abuse; and, on the other hand, far from putting an end to the probabilities of war, it leaves the fleets of Russia per- petually threatening Turkey, and the fleets of England and France perpetually threatening Russia. And while such a position could hardly fail sooner or later to create jealousy between Eng- land and France, I can Scarcely imagine any disease that would more rot away the independence of Turkey than this sort of chronic protection established in her own waters. The second proposition, which retains the mare clausum, not only leaves the preponderance of Russia exactly what it was before the war began, but, in granting to the Sultan the power to summon his allies at any moment he may require them, exposes you to the fresh outbreak of hostilities whenever the Sultan might even needlessly take alarm ; but with these differences between your present and future position,-first, that Russia would then be strengthemed, and you might be unprepared; and next, that while, as I said before, now not one Russian flag can show itself on those waters, you might then, before you could enter the Straits, find that flag waving in triumph over the walls of the Seraglio. And, to prove that this is no imaginary danger, just hear what is said upon the subject by the practical authority of Marshal Marmont, which was loosely referred to the other night by the noble lord the Member for London"—and remember the Marshal is speaking at a period when the force of Russia in those parts was far inferior to what it would be now if you acceded to her terms—“At Sebastopol, Russia has twelve Sail of the line, per- fectly armed and equipped.” Let me here observe that the Marshal recommends that this number should be increased to thirty, and says that if Sebastopol were made the harbour of a power- ful navy, nothing could prevent Russia from imposing laws on the Mediterranean. “In the immediate neighbourhood a division * Lord John Russell. 254 THE CRIMEAN WAR. of the army is cantoned; it could embark in two days, and in three more reach Constantinople—the distance between Sebasto- pol and the Bosphorus being only 180 miles, and a speedy pas- Sage almost a matter of certainty, owing to the prevalence of northerly winds, and the constant current from the Euxine to- wards the Sea of Marmora. Thus, on the apprehension of inter- ference from the allied fleet, that of Russia would pass and take up such a position as circumstances might dictate, while an army of 60,000 men would cross the Danube, pass the Balkan, and place itself at Adrianople ; these movements being effected with such promptitude and facility that no circumstances whatever could prevent their being carried into execution.” And now I put it to the candour of those distinguished advocates for the Bussian proposals, whose sincerity I am sure is worthy of their character and talents, whether the obvious result of both these propositions for peace is not to keep four Powers in the unrelax- ing attitude of war—one of those Powers always goaded on by Cupidity and ambition, the other three always agitated by jealousy and suspicion ? And is it on such a barrel of gunpowder as this that you would ask the world to fall asleep 2 But, say the hon. gentlemen, “the demand of the Western Powers on the third article is equally inadequate to effect the object.” Well, I think there they have very much proved their case—very much proved how fortunate it was that negotiations were broken off. However, when a third point is to be raised again let us clear it of all dif- ficulties, and raise it not in a Congress of Vienna but within the walls of Sebastopol. Sir, before I pass from this part of the sub- ject, let me respectfully address one suggestion to those earnest and distinguished reasoners who would make peace their para- mount object. You desire peace as soon as possible; do you think you take the right way to obtain it ! Do you think that when Russia can say—“Here are members of the very Govern- ment who commenced the war declaring that our moderation has removed all ground for further hostilities—they are backed by the most conspicuous leaders of the popular party — the repre- Sentatives of those great manufacturing interests which so often influence and sometimes control the councils of a commercial THE CRIMEAN WAR. 255 State,”—do you think that Russia will not also add, “These are signs that encourage us, the Russian empire, to prosecute the war—they are signs that our enemy foresees the speedy exhaus- tion of its means, the relaxing ardour of its people, and must, after Some bravado, accept the terms which are recommended in the national assembly by experienced statesmen and popular tribunes”? You are leading Russia to deceive herself, to deceive her subjects. You are encouraging her to hold out, and every speech you make in such a strain a Russian General might read to his troops, a Russian Minister might translate to trembling merchants and beggared nobles, if he desired to animate them all to new exertions against your country. I do not wish to ma- lign and misrepresent you. I respect the courage with which you avow unpopular opinions. I know that you are patriots as sincere as we are. You have proved your attachment to the ab- stract principle of freedom ; but do reflect whether you make a right exercise of your powers if, when we are sending our sons and kinsmen to assist a cause which would at least Secure weak- ness from aggression, and the free development of one nation from the brute force of another, you take the part of the enemy against your country. [Mr M. Gibson—No, no.] “No, no l’ What means that denial? You take part with the enemy when you say he is in the right, and against your country when you say we are in the wrong. You transfer from our cause to his that consciousness of Superior justice which gives ardour to the lukewarm, endurance to the hesitating, and by vindicating his quarrel you invigorate his arms. If I now turn to the amend- ments before the House, I know not one that I can thoroughly approve; not, of course, that by the hon. Member for the Uni- versity of Oxford,” not that of the hon. Member for Kiddermin- ster, f for I feel no regret that Russia should not have terminated hostilities by accepting proposals inadequate, in my judgment, to secure our object; while I think it scarcely consistent with the prerogative of the Crown, and might furnish a dangerous precedent hereafter, if we were to contest the right of her Ma- jesty to judge for herself whether the means of peace on the basis * Sir William Heathcote. ºf Mr Lowe. 256 THE CRIMEAN WAR. of the third negotiation are exhausted or not. The amendment of the right hon. Member for Portsmouth (Sir F. Baring) would have been more complimentary to the quarter whence he stole it if he had not added the crime of murder to that of theft. He takes the infant from the paternal cradle, cuts it in half, and the head which he presents to us has no longer a leg to stand upon. The original motion of my right hon, friend the Member for Buckinghamshire,” in censuring the Government for ambiguous language and uncertain conduct, gave a substantial reason for conveying to her Majesty that we, at least, would support her in the conduct of the war. Omit that censure—imply by your silence that there is no reason to distrust her Majesty's respon- sible advisers—and the rest of the resolution becomes an unmean- ing platitude. It is with great satisfaction that I think of the effect produced by the original motion of my light hon, friend, for to my mind that effect atones for its want of success in meet- ing with the sanction of the House. It has not, it is true, changed the Government, but it assuredly has changed their tone. I do not know whether that change will be lasting, but I hope that we are not to take, as a test of the earnestness of a Government thus suddenly galvanised into vigour, the speech of the noble lord the Member for London, which, before the division, implied so much, but which, after the division, was explained away in so remarkable a manner. I rejoice that in wringing direct de- clarations from the Government it leaves us free to discuss that which is before us, not as Englishmen against Englishmen, but as citizens of one common state equally interested in surveying the grounds of a common danger. Much reference has been made, in the course of this debate, as to the position of Austria. The mediation of Austria is withdrawn for the present, but Aus- tria is still there, always ready to mediate as long as she hesitates to act. It is well to consider what may be our best position with regard to a Power with which we shall constantly be brought into contact. I cannot too earnestly entreat you to distinguish between the friendship with Austria and the alliance with Aus- tria. I think it of the utmost importance, if you would confine * Mr Disraeli. THE CRIMEAN WAR. 257 this war within compact and definite limits, that you should maintain friendly terms with a Power which, as long as it is neutral, if it cannot serve, does not harm you, and which you could not seriously injure without casting out of the balance of Europe one of the weights most necessary to the equilibrium of the scales. It is easy to threaten Austria with the dismember- ment of her ill-cemented empire—easy to threaten her with reduc- tion to a fourth-rate Power. But she has this answer to the prac- tical sagacity of England and the chivalrous moderation of France: “I, the Empire of Austria, am not less essential as a counterpoise to France than the integrity of Turkey is essential as a barrier against Russia. If the balance of power be not a mere dream, I trust my cause to every statesman by whom the balance of power is respected.” But though, for this and for other reasons, I would desire you to maintain friendly relations with Austria, pardon me if I doubt the wisdom of having so urgently solicited her alliance. Supposing you had now gained it, what would you have done Just what a Government here might do if it pressed into its Cabinet some able and influential man with views not congenial to its own, and who used his power on your councils to modify the opinions and check the plans upon which you had before been united. Add Austria now, while she is still timid and reluctant, to the two Western Powers —give her a third coequal voice in all the conduct of the war, and it could only introduce into their councils a certain element of vacillation and discord. But if you bide your time, preserv- ing Austria in her present attitude of friendly neutrality, if you do not threaten and affront her into action against you—the mat- ural consequences of continued war, the common inclinations of her statesmen and her people—which I have reason to know are not favourable to Russia—will bring her to you at length with coincidence in your objects, because according to the dictates of her own sense of self-interest. As far as I can judge, Our tone with Austria has been much too supplicating, and our mode of arguing with her somewhat ludicrous. It reminds one of the story of an American who saw making up to him in the woods an enormous bear. Upon that he betook himself to his devo- WOL. I. R 258 THE CRIMEAN WAR. tions, and exclaimed,—“O Lord, there is going to be a horrible fight between me and the bear, all I seek is fair-play and no favour: if there is justice in heaven you ought to help me ; but if you won't help me, don't help the bear.” But now comes the grave and solemn problem which the withdrawal of all negotia- tion forces still more upon the mind of every one who thinks deeply, and which the right hon, gentleman the Member for Man- chester has so properly raised. War being fairly upon us, of what mature shall be that war 2 Shall it assume that vast and Com- prehensive character which excites in the hon. Member for Ayles- bury” hopes for the human race too daring even for him to de- tail to this sober House? In plain words, shall it be a war in which, to use the language of Mr Canning in 1826, you will en- list “all those who, whether justly or unjustly, are dissatisfied with their own countries;” in which you will imitate the spirit of revolutionary France, when she swept over Europe, and sought to reconcile humanity to slaughter by pointing to a rainbow of freedom on the other side of the deluge 2 Does history here give to the hon, member an example or a warning? How were these promises fulfilled ? Look round Europe 1 You had the carnage—where is the freedom 2 The deluge spread, the deluge rolled away—half a century is ſled, and where is the rainbow visible 2 Is it on the ruins of Cracow 2–On the field of Novara. ? —or over the walls of defeated Rome 2 No ; in a war that in- vokes liberal opinion against established rule what I most dread and deprecate is, not that you will fulfil your promises and reap the republics for which you sowed rebellions,—what I dread far more is, that all such promises would in the end be broken— that the hopes of liberty would be betrayed—that the moment the monarchies of England and France could obtain a peace that realised the objects for which monarchs go to war, they would feel themselves compelled by the exhaustion of their resources, by the instincts of Self-conservation, to abandon the auxiliaries they had lured into revolt—restore to despotism “the right divine to govern wrong,” and furnish it with new excuse for vigilance and rigour by the disorders which always distinguish armed re- * Mr Layard. THE CRIMEAN WAR. 259 volutions from peaceable reforms. I say nothing here against the fair possibility of reconstructing in Some future congress the independence of Poland, or such territorial arrangements as are comprised in the question, “What is to be done with the Crimea, provided we take it?” But these are not all that is meant by the language we hear, less vaguely out of this House than in it, except when a Minister implies what he shrinks from explaining. And woe and shame to the English statesman who, whatever may be his sympathy for oppressed subjects, shall rouse them to rebellion against their native thrones, not foreseeing that in the changes of popular representative government all that his Cabi- net may promise to-day a new Cabinet to-morrow may legally revoke; that he has no power to redeem in freedom the pledges that he writes in blood; and woe still more to brave populations that are taught to rest democracy on the arms of foreign soldiers, the fickle cheers of foreign popular assemblies, or to dream that liberty can ever be received as a gift, extorted as a right, main- tained as an hereditary heirloom, except the charter be obtained at their own Runnymede, and signed under the shadow of their own oaks. But there is all the difference between rousing na- tions against their rulers and Securing the independence and in- tegrity of a weak nation against a powerful neighbour. The first is a policy that Submits the destinies of a country to civil discord, the other relieves those destinies from foreign interference; the one tends to vain and indefinite warfare—the other starts, at the onset, with intelligible conditions of peace. Therefore, in this war, let us strictly keep to the object for which it was begun— the integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire, secured by all the guarantees which statesmen can devise, or victory enable us to demand. The more definite the object, the more firm you will be in asserting it. How the object is to be effected, how those securities are to be obtained, is not the affair of the House of Commons. The strategy must be planned by the allied Cabinets, and its execution intrusted to councils of war. We in this House can only judge by results; and, however unfair that may seem to Governments, it is the sole course left to us, unless we are always dictating to our allies and hampering our generals. 260 THE CRIMEAN WAR. But, while we thus make the end of the war purely protective, we cannot make the means we adopt purely defensive. In order to force Russia into our object we must assail and Cripple her wherever she can be crippled and assailed. I say, with the right hon. gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford, do not offer to her an idle insult, do not slap her in the face, but para- lyse her hands. “Oh,” said a noble friend of mime the other night,” “it is a wretched policy to humble the foe that you can- not crush; and are you mad enough to suppose that Russia can be crushed ?” Let my noble friend, in the illustrious career which Iventure to prophesy lies before him, beware how he ever endeavours to contract the grand science of statesmen into Scho- lastic aphorisms. No, we cannot crush Russia as Russia, but we can Crush her attempts to be more than Russia. We can, and we must, crush any means that enable her to storm or to steal across that tangible barrier which now divides Europe from a Power that supports the maxims of Machiavelli with the arma- ments of Brennus. You might as well have said to William of Orange, “You cannot crush Louis XIV. ; how impolitic you are to humble him " You might as well have said to the burghers of Switzerland, “You cannot crush Austria; don’t vainly insult her by limiting her privilege to crush yourselves 1’’ William of Orange did not crush France as a kingdom—Switzerland did not crush Austria as an empire ; but William did crush the power of France to injure Holland—Switzerland did crush the power of Austria to enslave her people; and in that broad sense of the word, by the blessing of Heaven, we will crush the power of Russia to invade her neighbours and convulse the world. The right hon. gentleman the Member for Manchester has sought to frighten us by dwelling on the probable duration of this war; but if you will only be in earnest, and if you will limit yourselves strictly to its legitimate object, I have no fear that the war will be long. I do not presume on our recent successes, important though they are, for Kerteh is the entrepôt of all the commerce of the Sea of Azoff; nor on the exaggerated estimate of the forces which Russia has in Sebastopol, or can bring to the Cri- * Lord Stanley. TFIE CRIMEAN WAR. 261 mea; nor on her difficulty through any long series of campaigns to transport and provision large armies from great distances; nor on many circumstances which, of late especially, tend to show that for exertions at once violent and sustained her sinews are not strong enough to support her bulk. But Ilook only to the one fact, that in these days war is money; and that no Power on earth can carry on a long war with a short purse. Russia's pecuniary resources are fast failing her. In no country is recruiting so costly, or attended with such distress to the proprietors of the soil. Every new levy, in depriving the nobles of their serfs, leaves poverty and discontent behind, while in arresting her com- mercial intercourse you exhaust the only springs that can recruit the capital which she robs from the land. In the great ‘History of Treaties, now publishing by the Count de Garden, and which must Supersede all other authorities on that subject, he speaks thus of Russia in 1810 : “The closing of her ports, which was the result of her war with England, deprived Russia of all outlet for her exportations, which, consisting chiefly of raw materials— such as timber, potash, iron, &c.—could only be transported by sea. The balance of commerce thus fixed itself entirely to the detriment of Russia, and, producing there a disastrous fall in the course of exchange, and a depreciation of the currency, menaced with ruin all the financial resources of the State.” You have therefore always at work for you, not only your fleets and armies, but the vital interests of Russia herself. She cannot resist you long, provided you are thoroughly in earnest. She may boast and dissimulate to the last, but rely on it that peace will come to you suddenly—will, in her proper name, knock loudly at the door which you do not close against peace herself, but against her felonious counterfeit, who would creep through the opening dis- guised in her garments, and with the Sword concealed under her veil. The noble lord * who has just spoken with so much hon- esty of conviction, ventured to anticipate the verdict of history. Let me do the same. Let me suppose that when the future philanthropist shall ask what service on the human race did we, in our generation, signally confer;-Some one trained, perhaps, in * Lord Archibald Hamilton. 262 TEIE CRIMEAN WAIR. the schools of Oxford, or the Institute of Manchester, shall an- Swer—“A Power that commanded myriads—as many as those that under Xerxes exhausted rivers in their march — embodied all the forces of barbarism on the outskirts of civilisation. Left there to develop its own natural resources, no State molested, though all apprehended its growth. But, long pent by merciful nature in its own legitimate domains, this Power schemed for the outlet to its instinctive ambition; to that outlet it crept by dis- simulating guile, by successive treaties that, promising peace, graduated spoliation to the opportunities of fraud. At length, under pretexts too gross to deceive the common-sense of mankind, it prepared to seize that outlet—to storm the feeble gates between itself and the world beyond.” Then the historian shall say that we in our generation—the united families of England and France—made ourselves the vanguard of alarmed and shrinking Europe, and did not sheathe the sword until we had redeemed the pledge to humanity made on the faith of two Christian SOve- reigns, and ratified at those distant graves which liberty and jus- tice shall revere for ever. END OF THIE I'IIST VOLUME. I’lti N TI, D DY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, DDINBURGII. SPEE CHES Olſº ED WARD L () R D L YT TO N S P E E C H E S ED WA R D L () R D L YT TO N NO W FIRST CO L L E CTE D WITH SOME OF HIS POLITICAL WIRITINGS HITEIERTO UNIPUBLISHED AND A PREFATORY MEMOIR BY HIS SON IN TWO WOI, U M ES VOIL. II. WILLIAM BILA C KWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MD C C C LXXIV XXI. XXII. XXIII. XXIV. XXV. XXVI. XXVII. XXVIII. XXIX. XXX. XXXI. XXXII. XXXIII. XXXIV. CONTENTS OF THE SECOND WOLUME, REPRINT OF SPEECHES DELIVERED. THE STATE OF THE NATION, 1855, THE VIENNA NEGOTIATIONS, 1855, THE CAPITULATION OF KARS, 1856, THE WAR WITH CHINA, 1857, TRANSFERENCE OF INDIA TO THE CROWN, 1858, COLONY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA, 1858, THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY, 1858, IMMIGRATION INTO THE WEST INDIES, 1859, THE REFORM BILL OF 1859, THE REFORM BILL OF 1860, HERTFoRo AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, 1862, . & THE MALT DUTIES, 1865, THE REFORM BILL OF 1866, e & THE DICKENS BANQUET, l867, THE ARCHEOLOGICAL CONGRESS, 1869, PAGE 150 16() 171 188 vi CONTENTS. XXXV. XXXVI. XXXVII. XXXVIII. XXXIX. XLVI. XLVII. XLVIII. ORIGINAL MATTER, OljTLINES OF SPEECHES INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN DELIVERED. LITERARY COPYRIGHT, 1839, THE HONDURAS QUESTION, 1856, No CONFIDENCE MOTION, 1859, THE ITALIAN QUESTION, 1859, REPEAL OF PAPER DUTIES, 1860, . NATIONAL DEFENCES, 1860, ABOLITION of CHURCH RATEs, 1861, colonial MILITARY EXPENDITURE, 1861, . THE REFORM BILL OF 1866, . THE REFORM BILL OF 1867, . THE LIFE PEERAGES BILL, 1869, THE IRISEI CEIURCH BILL, 1869, COLONIAL GOVERNMENT, 1870, BRITISH COLUMBIA, 1870, XLIX, THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR, 1870, 204 2] I 25 L 261 283 299 3]. 1 32]. 339 346 350 365 XX. A S P E E O H DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S, ON THE 15TH OF JUNE 1855. ON Friday, the 15th of June 1855, the Member for Aylesbury, Mr Austin Henry Layard, moved the subjoined resolution—“That this House views with deep and increasing concern the state of the nation, and is of opinion that the manner in which merit and efficiency have been sacrificed in public appointments to party and family influences, and to a blind adherence to routine, has given rise to great misfortunes, and threatens to bring discredit on the national character.” The Member for Herts, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, during the discussion which ensued, moved the following amend- ment—“That this House recommends to the earliest attention of her Majesty's Ministers the necessity of a careful revision of our various official establishments, with a view to simplify and facilitate the transaction of public business; and, by instituting judicious tests of merit, as well as by removing obstructions to its fair promotion and legitimate rewards, to secure to the service of the State the largest available proportion of the energy and intelligence for which the people of this country are distin- guished.” The debate occupied two nights, at its close the original motion being rejected by 359 votes to 46. On introducing the amendment, during the first night's discussion the following speech was delivered. SIR,--I think there has been no question in our time which con- tains on the one hand a proposition in itself more just and reasonable, and which, on the other hand, is encumbered by more dangerous exaggeration, than that popular demand which VOL. II. A. 2 THE STATE OF THE NATION. this motion submits to the consideration of the House. That when the failure of our departments connected with war, after a forty years' peace, compelled us to turn our eyes to our various establishments with a more rigid Scrutiny, we should find a great deal that is obsolete in principle, or cumbersome in detail, and that when we so find it, we should desire to improve and simplify both the mechanism and its operation, is natural enough ; but that we should suddenly pervert a matter of busi- ness, to which all men might fairly bring their collective experi- ence and dispassionate intelligence, into an irritating inflammatory attack upon particular classes, seems to me a very grave mis- fortune—so grave that I think in the first instance we should try and see what are the causes which have given to a demand, natural and harmless in itself, such sinister and alarming ten- dencies. Now, it is very important to look at the date in which the cry for administrative reform took the shape which it has mow assumed. It was almost immediately after the accession of the noble Wiscount to the place that he now holds. There had been great calamities and disasters in the due provision for an army in which the country felt the deepest interest. Parliament, rightly or wrongly, laid the main fault upon certain Members of the late Government. This idea was sanctioned by the opinion of the noble Lord the Member for London, who had implied, first to the Chief Minister and then to the House of Commons, that things would come right if one of his colleagues—the noble Wiscount—took the administration of the war out of the hands of another of his colleagues—the Duke of Newcastle. The people shared in that belief; they thought that whatever defects there might be in the system—however blundering and incap- able minor officials might have been—a Minister of greater vigour would much more promptly remedy the defects and re- place the offenders than they could do by any irregular efforts of their own. They saw in the noble Wiscount the personifica- tion of their own energy and freedom. He came into his present office backed by a popular enthusiasm almost unequalled since 1757, when the first William Pitt entered on his famous war Administration. Up to the time of the noble Lord's accession THE STATE OF THE NATION. 3 to office not a word was said out of doors on administrative reform, in that sense which it has now assumed. About two weeks afterwards the whole country rang with that cry. Why? Because the noble Wiscount had disappointed the expectations of the country. At the very commencement he seemed to prove that he wanted that decision of character, that firm reliance on his own judgment, and that penetrative foresight, which are the primary qualities that the people demand in a public man on whom for the moment they confer a virtual dictatorship. The motion for the inquiry into the state of our army, which had been carried by so large a majority, was, the noble Wiscount himself frankly said, “the main difficulty that stared him in the face;” yet, so little had been his foresight, that he had not even arranged with his colleagues beforehand what course to pursue with regard to that inquiry, and so little was his decision that he had not even made up his own mind on the subject. At first he proposed to rescind the vote to which he owed his elevation, and compared himself, with a curious infelicity of illustration, to Richard II., who, as history tells us, had indeed appeased the mob by promising to be their leader—but for the sole object of drawing them away from their immediate object and revoking every promise he had made. Finding the House neither coaxed by his blandishments nor convinced by his illustration, the noble Lord Suddenly turned round, and jauntily stepped into that terrible breach of the constitution, leaving three of his colleagues on the other side of the wall. The noble Lord thus lost popu- larity by his injudicious resistance, and then impaired the respect which belongs to manly firmness by the levity of his subsequent acquiescence. Now the people have quick instincts in discovering whether their favourites are thoroughly in earnest. They do not go by actions alone, but also by words. There are times when words are things. For instance, Lord Chatham's first military expedition against Rochfort had been a notable failure, yet the public unanimously acquitted him, because they felt that the failure did not arise from his want of earnestness and vigour: and there was something in Lord Chatham's lan- guage, his tone, and moral bearing, which induced them to wait 4 THE STATE OF THE NATION. with confidence for the full development of his designs. But from the very first day of the noble Viscount's accession, he led the public to believe—no doubt erroneously—that he was unduly trifling with the solemnity which they attached to the occasion, and he met that impatient grief which complained of national disaster, and feared even national discredit, with an air that might remind us much more of Lord North than Lord Chatham. There is another consideration here which is most important, when we seek to ascertain the causes for whatever is dangerous and embarrassing in the popular demand which this motion sub- mits to us; and on this head I put one question to the noble Lord's most partial supporters. Did they not welcome his accession to the head of affairs upon the supposition that his Government would proffer a striking contrast to that of the Ministry he succeeded, or rather reconstructed ? That was the belief to which the noble Lord owed his elevation. What was, then, the surprise of the public when the noble Wiscount's new Minister of War, Lord Panmure, declared, in his inaugural speech, that “his anxious desire” was—what ? to contrast by his vigour all previous lethargy 2 No—“to do away with the impression on the public mind that his predecessor had neglected, Or rather had not carried out to the fullest extent, the interests of the army committed to his charge 2" Carried out to the fullest extent the interests of an army at that instant rotting away from disease, which was without food, without shelter, without cloth- ing, and with hospitals in a state that made humanity shudder ? Why, if this were the fact—if in Lord Panmure's opinion the Duke of Newcastle had carried out to the fullest extent the in- terests of the army, why on earth did you change the Duke of Newcastle for Lord Panmure ? Sir, in all other respects, the public were disposed to do justice to the Duke of Newcastle; his own touching defence had secured to him much respect and sympathy. All dispassionate men were willing to acknowledge his humanity, his application, his honesty of intention, to hope that he would serve his country hereafter in some other department. The only fault they found in him was that fault which placed the noble Wiscount where he is—namely, that for some cause or THE STATE OF THE NATION. 5 another the Duke of Newcastle had not carried out the interests of the army. And when my Lord Panmure openly declared that this belief was a mistake, and that, in fact, he meant to follow in the steps of his predecessor—and when, simultaneously, the language and bearing of the noble Wiscount destroyed all the previous enthusiasm in his favour—then suddenly broke out this cry—the middle class rose up and said, “It is no use trusting to Ministers, one set is as bad as another ; the affairs of the country at a time when its very existence may be at stake are managed by the conventional courtesies of a drawing - room clique; we must make a sweeping change, not in Ministers, but in the whole system of administration, and take the functions of a trifling and effeminate Executive into our own uncompromis- ing hands.” That, Sir, was the mode in which this cry arose; and for all that is dangerous in the cry the noble Wiscount is thus responsible. Then, indeed, when the country was roused into resentment, when public meetings threatened to take the whole matter out of their hands,-then, but not till then, the Government seemed to be dimly conscious that something more was expected from them than pleasant jokes and flattering epitaphs upon the defunct predecessors they had slain and buried, and the noble Wiscount rose to avert the gathering storm —by what? by an announcement of official arrangements re- commended by a Committee of the House more than twenty years ago—pressed last year by the right hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, but pressed vainly, on the Cabinet of which the noble Wiscount had been one of the leading members, and improving in no particular upon such reforms as we should equally have had if Lord Aberdeen had been still at the head of affairs and the Duke of Newcastle still Minister of War. Well, then, I pause to put this direct question to the noble Wiscount and his colleagues—did you reconstruct yourselves into a new Government only to carry out the projects and measures of the last one 2 If so, how deeply has the noble Lord the Member for London injured the Duke of Newcastle, and how egregiously have you duped the expectations of the people ! If, on the other hand, you tell me, “No, we came in to contrast 6 THE STATE OF THE NATION. * the late Government with improvements and ideas of our Own,” I ask you what is meant by these grateful eulogies on the Duke of Newcastle, and I entreat you to distinguish your improve- ments and your ideas from those which the Duke of Newcastle was forbidden to develop by the denunciation of his own col- league ! Thus, Sir, the Government at length produced the mouse that their own mountain had not conceived. And do you think that these stale and plagiarised reforms, embodying not one proof of inventive sagacity, not one original conception, and, strange to say, leaving that department which the noble Wiscount himself declared had the most broken down, I mean the Commissariat, precisely the department in which all reforms are indefinitely postponed—do you think that these will suffice to silence the new cry which is startling the country and threat- ening to usurp altogether our constitutional powers of legislation? It is not enough that the late Government launched us into a war without any definite plan or adequate preparation, but you —not Lord Aberdeen's Cabinet—you, the noble Viscount's Government, have exposed us to a far worse danger from the vague and restless discontent which an appearance of trifling and frivolity has engendered, than we have to apprehend from all the armaments of Russia. We have cause, indeed, to be thankful to Providence for our late successes; for what would have been the consequences to our whole political and social system if some serious defeat to our arms, some indelible stain upon our national honour, had, in the ferment of public feeling, been suddenly added to the minor calamities of barren victories and wasted valour ! Do you not see, in the direction which this movement for administrative reform has unhappily taken, the germs of danger to Something more important than the exist- ence of any individual Government, something more deeply rooted into Our System than aristocratical ascendancy 2 The dānger is to the fundamental principles of representative insti- tutions. I do not think that those who are now so fiercely agitating against the influences of party and of Parliament are aware of the logical consequences to which their agitation may lead. I am sure the hon. Member for Aylesbury is not, or he TEIE STATE OF THE NATION. 7 would be the first to condemn what he now approves. Talk thus loosely, yet thus fiercely, against the influences of party. The influences of party are the sinews of freedom. Party and freedom are twins, united at the birth by a ligament which is nourished from the life-blood of both, and if you divide the liga- ment you kill the twins. Oh, yes, without the influences of party you might, indeed, have able and efficient men in your bureaux—Englandwill never wantsuch men under any system — but you will have exchanged the nerve and muscle of popular government for the clockwork machinery which belongs to despotism . But, Sir, to judge by the language out of doors, it is not meant to clear away the obstacles that beset the career of a clerk in a public office—no, it is meant to make the Queen's Government, make the Ministers of the nation, independent of the influences of party,+in other words, of the opinions of Parliament. That is the only way in which I can interpret the language we hear out of doors—that there must be an entirely new administration of the country perfectly free from the in- fluences of party—why, Sir, if it is meant that the Crown is to appoint to the higher offices of State, free from the influences of party and from the opinions of Parliament, the Crown would become as absolute as it was in the time of the Tudors; and if these agitators against Parliament say, “Oh, no, we do not mean that ; we mean that the people are to dictate to the Crown, according to their ideas of merit, who are to be the Ministers of State, through other channels than Parliamentary parties, through patriotic associations and audiences accustomed plausu, gaudere theatri.” I tell them that they would root out the dur- able institutions of liberty to make room for the deadly ephe- merals of Jacobin clubs. But if they say, “Oh, no—we mean neither one nor the other,” what do they mean—they who are attacking Parliament—except to bring Parliament into contempt, and to trust the chance of a substitute to the lottery of revolu- tions ? But let the House inquire if the Government is not in Some degree responsible for the loud cry which has been raised against family patronage and party influence? Can you deny that it has ever been the peculiar characteristic of the Whigs 8 THE STATE OF THE NATION. when in office to concentrate power as much as possible within their own narrow and exclusive coteries, and to make a marked distinction between the great body of their supporters and the highbred materials from which they construct their Cabinets? So far as that goes, I think the hom. Member for Aylesbury has proved his case. Your Cabinets have been one colossal instance of family patronage. You trace your map of office as the Chinese trace the map of the world. The Chinese draw a square; in that square they describe a circle, which fills up all the space except the four little corners. The circle is the Ce- lestial Empire of China, and the four little corners are assigned to the miserable remnants of mankind. So when you come into power you describe round Downing Street your circle; in that circle you place the sacred family of Whigs—that is the Celestial Empire; and to the four little corners you banish the herd of your supporters. Now it is because ever since the Whigs came into office, more than twenty years ago, the public have seen this exclusive principle, this preference of family connections, applied to the more conspicuous departments of the State, that therefore now, when national disasters tend to magnify every abuse, and some abstract cause is to be found for every griev- ance, there has risen up this cry against the governing classes, and a persuasion, which I do you the justice to say is much exaggerated, that you apply the same system of favouritism to all the ramifications of official power and distinction. The belief is exaggerated—the exaggeration is dangerous; it tends to shake the basis of our social system ; but for that exaggeration and for that danger you are responsible, because in the com- position of your Cabinets you have, one after another, installed a combination of families and privileged houses like a sacred caste, and have contrived to Sour, to chill, and to alienate the energy, the intellect, the enthusiasm, of that class of your sup- porters in whom the people can recognise their own hardy children ; while you mortify the pride of a numerous gentry with birth as ancient as your own, but who happen not to be allied to your houses, nor partially naturalised to your coterie by having been disciplined in its drawing-rooms. Sir, I will THE STATE OF THE NATION. 9 grant most readily that the noble Wiscount, in seeking to form the materials of his Government, was much less to blame for family exclusiveness than Whig Ministers have been before him. I believe that he did honestly desire to extend the range of selection. In the selection, for instance, of a right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr Horsman) to the important post of Chief Secretary for Ireland—a post which requires the union of courtesy and firmness, of ready powers in debate, with compre- hensive knowledge of mankind—the noble Wiscount has, to my mind, been most fortunate and judicious. But parties, like kings, are punished for the faults of their predecessors; and what the people resent is this, that the very nature of the party, or rather the coterie, which the noble Lord represents, has com- pelled him still, notwithstanding a few exceptions, to retain in the map of his Cabinet that general preponderance of the old Celestial Empire which is out of all reasonable proportion to the rest of the world. At the bottom of all this agitation that which I see most clearly is this—that the public are tired of Govern- ments purely Whig, and that, sooner or later, the doom of that oligarchy will be sealed. Long ago Mr Burke said, “The Whigs had never a majority in the country, but they obtained their ascendancy by dexterous management.” We know in our time what that management has been ; it consists in saying to the Radicals, “Support us, or you will let in those horrible Tories;” and in whispering to us Conservatives, “Bear with us, or those horrible Radicals will upset the country.” I think that device is now pretty well worn out. Well, then, I distinguish between the dangerous elements which have been added to the question of administrative reform and the reform itself. For the danger- ous elements I arraign the Government—for the reform I am a cordial advocate. You must, as soon as possible, take this question out of the hands of agitators, and turn it to safe direc- tions in the hands of statesmen. Exactly a parallel case arose towards the end of the American war, when the cry throughout the country was for economical reform, coupled with an attack on the power of the Crown; now the cry is for administrative reform, coupled with an attack upon the predominance of the 10 THE STATE OF THE NATION. aristocracy. In both instances the country felt that its re- Sources had been wasted, and feared its character was tarnished: it sought to trace the causes to a tangible origin, and in both instances believed it found that origin in the abuse of patronage. By a timely—and, because timely, a moderate—reform the Rockingham Administration contented the people and averted all danger from the Crown. By the same means—though I hope the reform will be more extensive—you may again content the people and relieve the aristocracy from unmerited censure. Sir, it is not my intention at present to touch at all upon the vast but intricate question of military reform. I am convinced that you will do much better to keep that question apart from the administrative reform connected with the civil service, and entertain it in a different debate; and it is to the civil service that I shall confine myself. Sir, the elaborate and able speech of the hon. Member for Aylesbury has saved me from inflicting on you quotations from the Reports of our various offices, which Reports I have studied with great care. Those Reports allow us to take it for granted that administrative reform is impera- tively necessary, since there is not one of those offices in which that reform is not urgently enforced by those who are the best judges of it; and I shall content myself with this short extract from the Report on our general civil service —“All who have had occasion to examine its constitution with care, have felt that its Organisation is far from perfect, and that its amendment is deserving the most careful attention. It would be natural to expect that so important a profession would attract into its ranks the ablest and most ambitious of the youth of the country; that the keenest emulation would prevail among those who had entered it; and that such as were endowed with superior quali- fications would rapidly rise to distinction and public eminence. Such, however, is by no means the case. Admission into the civil service is indeed eagerly sought after; but it is for the unambitious, and the indolent or incapable, that it is chiefly desired. Those whose abilities do not warrant an expectation that they will succeed in the open professions, where they must encounter the competition of their contemporaries, and those THE STATE OF THE NATION. 11 whom indolence of temperament or physical infirmities unfit for active exertions, are placed in the civil Service, where they may obtain an honourable livelihood with little labour, and with no risk; where their success depends upon their simply avoiding any flagrant misconduct, and attending with moderate regularity to routine duties; and in which they are secured against the ordinary consequences of old age, or failing health, by an ar- rangement which provides them with the means of supporting themselves after they have become incapacitated.” I have made a short summary of the principal reforms sug- gested for the existing imperfections. They are, the establish- ment of a primary, and of, perhaps, periodical examinations, and those for the highest situations should be on a level with the highest description of education; a more judicious regulation of the principle applied to salaries; the adoption of honorary rewards and distinctions; the bestowal of all the places and prizes in the service on those who belong to it; accountability by records of individual and reports of departmental service; and, in short, the general regulation, not only that merit should be the rule for promotion, but that there should be legitimate occasions to test that merit, and increased facilities for its rise. In looking over all the evidence on the subject, and weighing all the objections made to these recommendations, I have convinced myself that the reforms proposed by the vari- ous Commissions are sound and judicious, but that they require a vigour the Government have not yet shown in arranging the details into a systematic whole, and an honest determination, not yet evinced, to encourage the workings of such reforms, and a generous vigilance of ministers in the discernment of merit in their own departments. We shall be told that the Government have done much, and are doing still more, in the way of amend- ment and reform. I will tell the Government why I am not Satisfied to rest simply on that declaration. In the first place, I cannot compliment the right hon. Member for the University of Oxford on his share in the Order in Council. I think your mode of examination under that Order a complete evasion of all the real questions at issue. The objects sought by the Com- 12 THE STATE OF THE NATION. mittee on the Reorganisation of the Civil Service, and by all genuine reformers of that service, are to obtain the largest avail- able amount of energy and intelligence; first, by fair competi- tion, and next, by all professional inducements. Now, I Say that your Order in Council frustrates these objects. By that Order in Council you did not widen the range of candidates. You may have improved the examinations to a certain extent, but you still retain that which reformers specially desire to correct throughout the whole civil service—the character of a close borough ; and you do not increase the inducements to candidates of talent to enter the service, by assuring them of professional rewards; for the Order in Council enables the chiefs of departments to nominate persons to office who have not been in the civil service, and who have been distinguished Only in other pursuits, without undergoing any examination whatever. On the one hand you invite men to submit them- Selves to a severe examination; and, on the other hand, you prepare them to have men who have never been in the public Service set over their heads. Thus, I say, that by this Order in Council you Sanction the two worst abuses of which all your official reports complain. When I look at the minutes of answers made by the heads of departments to the reports on their own offices, I see in them nothing more than a servile acquiescence in detached suggestions, without the slightest indication that those great officers of State have mastered the subject for them- Selves, without one original conception or proof of constructive faculty; while they all exhibit the same indolent and desultory spirit, and affect to deliberate when in reality they only dawdle. Now, this is precisely what I object to. I would rather you left things alone. You cast a slur on what exists without being prepared to replace it. You strip off the roof and let in the rain, not only before a new covering is ready, but while you are still undecided whether you will use slates or tiles. This is one of the cases in which reform ought not to be slothful and vacil- lating, but prompt and decisive, because as long as you leave the public servants of any department uncertain what is to become of them, you deprive them of all energy and good-heart. I THE STATE OF THE NATION. 13 believe that one reason of the Duke of Newcastle's failure was, that you placed him at the head of establishments which lay effete and paralysed under sentence of death. Hesitating re- forms unsettle; decided reforms reconstruct. And I am con- vinced, also, that any general rules you may adopt to excite emulation and encourage merit should be applied simultaneously to all establishments, and that the reform in one should not be contrasted by the abuse in others. For instance, what could be so unwise, at a time when the eyes of the public are fixed on you with so keen a scrutiny, as to announce a very proper but a very rigid examination for the vacancies in the senior practical class at Woolwich Academy, and proclaim in the newspapers of the very same day that three of the best places in the public service, that of Director-General of Stores, Director-General of Contracts, Assistant-General of the Army Clothing Department, were bestowed upon gentlemen who, whatever their merit, are less connected with those departments than they are with your- selves, and therefore appear to the uninstructed public audacious specimens of that very favouritism which your reforms affect to abolish : Let me again impress upon you that it is not enough to subject young candidates to a rigorous examination, to decoy into the public service the rising energy and talent of the country, unless you set before them all the lawful prizes of the profession, and convince them that not one such prize shall be abstracted from their ambition, and bestowed upon gentlemen who, however able, are not connected with the service. If the public service is to be really a profession, it ought to be as monstrous to give one of the great prizes in that service to a man who has not been actively distinguished in it, as it would be to give a clever lawyer the colonelcy of a regiment, or a gallant officer the Mastership of the Rolls. I am more alarmed than I can well express at the state of things out of doors, and I am most desirous, for the sake of Satisfying the country, and allaying all disaffection, that the Ministry should frame a scheme which they can openly bring before this House, and so inform the country exactly what they are doing, and intend to do. Sir, I cannot vote for the motion of the hon, Gentleman the 14 TEIE STATE OF THE NATION. Member for Aylesbury—not, he may be sure, from disrespect to himself, but because, looking at his motion in connection with its supporters out of doors, I cannot sanction an influence quite apart from the question of Administrative Reform, which I conscien- tiously believe to be unsound in principle and perilous in the consequences to which they would lead. But I am desirous, not only for my own sake, but that of many gentlemen on both sides of the House, to have an occasion of recording our votes in favour of the simple question of Administrative Reform. For this reason I have not framed the Amendment I propose in a party spirit; my remarks may have been under that influence: my Amendment shall be free from it. My hon, friend * has referred to a lovely passage in Tasso, and says that I would Smear the bowl with sweets that the child may swallow the medicine. No ; I present the medicine as it is. He adulterates the medicine with the bitterness of unnecessary gall. Not the least dangerous part of the agitation out of doors, which it was Scarcely worthy of a distinguished Member of Parliament and a distinguished scholar to countenance, is the attempt of certain persons to disparage the character of this House. Acting as I do with a minority, it might be more consistent with the pas- Sions of party to connive at that depreciation, and insinuate that it is the fault of the tribunal when we cannot carry our cause. But I say, from the bottom of my heart, that the longer I have lived, and the more familiar I have become with books or with mankind, the more deeply the patriotic spirit and the intellectual eminence of this House of Commons are impressed On my convictions. And during my experience of more than twenty years in the records of your proceedings, I can recall no time in which this House was ever more worthy of the confi- dence and respect of the country, whether for the ability which by all Sections of opinion has been displayed, or, as I solemnly believe, for the personal incorruptibility of its Members as a body, or for that zeal for the welfare of the country which, whether you have assailed or supported Ministers, posterity will acknowledge to have been your prevailing motive. It is not at * Mr Layard. THE STATE OF THE NATION. 15 such a time that a mere form of words, which some of us cannot accept, should alienate the affections of the people from this palladium of their liberties; and in order that every Member, no matter what his politics or party, who cannot accept the motion now before us, may have the opportunity of recording a vote which he can vindicate to his constituents and justify to his conscience, I submit to you this proposition, which you will pardon for its temperance if it obtains the object of conciliating your approval. XXI. A S P E E C H DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 16TH OF JULY 1855. ON Monday, the 16th of July 1855, the Member for Herts, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, moved in the House of Commons: - “That the conduct of our Minister in the recent negotiations at Vienna has, in the opinion of this House, shaken the confidence of the country in those to whom its affairs are intrusted.” The Minister therein referred to, anticipating the submission of this Resolution to the House, Suddenly announced to the Commons, in the course of an explanatory harangue, that he had resigned. The original motion was eventually withdrawn in consequence of this resignation, but not until after it had given rise to a lengthened and animated discussion. It was immediately after the Minister's startling announcement of his resignation that the following speech was deliveréd. SIR-If I understand correctly the allusions of the noble Lord * towards the end of his speech, it is not before the phalanx of a hostile party that he retires from office. That is true. It is before the sense of the country, evinced in the desertion of his own followers. But do those followers deserve the lofty taunt of the noble Lord 2 No, Sir ; it is not, as he implies, that they forsook him because his fortunes waned or wavered, but because * Lord John Russell. THE VIENNA. NEGOTIATIONS. 17 he deviated into a path which seemed to leave behind it the honour of his country. The noble Lord has a second time in one campaign left the field upon the eve of contest, and in doing so he has entered at such length into a vindication of his pre- vious conduct, that I trust the House will not consider it un- generous or vindictive in me, if I also vindicate some of those reasons which have induced me, and those who support me in this motion, to think that the conduct of the noble Lord was such as to shake the confidence of the country in those who administer its affairs. Under the altered circumstances of the case, however, I shall make my statement as temperately as may be consistent with the requisite proof that it was not upon light grounds that we brought forward a charge against a man so emi- ment, and against a Government so justly entitled to the indul- gence of compassion. What, Sir, on Thursday last, was the position of the noble Lord and of the Government who then so boldly accepted our challenge, and who have since selected as a victim for Sacrifice the very champion whom they then armed at all points for encounter ? The position of the noble Lord on Thursday last was this, and he must pardon me if I state it frankly, because in the whole course of his speech, he does not seem to have understood how that. position is viewed by his countrymen. Here was a great and distinguished statesman, who had held the office of Chief Minister of the Crown, who was sent to Vienna to negotiate terms of peace, or to report to us honestly the necessity for continued war. Under what circum- stances was he selected ? He had just before broken up a Government by his own solitary desertion—a desertion so Sud- den, and accompanied by a denunciation of two of his colleagues so startling, that it was without parallel in the records of this House. But it was not without an excuse. What was the excuse? Why, that upon a question involving the fate of armies he could not, as an honest man, conceal his Sentiments, and rather than do so he left his associates whom he could not de- fend. Well, that is a very noble excuse ; and in Saying so, I do not desire to imply a sarcasm. Lord.JOHN RUSSELL : I beg the hom. Baronet's pardom. What VOL. II. B 18 THE VIENNA NEGOTIATIONS. I said was, that I could not oppose the motion for inquiry, not that I could not defend their conduct. There was no question about defence. - Sir BULWER LYTTON: I have not the least objection to the change of terms; and as I now understand the noble Lord he left his former office, in the Earl of Aberdeen’s Administration, because he could not oppose the motion for the appointment of the Sebastopol Committee; but does he forget all the observa- tions which he made in explanation of the course he then took 2 Does he forget the charges, or at least the strong insinuations, which he made against the Duke of Newcastle and the Earl of Aberdeen 2 Surely, if the noble Lord's explanation at that period was rightly conceived, it informed us that he was com- pelled to retire, and to break up the Government of which he was so eminent a member, because of his distrust of the warlike capacities of his colleagues. He says he could not resist inquiry. Inquiry into what? National disasters; ascribed to what? To the want of competent vigour either in the chief Minister or the Minister of War. This was his excuse for not suppressing his sentiments. I say again, a noble excuse, but an excuse that required the uniformity of an inflexible political creed. Well, then, this statesman is sent to Vienna; he apparently fails in his object; he returns; a suspicion gets abroad that the noble Lord is inclined to favour the proposals of the Austrian Govern- ment. That suspicion is mentioned in this House on the 24th of May, and the noble Lord rises to make a speech to dispel that Suspicion, to vindicate the breaking-off of negotiations, and the continuance of the war; and although the noble Lord does not refer to the Austrian proposals at all, he does in that speech, which I do not think he has successfully defended to-night, speak with marked disdain of the propositions which embodied that main principle of naval counterpoise which, we have since learned, the Austrian propositions contained. He says, “After I had left Vienna another proposal was made, which my right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Oxford * seems to think offered a security—namely, to leave the treaty of 1841 as * Mr Gladstone. THE VIENNA NEGOTIATIONS. 19 it now is ; but when Turkey is menaced, to enable her to call the fleets of her allies to her assistance.” “I own,” said the noble Lord, “I can see very little security in that proposal.” The noble Lord then proceeded triumphantly to argue in favour of the absolute necessity of limiting the power of Russia in the Black Sea. He denounced the idea of guarding against that force by any counterpoise in the ships which the Western Powers might station in those waters; he pointed out the costly and preposterous folly of our being there, to use his own words, “perpetually defending Turkey” (all arguments that apply equally against the Austrian proposals then locked within his breast); and, finally, he wound up with a spirited imitation of that famous philippic in which Demosthenes inflamed his coun- try against Macedon, by dilating on the corruption which pene- trated every council hall and the ambition which threatened every civilised State. The general impression then was, that that speech of the noble Lord was somewhat extravagant in its zeal. But we, who advocated the vigorous prosecution of the war, pardoned that extravagance for the sake of its high spirit; we said, “Here, at all events, is one man who is thoroughly in earnest for the prosecution of the war.” Suddenly there appeared in the public prints the circular of the Austrian minister, in which Count Buol states that this very statesman had not only inclined to a peace upon the terms proposed, and which he had appeared to us indignantly to Scout, but that he had actually promised to lay before his Government definite proposals for peace so framed, and to back those terms in the Cabinet with all his power. The thing seemed incredible; but the question on Friday week was put to the noble Lord, and he then rises, confirms the statement, and informs the House that he had brought back propositions of peace which he did conscientiously recommend as likely to end the war “with honour to the allied Powers, and on terms calculated to afford security for the future,” and that, thus thinking peace both possible and honourable, he did, nevertheless, when the question was formally brought before this House, while the peace in question was being actually dis- cussed by the Cabinet, abuse the station he took from the favour 20 THE VIENNA NEGOTIATIONS. of his Sovereign, and the confidence the people placed in his honesty and truth, and join with his colleagues to urge us to Sacrifice the best blood of England in a war that he deemed no longer necessary, and to disdain the peace that he himself re- commended. Now, Sir, what made the political conduct of the noble lord still more disingenuous—I request his pardon for the word—is, that subsequently to the 24th of May, namely, on the 6th of June, when the expediency of peace through the inter- vention of Austria was again discussed, the right hom. Baronet the Member for Carlisle.* alluded plainly to the report that the terms of peace suggested by Austria had been favoured by the French envoy, that the Emperor of the French actually proposed them to the English Government, and that it was the English Government that prevented the acceptance of those terms. The noble Lord replied to that speech, and evading all distinct reference to the Austrian proposal, he left the House, the country, and the great Powers of Europe, under the impression that our illustrious ally would have sanctioned terms of peace which were utterly disdained by the lofty spirit of the noble Wiscount and the united chivalry of his Cabinet. Now, let the House mark the inconsistency and want of faith in the noble Lord. On Friday week what was the noble Lord’s excuse for his pre- ference of peace 2 Why, that Russia was so powerful And what was the excuse of the noble Lord on the 24th of May for his preference of war 2 Why, that Russia was so powerful! So that the excuse of the noble Lord for peace and his excuse for war was literally the same. And what was the apology of the noble Lord on Friday week for having suppressed his real senti- ments, and stilled his conscientious convictions 2 Why, forsooth, if he told the truth he might have damaged the Government. Dut what was the noble Lord's apology for destroying the Gov- ernment some months ago 2 Why, that as an honest man he could not suppress his sentiments or still his conscience. Does he think that this mockery of our common-sense can be endured —does he think that this English Parliament would accept, and that this Christian people would endorse, a bill drawn upon * Sir James Graham. THE VIENNA NEGOTIATIONS. 21. human life under fraudulent pretences ! It is only those who hold that the war is necessary, and that no honourable peace could be obtained upon the basis proposed, who have a right to call upon the country to make every sacrifice of its blood and treasure. But can any excuse of Cabinet compromises justify the statesman who was sent forth to negotiate a peace, and who feeds the flames of war with the very olive branch which he brought back from his mission ? Oh, is it you—I declare that I speak more in Sorrow than in anger—is it you, whose brief and touching allusion to your past Services deserved louder cheers than it received—is it you, whose labours and whose genius have so honoured your name that we feel every stain upon it as a national calamity—is it you who have taken from the people of England power and dignity for twenty years—is it you who could call upon your countrymen to send their children to a slaughter which you deemed unnecessary, and advise your Sove- reign to jeopardise her sceptre rather than endanger that feeble and rickety thing you call a Government, and of which you told us last Friday week we ought to be the more tender because it had lost the favour of the people 2 Sir, the noble Lord said that the Executive was weakened by popular distrust; and I tell the Government that the weakness and the distrust both arise from that belief in your insincerity and vacillating purpose, of which on Thursday last the most signal proof was the appear- ance of the noble Lord upon that bench (the Ministerial). The noble Lord complained that our counsels were unstable. How. could they be other than unstable when the noble Lord repre- sented in the Cabinet the very element of instability ? The noble Lord rebuked the people for their distrust of public men, while, in the same breath, he told them on Friday week that in- sincerity on a question affecting life and death was a duty he owed to the public service. The noble Lord then said, “See the circumstances of the time.” The circumstances of the time require either peace in earnest or war in earnest. And I say you cannot have peace in earnest if your negotiator accepts terms upon one day which he shrinks from the responsibility of ad- hering to on the next. With what face could the Govern- 22 THE VIENNA. NEGOTIATIONS. ment have appealed to the ardour of the people so long as the noble Lord remained in office to paralyse, by his acknowledged Sentiments, the war which he sanctioned by his official vote % But the noble Lord said, “I am misrepresented; it is not because I thought this peace safe, honourable, or expedient on the 1st of May, when I brought those proposals back from Vienna—it is not because I still think that at that time peace might be safe, honourable, or expedient, that I am bound to think so now.” That is the argument of the noble Lord ; “and then,” said the noble Lord, on Friday week, in a tone so languid that it might have disheartened Achilles, that “the only chance of peace now is in a vigorous prosecution of the war.” But does not the noble Lord see that though that last revised and corrected edition of his opinions disqualifies him from becoming a member of a Peace Administration, yet that it does not in the slightest degree amend his position as a Minister of the Government pledged to the carrying on of the war 2 For, if the noble Lord tells us that the object of the war could have been attained in May, it is in vain that he appeals to the military ardour of the people in July. What progress would a recruiting Sergeant have made through the country with the cheering cry, “Fight, my boys, for your Queen and country. Think of Alma and Balaklava. Never mind a cannon-ball nor a wooden leg if you obtain this glorious result—that if Russia shall hereafter be at liberty to send eight ships of war to the Black Sea, Old England shall have the privi- lege of sending four.” Now, I say, that when a Minister so recently as May had approved of the principle of the Austrian peace propositions, he is not a fit Minister to carry on the war in July. What are the reasons which, in the noble Lord’s mind rendered a certain proposition for peace honourable and expedi- ent in May, which are not equally good in favour of such a peace in July 2 “We have gained some victories,” he says; “our army is in a better state.” Good arguments these if we were at war for dominion, mone if we are at war for definite objects of justice. I deprecate this sliding-Scale of homicide, which is to go up and down with every fluctuation in the market of blood. But, as I understood the noble Lord, he said that in the position in which THE VIENNA. NEGOTIATIONS. 23 England and France was, he did not think he would be acting prudently in resigning. With an eye solely to that position, I think the reverse. For, as to France, did he not place our coun- Sels at variance with the French He brings back a peace from Austria, proposes it and retains office; the French negotiator brings back the same peace, proposes it and is dismissed. This is not all—the French Emperor has declared Austria impera- tively bound by her engagement to share in our hostilities; but the noble Lord some days ago, in the very teeth of Lord Claren- don, Said he considered that Austria might be excused from her fulfilment of that engagement. So that, as long as the noble Lord remained in the Cabinet, you possessed a Minister in whom Russia could find her excuse, Austria her justification, France a dissentient from her policy, and England the condemnation of her war. 4. I understood the noble Wiscount on Thursday last to say, that the Government were prepared to stand or fall together. And, indeed, the old Parliamentary principle that one Minister of the Cabinet does not stand alone—that all are equally worthy of praise or censure—applies with peculiar force to the present case. For the House will remember that, when we were dis- cussing the conduct of the noble Lord in these negotiations, and While we were yet in the dark as to the Austrian proposals, the noble Wiscount, as chief Minister, emphatically declared his cordial approval and admiration of his envoy and colleague. And yet the sole practical result of that mission was the sketch or idea of peace which the Cabinet was at that moment debating. While, if any blame was subsequently to be attached to the noble Lord, including his speech on Friday week, the chief Minister of the Crown shared the responsibility, since he saw in that speech no cause to invite the resignation of his colleague. Nay, on Friday week the noble Wiscount defended what some other Member has harshly called the duplicity displayed in that speech by confounding it with the ordinary concessions upon ordinary questions which one Minister makes to his colleagues, and treated a vital difference of opinion upon peace and war with as much levity as if it were a disagreement in the details of a 24 THE VIENNA NEGOTIATIONS. Beer Bill. Now, Sir, I will take the liberty of telling the noble Wiscount, that there are two parties in this House who have Some reason to suspect, that among the many accomplishments and rare talents of the noble Wiscount, the rude frankness of Sincerity does not bear a prominent place as respects the part he has taken in these transactions. I mean, first, the party that advocates the Austrian peace; and, secondly, the party that ad- vocates the vigorous prosecution of the war. The House will remember that immediately upon the formation of this Cabinet the noble Wiscount gave a pledge, in answer to a question from the right hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle, that he would adhere to the foreign policy of Lord Aberdeen with regard to the war. Well, Sir, those who consider that that policy wanted the requisite vigour have a right to complain that he had given a pledge So opposed to the expectations of those who assisted in raising him to his present position. On the other hand, those distinguished adherents of Lord Aberdeen's Government—who best know what Lord Aberdeen's policy was—have some right to complain that the noble Viscount had given that pledge rather too lightly, when they see him reject terms which his own en- voy, who left the Aberdeen Government from the want of vigour in the administration of the War Department, had not only assented to, but promised to support in the Cabinet with all his power. Now, Sir, I have looked carefully through this corre- spondence before us, and I confess my astonishment is increased that the noble Lord the Member for London did not resign his office as Minister of the Crown, within a week after he returned with his propositions from Vienna. This correspondence also justifies my continued distrust in the Government in consenting to act with the noble Lord in the counsels of the Crown. For these papers show that during the latter period of the negotia- tions at Vienna, the noble Lord was at direct variance with the noble Earl our Minister for Foreign Affairs; and that the noble Lord had agreed to a peace founded upon a basis which the noble Earl the Minister for Foreign Affairs had already declared to be inadmissible, impracticable, and dishonourable. To the very first suggestion of the noble Lord—which was called an THE VIENNA NEGOTIATIONS. 25 Austrian proposal, but which, in fact, emanated from our Eng- lish envoy—Lord Clarendon writes word, on the 18th April, What appears in that suspicious form called an extract :— “We think that the limitation of the Russian fleet should be absolute, and that it would be made too conditional by the plan which you propose. We must avoid, as much as possible, the system of counterpoise, the objections to which you have explained fully to the Austrian Government.” Well, then, what does the noble Lord do 2 Why, the noble Lord matures that plan that was considered so objectionable, and bases it upon the principle of a counterpoise. He does not return from Vienna until he has promised the Austrian Minister to introduce this proposal to the Cabinet when he arrives in Lon- dom. The noble Wiscount who succeeded Lord Aberdeen in the Government, on the express ground that all dissension upon the question of peace or war should cease, deems that dissension in the Cabinet of no consequence, so long as it is concealed ; and when it is found out, he declares that the concealment of the opinion of the noble Lord, to use his own words, “is highly be- coming the elevated position of his noble friend.” I am quite willing to accord to the Government all the praise which they are entitled to claim. I am willing to say, so far as Lord Clarendon is concerned, that there is a frank, hearty, and English tone in all his despatches. And I would willingly ex- tend to the noble Wiscount the praise I so cordially bestow on Lord Clarendon 2 But then, though Lord Clarendon in these despatches represents himself—and of course the majority of the Cabinet—the noble Wiscount does more than represent a majority. He is First Minister of the Crown, and he alone is responsible for the unanimity of his Cabinet. He alone is responsible if there be a minority at variance with the majority. And there- fore, if the noble Lord does cordially approve the Sentiments of Lord Clarendon, how could he have expressed an approbation, equally cordial, of the negotiator and colleague whose opinions so flatly contradict those which Lord Clarendon expresses 2 One may suppose that the noble Wiscount could not have been so indifferent to the success of the negotiations as never himself to 26 THE VIENNA NEGOTIATIONS. have written to the negotiator. Yet, not one letter from the noble Wiscount appears in this correspondence. (Ironical cheers from Ministers.) Yes; I understand that cheer. You say the Secretary for Foreign Affairs was the right person to communi- cate officially. True ; but the noble Wiscount, in fairness to the country, and in justice to himself, might have extended this publication beyond the formality of strict routine, and inserted Some of the admirable letters he no doubt addressed to the per- plexed conscience of his noble friend. The noble Lord’s earlier speeches had not been so free from levity, from ambiguity, but what some persons were ill-natured enough to doubt the consist- ent earnestness of his sincerity. (“No, no l’’) He might dis- dain justification for himself, but to justify himself would have been to strengthen the Government and assure the unquiet mind of the country. But do Gentlemen who cry “No, no,” doubt if there was any cause to suspect that the noble Wiscount ever hesitated as to the Austrian terms ? Very well, let us see. Observe: the Earl of Westmoreland communicates to the Eng- lish Government the last Austrian proposal, which was received in London on the 19th of May. Now, Lord Clarendon almost invariably answers communications on the following day they are received by him. It, however, appears that the noble Earl does not answer these communications until ten days afterwards— namely, the 29th of May. Now, I should like to know what occurred in the interval. Why, from the hesitating tone of the English Government, and more especially of the noble Wiscount, my right hon, friend the Member for Buckinghamshire * was induced to bring forward a Motion upon the ambiguity of their language and the uncertainty of their conduct. During those ten days Ministers were deliberating upon those proposals in their Cabinet. We, too, were discussing the Resolutions of my right hon, friend in Parliament. And Lord Clarendon was evi- dently instructed not to reply to Count Buol's propositions until you [the Government] had ascertained the sense of the House of Commons. The judgment of the House being taken, it left the Government no option but to continue the war. With these * Mr Disraeli. TELE VIENNA NEGOTIATIONS. 27 facts before us, I think it is a fair inference that the noble Lord (Lord J. Russell) does not stand alone in his opinions in the Government, and that Lord Clarendon is not the spokesman for the entire Cabinet. It was not until the temper of the House of Commons compelled you to renounce the ambiguity of your language and uncertainty of your conduct that these Austrian proposals were rejected. . Sir, the noble Lord the Member for the City of London has misunderstood something I said upon a former Occasion in regard to the Austrian alliance. On that occasion I made a distinction between the alliance of Austria and the friendship of Austria. I said that I was desirous of the friendship of Austria, but that I did not care for her alliance. At this moment I would really rather be without it. In the first instance, I believe that such an alliance would necessarily produce a Schism between England and France. Even now, Austria, as a mediator, makes a pro- posal of peace, which France rejects and which induces you to hesitate—the mere entertaining of which almost broke up the Government. Now, suppose the same thing to occur again when Austria becomes our ally, with power to raise her voice in the general counsels of the united nations. Suppose, then, that Erance accepts this Austrian proposal. Suppose that the Eng- lish people will not allow the British Government to accept it. You would, under such circumstances, fulfil the prediction of the hon. Member for the West Riding of Yorkshire (Mr Cobden). You would stand alone in the struggle, with exhausted finances, and the remnant of disheartened armies. Surely some gain would come of this war if we could convince the world that Eng- land and France united in arms are quite sufficient to check any aggression on the dominion of her neighbours on the part of Russia. But if you choose to lay down the doctrine that France and England are not sufficient without the aid of Austria;-if you must, as the noble Lord says, bring all the other European com- binations to back the two Western Powers, your successes, if you succeed to the utmost, will not diminish the moral power of Russia; her very concessions will become glorious to her, and she can say to Turkey, Say to the East, say to the existing world 28 THE VIENNA NEGOTIATIONS. and to future ages, “France and England united have shown themselves no match for me, and it required all the combined armaments of reluctant Europe to restrain my ambition within the boundaries of my lawful realm. Such a combination cannot readily occur again; the combination is momentary, my ambition is eternal.” I would simply repeat what I said on a former occasion. I value the friendship of Austria. I would even be indulgent to her weakness. I would not entrap her into reluc- tant engagements. I would not take a single step to bring about an alliance with her, unless she felt that she could embark in it with a hearty sense of her own interests. If, however, you desire to have Austria neither your ally nor your friend, surely you could not take a better course to effect that object than to allow a Member of the Cabinet to promise her his support of her definite proposal for peace, and afterwards to join with his col- leagues that the proposal should be rejected. One thing, however, is clear; we cannot afford the ridicule of Europe consequent upon these constant Cabinet Scandals—we cannot allow the great name of England to be thus frittered away. Let us have peace even upon Austrian terms, and let us hope that the energies of our commerce may atone for the fail- ure of our arms; or let the Ministers and the people join with One heart and One Soul to carry on this war to a speedy and tri- umphant end, by the earnestness of their purpose and the worthiness of their preparations. Are you so united ? Is Lord Clarendon the spokesman of the entire Cabinet 2 I should like to hear the expression of opinion on the part of other Members of the Cabinet besides the noble Wiscount. There are Gentle- men in the Government who have not as yet expressed their opinion upon the nature of the war or the propositions for peace. What are the opinions of the Chancellor of the Exchequer 3 What are the opinions of the First Lord of the Admiralty 2 Are all the Members of the Government united upon this subject 2 Again I ask, is Lord Clarendon the spokesman of a united Cabinet 2 (“Hear, hear !”) I am glad if it be so; but you told us the same thing in the month of May last, when we now know that the noble Lord the Member for London was dividing your THE VIENNA. NEGOTIATIONS. 29 counsels, and it is my impression, and that of the country, that the noble Lord did not stand alone in those opinions. I am, however, willing to give you all the benefit of the doubt. The noble Lord's retirement from office has so far effected my object, that if it has not cancelled what I presume to call his errors, it has at least prevented for a time any injury which those errors would inflict on the public service. There is something, how- ever, which I think ought to be more lasting than any peace, and more glorious than any war—I mean, that high standard of public integrity, without which nations may rot, though they have no enemies, and with which all enemies may be defied. On Friday week that standard was debased to the ignoble reasons by which expediency seeks to justify dissimulation, You, the representatives of the people—I desire not to make it the tri- umph of a party—be it the triumph of the House of Commons —you have once more raised that standard to its old English level; and in now, asking your leave to withdraw my Motion, I congratulate you on having so successfully asserted that vital element of all free Governments which is lost the moment you divorce from the national counsels the recognition of that public virtue which demands that our actions shall not, with a cynical audacity, give the lie to our convictions. All the objects we have had in view have been thus effected, except the mere party object of replacing one Government by another. But what Eng- lishman, at such a crisis, would suffer that object to be para- mount in his thoughts 7 I am willing that the Government should not be removed, but I warn them that they will remain under the vigilant surveillance of public opinion; and it is yet to be seen whether the sacrifice of a man who had been trusted by his country and revered even by his opponents, until in an evil hour, when on two previous occasions he might have retired from office with honour, you induced him to consult your tem- porary interests rather than the dignity of his own imperishable name—it remains to be seen whether that sacrifice has really removed the only obstacle to the earnestness of your purposes and the unity of your counsels. XXII. A S P E E O H DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE lST OF MAY 1856. ON Monday, the 28th of April 1856, the Member for Enniskillen, Mr James Whiteside, moved in the House of Commons a resolution to the effect— “That, while this House feels it to be its duty to express its admiration of the gallantry of the Turkish soldiery and of the devotion of the British officers at the siege of Kars, it feels it to be equally a duty to express its conviction that the capitulation of that fortress and the surrender of the army which defended it, thereby endangering the safety of the Asiatic provinces of Turkey, were in a great measure owing to the want of foresight and energy on the part of Her Majesty's Administration.” A discussion thereupon arose which lasted three nights, the member for Dorsetshire, Mr Henry Ker Seymer, on the second evening, moving as an amendment— “That it is not expedient to offer any judgment as to the causes and the consequences of the capitulation of the fortress until the House has an op- portunity of considering the terms of the treaty of peace and the Protocols of the Conferences recently held at Paris.” Upon a division, the amendment was rejected by 451 votes to 52, the original motion being lost afterwards by 303 votes to 176. The second adjournment of the debate having been moved by the member for Hert- fordshire, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, upon the opening of the third might's discussion, the following speech was delivered. SIR.—After the discussion which has taken place on the Orders of the Day, I feel it becomes me to assure the House, and more especially those hon. Gentlemen to whom my motion for the THE CAPITULATION OF KARS. 31 adjournment of the debate from Tuesday last has occasioned in- convenience, how wholly unconscious I was at the time that the motion would have been opposed by the noble Wiscount (Vis- count Palmerston). I had no personal wish to gratify in moving the adjournment; it was not my intention then, nor is it now, to address the House at any great length; I was urged to make that motion by several hon. Gentlemen whose wish to prolong the discussion was entitled to respect. I looked to the opposite benches; I saw that many of the Members most accustomed to adorn our debates had not yet spoken, though they had been pointedly appealed to. I looked to the Treasury bench; only one Cabinet Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had ad- dressed us, and that at an hour when the House was so empty that few indeed had been able to profit by his elaborate defence of the Government, or the interesting memoir of the Turkish loan by which that accomplished historical critic relieved the dreary chronicle of the decline and fall of Kars. At half-past twelve o'clock I had, therefore, considered that the adjournment had become a matter of course, and I never was more surprised and vexed than when I found that a second time in my life— and this time, at least, innocently—I had occasioned to the noble Wiscount a degree of angry excitement, which, whether genuine or simulated, overcame for the moment his ordinary urbanity and polish. Sir, the best amends I can make for my unintentional offences is to condense as much as possible what I have to say, and deal as little as I can with familiar extracts from this book. Indeed, I would chiefly confine myself to what I hope will be fair replies to the arguments of hon. Gentlemen opposite. Sir, the hon. Gentleman the Member for Aylesbury (Mr Layard), who com- menced by saying that he could make a much better defence for the Government than they had made for themselves, appeared to rest much of that defence upon an exaggerated estimate of the charge which was brought against them. He said—“He thought they had committed serious mistakes, but that it was unfair to assert that the fall of Kars was solely attribut- able to the want of foresight and energy on the part of the 32 THE CAPITULATION OF KATS. British Government alone. That proposition entirely passed over the French Government, which, after all, might have had some share of responsibility for that event.” Sir, this Re- solution does not exclusively ascribe the fall of Kars to the Inglish Government. If it did, fair is fair; and the Resolu- tion would not have my vote. But the question is, Whether, among other causes, the want of energy and foresight on their part did not, in great measure, contribute to that disaster? The hon. Gentleman speaks of France. I may touch upon that point later. But here, in the meanwhile, is a Correspondence between an English Government and an English Ambassador as to the due support to be given to an English Commissioner from the date of September 1854, to the date, we will say, of June 1855; and in all this France is not a consulting party. This Commis- sioner had been sent to Asia not only to report on the state of disorganisation in which our Government already knew that the Turkish army had long been, but to use all means at his disposal to ameliorate its condition; and this very book is published to show that the English Government and the English Ambassador between them failed to place at his disposal any adequate means whatsoever. That fact, whether or not the fault entirely rests with the Turkish Administration, the Government takes the greatest pains to establish from January 11, 1855, when Lord Clarendon writes to Lord Stratford, “that little has been sent to Rars, with the exception of some ball cartridges,” to the date of the fall of Kars, November 21 (four days before the capitulation), when Lord Clarendon writes the letter which provokes so severe a comment from my hon. and learned friend the Member for Enniskillen (Mr Whiteside)—“That that neglected garrison will at least have the satisfaction of knowing that their sufferings troubled the sleep and repose of the Turkish Ministers, who, in default of all ordinary measures of relief, never ceased to pray for their safety and success.” And now, Sir, the question is, Whether there were not other Ministers besides the Turkish whose repose that neglected garrison might have troubled, and whom the default of all ordinary measures of relief might have inspired, not only with the piety THE CAPITULATION OF KARS. 33 of prayer, but the humility of repentance? The hon, gentleman the Member for Aylesbury referred to the despatches of Lord Clarendon with great praise; and my hon. and learned friend the Attorney-General, as well as the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr J. G. Phillimore) seemed to think those despatches a suf- ficient proof of the energy and foresight of the Government. Nay, the Attorney-General said, what more could they do? Sir, in much of the praise bestowed on these despatches I heartily concur. I think many of them excellent. I will go further and say that if despatches alone could have Saved Kars, Lord Clarendon would have saved it. But if one thing should be more clear than another to the excellent understanding of those hon. gentlemen, it is that despatches alone and letter-writing, of whatever kind, were wholly insufficient for the purpose, and that the inventive genius of the English Government should have devised some other mode for the relief of Kars and the security of Asia. It is perfectly true that Lord Clarendon faith- fully reports to Lord Stratford, General Williams's complaints. He wants cavalry, he wants artillerymen, he wants reinforce- ments, ammunition, provisions—above all, he wants money; and Lord Stratford, with all his faults, very fully explains that for all these purposes the state of the Sultan's revenue is wholly inadequate ; and very lucidly shows that corruption and pecula- tion, having been the habit for generations of an Eastern Govern- ment, cannot be reformed in a day, no matter how sincerely the Porte may desire it—cannot be reformed in time for you to rely on that reformation for the safety and defence of Kars. Lay what blame you will on the inherent vices of the Turkish administration, still one fact comes clear from this corre- spondence, and that fact the Chancellor of the Exchequer has failed to grapple with. It is said, as to reinforcements in the spring, you could not withdraw men from the Crimea. Granted. But if men you had not, money you had ; and a moderate sum of English money placed at General Williams's absolute disposal would, in spite of all the abuses of Oriental lethargy and cor- ruption, have thrown into Kars ammunition and provisions suf- ficient to defy and outlast the Russian blockade. For how did WOL. II, C 34 THE CAPITULATION OF KARS. Rars fall at last 2 Not for want of men; it had at the time of the capitulation a much larger proportional force than the be- sieging army. Every one knows that Kars was conquered by famine. We are told that the Russian general would have raised the siege when Omar Pasha entered Georgia, if he had not learnt from an Armenian spy that there were not more than a fortnight's provisions in the garrison. But while England was cheerfully taxing herself to the utmost to save his dominions to the Sultan, not a shilling of her money goes to the aid of the English genºpal who is holding the fortress on which those do- minions and—not indeed in the opinion of the hon. and learned Member for Kilkenny (Mr Serjeant Shee) but of Omar Pasha— the safety of the Turkish capital itself may depend. For, says Colonel Simmons in a despatch to General Simpson, July 12, “The Government inform Omar Pasha if Kars should fall there is no force to prevent the Russians marching directly upon Constantinople,” and Omar Pasha credits that information. Surely the Chancellor of the Exchequer might have been a little more in the confidence of the Secretary of State for War, and he would then have told us with that unvarnished severity of candour with which he does sometimes tell us very disagreeable truths: “I am about to raise several millions for the vigorous prosecution of the war; by-and-by there may be a Turkish loan to consider, but I can tell you, for your comfort in the mean- while, that not one sixpence of your money will go to General Williams in defence of the great key of Asia Minor; which, in- deed,” says the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with an easy con- fidence I should not have expected from So grave an intellect, “if lost, the easiest military operation would be all that was needed to recapture.” Permit me to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, not as a military but as a financial authority, whether it would not have been much cheaper to save Kars than to re- capture it? But, if there be some valid reasons, which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has wholly failed to show, why you could not place English money directly at the disposal of your English Commissioner and General, what is the strange reason set up by the right hon. gentleman against application THE CAPITULATION OF KARS. 35 to Parliament for a grant expressly for the relief of Kars? Why, that the amount would have been contemptible. Apply to Parliament for £100,000 or £200,000 ! A Chancellor of the Exchequer could not so degrade his financial dignity. There was something respectable in the lavish subsidies we granted to foreign nations in the French war, but to come to Parliament for £100,000 or £200,000 was below the dignity of a Chancellor of the Exchequer. Sir, the answer is obvious. It is not the sum given, it is the use to which it is to be applied, that it becomes a statesman to consider. And if Dr Sandwith is right in saying that, had General Williams had absolute control (or for “means of control” we must say plainly “funds”) in the special question of the commissariat, Kars would have been saved—if that be true, the simple question for the House would have been, what sum would suffice for that purpose? “But,” said the Chancellor of the Exchequer, “we must have had the Same securities for that grant as for the larger loan, and been subject to the same delays.” No ; if you had been freed from the joint guarantee of France, and in earnest for the relief of Rars, the country would have forgiven you if you had made the grant as an advance in anticipation of any loan afterwards required, and all tedious securities for the moment might have been dispensed with or deferred. Where there's a will there's a way. But if you would neither give the money direct to General Williams nor apply for a special grant for the pro- visioning and relief of Kars, why, when you learnt, in 1854, that the Turkish revenues were so inadequate, could you not have come to the House with that or some similar proposition in the spring, and not deferred it to creep through the Legis- lature in August, when its application could be no longer of the slightest assistance to that garrison ? Sir, the Attorney-General said, in his terse and argumentative speech, that a reproach on that score could not well come from those who had opposed the Turkish loan in July. That may be a good House of Commons argument, but it is not an argument to common-sense. Sir, I was not in the House at the time of that debate. I had paired off for the rest of the session. If I had been present I should 36 THE CAPITULATION OF KARS. have voted for the loan; but on referring to the debate, I find that the objections made were not against the principle here at stake—the relief of Kars—but to the joint guarantee with France; and I appeal at once to the candour of the noble Wis- count (Viscount Palmerston), and I ask him whether, if, in the spring, the Government had come to this House and said frankly, upon the information they possessed, but of which this House was wholly ignorant, that, without such pecuniary aid to Turkey, Rars might be lost, and with that loss the honour of the British name be tarnished and Constantinople left defenceless—I ask him, I say, whether the conduct of gentlemen on this side the House in the prosecution of the war—nay, even the conduct of the warmest advocates for peace—has been such as to lead him to suppose that any mere financial objections, though they might have been temperately stated, would ever have been urged by us to a hostile division? By one of these modes— either by sending money directly to the Commission, or by a grant made expressly for the relief of Kars, or even by a Turkish loan, with the direct understanding that a portion of it should go, under the direction of the British Government, to the relief of Kars—by one or other of these means Kars might have been easily supplied with arms and provisions. But on the 3d of August, when Lord Panmure is urging the adoption of the Turkish loan on the House of Lords, and Lord Ellenborough is pointedly calling your attention to the distressed state of Kars and the neglect of the war in Asia, well may my learned friend the Member for Enniskillen (Mr Whiteside) remind you of Lord Panmure's reply, “that Turkey in that quarter is well able to maintain herself.” And Lord Panmure says this in the teeth of these despatches, published to show how utterly helpless in that quarter Turkey alone then was—in the teeth of Lord Clarendon's letter to Lord Cowley on the very same day, the 3d of August, in which Lord Clarendon says, “It is clear, without assistance the whole Turkish force in Asia must be destroyed or captured,”—and when it was Lord Panmure, who, in the previous month, the 16th of July, had rejected the proposals of Turkey to defend herself, and without having preconcerted any means of THE CAPITULATION OF KARS. 37 his own by which Asia might be saved. And the hon. gentle- man the Member for Aylesbury, who rarely speaks without Some—doubtless just, but—complimentary allusion to his own peculiar frankness and honesty, which, indeed, I never before questioned, which I will not question now, eulogised that asser- tion because it is untrue, and thinks a British Minister justified in deceiving Parliament and the country in order to impose upon the Russian general a hollow brag, which, in the month of August, when that general was blockading Kars, could not have deceived him for a moment. Nay, the hon. gentleman thinks that Lord Panmure did not go far enough. “If I,” said he, “had been in Lord Panmure's situation, and was asked in August what was the state of the army in Asia, I should have certainly Said it was immensely strong, and supplied with provisions, arms, everything, for ten months.” Sir, the hon. gentleman has compared himself, with Homeric simplicity, to a dog upon a race-course, shouted at by both parties and sometimes whistled to within the ropes. There is a familiar saying applicable to those faithful animals, “Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better.” On this side the course we would always whistle to Holdfast; we must leave it to the other side of the course to find more enticing allurements for Brag. Well, Sir, let me now touch upon a point which, though it did not affect the fall of Kars, still shows that spirit and predisposi- tion on the part of Lord Panmure to which I think the fall of Kars may be in a great measure ascribed. No sooner does our Commissioner arrive in Anatolia, than he tells you that from 10,000 to 12,000 men had perished in the hospitals in the pre- vious winter, and asks for a few English surgeons. The Duke of Newcastle, on whose humanity, at least, there never rested a stain, promptly replies to that appeal on the 6th of November, and directs inquiry whether the Turkish Government will con- sent to place the hospitals at Kars and Erzeroum under the superintendence of three or four English or French army surgeons. But when, that complaint not being redressed, Lord Clarendon, with humanity equal to the Duke of Newcastle's, encloses, through Lord Wodehouse to Mr Peel, April 16, 1855, 38 THE CAPITULATION OF KARS. a despatch from General Williams and a medical report from Dr Sandwith to Lord Panmure, and begs to suggest to his lord- ship whether it would not be expedient to send out some surgeons to the Turkish army; what is Lord Panmure's reply, through Colonel Mundy, April 21—an ominous date, almost simultaneous with Lord Panmure's frigid despatch of April 12, in which he had met the request for reinforcements by a languid recommendation to the Porte “to pay attention to these require- ments whenever the more pressing need of the Ottoman troops elsewhere shall have ceased”? That was was his reply about troops. What his reply about surgeons 2 That, “in supplying the army under Omar Pasha, and the Turkish Contingent, with a medical staff, he does not see much prospect of being enabled to send medical aid to the province of Anatolia.” True, he graciously adds, “that he will endeavour to do so to a limited extent, as soon as he has provided for the other two Services.” Yes, as soon as Russian generals Save him the trouble, and Bussian surgeons are dressing the wounds of the men to whom Bussian magnanimity is kinder than English care Talk of foresight ! When you sent General Williams to ameliorate the condition of the Turkish army, the necessity of European medical aid was the first requisite to foresee.' Talk of energy | When that medical aid was imperatively required, and again urgently pressed, why, an advertisement in the ‘Times, offering good remuneration to young surgeons, would have brought you ap- plications by the hundred. At that very time, as a Member of Parliament, I was beset with requests from young medical students to obtain them employment in the Crimea. You Say that the Turkish Government is alone to blame for not attending to the requests of your Commissioner; and here, when your Com- missioner sends a request direct to you, backed by the Foreign Minister to the Secretary for War, for what is entirely under his own control, the laziest Pasha in all Asia could not have treated that request with more Supreme indifference. And while you are laying the whole blame on the Government of the Porte, do not forget that that Turkish Administration, with all its oriental languor and institutional defects, had achieved vast TEIE CAPITULATION OF KARS. ** 39 things without the mighty aid you sent to its defence in Asia. When it stood alone, before you came to denounce its deficiencies without supplying them by adequate resources of your own— when no jealousies of the foreign Christian obstructed its action and divided its responsibilities—it coped gallantly with the might of Russia. What is your aid, and what its result 2 “Oh,” says the Attorney-General, “we took 20,000 Turkish soldiers into Bnglish pay.” Yes, and when those soldiers are wanted for the defence of Kars they cannot budge a step. In the spring, general Williams writes that if he is to have no aid from the Allies he shall require in all 20,000 Turkish soldiers for rein- forcement. You have taken these 20,000 Turkish soldiers to yourself—that is the reason why they cannot be sent to Kars. This is your aid, and this is its result. And now there is an assertion made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer which com- pels me to enforce on you the practical mischief that was effected by the doubtful position and equivocal authority assigned to General Williams — nominally a commissioner, in reality a general; nominally under the orders of the Turkish commander, but the Turkish commander instructed by your ambassador to defer to the advice of General Williams. Well may Omar Pasha place in that luminous memorandum, page 272, of this book, among the foremost causes of the misfortunes that had befallen the army in Asia, that its general was not invested with full powers. “But,” says the Chancellor of the Exchequer—and the Attorney-General has said it before him—“the Government cannot be blamed because they did not furnish General Williams with an authority that could only emanate from the Porte.” Certainly not; but you are to blame if you left his position doubtful in the eyes of English officials. I don't excuse Lord Stratford for neglect in correspondence; I don’t accept the de- fence set up for him; but enough has been said on that score by others, and it is not the general practice of this House, nor the true principle of the constitution, to Saddle all this blame on the absent diplomatist—not here to defend himself—when we have before us the Government who, constantly grumbling at his ill success, still maintain him in his post. Nor will I even 40 TEIE CAPITULATION OF KARS. blame them for doing so. All I say is, that those who heap all the blame on the agent do not understand the English constitu- tion if they acquit the employer. But I must again remind you, since it has not been answered, that Lord Stratford, stung by the complaints of General Williams, writes to you on February 19th, 1855: “It is de- sirable that I should be made acquainted with the extent of General Williams's powers on the spot, with the degree to which he is independent of the Commander-in-Chief, how far it is thought expedient by her Majesty's Government that I shall insist upon obedience to his demands without reference to any doubts entertained of their expediency either by the Porte or by me.” To these questions, which gave you so good an occasion to strengthen General Williams by defining and enforcing the authority of one who had proved so worthy of his charge, no answer whatever appears in this book. The Attorney-General says, that after your rebuke there was no lack of punctuality in correspondence on the part of Lord Stratford; that is not the case; so little is he affected by the rebuke that, so late as May 1st, 1855, General Williams writes to Lord Stratford: “Several weeks ago I addressed your lordship on the necessity of my having authority direct from Constantinople to take an active part and have a decisive voice in the purchase of provisions for this army; but although Lord Panmure has expressed his senti- ments on this vital point, I have not received a line in allusion to it from your Excellency.” These applications are on the subject of provisions;–they receive no answer, and it is for want of provisions that Kars falls in November. You may say that the energy of General Williams surmounted the neglect of the ambassador, and that by his individual exertions he gets provisions enough into Kars to last for four months; but you are informed by his despatches that unless relief be sent before then, the perspective of Kars must end in the vanishing point of starvation. And this brings us to the camp at the Crimea, and shows that it was your omis- sion more stringently to enforce the authority of General THE CAPITULATION OF KARS. 41 Williams, which appears to have been yet more injurious to his Weight in the camp of the Crimea than in the Ottoman Porte— that it proved fatal to the rescue of Kars at the very moment when the fate of that garrison was the most imminent ; for when, on July 15, Omar Pasha addresses the allied generals and admirals for the adoption of his plan of relieving Kars by an army of diversion, his note is written in consequence of infor- mation contained in a despatch from General Williams to Lord Raglan, dated Kars, June 23; but the allied generals refuse to give any opinion, on the ground that they “have no information from their respective ambassadors at the Porte to lead them to Suppose that the affairs of Asia are in the precarious state in which Omar Pasha, from the information he had received from his Government, believed them to be.” Yet Omar Pasha founds his representations on the despatch of your own Commissioner to your own General-in-Chief; and so little weight have you given, in your headquarters in the Crimea, to the hero who is defending Asia, that even an opinion is delayed upon the alleged absence of that information which your ambassador had not given—which your Commissioner had given—and the only man who attended to it is the General of the Porte, which you accuse of indifference to the fate of Asia and disrespect to the representations of your Commissioner | And it is you who sneer at the apathy and sloth of the Government of the Porte Why, when at last, in the month of June, it is clear that there must be some plan to Succour and reinforce the garrison of Kars, does that plan first proceed from your energy and foresight? Do you send to this lazy Divan from your European councils of war a profound premeditated Scheme, with all its preparations complete? No; it is from the Porte and its generals that the first scheme emanates, and it finds you prepared with nothing but objections. Just as you let the war drift to the Crimea, so you had let it dribble into Armenia. Unwarned by the past calamities, exactly on the same principle which allowed you to land in the Crimea without tents, without knapsacks, without winter provisions, without an army of reserve, you throw Gene- ral Williams into Kars—you leave him to the mercy of the 42 THE CAPITULATION OF KARS. corrupt system, the vices of which you know beforehand—you provide no requisite by which the faults of that system are to be counteracted; and when an army is proposed to be sent to his aid, you are not even furnished with a strategy or the con- ception of one. For if you would refer to your first plan, by Trebizond, which you hastily proposed, it is clear that that plan was never premeditated, since you were not aware of any of the objections which would be made against it. Why was General Williams at Kars? To defend it from the Russians. Early in the spring of 1855, preparations for a Russian army had com- menced at Gumri. Did it ask the vision of a prophet to know that that army would besiege Kars, that, if besieged, an army of relief or diversion would be required ? Did you once think beforehand what you would do in such a contingency 2 had you one scheme for the raising, for the transport, for the move- ment of such an army 2 Or did you mean to leave it entirely to the Porte to effect all these operations? If so, you had no right to obstruct the operations which the Porte advised. There seems to me no excuse for the want of some premeditated scheme of your own. You had Omar Pasha in your own camp. He was surely as sincere as you for the defence of Asia. You might have communicated with him from the first in the spring of 1855; discussed beforehand and settled all the objections which paralysed you at the last ; arranged some plan for a re- lieving army—whether under him, if he could be relieved from Sebastopol, or some other general if he could not—some plan to be adopted if Sebastopol was taken, another if it was not ; and when you allege as an excuse for procrastination in July and August the necessity of consulting France and obtaining her consent, that is no excuse if in the month of April or May you could have consulted with France on some contingent scheme for a relieving army, to be modified according to varying circum- stances, but equally to be acted upon whenever the time arrived, and so prevented all that scramble and bewilderment of cross purposes which close this melancholy record with one medley of hopeless confusion and inevitable disaster. But no; when the Russians are before Kars you seem as much astounded as if THE CAPITULATION OF KARS. 43 they had dropped from the moon. Reinforcements, relieving armies, are then really necessary; where are they to come from, where are they to go 7 Shall they proceed to Trebizond 2 shall they go by Redout-Kaleh Z shall General Vivian take his con- tingent 2 how shall Omar Pasha make up the force drawn from the Crimea 2 I do not pretend to say what plan you ought to have adopted—that is not my province. I have my ideas, like others; but it is not for me, in an assembly which boasts of British officers so distinguished—of one so pre-eminent, whom I now see before me (General Sir De L. Evans)—to point out or criticise a strategy. All I say is, that some strategy or another should have been devised in time, and its necessity not burst upon you by Surprise, first communicated to you by a perplexed ambassador, to whom you had never given a hint before as to what plan you would prefer, and finding you without an original conception of your own. A great military authority has said that “a good general may be beaten, but can never be sur- prised.” Surely the same thing should be said of a Minister for War. He should have a choice of plans ready for any probable emergency, but the one or the other, adopted by previous con- cert with his generals and allies, for prompt action the moment prompt action is suddenly called for. Then we come to the natural consequence of this preliminary, effete, and impotent correspondence—that indescribable mixture of hurry and torpor, of contradictory orders to and fro, which, in the month of July, prepares us for the catastrophe of Novem- ber. Dr Sandwith tells us that the meaning of Bashi-Bazouks in English is “spoiled heads.” In the month of July we had plenty of Bashi-Bazouks in our councils of war. And if ever that respectable force should want for their war department a spoiled head in perfection, I think we could furnish them with some very eligible candidates. But now, in that month of July, out of this cloud of despatches, emerges the awful form of our Minister for War. All is breathless with expectation. Can Rars be saved? It is the fifth act of the tragedy, and our Deus ea, machiná descends. Only there is this difference between him and the Dews ea machiná of the ancient stage; when the god, 44 THE CAPITULATION OF KARS. there, descended from his cloud, it was to solve the difficulties and complete the action; when our Deus ea machind descends, it is to increase the perplexities and obstruct the plot. The moment to stir has arrived—the only question is, how to stir, and whom to stir 2—and Lord Panmure takes that brilliant occasion to deliver his oracular essay upon the virtue of caution. “Do not risk,” he exclaims, “the honour of the British name and your own reputation by undertaking military operations for which proper bases have not been laid, communications opened, trans- ports provided, and supplies arranged.” Why, good heavens, Sir, certainly not. But if all these things were wanting to save Rars, secure the frontier of Asia, and the road to the Turkish capital, in July 1855, after all the warnings these repeated despatches contained—why on earth have we had a Minister for War 2 If you are so careful of the honour of the British name, why commit that name to the defence of Kars in Sep- tember 1854, and in July 1855 not be prepared with any means to preserve it ! For, don’t let the Chancellor of the Exchequer flatter himself that English honour was in no way concerned in the fall of Kars. The eyes' of England and of Europe had already turned to the grand image of that English soldier who was there, with his three or four dauntless countrymen, embody- ing and supporting the renown of his whole nation. General Williams and Kars could no longer be divided. That English- man was Kars, and Kars was that Englishman—and both together, if saved by your energy and foresight, would have closed this war with a glory, not only to English valour, but your English councils, which would have covered all your blots at Sebastopol. “Organisation,” says Lord Panmure, “is as necessary to any army as endurance and valour.” Nothing was ever better said. General Williams had the endurance and the valour for the defence of Kars—what has Lord Panmure to say as to the organisation for its relief? In Dr Sandwith's graphic account of the Russian army before Kars—the soldiers in warm huts with fireplaces, the officers with glazed windows, the ad- mirable wellbeing of the enemy we have been taught to look down upon as comparative barbarians—who could help con- THE CAPITULATION OF KARS. 45 trasting those sleek, carefully-provided-for, thriving soldiers, with the famished spectres whom our Government, with all the wealth of England at their disposal, and dropping so lavishly elsewhere from their spendthrift fingers, had left for fifteen months to struggle and to starve—to whose wounds our Secre- tary for War could give slight hope of medical aid—for whose succour he could devise no plan of relief, until he says, “It is too late even for regret "–until the Russian general (honour to his name ) is shedding tears of generous sympathy for his ill- used and deserted foe—until the population of Kars are crowding round to kiss the departing stirrup of the man who had implored you not to forget him and “the remnant of his army"—until General Williams says, “I am a prisoner,” and ought to have added, “and Lord Panmure is the British Minister for War” 2 But it is said that the affair is over—the evil irremediable. The affair is not over. Discredit and its consequences remain. The Chancellor of the Exchequer says that the fate of Kars did not influence the articles of peace. Possibly. But will you deny that if ever again—which Heaven forbid!—we are at war with Russia for the defence of Turkey, that war will come from the Asiatic frontier, in which the fall of Kars has permitted Pussia to retain the menace of her forts and garrisons? But are we to hold the doctrine that because the offence is past the offender is to go free ? That is not the line of argument our Government adopts towards the Porte. Their correspondence closes with vehement demands that the Porte should dismiss Selim Pasha from his office—and Selim Pasha is dismissed. Why? The Porte might Say, “Kars has already fallen; the affair is over ; the evil irremediable !” What is the fault of Selim Pasha 2 Procrastination. But if procrastination is to be punished by loss of office, have we no Pashas of our own whose dismissal the Porte in turn might vehemently demand 2 The Attorney-General asks, “Make your charges distinct,” turns to the despatches, and says triumphantly, “What more could we do?” One gentleman says all the fault lies with Turkey, another with Our ambassador; a third hints at the generals and Government of France. Faults in all these quarters no doubt 46 THE CAPITULATION OF KARS. there may be. But still, when General Williams applies to you for what it is in your power to give, nothing is done. He asks, or implies that he asks, three things: first, money; Second, medical aid; third, that you will enforce and extend his autho- rity as much as you can. You don't send the money; you don’t send the medical aid; you decline to extend his authority with your own ambassador when the ambassador invites you to do it—and you so little enforce that authority in the Crimea, that your generals refuse to receive his statements as accredited authority. A fourth thing he asks is assistance from the Allies in case Kars should be invested. Here, I grant, France may have thrown some obstacle and delay in the way; but you have failed to show that you consulted France long beforehand—that you asked simply, “Suppose a force, whether European or Turkish, should be required for the relief of Kars, what shall we do 2 don’t let us be left entirely to the chapter of accidents at the close.” Therefore, when it is asked what more could we have done, I rather ask, what less could you do? Don't turn to the despatches for an answer. I grant that you could not write better. I don't see how you could well act worse. Just as I think this resolution is, there may be a majority against it. But I think I read the English hearts of some of those by whom the majority may be composed. Many, no doubt, will vote with you from the conviction that there is no case against you; but many will also vote with you from the loyal affection of party; many from the reasons so touchingly urged by the Attorney-General, that, having closed the war with a peace which has excited so popular an enthusiasm, you have been enabled to invite both Houses of Parliament to a naval exhibition, in which your administrative energy and foresight have left so grateful a recollection on the minds of your applaud- ing guests; many from a personal admiration for the noble Wiscount—in which admiration I, too, humbly claim to have a share; many to keep in the Government, and keep out the Opposition. But I do not think a majority will be tantamount to a verdict of acquittal. Ask, in a whisper, any friend who goes out with you into that lobby—“Don’t you think, as a THE CAPITULATION OF KARS. 47 Government, we showed great foresight, great energy, in the defence and relief of Kars?” I think the chances are, your friend may reply in the same cautious whisper, “If that be your energy and foresight, for Heaven's sake, try in future to imitate Lord Chatham's improvidence and sloth.” I would fain separate individuals from the Government. I can do justice to the gal- lant nature of the noble Wiscount. I can give credit to Lord Clarendon's evidently deep but helpless sympathy for his glo- rious correspondent. His approving letters must have been gleams of sunshine to that great soldier in his hour of trial and desolation. But, thanks to other agencies in the war councils of the Government, if those letters come to cheer and to encour- age, they come also to Sadden and to doom—they come to the defender of Kars as the false apparitions came to Macbeth— come to glad “his eyes and grieve his heart— Come like shadows, so depart l” Other causes conspired to the fall of Kars. Give to the Govern- ment the full credit for them. But tell me in turn, do you not honestly think among the main causes is the want of zeal and comprehension, of energy and foresight, on the part of your Minister for War Z Sir, in all Cabinets there must be a division of labour; but since in none there can be a division of responsi- bility, whatever my respect for individuals, I think the charge against you as a Government has not been rebutted. In almost every letter from General Williams he warns you of evils and dangers; in almost every letter from Lord Stratford he proves to you that against these evils and dangers no reliance is to be placed upon the Ottoman resources alone. On those resources do you continue to rely. Not a step do you take, not a concep- tion do you originate, not a strategy prepare, until you are overwhelmed by the logical consequences of your own improvi- dence and neglect ; and the stain of the fall of Kars will cling to your memory as a Government as long as history can turn to this book for the record of a fortitude which, in spite of your negligence and languor, still leaves us proud of the English Ilà Ille. XXIII. A s P E E CH DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 26TH OF FEBRUARY 1857. ON Thursday, the 26th of February 1857, the Member for the West Riding of Yorkshire, Mr Richard Cobden, moved in the House of Commons a resolution to the effect— “That this House has heard with concern of the conflicts which have occurred between the British and Chinese authorities in the Canton river ; and without expressing an opinion as to the extent to which the Government of China may have afforded this country cause of complaint respecting the non-fulfilment of the treaty of 1842, this House considers that the papers which have been laid upon the table fail to establish satisfactory grounds for the violent measures resorted to at Canton in the late affair of the Arrow ; and that a select Committee be appointed to inquire into the state of our commercial relations with China.” A discussion arose upon this which lasted four nights, a division being taken early in the morning of Tuesday, the 3d of May. The first part of the resolution having been previously withdrawn, the concluding portion of it was carried by 263 votes to 247—showing a net majority of 16 against the Government. During the first night of the debate the following speech, was delivered. SIR,-Although the right hon. gentleman has spoken with great earnestness, and although he has touched upon a great variety of subjects, I do not think he has succeeded in giving a very Satisfactory reply to the powerful arguments of the hon. Member for the West Riding; and if the House will vouchsafe me its THE WAR WITH CHINA. 49 indulgence, I think I may be able to show, without any tedious references to Parliamentary papers, how groundless is the posi- tion assumed by the right hon. gentleman. Let me first briefly state the nature of the question before us, and then show, from the wording of the resolution, how little it merits the condem- nation of the right hon. gentleman. The two main questions before us, out of which many others incidentally arise, are— first, was this vessel, the Arrow, bona fide a vessel belonging to the English nation, according to the plain meaning of the 17th Article of the Supplementary Treaty ? and next, if that was the case, were the circumstances attending the alleged outrage on the part of the Chinese authorities, such as to warrant the adoption of the consequent proceedings on the part of the British authorities? The 17th Article of the Supplementary Treaty contains regulations respecting certain small vessels belonging to the English nation. The hon. Member for the West Riding asks, very properly, “How can a vessel that is notoriously Chinese in every stage of its history—that is built, owned, manned, fought for, litigated for by Chinese, with nothing English about it except a mere lad of twenty years of age, who was hired by the Danish Consul as the nominal master—how can that be a vessel belonging to the English nation according to the plain meaning of the 17th Article?” The right hon. Secretary for the Colonies (Mr Labouchere) referred us to the practice we adopt in the Mediterranean. I will presently show the right hon, gentleman that the illustration does not apply. The only mode in which a Chinese vessel could become a vessel belonging to the English nation is by the colonial ordinance, and you might as well by a colonial ordinance attempt to turn a tea-tree into an Oak-tree. Your colonial Ordinances may bind your own subjects; but neither a colonial ordinance nor even an Act of Parliament can have the effect of altering the interna- tional law with regard to other nations whom such ordinance or Act of Parliament may concern. You refer to the Treaty of Nankin, you put your own construction upon its Articles; the Chinese have a right to refer to the date of that treaty. And if at the period when the treaty was concluded no class of vessels VOL. II. T) 50. - THE WAR WITH CHINA. similar to the Arrow did belong, or could by any possibility have belonged, to the English nation, the Chinese are not bound to allow you a right by subsequent internal regulations to ap- propriate to the English nation a certain class of ships which by build and ownership and crew essentially belonged to the Chinese nation; for a fundamental maxim in the construction of all treaties, which the noble lord at the head of the Government will not deny, is that it must be construed by the forms and usages prevalent at the time the treaty was drawn up and con- cluded. But, according to the words of the treaty and the usage in force at its date, no such vessels could by any possibility have belonged to the English nation. If the Chinese had asked you while that clause in the treaty was under discussion to define what you meant by a British vessel, you could only have referred them to our navigation laws. By our navigation laws, as they ex- isted at the time the treaty was made, every British vessel must have had a British subject for an owner, and her crew must also have been three-fourths British subjects. It was not until the year 1854, many years after that treaty was made, that by the Mer- chant Shipping Act you could have attempted to torture this Chinese vessel into an English one ; and how is it done then ? why, by destroying the vital principle of the Act itself, and granting to foreigners, not naturalised, the right of ownership which the Act confines to the subjects of the British Crown. I now come to the supposed parallel which the right hon. gentleman has found in the ownerships of vessels in the Medi- terranean. The difference between the two cases is this— there you do not take a vessel belonging to another sovereign, and you do here. I concede that by the Alien Act of 1847 you may grant naturalisation to every Chinese in Hong Rong. But then you cannot alter the operation of the law of nations in their behalf. You cannot, by the law of nations, give such naturalisation the force of a protection to such natives in their own country against the independent sovereign whose natural-born subjects they are. I ask the noble lord—I ask any hon, member—to tell me whether, if a foreigner gets letters of naturalisation or protection they will avail him in the country TEIE WAR WITH CHINA. e 51. of the independent sovereign to whom the naturalised subject has belonged. You may naturalise an Austrian, but you cannot give him a passport that will protect him in Austria against the Rmperor of Austria, unless Austria has first dematuralised him. I will suppose, then, that the naturalisation of these Chinese aliens had given them rights which would avail them anywhere except in the seas and the empire of China; but it could not. give them protection there unless China had denaturalised them or absolved them from their allegiance. This axiom belongs not to law only but to civilisation, and it is founded upon the most obvious principles of reason. For how can you protect the vessels and the subjects of an independent sovereign within his Own jurisdiction and domain, and make your laws and customs Supersede the laws and customs of the country to which the persons you protect owe an allegiance from which they have never been absolved? How, in a word, can you turn a Chinese vessel into a British vessel, and Chinese subjects into British Subjects, without usurping the Sovereign rights of the Emperor of China in his own dominions? The only pretext by which this lorcha could be said to be a British vessel is to be found in the 17th Article, which declares that every British vessel shall have a sailing letter or other act of registration, which she is to deliver up to the British Consul on arrival, and which is to be restored when she sails. It is contended that because this vessel had a sailing letter she was unequivocally British. But the article only refers to vessels that are bona fide British, and that would be considered British at the date of the treaty. It does not follow that every Chinese vessel which complies with your internal regulations is therefore a British vessel, in spite of the Chinese laws. According to the English law, the Arrow could not have been a British vessel at the time of the treaty; she could not have been so according to the law of nations at the date of the dispute; and she cannot be made English merely by doing something which vessels legally English are required to do. If at the time of signing the 17th Article of the Supple- mentary Treaty you had said to the Chinese, “We claim the right hereafter to sell all the privileges and protection of the 52 THE WAR WITH CHINA. British flag to vessels belonging to Chinese natives,” do you suppose the Chinese would have acceded to such a demand, or that England would have renewed the war for the monstrous privilege of selling the flag of England for fifty dollars? What was the reason for your claim alleged by the British agents to the authorities at Hong Kong in the preamble of this precious ordinance 2 Why, “That legal trading might be protected, and illegal trading prevented.” What has been the result 2. In two instances our flag has been used in protecting smuggling, and in the present instance it was used to protect a pirate, to the de- struction of legal trading by our cannon-balls and shells. To sum up, then—I say this vessel, belonging to Chinese subjects, manned by Chinese, and employed in Chinese waters, did not, at the date of the treaty, belong to the English nation. If you chose afterwards to call it so by a local ordinance, that might bind your own subjects, but would not acquire the force of international law, and would not bind the Chinese, if they had never agreed to it, which it was clear they never did. It is said by Wheaton, the most modern authority on international law, that where a nation alters its existing laws of trade and naviga- tion so as to affect another nation, it may require the Act of the internal Legislature of the nation so affected in order to procure the adoption and execution of such alterations; and he instances the well-known case of the commercial treaty of Utrecht, which the British Parliament refused to execute, though the treaty itself had been concluded by the negotiators. It follows from this, as clearly as one problem of Euclid follows from another, that if, after a treaty has been concluded, you, as one of the con- tracting parties, alter your existing law so as to affect the Chinese, the other contracting party, your alterations will be binding on your own subjects, but that it will require the legislative power of China to give those altered laws force and effectin that country. The whole argument lies in this. If you cannot by the 17th Article of the treaty call this a British vessel, then you cannot avail yourselves of the 9th Article, which says, that if any Chinese malefactor be on board a British vessel, and the Chinese authorities wish to arrest him, they shall not forcibly enter upon TEIE WAR WITH CHINA. 53 such British vessel, but shall make application to the British Consul. For that 9th Article applies to British merchantmen, and this is not a British merchantman but a Chinese vessel. I will, however, grant for a moment the right of this vessel to be considered an English vessel, and then I ask, was the act of the Chinese so inexcusable—was it so outrageous, so insulting to the dignity of this country, as to warrant the terrible revenge that we have inflicted? The right hon, gentleman the Secretary for the Colonies had said that the evidence in the matter is so Overwhelming in favour of the British authorities, that he won- dered any man could question the course which they have pur- sued. What is the evidence on this subject 2 Four persons, two British and two Chinese, have deposed that the British flag was flying at the time the lorcha was boarded, and that it was hauled down. What was the evidence brought before the Imperial Commissioner Yeh 2 He had not four witnesses, but more than seventy—the soldiers, the mandarins, and the crew, who are computed at the number of sixty, and the twelve sailors whom he took away. If we may suppose, as is natural, that he had received the report of all these persons, he has against our four witnesses seventy witnesses, when he states that the flag was not flying, and could not therefore have been hauled down. We are inclined to believe our own countrymen; that is natural. Yeh is inclined to believe his : is not that natural, also 2 And is it not the more excusable, because, as the hon. gentleman the Member for the West Riding has observed—and the state- ment has not been contradicted by the right hon, gentleman— it is the established custom of English vessels in those waters not to have the flag flying until the vessel is under way ? But, assuming that the flag was flying, according to the evidence of one of the Chinese, the mandarin who gave the orders for pull- ing down the flag said, “Why, this cannot be a foreign lorcha; there are no foreigners on board; haul down the flag.” Grant that the mandarin was wrong; but still, when he comes in search of a pirate on board a vessel that had been notoriously a pirate ship—which was known to be so to all the Chinese authorities—which was stated to have been employed in the 54 TEIE WAR WITH CHINA. disturbances between the imperialists and the insurgents—and when he does not find a single foreigner there, may he not ex- cusably believe that the flag was fraudulently hoisted? Observe, this is not merely a question of who was right and who was wrong, but whether the Chinese were so outrageously in the wrong as to justify the terrible punishment we have inflicted. Englishmen are not the Dracos of legislation. Every offence with us is not punishable by death. Are we mild philosophers in our domestic legislation, and ruthless exterminators in the enforcement of every questionable point of international law Ż It would be a monstrous inconsistency if, while we are mitigat- ing, and have for the last thirty years been mitigating, our criminal code, and dealing mildly with offenders who prey upon the very vitals of the State, we should wage a ruthless war—no, not a war, but a wholesale massacre—on our helpless customers at a remote corner of the globe. And what for ? Why, to maintain a trumpery ordinance which our own Board of Trade has admitted to be of “very questionable propriety,” and which is at direct variance with the Acts of our own Imperial Parlia- ment. It is a complaint against Commissioner Yeh that he will not apologise for the alleged insult offered to our flag. But if you ask Yeh to apologise—if you ask him to acknowledge that he believes the vessel to be Chinese and to belong to the English nation, you ask him to be a traitor to his sovereign and his country, and to admit that the representatives of a foreign sovereign can dictate laws to China. Instead, however, of making any such admission, Yeh holds to his statement that the Arrow is a Chinese vessel; and he hits the right nail on the head, and is strictly within the limits of international law, when he says so mildly to Sir John Bowring, with a view to prevent disputes in future, “I would be obliged to your Excellency if you would not give an English register to a Chinese ship.” I was surprised to hear the Colonial Secretary quote the language of Mr Consul Parkes as something that was remarkably decorous and proper from an official of his rank. Will the House permit me to read a few words from a communication addressed by Consul Parkes to Commissioner Yeh, not for the sake of its proper tone, but on THE WAR WITH CEIINA. 55 * account of its prevarication ? Mr Consul Parkes says, “I have seen clear and conclusive proof of the facts that your Excellency attempts to deny.” Attempts to deny . Where, Sir, in all Yeh’s correspondence shall we find a phrase so gratuitously in- Sulting as that ? It would have been quite as easy and more in conformity with diplomatic usage to say, “Your Excellency is misinformed.” Mr Consul Parkes informs Commissioner Yeh that he has seen clear and conclusive proof that the Arrow had an English ensign hoisted and an Englishman on board—facts, he adds, “ of which there can be no further doubt or question.” Here, Sir, there is more than prevarication—there is positive untruth; for, according to our own evidence, there was no Eng- lishman on board when the Chinese officials reached the vessel —the Englishman did not go on board till after the seizure: so here we have Consul Parkes deposing as to two facts being so clear and conclusive that there could be no doubt or question respecting them, while upon one of those “facts” he goes directly in the teeth of his own evidence. Is Commissioner Yeh So very unreasonable when he refuses to believe him as to the other fact 7 Lord Clarendon, with somewhat incautious haste, asserts that it was evidently an afterthought on the part of Yeh to Say that the Arrow was not a British ship. It is too much to ask Lord Clarendon to condescend to look into the papers concern- ing any case before him ; but if we had a Minister of less com- manding capacity who would descend to that drudgery, he would see that, so far from its being an afterthought, Yeh states in his first letter that the Arrow was not an English lorcha. Before the affair of the Arrow, in the case of the two Chinese smugglers whom we took under our protection, the Chinese authorities used exactly the same arguments—namely, that a Chinese vessel cannot be altered into an English vessel; and they not only said that, but acted upon it. The case of our officials is greatly aggravated, when we find Sir John Bowring deliberately stating that this vessel, for which we are committing such havoc of law, of Order, of property, and of life, is not legally entitled to our protection. Such is the statement made by Sir John Bowring to Mr Consul Parkes; and yet these 56 THE WAR WITH CHINA. officials not only continue to urge their claim upon China, knowing it to be unjust, but they proceed in the deception, step by step, to the bombardment of a city containing 1,000,000 inhabitants. I was not astonished at the thrill of indignation that ran through the House when the hon. Member for the West Riding, with that peculiar and enviable eloquence of his, alluded to the miserable argument that the Chinese did not know the true position of the Arrow. Why, Sir, a falsehood does not exist only in the telling a lie, but in the wilful suppression of truth; and this suppression of truth Lord Clarendon, a Minister of the Crown, does not hesitate to re-echo and approve. In the magniloquent appeal with which the Colonial Secretary conclu- ded his peroration, he talked loftily of vindicating the honour of the nation. The honour of the nation | Sir, prevarication and falsehood have nothing to do with the honour of the English na- tion; they appertain rather to the honour of an Old Bailey at- torney. We have heard a great deal about the dissimulation and duplicity of Russia. How Russia will chuckle at this Here is a Minister of the Crown, the austere negotiator of the Paris Con- ference, the rebuker of Russian duplicity, approving colonial agents in the maintenance of a claim which they knew to be illegal, and the assertion of a fact which they knew to be untruth! But another excuse has been advanced. It is said that by the 10th rule of the ordinance the register of the Arrow might con- tinue in force for more than the year for which it was granted. That is not the case, and the argument was not thought of at the time. It never occurred to Sir John Bowring, who had no doubt that the vessel was not entitled to our protection, and it was never mooted until the town had been bombarded. The proviso in the 10th rule, upon which the excuse is founded, refers to the claims of the owner to renew the licence, and not to the continued force and effect of an old register after its expiration. It simply means that if the vessel be detained at sea by unavoidable cir- cumstances, the licence may be renewed, notwithstanding that irregularity; but it does not mean that the force and effect of the licence shall be continued in the interval. If you look at the ordinance, that would be found to be impossible, because no THE WAR WITH CEIINA. 57 limit as to time is placed during which the vessel might be at Sea; and therefore, according to your construction, the vessel might remain out many years and the licence still have force. It is quite clear that Sir John Bowring interprets this part of the ordinance as I do, since he says, “I will consider if the licence can be renewed, but there is no doubt that the vessel’s right to protection has expired.” Were there ever, then, more miserable special pleas for the defence of violence and fraud? The right hon. gentleman said that there had been no desire to quarrel with China; but I ask, if the Government had not predetermined upon these hostilities, what better moment could have been chosen to take us out of this affair with dignity than when Lord Claren- don hears that the licence of the vessel had expired ? How well might we have said to the Chinese (retaining the right to this class of vessel if we thought proper) that we had found a tech- nical difficulty in the fact of the expiration of the vessel's licence; and as it was doubtful whether she was entitled at that time to the British flag, and as we were a nation singularly just, and lived under a Government singularly humane, you, the Chinese, shall have the benefit of the doubt . Then, if we wished to gain an entry into the city of Canton, we should have had a better claim in our forbearance than we have had in our violence. If, however, we were too candid to own that we could be the least in the wrong—and if it were necessary for the dignity of this Country not to suffer the least affront from China, however unin- tentional—then I say that when we captured a Chinese junk, with a valuable cargo, instructions should have been given that that capture was a sufficient reprisal. But, if that was not enough, we might have stopped short after bombarding the Barrier Forts. Good heavens, Sir, it is a stain on the nineteenth century that we hurried on to the shelling of a city, the destruction of its property, the slaughter of its inhabitants, who were disavowing offence and imploring mercy And all for what? In order that we may convince these barbarians how unenlightened is their prejudice against foreigners. Then there comes this new feature of the case—the alleged infraction of the Treaty of Canton in not admitting the English into the city of Canton. Now, I am going 58 THE WAR WITH CHINA. to raise the question a little more boldly than it has been raised by the hon. Member for the West Riding, and I would ask the noble lord at the head of the Government, than whom no greater authority exists as to the law of nations, whether, according to the law of nations, as interpreted by all authorities, the Chinese Emperor may not feel specially exempt from the fulfilment of this part of the treaty 2 For the fulfilment of a treaty there are five conditions: the most essential of the five is, that its fulfilment shall be practicable and not pernicious to the State and people of the power that enters into the engagement. Nothing is more clearly laid down by Wattel than that proposition. I need not quote him to show that where a treaty is not practicable it can- not be fulfilled. No one wants a Wattel to tell him that ; but on the latter and more delicate part of the proposition—namely, that a sovereign may be exempted from fulfilling a treaty where it proves fatally pernicious to the people he is primarily bound to protect, Wattelis more worth attention. He cites the well-known instance of Louis XII., who was called on by the States-General of France to break his treaty with the Emperor Maximilian and the Archduke Philip, on the ground that it was pernicious to the French people. Frederick the Great has treated this very criti- cal question with the acute distinctions of a king whom the sub- ject vitally interested. But he plainly allows the broad fact, that one sovereign should not and cannot bind another sovereign to do that which, not being intended at the time, would, if done, prove destructive to his State or pernicious to his people. Then I ask, first, are you sure that the Emperor of China can practi- cally effect your entrance into the city of Canton 7 Secondly, what are really the powers of the Chinese Emperor over the pro- vincial city of Canton ? We know little of the political consti- tution of China, but it is perfectly clear that it differs essentially from all modern Oriental nations. When the French Jesuits went there, they were struck with the similarity of the manners of the Chinese to those of the ancient Egyptians, and one wrote a work to prove that China was a colony from ancient Egypt. I believe a Chinese scholar replied, “Not so, but Egypt was a colony from China (" However that be, what most struck thé THE WAR WITH CHINA. ‘59 Jesuits was, that under the forms of despotism there prevailed, as there did in Egypt, a religious respect for the feelings, cus- toms, and habits of the people, which the Chinese Emperor could not venture to transgress. Are you sure, then, that it is in the Emperor's power, or in that of his Viceroy, to enforce our entry into Canton against the will of its population ? If he attempted to do so by a violent exercise of prerogative, the attempt might be fatal to him at a time when his empire is rent by rebellion. The Emperor of China has admitted us into every port into which it was possible for him to give us admission, and if he does not admit us into Canton, may it not then be solely because he cannot do so; and might not a violent effort on his part to force us on the inhabitants be fruitless in itself, but more inju- trious to him than we had ever presupposed ? Ought we, then, to insist on what it may not be possible for an ally to grant 7 No ; does not Wattel expressly declare that, “when a treaty, which has been concluded with upright intentions, becomes thus difficult of fulfilment, nothing can be more honourable, more praiseworthy, or more conformable to the histories of international treaties, than to relax the terms of such treaty as far as possible without exposing yourselves to loss and danger”? How much more, then, may we be disposed to do so, when it is not by re- laxation, but by rigorously insisting that loss, if not danger to ourselves, is incurred ? The right hon. gentleman tells the House that this is not the first time that China has insulted us. But does not Sir John Bowring tell us that, in 1852, before he began to revive the obnoxious claim to enter the city, so far from desiring to insult us, “the Chinese were in a state of unusual tranquillity, and the prejudices against foreigners are gradually subsiding”? That was the happy state of things which he found in 1852, and which he began to disturb in 1854. And the mo- ment in which Sir John Bowring, in his innocent simplicity, be- comes animated with the most friendly intentions of entering the city of Canton at all hazards, is that in which we are uniting all the inhabitants against us, and justifying the prejudices which led them to exclude us. The whole of this question was brought in 1849 before the noble Wiscount now at the head of the Gov- 60 THE WAR WITH CEIINA. ernment. Sir George Bonham was then the representative of this country in China. I am sure that more admirable despatches than those written at that time by the noble Wiscount on this subject I have never read. Sir George Bonham fairly put before the noble Wiscount all the bearings of the case. He stated all the disadvantages that would accrue from our not enforcing that part of the treaty. All the rubbish we have heard about the Chi- nese not being sufficiently afraid of our power was urged then as now ; but Sir George Bonham came to the conclusion that the advantages of enforcing the treaty would be as nothing com- pared with the risk and the danger accompanying it: and the noble Wiscount, in one of those admirable despatches which he wrote to Sir George Bonham, stated distinctly that “it had always appeared to him to be doubtful whether the right of entering the city of Cantom would be productive of any material advantage to British residents; while it had been plain that the unrestricted entrance of British residents into that city might lead to disputes and collisions between British Subjects and Chinese, the conse- quences of which might be serious.” All the advantages to be gained, then, in the opinion of the noble Wiscount and Sir G. Bonham, could not arise from the indiscriminate entrance into Canton, be it observed, of the commercial English—no; that was deemed to be undesirable on all sides—no ; but only from the convenience that the English Superintendent and Consul should have access to the Chinese authorities on special occasions. No doubt that object was a very desirable one—desirable in 1849, and desirable now. But in 1849 the noble Wiscount said that that object, however desirable in itself, “was not worth a naval and military operation;” and accordingly he resolved not to re- nounce it, but to suspend it indefinitely, and that for reasons which apply more strongly at the present day than they did at that time; because if ever the treaty was to be enforced by na- val and military operations, Surely the time to do it was when the treaty was fresh, and our moral claim had not been weakened . by its having been left in abeyance for eight years. If the main reason that we did not urge it then was the prejudice which existed on the part of the inhabitants of Canton, and the noble THE WAR WITH CHINA. 61 Viscount wisely left it until time had softened that prejudice, can we expect that prejudice now to diminish when we have bombarded the city, and every Chinese who has lost a brother or son in the conflict is thirsting for revenge 2 The more, there- fore, I admire the prudence of the noble Wiscount in 1849, the more I am astonished that he should have lent his sanction to a diametrically opposite policy in 1856. Lord Malmesbury no less wisely enforced the precaution which the noble Wiscount had laid down; and Lord Clarendon is the first of our Ministers who, listening to the siren voice of Sir John Bowring, has plunged us into the Charybdis. With regard to Sir John Bowring, we all know that he is an able and accomplished man; but he is also a man of enthusiastic temperament, and, like all men of genius, is very desirous of carrying out his own wishes. From the first he was seized by a strong ambition to obtain an entrance into Canton; and although I do not doubt that Sir John Bowring is as humane and honourable a man towards his own countrymen as any amongst us, yet when agents of European Governments come in contact with Oriental nations, they are apt to be gradu- ally warped from the straight line of humanity and justice they would adopt at home. It is then that we look to a wise Govern- ment to guard against the over-zeal of agents by salutary cau- tions which foresee and prevent their errors, and by temperate rebuke when the errors are first incurred. When a Government forsakes this duty—when it places before us nothing but unquali- fied approval of actions like those recorded in the papers laid on our table—all subordinate agents, like colonial Superintendents and consuls, vanish from our eyes, and it is only with the Gov- ernment that we have to deal. Here, then, in my place as a representative of the people, it is the Government that I charge. I charge them with sanctioning an ordinance which, unknown to Parliament, has turned into a dead letter that grand Act of the Imperial Legislature which regulates the whole trade and navi- gation of the country. I charge them with approving the en- forcement of that ordinance by measures that equally violate the laws of nations and the spirit of English honour. I charge them with lending the authority of the Crown to homicide under false 62. TEIE WAR WITH CHINA. pretences, belying the generous character of our country, and offensive to every sentiment of right and justice which our nature receives from Heaven | You tell us it is necessary that China should learn to know our force. It is not true: all these papers tell us that China knows and dreads our force; and what China doubts is, the friendliness of our intentions and the simple rectitude of our objects. In dealing with nations less civilised - than ourselves, it is by lofty truth and forbearing humanity that the genius of commerce contrasts the ambition of conquerors. Talk not of the interests of trade 1 Your trade cannot prosper if you make yourselves an object of detestation to those you trade with. You may, indeed, force a road for your merchants to the market-place at Canton over the ruins of the city and the Corpses of your customers—you may carry your tariffs at the point of the sword, and surround your factories by armed garrisons and bristling cannon—but I warn you that your trade will fly the place, for commerce recoils from unnecessary bloodshed. Et wdam Spermit hºmºm fugiente penná. XXIV. A S P E E O H DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 18TH OF FEBRUARY 1858. ON Friday, the 12th of February 1858, the First Lord of the Treasury, Wiscount Palmerston, moved in the House of Commons for leave to bring in a bill for transferring from the East India Company to the Crown the government of her Majesty’s East Indian possessions. The member for Huntingdon, Mr Thomas Baring, thereupon moved by way of amendment, “That it is not at present expedient to legislate for the government of India.” A debate arose upon this which occupied three nights, the motion being carried on the morning of Friday, the 19th of February, by 318 votes to 173. During the third night of the discussion the following speech was delivered. SIR-It has been made a subject of complaint by the right hon. baronet the First Lord of the Admiralty against my hon. friend the Member for Huntingdon,” that he should ... have rested his objection to this bill on the score of time. But the right hon. gentleman must be well aware that a measure of this importance brought forward by the head of the Government would be entitled, whatever might be its defects, to be allowed to pass to a discussion of its principle upon a second reading, if there were not something in the season at which it was submitted to our * Sir Francis Baring. 64 TRANSFERENCE OF INDIA TO THE CROWN. consideration that was peculiarly unfavourable to its introduc- tion. With regard to the bill itself, which I am not disposed to discuss at this moment at any length, I must say that I think it is at Once audacious, incomplete, and unconsidered. It is audacious, inasmuch as it affects the conversion of an adminis- trative body, through which, whatever may have been its faults, every hasty or unwise proposal on the part of her Majesty's Government was sure to be carefully sifted, into a set of irre- sponsible nominees of the Ministers of the day. It is incom- plete, because it does not afford us a single guarantee for that wholesome restraint on a precipitate or a despotic policy that is effected by the system which it is proposed to remove. And it is unconsidered, because even on so simple a point as the mere number of the council which it would establish, every hon. gentleman who has any practical acquaintance with the affairs of India, tells you that is preposterously inadequate for the discharge of the amount of business which the council under- takes to perform. I believe it may be shown, too, that it is unconsidered on a much more important point, because her Majesty's Ministers assert, and I have no doubt honestly be- lieve, that this bill will not increase their patronage; while I am persuaded that it will appear, when we come to detail, that their patronage will be enormously increased, and increased in a direction that is peculiarly dangerous, because it applies to the class of gentlemen—the class of whom this House of Com- mons is composed; and the patronage is therefore of a nature which will prove hard to reconcile with our virtuous horror of bribery and corruption. I am not surprised to find that this measure is incomplete and unconsidered, because I do not think that the Government could have had the requisite calmness of temper to devise a complete, safe, and comprehensive measure for the civil administration of India at a time when revolt is still raging—at a time when no man knows or can conjecture how far disaffection has spread or is spreading—at a time when none can know the proper remedies that ought to be applied—and at a time when all our thoughts are, or ought to be, concentrated on the fittest military measures for the support of a handful of TRANSFERENCE OF INDIA TO THE CROWN. 65 our countrymen, amid the dangers that surround them. But the noble Wiscount says this cry of time is a stale cry; that it is always said that it is not the right time for change. The noble Viscount is unquestionably the highest authority of any man living as to the right time for change, and I am surprised that so acute a statesman should not be able to distinguish between the mere hollow cry against a time for change, which Mr Ben- tham classes among the “Fallacies of Delay,” and the plain truth that nevertheless there are times which are peculiarly unpropitious to change; a truth which Mr Bentham himself would have been the first to acknowledge, because, though he was a great philosopher, he was also, strange as it may seem, a man of common-sense. But, by the by, after that remarkable chapter of Mr Bentham's on the “Fallacies of Delay” comes his immortal chapter on the “Fallacies of Confusion,” in which is explained the fallacy of Ministers making use of the name and authority of the Crown for the purposes of corrupt patronage— a chapter that her Majesty's Ministers have, no doubt, studied with extraordinary diligence and care. But with respect to this objection of delay, what was the answer which the noble Wis- count made to his noble friend the Member for the City of London, when he wished to persevere with his scheme of Parlia- mentary Reform 2 We all know the life-long attachment of the noble Wiscount to the cause of Reform. But what was his answer on that occasion to the noble Lord 2 It was, “This is not the right time for change.” Why was it not the right time for change 2 Because we were then engaged in a war with Russia. And can this, then, be the right time for a reform in the government of India, when you are engaged in a war with India itself? Yes, said the noble Wiscount, this is exactly the time, because we want a system of more vigour and promptitude to deal with the difficulties that surround us. “Only think,” says the noble Wiscount, “ of the waste of precious hours in sending cabs from one end of London to the other. How much more convenient would it be to have one Smug little family party round a single table in Cannon Row?” Why do you want this peculiar promptitude and decision? Because you are in a state WOL. II. E 66 TRANSFERENCE OF INDIA TO THE CROWN. of abnormal and temporary difficulty. I object to legislate for the securities of permanent and normal administration in a time of abnormal and temporary difficulty. I object to legislate for the provisions of peace at a time when your thoughts are con- centred on the exigencies of war. I grant that war requires promptitude and decision—but peace requires deliberation and caution ; and I believe that the slowness produced by the checks and counter-checks of which the noble Wiscount now complains, have saved the empire from many fatal blunders which would have been committed by the rashness of a Minister if he had had no better advisers than the complaisant nominees of himself and his party—men not like the present Court of Directors, who have nothing further to expect from the Government, but men who, if they are of the mark and ability you desire to secure for your new Board, will be comparatively young and ambitious —men who will, perhaps, only take their place at your Board with a view to some higher and more dignified position in India, and who will thus be stimulated to a discreet acquiescence in the policy of their Ministerial patron by a lively sense of the prospective benefits of Ministerial patronage. But I ask whether, according to the policy you are now pursuing, you are likely to attain the object you desire ? Do you think that the advantage of promptitude and vigour, for a special, and, we hope, temporary occasion, will be obtained by the course you propose to adopt 2 Are not the next few months most critical in regard to the Security and tranquillity of our sovereignty in India Ž And how do her Majesty's Ministers invite us to spend them : In conveying to the hesitating courts of the neutral princes of India our own doubts as to the efficacy of our machinery and the rectitude of our cause; in apprising rebels that the Ministers of England admit that our rule was acquired by “rapacity and perfidy,” and is administered by a system cumbrous and feeble and effete. Is not this the language of the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and can you suppose that that language will not be published, translated, and garbled from one end of India to the other ? Is this the way to strengthen our government over those who are doubting whether they should submit to be TRANSFERENCE OF INDIA TO THE CROWN. 67 governed by us at all ? All Orientals dislike change—all orientals are suspicious—all Orientals believe that the wiser you are, the more in any change you mean to dupe or to injure them ; and therefore, whenever you propose change for Orientals, take care that you propose it when your Sovereignty is unquestioned —when your rule is calmly predominant. To institute a change in the midst of rebellion, is too often considered but a treaty of compromise with the rebels. Take the language of the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer—say that our empire was acquired by unqualified rapacity and perfidy—say that it is matter of doubt whether the empire be a boon to England,-and do you not justify rebellion ? Accompany the change with the language of the noble Wiscount, which has also been repeated by the First Lord of the Admiralty—say that the change is of no importance —say that it affects only the home administration—say that it holds out to India no particular benefit or hope of amelioration —say that it will only make our rule more vigorous, or, as India will construe it, more arbitrary and stern—say that the Com- pany, which you are now constrained to acknowledge has always opposed schemes of Conquest, annexation, and religious intoler- ance, is no longer to be allowed to thwart, to admonish, or to recall a governor-general who may be stimulated by the lust of popularity or of fame to meditate Schemes of annexation, con- quest, or religious intolerance,—and can you tell me that this may not provoke to rebellion the princes who at this moment remain neutral, or even friendly to our rule? When it is under- stood in India that you propose to new model the machinery of government in such a manner as to render the governor-general more despotic—when it is understood that a large party in this country is opposed to this scheme, and that months may be spent in discussing it, and when all this occurs in the very ferment and meridian of disaffection—when the whole popu- lation of India is, I will not say hostile to you, but still in that state of oscillation which the hon, and gallant Director * could only describe by an expressive movement of his hand— when the whole state of feeling in that country is so delicate * Colonel Sykes. 68 TRANSFERENCE OF INDIA TO THE CROWN. that no prudent man will venture to analyse it, will you tell me that, at such a moment, the very discussion of a change does not tend to weaken authority, and to provoke resistance 2 An important paper has been put into our hands to-day, to which I will briefly refer. It is a portion of a despatch from a commis- Sioner of revenue, in which the writer states that many people endeavour to persuade themselves that the natives are not aware of the contents of the English papers, and that, so far as they are concerned, it is immaterial what appears in those publications; but that, he adds, is a great mistake : the English newspapers have for many years been the source to which the natives have looked for news and intelligence; and since the revolt com- menced, the greatest anxiety has been manifested to learn what those papers say. Every one who is fortunate enough to get hold of an English paper is called upon to translate it for a large circle of natives; and there can be no doubt that whatever appears in those papers which can in any way serve the pur- poses of the disaffected, is speedily made known to them by agents in Calcutta or elsewhere. If this be so, who can doubt that these debates will not be extensively translated among the natives? In England we think little of imprudent speeches. Gentlemen may cheer the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he denounces the founders, and questions the value, of the Indian empire. But what will be thought of such opinions stamped with the authority of the Queen's adviser, by men who are actually rebelling or considering whether they should rebel? At what period did the necessity for this change flash on the inexperienced mind of the noble Viscount 2 For fifty years the noble Viscount has been in the service of his country, one of the most eminent statesmen which this country has ever known. Whatever may happen to him, his name is immortalin the history of this country. Well, but in that interval we have had moment- OuS Wars in India ; and yet in that interval the evils of what is called the “double Government,” or what the right hon. gentleman the First Lord of the Admiralty called the “com- pound Government,” never seemed to occur to the noble Wis- Count. They never occurred to him at all till—when 2 Till TRANSFERENCE OF INDIA TO THE CROWN. 69 any check or counter-check whatsoever is extremely incon- venient to the single Government of the noble Wiscount. Says the noble Wiscount, “Under the present system we have no responsibility—we want more responsibility.” The Chancellor of the Exchequer echoed the same plaintive cry—“We want more responsibility.” No, you do not want more responsibility; What you want to obtain is more power—and power not only Over the population of India, but over the Parliament of Eng- land. When the right hon. gentleman the First Lord of the Admiralty got up, I own I felt a lively interest to know what he would say on this point. I recollect the speech the right hon. gentleman made in 1853. He then said, “I, as President of the Board of Control, have as much responsibility for what- ever happens in my office as the Secretary for the Colonies has for whatever happens in his.” I therefore felt a lively interest When the right hon. gentleman got up this evening, to know his opinion. Did he retract 2 Did he say that upon reflection he had discovered that the President of the Board of Control was not responsible 2 No; his great object was to show that the present Court of Directors were a dependent body, and therefore, that the President of the Board of Control was actually responsible to Parliament. That was the whole of his argument. But, says the Chancellor of the Exchequer, it is Only in stress of weather that the vessel can be proved. The metaphor is not very new ; but, as coming from a gentleman of his solid attainments, any metaphor acquires the grace of novelty. It is only in stress of weather that the vessel can be proved. That is true ; but only just observe the ingenious manner which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has of proving the vessel. He and his friends, who are the temporary pas- sengers, throw overboard the tried and regular crew, and ap- propriate to themselves the cargo. That is the ingenious mode by which the Chancellor of the Exchequer proves a vessel ! What does he mean by stress of weather ? He means that this is a time of peculiar emergency—a time of mutiny, revolt, and disaffection. Well, let us grant that it is so. But now tell us in what joint has the vessel parted ? In what single instance, 70 TRANSFERENCE OF INDIA TO THE CROWN. metaphor apart, has the Company failed you? Has it failed you in a single instance by which it could assist you in putting down the mutiny or quelling the rebellion? No; it is to the Company we owe those instances of ability and heroism which have never been exceeded in the annals of any country in the world. And is this a moment to annihilate their existence, and to affix—there is no mincing the matter, for you do affix upon them in the eyes of India, of Europe—the ignominy of an abrupt dismissal, not only without a fault, not only without a trial, but in the midst of acknowledged and imperishable obligations? And by whom is it done? By that grateful Administration, whose numberless blots of policy and prudence, of energy and foresight, that Company has been lavishing the blood of its best and bravest in the endeavour to efface. Hitherto it has been the policy of the noble Wiscount, and it is a generous policy, to support his officials, his agents, his em- ployés, even though they should commit occasional acts of indiscretion. We are now, for the indiscretion of a couple of agents at Hong Kong, plunged into a war with China, of which none of us can conjecture the end—of which very few of us can conceive the object. But now, in a temporary moment of clamour, you refuse to stand by a great Company to whom you owe the acquisition, the preservation of India; and all its virtues are to be ignored, all its faults exaggerated, and itself thrust aside from all participation in the glory of restoring peace and security to an empire which was won by the genius of its founders, and which is hallowed by the graves of its martyrs. I have now a word or two to say on the speech of the First Lord of the Admiralty; but the right hon. gentleman has so many claims to our respect and regard, he has served this House and the country with so much ability—and I un- derstand that he has, in much bodily suffering, come down to the House this evening from a desire to show respect to the House, and to acquit himself of the charge of inconsistency— that I think it would be ungenerous in me if I were to triumph over the weakness of his argument under these circumstances. I shall content myself, therefore, with observing that the greater TRANSFERENCE OF INDIA TO THE CROWN. - 71 portion of his speech to-night was an inadequate answer to his argument of 1853, and consisted mainly of those reasons for change which he then declared to be such utter rubbish “that no man of sense would answer them.” But he thinks he obtained a triumph over my hon. and learned friend the Member for Enniskillen + and other hon. gentlemen on this side of the House. He says that in 1853 the Member for Enniskillen, and others on this side the House, voted in favour of carrying On the government of India in the name and authority of the Crown. Well, why not ? I myself think that would be an advantage. I think the right hon. gentleman urged a new and a cogent argument in favour of it, deduced from the in- creased number of British troops to be henceforth employed in India. I see nothing at all inconsistent with that view in the whole of the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Ennis- killen. Nothing can be more obvious than that the Company are the trustees of the Crown; than that every act that is done in relation to the government of India is at this very moment approved of by the Crown, ratified by a responsible minister of the Crown; that, in short, such acts are acts of the Crown. Well, then, supposing that to-morrow you were to pass an en- actment by which the government of India should henceforth be carried on in the name of the Crown, that would not—and I appeal to any lawyer in the House to say whether I am wrong —that would not necessarily destroy the existence of the Com- pany; it would not necessarily alter the position of the Board of Control and the Court of East India Directors. I myself am for carrying on the government of India in the name of the Sovereign. But I go much further than that in the way of concession. I grant that it may be inconvenient that the re- spective places in which the business is transacted should be so far distant from each other as to be an obstacle to the despatch of public business; I grant that it may be proper that the two bodies should meet either in the same building, or buildings contiguous to each other—although, so far as the question of the preparation of the despatches is concerned, I must do the * Mr Whiteside. - 72 TRANSFERENCE OF INDIA TO THE CROWN. hon. and gallant gentleman * who commenced the debate this evening, the justice to say that he made a most admirable answer to that ; but I will, for the sake of argument, suppose that the history given with reference to the delay of despatches is correct, and that that which was said by the hon. and gallant Mem- ber for Reigate (Sir H. Rawlinson), by the Secretary of the Board of Control, by the Vice-President of the Board of Trade, Was the fact—granting, I say, that the present mode of com- munication between the Court of Directors and the Board of Control is too tedious and prolix, cannot you make all the necessary improvements without destroying the Company ? That is the point which I wish to impress upon the House. Granting all the defects of which her Majesty's Ministers com- plain, I venture to say that, if you had come down to the House with a simple bill to remedy those defects, you would have met with no opposition to it. But, Sir, even if I assume, for the sake of argument, that it is quite right to destroy the Company —further than that, if I assume that the present is the right moment for so doing—am I therefore obliged to accept the substitute which you propose ? Am I obliged to accept the principle of your bill? The hon, and gallant Member for Teigate himself, although he is going to vote for leave to in- troduce it, cannot accept the principle of the measure. What Did not the hon. and gallant gentleman say that he wished the council to be independent 2 Did he not say, “I want the council to be chosen not by nomination, but upon some prin- ciple of election”? But look at the bill. Is not its very essence nomination ? You say that for the Board you constitute you may obtain some of the most eminent of the existing Court of Directors. The great inducement held out to this House to persuade it to accept the measure is this—that you may possibly obtain for your new council a small portion of that wisdom possessed by the Court which we are now called upon to abolish. Sir, I do not believe that the more eminent of the Court of Directors will condescend to sit as mere Ministerial nominees at that Board you propose to institute. But grant that they * Colonel Sykes. TRANSFERENCE OF INDIA TO THE CROWN. 73 do. Do you mean to say that there is no difference between a Board which consists of Ministerial nominees, and a Board in which the same men are animated by the pride of an indepen- dent class, and exercise the functions of a responsible body ? Take the twelve most eminent men in this House; place them in the legislative council of some absolute sovereign, and will you venture to tell me that they would exhibit the same high- spirited intelligence; that they would be impressed with the same pure and noble feeling of grave responsibility by which they are now distinguished ? If you want to govern India by clerks, call them clerks; and, as clerks, let them be nominated. If you want councillors, councillors must be free. You will substitute, you say, for an existent independent council, the superintendence, the vigilance of Parliament. The noble Lord condescends to flatter us by saying that it is all very well for people out of doors to disparage the House of Commons, but he does not think that any hon. gentleman will get up here and say that we are not just as wise, just as capable of administer- ing the affairs of India as a set of merchants. Sir, I hope the members of this House are too manly to accept that species of adulation. We all know the merits of this illustrious assembly of which we are so justly proud, we also all know its defects— there is no man who knows them better than the noble Vis- count. If upon any question, however trivial—if upon any question of foreign policy, not half so important to us as the affairs of India, not half so delicate to deal with—some hon. gentleman were to ask a question of the noble Wiscount, would not the noble Wiscount rise with more than usual stateliness, and would he not as good as tell us that we had better attend to our domestic legislation, and imply that it was not well that such delicate matters should be handed over to the tender mercies of a popular assembly 7 Suppose that this bill passes, and some young and innocent member, anxious to assert that vigilant superintendence now held out as so strong and seduc- tive an inducement in favour of this measure, should venture to put such a question as—What are the intentions of the Government regarding the Nizam!—what the true state of our 74 TRANSFERENCE OF INDIA TO THE CROWN. relations with Holkar or Scindia?—do we not know perfectly well that the noble Wiscount would rise in his place and say, as he said the other night, “that without meaning anything personal, the question was extremely absurd” 2 And indeed, for my part, I own to a wholesome dread of hon. gentlemen cramming themselves with blue-books, and coming down to the House with an elaborate speech about Rajahs and Nawabs con- ceived in accordance with the respective interests of party ; Sometimes, as the case may be, to defend some more than ordinary act of duplicity by which we had annexed a kingdom— or, on the other hand, to declaim against Some measure which might be necessary to the stern necessities of oriental rule, but painful to the feelings of an English popular assembly. That would be dangerous for India; but still more dangerous in its effects upon the moral character of England, which it cannot be well to familiarise with all the details of despotism, all the excuses for arbitrary powers. Before you can judge with dis- crimination of a policy applied to orientals, you must learn to orientalise yourselves; you must be familiar with the customs, the laws, and the manners most at variance with all your own free institutions; you must know the principles and the forms of a mythological religion which, I suspect, very few of us can comprehend, but which is interwoven with the habits, with the feelings, with the affections, with the daily routine of Hindoo life. Without some clear perception of the mode in which that religion influences and colours all the social and moral existence of Hindoos, how can you even pass an opinion on that admin- istration of justice to which the Superintendence of Parliament is to be involved ? You may sanction penalties which, to your English ideas, will seem mild and equitable, and which, to a Hindoo, seem the most exquisite torture. And why 2 Because Such penalties, mild in their operation in this life, may, accord- ing to his creed, affect him in the life to come; and, in forfeit- ing the Sacred privileges of his birthright, condemn him to countless ages of degradation. But you will peaceably escape this danger. The House will have the wisdom to shun it; the House will never habitually exercise the superintending TRANSFERENCE OF INDIA TO THE CROWN. 75 vigilance you commend to it—it will only interfere with the despotism you are about to establish whenever it suits the interest of party to assail a Minister or asperse some illustrious name. But be that as it may, I content myself now with the simple declaration, this is the moment not to legislate, but to arm. This is the moment, above all others, when you should give to that authority which is already established in India, and which has never failed you, all the force, all the power of your own unanimity. This is not a time when you should damp the ardour of England by tracing to perfidy the empire you ask it to defend. Rather should you appeal to the con- science of Englishmen for every aid they can raise and send forth, to protect from carnage and massacre their countrymen, their women, and their children. Your Indian empire has passed through the perils of a mutinous army; do not expose it to the more fatal ordeal of an organised system of favouritism and jobbery. That empire was won by the valour and intellect of the middle classes, of whom you call yourselves the repre- sentatives; and it is for you now to determine whether it shall henceforth be jeopardised by official imbecility and Ministerial corruption. XXV. A S P E E C H DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THURSDAY. THE 8TH OF JULY 1858. ON Thursday, the 8th of July 1858, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, introduced into the House of Commons a bill to provide for the government of New Caledonia. This measure resulted in the organisation by him of the new colony of British Columbia. On bringing before the House his motion for the second reading, the follow- ing speech was delivered. SIR,-The bill which I rise to ask the House to sanction, is necessary to the maintenance of law and the preservation of life in the district in which it proposes to establish a Government, and it realises at an earlier period than was anticipated an object which has already entered into the colonial policy of this country. The House is aware that in 1849 the Crown granted to the Hudson's Bay Company the soil of Vancouver's Island, on the condition of establishing a colony there, disposing of the land to emigrants, and defraying its expenses; at the same time, the Crown reserved a right to resume the land on the expiration of the grant of exclusive trade in 1859. But the Company enjoy in Vancouver's Island no rights of government or of judicature. The government is administered by a Governor COLONY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA. 77 appointed by the Crown, with a Legislative Council, and the House of Representatives chosen by the people. The judicature is administered by courts instituted by the Crown, under the special authority of an Act of Parliament, “to provide for the administration of justice in Vancouver's Island.” Next year it is the intention of the Crown to resume the soil, and the whole public connnection of the Company with the island will cease. Indeed, my right hon, friend the Member for Coventry,” in his able evidence before the Committee on the Hudson's Bay Com- pany, says, “The Sooner the public re-enter into possession, and the sooner they form establishments worthy of the island, and worthy of the country, the better.” My right hon, friend pro- ceeds to say—“That this island is a kind of England attached to the continent of America; that it should be the principal sta- tion of our naval force in the Pacific ; that it is the only good harbour to the northward of San Francisco, as far north as Sitka the Russian settlement ; that you have in Vancouver's Island, the best harbour, fine timber in every situation, and coal enough for your whole navy; that the climate is wholesome, very like that of England; the coasts abound with fish of every descrip- tion;–in short, there is every advantage in the Island of Wan- couver to make it one of the first colonies and best settlements of England.” But when my right hon, friend was asked by the Committee if he thought it desirable to attempt also at once to colonise the land on the adjacent coast he answered, “No, we should have enough to do in colonising the island.” He will not say that now. He knows that since the evidence was given circumstances have arisen which call upon us to place, as soon as possible, the adjacent territory under the Safeguard of an established Government, such as this bill will provide. And those circumstances are the discovery of gold-fields, the belief that those gold-fields will be eminently productive, the number of persons of foreign nations and unknown character already impelled to the place by that belief. I need say no more to show the imperative necessity of establishing a Government wherever the hope of gold—to be had for the digging—attracts * Mr Edward Ellice. 78 COLONY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA. all adventurers and excites all passions. At this moment there is no Imperial Government at all in the place, for the Governor of Vancouver's owns no commission on the mainland. Thus the discovery of gold compels us to do at Once what otherwise we should very soon have done—erect into a colony a district that appears, in great part, eminently suited for civilised habita- tion and culture. Before I proceed further, it may be interesting to the House to give a sketch of the little that is known to us, through official sources, of the territory in which these new gold-fields have been discovered. The territory comprehended in the proposed bill lies between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific ; it is bounded on the south by the American frontier line, 49 degrees of latitude, and may be considered to extend to the sources of Fraser River, in latitude 55 degrees. It is there- fore about 420 miles long in a straight line, its average breadth about 250 to 300 miles. Taken from corner to corner its great- est length would be, however, 805 miles, and its greatest breadth 400 miles. Mr Arrowsmith computes its area of square miles, including Queen Charlotte's Island, at somewhat more than 200,000 miles. Of its two gold-bearing rivers, one, the Fraser, rises on the northern boundary, and flowing South falls into the sea at the south-western extremity of the territory, opposite the southern end of Vancouver's Island, and within a few miles of the American boundary; the other, the Thompson River, rises in the Rocky Mountains, and flowing westward joins the Fraser about 150 miles from the coast. It is on these two rivers, and chiefly at their confluence, that the gold discoveries have been made. Hon. entlemen who look at the map may imagine this new colony to be at such an immeasurable distance from Eng- land as to be fatal to anything like extensive colonisation from this country; but we have already received overtures from no less eminent a person than Mr Cunard for a line of postal steam- vessels for letters, goods, and passengers, by which it is calcu- lated that a passenger starting from Liverpool may reach this colony in about thirty-five days by way of New York and Panama. With regard to the soil, there is said to be some tolerable land on the lower part of Fraser River. But the COLONY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA. 79 Thompson's River district is described as one of the finest countries in the British dominions, with a climate far Superior to that of countries in the same latitude on the other side of the mountains. Mr Cooper, who gave valuable evidence before our Committee on this district, with which he is thoroughly ac- quainted, recently addressed to me a letter in which he states, that “its fisheries are most valuable ; its timber the finest in the world for marine purposes; it abounds with bituminous coal well fitted for the generation of steam. From Thompson's River and Colville districts to the Rocky Mountains, and from the 49th parallel, some 350 miles north, a more beautiful country does not exist. It is in every way suitable for colonisa- tion.” Therefore, apart from the gold-fields, this country affords every promise of a flourishing and important colony. In Char- lotte's Island, which we include in this new colony, gold was discovered in 1850, but only in small quantities. Here I may perhaps correct a popular misconception. In Vancouver's Island itself no gold has been yet discovered. The discovery of gold on the mainland was first reported to the Colonial Office by a despatch from the Governor of Vancouver's Island, dated April 16, 1856. The Governor had received a report from a clerk in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Colville on the Upper Columbia River. Further reports followed in October 1856, testifying to the importance of the discovery. From experiments made in the tributaries of Fraser River there was reason to believe that the gold region was extensive ; the . similarity in the geological formation of the mountains in the territory to those of California, induced the Governor to believe that these would prove equally auriferous. Subsequent accounts in 1857 varied as to the quantity of gold obtained, but con- firmed generally the opinion of the richness of the mines, especially above the confluence of the Fraser and Thompson Tivers. The Governor writes on the 15th of July 1857, that gold was being discovered on the right bank of the Columbia, and the table-land between that river and Fraser's. On Decem- ber 29th he ascribed the Small quantity found to the want of skill and tools on the part of the natives, who opposed any 80 COLONY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA. white men digging. The Indians were especially hostile to the Americans, and opposed their entrance into the country. Great excitement now prevailed in Oregon and Washington territory. An influx of adventurers might be expected in the spring, in which case collisions between the whites and the natives might be expected to occur. As far back as the first discovery in April 1856, the Governor had suggested the system of granting digging licences. The right hon. gentleman the Member for Taunton,” then Secretary of State for the Colonies, pointed out, in a reply (Aug. 4), that it would be abortive to attempt to raise a revenue from licences to dig for gold in that region in the absence of effective machinery of government, and left to the Governor's discretion the means of preserving order. In the exercise of that discretion he issued a proclamation (December 28th 1857), declaring the rights of the Crown to the gold in Thompson's and Fraser's Rivers; establishing licence fees [of 10s., which, on the 1st of January 1858, he raised to 20s. ; and prohibiting persons from digging without authority from the Colonial Government. But this proclamation has virtually proved a dead letter; for, in point of fact, the Governor had no legal power to issue the proclamation, or cause it to be respected, he having no commission as Governor on the mainland; his sole power has been the moral power of his energy, talents, and extraordinary influence over the natives. Indeed, the manner in which he has preserved peace between the white man and the natives is highly to his honour. In a letter from the Governor to the Hudson's Bay Company, March 22, 1858, he trusts that her Majesty's Government would take measures to prevent Crimes, and protect life and property, or there would be ere long a large array of difficulties to settle. “A large number of Americans,” he said, “had entered the territory; others were preparing to follow.” On the 8th of May in the present year, he states to the Colonial Office that 450 passengers, chiefly gold miners, had come from San Francisco ; that they all appeared well provided with mining tools; there seemed to be no want of capital or intelligence among them; that about sixty were * Mr Labouchere. COLONY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA. 81 British subjects, about an equal number Americans—the rest were chiefly Germans, with some Frenchmen and Italians. And I have here the pleasure to observe that he states, that though there was a temporary scarcity of food and a dearth of house accommodation, they were remarkably quiet and Orderly. The Governor then touches on the advantage to the trade of the island from the arrival of so large a body of people; but he adds significantly,–" The interests of the empire may not be im- proved to the same extent by the accession of a foreign popula- tion whose sympathies are decidedly anti-British. From this point of view the question assumes an alarming aspect, and leads us to doubt the policy of permitting foreigners to enter the British territory ad libiţum, without taking the oath of allegiance, or otherwise giving security to the Government of the country.” He states that “the principal diggings at Fraser's and Thompson’s Rivers at present will continue flooded for many months, and there is a great scarcity of food in the gold districts; that the ill-provided adventurers who have gone there will exhaust their stock of provisions, and will probably retire from the country till a more favourable season; that on the dangerous rapids of the river a great number of canoes have been dashed to pieces, the cargoes swept away, many of the adventurers swept into eternity—others, nothing daunted, press-, ing on to the goal of their wishes.” He again, in a letter to the Hudson's Bay Company, repeats his fears, “how seriously the peace of the country may be endangered in the event of the diggings proving unremunerative, and the miners being reduced to poverty and destitute of the necessaries of life.” I should state that I have also seen private letters recently from San Francisco, giving an account of the extending excitement pre- vailing there, and of the number of Americans, of other foreigners, and of negroes, preparing to start for Fraser's River. In one letter it is stated that 2000 persons have already left, and 20,000 persons might leave before the end of the summer, if the news continued favourable ; but perhaps the news of the flood- ing of the waters may for a time retard so copious an emigration. I think I have said enough to convince the House of the neces- VOL. II. F 82 COLONY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA. sity of providing at once for the government of a country threatened by so many disturbing elements. My first care has been to urge upon my right hon. friend the First Lord of the Admiralty the necessity of despatching an adequate naval force in the harbour of Vancouver—sufficient to provide against law- less aggression,-and instructions to this effect my right hon. friend assures me he has given; and my next care is to bring in this bill, which is intended to establish lawful authority and order. Now, Sir, the Crown of itself could, if it thought proper, make a colony of this district. But the law officers decided, in the case of Vancouver's Island, that no Legislature can be estab- lished by the Crown, except an elective assembly and a nomina- tive council; and, considering the very imperfect elements for such a constitution at such a moment, considering the Ordinary character of gold-diggers, considering that our information as yet is really so Scanty that we are at a loss to constitute even a council of the most limited number, I think that most hon. gentlemen will agree that it would not be fair to the grand principle of free institutions to risk at Once the experiment of Self-government among Settlers So wild, so miscellaneous, perhaps so transitory, and in a form of society so crude. This is not like other colonies which have gone forth from these islands, and of which something is known of the character of the colonists. Neither is it like those colonies in which the first thought of the emigrants is the acquisition of land, and the first care of the governor those allotments of land, which are the preliminary of representation. As yet the rush of the adven- turers is not for land but gold, not for a permanent settlement but for a speculative excursion. And therefore, here the im- mediate object is to establish temporary law and order amidst a motley inundation of immigrant diggers, of whose antecedents we are wholly ignorant, and of whom perhaps few, if any, have any intention to become resident colonists and British subjects. But where you cannot at Once establish self-government, all sound political thinkers, all friends to that responsibility which is the element of freedom, will perhaps agree that the next best thing is to establish a government which shall have as few COLONY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA. 83 checks as possible on its responsible functions; which shall possess unhampered what powers we can give it, to secure the respect for recognised authority; which shall be clearly for a limited time, and with the avowed and unmistakable intention of yielding its sway at the earliest possible period to those free institutions for which it prepares the way, and which it will always henceforth be the colonial policy of this country to effect. I think that all complicated attempts to construct half-and-half forms of government for such new societies are unsatisfactory. They only serve to weaken the executive, and to form an excuse for retarding the completion of popular systems. What, there- fore, we propose to do by the bill we now ask the House to read a second time is, to empower the Crown, for a limited period, till December 1862, and the end of the Session of Parliament next ensuing after that time—a period nominally of five years, though in reality of four—to make laws for the district by Orders in Council, and to establish a Legislature; such Legislature to be, in the first instance, the Governor alone; but with power to the Crown, by itself or through the Governor, to establish a nominative council and a representative assembly. If, there- fore, before the five years expire, there are the elements for a representative assembly, I cannot doubt that, whoever then may be the advisers of the Crown, a representative assembly will cheerfully be given. Sir, there will be some, no doubt, who think the term of five years too short—who think that the materials for popular self-government could not be matured at the end of that term, and that there would be many inconveniences in coming again to Parliament to renew the powers of the Act. To these objections I have given the most respectful care, and I would submit that the larger proportion of the immigrants attracted by the gold-fields will probably be Americans, accus- tomed to self-government; that, if you desire to keep them loyal and contented, you should give them the prospect, at the earliest possible period, of that representative form of government to which, in their native country, they have been accustomed; and that if you desire a strong Government for the preservation of internal order, no Government we can make, without the aid of 84 COLONY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA. armies, is so strong as that where the whole society is enlisted in Securing respect to the laws which it has the privilege to en- act, and has no motive to rebel against the authority in which it participates. And if, which is not impossible, the gold-fields should prove a delusive speculation, and the principal settlers should be the steadier class of emigrants—perhaps our own countrymen, who will rather cultivate the other resources of the land in its coal-mines, timber, fisheries, and other agricultural produce—you may have at the end of five years a quiet and orderly population, well fitted for self-government. Therefore I think we had better fix the shortest term for the experiment of a provisional Legislature. With regard to Vancouver's Island, which has already a free constitution, we do not propose to annex that island to the new colony. In fact, if the gold- fields should prove to be really productive, a very large popula- tion will rapidly spread over the neighbourhood of the diggings, which it will be impossible to govern from the distance of several hundred miles at Vancouver; while, if we extend our view to the natural destinies of Vancouver as the great naval station to our only possession on the Pacific side of the whole of America —a station from which we should carry on a trade with India, China, the Indian Archipelago, Australia—a trade now carried on exclusively by the Americans from California—I think we must allow that the Government of the island would have enough to occupy its care and attention in developing the true interests and resources of that single colony. Nevertheless, difficulties in the severance of the two colonies may be found in their geographical relation to each other. According to maps, the maritime access to New Caledonia can be only made facile and guarded by its command of the noble harbour of Esquivault at Vancouver's Island; natural circumstances may thus compel the fusion to which otherwise there may be sound political objections: we therefore propose to leave the question of annex- ation open to further experience; and the Act will empower the Crown to annex Vancouver to New Caledonia, if the Legislature of the island intimate that desire by an address to the Crown, under such terms and conditions as may be approved. Mean- COLONY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA. 85 while, as the most pressing and immediate care in this new colony will be to preserve peace between the natives and the foreigners at the gold-diggings, so there is nothing in the Act which impairs the prerogative of the Crown to permit the Governor of Vancouver to administer also New Caledonia, should that be absolutely necessary, in the first instance, just as the Governor of the Cape, which has a free constitution, is also Governor of the Crown colony of British Kaffraria, holding separate commissions for each. Our object, in short, has been, under our very imperfect information, and the uncertainty, as yet, of the value of the gold-fields, to insure some immediate Government, and to leave to the Crown all discretional power, according to the advice it may receive, and suited to the varia- tion of circumstances. I should add that it has been deemed necessary by the law advisers of the Crown to abolish in the proposed Act—as was done in the Act for Vancouver's Island, by the advice of the Committee of Privy Council, in 1848—the jurisdiction which the courts of Canada claim over civil and criminal cases in this region. The Crown has power to appoint magistrates and constitute courts having a concurrent jurisdic- tion with Canadian courts up to a certain amount. The Cana- dian jurisdiction is a dead letter; and though it has subsisted nominally for nearly forty years, it has never been put into execution—certainly not in the north-west territories. It is clear, however, that the concurrent jurisdiction would be attended with many practical inconveniences, which, in creating a colony, it will be necessary to remove, as we did remove them for Van- couver's Island. I have now, Sir, stated the substance of the bill I ask leave to introduce. I have shown, I trust, the neces- sity of an immediate measure to secure this promising and noble territory from becoming the scene of turbulent disorder, and to place over the fierce passions which spring from the hunger of gold the restraints of established law. If the machin- ery we propose is simple, it is because the Society to which it is to be applied is rude. But happily, in that new world, the true sense of the common interest is rapidly conceived, and the capa- cities of self-government no less rapidly developed. And pro- 86 COLONY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA. bably even before the end of the five years to which I propose to limit the operation of this Act, the materials for a popular representation may be found, and the future destinies of this new-born settlement boldly intrusted to the vigorous movement of liberal institutions. It may be mecessary to observe that, both as regards Vancouver's Island and this more extensive territory of New Caledonia, it is not intended over these colon- ised districts to renew to the Hudson's Bay Company the licence of exclusive trade, which expires next year. The servants of the Company will then have in those two colonies no privileges whatever apart from the rest of her Majesty's subjects there; and therefore I was glad to hear the hon. and learned gentleman the Member for Sheffield (Mr Roebuck) express his opinion that the present occasion was not a fitting opportunity for raising the question of which he had given notice. It is desirable to keep any discussion upon this bill free from the more angry elements which may be involved in the general question as to the powers of the Hudson's Bay Company, by virtue of its charter, on the different districts of Rupert's Land, on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, a question which the hon, Member for Shef- field will have a distinct opportunity to introduce. Sir, I have wished to keep my statement of the present value and ultimate importance of this new colony clear from all the exaggerations which belong to the philosophy of conjecture. I have carefully abstained from Over-colouring our imperfect knowledge as to the permanent richness of the gold discoveries. Nothing can be more cruel to immigrants and more dangerous to the peace of the settlement than to give undue favour to any extravagant expectations as to the produce of these gold-fields. It is a ter- rible picture, that of thousands rushing to what is already called the new El Dorado, influenced by avarice and hope, and finding, not wealth, but disappointment and destitution—provisions dear and Scanty, and the gold itself meagre in its produce, and guarded by flooded rivers and jealous Indians. At present, whatever may be the riches of the discovery, it is fair not to forget the fact that California exported in the first eight months from the discovery of its mine 150,000 ounces of gold-dust; COLONY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA. 87 while the largest amount ascertained or conjectured from Eraser's River since 1856 is not more than 1000 ounces. More rational, if less exciting, hopes of the importance of the colony rest upon its other resources, which I have described, and upon the influence of its magnificent situation on the ripening grandeur of British North America. I do believe that the day will come, and that many now present will live to see it, when, a portion at least of the lands on the other side of the Rocky Mountains being also brought into colonisation and guarded by free insti- tutions, one direct line of railway communication will unite the Pacific to the Atlantic. Be that as it may, of one thing I am sure—that though at present it is the desire of gold which attracts to this colony its eager and impetuous founders, still, if it be reserved, as I hope, to add a permanent and flourishing race to the great family of nations, it must be, not by the gold which the diggers may bring to light, but by the more gradual process of patient industry in the culture of the soil, and in the exchange of commerce; it must be by the respect for the equal laws which secure to every man the power to retain what he may honestly acquire ; it must be in the exercise of those Social virtues by which the fierce impulse of force is tamed into habitual energy, and avarice itself, amidst the strife of competi- tion, finds its objects best realised by steadfast emulation and prudent thrift. I conclude, Sir, with a humble trust that the Divine Disposer of all human events may afford the safeguard of His blessing to our attempt to add another community of Christian freemen to those by which Great Britain confides the records of her empire, not to pyramids and obelisks, but to states and commonwealths whose history shall be written in her language. XXVI. A S P E E O H IDELIVERED IN T EIF. H. O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 201EI OF JULY 1858. ON Tuesday, the 20th of July 1858, the Member for Sheffield, Mr John Arthur Roebuck, proposed, and the Member for Norwich, Wiscount Bury, seconded a motion to the effect—“That the privileges of the Hudson's Bay Company, about to expire, ought to be renewed.” After some discussion, this motion was eventually withdrawn. During the course of the debate the following speech was delivered by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, in his capacity as Secretary of State for the Colonies. SIR,--It is with some reserve that I approach the great and difficult questions involved in the resolutions of my hon, and learned friend. The Government, as yet, are in the condition of negotiators. Certain distinct propositions, as the right hon. gentleman who spoke last told us, were made to Canada by the late Government with regard to any districts now covered by the charter of the Hudson's Bay Company which she might desire for the purposes of settlement ; and whatever cause there may be to suppose that the Canadian Government will reject those proposals, still every motive of policy, as well as of respect to that great colony, would make us desire that any scheme for colonisation in that region may have her sympathy and concur- THE HUDSON's BAY COMPANY. 89 rence. To those propositions we have had no official answer; still, Sir, I own that the probability that they will not be accepted is so notorious, and the interests involved in this question are so great, that I cannot hesitate to state at least the general views by which I venture to think that we ought to be guided. In glancing over the vast regions devoted to the fur trade, which are loosely said to be as large as Europe, the first thought of every intelligent Englishman must be that of humil- iation and amaze. Is it possible that so great a segment of the earth under the English sceptre, can have so long been aban- doned as a desolate hunting-ground for wandering Savages and wild animals? I put aside, for a moment, excuses of soil and climate ; it is always presumptuous to decide hastily between man and nature—to say what man may or may not do to con- quer those obstacles of soil and climate which mature may raise against him. It is enough for us to cling to the grand principle that civilisation should be left to find its own voluntary chan- nels; that we should not force it, but should take care not to obstruct it. No one can deny that a trade which preserves wild animals, and has a direct interest in excluding civilised men, does obstruct civilisation if it claims territorial rights in any district which civilised men are disposed to cultivate and inhabit. The right hon. gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford (Mr Gladstone) summed up the general evidence before our Committee in the first two of a series of resolutions which he proposed to that Committee: first, that the country capable of colonisation should be withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the Hudson's Bay Company; secondly, that the country incapable of . colonisation should be left to that jurisdiction. In the two ab- stract principles involved in these propositions lies the readiest solution of the gravest difficulties that beset the question; it is the attempt of a practised statesman to effect a compromise by which civilisation may gain all it asks at present, and humanity may not only preserve to the savages scattered over frozen deserts, inaccessible to regular government, the trade on which they depend for existence, but guard them from the terrible de- moralisation produced by rival bribes of ardent spirits, and the 90. THE HUDSON's BAY COMPANY. strife and bloodshed among themselves, or between themselves and the whites, which might follow if the administrative ma- chinery which it is the interest of a trading company to estab- lish were destroyed before any effective substitute could be found. These are the reasons which will weigh upon the Govern- ment in considering the renewal of the licence. The Govern- ment will certainly not renew the licence over any part of the Indian territory which promises early settlement; but they re- serve for further deliberation whether they will renew it for a limited period over the more remote and northern regions, tak- ing care that the Crown shall have always the power to with- draw from that licence any land that may be required for the uses of civilised life; that it shall retain all the imperial rights to fisheries and mines, and whatever may call forth human in- dustry and enterprise in pursuits more congenial to our age than that gloomy trade in the skins of animals which seems to carry us back to a date before the annals of history. Now, although the renewal of the licence may possibly form a part of any fresh negotiations with the Hudson's Bay Company for arrangements respecting the Red River Settlement, yet it ought in principle to be considered apart from such arrangements, and on its own merits; in lands held as yet only by the Indians, does the ex- clusive licence, or does it not, work well for the Indians ? The licence is a question wholly distinct from that of the charter; the licence gives none of the territorial rights which the charter assumes—it involves no principle of compensation in case of any lands which colonists may require, and it ought to be re- garded simply as an instrument by which the Government can effect that safeguard from broil and disorder which in so vast and profitless a wilderness the Government is not able of itself to establish. But, whatever doubts may be entertained as to the Second proposition of the right hon. gentleman the Member for Oxford—namely, that land incapable of colonisation should be left to the jurisdiction of the Hudson's Bay Company—no one can dispute the soundness of the first proposition, that the country capable of colonisation should be withdrawn from that jurisdiction; and turning our eyes from a trade which, unlike THE HUDSON's BAY COMPANY. 91 all other commerce, rests its profits, not on the redemption, but On the maintenance of the wilderness, it must cheer us to see already, in the great border-lands of this hitherto inhospitable region, the opening prospect of civilised life. Already, by the Pacific, Vancouver's Island has been added to the social commu- nities of mankind. Already, in the large territory which ex- tends west of the Rocky Mountains, from the American frontier up to the skirts of the Russian domains, we are laying the foun- dations of what may become hereafter a magnificent abode of the human race; and now, eastward of the Rocky Mountains, We are invited to see, in the settlement of the Red River, the nucleus of a new colony, a rampart against any hostile inroads from the American frontier, and an essential arch, as it were, to that great viaduct by which we hope one day to connect the harbours of Vancouver with the Gulf of St Lawrence. This is the district offered to Canada, and I think my hon. and learned friend has good reason to presume that Canada will decline the task of forming it into a colony at her own responsibility and charge. If the answer from Canada be unfavourable, we have two Options : either to leave the district, as now, under the jurisdic- tion of the Hudson's Bay Company, which nothing but absolute necessity would justify; or to take it into our own hands and form a colony, which will, no doubt, one day constitute a confederate part of a great Canadian system, and which might meanwhile, perhaps, be administered by a Government in concurrence with Canada. To this there have been two objections. The first is the presumed expense. This I do not at present anticipate. All healthful colonies should be self-supporting, and I agree with my hon. and learned friend in the general theory he advances with so much eloquence and wisdom. Colonies will be self- Supporting in proportion as you leave them to raise their own revenues under free institutions. The second objection is, that such a colony would not be peopled by Canadians; that, owing to the easier access from the American frontier, the majority of immigrants would be Americans. This objection does not alarm me. In the first place, though the immigrants come from the American territory as the readiest access, it does not follow that 92 THE HUDSON's BAY COMPANY. they should all be Americans. Probably large numbers of Our own countrymen, especially the Scotch, would flock there, as well as Americans; and as for Americans, once settled as British colonists, it is probable that they would soon identify their na- tional feelings and interests with the land in which they lived, and the conditions of the Imperial Government. It has been So already in Canada—it would be so at Red River; because all history tells us how soon men, if at all of kindred race, take, as it were, the stamp and colour of the land in which they settle. We, in this country, are an instance of that truth. No less than sixteen counties in this kingdom were given up to the immigra- tion of the Danes—and probably the great mass of the popula- tion in those counties, more particularly in Yorkshire, Lincoln- shire, and Norfolk, are of Danish origin to this day; yet in a very short time they became as heartily English and as hostile . to the Danes of the Baltic as the Anglo-Saxons of Kent. Nay, even the Normans, despite their pride as a conquering race, de- spite the difference of language, became in the third generation as intensely English and anti-French in their national feelings as if they had been Saxon Thegns. In short, no matter where men come from, place them in ground covered by the British flag, overshadowed, though at a distance, by the mild British Sceptre, and they will soon be British in sentiment and feeling. All that I say on this score is, do not, on account of such jeal- ousies and fears, obstruct civilisation. Here is land fit for set- tlement; if civilised men will settle in it, let them. Never let tus mind the difficulties of access, soil, or climate. Leave the difficulties to them. Nature and man will fight their own bat- tle and make their own peace. With regard to the fitness of the place itself for colonisation, I am contented to take the opinion of the Hudson's Bay Company themselves; for, in a letter from the Company to Lord Glenelg, February 10th, 1837, when asking for a renewal of the license, I find it said, “The soil and climate of the country of the Red River Settlement are favourable to colonisation ; that it was intended that this set- tlement should be peopled by emigrants from Britain, and that the Company hoped to establish in time a valuable export trade THE HUDSON's BAY COMPANY. 93 from thence to the mother country, in wool, flax, tallow, and other agricultural produce.” Sanguine hopes, not realised since 1837 under the auspices of the Company, but which may be more rapidly fulfilled when the Company withdraws from the place the shadow of its chilling protection. With regard to the safety of a settlement at the Red River from all ordinary attacks that might be made on it from the American quarter, I have a most satisfactory report from Sir William Eyre, the Lieutenant- General commanding the forces in British North America. He states that “the Red River Settlement consists of about 8000 persons, of whom 2000 are Irish, English, and Scotch; the re- maining 6000 all mostly half-breeds. They are generally good shots, skilled in the use of firearms, and good horsemen. A local force or militia, of at least 1000 men, could be easily organised and embodied. . . . The barracks are perfectly habitable, and the post defensible, except against heavy ordnance, which it would be difficult to bring up against it. Norway House is the chief depot of the Company—the position might be made impregnable. All communication between Lake Superior and the Red River is now, according to Sir George Simpson, imprac- ticable for any body of troops. . . . A few individuals might go, but not any force. There is abundance of provisions in the Country; no want need be apprehended; water is good— wood abundant. The climate is severe in winter, but healthy at all seasons.” - These few extracts may suffice to show that a settlement once established would be safe from danger from without. As regards the fur trade in this district, I need scarcely say, that if you take the land from the Hudson's Bay Company, the monopoly that goes with the land will expire. To attempt to maintain the monopoly there would be impossible, and only give rise to per- petual feuds. In fact, I must be pardoned if I say that there is good reason to believe that that monopoly has practically, in a great measure, ceased to exist in those parts. Major Seton re- ports from Fort Garry itself—“The Hudson's Bay Company have long since abandoned in practice their pretensions to exclu- sive trade in this district and far beyond it.” Captain Pallisser 94 THE HUDSON's BAY COMPANY. writes word: “That monopoly there is unattainable now and for evermore; that the people engaged in the illicit trade are inhabitants of the Indian land, and born on its soil. Most of them are half-breeds; they are British subjects; and whatever the rights of the Hudson's Bay Company under the charter, they think it a very hard case that they should be debarred from trading in the land of their birth. There appears to be a shadow of justice in this complaint; but, just or not, the opposition exists, and nothing short of extirpating the people engaged in it can ever stop it.” Indeed, this report is so far confirmed by Captain Shepherd himself, on the part of the Hudson's Bay Company, that he states, in a letter to the Colonial Office, “That the diversion of the fur trade is carried on by the in- habitants of the Red River Settlement, who, regardless of the Hudson's Bay Company, conduct an illicit trade in spirituous liquors and furs in various parts of the country.” I think, therefore, there can be no doubt that, where the Company yields the land, it must resign the monopoly. It will be an after consideration by what regulations the trade should in that case be carried on, so as to maintain order and peace, and respect that considerate humanity which is due to the In- dians. But now comes the difficulty. The land we would thus dispose of for colonisation is within the charter of the Hudson's Bay Company; and if that charter be valid, the land belongs to the Company, but not the monopoly of the trade, except as includes the right of ownership to keep others off the land. The law officers of the late Government, men of very high distinction, consider—“That the Crown cannot now, with justice, raise the question of the general validity of the charter; but that, on every legal principle, the Company's territorial ownership of the lands granted, and the rights incident thereto—as, for example, the right of excluding from their country persons acting in violation of their regulations—ought to be deemed valid.” While this opinion of the late law officers remains before us, unexamined by our own law officers, it would be presumptuous in me to express any opinion of mine. It is our intention to submit the question to the most careful and deliberate consideration of our THE HUDSON's BAY COMPANY. 95 law officers, and ascertain from them whether, in equity and justice, we could advise the Crown, or recommend to Parliament any mode by which to facilitate a judicial decision upon this venerable title-deed. But I am bound, in justice to the Com- pany, to say that, though it might be very desirable to try the validity of the charter, it is not absolutely necessary to do so for any immediate objects of colonisation. It is but just to the Company to say that it has not hitherto shown itself stubborn or intractable. It does not say, “You shall not have the land which our charter covers.” It says, on the contrary, “Take whatever land you please; Heaven forbid we should stand in the way of civilisation. We are not the fit agents to colonise; we have not the means for it ; we tried it at Vancouver's, and are glad to get rid of the experiment; take, then, whatever land you desire within the range of the charter. But”—here comes the critical but l—“we rely on your honesty.” In other words, “If you take from us that which we actually possess, without proving that we have not the right to possess it—we are human beings, and we expect some kind of compensation.” Seeing all the embarrassments of this dilemma, I cannot but admire the skill with which, in pursuance of the report of our Committee, the right hon. gentleman the Member for Taunton (Mr Labou- chere) devised a scheme which was intended to unite the objects we have in view with a temperate conciliation towards the claims of the Company. He proposed to cede this territory to Canada if she would agree to open a line of communication to it, and give satisfactory evidence of her intention to take steps for laying out townships and settling and administering the affairs of these districts; and as to the Hudson's Bay Company, he proposed to renew its trading licence for twenty-one years over the wilderness not fitted for colonisation; and that three Commissioners—One chosen by Canada, one by the Imperial Government, and One by the Company, should consider and report what, under all the circumstances of the case, might be justly payable to the Company in consequence of Such contem- plated annexation, and in respect of property which they might be required to surrender. Well, if Canada reject these proposals, 96 THE HUDSON's BAY COMPANY. our hands are free for fresh negotiations and unfettered action. Meanwhile, to sum up my answer to the hon, and learned gentle- man—first, I think the licence ought not to be renewed except where civilisation has no requirements and law no other machi- nery but that of the Company. Secondly, with regard to raising the question of the validity of the charter, it will be submitted to our law officers, and we can obviously say nothing One Way or the other till their opinion is received. Thirdly, I grant the expediency of strengthening our empire in North America by substituting, and in one connected frontier line, the colonies of Great Britain for the hunting-grounds of a trading company. It is my sincere wish and hope that arrangements for that object may be effected in a spirit of reasonable conciliation to all parties concerned, and that we may thus lay the foundation of a civilised community, upon those principles of humanity to- wards the red man, and of honour and honesty towards the white, which our civilisation should carry along with it wherever it extends, as the colonisers of old carried along with them a fragment of their native earth, and a light from the altar of their ancient council-hall. The Company have assured us of their desire to meet the necessities of the case in a spirit of concession, and I do hope that early next Session we may propose to Par- liament arrangements that will receive its approval. In the object before us we all have a common interest,--to fulfil the mission of the Anglo-Saxon race, in spreading intelligence, free- dom, and Christian faith wherever Providence gives us the dominion of the soil, and industry and skill can build up cities in the desert. Sir, hoping that what I have said will satisfy my hon. and learned friend, at least as to the general views of the Government, I have only to thank the House for the indulgence with which it has heard me. XXVII. A S P E E O H DELIVERED IN T EI E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 3D OF MARCH 1859. ON Thursday, the 3d of March 1859, the Member for Maidstone, Mr Charles Buxton, moved in the House of Commons, “That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the condition of the West Indies, and the best means of promoting immigration into them.” A brief discussion there- upon ensued, the motion being eventually withdrawn. As Secretary of State for the Colonies, the Member for Hertfordshire, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, was especially called upon to take part in the debate ; and it was upon this occasion that the following speech was de- livered. SIR,-Let me, in the first instance, express my sense of the tem- perance as well as the ability with which the hon. gentleman has introduced his motion. The bearer of his father's name enters into the discussion of all questions that affect humanity with an hereditary title-deed to respect. It is clear that he will preserve that heirloom without a flaw. If I question his views I can equally honour his sincerity. The hon. gentleman has divided the subjects of his inquiry into two heads—the present condition of the West Indian Islands, and the question of immigration. I will take the latter first, for it goes to the core of the question, and I am glad this subject is to be openly dis- VOL. II. G 98 IMMIGRATION INTO THE WEST INDIES. cussed. I take it first on its broadest ground. Sir, I should be dealing unfairly towards those friends of the Anti-Slavery Society whose petitions have been before me, if I did not assume that on principle they are opposed to the whole system of labour immi- gration which I found established in the West India colonies. On my part, I so sympathise with zeal on behalf of the negro, even where I think those who entertain it misguided and mis- informed on details, that I entreat beforehand forgiveness if inadvertently a single word should escape me that may seem to disparage the humanity that I hold in reverence. But I must Say, frankly and firmly, that from that system of immigration I am convinced that no Minister, responsible for the welfare of the West India colonies, can depart. Let the House listen to facts and figures, and then say if I am wrong in the convictions I express. The hon. gentleman says that the prosperity which characterises many of the colonies does not arise from immigra- tion alone. No ; but where immigration has been continued prosperity has followed. Sir, the experiment of Coolie immi- gration was first tried in the Mauritius in 1835 or 1836; it was then commenced by the planters as private importers of labour. Abuses arose; the immigration was consequently suspended in 1838. In 1843 the Government took it into their hands, and by the Government it has since been conducted. Now hear the result. Since the experiment there have been introduced into the colony 170,000 persons; out of these, in 1856, as many as 134,291 were still residents. The effect on the produce of the colony has been this: The sugar crop in 1844 was 70,000,000 lb.; in 1855, ten years afterwards, it amounted to 238,480,000 lb. That has been the effect on the produce. What has been the effect on the immigrant population ? Three-fourths of those immigrants who returned to India at the end of three or five years brought back with them from 1200 to 50 rupees each; and Sir G. Anderson, who had formerly been a distinguished judge in India, in 1850 reported his opinion in these words—“The immigrant, as a labouring population, is perhaps nowhere in the world in such favourable circumstances.” But I may be told that the Mauritius is a special and singular example: is it so? IMMIGRATION INTO THE WEST INDIES. 99 Take next the case of British Guiana; into that colony about 23,000 Coolies have been introduced: they do not, as in the Mauritius, form the whole of the agricultural population, but a considerable part of it. The produce of the sugar crop, which in 1841 was little more than 34,000 hogsheads, was in 1855, 55,366 hogsheads. While this was the increase to the wealth of the colony, what was the benefit to the immigrants? Judge by this instance,—In a single ship which left British Guiana last year, 277 Coolies paid into the hands of the authorities as the amount of their savings for transmission to India more than £6000. I turn next to Trinidad. I find in the despatch from the Governor, dated September 26, 1858, that the population returned by the census of 1851 was 68,600; by immigration and the influx of strangers it is now raised to about 80,000. About 11,000 Coolies have been introduced into that island. Now wages in Trinidad are not so high as in British Guiana, but I find that 343 of these labourers on their return to India paid into the hands of the authorities for transmission the sum of £5389, and took with them more than £900. Such has been the gain to the immigrant ; what has been the gain to the colony ? The imports of Trinidad in 1855 were £554,534—in 1857, £800,830; the exports in 1855 were £387,999—in 1857 there were £1,013,414; and the Governor, in summing up the cause of this sudden and marvellous increase of the surest signs of prosperity, says—“But it is to the stream of immigration, though expensive, and by no means sufficient, which has flowed into the island during the years under review, that it is mainly indebted for the progress it has achieved.” Now, turn to the other side, and compare this increase of produce in colonies caused by immigration with the decline of produce in Jamaica, where immigration has been Suspended. In Jamaica the pro- duce of Sugar for three years after the apprenticeship was 1,812,204 cwts, and during the last three years it has fallen off to 1,244,373 cwts. Now, then, I respectfully ask you who advocate the cause of humanity, who feel with me that humanity belongs exclusively to no colour and to no country—who, if you advocate the cause of the negro, must advocate equally the cause 100 IMMIGRATION INTO THE WEST INDIES. of the Indian—I ask you whether, when we find that more than 200,000 persons left countries in which labour was worth from 2d. to 3d. a-day, where impressment and forced labour exist, where, as was said by the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, “the strong universally preyed upon the weak”—left, I say, those countries for British colonies, in which easy labour secures comparative affluence, where the labourer lives under British law, and has at all times access to a British magistrate—I ask you to Say whether humanity should bid me arrest that immigration, fling these human beings back to oppression and to famine,— and why? — because their labour benefits our fellow British Subjects and Saves a British colony from ruin. You object to the system of indentures to a master. Just hear the answer as it is supplied to me by the Immigration Commissioners: “It has, however, been objected that the Coolie, being paid for a Certain time under indenture, is in reality in a state of bondage. The answer is that, before the indenture system was established, the Coolies abandoned their work and wandered about the country, and, in many instances in the West Indies, perished miserably from disease and want.” Their condition was thus described in August 1859, by Mr Carberry, a stipendiary magis- trate in British Guiana, whose sympathies are much more with the Coolies than with the planters. “With the indentures,” he says, “the immigrant becomes an useful and industrious mem- ber of society. His labour is alike profitable to himself and his master. Without it he too often becomes a wandering mendicant, a nuisance and disgrace to the colony, and finishes his career in the public hospital; in the interest, therefore, of the Coolie himself, the indenture system is necessary.” But it is said by the Anti-Slavery Society, there has been great mor- tality on board the immigrant vessels from Calcutta. Un- doubtedly there was in the years 1856-57. But it is fair, while allowing this fact, first to remind the House that the rate of mortality was taken from selected vessels, and that it may be in much accounted for from causes that do not apply to Coolie immigration alone. Take the very worst cases that occurred. In Calcutta ships the average mortality was in the year 1856-57 IMMIGRATION INTO THE WEST INDIES. 101 a little more than 17 per cent ; but in 1847, on board the vessels that carried the Irish immigrants to America by a far shorter voyage, the mortality was much the same—about 17 per cent. Imagine what advantages would have been lost to Ireland, Eng- land, and America, if, on account of that melancholy average, the Irish exodus had been stopped. I hold here recent reports of the mortality of Coolies from inquiries instituted in India. The causes are most carefully analysed ; remedies which will receive the most diligent attention are suggested. The most searching of all the inquirers, Mr Morant, who is the inspector of jails and prisons, thus sums up : “I am distinctly and decidedly of opinion that the great sickness and mortality of 1856-57 need not recur; that, whether exceptional or not, it can be prevented by proper care and attention; and that there is no need to prohibit the continuance of immigration on grounds either of humanity or policy.” What he thus says is borne out by facts and figures; for I have here a return showing the average of mortality on board Calcutta vessels during the whole eleven years immigration has taken place. Ninety-four ships have been sent from Calcutta to the West Indies, and the average mortality in all these years had been but 6 1-5th per cent; while on board thirty-one vessels sent from Madras to the West Indies that average has been under 2 per cent : and it will be satisfactory to the House to learn that in the last year there has been a marked decrease in mortality, both in Calcutta and Madras ships; for whereas in 1857-58 the mortality in the first was 13 per cent, in 1858-59 it has been only 6 1–6th per cent; while in the Madras ships in 1858-59 the mortality has been a seventh part of 1 per cent. Stress has been laid on the Coolie immigrants in Jamaica. In most of the petitions that have been before me it is stated to be 50 per cent. What are the facts 2 I find by the last return, August 1858, that the total number of Coolie immigrants since the immigration began was 4451, and that the number of those who had died, disappeared, or were unaccounted for, during those thirteen years, was 1597. I am told, in fact, that a number of these immigrants chose to re- emigrate to Panama to work at the railroad, and lost their lives 102 IMMIGRATION INTO THE WEST INDIES. by that climate; but that was their own fault. But suppose they all died in Jamaica, calculate that mortality: as taken for the thirteen years, it gives, not a percentage of 50 per cent, but a percentage of only 2 1-6th per cent ; but taking it, as I think you ought, by calculating the average mortality of those who had returned to India during the thirteen years, you only get about 4 per cent. And this is a specimen of the exaggera- tion by which honest and well-meaning men have been deceived. As to the colonies generally, we find by returns that the average mortality among the Coolies in the Mauritius is a little more than 3 per cent. In British Guiana it is under 4 per cent ; in Trinidad it is returned as so low that I think there must be some mistake, into which I will inquire; meanwhile, I think I may safely assume it not to exceed 3 per cent. I turn, then, to the second class of argument—namely, that which condemns the present system of immigration as unfair to the Creole. It is said that there is really no scarcity of hands to meet the habitual requirements of the labour-market in the West Indian colonies; that immigration is an attempt on the part of the planters to beat down the wages of the negroes. But surely it is a sufficient answer to that assertion that the proprietors pay an extra sum to obtain elsewhere the labour which you say they can find more conveniently at home. Is that human nature? Do men do so even in the West Indies? Does Barbadoes do so? No. Bar- badoes sends for no immigrants, because Barbadoes has a suffi- cient population, and that population is eminently industrious. But does the absence of immigration keep up wages? No. Wages in Barbadoes are lower than those in any of the colonies to which immigration has been admitted. Compare the average wages of Barbadoes even with those at Jamaica, where you say the planter wishes to drive so hard a bargain with the Creole. Wages at Barbadoes since emancipation have ranged at 1s. 1%d. per day to 10d; at Jamaica they have ranged from 1s. 6d. to 1s. ; and in colonies where immigration is admitted freely, a man, be he Creole or Indian, can obtain by task-work at least 2s. a- day. But is the immigrant a competitor for labour at less wages than are current with the native 2 No; it is provided that the IMMIGRATION INTO THE WEST INDIES. 103 immigrant shall receive as a minimum the current rate of wages paid to an unindentured labourer, and these wages cannot be low, if, as we have seen, they enable the Coolie to return home in a few years with what to him is affluence for the rest of his life. But it is said, “At all events, for this importation of labour the planters should pay exclusively; the population should not be taxed for the labour that competes with their own.” Sir, I grant at once that the planter should pay the greater portion of this expense ; that is a condition which both my predecessors and myself have kept steadfastly in view. And, according to the Jamaica Act, the planters pay two-thirds; but that is not all. The money applicable for the payment of the first immigration is the sum of £50,000 remaining on the imperial guaranteed loan of £100,000. The repayment of that loan is to be effected by an export duty, and an export duty falls on the producer, that is, the planter. But granted that a portion of the expense does fall on the general community, if the immigration conduces to its prosperity, it may fairly be expected to contribute towards. it. Increased prosperity is always followed by increased civili- sation; more money is required for schools, for religious worship, for public works; every individual in the country rises higher in the Scale in proportion as it becomes more prosperous; is it unjust to call on the Creole to pay something towards what enriches and exalts the country in which we have made him a freeman? Well, Sir, then I venture to think there are really no grounds for this Committee. So far as the West Indies are concerned, there are no petitions from them demanding this inquiry, nor are there any special measures for their benefit pro- posed. So far as information is concerned, it is given to you every year in blue-books as numerous and as bulky as the most passionate student of blue-books could desire. And we are now printing for Parliament papers upon nearly all the subjects to which the hon. gentleman has referred. But it must not be supposed that we shrink from inquiry. And I make the hon. gentleman two proposals: Ist, Let him wait till the papers about to be printed for the use of hon. members are on Our table; if he then wants more information, let him specify the 104. IMIMIGRATION INTO THE WEST INDIES. points in which those papers are defective ; if the Government cannot give it, then let him move for his Committee upon those points, and we will see if those points do really need a Parlia- mentary inquiry, in which case we will concede it. Or, 2dly, if he insist on a Committee immediately, I will grant it, provided he thus defines its inquiry—namely, “To inquire into the pre- sent mode of conducting immigration into the West Indian colonies, and the best means of promoting that object.” I think that is fair; but if he take my advice he will wait for informa- tion before he decides on moving for any Committee at all. Let me say, in conclusion, a few words to the friends of the Anti- Slavery Society. I have fought by their side in my youth, and now, when I think they have been misinformed, I still believe that our object is the same—namely, to give complete and triumphant success to the sublime experiment of negro emanci- pation. It becomes them above all men to do their best to render prosperous the colonies in which slavery has been abolished. Every hundredweight of sugar produced by the immigrant at Jamaica is a hundredweight of Sugar withdrawn from the market of Cuban slaves. Will slave States follow our example unless capital flourish under it? Can capital flourish unless it has the right to hire labour wherever labour is willing to be hired ? I warn them, that if by any indiscretion of over- zeal on our part one West Indian colony becomes vitally in- jured, it is we who shall rivet the bonds of negro slavery wher- ever it yet desecrates a corner of the earth. XXVIII. A S P E E O H DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 22D OF MARCH 1859. ON Monday, the 21st of March 1859, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Disraeli, moved the second reading of the Bill to Amend the Representa- tion of the People in England and Wales. The Member for the City of London, Lord John Russell, thereupon moved as an amendment— “That this House is of opinion that it is neither just nor politic to interfere in the manner proposed in this bill with the franchise as hitherto exercised in the counties of England and Wales; and that no readjustment of the franchise will satisfy this House or the country, which does not provide for a greater extension of the suffrage in cities and boroughs than is contemplated in the present measure.” The discussion which arose upon this lasted for seven nights. At length, on the morning of Thursday the 31st of March, the amendment was carried by 330 votes to 291. On the second night of the debate the following speech was delivered. SIR.—The hon. gentleman who just sat down" has employed in vain much subtlety of argument and great variety of detail. Despite his undeniable talents, despite his industry in collect- ing and his dexterity in combining materials, whether for attack or for defence, he has failed to obscure the question so clearly put before the House by the right hon. Member for Stroud.H. That question is, Will you take into consideration— * Mr Wilson, - ºf Mr Horsman. 106 - THE REFORM BILL OF 1859. I say into consideration, for this is all that is now asked—a moderate measure of reform, which is offered by a powerful Conservative party with a large concession on their part ; Or will you rather wait for that other measure which the hon. gentleman says should be immediately proposed, which should be a satisfactory solution to every problem, but which, un- happily, is not before you, of which there is not a glimpse either in the amendment or even in the speech of the noble Lord the Member for London, and for which you must calcu- late the odds that its provisions will be such as to satisfy those gentlemen who profess what they call Radical principles, and to satisfy also those other gentlemen who have spent the last six-and-twenty years in decoying Radical votes and in abjuring Radical opinions 2 Of course, if you cannot take the mere principle of a moderate measure from us—if, as you say, the country will not accept it—then the question of Reform passes out of the hands of Lord Derby's Government. But into whose hands will it pass 2 Noble lords and hon. gentlemen who are at this moment so carefully bridging the gangway with a rope of sand [Sir W. Hayter, who was seated in “the gangway,” rose up hastily at this allusion, and left the House amid great laughter] may, by the aid of that experienced personage who has so abruptly vanished from his place, patch up the quarrels of years for the division of a night. But grant that they triumph. Grant that the Solemn lecture which has just been addressed to Lord Derby by the hon. gentleman has its effect, and that no appeal is made to the country. Grant that you are in Downing Street to-morrow, will not the quarrels of years be in Downing Street also 2 But where will be any Reform Bill? As my noble friend the Secretary for India justly said last night, this resolution will answer the noble Lord’s purpose much as the Irish Appropriation Clause answered a similar purpose in the hands of the same unrivalled destroyer of Governments; and it may then leave the English suffrage much as that famous clause left the Irish Church. And indeed it must have struck all who have listened to this debate, that, however hon, gentlemen may agree in disapproval of our THE REFORM BILL OF 1859. 107 bill, they have shown so little agreement as to any other, that Some have even taken pains to imply that there ought to be no Reform Bill at all. The hon. Member for Sandwich.” said last night that rather than take our measure he would wait— he did not say how long. The hon. Member for Birmingham, i. who is always the frankest of men, was somewhat more explicit. He said, a few weeks ago, that in order to have a good bill, he would consent to wait five years. Well, then, why not move an amendment which would get us all out of the dilemma, and which, I am sure, is at the bottom of the hearts of half the reformers opposite? Why not propose as an amendment to this bill that a good bill should be read a second time this day five years? For my part, speaking frankly, I have no super- stitious dread of any of those questions which are raised by the more ardent reformers opposite. Some of those questions I espoused myself many years ago; one or two of them I still individually favour; and if on others I have since modified or wholly altered the opinions I then held, I have done so with no uncharitable prejudice against those who believe now what I myself once believed, or may even believe a little more than my political creed ever permitted me to do. But from me, at least, advanced reformers are entitled to respect; and I know that in arguing the case with them I argue it not with the mob- leaders of fifty years ago. I argue it with gentlemen of refined education, and some of whom have proved the independence of their character by the loss of their seats, rather than yield to what they held to be the mistaken judgment of their constitu- ents. I will be fair to them. I ask them, in return, to be fair to me. We will enter on the question not as enemies but as reasoners. Now, when a Government undertakes a Reform Bill, it is impossible to discard the question—what party does that Government represent 2 Conservatives are free as other men to undertake financial or administrative reforms; and there may be points, both in the management of business and even of policy, in which there is more sympathy between Con- servatives and advanced Liberals than there is between advanced * Mr Knatchbull Hugessen. + Mr Bright. 108 THE REFORM BILL OF 1859. Liberals and Whigs. But when it comes to great organic changes, your own good sense and your instinct of party honour must tell you that a Conservative Government could not give the same kind of reform as a Government which represents your views and is supported by your constituents. An hon. gentleman who spoke last night said, with great anger, that this bill was a compromise. Of course it is. We could only deal with this question as men offering a compromise, in which We tender concessions on our side and ask concessions upon yours. What you lose in amount of reform you gain in the expedition and ease with which some reform at least may be effected. This is not all; a violent party battle upon Parlia- mentary Reform, to be fought throughout the length and breadth of the kingdom, is in itself a great calamity. I remember what it was before. Lifelong friendships are dissolved, families are divided. In each town or county, in each section of the com- munity, Society is embittered for years; trade and credit are Seriously injured. The metropolis was said to have suffered in its trade to the amount of £2,000,000 by the agitation of the great Reform Bill. All those evils, according to your views, may be counterbalanced by some large triumph for popular Government such as you would propose. All those evils are Counterbalanced by the amendment of the noble Lord. All those evils are prevented, and some advantage even to your views is obtained, if, by passing the second reading of this bill, you will meet the spirit in which a Conservative party offers to you the grounds for a compromise. The right hon. gentle- man the Member for Stroud, in the course of his weighty and impressive speech, put our position on grounds I at once accept. He said a Government, in dealing with Parliamentary Reform, has these two questions to determine : first, what will the temper of public opinion enable us to carry—what does public opinion require 2 Second, what is the amount of acknow- ledged evil—what is there for a Government (and I must here add a Conservative Government) to admit and to remedy ? Sir, I think few will deny that when we undertook the ques- tion of Parliamentary Reform public opinion was extremely THE REFORM BILL OF 1859. 109 apathetic. Doubtless, nine out of ten said loudly, “We must have a Reform Bill;” but eight out of every nine whispered to each other, “Does anybody want one 2” Is there a reason why public opinion should have changed on this subject since last year ! Look to the state of Europe. During the latter date of our deliberations on reform, war seemed inevitable. True, it is peace to-day ; can any man say there will not be war to-morrow 2 Is this the precise moment suddenly to transfer political power from the middle class, with which, on the whole, it now rests, and by which, on the whole, it has been liberally and usefully exercised, to the wider area of a class, however honest and respectable, still not yet educated up to the mark which England should require in a constituency that is to enable her to confront foreign Powers, not with the force of numbers, but with the majesty of disciplined intellect? Mr Fox once uttered words to this purpose—“What gives Eng- land her power in Europe? . It can never be numbers; it must be always intellect.” Can England represent intellect in Eu- rope, if numbers are to make the law of representation in the House of Commons? And now, Sir, when I hear the Govern- ment accused of a want of earnestness and sincerity in dealing with this question, I must venture to ask if no insincerity, no want of earnestness, has been shown by many eminent persons opposite? When it was supposed out of doors that we intended to propose a Sweeping and comprehensive measure, many of those eminent persons actually became anti-reformers. Articles appeared in Whig journals that might have been written by Mr Croker. Speeches were addressed to their constituents by Whig members that might have been uttered by Lord Liver- pool. I appeal to our own social experience. Were not gentle- men on this side besieged with confidential whispers by gentle- men on the other side, “I hope your Reform Bill will be a very moderate measure; in fact, it cannot be too moderate for pub- lic opinion.” And now, Sir, because this measure is brought forward by a Government they oppose, those same eminent persons, not contented with censuring its details, declare that it falls far short of their expectations; when if it had gone but 110 THE REFORM BILL OF 1859. a few feet further, if it had but touched the corner of that bench which the noble Lord the Member for London now adorns as a reluctant visitor, they would have said that it left Church and State behind it. Sir, that is very naturally the voice of party. I do not think it is the voice of public opinion; and if public opinion had a glass window to its bosom, we should there see among the better educated classes, on the whole, a preference to our bill, with all its shortcomings, rather than to any bill founded upon the principles which have been set forth in the only public meetings in which our bill has been denounced—principles against which I say nothing. If you want to know what is to be said against triennial Parliaments and vote by ballot, I refer you to the speeches of the noble Lords the Members for Tiverton and London. Well, then, in answer to the first question, What was the temper of public opinion; and when we undertook this bill what did it re- quire? I say the temper of public opinion was listless. I say that it either required a measure quite as moderate as we pro- pose; or, if you tell us that public opinion has been lately represented in local public meetings, then I say it requires something which is not to be found in the amendment of the noble Lord. It requires something which no Whig Govern- ment could propose, and no conceivable Government at this time could hope to carry. I turn to the Second question, put by the right hon. gentleman the Member for Stroud, What was the amount of acknowledged evil? What was there that asked a remedy ? Why, Sir, it could not be very large, for the right hom. Baronet the Member for Radnorshire,” with all his scholastic acuteness, did not, in addressing his constituents, appear to discover any evil at all. The evil could not be one very popularly felt, for the hon, gentleman the Member for Birmingham, with all his masculine eloquence, failed to get up an agitation commensurate to his talents and proportioned to his zeal. Still, there were these defects, which candid men upon all sides were disposed to admit. First, some large con- stituencies were unrepresented. Secondly, Some large classes * Sir George Cornewall Lewis. THE REFORM BILL OF 1859. 111 did not possess the franchise. We addressed ourselves at once to these. As to the first, we found that the really large towns unrepresented were extremely few. To all those with popu- lations approaching 20,000, we have given members; if we have omitted some that should be represented, prove the case, and it is a fair question of Committee; but reject the bill On account of that amendment, and you leave the towns we enfranchise still unrepresented. Secondly, there were large classes that did not possess the franchise. Now, should we really best obtain the remedy by the principle of the noble Lord’s amendment, the lowering of the borough household franchise? No; for we should then equally exclude some of the intelligent and independent persons who live in lodgings, and have no house at all. We believe we have adopted a fair rental at 8s. a-week. Is the rental too high 2 prove the case— it is a fair question of Committee; but reject the bill on account of that amendment, and you leave those intelligent persons unrepresented. We desired to extend the principle of representation by admitting personal property of all kinds. We wished to bring that qualification down to a scale that might include the artisan if he has given proofs of thrift and foresight by investment in a savings bank. Have we made the amount of that investment too high 2 prove the case—it is a fair question of Committee ; but reject the bill on account of that amendment, and you reject the principle that was honestly meant to include the superior artisan. We found it loudly complained, especially by hon. gentlemen opposite, that in counties there were many respectable persons living in towns and villages not represented, and excluded from a vote as re- sidents in the county; these we resolved to enfranchise. We took the £10 occupier, and we gave him a vote for the county. We did so with large concession on Our side. Why? I am not ashamed to say, because our subject, if possible, was concilia- tion. Do you object to the nature of that proposal as between lands and tenements 2 prove your case—it is a fair question of Committee; but reject the bill on account of that barren amendment, and I ask you whether this £10 Occupier is to be 112 THE REFORM BILL OF 1859. enfranchised by the mere resolution of this House, or whether he is to wait for that other bill, which the right hon, gentle- man the Member for Coventry (Mr Ellice) tells you a Liberal Government could not carry against the consent of the Con- servatives, and which the right hon. gentleman the Member for Stroud tells you it is more than doubtful whether you could carry at all. I decline to accept the noble Lord’s invitation, in the earlier part of his amendment; I decline to allow the whole scheme of this measure to be judged piecemeal, by a clause which you can alone thoroughly discuss in Committee. Take but one single instance of the unfairness into which we are led, if we are once distracted from all that belongs to the broad out- line of the bill on such a subject, into the investigation of de- tails which can only be sifted at a later stage. The Member for Devonport, who preceded me, is an authority in facts and figures—he is a master of detail; yet even he seeks to pre- judice you against the second reading of the bill by an inac- curacy he would not, I am sure, have incurred, had we been in Committee on the clause ; for he said that our mode of dealing with the borough freeholds would create a fluctuating constitu- ency between town and country for the next sixty years. But only allow the bill to go into Committee, and I think we shall be able to show that there will be no such floating constituency, as a voter must select between the two at the first registration. Again, the noble Lord says, “By withdrawing the borough freeholders from the counties, we withdraw the commercial ele- ment those freeholders represent.” But he forgot to state that we give to the counties more than double the votes by occu- piers of the votes withdrawn by the freeholders; and if these Occupiers should be for the most part the inhabitants of towns, they are more likely to be in trade than even the freeholders; and thus the commercial element is not withdrawn, but probably it is doubled—more than doubled, if you add those who will ob- tain either the lodger franchise or that derived from personal property. Thus, I say, you cannot judge the whole bill by a single clause. You must compare one part with another. And to analyse the clause you object to would require a debate to THE REFORM BILL OF 1859. 113 itself. Meanwhile, I am contented to leave that part of the gen- eral measure to the able defence of my noble friend the Secre- tary of State for India. I go further, and say that, granting all the force you like to the noble Lord's objections, those objections apply to details you can consider in Committee; and unless you Say it is nothing to enfranchise the large towns now unrepre- Sented—nothing to improve the registration—nothing to enfran- chise new classes—nothing to admit the £10 occupier to a vote in counties, you ought not to reject the Second reading of the bill on account of a clause you have a later and a fuller oppor- tunity to discuss. I pass on to the latter part of the noble Lord's amendment, which involves a more important question—I mean the lowering of the borough franchise. The difference between us is, that he would suddenly lower the borough franchise, and we would extend the general franchise of the nation; while in admitting the principle of lodger franchise, of investments in a Savings bank, of education as it advances becoming a qualifica- tion in itself, we not only extend the suffrage, but we open vis- tas for gradual reduction, according to the views to which some of the most thoughtful reformers have inclined more than they have dome to the coarse substitute of a £6 or a £5 for a £10 house qualification. Surely education and independence ought to be the characteristics of a liberal suffrage; Surely you gain those much more through the educated persons who hire lodgings, than you do through the persons who are struggling with poverty in a £5 house. Take no very uncommon example: a retired servant, or a broken tradesman, hires a house and lets lodgings; in those lodgings may live an artist, a banker's clerk, a man of letters, a superior artisan. The one retired servant or the broken tradesman alone has a vote ; the four educated men who lodge with him have none. Will you tell me that their four votes would not be of more value to the constituency in the right choice of a member than the votes of four £5 householders if you added them to the constituency instead 2 Now, Sir, so far as regards the mere interest of the Conservative party in this House, I have always said, and I still think, that the lowering of the borough franchise would be no disadvantage to us, and VOL. II. H 114 THE REFORM BILL OF 1859. might indirectly be of advantage. No disadvantage, because I take it for granted that the disposition of all the larger towns will be to return candidates of the opposite party. Whether those candidates are returned by a £10 or a £5 constituency could, therefore, in no way affect the balance of party in this House. Indirectly it might be an advantage to us that gentlemen oppo- site should be chosen by a £5 constituency rather than a £10. And why? Because a party does not depend on its numbers alone; it depends on the dignity, the independence, the educa- tion, and, on the whole, the moderate good Sense of its represen- tatives. I believe you gain all those qualities better under a £10 constituency than under a £5. I believe the worst enemy an upright reformer can have is not a Conservative gentleman; it is a demagogic adventurer. Once adopt a very low Suffrage in your towns, and are you sure that in the present state of popular education the upright reformer would not be often dis- placed by the demagogic adventurer? That would be your loss; indirectly it would be our gain. Our gain, because you would no longer be the same formidable candidates for power. Vio- lent politicians may make a troublesome and unscrupulous Op- position, but they could never unite to form the Queen's Govern- ment. If we wanted to destroy the moral power of your party, we would give you the lowest Suffrage you like to ask; because, lower the franchise beneath £10 in counties, lower it to £5, and you would bring our own village labourers into the franchise, and thus place numbers under the influence of property. That would be our gain. But in towns it is different. Lower the franchise in towns, and the lower you go the more you place numbers under the control of ignorance and passion. That would be your loss. But, far from wishing to destroy your party, I consider it essential to freedom that the Liberal party in this House should be always strong; and if I ask you to pause before you lower too much the borough franchise, it is because I am convinced you cannot be always strong if you create a constitu- ency that does not secure to Liberal members the same high standard of integrity and culture. But do not let gentlemen who represent the smaller boroughs credulously believe that you can THE REFORM BILL OF 1859. 115 by any political logic lower the franchise in boroughs without also destroying the smaller boroughs; the two principles must go together. For why lower the franchise in boroughs except to take population more into account, and except to enfranchise a larger number of the Superior part of the working class? You cannot, therefore, by your principle preserve the Smaller towns to the exclusion of the larger; you cannot pass over the artisans of larger towns, where intelligence is most diffused, in order to enfranchise the artisans of Smaller boroughs, with a less rate of wages, and probably a less degree of education. Therefore you cannot separate the two. To lower the borough franchise is to annihilate the smaller boroughs. Are there any members for such boroughs so guileless and lamb-like as to be caught by the noble Lord's ensnaring amendment and seductive tongue? Yes, Sir, there is one, the Member for Sandwich— “Pleased to the last he crops his flowery food, And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.” But when those smaller boroughs are destroyed, what then 2 To what constituencies will they be transferred ? Do not think we did not carefully examine that subject. We might have given what is called a more comprehensive, and might have been a more popular measure. We might have swept away 80, 90, 100, 120, boroughs. But, had we done so, it appeared clear to us, as it does to my noble friend who spoke so well last might (Lord Robert Cecil), that the majority of the seats taken from the boroughs Ought to be given to the counties. The noble Lord in his last Reform Bill arrived at the same conclusion. If we had done this you would have said, “We undertook a Re- form Bill in order to serve our party.” We did not do this. We would not, in the present state of Europe, provoke that town and county quarrel which renders always so difficult, and at this time so dangerous, the question of any large redistribution of seats. Having resolved that our measure should be moderate, we resolved that, as between party and party, it should be fair. But whenever you open that question of a wide redistribution, then, on every ground of justice, the counties will ask a larger 116 THE REFORM BILL OF 1859. proportion of seats than they now possess. But grant that you put aside our pretensions; grant that you get the kind of Reform Bill you require, and that this House is swayed and this country governed by a large preponderance of great urban populations with a very low franchise. Sir, let us face that question fairly. It is one far more important than the party battle which the noble Lord’s amendment presents to the ardour of some, and forces on the distaste of many who support it. This question—namely, a preponderance of large urban constituencies with a very low franchise—has the deepest interest to us all as well-educated men anxious for the dignity of our councils and the continued power of the House of Commons. Pause for a moment—reflect. What do you seek? What is your object? The increase of popular freedom º Be it so. Popular freedom is not secured by the ma- Chinery that returns representatives; its security is in the power the representative assembly will exercise over that highest class of minds which first guide and then consolidate the public opinion of a civilised state. That power must be intellectual, or it has no duration. That power all reforms must tend to increase, or they are worse than worthless. Fatal mistake, if in augmenting the constituency we lower the character of the assembly that re- presents it ! From one end of Europe to the other, freedom is strengthened or enfeebled not by the numbers which bear her into our councils, but in proportion as, once installed amongst us, we preserve or endanger her attributes to confidence and re- spect. Well, then, the power and dignity of the House of Com- mons. That is the object, and all reforms are but as means to maintain it. Sir, first let us see what the House of Commons really is. It is not merely a popular assembly, it is a delibera- tive assembly. It arrogates inquiry, and decides upon all the most complicated questions of policy both at home and abroad. It is this in which it strikingly differs from our free colonies, to which we may accord the most popular suffrage. A colonial legislature is little more than a vestry on a great scale. It does not provide even for its own military defences. It does not touch upon foreign affairs. All those matters belong to the imperial government. It is this, too, in which the House of Commons THE REFORM BILL OF 1859. 117 differs from the popular Assembly of America. In that Assem- bly foreign affairs are seldom discussed, except when they relate to tariffs or the disposition of public money. Foreign affairs be- long by right to the Senate, when they escape from the Select Committee of the Senate to which they are more habitually con- signed. And the Senate itself, in discussing the ratification of treaties and public appointments, becomes an executive body, excludes reporters, and sits with closed doors. Even in domestic matters the debates in the American popular Assembly never excite the same interest, nor carry with them the same weight, as the debates in the Senate do. The guiding intellect of Ame- rica is in her oligarchical Senate, not in her popular Chamber. And why? Because the American House of Representatives is what you would make this House of Commons,—so popular in its constituent elements — so brought down to the level of the masses—that even the masses have small respect for its wisdom; and it is to the Senate that the grand republic looks for deliberate judgment upon the graver matters which involve its honour and affect its national interests. It is not so as yet in England. The brain and the heart of England are still in the House of Com- mons. The wisest of our people have still a paramount interest in our debates; the greatest potentates of Europe have still a reverence for your decisions. But once Americanise the House of Commons and you would lose more in the intellectual attri- butes that create your real power than you could obtain by all the popular vigour you could get through manhood Suffrage and electoral districts. One reason for the moderation and dignity which pervade our Councils is to be found in this—that we have not as yet, on the whole, lowered our suffrage beyond the fair standard of education which ought to be required from an Eng- lish voter. I grant that in all the very large towns, even under the present franchise, the suffrage is practically so low that de- mocracy may be said to prevail. But it is the retention of those small boroughs where the franchise, though apparently the same, is really higher, which gives us that calm wisdom and fair intel- ligence which interposes, as the Member for Devonport has well said, between rival interests—between the agricultural classes 118 THE REFORM BILL OF 1859. on the one hand, and the great urban populations on the other. I do not say that this or any other argument would avail to save those smaller boroughs in proportion as the larger towns grow up in wealth and importance. But, in the meanwhile, you need not be in a hurry to get rid of a machinery which adds to the power of this House by insuring the varied accomplishments of its members and increasing the number of competitors for the Government of the country. This advantage I do not think is to be counterbalanced merely by transferring the seats taken from smaller boroughs either to counties or to towns already repre- sented, and thus diminishing the number of members who have nothing but the business of the State to think of And I do fear, that whenever that transfer is effected, whenever the smaller boroughs wholly vanish out of our system, you will realise the Same evil which America has long felt, which our free colonies, such as Canada and Australia, begin to feel already—namely, that when only very popular constituencies exist, members be- come rather delegates than representatives; men of large pro- perty, of refined education, of independent character, decline to enter into political life, and the popular Assembly ceases to re- present, what this House now does, the highest and noblest ele- ments of the general community. Sir, in the curious correspon- dence between Mirabeau and the Count de la Marcke, in which the Count was engaged in obtaining Mirabeau’s aid to save the monarchy, Mirabeau said (I forget his exact words, but they are to this effect): “You have adopted from aristocracy the most dangerous of its elements—namely, the influence of money; you have adopted from democracy the most fatal of its properties— namely, the influence of great towns over rural districts.” Mira- beau was right. Of all aristocracies, that of money is at once the most corrupting to popular virtue, and the most timid in defending institutions. Of all democracies, that of great towns is most fickle in the choice of its favourites. Freedom has no Surety in popular favourites; they may begin as the demagogue —they may end as the tyrant. Freedom has no enemy So fatal as the favourite, who may push its advancement one inch beyond the boundaries of order. Mirabeau was right. The monarchy THE REFORM BILL OF 1859. 119 went. What went with it 2 Did not liberty go? Monarchy, in One shape or other, was soon restored; monarchy reigns still. Has liberty been restored as well? What killed liberty 2 The democracy of large towns, and the terror which that democracy itself had of its own excesses. But democracy in France still exists—a democracy of universal Suffrage and vote by ballot. Pardon me if I prefer the freedom of which this House, with its tempered suffrage, is still the guardian—a freedom safe, because education controls and property does not fear it. Hon. gentle- men ask, “Are you afraid of the working man?” Certainly not; we country gentlemen, by the nature of Our pursuits, by the ha- bits of our lives, are brought of necessity into an intercourse with the village workmen around us, more familiar, more friendly, than can well exist between the employer and the operative in great towns. We are not likely to fear the working man. And for my part I am proud of the English workman, whether he be the simple village peasant, with his homely virtues, or that more agitated, but, amid all his faults, that noble human being, the skilled mechanic of our manufacturing towns, with his thirst for Rnowledge and his dreams of some political Utopia quite as ra- tional as Plato himself had dreamed before him. But it is one thing to admire the individual, to respect the class he belongs to—One thing to devise modes, by which every individual amongst it who gives proof of intelligence by forethought for the morrow, Or who by the investment of earnings, however modest, wins a stake in the preservation of order, shall come welcome and hon- Oured into the franchise—and it is another thing to say that to that class you will intrust all the destinies of England. I would intrust the destinies of England to no single class whatever; but if you admit the working men, as a body, their numbers alone give them a large majority in every constituency, and thus all the education and property of the other classes must be borne down by that class in which education is of necessity the least diffused, and by which all the intricate laws that, if only through political economy, affect the interests of property, must be the most imperfectly understood. And here, Sir, I do complain of the dangerous want of Candour with which hon, gentlemen op- 120 THE REFORM BILL OF 1859. posite have made their appeal to the working class—the noble Lord the Member for London, and the right hon. Baronet the Member for Halifax (Sir Charles Wood), both say that the fault of the bill is, that it does not admit the working class. They dwell on this objection; they inflame the working men with the belief that they shall come into the franchise not by threes and fours, but by hundreds and thousands; and then, in the same breath, they declare that they have no idea of admitting the numbers whose expectations they so cruelly excite. No, you do not admit the numbers, but you lay down the principle by which they must be either admitted or deceived. You would lower the suffrage on the express principle that it ought to include the work- ing class. Does it do so by the mysterious franchise which the noble Lord would give, but declines to divulge 2 then the evil is accomplished. Does it not do so? then you have equally conceded the principle that must accomplish the evil; for the workmen ex- cluded by the suffrage you restrict will never rest till they are ad- mitted by the principle you allow. And Iventure to predict, when you talk of our releasing the elements of democracy—and upon this subject I have heard some of the most deplorable rubbish that ever was talked by educated men—that whenever the noble Lord and the Member for Halifax bring forward their measure, and the workmen as a class find that they do not pour in their countless multitudes through the door those gentlemen will keep ajar with a chain across it, there will be among them one cry of angry dis- appointment. But I may be asked, “Would you never lower the borough franchise at all, or do you mean to say that the working class are to be everlastingly excluded ?” To both these questions I answer, “I make no such assertion.” With regard to the bor- ough franchise, I can but place before you, in no hostile spirit, the reasons why I think you should pause before you insist on any great reduction ; but I do say, it is your duty to tell us to what extent you would go. Show us the numbers below the present £10 constituency which your franchise would give, and then clearly ascertain whether your constituents desire you to swamp them. As to the future admission of the working class, I ask not the noble Lord to give us all the details of the bill that he would pro- THE REFORM BILL OF 1859. 121 pose; but I do say, that when a statesman so eminent invites the agitation of the working class against the measure proposed by the Queen's Government, he incurs to that working class a very Solemn responsibility; and he owes it to them, he owes it to his country, to make clear whether that for which the working class are to agitate is or is not that which he is prepared to concede. For my- self, I cannot but think that at heart I go farther than the noble Lord; I go farther than most of the great republican writers, an- cient and modern : I go in theory as far as Mr John Mill, and I would not object to the widest possible suffrage, if you can effect a contrivance by which intelligence shall still prevail over numbers. If that be impossible, then I say, at least, the first step towards anything that approaches to universal suffrage should be something that approaches to universal education. But this I repeat, that when you invite the agitation of the working class against this measure, you should not only tell us what you refuse from us, you should make it distinct and unequivocal what you would give, and then let the country decide between the two. Sir, Lord Plunket, in one of his great forensic speeches, said—“Time is represented with the hour-glass as well as the scythe.” True; with the scythe he mows down—by the aid of the hour-glass he metes the dura- tion of that which he intends to destroy: let me add to Lord Plunket's grand image—by the aid of the hour-glass Time also must reckon the moment for that which he designs to construct. You would borrow from Time the scythe ; have you consulted his hour-glass? You would mow down this Government and this Re- form Bill. Granted. Look at the hour-glass What Government and what Reform Bill will you reconstruct 2 So far as this Gov- ernment is concerned, I will not defend at this moment its alleged faults—I will not at this moment ask if it has had no merits; nor will I, even now, when gentlemen opposite are arrayed against it, ungratefully forget the patriotic countenance it has received amidst its earlier but not its greater difficulties. All I would say is, our intentions in this bill, amidst the general state of England and of Europe, are not such as to merit the censure of any high-minded Liberal. I grant the bill is not one which gentlemen below the gangway would give if it were their task to make one ; but, so far 122 THE REFORM BILL OF 1859. as the Government is concerned, I ask those very gentlemen, as men of honour, if Lord Derby's Government had passed a bill ac- cording to your models, though you would have accepted the bill, would you not have despised its authors ? Should we not have been traitors to those we represent 2 We should have come into your camp, not as now, with a fair flag of truce and Overtures of mutual compromise, but with standards trailed in the dust, and offering up the keys of every fortress which the loyalty of our par- tisans had confided to our charge. No | If a Reform Bill, such as you desire, must be carried, it is for you to propose it; it is not for us. But, before you raise the scythe to mow us down, look again at the hour-glass | What is to be the next Government? Can it last if the Member for Birmingham and the noble Wiscount, if the Member for Sheffield and the Member for London, do not sit on the same Treasury bench 7 Can it last if they do? In either case the sands in the hour-glass will be violently shaken. So much for this Government. One moment more to this bill. It is said not to be final. No Reform Bill can be. The fault you allege is its merit. It is its merit if it meets some of the requirements of the day present, and does not give to-day what you may regret to-morrow that you cannot restore. Democracy is like the grave— it perpetually cries “Give, give; ” and, like the grave, it never re- turns what it has once taken. But you live under a constitutional monarchy, which has all the vigour of health, all the energy of movement. Do not surrender to democracy that which is not yet ripe for the grave. Gentlemen employ much sarcastic cavil in the dispute as to what is the main principle of this bill. I say, as Lord Macaulay said in the debate on the old Reform Bill, I care little for technical definitions on that score. I would not base the defence of this or of any Reform Bill upon an abstract dogma on which special pleaders may differ. I would take that which was our main object for the backbone and life-spring of the bill. That main object, so admirably stated by my noble friend the Secretary for India, was, irrespectively of party interests, to confirm and ex- tend to the middle class the political power which, during the last twenty-seven years, they have exercised, so as to render liberty progressive and institutions safe ; but at the same time to widen THE REFORM BILL OF 1859. 123 the franchise the middle class now enjoys, so that it may include all belonging to the class who are now without a vote; and, in- stead of bringing the middle-class franchise down to the level of the workmen, lift into that franchise the artisan who may have risen above the daily necessities of the manual labourer by the ex- ercise of economy and forethought. The bill therefore, I own it, is emphatically a bill for the middle class. The cause is theirs; it is not the cause of the aristocrat ; it is not the cause of the Conserva- tive country gentleman, who, of all parties concerned, now tenders the largest concession. The cause is that of the middle class, down to the verge at which the influence of that class would melt away amidst the necessities of manual labour and the turbulence of con- centred numbers. If they of the middle class like to abandon that cause, they abdicate their own power, and with it all which has hitherto made the resources of England unshaken amidst the vicis- situdes of commerce and the calamities of war. If they honestly think the time has come when it is safe to accept the counter-prin- ciple which you advance — namely, that political power should descend to the working class—not knowing, so far as I can judge by the language of popular meetings, where that principle, Once adopted, can stop till it reaches manhood suffrage, then I Say with the middle class the responsibility must rest. Meanwhile you in this House will determine whether it is your duty thus abruptly to sign away the influence of that class of which you are still the representatives and trustees, whether you really secure the title- deeds of their commerce, and take solid guarantees for the safety of their old English freedom, by accepting an amendment which commits you to a pledge to the working class—a pledge which you can never redeem to their satisfaction until you have placed capital and knowledge at the command of impatient poverty and uninstructed numbers. XXIX. A S P E E C H DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 26TH OF APRIL 1860. ON Monday, the 19th of March 1860, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Lord John Russell, moved the Second Reading of the Bill to Amend the Representation of the People in England and Wales. After a discussion which lasted for six nights, the motion was agreed to without a division. On the fourth night of the debate the following speech was delivered. SIR,--The debate has hitherto chiefly turned on the quality and nature of the proposed borough franchise. It is evident from the speech of the hon, member who has just sat down,” that this involves a question on which gentlemen opposite have an interest fully equal to our own; I shall therefore so far imitate his example, that I will endeavour to state my views in a spirit that shall be as free from party bias as I can possibly form and express it ; and as I think it very important that we should have clear perceptions of the nature of our dispute, and of the Consequences of any mistake we may commit, I will first entreat the House to bear with me for a few minutes, while I try to * Mr Black. THE REFORM BILL OF 1860. 125 consider whether, at least, we cannot agree as to some broad principle upon which all good representative systems should be based. Sir, I will assume that every popular reformer, and every sound political thinker, who seeks to estimate the proper standard at which to fix an electoral franchise, must, in abstract theory, start from the same point;-and that point is the primó facie right of manhood suffrage. Where you find a civilised community in which all the members are equally free, and where, by a system of indirect duties, every man is more or less taxed to the support of the State, I can readily understand that every man should consider that he has a primá facie right to vote for those who superintend his affairs and regulate the machinery by which his welfare is controlled. But here, from the origin of all political Societies, commences another view of that same question, upon which popular reformers may differ—I do not know if they do—but on which all who are acknowledged to be sound political thinkers are agreed; and it is this: granting that every man in a free community may thus put forward his claim to the electoral franchise, still every member of a community merges all his individual rights, and many rights much nearer and dearer to him than an electoral franchise, in the paramount consideration how the State itself can be best sustained for the general safety and the social advancement; or, in the words of the hon. gentleman who has just spoken, how “the greatest happiness of the greatest number” can be secured from attacks without and within, from foreign dangers or its own mistakes, for the longest probable period. The Member for Edinburgh says that he would wish to see established some definite principle by which we might construct our measure, and by which we might test its details. That which he asks has been the object of research to political reasoners for more than two thousand years; but I think the substance of all that has been said by those whom we hold to be authorities may be found in this very simple definition: a free State will be thus best sustained and advanced by Securing to its legislative coun- cils the highest average degree of the common sense of the common interest. For this, intelligence is requisite, but not 126 THE REFORM BILL OF 1860. intelligence alone; you might have a legislative assembly Com- posed of men indisputably intelligent—nobles, lawyers, priests —who might honestly believe they used their intelligence for the common interest, when in fact they used it for their own. Hence it follows that no one class interest must predominate over all the others, or the common interest is gone ; gone if that class be the great proprietors—gone if that class be the working men. But there is this distinction between the work- ing class and every other, that, granting their intelligence to be equal to that of others, granting that it be not more likely to be misdirected, still, when it is misdirected, the conse- quences are, if they are invested with the electoral power that determines legislation, immeasurably more dangerous both to the common interest and to their own. For they are the roots of society, and it is the roots of society that their errors will affect; while their numbers are so great that their votes could overpower the votes of all the other classes put together. When this happens, the instinctive safeguard of the rich is corruption; and the instinctive tendency of ambition, if it be not rich, is to- wards those arts which give dictatorship to demagogues. The hon, and learned Member for Marylebone has done me the honour to quote expressions of mine in praise of the labourer and mechanic. I neither retract that praise, nor the qualifica- tion with which it was then accompanied. The working class have virtues singularly noble and generous, but they are ob- viously more exposed than the other classes to poverty and to passion. Thus, in quiet times, their poverty subjects them to the corruption of the rich; and in stormy times, when the State requires the most Sober judgment, their passion subjects them to the ambition of the demagogue. To every man who has read history, these are not unsupported propositions. The history of all the old republics is uniform as to their truth; and as in all those old republics, at least where democracy was established, vote by ballot was employed, so the same history tells us that vote by ballot is no cure for the evils. Hence it is that those eminent writers on the Liberal side who have lately examined this very question of a new franchise for England with political THE REFORM BILL OF 1860. 127 courage as well as speculative acuteness, have all specially dwelt on the extreme danger of basing that new franchise rudely and exclusively upon a principle that, once conceded, must expand —a principle that, by avowedly reducing your borough franchise So as to admit manual labour without any equipoise, without any test or condition beyond that of finding a roof to cover it at 2s. 4d. a-week, must end by giving to manual labour the political power over the capital that employs and the mind that should direct it. An hon, member in the course of this debate referred to the opinions of Mr John Mill, than whom no severer reasoner adorns our age; but what are Mr Mill's opinions? Sternly against all the arguments by which the proposed fran- chise is defended. He would give, it is true, a vote to every man; but in order to counteract the effect of numbers so created, he would give to a man of Superior education or property, such as a farmer or a tradesman, four or five votes—to a man of still higher education and property, five or six votes. More lately Mr Mill has declared in favour of the scheme propounded by Mr Hare and explained by Mr Fawcett in a very remarkable pamphlet; a scheme that is based upon the principle of securing representation even to the smallest minorities. These ideas are So against the taste of the House and the inclination of the public, that their adoption may be impossible; but I mention them to show that here are consummate reasoners whose doc- trines of government belong to the boldest school of Liberal opinion, and who are yet more anxious than the highest Tory amongst us to secure to property and intelligence a power that shall not be overborne by the influence of numbers. - The Member for Birmingham says there is no cause to fear the influence of numbers or of the working class in the bill that is now before us. He says, firstly, that the proposed addition as regards the boroughs is not considerable; secondly, that the total constituency will still be very small in proportion to the adult male population. But the Member for Birmingham fails to see or to grapple with the argument of my right hon, friend the Member for Buckinghamshire. It is not with my right hon. friend a question of numbers alone, but rather of fitness. In 128 THE REFORM BILL OF 1860. fact, though I accept the assurance of the right hon, gentleman the Home Secretary, that the most conscientious pains were taken to obtain accurate returns, yet he must pardon me if I say that, without entering into the dispute between him and the Member for Marylebone, those returns must seem incredible to any gentleman who will use his own powers of inquiry and observation—for a £6 house is a house at 2s. 4d. a-week; but if any gentleman will inquire in the Small rural towns or even the large villages in his neighbourhood, he will find that there are scarcely any houses in them that are let to the most ordinary artisans at less than 2s. 6d. a-week; but if 2s. 6d. a-week be the lowest rent paid by a journeyman labourer in a small rural town, what must it be in a populous borough where the average rental cannot fail to be higher? Just consider. Many gentlemen, no doubt, have built plain cottages for their own day-labourers; those cottages cannot cost them less than about £80 each : they would be contented with a small interest for their money, be- cause, as it is truly said by the Duke of Bedford, who has con- ferred benefits on the working classes, the more signal, because so nobly unostentatious, “the Country gentleman does not build cottages for immediate remuneration;” but in a borough town such houses are built on speculation by Small capitalists, who would not be satisfied with less than 7% or 8 per cent for their outlay—that is, more than 2s. 4d. a-week, for a house equal to the humblest cottage you build for your humblest labourer. But, granting the returns to be correct as to the present number of £6 householders, they can afford no criterion of what the number of £6 voters would be if this bill passed into a law; for the poor labourer who now pays 2s. a-week for a house (and less than that he could scarcely pay for any hovel in a borough town) would gladly pay 2s. 4d. to Secure a vote as a good specu- lation, which will give him a claim on the wealthier tradesmen of the town who take an interest in elections, should he want a job of work or a charitable donation at Christmas—those small gleanings of calculating benevolence which are the perquisites of poor electors; and on the other hand, a landlord who now lets houses at 2s, or 2s. 2d. a-week will screw them up to 2s. THE REFORM BILL OF 1860. 129 4d., in order to increase his political importance by having a numerous tenantry at his command, in constitutional proof of the legitimate influence of property. And you must take with you the fact, which you seem to ignore—namely, that every year, as the prosperity and population of the country increase, the £6 franchise will become wider and wider as to numbers, lower and lower as to the condition of the voter. The £10 occu- pation is now, in the larger towns, a very much lower franchise than it was thirty years ago. You are legislating for posterity in a direction you can never retrace; and in less than thirty years a £6 franchise must, in the larger towns, be equivalent to household suffrage. We have therefore no fair criterion as to numbers; but in the meanwhile we find, even by your returns, that the addition proposed is quite enough to overbear the exist- ing constituency in a great proportion of the present boroughs; it must materially influence elections in most of the others. We then ask if that addition be composed of a variety of classes; we find it is confined to a single class, and we object to overbear the existing constituency by a single class, without any equi- poise or relief. I shall make our distinction more clear by proceeding at Once to the second assertion of the Member for Birmingham. He Says that the entire constituency, which he estimates at 1,000,000, will be very Small, compared to the adult male population, which he estimates at 7,000,000. But when he would thus make man- hood suffrage a standard by which to compose a suffrage that, if more limited, should fairly represent the diversified character and opinions of the whole adult male population, he forgets to omit from his 7,000,000 not only about 700,000 paupers, whom we will put aside, but more than a million and a half com- posed of soldiers, Sailors, mercantile marine, domestic servants, and rural peasants; voters whose tendencies might counteract the opinions of the special class this bill selects for the franchise. And the right way to look at the present suffrage, and at the proposed addition, is evidently this: The present suffrage is a Selection, made less than thirty years ago, from those classes of the male population with which popular liberty is most safe; WOL. II. ** I 130 THE REFORM BILL OF 1860. excluding rural peasants, as too much under the influence of landed aristocracy—domestic servants, as too much under the influence of masters—soldiers and sailors, as too much under the influence of the Crown. But if, while you continue to exclude from your constituency large masses of the population that re- present Conservative elements, you admit a new element, which our common Sense tells us must be exclusively democratic, you destroy the fair equipoise of representation even by numbers, and you do not impartially extend the area of a national fran- chise, but you pervert a national franchise into the monopoly of a single class. I close, then, this part of my argument with these plain propositions: First, that it is not consulting the common sense of the common interest; secondly, that it is not a fair application of the doctrine of representation by numbers, to introduce into a constituency already so popular, that in this vast metropolis, and in many of our great towns, the richer classes are not represented at all, a new selection from that special class of artisans, who, crowded together in large towns, always have been, and always will be, the most democratic and the most excitable part of the population, without any selection of an opposite tendency, so that the more some town has been rendered populous and flourishing by expenditure of capital and activity of educated intellect, the less capital and educated intellect will have a voice in the representation of the place, the prosperity of which they created and maintain. And now, Sir, let me observe that it was well said by my hom, friend the Member for Leominster, in a speech which the Home Secretary censures for being animated—I cannot retort the charge on the right hon. gentleman, who spoke as if “he came to bury Caesar, not to praise him *—that much of this argument has been conducted on premises that are not strictly true. It has been too much assumed that all the working class are excluded by the present franchise. We are asked to open the door to them, as if the door had been kept rigidly locked and barred against them. But is that the case? I apprehend that in all the metropolitan boroughs artisans must form a con- siderable part of the constituency. In fact, if your returns are THE REFORM BILL OF 1860. 131 correct, and if we must prefer them to the calculations of the Member for Marylebone, it is clear that the main reason why artisans living in houses below a £10 rental will not add con- siderably to the metropolitan constituencies, must be because a large number of artisans in metropolitan constituencies live in houses that are not below a £10 rental. But, take any borough, any County,+have not all and each of us several working men among our constituents? The working classes are therefore admitted at present. The door is not locked. You say, admit more, many more; open the door much wider. Very well, do So ; but since you cannot admit them all, let us try and estab- lish Some better test than that of a certain amount of poverty. Do not lower your franchise upon the express principle of ad- mitting the poor solely and wholly because they are poor. The Member for Halifax, in a speech of much promise, and in the excellent taste of a gentleman who can unite ardour for a cause With courtesy to opponents, said, “The best test of fitness for the franchise is the desire to possess the franchise.” Let him reflect for a moment, and he is too good a logician not to see that his position is untenable. Desire is no proof of fitness. We all desire to be rich—is that any proof that we all deserve riches 2 We all desire to be strong, healthy, and wise, and how few of us take the smallest pains to be strong, healthy, or wise? We lmust have, then, a better test than desire. In Our bill, we, the late Government, sought to take that simplest test by which the human being vindicates his claim to reason—I mean the habit of frugality and forethought for the morrow in the man who lives by the labour of the day. We thus did expand the franchise to the working class, not by regarding such voters as the mere symbols of four crazy walls, but in proportion—I do not say as they had a stake in the Country, for every child just born has a stake in his native country, but in proportion as they showed they were sensible of that stake, and had by the mere exercise of a virtue most useful to themselves—the mere principle of Saving for the un- certain morrow—entered into the class of proprietors, and had become participators in that prudent regard for order which is 132 THE REFORM BILL OF 1860. the Safeguard of property, and the main distinction between liberty, which is always thoughtful, and licence, which is always reckless. You dismiss these attempts of ours to modify, refine, and exalt a mere popular franchise—dismiss them without one effort of your own to improve them ; and I believe they could be greatly improved and enlarged by a Government in whom reformers had confidence, and whom this House honoured with a majority; you dismiss not only our notions, but all the re- monstrances and all the warnings of your own ablest writers, and you who came into power upon the presumption of Superior capacities for a comprehensive scheme, content yourselves with what ?—rudely creating an additional constituency upon the express and sole principle that it is to be poorer and less intel- ligent than the present, without a single franchise of a higher nature; and you make that addition so numerous that in most of those large towns which are the centres of energy, which the Member for Rochdale once told us “govern England,” it is that poor and less intelligent class which must take the lion's share of political power. And when we are told by the hon. Member for Birmingham and the hon. Member for Leeds, that a £6 franchise is not so rigidly confined to the working class but what there are several £6 occupiers who are not actually work- ing men, I say that in no way touches our objection. They are equally men subjected to the conditions of poverty and passion; and though we are willing to admit poverty and passion into the franchise, we are not willing to give poverty and passion the lion's share of political power over capital and knowledge. And I say this, not as against the representation of the working or the poorer classes, but on behalf of their genuine and true repre- sentation; for if you reflect a moment you will own that their true representation must be more or less perfect in proportion to the knowledge which may exist in this House of the inseparable connection between their interests and all our legislative functions. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in a speech which, whatever we may think of the Budget it introduced, will remain among the monuments of English eloquence as long as the language THE REFORM BILL OF 1860. 133 lasts, told us truly that “the interest of the working man was consulted less by our cheapening the articles he consumes, than by our stimulating the trade which gives him wages and employ- ment.” I advance upon that argument, and I say, therefore, that the true representative of the working man is in every wise legislator who stimulates trade, who strengthens credit, who exalts the standard of society, in which the working man rises with every step that raises the common interest of us all. I say that he has a true representative in every profound lawyer who renders justice more accessible; in every enlightened phil- anthropist who ameliorates the condition of humanity; nay, in every naval or military officer whose professional Science Sug- gests sounder defences, not only for the land we inhabit, but for the protection of the commerce which employs the millions, and which rises or falls with the honour of the flag that is only the Safeguard of our wealth because it is the symbol of our power. But, are these the kind of representatives the working class would generally prefer if they constituted the great majority of electors ? I say boldly, No. For even in America, where edu- cation is far more equally diffused than it is with us, it is the common complaint that such are not the kind of representatives they prefer, Just hear what is said on that score by an Ameri- can addressing his fellow-citizens—not a political malcontent declaiming on a popular hustings, but a man of high education (Mr Doherty) calmly addressing the literary Societies of Lafay- ette College, and the title of his lecture is “Fears for the Future of the Republic.” After stating, as a well-known fact, that the more respectable citizens even of the commercial and industrial classes will tell you that they “scorn to mix in politics, their time can be better employed,” he goes on to say: “Thus, the vast machinery of this huge republic in all its departments is for the most part left to the control of bands of men who make politics a trade—men who laugh at integrity, are insensible to patriotism, are regardless of intellect—who hate the man who tells the truth and will not cringe to them, and love the one who lowest bends, yet cheats them in the end. . . . Surely it is of vital importance to the wellbeing of a State that its legis- 134 THE REFORM BILL OF 1860. lature reflect the wishes of the people. . . . Yet there are those who legislate for the different States of the American Confeder- acy who are unable to read, much less to frame a statute; who Know nothing of our past history, present wants, or future prospects; who are ignorant of the constitution, and would not dare to fill the humblest of clerkships, yet occupy seats in legis- lative halls. But their ignorance is their least fault. Corruption Swarms around each capitol, daring the gaze and defying the power of outraged constituencies; legislation is bought and sold. Within a year it has come to light that in one of the vigorous States of the west, the majority of the legislature, with many of the State officers, in violation of their oaths and of honour, were purchased each for a given price. Better for us and for our posterity, better for our peace at home, our character abroad, that the legislature of Pennsylvania should meet but Once in ten years, than that the State should be disgraced by such representatives and dishonoured by such laws.” Yet these are the representatives whom the majority of the working classes elect, and these are the laws those representatives pass, uninflu- enced by that aristocracy to whom the hon. Member for Bir- mingham ascribes all the evils we endure. So much for America. Now look to England. Let me ask who in our time has been the man who has had the largest share of the especial confidence of the working classes 2 Not the hon. Member for Birmingham. No ; it was Mr Feargus O'Connor. And is there any member present who would say that at this moment the interests of the working classes are not better represented in this House by such gentlemen as I have described, and whom we may recognise wherever we direct our eyes, than they would be if they could turn this House into a synagogue of Feargus O'Connors ? But this bill is to amend the representation. How will it do that ? Will it make the House of Commons wiser? Will it make our councils more enlightened? Will it increase the knowledge, the integrity, the pecuniary in- dependence, and the mental discipline, without which we should have no strength in public opinion if ever we had to protect our freedom against an able tyrant and a standing army? We read THE REFORM BILL OF 1860. 135 in that masterly contribution to our history which Mr Forster has just published, that when Charles I. attempted illegally to seize five members of this House, all London rang with cries of “Parliament!” “Privilege!” and why? Because at that moment this House represented property, station, and knowledge, as well as patriotism and valour; and therefore it had strength in public opinion. But a few years later Cromwell expelled all the members, and locked up the House itself; and there were then no cries of “Parliament l’ “Privilege : * There was Scarcely a murmur heard out of doors. Why was that ? Be- cause the House was then only a Rump Parliament. It had ceased to represent property, station, and knowledge; and therefore it had no strength in public opinion, though its major- ity, even then, were stanch reformers; nay, they were actually. discussing a new Reform Bill, not altogether different from that of the hon. Member for Birmingham, at the very moment Crom- well and his pikemen entered. Is there any gentleman here who will tell us he expects to return to Parliament a wiser man—a sadder man, perhaps, he may be—when he knows he has ceased to represent property, station, and knowledge, and has become the delegate of the poorest householders in the borough he represents? But how will this measure improve the constituent body? When that question was asked in the debates on the great Re- form Bill, the answer of the reformers was crushing. You then got rid of the boroughmonger, who sold his borough—of the potwalloper, who sold his vote; and your substitutes were trade, commerce, manufactures—that combination of various interests which is found in the middle ranks of society, which cannot be called a class, because it comprises all classes, from the educated gentleman to the skilled artisan, and which, therefore, does represent a high average of the common sense of the common interest. You then did not merely extend the franchise. The Home Secretary has taken pains to prove that. To use the words, I think, of the late Lord Grey, “you purified, you ex- alted the constituency.” But when you are asked, “How does the little Reform Bill purify and exalt the constituency " what 136 THE REFORM BILL OF 1860. will you answer ? You will say, “It is true we found many persons of respectable means and excellent education, who com- plained that they were without a suffrage; we did not attend to their complaint, but where we found persons living in lanes and alleys, at a rent which afforded the fair presumption that they had little property and less education, we conferred our new franchise exclusively on them. And so we purified and exalted the constituency l’’ Sir, let me venture to give you an illustration of the manner in which the little Reform Bill will probably work out the amendment of the representation, and purify and exalt the con- stituency. I will first assume that the state of the world renders it likely that for some years to come our party differ- ences will occur upon questions affecting our foreign relations. Let me suppose some such question on which Parliament has been dissolved, some question that shall not trespass on what we should now call delicate relations; only perhaps a new quarrel with China. Nothing more likely than that Suddenly, then, there appear before your new constituency in one of those boroughs which the noble Lord reserves as the nursery of rising genius and the refuge of ill-treated statesmen, two dignified and imposing persons, whom that new constituency do not know from Adam: but these are rival candidates; Thomson is a rising genius, Browne an ill-treated statesman ; Thomson supports the Government—genius that rises generally supports a Government; Browne sides with the Opposition—ill-treated statesmen natur- ally do. They both proceed to canvass Mr Smith, one of your new electors, a journeyman plasterer—the hon. Member for Leeds thinks that plasterers are entitled to a preferential differ- ence—living in a frail tenement, much in need of plaster, and struggling hard to pay off a harassing debt of £3. Thomson, who supports the Government in a naval and military expedi- tion to Pekin, appeals to Smith's patriotism for the chastisement of the Chinese barbarians and the prestige of the English name. Browne condemns that criminal and somewhat costly expedition, and is eloquent on the rights of humanity and the inoffensive character of an oriental but industrious population. The more THE REFORM BILL OF 1860. 137 the Candidates talk, the less interest they excite in the breast of Smith, One way or the other, for the affairs of China. In fact, his whole mind is absorbed in the consideration of those £3 which neither of these eloquent strangers helps him to pay. Now there appears a third person on the stage, and he whispers to Smith, “Vote for humanity and Browne; vote for the pre- Servation of the Celestial Empire and its countless millions, and you shall have 30s.” Smith indignantly rejects a bribe thus coarsely offered ; nevertheless it cannot but occur to him that 30s. would pay off half his debt, and for the first time in his life he begins to conceive an interest in the affairs of China. Now there appears a fourth person, the real Deus cæ machiná— a Solicitor, or a Solicitor's confidential agent—a fellow-townsman, a man whose word is as good as his bond; and he whispers to Smith, “You are an homest man, and not to be bribed; I know all your affairs; you are tormented by a paltry debt of £3; that debt shall never trouble you any furtherif you vote for Thomson and your country's glory.” Well, Smith begins to think of his wife's anxious face, of his children's scanty supper—thinks what a blessing it would be to rise the next morning free from the incubus of those £3; and as he so thinks, can you wonder that he begins to care no more for the Celestial Empire than the Celestial Empire cares for him 2 The man's heart is tempted, and the elector's vote is bought. That is the origin of corrup- tion; and such corruption soon becomes contagious in proportion as you multiply voters to whose knowledge China is a phantom, and to whose wants £3 are the Indies. These instances occur now ; but will you tell me that they will not be much more numerous under your new constituency —ay, and on questions far more vitally important to England than an expedition to Pekin But why more numerous 2 Be- cause poverty and debt are not the staple of your present con- stituency. But reduce your franchise to almost the humblest tenements in which poverty can face debt, and I leave the conjecture of the probable result to your own indulgent know- ledge of human nature. Are we to be told that the ballot would cure this? The ballot / Why, is there a gentleman old enough 138 THE REFORM BILL OF I. 860. to sit in this House and yet young enough to believe that if our friend Smith, who is not a bad man, and who will not break the promise he has given on a consideration, could drop into the ballot-box a vote, perhaps, against the inclinations of his party, he would not have a conscience still more placidly resigned to that chastisement of the Celestial Empire and that vindication of his country's glory by which thus quietly, unobtrusively, and without giving offence to any one, he could pay off his debt of £3, and perhaps by that vote serve to add £3,000,000 more to the debt of England 2 The hon. Member for Birming- ham has a more speedy and decided cure for this evil. He would get rid altogether of these nurseries of rising genius, these asylums of ill-treated statesmen; he would have only con- stituencies so numerous that they are less likely to be bribed in detail than bribed wholesale, by some system of direct taxation which shall reduce the duties on the articles £6 householders consume, or defray all the expenditure necessary to protect the houses they inhabit and the freedom they enjoy, at the exclusive cost of persons who are better lodged than themselves. This kind of corruption I hold to be infinitely more dangerous than the other; for a nation may continue great and flourishing even though rich candidates do bribe poor electors, but the greatest nation in the world must become bankrupt and ruined if the poor could carry any system of taxation which embodies a prin- ciple that confiscates the property of the rich. Therefore, though I am far from saying that a bolder redistribution of Seats may not be required for the ultimate Settlement of this question, I say that if that redistribution is to be based on a £6 fran- chise, without any equipoise, in all the larger urban consti- tuencies substituted for smaller boroughs, you will render the danger of a low franchise immeasurably more formidable, and though there may be less individual bribery than among Small constituencies, you will incur a much greater risk of that general political corruption which ends either in the spoliation of pro- perty or the loss of freedom. Yet, if you pass this bill, the Mem- ber for Birmingham is quite right in thinking that an extensive redistribution of seats, which shall give the same £6 franchise to THE REFORM BILL OF 1860. 139 urban multitudes, must follow. “Give him,” he says, “this £6 borough suffrage, and he will there fix a lever that shall lift about a hundred gentlemen round him out of their seats, and launch them into the abyss of space.” That is the very next of what he mildly calls “successive steps;” and when I heard him thus inhumanly predict the massacre of the confiding innocents who were then actually grouped around his very knees, I turned towards those unfortunate gentlemen with a thrill of Supersti- tious awe at the despondent resignation with which they seemed to hear the executioner announce their doom. Well, them, I think this change will not make the representative body wiser nor the constituent body purer. But an hom. member said in the former debates that “this was an age of progress; ” and from that fact he argued that, because we had railways and steam therefore we ought to have a £6 constituency. I do not see the Sequitur. Steam and railways are produced by the science of the learned and the capital of the rich; and I cannot understand by what principle of logic I am to call that a progress which places our legislation at the mercy of men who are the reverse of learned and the opposite of rich. The Home Secretary says he supports the bill “because the time has come to make some further progress in the same direction in which we made so great an advance in 1831.” But by this bill you do not ad- vance ; you go back, and in the direction from which that great reform so resolutely departed; you go back by one long stride towards the old Scot-and-lot voters, whom the great Reform Bill was originally designed to get rid of—go back to the very con- stituency which the experience of centuries had proved to be venal. It seems to me that we thus engender the coarsest vices of democracy without any of its redeeming grandeur. Pure democracy, in the classic sense of the word, has conferred on the civilised world too many benefits as well as warnings not to have its full share of enthusiastic admirers among men of culti- wated minds and of generous hearts. But for pure democracy you must have the elements that preserve its honesty and insure its duration. Those elements are not to be found in old socie- ties with vast disparities of wealth, of influence, of education— 140 THE REFORM BILL OF 1860. they belong to the youth of nations, such as colonies; and when any gentleman cites to us the example of a colony for some democratic change that he would recommend to the ancient monarchy of England, I can only say that he has not studied the hornbook of legislation. The acute democrats of that sub- lime republic by which we are all unconsciously instructed whenever we discuss the problems of government—the acute democrats of Athens—were well aware of the truth I endeavour, before it is yet too late, to impress upon you; they were well aware that democracy cannot long coexist with great inequali- ties of wealth and power; they therefore began by Ostracising the powerful to end by persecuting the wealthy. And I cannot forget, since I have referred to that noble commonwealth, which may almost be called the England of the ancient world, that one main cause for the decline and fall of Athens has been traced by those writers, whose authority the scholars I see before me will agree to accept, to the adoption of the very principle you now commend to us—I mean the extension of the Suffrage to a class the most eager for political change and the least accustomed to weigh political consequences. That extension would have been then justified by much the same arguments you use now. It could have been truly said that the extension was not very large in itself; that it still left the whole suffrage small compared to the whole of the male adult population ; that it did not admit even the majority of the working classes, for the working classes there were chiefly slaves or settlers; it would have been said, “Do you fear your own countrymen? Can you dispute the in- telligence of any class of Athenians?” and, indeed, the humblest Athenian had facilities for education that we cannot give to our working men. All such arguments would have been very plausible—they are the arguments we hear to-day. But, never- theless, the extension did contrive to give to poverty and passion a preponderating power over capital and knowledge : and the results were soon visible in a series of “successive steps”; in new tamperings with the suffrage in the same direction; in a plentiful crop of eloquent demagogues outbidding Liberal states- men; in a system of direct taxation, which was unjust to the THE REFORM BILL OF 1860. 141 rich, and made the rich either indifferent to politics or hostile to liberty; in unwise expeditions called for by a brave and eager population, who called for them the more loudly because the rich paid for them ; in the destruction of the fleets which had secured to the England of the ancient world the empire of the seas; in her subjugation by her near and formidable rival, who possessed a genius more military than her own, whom her free speaking had seriously offended, and who, under the con- duct of a chief of whom it was said—pause, and think whether the same can be said of any foreign chief now living—“that where the lion's skin fell short, he eked it out with the fox's,” while her orators still talked about “progress,” while her fac- tions still wrangled for power, sailed into the Piraeus itself, and gave her liberty to the winds. But why do we all hastily yet languidly agree to shovel this question away, to accept this or any measure of reform, though what it is to reform none of us could satisfactorily explain 2 Is it not because we all do desire for the next ten or twelve years to have done with the subject 2 And I can well understand that gentlemen on both sides should feel eager this very session to try and effect a compromise which, though not final, will give a new constitution a trial for at least half the term of years which we have given to the constitution of 1832. To attain that object I should myself be prepared to approve a measure really comprehensive and substantial, that should unite a larger representation of numbers with some prudent Securities for the fair representation of property. For it is better, of the two, if we are to alter our house, to alter it so as to get rid of its chief inconveniences, than it is to pass the best part of our lives in the hands of the architects. One may put up with a great deal of alteration if one can say, “Thank Heaven, one is settled at last ;” but there is no inconvenience equal to that of never being settled at all. But is there one gentleman who can flatter himself or us that if we pass this bill we are one jot nearer to settling the question of Parliamentary Reform 3 There is not a single in- convenience of which educated men complain that this bill even attempts to mitigate; no attempt to lessen the expenses of elec- 142 THE REFORM BILL OF 1860. tions—in counties, I suspect that those expenses will be doubled; no attempt to enfranchise the many enlightened and respectable men who happen not to be householders; no attempt to lessen the chances of bribery—on the contrary, as we have seen, to increase them. Thus the next general election will not inaugu- rate this Reform Bill, but rather record the dissatisfaction of its own supporters at its crudity and incompleteness, and their solemn pledges that they will continue with increased ardour to struggle—what for 2 Why, for a new Reform Bill. So that this measure is only the shoeing-horn to some fresh miracle of cobbling, in which, with weary feet and in “successive steps,” we shall plod the same dull road, sure to pass our nights again under the same old sign of the Blue Boar. I say, then, as men of business, we do not get our consideration; that when we have paid the bill we do not get that acquittance and receipt which can alone reconcile our doubts as to the justice and propriety of the demand. The Member for Birmingham says persuasively, “Take this, or you will get Something worse.” But if we take this do we not strengthen his hands to give us the something worse into the bargain 7 Thus we go into Committee on this bill with the conviction beforehand that it pleases no one and settles nothing, that, do what we can with it, it will remedy no evil, produce no benefit, Satisfy no class—not even the class of the working men; all we shall have done, if we pass the bill, is to place an empire which rests its wealth and greatness upon causes so artificial and delicate that, once destroyed, that wealth and that greatness could no more return to England than they could ever again return to Venice, in the hands of men whose means of existence and facilities for education are—if a house- hold test be any test at all—nearly one-half below the lowest standard of the existing Suffrage in our towns. So much for the bill itself. A word now as to the time in which we are called upon to pass it. The Home Secretary says he hopes there is to be no ignoble resort to the Fabian policy of delay, while at the same time he rejoices that there is to be a Committee of the House of Lords to consider whether that Fabian policy in England may not be entitled to receive the same praise THE REFORM BILL OF 1860. 143 that it received in Rome, where it was called, in classical expres- sions that have passed into proverbs, “The Salvation of the State and the shield of the Commonwealth.” And it does seem to me the height of inconsistency to concede a Committee of the other House of Parliament upon the very points that we are called upon to take for granted, so that this House may stamp its approval on the bill simultaneously with the publication of evi- dence which may show that if we had waited for three months we should have found that we had been legislating for remote generations upon data on which the Home Secretary would not have filled up the humblest office in his public department, nor accepted a tenant on a seven years' lease for the Smallest farm on his private estate. But even if no such Committee had been conceded, I would ask if there be not two very evident causes which render this special time peculiarly unfortunate for dis- carding a legislative body with which the nation has become familiar, and choosing another of which it can know nothing. Those causes are, first, the state of affairs abroad; secondly, the state of our finances at home. On the one side, all the signs and Omens that indicate storm; on the other, the gulf of an enor- mous deficit which this Parliament first sanctions and widens, and then, like many a private speculator, commits suicide rather than face the day of reckoning. But let us first glance at the state of affairs abroad. The Chancellor of the Duchy said in the debate before Easter, “Affairs abroad were critical when you (Lord Derby's Govern- ment) introduced a Reform Bill. War in Europe was then imminent; you did your best to prevent it, but that war soon broke out.” Perfectly true ; and, as an ad captandum argument addressed to a £6 constituency, the right hon. Baronet's answer would be very clever and telling. But addressed to this House, as at present constituted, it seems to me to be a poor resort to what schoolboys call the tu quoque kind of logic, and not quite worthy the right hon, Baronet's just reputation for ability and candour. The difference between the two periods of time is immense. That difference has become infinitely more marked since the commencement of the Session. The noble Lord who 144 THE REFORM BILL OF 1860. is at once the introducer of this bill and the responsible Min- ister for Foreign Affairs, has not only acknowledged but enforced that difference in speeches in the House and despatches to Foreign Ministers, which have been equally worthy of himself and faithful to the sentiment of the country; and I am sure there is not a loyal gentleman on this side of the House who will not pardon and perhaps even sympathise with me when I say that, looking towards the chief under whom I once served as a private soldier, I rejoice to think that here at least I can equally defend my country's honour and his renown. Well, then, will not the noble Secretary tell his colleague the Chan- cellor of the Duchy that the difference between the two periods of time—between the time when Lord Derby's Government in- troduced a Reform Bill, and the time in which we now are—is immense ? In a war undertaken by France for the independ- ence of Italy, there was nothing that threatened England; in the peace concluded by France, with the enlargement of her boundaries, can we say the same 7 We see before us now, as we saw then, a neighbour of gigantic power. He said then to us, “This power I will not use for one selfish object.” We had no right to disbelieve him. Now we not only see the power but the use that is made of it; and events have shown that our neighbour can Say one thing and mean another. You now know the character and conditions of the French empire; you now know that the peace of the world and the security of England hang on the nod of a single man, whose thoughts none of us can penetrate, whose ambition none of us can measure. At the stroke of his pen the existing geography of Europe may be changed as rapidly as in his own country a republic that vied with the American collapsed into a Sovereignty as imperial as that of the Roman Caesars—a sovereignty, like theirs, preserving the forms while it destroys the substance of liberty; more dan- gerous to its neighbours than the ancient monarchies around it, because it is as little bound by their scruples as it is by their treaties. It has the young blood of the revolution out of which it sprang; it inherits the licence and the force of the multitudes who deem themselves crowned in its coronation. Thus, it com- THE REFORM BILL OF 1860. 145 bines in a terrible union the arts and necessities of a brilliant demagogue with the armies and the objects of a military chief. Such a combination is rare ; it has never hitherto occurred in the history of the world without threatening the landmarks of its neighbours; and woe to the nation that it finds unprepared to cope with its twofold power over the multitudes that it dazzles and the armies that it wields ! And the danger is the greater because we deal with no vulgar tyrant, no petty dissimulator. The Emperor of the French has those high attributes of genius which render even his defects popular and majestic with the people that he governs. He has capacities for organisation not inferior to those of his illustrious uncle, and he consolidates both his ambition and his intellect by an inflexible singleness of pur- pose, by a mixture of Secrecy in design and promptitude in action, which give the vigour of Richelieu and the astuteness of Mazarin to the leader of 600,000 soldiers. Such are the char- acter and conditions of the French empire, involving nothing that would justify our taking one step, either to court its hostility or forfeit its alliance, nothing that should make us depart from Our position as an insular commercial population by Seeking to excite a counter-league among the Powers of the Continent before they themselves invoked our assistance, but involving much that requires unrelaxing vigilance as well as disciplined judgment on the part even less of Ministers than of the House of Commons. And therefore it does seem to me a wanton im- prudence to discard at this moment a legislative body whose fidelity to English interests and English honour has been proved and tested—which certainly cannot be called worm out and effete which is actually younger than most of the youngest members among us, which has not spent thirty years in acquiring some familiar acquaintance with its arduous duties—for a raw and untried legislative body, chosen by the minimum of political experience to meet times that may require the maximum of political knowledge. The Home Secretary says this transfer of political power will be a Security against invasion, and that if Napoleon I. had not been So unpopular, he might have defied the armies that invaded VOL. II. K 146 THE REFORM BILL OF 1860. his capital. What is meant by that argument and that histori- cal illustration ? Is the Queen of England unpopular 7 Has the nation shown that it requires a £6 constituency to teach it the virtue of self-defence 2 Or, if it be implied that the House of Commons needs amendment in one simple respect to render it more disposed and more resolved to resist an invader, I deny the ungrateful imputation. This poor House, as at present Con- stituted, has borne us gallantly through a war which tasked all our national virtues, and revealed to us all our administrative defects. With an energy which had no signs of decrepitude, it has adapted our armaments to the improved Science of the age, and placed this country in a state of defence which will need steady patience and self-sacrifice to maintain. Are we sure that that patience and self-sacrifice will equally characterise the new constituency and their new representatives 3 No doubt we shall have members just as anxious for what is called the honour of the country, who will make high-sounding speeches against truckling to absolute sovereigns, and insist on the right of the House of Commons to become the garrulous confidant of every secret which Cabinets would keep to themselves. But will the new representatives of the new constituency be as provident of practical defences as they may be lavish of verbal provocations? Will they as readily submit to the taxation which is necessary to self-defence, so long as the world shall see wars commenced for the propagation of ideas, and peace concluded by the acquisi- tion of domains ? Sir, it is possible that they may possess all such requisite qualities in a higher degree than ourselves and our constituents; but at least there is a doubt the other way, and seeing that doubt, it would be no such great infelicity if, at a juncture so critical, we could be contented to let well alone; if we could defer putting this great nation into the lottery of chance until we could see more distinctly the face of the goddess who presides at the wheel,-until we could judge whether, in truth, we behold in her that Fortune who smiles upon peace and commerce, “dominam asquoris,” or whether she be rather that more terrible deity— “Clavos trabales et cuneos manu {\ }} Gestans ahená, "- THE REFORM BILL OF 1860. 147 whose attributes are calamity and war. But still more do I think it would have become this Parliament to remit to its suc- cessor a less formidable balance-sheet of deficit and revenue. I say nothing here against the Budget or the Treaty, on which I have refrained from all other opposition than that of a silent, and, I will add, a reluctant vote; reluctant, partly because of the sincere, and, may I say in his absence, the affectionate admir- ation in which I hold not more the talents than the character of the Chancellor of the Exchequer—partly because, though I doubt the prudence of both those measures, the Treaty and the Budget, I fully recognise the generous and enlightened hopes upon which, whatever the issue, they may rest their vindication. I say no- thing, then, against the financial scheme of the Government; but I do say to this House, which has sanctioned that scheme by so large a majority, that if we, the Parliament of Lord Grey's Reform Bill, have been the trustees for this infant constituency, it would surely be well if we could render accounts to the ward whose year of attaining majority we so impatiently advance, without presenting to its earliest consideration a debt or defi- ciency of £10,000,000 or £12,000,000, which we leave its inex- perience to settle without an effort on our part to lessen its embarrassment or to warn its councils. If we are to assemble this new tiers 6tat, it is a sinister coincidence with a very dark page in history that the appeal to numbers should be simulta- neous with a deficit which we have not the happiness to supply, and problems in the Science of taxation which we have not the courage to Solve. But all this is for your consideration, the consideration of the Queen's responsible advisers, and of that majority by whom the late Government were displaced, rather than for any exclusive or obstimate resistance on our part, which, if unavailing, would be obviously unwise. The Chancellor of the Duchy somewhat scornfully asked us, “Why don’t you divide 2° and answered his own question in the same breath, “Because you know you would have a majority against you !” In return, I ask him, not Scornfully, but in a sober appeal to his love of truth, “Granting the fact of that alleged majority, does it not contain members more than enough 148 THE REFORM BILL OF 1860. to turn the scale in our favour if they voted according to the opinions they express in private 2* Now, it is because there is at present to be no division, be- cause we would not, if possible, make that strict demarcation of parties which would not faithfully represent a real difference of opinions, that I hope I may, without presumption, solicit the serious reflection of those enlightened reformers who do not de- sire change for the mere sake of change. I know, indeed, that there are some persons who believe that progress consists in always stopping on the road to alter the springs of the carriage in which we travel. I know that there are some who think that man was made for nothing better than to pass his whole exist- ence in the ecstatic contemplation of interminable Reform Bills. But let us flatter ourselves that such amiable enthusiasts are to be found chiefly out of doors, and not among us, to whom education and knowledge of the world may fairly be supposed to have given the ordinary attributes of common-sense. We cannot disguise from ourselves that, whether we look at home or abroad, this is a somewhat critical moment in the destinies of our country—one in which we would rather summon the high- est wisdom, the ripest experience we could obtain for our guid- ance, than merge such wisdom as we do possess, such experience as we have acquired, in the arbitration of men who have never been hitherto called upon to judge of questions so complicated and grave, and from whom, if you once appoint them, you can never have a court of appeal. I do not say that the reasons I have urged as to the state of Europe or as to our own financial deficit are reasons that the Government could openly put for- ward for withdrawing this bill; but they are reasons which their own supporters might privately urge upon them, and they are reasons which might satisfy their own good sense and justify them before the public, if, having honourably fulfilled their pledge to introduce a Reform Bill, this bill was withdrawn on the obvious and unanswerable ground that it has failed to give general satisfaction. Nor do I consider that failure a serious reproach to this or to any Government. A Reform Bill, so easy to the theorist, is very difficult to the practical statesman. The THE REFORM BILL OF 1860. 149 hand of the true artist may well tremble when he applies the hammer and the chisel to the palladium of his country's laws. I do not presume to think that anything I can say will have the least influence upon the Government ; but they would be wrong indeed, if they did not respect what may be said, or, if not said, what they know is thought, by their own temperate and tried Supporters. If, however, you tell us that, be the bill good or bad, you are resolved to persevere in it; that what we think its defects you hold to be its main principles; that you will not wait for the report of the Committee you have conceded to the other House; that you will avail yourselves of the natural reluctance which the members for boroughs may feel openly to declare against those new constituents to whom, next December, you would condemn them to appeal,—if that be the course which, as the Queen's advisers, you deem it your duty to pursue, then I can only express a fervent wish that the result may justify your reversal of all the rules by which the states- men even of republics would rather seek in similar time and circumstance to strengthen the hands of the executive, than transfer to the wide circle of an unaccustomed multitude the nice and permanent adjustment of national finances, and the cautious preparation against perils which already alarm the boldest statesmen and menace the strongest thrones. XXX. A S P E E O H DELIVERED IN THE SHIRE HALL AT HERT FORD ON THURSDAY THE 9TH OF OCTOBER 1862. ON Thursday, the 9th of October 1862, the Hertford Agricultural Society held its annual meeting. In the evening the usual dinner in the Assembly Room of the Shire Hall was presided over by the Marquess of Salisbury. In answer to the toast of the Members for Hertfordshire, with which was specially coupled the name of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, the following speech was delivered. My LORDS AND GENTLEMEN,+In rising to return thanks for the honour you have just conferred on me and my colleagues, I am reminded that the first occasion on which I took part in the public affairs of this county was at an agricultural meeting similar to the present, held in this very town and in this very room. When I look round I recognise many of the faces with which I then first became acquainted ; and owing, I presume, to the salubrious habits and the peaceful consciences which belong to agricultural pursuits, I see in those faces so little of the wear and tear of time that I could almost fancy it were yester- day when my health was first drunk by the farmers of Hertford- shire. Yet the years which have elapsed since that,day have HERTFORD AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 151 witnessed so many stirring events that they constitute one of the most important epochs in the history of the world. France has undergone three revolutions—the fall of a constitutional monarchy, the stormy interlude of a democratic republic, the restoration of a military empire. The old rulers of Lombardy, Tuscany, Naples, have disappeared from those lands, and the map of Europe has been altered to admit the kingdom of Italy. Austria, long the haughtiest representative of the principle of absolute monarchy, has commenced the experiment of constitu- tional government ; Russia has laid the foundation of a new political and social existence in recognising the value of free labour and abolishing the institution of serfs; China has opened her ports to our merchants and her capital to our ambassadors. We ourselves have twice gone through the calamities of war, in the siege of Sebastopol and the suppression of the Indian revolt. On the other side of the Atlantic, that great republic which boasted a superb exemption from the evils and perils which beset ancient States and monarchical forms of government has been violently rent in two ; and whatever may be the issue of a struggle in which, as yet, we see only the lavish expenditure of blood and treasure, no far-sighted politician can suppose that the curse of slavery will long survive the separation of which it is the most Ostensible, though it is neither the only nor perhaps the most powerful cause. So many startling events, tending to vast and permanent effects on the destinies of the human race, have scarcely ever before been crowded into a space of time so short as that which has elapsed since I first addressed you in this town. But, all the while, we have continued to hold our peaceful meetings in honour of that agriculture which, as it is the earliest art men learn when they form themselves into social communities, so it remains to the last the most solid foundation of the prosperity and wealth of nations. Since the first meeting I attended in this town I can See a great and marked improve- ment, not so much in our exhibitions as in the object which the exhibitions are intended to promote—I mean the better cultiva- tion of the land. Agricultural improvement, so far as the adapta- tion of science is concerned, must be always slow compared with 152 HERTFORD AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. those improvements which science effects in the machinery employed in manufactures; for in manufactures any new idea requiring experiment addresses itself only to one wealthy class —the master manufacturers. They have the capital to try the experiment, and they are tempted to do so by the expectations of very large profits. But in agriculture speculative or scientific improvement must pass through a double process. An experi- ment that requires outlay and entails risk is, as a general rule, first made by the proprietor who farms his own land; but, as long as it stops there, it is only a scientific experiment—it is not a practical agricultural improvement. It only becomes a practical agricultural improvement when the tenant-farmer, Satisfied that the result will pay, takes it up, not as a question of Science, but as a matter of business. And he is naturally more slow in the adoption of a novelty than the manufacturer, because, however plausible the novelty may be, still it does not proffer those vast and immediate gains which a new invention may bestow on the manufacturer. No farmer makes a great fortune by One lucky hit. For these reasons speculative improvements are comparatively slow before they become generally adopted by practical agriculturists; but, Once adopted, they are perma- ment. There is no more retrogression in English farming than there is in English politics. But there is a great distinction between what is called fancy farming and practical husbandry, and that distinction will be seen in the balance-sheet. I re- member an amusing anecdote of a certain nobleman, who was a great farmer and also a great epicure. He kept a famous prize ox; he kept also a famous French cook. Once on a time he in- vited some distinguished friends to accompany him to his country seat, and sent the cook on a few days before to prepare for the entertainment. As soon as he arrived he was impatient to show his friends his prize ox, and carried them off to the farmyard. When he came to the stall in which the Ox was kept, lo and behold, the ox was gone He called to the herdsman, “Why, where is my prize ox 2 * “Please your lordship,” said the man, “the French cook came to look at him two days ago, and admired him greatly; since then the ox has disappeared.” HERTFORD AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 153 Much astonished, my lord hastened to seek an explanation of the Cook, and found him very busy in his private room near the Ritchen. “What is this story about my prize ox,−what have you done with my Durham ox?” “Ah, my lord,” said the Cook, “I have him here, Safe and sound;” and so saying, he Opened a cupboard, and, on one of the shelves, showed his lord- ship a small jar. Pointing to the jar, he said, with great com- placency, “There ! you see, my lord, he was rather too tough for a roast ; but I have stewed him down into a famous sauce l’’ Now I am sometimes reminded of that anecdote when some gentleman fancy farmer carries me over his model farm. One Sees much to admire in expensive nicknacks and clever inven- tions, but when one delicately inquires into the state of the balance-sheet the admiration cools. And many a fancy farmer who wants to look at his net profit, as my lord wanted to look at his prize Ox, may be astomished to find how many pounds of Solid substance may be scientifically stewed down in a very Small jar of Sauce. So much for mere fancy farming ; but as to practical husbandry, I have no doubt that if any competent agricultural judge who had not visited Hertfordshire for the last fifteen years were to visit it again now, he would be greatly struck with the progress we have made, whether he looked at the tillage and the stock, or whether he conversed familiarly with that great body of tenant-farmers who have contributed to this day's exhibition so many excellent specimens, not only of cattle, but of men. For man is the most improvable of all created beings in this world; because it is through the hand and the brain of man the Creator effects the improvements on the earth, which is allotted to man for his dwelling-place, and in the products of nature, which are bestowed upon man for his uses. That much of the agricultural progress made in our county may be ascribed to these annual meetings no one can reasonably doubt; for the more men are brought together in friendly com- petition, and in the social interchange of ideas connected with their own calling and occupations, the more their minds must be warmed in the desire of improvement, and the more the range of their own observation will be expanded and enriched by the 154 HERTFORD AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. hints and suggestions they receive from the experience of others. To these meetings, also, I think we may ascribe much of that visible improvement in the comforts and the Social position of the labouring class which forms one of the most pleasing features of the age in which we live. For the labourer has his share in the honours of these meetings—he contests for a prize in skill as a ploughman or a shepherd; and I am sure all farmers will bear me out when I say that there is no department of skilled labour more important in husbandry than that of a thoroughly good ploughman and a thoroughly careful shepherd. Seeing, then, that these meetings bring together as exhibitors of skill, the landlord, the farmer, and the labourer, in their several modes of competition; seeing that even those prizes for the labourer which are not devoted purely to skill, and are therefore liable to Some objections, still in our society encourage the spirit of in- dependence, and the enrolment into benefit societies, and thus by energy and foresight raise the labourers and their families above the charity of the parish,_I think it is scarcely possible these meetings should not produce a good effect on the social position of the labouring class, or that, after applauding in public all generous sentiments that do honour to the labourer, we should return to our own homes without a hearty desire to treat those who serve us honestly and faithfully, not only with kindness, but with respect. Gentlemen, I have observed that at the agricultural meetings held elsewhere this year much stress has been laid by eminent speakers upon the importance of utilis- ing the sewage of towns to agricultural purposes. Upon that head Lord Derby, himself a great agricultural authority, has done much, in his very remarkable speech at Preston, stating the re- sult of the experiments at Wellington College, according to the plan of the filter introduced by the Prince Consort, and by the prize he has offered to any company who shall profitably to themselves utilise the liquid manure of a district comprising 4000 inhabitants: Mr Gladstone also, with the acuteness of a mind accustomed to seize the strong points of any question to which it applies itself, has very eloquently enforced our atten- tion to a means of producing wealth, which, though sufficiently EIERTFORD AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 155 familiar to other countries, has been hitherto signally neglected by our own. I remember, when I held the colonial seals, the trouble and toil it cost me to secure from Some distant islands a scanty supply of guano, while all the time, close at hand, a few of the London sewers were every year casting away into the Thames more than half a million's worth of a manure consider- ably more valuable for the general purposes of agriculture than the guano which ships were fitted out to bring home, in order that it might be retailed at a price which rather fits it for the phials of an apothecary than the fields of a farmer. I said half a million's worth of money was thus thrown away, but this is a very low estimate of the real waste. In Flanders, for instance, where I have been lately, the value of sewage is calculated ac- cording to the numerical population, especially in towns. It is there calculated at £1, 7s. a-head yearly. In Belgium it is calculated at a still higher rate. So that, if the population of London be taken at 2,000,000, a means of increasing the pro- ductive wealth of the country which, according to the estimate of Flanders, would be worth about £2,700,000, is exclusively devoted to poison the waters of the Thames, and administer gratuitous disease to her Majesty's metropolitan subjects. If We may condescend to take lessons from barbarians, the Chinese may in this respect be our teachers. The rapidity with which the Chinese bring almost any soil into cultivation, and, when brought into cultivation, the enormous crop they contrive to take from mere handfuls of land, have been the wonder and admiration of travellers. But the great secret of the Chinese is in the utilisation of Sewage. The proverbial fertility of Belgium is owing, in much, to the same cause. But it is not only the sewage of London which is wasted, but that of all our own rural towns; although in them there appears a more impatient desire to remedy acknowledged abuses than seems to be the character- istic of city aldermen and metropolitan boards. When I con- sider how many populous towns there are in this country, I heartily wish we could send among them a few enlightened Chinese engineers to devise the best practical means by which our townsfolk might be enriched by the manure they could sell, 156 HERTFORD AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. and our farmers enriched by the manure they could buy. But in the meanwhile, until some such scheme is devised and agreed to, we must fall back on our old friend the farmyard dunghill, assisted, indeed, by various chemical manufactures, but never to Such a degree as to supply its place. Professor Liebig is, no doubt, right in considering the chief art of productive husbandry to consist in the skilful application of manure. David Hume tells us, in One of his essays, that all the vast apparatus of our government has ultimately no other object or purpose than the distribution of justice, Or, in other words, the support of the twelve judges. So it may be said that all the apparatus of pro- ductive husbandry has ultimately no other object or purpose than the distribution of justice to the soil—in other words, the application of that manure which gives back to the Soil the nutriment we take from it, or supplies the nourishing properties which nature had neglected to bestow. Eight hundred years ago there was a very learned dispute whether or not the earth was an animal. We have now discovered that the earth is so far an animal that it requires to be fed, and will not bear to be starved. A remarkable instance of this truth is mentioned by a cele- brated agricultural authority in some of the Southern States of America, such as Maryland and Virginia. In those States there were large districts of some of the most fertile land in the world. The crops they yielded were prodigious, but, unluckily, the cultivators neglected the manure ; they took from the land the alkalies and salts which they did not replace, and these dis- tricts have now become so hopelessly sterile that they have been altogether abandoned as a desert. Now, if it be true that the fertility of the soil thus depends on the mourishment we give to it, there can be no stronger argument for the perfect confidence which ought to exist between landlord and tenant, so that the enterprise of the former may not be checked by any reasonable fear that he should not have his fair share of the profits in whatever he permanently adds to the fertility of the soil. For, on the one hand, the farmer cannot, on the long-run, enrich himself unless he does justice to the land ; and, on the other hand, the landlord cannot, on the long-run, benefit his estate EIERT FORD AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 157 unless he does justice to the cultivator. The healthiest condi- tion of productive industry, whether in farming or anything else, must be that which attracts to its cultivation capital and intelligence by the rational calculation of adequate returns. Now, when I look forward I can see many causes at work to give assurance to investments in agriculture, whether for the owner or the occupier. The increase of population, the cer- tainty that new towns will spring up in the neighbourhood of railway stations, the tendency to building even in the quietest old rural towns if sufficiently near to railway communication, above all, the vast and progressive influx of gold—all must serve every year more and more to increase the value of the land, widen the demand for its produce, and maintain the standard of its remunerative prices. I turn from prospects which may reasonably give hope and confidence to the agriculturist to express the deep sorrow with which we must all contemplate the un- merited sufferings of our fellow-countrymen in the manufactur- ing districts, and our sympathy is rendered still more acute by our heartfelt admiration of the fortitude and patience they have shown. I would fain hope that the princely capitalists of Lancashire, whose fortunes have been made by the hands now stretched out to them for work or for bread, will seize this opportunity to prove that their gratitude is in some proportion to their wealth. It is not benevolence alone—it is policy, it is wisdom, to win to themselves the hearts of their mechanics at the moment when those hearts will most lastingly remember kindness, and so strengthen that tie between employer and operative which can never be loosened without danger, and perhaps with more danger in the crowded population of manu- facturing towns than in any other combination of capital and labour. But Supposing, as I will not doubt, that the rich men of Lancashire nobly discharge their duty to their afflicted poor, still, I fear that the distress may extend beyond even their means to deal with it ; and if so, since the profits derived from the industry of mechanics have been not only local but na- tional, so I thinkit becomes us to make the aid to their suffering as national as have been the profits which their industry has 158 EIERTFORD AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. diffused. Whenever such general movement may commence, I am sure that this county will be among the earliest in the generous competition of patriotic benevolence. For my own part, I know that I could not more faithfully represent a warm- hearted agricultural constituency than by assisting to prove to our suffering countrymen how completely we merge in one common sentiment of Christian brotherhood all angry recollec- tions of the old feud between cotton and corn. This year has, indeed, from its commencement, been a year of sorrow. To-day, in the list of toasts which my noble friend proposed from the chair, we miss one that in former years immediately followed the toast in honour of our Sovereign. I do not seek to revive the freshness of that grief which overshadowed every hearth in these kingdoms when we first heard that the Prince Consort was no more. For though the virtues of those we lose make sorrow more poignant at the first shock of bereavement, the after remembrance of those virtues becomes in itself a consolation; and no man can be said to have wholly passed from earth who leaves behind him one of those rare examples of unassuming goodness, of Serene and disciplined wisdom, which are, perhaps, less recognised in life than revered and imitated after death. The chief characteristic of a prince in all respects so truly illus- trious appears to me to have been this: He so regulated his whole life and nature as to bring them both into harmony with One systematic idea of duty. Thus duty with him was not a stern constraint, a harsh obligation, but rather a pleasurable obedience to the habits of his life and his instincts of happiness. He did not seek to cultivate one faculty alone, but rather to develop in due proportion all the faculties which served to en- noble and complete his existence as man ; and the Success with which this was achieved becomes visible at once when we con- template his life and deplore his loss. Other men, with some special talent more conspicuously displayed—other men more strikingly, because, perhaps, more irregularly great—we may readily discover; but looking around the civilised world among those whom rank or fame gives to our Survey, I think we should find it difficult to select a life more beautifully consistent with HERTFORD AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 159 its allotted duties, or presenting a larger aggregate of those at- tributes which form the intellectual and moral dignity of man. We must, comfort ourselves with the thought so exquisitely expressed by our Poet-Laureate, that the Prince we lament is still— “The silent father of our kings to be.” My noble friend * has intimated to you that next year we shall be called upon to celebrate the nuptials of the heir-apparent to the throne. May those nuptials be solemnised under the brightest auspices which can connect the happiness of princes with the felicity of nations ! May that terrible strife among our American kinsfolk be then decided in the way most propi- tious to the permanent welfare of a people whom Providence has endowed with so many noble qualities, and placed in regions so vast, and so safe from all ambition except their own 1 May the industry now so mournfully suspended in our manufacturing districts be again renewed, and rendered more independent of the faults which it does not share, in the States which it cannot control | And thus may our beloved Sovereign find in the hap- piness of her children, and in the content and prosperity of all classes of her people, those consolations which can best cheer and sustain her heart, whether as the mother or the Queen * The Marquess of Salisbury. XXXI. A S P E E O H DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMON's ON THE 7TH OF MARCH 1865. ON Tuesday, the 7th of March 1865, the Member for East Suffolk, Sir Fitzroy Kelly, moved in the House of Commons—“That upon any future remission of indirect taxation, this House should take into consideration the Duty on Malt, with a view to its early reduction and ultimate repeal.” After a lengthened debate, the motion was rejected by 251 votes to 171. In seconding the resolution the following speech was delivered. SIR-I rise to second the motion of my hon, and learned friend.” In his able and exhaustive speech he did not exag- gerate the importance attached to the relief from the malt-tax by the great body of agricultural producers; and the amount of the tax, which, no doubt, seems to many gentlemen the strong reason for retaining it, seems to the farmers the strongest argu- ment in favour of its repeal. What the farmers say is this: “When you tell us that this tax produces £6,000,000 a-year, you only bring more vividly before our eyes the extent to which we are defrauded in the fair exercise of our industry and skill. Here you call in free trade in order to compel us to vie * Sir Fitzroy Kelly. THE MALT DUTIES. 161 with the corn-growers throughout the world; and when in this struggle we turn to that crop on which we ought most to rely, because in that crop we are most a match for the foreigner, your free trade resolves itself into a tax of £6,000,000 on our raw material; and you make the very amount of the spoliation the reason why we should submit to be despoiled.” But it is not only against the free cultivation of barley that the tax mili- tates. Its tendency must be, more or less, to derange the natural process of agriculture in the unfettered selection of crops. Agriculture is a course of tillage spread over a certain Series of years in a certain rotation of crops; and in that year in which the farmer would and ought to Sow barley, our com- mon-sense must tell us that the presence of this tax at once obtrudes itself on the consideration of his choice, and will often induce him to select another crop more exhausting to the land, less appropriate to a judicious place in the regular course of his husbandry, and less lucrative than barley would be if barley were left free from the exciseman. You cannot, therefore, wonder to find many farmers declaring, at the various meetings which have been held on this subject, that they will not grow a bushel of malt so long as the tax lasts. And if the tax thus deters farmers from selecting a barley crop even in the barley-growing districts, how much more will it tend to prevent the introduc- tion of that crop in other parts of these kingdoms to which it would be invaluable as an article of cattle-food, if it were not frightened away by a duty of 21s. 8d. a quarter ? Thus, by the positive discouragement you give to a crop in which England naturally excels every other nation, you exclude it altogether from many soils to which it would be well adapted, and you stint the whole agricultural wealth of the country to a far greater amount than the revenue benefits by so mischievous a tax upon a raw material. The question becomes still more im- portant as to the operation of the tax, not only against the farmer, but against every class of consumer, and against the element- ary source of national wealth which consists in the fertility of the soil, when you consider its injurious effect upon the quan- tity of stock kept. For stock implies two things; first, meat to WOL. II. L 162 THE MALT DUTIES. the consumer—secondly, manure to the soil. Whatever tends to restrict the quantity of stock kept, tends to make meat less plentiful and of higher price, and tends also to rob the land of the manure necessary for its nourishment. If you have no stock, you have no farmyard heap. If you have no farmyard heap, you have no guarantee for the permanent and continuous fertility of the soil. Artificial manures are like doctor's drugs— they may do great good for a time, they act as restoratives or alteratives; but they can no more Supersede the necessity for the natural manure of the farmyard heap than doctor's drugs can supersede the necessity for food. The farmyard heap is the food of the soil, and nothing can Supply its place. Now, let me ask any of those distinguished practical agriculturists, of whom there are so many in this House, if I am not right when I Say that just in proportion as, since the repeal of the Corn-laws, successful farming has ceased to depend upon the price of corn, it ought to depend upon the increased cultivation and keep of stock? And yet, I ask again, can there be a greater discouragement to the increase of stock than a law which restricts the farmer in the growth of his own food for it ! And what kind of food? Why, precisely that which can be grown upon almost any soil. Therefore, this tax, which some consider only the grievance of the farmer, and others ridicule as a mere question of beer, operates against every constituent you have in towns or bor- oughs; because, by discouraging stock, it raises the price of meat, and by defrauding the soil of the manure which is its most lasting fertiliser, there is nothing that the soil can yield which it does not render dearer, while it diminishes the taxable wealth of the whole community. But the Board of Trade has issued a Report on the eve of this debate, which, in common fairness to members, who in questions of practical detail natur- ally desire time to confer with practical authorities, it ought to have issued some weeks ago, containing an account of a course of experiments on cattle-food ; by which Report it is made to appear that barley unmalted gives more weight to cattle and more milk to cows than barley malted; and thus, it is contended by a powerful daily journal, that one main argument for the THE MALT DUTIES. 163 repeal of the tax is destroyed. That those experiments were made fairly, the name of Mr Lawes is to me a sufficient guaran- tee. As a Hertfordshire man, I am too proud of the fame of that eminent chemist to disparage his authority. But Mr Lawes, were he here, would agree with me when I say that the whole history of physiological science shows how little faith is to be placed in any preliminary course of physiological experi- ments—or even in a second or third course—however plausible they may be. For instance, a series of experiments was made on the transfusion of new blood into diseased subjects, which appeared at first so triumphantly successful, that it created a profound sensation throughout Europe. Everywhere medical men adopted the practice, but the result so upset the theory founded on these experiments, and caused so many sudden and violent deaths, that the Parliament of Paris actually declared the transfusion of blood to be criminal, where it was not formally authorised by the medical faculty. The inventor, despite the unquestioned success of his early experiments, was sent into banishment, and the whole system fell into discredit till revived in our day and placed on a scientific basis. But how ! Why, by allowing that the first process of experiments, though ap- parently so successful, was altogether based upon an erroneous principle; that the subsequent course was equally fallacious, because adhering to the same error of principle, and showing by experiments founded on a principle before unacknowledged, and now generally recognised as sound, where and how the process may be beneficial and where it must be fatal. But in the whole history of experiments nothing has required so many repetitions, and undergone such revisions of Scientific opinion, as experi- ments analogous to those of the Board of Trade which have been made upon the relative merits of articles of nutrition. Here the deductions drawn from the first course of experiments, made by the ablest authorities, have been almost invariably disproved by a second course of experiments, and the second disproved by a third ; and to this day the whole subject is one of the most complicated and mysterious in which rival physio- logists can engage. I think that one of the last of these in- 164 THE MALT DUTIES. quiries on the merit of comparative articles of nutriment made by the physiologists of the Continent was whether, according to Scientific experiments conducted on principles of selection exactly similar to those adopted by the Board of Trade, only Selecting varieties of men instead of varieties in the inferior animals, more nutrition was contained in the roast beef of Old England or in the boiled leg of a donkey. I believe the first experiments were in favour of donkey; but I am now assured that, on second thoughts, sound philosophers give the preference to beef. Sure I am, however, that if the raw material of donkey yielded to the revenue £6,000,000 a-year, a Board of Trade would never be at a loss to find a preliminary abstract report to justify its predilection for donkeys. Therefore, Sir, with al] respect to the Board of Trade, I object to take their Report as in any way settling the question. We are not to suppose that during all these years farmers themselves had not been testing the relative merits of barley and malt as cattle-food, with every inducement to prefer barley because it is untaxed. Numberless persons have made these experiments. I will single One, because he is as high an authority as even Mr Lawes on this subject— Mr Booth of Catterick, Yorkshire—who, as the largest stock- breeder in England, and perhaps in the world, has tried both barley and malt in every conceivable combination, and found that though barley might require to be very slightly steeped, it must be steeped enough to be chargeable to the tax in Order to be of general advantage, and in that case he would have given it the most important place in cattle-food, if the tax did not render it too expensive. Thus I am quite sure that we shall shortly hear from numbers of persons of unquestionable author- ity, that the result of their experience is totally at variance with the Report of the Board of Trade. But we will now assume, for the sake of argument, that the Report establishes the fact at which it aims, and even then it will not affect, except to strengthen, our proposition that the malt-tax operates against the increase of stock. And for this reason, assuming that un- malted barley is better than malted barley for the food of cattle, still it will be the inferior barleys devoted to that obj ect. But TEIE MALT DUTIES. 165 the malt-tax, as the leading journal I have before referred to allows, is a fine on the inferior barleys, and a fine which the same authority admits is sufficient to discourage the sowing of inferior barley—that is, to discourage the growth of cattle-food in barley, whether it be malted or unmalted. My right hon. friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose faith in the legitimate laws of competition, and whose vast information on all subjects belonging to philosophical inquiry, must make him at heart somewhat sceptical as to the value of those experi- ments on which the Board of Trade seem to rely, saw that in the application of malted barley to cattle-food there was an argument with which it was difficult to cope ; and therefore, in his bill of last year, he attempted to encourage the experiment of malting barley exclusively for the purpose of cattle-food. I wish to do the amplest justice to the enlightened consideration for the interests of the meat-consumer—in other words, for the whole population of England—which is evinced by the intention of this bill. But I am sure that his candour will at once allow that the effect of that bill must be extremely partial. I am ready to concede, for the sake of argument, that it has done more good than is generally supposed ; but, on the other hand, it must be quite clear to him—it must be quite clear to every man of Sense—that only a very small number of farmers and stock-keepers will attempt the experiment of malting for cattle-food, with all the vexatious restrictions heaped upon the experiment, with all their jealous dislike of the exciseman, with all their natural and excusable desire not to co-operate in assist- ing a contrivance by which the tax itself is to be retained—a very small number indeed, compared with those who would grow barley for the sake of malting if malt were free from duty, and they could count on the double profit of malting, both for the food of cattle and the drink of man. And out of that great increase in the quantity of malted barley the larger part would necessarily go to the food of cattle, because that is the proper destination of the inferior barleys which at this moment are almost a drug in the market. But, apart from the direct appli- cation of malt to cattle-food, and apart from the Report of the 166 THE MALT DUTIES. Board of Trade, and regarding only the application of malt to the popular beverage of malt liquors, the repeal of the malt-tax would inevitably tend to the increase of the quantity of stock kept. For malt so applied, if free from duty, would be a new and large item of profit to the farmer; it would thus increase the general farming capital, and that increase of capital would find its natural, because its most profitable, vent in the increase of stock; while, if the working class paid less for their beer than they do now, they would of course have more to spend upon butchers' meat; and thus there would be at once created an ad- ditional supply of, and demand for, that main article of human food, meat—all tending to the encouragement of keeping stock, and by the manure produced from the stock all tending to the increased fertility of our soil, even for wheat crops, and there- fore all tending to the cheapening of bread itself. For it is clear that the manure which the farmer would obtain by grow- ing untaxed barley he would devote to the land which is to grow untaxed wheat. Is it not a strange anomaly that you should say to the bread-producer, “You must give us the cheapest bread which unlimited competition with foreign countries can Secure ; ” and then inflict on the bread-grower a tax which directly frustrates your object of cheap bread; because it mulcts the capital by which the bread-crops are produced at home, and cheats the land of the nourishment which the bread-crops re- quire? If this tax raises £6,000,000 a-year from the raw mate- rial of the agriculturist, what is it but £6,000,000 withdrawn from one of the most reproductive sources of the wealth of the nation ? I ask, then, is not this relief essential to the consummation of free trade 2 Is it not the fair demand of skilled labour to be free from a tax upon the raw material? And if you wish that raw material to be worked up so as to contribute a fair benefit to the consumer, do you suppose that you can effect that object by the partial experiment of a handful of maltsters with the excisemen at their backs, and all the com- plicated machinery by which malt may be rendered unfit for the use of man 2 No; you can only effect your object in the Common-sense natural way, by the unshackled competition of THE MALT DUTIES. 167 the cultivators of the soil, by whose skill, industry, capital, and labour, the raw material of the soil is to be raised and increased. Now there has been a strange attempt to prejudice the true merits of this question by narrowing them to the mere effect of the tax upon malt liquors. But, quite apart from that article of consumption, I think I have shown that the tax affects the price of meat and of bread; that it affects the productive fer- tility of the soil, and therefore, of course, everything which the Soil produces. But its effect on malt liquor is not a thing to be ridiculed. First, as to quality. I bring no charge against respectable brewers. I do not believe that they adulterate beer by any deleterious ingredients. But it is not from the respect- able brewers that the workmen get their beer. The beer of the working class is bought retail, and we are told by an eminent chemist that the beer retailed to the working class is agreeably compounded of quassia, wormwood, and cocculus indicus, which last has the special advantage of being a poison that insures speedy intoxication. So here I grant that you may say to the working man, “It is true that the tax raises the prices of your beer, but then it gives you these two blessings in return—it accelerates the stupefaction of drunkenness, and shortens the probation of this mortal life.” Secondly, as to the effect of the duty on the price of malt liquors. I shall not here attempt to add anything to the calculations of my hon. and learned friend. Whether it only tax a quart of malt liquor at 12% per cent, as my right hon, friend the President of the Board of Trade assures us—Or, as my hon. and learned friend contends, 50 per cent—that is a matter which I leave entirely to those more competent than myself to deal with. I may, indeed, think it strange that malt liquor is only taxed 12% per cent, when the malt which we in the innocence of our hearts assume to be its principal ingredient is taxed 70 per cent; but I am Old enough to know that there is no conjuring trick equal to that of figures in the hands of a clever Minister. I am contented to take my stand on the simple certainty, which the President of the Board of Trade is the last man to dispute—namely, that according to the law of competition, which affects the operations 168 TEIE MALT DUTIES. of trade, the repeal of the malt-tax would give to the consumer of malt liquor his most probable chance of having the best quality at the lowest price; and while the tax lasts he certainly has neither. But permit me to add that I think it would be difficult to persuade the working man that you apply your legislation fairly to him when, in the name of free trade, you So largely reduce your duties on the beverage of the rich, and then, in the name of the revenue, refuse all mitigation of a tax on the beverage of the poor—taking such special pains that the working man shall not have the best drink at the lowest price, that your last legislation on the subject exhausts the ingenuity of mechanicians in order to exclude the man from the advantage you are willing to give to a cow or a pig. But, Sir, the malt- tax is entitled to our first consideration, not only for the reasons I have stated, but because it now stands prominently foremost among the objects for which the income-tax was first imposed. What the farmers feel and say is this: “You have levied an income-tax, of which we pay a share, for the avowed object of establishing free trade as the mainspring of all fiscal legislation. Availing yourselves of this mighty instrument, you have given relief to other classes of the community in the taxes or duties by which their energies were most crippled, or of which their complaints were most loud; but, all alone, we agri- culturists have been thrust out of the pale of your benignant consideration. The exciseman stands between us and the free culture of our soil, just as he stood before free trade was an experiment tried upon ourselves, or the income-tax drew from our pockets moneys which have gone to the relief of others. You have conceded to fellow-sufferers, far less numerous than we are, all those arguments against the principle of excise duties to which you turn a deaf ear when they are urged by us. Bricks and soaps and paper have all had priority over our complaints. But we now ask—and is it too much to ask —that the income- tax should complete its object, and give us, however tardily, Some share of the relief which our contributions to that income- tax have so largely assisted to give to all industrial occupations except our own.” “Oh,” but it is said, “we do not dispute THE MALT DUTIES. 169 the justice of your demand, but then your grievance is so lucra- tive to the Exchequer. How can you expect us to repeal all at once a duty that yields £6,000,000 a-year ! A mere reduction would not satisfy the agitators, and would not get rid of the exciseman.” And finally, reasoners of this kind sum up by saying, “Since we cannot give you all, we will give you nothing.” But is that the way reformers deal with reforms? or is it in that way we are to “rest and be thankful” 2 Why, every abuse would last to the end of time if one party did not concede a something and the other party accept a something as an in- stalment of the whole demand. Do not forget that in this very temperate motion we do not ask you to take off the tax all at once. We only ask you to begin to take it off by any instal- ment you have to spare, and continue to bear us in mind whenever you can take off old taxes without imposing new ones. I do not deny that I desire and that I argue for the ulti- mate and total repeal of this tax; but I say this on behalf of our friends the farmers, that they are like other Englishmen— show them that you are in earnest to redress their grievance, and they, in turn, will have confidence in you as to the mode and manner of doing so, without too sudden a derangement of your financial operations; but do not dismiss them by the mockery of saying, “Since we cannot at once give you com- plete justice, we will give you no justice at all. Instead of justice we give you a Report from the Board of Trade.” I earnestly entreat hon. gentlemen on both sides of the House to regard this question with that fairness and freedom from prejudice which I am sure is their natural desire upon all matters that affect the general interests of the community. Do not be biassed against the motion because it emanates from these benches; do not suffer it to become a party question; and do not regard it as a mere farmer's question, on which you have mo interest if farmers are not your constituents. It is one of those instances in which the grievance of the producer is the wrong of the consumer. And, indeed, if I have proved to you how the tax raises the price of meat, meat is much more con- Sumed by your constituents in towns than by our labourers in 170 THE MALT DUTIES. the counties. And now as to the amount of the tax. Is it really so great a difficulty if you will but grapple with it ! The Chancellor of the Exchequer told us last year, on introducing his Budget, that since 1860-61 the real diminution in our taxa- tion had been £6,668,000. That is, within three years, above f500,000 more than the proceeds of this malt-tax which, we are now told, is protected from even an approach by the sanctity of its colossal injustice | But you say that approach cannot be made with safety to the revenue. Yet so safely to the revenue did you sweep away more than six millions and a half of taxes on industry in three years, that last year you had two millions and a half again to give away, and this year I believe you have much the same. All these great reliefs were effected because you were in earnest to effect them while you could avail your- selves of the income-tax. Be only as earnest to complete, by this relief, the objects of that income-tax, and ways and means will be found in this case, as they have been found in others, in which a relief to the national industry has proved to be the readiest means to increase the national income. I have always said of this House of Commons, in which it is more than thirty years since I first had the honour of a seat, that there has never been a popular assembly, on the whole, so alive to the principles of political honour, nor an aristocratic assembly, on the whole, more desirous of doing equal justice between man and man; and it is from a respectful but profound conviction that neither according to honour nor to justice you can play fast and loose with those professions and pledges in free trade which make the repeal of the malt-tax the logical and inevi- table consequence of the Corn-law, that I entreat you not to reject the motion of my hon, and learned friend. XXXII. A S P E E C H DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 13TH OF APRIL 1866. ON Thursday, the 12th of April 1866, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Gladstone, moved in the House of Commons the second reading of the Electoral Franchise Bill, as the first instalment of the scheme of Parlia- mentary Reform projected by the Government. The Member for Chester, Earl Grosvenor, thereupon moved an amendment, which was seconded by the Member for Lynn Regis, Lord Stanley, affirming the inexpediency of considering any measure of the kind until such time as the House might have before it the whole Ministerial plan for amending the representation. A discussion arose upon this which lasted for eight nights, the original motion for the second reading being carried at 3 o'clock on the morning of Saturday, the 28th of April, by 318 votes to 313, giving a narrow majority of 5 to the Government. Turing the second night of the debate the fol- lowing speech was delivered. [Called to the House of Lords by the title of Baron Lytton of Knebworth. His elevation to the Peerage gazetted on Friday the 13th of July 1866.] SIR-I approach this subject with deep and sincere anxiety. I cannot bring myself to regard it in a mere party point of view. It is not to my mind a question whether the Government of to- day is to be confirmed or displaced; it is not to my mind only a question how many seats a party called Liberal, or a party called 172 THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. Conservative, may gain or lose. The consequences of the measure before us go far beyond these considerations. They affect, for good or for evil, the permanent character of this House, whether it be regarded as the fair representation of various classes and various interests, or as a faithful likeness of the mind and state of the whole nation, or as a deliberative assembly requiring an amount of prudence and of cultivated intelligence beyond that of any other popular chamber in the world; because no other popu- lar chamber, either in Europe or America, exerts the same control over the executive, arrogates the same authority in maintaining peace and provoking war, or, by the temper of its debates and the grandeur of its renown, commands the same influence over the ideas and the destinies of mankind. My right hon, friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, speaking elsewhere, Said that the magnitude of the proposed change is imperfectly understood in the country; yet in his speech here last night it seemed to me . rather his object to conceal its magnitude and parade its insigni- ficance. A reform is the correction of abuses, a revolution is a transfer of power. A bill for the redistribution of seats is a cor- rection of abuses; a bill for a large alteration of the franchise is, and must be, more or less, a transfer of political power. The Chancellor of the Exchequer gives no glimpse of that part of the Government scheme which belongs to reform, and I think I can show that he greatly understates that part which belongs to revolution. Sir, the last time her Majesty's Government proposed a Reform Bill I ventured to state, that while the admission of a certain pro- portion of the working class into the franchise was essential to a well-balanced representation,-first, that that class was not incon- siderably represented at present; and, Secondly, that a £6 fran- chise would give to it the lion's share of the representation. Both of these propositions were strongly contested, but contested by none with more confident assurance than by my right hon. friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In condescending to answer my remarks, he asserted that the working class were now, except in some infinitesimal degree, altogether excluded from the pale of the constitution; and that a £6 franchise, according “ to the best, THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. 173 most comprehensive, and most accurate information that could be obtained,” would admit them in numbers so moderate that it would be idle to talk of the lion's share—it would admit them to less than one-third of the whole borough constituency. Now it is clear from the statistics furnished by the Government, that in both those propositions I was within the facts. Now we know that by the existing suffrage the working class already command something more than a fourth of the whole borough constituency and that a £6 franchise would give to it that lion's share, that electoral preponderance over all other classes of the borough con- stituencies which the Chancellor of the Exchequer frankly says Parliament never contemplated, and is not prepared to concede. Therefore, as the lowest verge to which the Government can ven- ture to descend, my right hon, friend contents himself with pro- posing a £7 franchise, which gives to the working class not fa short of half the borough constituency, taking it altogether— namely, as 333,000 to 362,000 electors of the other classes. That may be the proportion on this year; but it is not for this year that we legislate. And even granting that a £7 franchise is not lowered by Parliament, a £6 rental is raised to its level by time, and raised so rapidly that within three years from the next regis- tration, owing to permanent causes which necessitate the rise of urban rentals, the man who pays between £6 and £7 a-year for his house will pay £7 and become a voter. And if you pass this bill you give in all Parliamentary boroughs an additional and irresistible impetus to the rise of rent. It will be the interest of landlords and builders, the object of political parties, the natural desire of petty householders who covet a vote, whether for its own sake or as money's worth in some shape or another, to bridge over the narrow space that divides the £7 voter from the man who pays a trifling iota less; for it is not the rental of £6, but rather the rental of £6, 10s., or 2s. 6d. a-week, which forms the general staple of rents between £6 and £7; and the hon. Member for Leeds (Mr Baines), addressing his constituents the other day, truly said that the absence of the ratepaying condition is equivalent to the other 10s. in the pound. So that it must be perfectly clear to every man of sense and candour that, should you pass this bill, 174 THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. that which is now a £6 rental will be a £7 franchise within three, or at most four, years—viz., within the natural life of the present Parliament; and thus that you will create that very preponderance of the working class which the existent £6 rental would insure, but which the Chancellor of the Exchequer tells us Parliament never contemplated, and is not prepared to concede. This does not rest on assumption; we have ample evidence of the fact in the case of the £10 franchise. Look down these statistical tables and see how comparatively few occupiers there are in the £9 column; and why? because the old £9 occupiers have been absorbed into the £10 franchise. And the reason why the increase of the £10 voters was more rapid in the early years after the bill of 1832 than it has been lately is, that in those years the process of the absorption left less for the following years to effect. As a general rule, at whatever rent you wish to fix a franchise, especially if freed from ratepaying conditions, you must calculate the real numbers so admitted to be within three years those that are re- presented by the rental of £1 below it. But some hon, gentle- men have said, that if the poor householder was induced, by the gain of the franchise, to pay more for a better house, that would be a Social benefit, and an argument in favour of the bill. Yes; but the rise of rent does not necessarily mean the improvement of the house. Many gentlemen present know that they must now pay £300 a-year for a London house which four years ago would have been thought dear at £200. Nothing in this age of progress is so rapidly progressive as the rise of rents in all the large towns. In Parliamentary boroughs the house that is now worth £6, 10s., even £6, will remain just as squalid as it now is; the £7 franchise raises its rental without bettering its accommodation. But then it is said, with great plausibility, that the vote itself is a moral benefit to every man, whatever his education or condition of life; it raises his sense of dignity and self-respect. Does experience tell you so 2 Was the vote a moral benefit to the freeman and potwalloper ? Do you suppose that the freemen were corrupt merely because they were called freemen? No; they were corrupt because they belonged to a condition of life in which, no doubt, there are many upright and earnest politicians, but in which there THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. 175 are many others who, of two rival candidates, prefer Smith and a £5-note to Brown and the Rights of Man. You disfranchised the freemen of Yarmouth. Did you extinguish corruption at Yarmouth 2 No; you find this very year that the same class of men are not less corrupt as petty householders than they were as freemen. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the first reading of this bill, cited as a notable illustration of the soundness of his proposal a distinguished instance of “the intelligence and self- guiding power of the working class.” Where does he go for that instance? To one of those eight boroughs in which the electors of the working class are most equal in number to those of the middle class 2 No; he goes to the borough of Rochdale, where the electors that belong to the working class are only as one to twenty of the electoral population. Does he not see how his illustration tells against his argument 2 These admirable speci- mens of the working class required no £7 franchise to develop their intelligence and self-guiding power. Is there anything in the air of Rochdale more favourable to virtue than the air of Yar- mouth ? No; but those voters of Yarmouth had been for a long series of years exposed to the strongest temptations poverty can undergo when it is canvassed by wealth—temptations to which these noble operatives of Rochdale had never been subjected. But the operatives of Rochdale having been left thus free to mature uncorrupted their self-guiding power, would now, I grant, be strong enough to resist such temptation. To artisans of that kind, whatever the political creed, I am willing to grant the franchise. Willing, do I say? That word is too cold. I might almost wish that, like some old commonwealth of Greece, we could admit them to the franchise by acclamation, too proud of such fellow- citizens to ask what rent they pay for their houses. But if you want to make a safe experiment of a working-class Suffrage, and an experiment fair to themselves and true to the dignity of honest and thoughtful labour, are you sure that it can be made by the abstract principle of your bill? that is, by a uniform abasement of the franchise applied equally to all boroughs, whatever their population and whatever their character ? Perhaps for such an experiment the wiser plan would be to revive that variety of suf- 176 THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. frage which is agreeable to the ancient custom of the constitution, and which was strongly recommended by the high authority of Sir James Mackintosh, in any further extension of populous con- stituencies; and having decided how many boroughs should be devoted to majorities of the working class, then select those con- stituencies in which the prevalence of skilled labour tends to create a Superior class of artisans, and in which their numbers alone would be some safeguard against the bribes of a candidate; and giving there such a suffrage as would amply secure your object, decline to apply the same low rate of franchise to those other and numerous middle-sized boroughs in which the skilled artisans are too few to become a fair representation of the intelligence and integrity of their class, and the electoral population not sufficiently large to frustrate the bribery by which the ambition of the rich man tempts the necessities of the poor. For, do consider what are these boroughs in which, take them altogether, we are asked to make this abrupt and wholesale transfer of electoral power. Are they not really the predominant influence on the legislation of this House, and therefore in the choice and control of the imperial Government Despite the greater wealth, despite the larger numbers, represented by the county members, the boroughs have so decided a majority in the House of Commons, that no Government can last which does not obtain the support of a con- siderable proportion of the borough members; whereas a Govern- ment opposed by the almost unanimity of county members, if it has the general support of the boroughs, carries its measures and secures its existence. Gentlemen have gone into calculations as to the number of boroughs in which the working classes at a £7 franchise will have majorities. The Chancellor of the Exchequer estimates the number at 60 boroughs, or 101 seats; but in a very able pamphlet by Mr Baxter—a namesake of the hon. Member for Montrose—the result given of a very elaborate calculation is, that the effect of a £7 franchise would be absolute majorities in the election of 95 members, nearly majorities in the election of 93, and from one-third to two-fifths in the election of 85. But if I am right in maintaining that the rise of rent in Parliamentary boroughs will rapidly make what is now a £6 rental a £7 franchise, THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. 177 the number will be considerably increased; and in most of the boroughs where the working classes will not actually have the majority, their proportion will be so large that the election will be practically in their hands. It seems to me that this fallacy per- Vades the argument of the Chancellor of the Exchequer—that it is only in those boroughs where the working classes are to have a clear majority that he considers their influence predominant. But a class may have a minority so large as to be practically predo- minant. In the county I represent it is said, and perhaps truly, that the tenant-farmers can carry an election; yet the tenant- farmers do not appear by the books to be much more than a third of the constituency. A class that has a third of a constituency has, by combining itself with one party or the other, an election in its power. When, therefore, you hand over the boroughs to the urban working class, it is the urban working class who will ultimately become the arbiters of all that concerns the system of this elaborate monarchy and this commercial commonwealth. But it is said, “Well, but you have been admitting the urban Working class to a fourth share of the suffrage without danger; you have not even been conscious that they were admitted, and therefore it can be no danger to give them a half share upon a principle which must rapidly give them a preponderant majority.” Sir, that argument reminds me of the Irishman’s bull: “If one quince can give so good a flavour to an apple-pie, how wonderfully good must be an apple-pie that is all quinces.” The franchise of the urban working class is a generous stimulant to the action of a free state. But it is a stimulant, and you may carry a stimulant too far. The physician may recommend a certain quantity of alcohol in our daily drink, and the more it does us good the less are we conscious of the amount of the alcohol we have taken. But would the hardy Scotchman, who was all the better for his temperate glass of whisky and water, advance to a finer state of health, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer implied in his speech at Liverpool, in proportion as he swamped the water and increased the whisky 2 - So much for the persuasive line of argument adopted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer; but the hon, gentleman the Member VOL. II. M 178 THE REFORM BILL or 1866. for Birmingham (Mr Bright) gives us, instead, what schoolmen call the argumentum baculinum. He says, “Wretched Parliament that you are, take this change now before some accident occurs, by which the working class may compel you to take something much worse!” And it is not the fault of the Member for Birming- ham if one of those accidents does not now occur in the shape of a fortuitous concourse of tumultuary atoms, extending from Charing Cross to the doors of the House of Commons. Sir, on this subject of accidents, Something is said by Montesquieu, which the Emperor of the French thinks sufficiently striking to quote with approval in his preface to the ‘History of Caesar.” “It is not Fortune,” says Montesquieu, “which rules the world. There are general causes which act in every monarchy, and all accidents are subject to those causes. If the failure of a battle has ruined a State, there was a general cause which made it necessary that State should perish through a single battle. In a word, the principal cause drags with it the particular accident.” If, then, we wish to Create a general cause that may make any particular accident of a revolutionary character fatal to the independence and dignity of this grand Assembly, let us accept this argument of the bludgeon, and proclaim to the masses that we yield to intimidation that which we refuse to reason. And, Sir, if we desire to create a general cause that may make any particular accident of a democratic Gharacter fatal to the mixed Constitution of this country, let us at Unce accept this Bill, which, should any accident occur of a nature to accelerate the impetus and widen the circle of democracy, makes the political leaders of the urban working class the masters of the situation. Sir, I am not one of those who have an abstract and absolute horror of democracy, and who can only speak of it in the language we apply to Something monstrous and abnormal. I recognise democracy as one of the genuine and legitimate forms of national polity. Like every form of government, it has its defects and faults. But it has also merits of its own—merits identified in the history of the world with marvellous achieve- ments of individual genius, of national energies, of passionate devotion to the public cause. I would even here undertake the defence of our Anglo-Saxon colonies from much that has been THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. 179 said against them. But democracy seems to me essentially the Government that belongs to societies in their youth, and in which the habits of men, even more than their laws, produce a certain equality of manners and education. There is no special form of Government adapted to every varying community in every dif- ferent epoch of its existence. But if there be a country in the world in which democracy would be a ruinous experiment, it is surely a country like England, with a very limited area of soil compared to the pressure of its population, with a commerce so based upon credit and national prestige, that it would perish for ever if by any neglect of democratic economy, or, what is more probable, any adventure of democratic rashness, our naval power were destroyed; and with differences of religious sects so serious that we should find it impossible to precede democracy by that universal and generous system of education without which it would be madness to make the working class the Sovereign constituency of a Legislative Assembly. I may here, indeed, quote the autho- rity of the Member for Birmingham, who, speaking the other day at Manchester on the subject of education, showed that in the States of New England education did not follow, but long preceded, the establishment of democracy. So that even in America, despite the unequalled bounty of nature, the true fathers of the future re- public made a period of 150 years of education, brought home to the door of the poorest citizen, precede the establishment of a democracy, the action of which is even now qualified by checks on the Representative Chamber which, as I will show you presently, are unknown to the English House of Commons. But this Bill, you may say, does not create such a democracy. No ; but it is the inevitable step to it, and it is received and understood as such by its enthusiastic supporters out of doors, who, laughing at it as a settlement of the question, even of the franchise, hail and applaud it as an instalment of the principle to which absolute democracy is the only goal. This Bill, I say, is the inevitable step to democracy, not so much because of the actual franchise it gives now either in towns or counties, but because of the abstract prin- ciple, adorned by the eloquence of members of the Government, which alone wins to their Bill the approval of the National Re- 180 TEIE REFORM BILL OF 1866. form League—viz., that every working man has a right to a vote; and while no political community could exist for a quarter of an hour if all rights which speculative philosophers Say we take from nature were not merged in an acquiescence to the Social compact, that we have no rights except those that we take by law, this solitary right of an electoral vote forms an exception, and the privation of it constitutes a wrong. By this principle you Create and sanction and perpetuate a discontent on the part of every working man whom the suffrage you bestow on his fellow-work- men still excludes, and you gather round the doors that your principle keeps ajar the millions whom your principle invites to enter. “What, then,” says the Chancellor of the Exchequer ? “Do not regard these new applicants as an invading army. Are they not your own fellow-Christians? Are they not your own flesh and blood?” I share in the amazement general among his warmest admirers, how a man like my right hon, friend can descend to a species of argument so hollow in itself, and so peril- ous in its logical deductions. So hollow in itself, because Sup- pose, for instance, I introduced a Reform Bill by which I admitted rural voters to Swamp the urban voters, as you propose to admit the urban voters to swamp the agricultural element; and suppose I said, “Do not regard these honest farmers as an invading army. Are they not your own fellow-Christians? Are they not your own flesh and blood?” Would you not answer then—perhaps less civilly than we wish to answer now—“All that may be very fine ; but the mind and opinion of one set of fellow-Christians are not to be overborne by the flesh and the blood of another set !” But see how perilous are the deductions to be drawn from an ir- relevant platitude when it is used as an argument by a man in authority, and inscribed, as the very few Liberal journals which favour the Bill say that this platitude shall be inscribed, on the banner of Democratic Reform. I will assume for the moment— my right hom. friend will pardon and correct me if I am wrong— that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is not in favour of universal Suffrage. But how can he oppose it consistently with his own inscription on his own banner of Reform 2 What has he to say to the millions who will ask him one day, “Are we an invading THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. 181 army 2 Are we not fellow-Christians? Are we not your own flesh and blood?” I)oes he think it will be answer enough to give that kind of modified opinion which he put forth last night, and to say, “Well, that is very true. For my own part, in my individual capacity, I cannot see that there is any danger in ad- mitting you, but still you know it is wise to proceed gradually. A £7 voter is real flesh and blood, but you are only gradual flesh and blood. Read Darwin on the origin of species, and learn that you are fellow-Christians in an imperfect state of development.” That which is an amiable sentiment when applied to the claim of all mankind to our humanity and compassion, becomes a doctrine formidable to those who dislike universal suffrage when it is applied to a principle of political franchise by the most con- spicuous Minister of the British Crown. Sir, the most painful part of this discussion is that which is forced upon us by the Government statistics, sharply separating the working class from the rest of the community, and thus rendering it difficult to argue against the abstract principle of Democracy without wounding the honourable pride of men with whom every employer of labour, be he manufacturer, merchant, or country gentleman, is brought into affectionate and familiar contact. To you suppose it does not go to the heart of a gentleman if he utter a word which, either from his own defect of language, or from an unfair perversion of his meaning, hurts the manly feelings even of the humble labourer with whom he has formed an intimacy as cordial as any which exists among those equals whom he calls his honourable and noble friends? And what man of letters does not revere those lofty aspirations of the educated artisan towards a more perfect form of human society—which may, indeed, be Utopian, but which form an eternal link between the aims of educated labour and the dreams of philosophy and genius' But Surely, looking to this present state of this workday world, it is no disrespect to the urban working class if, in their relation to the State, I object to cut out of them a rude slice, and, without any test whatever of intelligence, give to that slice a preponderating influence in the constituent body and the legislation of this complicated empire. Why, Sir, I should have the same objection to the preponderating 182 THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. influence of scholars and men of science, or of great merchants, or of a territorial aristocracy. Each of such sections, however indis- putably honest and intelligent, would fail to represent that common sense of the common interest which is best expressed by the word “commonwealth,” and which can only be fairly represented where the middle class is, on the whole, largely preponderant. Not that the middle class has not as many faults of its own as any other class above or below, but that, on the whole, it the most faithfully represents all the interests and opinions which constitute the mind and welfare of a nation, and the most felicitously reconciles the securities of order with the demands of freedom. And are men to be stigmatised as traitors and conspirators because they desire to preserve from virtual disfranchisement and political subjugation the middle-class constituents of which they are as yet the trustees 2 The Chancellor of the Exchequer lays much stress on the fact that all the working class do not pull together—that they are not all of one mind as respects politics. I do not say that they are ; but I say this—that where the working class obtain a marked and general predominance, they cannot fail to colour and influence legislation, especially where questions in which they feel a special interest are concerned. All clergymen do not agree in politics; but if they returned the majority of Members, I fancy you would feel their influence in a division on church rates. All farmers do not agree in politics; but if they returned the majority of Members, you would feel their influence in a division on the malt tax. All working men do not agree in politics; but as soon as they return the majority of Members, rely upon it you will feel their influence in those questions between labour and capital, between manufacturer and mechanic, between supply and demand, upon which the very existence of this commercial Eng- land depends. Even in foreign affairs as well as domestic, the very virtues of the working men, in their detestation of what they consider tyranny and injustice, would be a perpetual source of danger, did they return a majority of Members. The Member for Birmingham says, this Bill is wanted to save the country from the risk of war, provoked by the depravity of Tories. It might be answer enough to say, that all the wars in which we have been THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. 183 engaged since 1815 had their origin under Liberal Administra- tions. But what says the hon. Member for Brighton (Mr Fawcett), who spoke on the first reading of this Bill with so much ability and promise ? Why, that the working class would have gone to war with Russia on behalf of Poland. That is quite consistent with their generous tendency to side with the weak against the strong. A House of Commons, had the large majority been chosen by the working class, would then have wished to provoke a war with Russia. But a war more disproportioned to our powers, less Sanctioned by our interests, and more vainly exhaustive of blood and treasure, the imagination of man cannot conceive. Why do such dangers never occur in America and France—countries in which universal suffrage is adopted ? Because both in America and France the popular Chamber has not the same voice in foreign affairs, in creating Cabinets and determining the choice between peace and war. And the example of both those countries makes the fact clear, that in proportion as you lower the scale of fran- chise to the preponderance of the working class, the Safety of the State compels you to limit the powers and authority of the Repre- sentative Chamber. Nay—if law did not, public opinion would. The more you lower the standard of the constituency below the average education of the country, the more you will transfer the intellectual power of this House to some upper Chamber, whether it be an English House of Lords or an American Senate. Take America itself. Every man there looks, not to the House of Re- presentatives, but to the Senate, on questions that affect the general interests of the nation. The Senate there alone discusses foreign affairs, and when it likes can become the executive body, resolve itself into a Secret Committee, and exclude the reporters. The wise Safeguard of America against her popular suffrage is in the scantiness of the powers she leaves to her House of Representatives. I daresay you might grant not only the £7 franchise, but even universal Suffrage in this country, with Safety as to foreign affairs, with safety as to making and unmaking Cabinets, and with safety to everything except genuine freedom, if you then left to the House of Commons as little influence, power, weight, and authority as are left to the Representative Chambers of America and France. 184 THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. But, Sir, whatever objection there may be in the principle of this Bill itself is increased to an extent which no man can de- fine by the mode in which the Government propose to deal with it. We are favoured with a volume of statistics, by which we are to compute how many boroughs will represent a majority of the working class, how many will represent a majority of the middle class, to what degree the balance between rural and urban constituencies will be disturbed or maintained; and yet it is per- fectly clear that all our calculations may be made utterly worth- less by a new distribution of seats and a new definition of the boundaries of boroughs. It is true that, before we proceed to Committee, the Government will favour us with their ideas on these subjects. But how 2 By Bills with which they do not intend to proceed till this Bill becomes law. What answer have you to the masterly argument of my noble friend the Member for King's Lynn 7 “Supposing we were satisfied with the scheme submitted as to re-distribution, what guarantee should we have that that scheme might not be altogether changed next Session?” Possibly, during the recess, those “advanced Re- formers ” who advise her Majesty's advisers may declare that a scheme much more comprehensive is absolutely essential, and her Majesty's Ministers may think it necessary to listen to their advice. Possibly the material and spirit of the Government may be as much changed next session as by one lamented loss it has been changed since the last ; and the Cabinet of 1867 may as much vary from the Cabinet of 1866 in its views of Re- form as the Cabinet of 1866 has varied from the Cabinet of 1865. But the Government will, I understand, declare that, as it stands or falls by this Bill, so it will stand or fall by its other Bills—that is, next year. Well, but if it carries this Bill and stands, before it carries the other Bills it may fall, or Parliament may be dissolved, and the whole question as to seats and boun- daries and remedies against corruption may be referred to new constituencies created by a Bill of which the only ardent advo- cates are in favour of electoral districts and vote by ballot. But if, having Once passed this Bill and made it law, we were then to proceed immediately to the other Government measures THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. 185 necessary for the completion of their scheme of Reform, would this House be as competent as the Chancellor of the Exchequer assures us to the task of making that scheme conclusive and binding 2 We should be literally Members without constitu- encies. We should have extinguished our old constituencies, and be without authority to act for the new constituencies, that have never chosen us. Suppose we did deal with some 20 or 30 seats, and in so dealing failed to satisfy the next Parliament, chosen by a more democratic suffrage, would not our successors Say, with truth, that when we extinguished our constituencies we had lost the right of representatives to prejudge questions affecting the electoral bodies to which we were without any existent responsibilities? And with what heart should we set about the most ordinary work of legislation With what un- certainty of temper should we address ourselves, no longer to the men who sent us here, but to that Virgilian threshold of souls not yet launched into the world, whom we must seek to propiti- ate before they are even born We should drag out the rest of our doleful existence like those monks of La Trappe who have no other thought but that of memento mori, and no other occu- pation but that of digging their own graves. Sir, my right hon. friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer must forgive me if I venture to doubt, whether there is an educated man in this House or Out of it who accepts the validity of his reason—the want of time—for thrusting upon us this measure, isolated and detached from all other portions of a general scheme of Reform, and insisting that we shall affirm its principle without even a guess as to the constituent bodies to which that principle is to be applied. No, Sir ; every one must feel that the true reason for this mode of dealing with the question is that which was so frankly announced some months ago by the hon, gentleman the Member for Birmingham, namely, that if the House can be per- Suaded to pass this Bill in its simple and severe integrity, the Bill itself becomes the leverage for lifting out of the representa- tion, whether in this Parliament or the next, many of the very Members who may thus be entrapped to their own perdition— many Members, indeed, whom a Bill for redistribution of seats 186 THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. may spare for the moment, but whom a Parliament chosen by the provisions of this Bill will sacrifice to the manes of those whom they have assisted to destroy. Indeed, I have observed that in all the public meetings held in favour of this Bill, no Speaker has accepted the reason for not proceeding simultane- Ously with the question of redistribution, but every speaker has accepted the reason stated by the Member for Birmingham (often interrupted by loud cries from the body of his audience), —“Let us in, let us in, and we’ll soon settle the question of seats.” Sir, no one can blame the Member for Birmingham for the candour with which he avows his share in a conspiracy to which I will not be so discourteous as to apply the epithet of “dirty,’” but a conspiracy in which Members are to be allured to resign “this pleasing, anxious being,” and kept so blindfold that they have even not the privilege to “cast a lingering look be- hind.” But with all deference to my right hon. friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I think the House has a right to complain of him that he does not imitate the candour of the Member for Birmingham. Sir, the leader of this House is more than the chief of party, more than the organ of a Cabinet—he owes a duty to the House itself, and in all things that appertain to our common existence we have a right to expect from him an ingenuous frankness, incompatible with these masked batteries and these crafty decoys into the dark. If there be among us any Members who, in voting for the principle of this Bill, will by the completion of the scheme it involves destroy their own seats in Parliament, I think they have a right to be so far warned of their fate as to have the Scheme put plainly before them by the Minister who, in leading the House of Commons, represents that good faith and straightforward dealing between man and man, without which no conceivable Suffrage could make us the true image of the English nation. Now, Sir, before I conclude, let me, with great respect, address a few words to those moderate Liberals who do not desire to be buried alive in that memorable tomb in Westminster Abbey in which the last of the Whigs is to rest, and his countrymen to be thankful that he can repose. To them I say, with the Chan- THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. 187 cellor of the Exchequer, “Be wise, and be wise in time.” Be wise before you cross the Rubicon and burn your vessels. There is a story of a famous French preacher, who, delivering a Sermon On the duty of wives, said, “I see a woman present who has been guilty of disobedience to her husband, and, in Order to point her out to universal condemnation, I will fling this breviary at her head.” He lifted the book, and every female head pre- Sent ducked and dived. “Alas!” said the preacher, “the multitude of the offenders necessitates a general amnesty.” Now, I See a gentleman opposite who is guilty of detesting this Bill, and yet intends to vote for it : and if, in order to point him out to universal condemnation, the courtesies of Parliament would permit me to fling these statistics at his head, so many heads opposite would duck and dive that nothing but a general amnesty could deal with such a multitude of offenders. Sir, I am the last man to disparage that loyal discipline of party by which we must all so often suborn our individual opinions to the decision of those whom we accept as our leaders. I do not, therefore, presume to impugn the motives of any fellow Member who, though detesting this Bill, yet intends to vote for it. But I believe that the respect and gratitude of that large portion of the Liberal public which is represented by so powerful a majority of the Liberal press, will be the reward of those who, on a question. So grave, and of which the results are so irrevocable, prefer the welfare and Safety of their native country to a blind submission to a Government that has not even the courage of its own opinions; for it does not dare to invite to its Cabinet the powerful orator who tells it the way to go; and thus, at least, make him responsible to his Sovereign for the counsels he dic- tates to her Ministers. For my part, I can honestly say that, looking to the nature of this Bill, the mode in which it is intro- duced, and the arguments by which it is defended, my vote against it will be given, not as Conservative against Liberal, not as employer against Workman, not as Englishman against Englishman, but as Englishman for the Sake of our common England. XXXIII. A S P E E O H DELIVERED IN T H E FR E E M A S O N 'S H A L L ON THE 2D OF NOVEMBER 1867. ON Saturday evening, the 2d of November 1867, Lord Lytton presided as Chairman at the Farewell Banquet given to Mr Charles Dickens prior to his departure on a Reading Tour in the United States. In giving the toast of the evening, the following Speech was delivered. My LORDS AND GENTLEMEN, -I now approach the toast which is special to the occasion that has brought together a meeting so numerous and so singularly distinguished. You have paid the customary honours to our beloved sovereign, due not only to her personal virtues, but to that principle of constitutional monarchy in which the communities of Europe recognise the happiest mode of uniting liberty with order, and giving to the aspirations for the future a definite starting-point in the experience and the habits of the past. You are now invited to do honour to a different kind of royalty, which is seldom peacefully acknowledged until he who wins and adorns it ceases to exist in the body, and is no longer conscious of the empire which his thoughts bequeath to his name. Happy is the man who makes clear his title-deeds to the royalty of genius while he yet lives to enjoy the gratitude THE DICKENS BANQUET. 189 and reverence of those whom he has subjected to his Sway. Though it is by conquest that he achieves his throme, he at least is a conqueror whom the conquered bless; and the more despoti- cally he enthralls, the dearer he becomes to the hearts of men. Seldom, I say, has that kind of royalty been quietly conceded to any man of genius until his tomb becomes his throne, and yet there is not one of us now present who thinks it strange that it is granted without a murmur to the guest whom we receive to- might. It has been said by a Roman poet that nature, designing to distinguish the human race from the inferior animals by that faculty of social progress which makes each combine with each for the aid and defence of all, gave to men mollissima Corda, hearts the most accessible to sympathy with their fellow kind; and hence tears, and permit me to add, and hence laughter, became the special and the noblest attributes of humanity. Therefore it is humanity itself which obeys an irresistible instinct when it rendert homage to one who refines it by tears that never enfeeble, and by a laughter that never degrades. You know that we are about to intrust our honoured countryman to the hospitality of those kindred shores in which his writings are as much “house- hold words” as they are in the homes of England. And if I may presume to speak as a politician, I should say that no time could be more happily chosen for his visit; because our American kins- folk have conceived, rightly or wrongfully, that they have some cause of complaint against ourselves, and out of all England we could not have Selected an envoy more calculated to allay irrita- tion and to propitiate goodwill. In the matter of goodwill there is a distinction between us English and the Americans which may for a time operate to our disadvantage; for we English insist upon claiming all Americans as belonging to our race, and Springing from the same ancestry as ourselves, and hence the idea of any actual hostility between them and us shocks Our Sense of relationship; and yet in reality a large and very active proportion of the American people derives its origin from other races besides the Anglo-Saxon, German and Dutch and Celtic forefathers combine to form the giant family of the United States; but there is one cause for ever at work to cement all 190 THE DICKENS BANQUET. these varieties of origin, and to compel the American people, as a whole, to be as proud as we are of their affinity with the English race. What is that cause ? What is that agency 2 Is it not that of one language in common between the two nations ? It is in the same mother tongue that their poets must sing, that their philosophers must reason, that their orators must argue upon truth or contend for power. I see before me a distinguished guest, distinguished for the manner in which he has brought to- gether all that is most modern in sentiment with all that is most scholastic in thought and language; permit me to say, Mr Matthew Arnold. I appeal to him if I am not right when I say that it is by a language in common that all differences of origin Sooner or later are welded together—that Etruscans, and Sabines, and Oscans, and Romans, became one family, as Latins once, as Italians now? Before that agency of one language in common have not all differences of ancestral origin in England between Britons, Saxons, Danes, and Normans, melted away; and must not all similar differences equally melt away in the nurseries of American mothers, extracting the earliest lessons of their children from our Own English Bible, or in the schools of preceptors who must resort to the same models of language whenever they bid their pupils rival the prose of Macaulay and Prescott, or emulate the verse of Tennyson and Longfellow 2 Now, it seems to me that nothing can more quicken the sense of that relationship which a language in common creates, than the presence and the voice of a writer equally honoured and beloved in the old world and in the new ; and I cannot but think that wherever our American kins- folk welcome that presence, Or hang spell-bound on that voice, they will feel irresistibly how much of fellowship and unison there is between the hearts of America and England. So that when our countryman quits their shores he will leave behind him many a new friend to the old fatherland which greets them through him so cordially in the accents of the mother tongue. And in those accents what a sense of priceless obligations—obligations personal to him, and through him to the land he represents—must steal over his American audience How many hours in which pain and sickness have changed into cheerfulness and mirth beneath THE DICKENS BANQUET. 191 the wand of this enchanter How many a combatant beaten down in the battle of life—and nowhere is the battle of life more sharply waged than in the commonwealth of America—has caught new hope, new courage, new force from the manly lessons of this unobtrusive teacher Gentlemen, it is no wonder that the rising generation of a people who have learned to think and to feel in our language, should eagerly desire to see face to face the man to whose genius, from their very childhood, they have turned for warmth and for light as instinctively as young plants turn to the sun. But I must not forget that it is not I whom you have come to hear ; and all I might say, if I had to vindicate the fame of our guest from disparagement or cavil, would seem but tedious and commonplace when addressed to those who know that his career has passed beyond the ordeal of contemporaneous criticism, and that in the applause of foreign nations it has found a fore- taste of the judgment of posterity. I feel as if every word that I have already said had too long delayed the toast which I now propose, “A prosperous voyage, health and long life, to our illus- trious guest and countryman, Charles Dickens.” XXXIV. A S P E E O H DELIVERED IN THE TOWN HALL AT ST ALBAN'S ON MONDAY. THE 2D OF AUGUST 1869. ON Monday, the 2d of August 1869, the British Archaeological Congress was held in the Court House of the Town Hall at St Alban's, under the Presidency of Lord Lytton. The following was the Inaugural Address then delivered. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,+Allow me first, in your name, to wel- come to the county of Hertford, and to this ancient town of St Alban's, the distinguished members of the British Archaeological Association who honour us with their visit. That Association was commenced in 1843 by the zeal and energy of a few earnest stu- dents of our national history as elucidated by our national monu- ments. Among the foremost of those students was our guest, Mr Thomas Wright, whose delightful Works have done so much to render us familiar with the manners and customs of our ancestors. It is stated by one of my predecessors in this chair, that at the time the Association was formed, the taste for antiquarian research was very partial, and somewhat languid; that there were no local museums in which objects of national antiquity could be collected, and even the British Museum had no special place for their recep- THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONGRESS. 193 tion; that, with some illustrious exceptions, archaeology was rather the amusement of amateurs than the study of practical thinkers and profound scholars; and that it is mainly owing to the labours of this Association that local museums may now be found in most of our principal towns, and that archaeology has been raised from a graceful accomplishment to the dignity of a philosophical Science. I should not have ventured to accept the distinguished office I hold to-day, if I had found that it had been generally occupied on similar occasions by professed archaeologists. But it seems that when the Archaeological Association selects any particular county for its annual Congress, its more eminent members consent toforego their own claims to the chair of President in favour of some inhab- itant of the district they visit, who does not pretend to rival the learning of those he represents; but who reveres the studies which they adorn, and is familiar with the localities whose monuments attract their research. These, indeed, are my sole claims to the distinction conferred upon me by the British Archæological Asso- ciation. As a writer I should be ungrateful, indeed, if I did not acknowledge how much I am indebted to the archaeologist when- ever I have endeavoured to trace upon my canvas some image of the past ; while, as a Hertfordshire man, I am proud to think that our county is worthy of the visitation, from which its history and its monuments will derive fresh illustrations and additional inte- rest. Camden, indeed, has said in his ‘Britannia” that “for the renown of antiquity Hertfordshire may vie with any of its neigh- bours, for Scarce any other county can show so many remains.” Archaeology has been called the handmaid of history; and, indeed, without its aid, history would as little represent the particular time it endeavours to recall as the drawing of a skeleton would represent the features and the form by which the individual human being was recognised while in life. It is to the skeleton of a for- mer age that archaeology restores the flesh and the sinews and the lineaments that distinguish it from the countless centuries of which it is a link, clothes it in the very garments that it wore, and re- builds the very home in which it dwelt. But archaeology is not only the handmaid of history, it is also the conservator of art. It disinters from neglected tombs the in- VOL. II. N 194. THE ARCHAEOILOGICAL CONGRESS. ventions of departed genius, and bids them serve as studies and Sources of inspiration to the genius of a later day. When the Baths of Titus were excavated at Rome, the attention of Raphael was directed by a fellow-artist to their faded arabesques. Those arabesques roused his own creative imagination, and under his pencil reappeared on the walls of the Vatican in new and original combinations of form and colour. Nay, that discovery, and the train of ideas it aroused, may be said to have suggested the delicate tracery and elaborate ornament of that new school of architecture called the Renaissance, out of which grew the palaces of Fontaine- bleau and Heidelberg, and which we have nationalised in England in those noble manorial residences which adorn the reigns of Eliza- beth and James. But it is not only history and the plastic arts which are indebted to the science of the archaeologist. It is amongst his labours to guard from oblivion the myths, the traditions, the legends of for- mer days; and critical and severe though his genius and its obli- gations must be, still it is to his care that we owe the preservation of many a pure and Sacred well-spring of poetry and romance,— well-springs from which Spenser and Milton, Dryden, Gray, Words- worth, and Scott, have drawn each his own special stream of in- spiration, to refresh the banks that he cultivated, and nourish the flowers that he reared. Last, and not least, of our obligations to the spirit of archaeology is, that it stimulates and deepens in the heart of a people sentiments of pride and affection for the native land. In proportion as we cherish the memories of our ancestors, and revere the heirlooms they have left us, in monuments reared by their piety, or bearing witness of their lives and their deeds, the soil which they trod becomes hallowed ground; and we feel that patriotism is no idle name, but the mainspring of every policy which makes statesmen wise, and the borders of a state secure. Indeed, if we look back to the annals of the world we find that there is no surer sign of the impending downfall of any nation than a cynical contempt for the memorials of its old renown. When Gibbon gives us the mournful picture of Roman corruption and decrepitude, just before the final extinction of the Western Empire and the accession of a barbarian king to the throne of the THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONGRESS. 195 Caesars, he tells us “that the monuments of consular or imperial greatness were no longer revered as the glory of the capital; they were only esteemed as an inexhaustible mine of materials, cheaper and more convenient than the distant quarry.” And with this miserable desecration of objects that attested the majesty of Rome, the very name of the Roman passed away; and, to borrow the ex- pression of a French writer, “the descendants of Brutus became the vassals of the Goth.” But, ladies and gentlemen, if the national spirit and the love of country be thus generally mourished by that searching but reveren- tial study of the past, which is called archaeology, there is an in- herent principle in the human mind which makes the affections more intense by limiting their range. A man, for instance, may take but a lukewarm interest in the antiquities of the whole Brit- ish empire, compared to that which he may readily be induced to take in the antiquities of the county to which he belongs. “Things distant,” says an old writer, “affect us feebly ; things which are brought under our eyes rouse our emotions, and appeal to our hearts;” and so, when a man of some intelligence and Sus- ceptibility of feeling finds that localities with which he is familiar are the sites in which great events took place, or in which great men had their residence or their birthplace, then the whole scene takes a new interest, a new charm; an importance and dignity are given to the places through which he passes daily, perhaps to the very fields which surround his home ; he conceives a pride in that portion of the land in which Providence has cast his lot, and in- Sensibly—for all such operations of the mind are insensible—that pride extends its range from his immediate district to the nation and the race of which he is a member. For this reason I think that the British Archæological Association has dome most wisely in holding an annual Congress at successive divisions of our common country. They thus sow in one place those seeds of patriotism and of art which are wafted to other places more remote, till that same culture of ideas which had commenced in a county town gradually embraces the surface of the kingdom ; and in visiting our county, and selecting St Alban's for their central meeting-place, the AS- sociation will find memorials and reminiscences that illustrate the 196 THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONGRESS. history of our native island from its earliest date to its halting point in our own day; from the ancient Briton whose ancestor, if Welsh tradition be true, crossed what is called in Welsh language “the hazy sea,” from the land of the Crimea, to the beloved and lamented statesman who had a home at Brocket, and under whose auspices was closed that last British war undertaken for the cause of European civilisation, which has left the tombs of heroes on those Crimean shores from which came the exiles that have given to Scotland, Wales, and England, their common name of Britain. I need not say to you who listen to me in the Town Hall of St Alban's, that round the spot on which we assemble one of the bravest and fiercest of the British tribes held dominion. Far and mear, round this spot, we tread on ground which witnessed their dauntless if despairing resistance to the Roman invader. But here let me pause to make this reflection. The difference between one race and another appears to be ac- cording to the mental organisation by which any given race can receive ideas from a more civilised race by which it is subdued, or with which it is brought into contact. If it cannot receive and in- corporate such ideas, it withers and fades away, just as the Red Indian withers and fades away beside the superior civilisation of the American settlers. But England never seems, from the earliest historical records, to have been inhabited by any race which did not accept ideas of improved civilisation from its visitors or con- querors. The ancient Britons were not ignorant barbarians—in our modern sense of the word barbarian—at the time of the Roman conquest. Their skill in agriculture was considerable; they had in familiar use implements and machinery, such as carriages, the watermill, the windmill, which attest their application of science to the arts of husbandry. They had formed towns and cities in which was carried on a trade so flourishing that Gaul is said to have derived from Britain the supplies with which it resisted Rome. But there were some ideas they received from the Romans utterly unknown to them before, and which are incorporated in the civili- sation we now boast and enjoy. They received the idea of facility of transit and communication. The Romans were to the ancient World what the railway companies are to the modern. They were THE ARCHAEOIOGICAL CONGRESS. 197 the great constructors of roads and highways: the word “street” is a vestige of the Roman ; it is derived from Stratum, a paved causeway. The Britons owed next, to Roman ideas, the introduc- tion of civil law; and the moment the principle of secular justice between man and man was familiarised to their minds, the priestly domination of the Druids, with all its sanguinary superstitions, passed away. The Britons owed next, to Rome, that institution of municipal towns to which the philosophical statesman, Mons. Guizot, traces the rise of modern freedom in its emancipation from feudal oppression and feudal serfdom. At the time the Romans finally withdrew from Britain no less than ninety-two considerable towns had arisen, of which thirty-three cities possessed superior privileges; each of them possessing a municipal government dis- tributed amongst annual magistrates, a select Senate, and a popu- lar assembly; possessing the management of a common revenue, and exercising civil and criminal jurisdiction. Amongst the most famous of these cities, I need not tell you, was the ancient Veru- lam, which was a municipium in the time of Nero, and of which the remains are now being brought more clearly to light by the labours of the Association, under the skilful guidance of Mr Edward Roberts. I understand that the plan of the city has now been dis- tinctly traced, and I am told by Mr Roberts that it bears a close resemblance to that of Pompeii. Two houses have been already disinterred; and on Wednesday you will be enabled to see at least the stage, proScenium, and orchestra of the ancient theatre—the only Roman theatre, I believe, yet found in this country; and the whole of which will shortly, by Lord Verulam's liberal permission, be laid open to inspection, and form one of the most valuable ac- quisitions to the treasure-house of British antiquities. Lastly, it was to the Roman conqueror that the Britons owed, if not the first partial conception, at least the national recognition of that Chris- tian faith whose earliest English martyr has bequeathed his name to St Alban's. When we pass to the age of the Anglo-Saxons, their vestiges in this county Surround us on every side. The names of places, fami- liar to us as household words, mark their residences: the terminals -by, -bury, -ley, -wick,-worth, -ham, are indicative of Saxon homes, 198 THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONGRESS. and there is no county in which they more abound than Hertford- shire. And here I may be permitted to observe that the main reason why the language of the Anglo-Saxon survived the Norman invasion, and rapidly supplanted the language of the conqueror, does not appear to me to have been clearly stated by our histo- rians. I take the reason to be simply this: the language that men speak in after life is formed in the nursery, it is learned from the lips of the mother. Now those adventurers of Scandinavian ori- gin who established themselves in Normandy did not seek their wives in Scandinavia but in France; and thus their children learned in the nursery the French language. In like manner, when they conquered England, those who were still unmarried sought their wives among the Saxons; in the Second generation Such intermar- riages were almost universal; and thus the language of the mo- thers naturally became that of the children, and being also the language of the servants employed in the household, the French language necessarily waned, receded, and at last became merged in the domestic element of the Anglo-Saxon, retaining only such of its native liveliness and adaptability to metrical rhyme and cadence as served to enrich the earliest utterances of our English poetry in the Muse, at once grave and sportive, at Once courtly and popular, who inspired the lips of Chaucer. I need not say to my listeners that throughout the Heptarchy, till the consolidation of the several kingdoms under one imperial ruler, the town and neighbourhood of St Alban's are part and parcel of Anglo-Saxon history; and if I do not dwell on the mem- orable events connected with this locality during that early epoch, it is because we are promised Some essays on that Subject by our distinguished and learned visitors. In this county, too, are the scenes of fierce and heroic conflicts between the Saxons and the Danes. Where now stands the town of Ware anchored the light vessels which constituted the Danish navy, as it sailed from Lon- don along the Thames to the entrance of the river Lea. There they besieged the town of Hertford, which had been a place of some worth even in the time of the Britons; and there the remark- able military genius of Alfred the Great, at once acute and patient, studying the nature of the river, diverted its stream into three THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONGRESS. 199 currents, and stranded the vessels of the invader, which were seized as spoil by the Londoners. The site of the fort erected by the Danes, and of the two forts built by King Alfred, has, I under- stand, been ascertained by a resident of Hertford, who has promised a paper on the subject. Further on, in the little town of Welwyn, the historian of our county tells us that, “according to common fame, the massacre of the Danes began;” probably at Danesbury, a name which, I believe, signified a fortified Danish camp. Nor are we, in this county, more destitute of memorials of the turbu- lent ages which followed the Norman conquest. When Prince Louis of France invaded England, no stronghold, with the excep- tion of Dover, resisted his siege with more valour, or with greater loss to the invader, than the Castle of Hertford. Under the soil around those old walls which now enclose the peaceful residence of our legal friend, Mr Longmore, as if to show that in the progress of civilisation the rage of war is transferred from the battle-field to the courts of law, under that soil many an invading French- man found his homeless grave. That castle at Hertford was, in the Wars of the Roses, possessed by Margaret of Anjou ; and here, in St Peter Street, at St Alban's, on the 22d May 1455, her ill- fated husband, Henry VI., pitched his standard against the armies of the White Rose, led by Richard Duke of York, and the great Earls of Warwick and Salisbury. And here again, on the 17th of February 1461, he was brought from London by Warwick, and made the nominal and reluctant representative of a conflict against his Queen, who, however, delivered him from the custody of the Yorkists, and Sullied her victory by such plunder and cruelty as a few days afterwards insured the crown to Edward IV. On the Summit of the church tower at Hadley is still seen the lantern which, according to tradition, lighted the forces of Edward IV. through the dense fog which the superstition of the time believed to have been raised by the incantations of Friar Bungay, a famous wizard. Through the veil of that fog was fought the battle of Bar- net—a battle among the most important of English history, whether for its immediate consequences or its ultimate results. On that field of Barnet the power of the great feudal barons expired with Warwick, the kingmaker, and a new era in the records of liberty 200 THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONGRESS. and civil progress practically commenced; for I am convinced, by a Somewhat careful study of that time, that the contest between the houses of York and Lancaster was not, as many historians have treated it, a mere dispute of title to the throne, or a mere rivalry for power between the great feudal chiefs. There was also a great political and moral principle at stake in the conflict. The house of Lancaster, with its monkish king, represented the elder and more intolerant spirit of papal persecutions. It was under that house that the first religious reformers had been mercilessly condemned to the gibbet and the flames; and in the martyrdom of the Lollards, Henry IV. and Henry V. left a terrible legacy of wrath and doom to Henry VI. Besides the numerous descendants of the Lollards, large bodies of the Church itself, including the clergy, accepted notions of religious reform ; and these necessarily were alienated from the house of Lancaster, and inclined to the house of York. With the house of York, too, were the great centres of energy and intelligence—London and the principal trading cities. The commercial spirit established a certain familiar sympathy with Edward IV., who was himself a merchant, venturing commercial speculations in ships fitted out by himself. Thus the battle of Barnet, which confirmed the house of York on the throne, was in fact fought between the new ideas and the old; and those new ideas which gave power to the middle class in the reign of Henry VII., and rendered the religious reformation in the reign of Henry VIII. popular, despite its violent excesses, shared at Barnet the victory of the king under whom was established the first printing- press known in England. But Hertfordshire is not eminent only for the memorable events connected with our national history, nor only dear to the archaeo- logist for the material relics of antiquity: the names of great men consecrate localities, and are often more familiar than the records of a battle, and more lasting than monuments of stone. Our county has furnished either the birthplace or the home of no in- considerable persons. According to tradition, Cashiobury was the royal seat of Cassivellaumus, the commander-in-chief of the British kings who stormed the camp of the Romans in their march upon Verulam ; and passing to the noble family that, now THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONGRESS. 201 holds its domains, Cashiobury found an owner as brave as its old British possessor in the first Lord Capel,-faithful in life and in death to the cause of Charles I. Near to the town of Hitchin, in which stood the priory of the White Carmelites, now possessed by our esteemed friend, Mr Delmè Radcliffe (the author, by the by, of a charming book entitled ‘The Noble Science,’—a name that he applies, not to the science of archaeology, as he ought, but to the Science of the chase, of which he is a distinguished professor), near to that town, in the rural hamlet of Offley, died the magnificent Offa, founder of St Alban's Abbey. King's Langley was the birth- place of Edmond de Langley, the brave son of Edward III., after- wards created Duke of York. Close beside it, at Abbot's Lang- ley, was born Nicholas Breakspear, afterwards Pope Adrian TV. Moor Park is identified with the names of Cardinal Wolsey and of the ill-fated Duke of Monmouth. At Aldenham lived for a time the father of the great Lord Falkland, who must there have passed Some years of his studious boyhood. Knebworth, before it passed to the family of which I am the representative, belonged to that flower of chivalry, Sir Walter Nanny. Baldock owes its origin to the Knight Templars, who had also a lodge at Temple Dinsley. Gobions belonged to the illustrious Sir Thomas More. Sir John Mandeville, the famous traveller (who, if he invented his travels, beat us all in the art of romance), was a native of St Alban's. Thomas Stanley, the learned author of the ‘Lives of the Philoso- phers,’ lived at Cumberlow. Sir Ralph Sadler, that great orna- ment of his time as a soldier, negotiator, and statesman, lived at Standon, and is buried in its church. Welwyn is immortalised as the home of Edward Young, the author of ‘Night Thoughts;’ and in our generation, of one of the greatest scholars England has ever produced, Mr Fynes Clinton, the author of ‘Fasti Hellenici.” Pan- Shanger is associated with the name of Cowper, a name rendered illustrious not only by the great lawyer and statesman in whom the title originated, but also by the poet who has made himself a name at every hearthstone where the English language is read or spoken. The delightful essayist, Charles Lamb, boasts his descent from Hertfordshire, and his genius has raised from obscurity the little hamlet of Mackery End. Future archaeologists 202 THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONGRESS. will revere at Brocket the residence of two eminent men who in our time have swayed the destinies of this country as First Ministers of the Crown, Lord Melbourne and Lord Palmerston,-men akin to each other by family connection, and akin still more by the English attributes they held in common, an exquisite geniality of temper united with simple and robust manliness of character. Our guests will visit, at Hatfield, a place rich indeed with brilliant memories and associations. There may be seen the tower from the top of which, according to the story, the Princess Elizabeth envied the lot of the humble milkmaid; and there, in the park, may still be seen at least the trunk of the tree under which she is said to have received the news of her accession to the throne. A little beyond the site of the old palace they will inspect the moble halls which were erected by Robert Cecil, and restored to fresh splendour by their late lamented owner; of whom it may truly be said, that his active mind never neglected a duty, and his loyal heart never forsook a friend. And what Englishman—may, what stranger from those foreign nations to which, conjointly with the posterity of his native land, Francis Bacon intrusted the verdict to be pronounced on his labours and his name—would not feel that he is on haunted ground when he enters the domain of Gor- hambury, and examines the relics of that abode in which the Shakespeare of philosophy united the most various knowledge of mankind with the deepest research into the Secrets of nature and the elements of human thought ! : Such, ladies and gentlemen, are some among the objects of in- terest to which the notice of our visitors is invited. I should apo- logise for much that the limits of my space compel me to omit; for there is scarcely a town, a village, an old manor-house in Hertfordshire, which has not some relic, some association, some tradition, which may commend itself to the true archaeologist. Nor ought I to forget how diligently the records of our county have been preserved by native historians, whose descendants still bear the honoured names of Clutterbuck and Chauncy. While another resident of Hertfordshire, Joseph Strutt, the celebrated author of ‘English Antiquities, has laid in the neighbourhood of Welwyn the scene of our earliest English romance, “Queen Hoo THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONGRESS. 203 Hall,’ which suggested to the more brilliant genius of Walter Scott the immortal tales of ‘Ivanhoe” and ‘Kenilworth.” Ladies and gentlemen, so long as we keep the past before us as a guide, we are not altogether (speaking humanly, and with due Submission to the decrees of Providence), we are not altogether without some power to shape the future so as to preserve, through all its changes, that national spirit without which the unity of a race disappears. It has been vouchsafed to England to diffuse her children and her language amidst realms unknown to the ambition of Alexander, and far beyond the boldest flights of the Roman eagle. Ages hence, from the shores of Australasia and America, pilgrims will visit this land as the birthplace of their ancestors, and venerate every relic of our glorious if checkered past, from the day of the Druid to that in which we now are; for while we Speak we ourselves are acting history, and becoming in our turn the ancients to posterity. May no future Gibbon trace to the faults of our time the causes which insure the rise and fall of em- pires. Century after century may our descendants in those vast new worlds, compared to which Europe itself shrinks to the dimensions of a province or a shire, century after century may they find still flourishing on these ancestral shores, nor ashamed to number the men of our generation among its fathers, a race adorned by the graces of literature, and enriched by the stores of Science 1 May they find still unimpaired, and sacred alike from superstition and unbelief, the altars of Christian faith ! may our havens and docks still be animated by vessels fitted for commerce abroad, or armed, in case of need, for defence at home ! Still may our institutions and Our liberties find the eloquence of freemen and patriots in our legislative halls, and the ermine of Justice be unsullied by a spot in the courts where she adjudicates between man and man These are the noblest legacies we receive from the past; and while we treasure these at every hazard, and through every change, the Soul of England will retain vitality to her form, and no archaeologist will seek her grave amidst the nations that have passed away. XXXV. OUTLINE OF A SPEECH INTENDED TO EIAVE BEEN DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE IST OF MAY 1839. [Besides the numerous Speeches delivered by Lord Lytton both within and without the walls of Parliament, and from which the foregoing, to the number of forty-one, have been selected, there were many others prepared by him for the debates both of the Lords and Commons, from the actual delivery of which he was precluded by purely fortuitous circumstances. As manuscript drafts of the outlines of several of these have been found among his papers, it has been thought advisable to include in the present collection those at any rate which are here subjoined.] ON Wednesday the 27th of February 1839, the Member for Reading, Mr Sergeant (afterwards Justice) Talfourd, moved the second reading of the Bill introduced by him for the better regulation of the Law of Literary Copyright. An amendment was thereupon moved by the Member for Kil- kenny, Mr Joseph Hume, that the Bill be read that day six months, in which proposal he was strongly supported by the Member for Bridport, Mr Henry Warburton. Eventually, on Monday the 8th of July, by reason of the opposition it had encountered, the Bill was withdrawn by its originator. Prior to this, on Wednesday the 1st of May 1839, while the projected measure was yet under the consideration of the House in Committee, the following speech was intended to have been delivered. SIR,--It seems to me that the main objections which have been urged against this Bill by the hon. Member for Bridport—objec- tions which, urged with all his ingenuity, and under popular pretexts, have perhaps induced many to share his opposition——rest LITERARY COPYRIGHT. 205 upon one or two misconceptions of the probable practical opera- tion of this Bill as regards the cheapness of publications. Before, however, I come to this point, let us see fairly what is the question before us. It is not necessary to enter into an argument to prove that the works of literature are property. The law has already decided that they are property for a certain period. For twenty- eight years a man's book is a man's property. My hon. and learned friend contends that that period is not sufficient. He brings in a Bill to prolong the period. That, then, is the simple question before the House. Not whether a book is or is not pro- perty; but is the present term in which the law does consider it property sufficient 2 Whether the extension of time should be sixty years, or more or less, is fairly a question for Committee, and is, I own, a matter fairly worthy of consideration. But all we have now to consider is—shall the present term be or be not ex- tended? The hon. Member for Bridport says that he will only argue this question as a question of expediency—of utility to the public. Sir, upon that ground I will meet him. The hon. gentle- man contends that the extension of copyright will tend to increase the price of works. Now here comes what I consider the practical view of the case, which I will endeavour to explain to the House. The price of a book after the first few years does not depend upon copyright or not ; it depends upon whether it be or be not of a popular nature. The more popular the nature of a great author's work, the lower the price at which it sells. There is no copyright to the ‘Vicar of Wakefield ;” there is no copyright to Newton's Principia. You have editions of Goldsmith at less than 1s. ; you have not one cheap edition of Sir Isaac Newton's Works. Why is this ? Because millions read Goldsmith, and only a few read Newton. If you were to publish the ‘Principia’for 6d. you would probably not increase the sale, and you certainly would not pay print or paper. Now take two other examples. There is a copyright in Lord Byron ; there is no copyright in Dryden. Dryden is, as a poet, equal to Lord Byron, but he is not at this moment equally popular. The only good edition of Dryden sells for £10, 10s. You get an excellent edition of Lord Byron for £1. There are no copyrights to Locke, to Hobbes, to Cudworth—three 206 LITERARY COPYRIGEIT. of our greatest philosophers; there is not one cheap complete edition of any of these writers. What, then, are the cheap works now disseminated, and which you justly value? They all belong to the lighter class of writers—light essays, fictions, novels, elementary or popular treatises; and you will find if you examine practically that you get these cheap in proportion not to their being a copy- right or not, but in proportion as they are of a nature to please a larger or a smaller circle of readers. I contend, then, that strange as it may appear at first, it is practically true that when the copy- right is in the hands of the public, you do not get better or cheaper or more numerous editions. That this holds especially good in all, I do not say the higher, but the more solid and Scien- tific branches of literature, because precisely in proportion as they are solid and scientific, they address themselves to the few ; and if you deny this, I ask you to make out your case—I ask you to show me the cheap editions of your great old authors in which there is no copyright—I ask for your cheap editions of Sir Walter Raleigh, of Sir Thomas Browne, of Lord Bacon's complete works—I ask you where are the cheap editions of Swift complete, of Dryden complete—indeed, of the prose works of Bolingbroke complete? It is but the other day after the lapse of centuries that you have any new complete editions of your great Dramatists—of Marlow, of Peele, of Massinger; and in comedy, of Farquhar and Congreve. IMy hon, friend the Member for Leeds is bringing out an edition of Hobbes. Does his bookseller allow him to bring it out in a cheap form 2 No ; he knows that only a few persons will buy it whether it be cheap or dear; and the price must be high accord- ingly. Nay, sir, I must even contend that books are so far an exception to the ordinary rules of political economy, that it often happens that a new edition of a great writer—a writer great, but not perhaps very popular—is not produced, because the bookseller has no copyright, and because, therefore, should the speculation answer, he incurs every risk of being undersold by some others, who will never, however, hazard the first undertaking. This has often come under my own knowledge. It was but last year that a bookseller informed me he had meditated a new and a cheap edition of one of the greatest writers in our language, now almost LITERARY COPYRIGHT. 207 out of print ; but was deterred from it by the very probability of its success—by the probability that just when it began to pay, another edition would appear and prevent the profits. So far, then, as your argument goes, that books must necessarily be cheaper where there is no copyright, most of the facts are against you ; and where they may appear in your favour, it will be not in these works that augment the sum of human knowledge;—not in works of science, philosophy, or reasoning; not those works which you mean when you talk of cheap knowledge; but in works of fancy, of fiction, of popular poetry, which sell cheap not because there is no copyright, but because they are popular by their nature. Now, Sir, what does the learned gentleman propose ? Why, by extending copyright for sixty years, we will say, after the author's death, to give his children a property not only in the pecuniary value of the work but the fame of the writer. Can you conceive no case—cannot you conceive many cases—where this, in- stead of making the works scarcer and dearer, will make them more numerous and cheaper? How many writers there are who, though most valuable, may not be so widely popular as to make it worth an indifferent bookseller's while to risk his capital in a new edition of his works. A bookseller naturally looks to everything as a matter of gain. He must have a profit, and a large profit, when he hazards his capital. But let copyright be the property of the son, and the son has an interest more identical with the public than that of the mere trader—the son has an interest in the fame of his father, and will be contented with little or no profit if he can build up, in a popular edition of his father's works, the most durable monument to his memory. Who so likely to benefit the public, who so likely to give you the cheap knowledge or the cheap amusement you desire, as the man who feels that every eye that glances over the page in which his father's soul yet lives, is doing homage to his own birthright of honourable reputation. Well, Sir, then, having got the ground clear from the most plausible objection, we come at once to the plain, broad question, Is the present term long enough or not ? Sir, for some works I believe it is long enough to afford a fair remuneration, but not for others. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the poet, the novelist, 208 LITERARY COPYRIGHT. the popular essayist, the author in that literature which belongs to wit or imagination, rises at once to celebrity and pecuniary reward. It is a remark as old as Tacitus, that all which belongs to fiction is rapid in its effect, all that belongs to science is slow ; but works that address only the few—works of research, of in- dustry, of less genius, perhaps, than the others—all these are many years before they bring any remuneration. I know an instance in the University which the hon. Baronet represents. A work has been produced that is among the greatest European Scholarship can boast. The author, formerly a Member of this House, devoted the best part of his life to it. It is a work on the Chronology of Greek History—a work that has thrown the greatest light upon the most important period in the ancient world, which has cleared up a thousand obscurities, refuted a thousand fallacies—a work without which no scholarship can be accurate, no library complete. Yet this, from its nature—this could not make its way into sale for many years. The University of Oxford, I believe, much to its honour, contributed to its expenses in the first instance; but now at the end of nearly twenty-eight years, it just begins to remumer- ate the illustrious toils of a laborious life. By your present law—if the author die—his son will receive nothing but three or four volumes in quarto. If you pass my friend's law, you bequeath to that son an annuity in the obligations his father has conferred upon the literature of Europe. Sir, the hon. gentleman has argued that this Bill can only benefit one case in a thousand; but why does he persist in forgetting that it can only affect the public where that case occurs ? It is a law that can only come into operation precisely to reward genius, or to remunerate toil. But I do not allow that this Bill benefits only rare and singular cases. I say that, upon expediency alone, whatever encourages, whatever honours, intellectual cultivation, tends to raise the character and to elevate the notions of an entire people. The more highly you show that you estimate what civilises mankind, the more you diffuse those principles and sentiments in which the grace and polish of civilisation are to be found. This is not all. I agree that men of great genius when they sit down to compose a work do not think of pecuniary rewards; and so far, if you think that genius, which LITERARY COPYRIGHT. 209 was meant to be your master, is only fit to be your slave—that you are to seize the toils, but to grudge the hire—so far, I agree with you that this Bill does nothing. But there are other men of ex- cellent talents—not poets, not writers of fancy, not belonging to the first class of intellect, but who very fairly and very honour- ably pursue literature as a profession—men of industry, statists, compilers, writers of your cheap literature, whose minds have the happy gift to popularise knowledge, who write on the elements of history or science, and who may reasonably expect that their works will become popular class-books. Now I do know that there are many such who would, in the way of professional calculation, devote their time and abilities to works of the most useful nature, and probably of the most permanent use to the public, if they could hope that, by so doing, they might Secure an income to their children ; so that stimulants of this nature, I do believe, would be most useful to the public itself. Sir, I have sought to argue this question as one of practical expediency, and to fight it upon the ground upon which the hon. gentleman has placed it. But I cannot pass in silence over the distinction he would draw between expediency and justice. The expediency of a great nation is to do justice by redressing every injury, and, where it happily has the power, to evince gratitude for every service. Talk of this as a class Pill—as a Bill which tailors or bakers would suggest for their own class—that, Sir, is not the language which we ought to address to the prayers of men who have given a lustre to their country. Indeed, it should be our boast that the humblest craftsman, if he complains of insufficient or limited protection to what the law has already considered his property, ought to receive at least a respectful hearing of his complaint; and if this were a Bill brought in by the tailors or bakers of Bridport, I very much doubt whether the hon, member would think it right to say that it should not even be brought into that House to which every class complaint even should find its way. But I own that while I would do justice to every man however humble, it seems to me that there is yet more Sanctity in the justice we confer if true, and the people are under obligations never to be repaid to the parties that complain. Sir, what is Our power in the world? It WOL. II. O 210 LITERARY COPYRIGHT. is our moral power—the homage due not less to our arts than to our arms. A hundred years ago, and the English language Was scarcely spoken out of these islands. Go now through the whole north—through Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Norway, Sweden, even in Russia—and our language is the study even of the humbler classes. In the extension of our language, who does not see the extension of our influence 2 Who does not see the new and close connection it forms with other States and our own It is one of the great helps to commerce; it is one of the great cements of peace. To whom and to what do we owe this? Not to our victories, nor to our laws; not to your debates in this House. You owe it to the labours and to the men to whose children you would now grudge 6d. a volume upon the heritage of their fathers. And among these, your benefactors, there is no man who has done So much to win you the affection and admiration of the great northern nations,—no man who has contributed to render the English language familiar to the lips, and the English interest dear to the hearts, of your allies, no man who has done so much as Sir Walter Scott. His children are among your petitioners. Sir, I need not ask my learned friend to persevere. His gallantry and zeal in this question, beset as it is with a vehement and able opposition, foreign as it is to the more popular questions in this House, have been worthy of his talents and his character. And I do hope that the time has now arrived when that fair extension of rights — an extension in the principle given already to the authors of Spain, of Germany, of Russia—will not be denied by the legislators of England to men who have no interest and no fame apart from the civilisation and the glory of their country. XXXVI. O UTILINE OF A SPEECH INTENDED TO EIAVE BEEN DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 9TH OF MAY 1856. FoR several years the aboriginal Indians inhabiting the Mosquito coast in Central America were under the protection of the British, who held pos- session of Belize, together with a group of islands in the Bay of Honduras. This arrangement was for a long while regarded with some disfavour in the United States. At length, in the April of 1850, the two Govern- ments entered into a covenant with each other that neither should assume dominion over any portion of Central America. Scarcely five years had elapsed, however, after their having ratified this treaty, when the United States charged the British Government with a violation of its share in the agreement; whereupon the latter undertook, with certain reservations, to cede the disputed territory to the Republic of Honduras. Eventually, in 1859, the whole matter in dispute was brought to an amicable adjustment. While the negotiations were yet pending—the relations between the two countries being at the time in the most critical position—the Member for Hertfordshire, Sir Edward Lytton, early in the session of 1856, entered upon the papers of the House of Commons notice of a Motion having reference to the dispute, then trembling as it were on the suspension of a hair, between the two Governments. Upon three several occasions—on Monday the 4th of April, again on Monday the 5th of May, and finally on Friday the 6th of June—the Member for Herts asked for the diplo- matic correspondence, the production of which was essential before his motion could be submitted to Parliament. Upon each occasion the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, deprecated the discussion as inadvisable, be- cause calculated, just possibly, to prejudice the whole question in dispute, and, while so doing, to hamper, and even, it might be, to irritate the nego- 212 THE HONDURAS QUESTION. tiations. Deferring upon each occasion to the Premier's appeal for “judi- cious forbearance,” Sir Edward Lytton postponed his motion again and yet again, until the imbroglio that at one time seriously threatened War, and that Lord Palmerston, on the 6th of June, spoke of as “certainly of a very grave character,” was of itself dissipated. But for this, on Friday the 9th of May 1856, the only day that was ever really set apart for the discussion, the following speech would have been delivered. SIR,--I rise to submit to the consideration of the House the disputes with regard to Central America which have formed the subject of this correspondence between her Majesty's Govern- ment and that of the United States. And however justly diffi- dent I may feel of my own capacities to fulfil the task I have undertaken, I think the House will allow that it is no trivial, no unseasonable topic which I would obtrude upon its notice. Not trivial, for we can have no political object more important than that of cordial relations with the people of America; not unseasonable, for I thought it my duty to ascertain that her Majesty's Government did not think a discussion here would be injurious to the progress of friendly negotiations; but that they rather concurred with me in the hope that it might serve to remove Some of those misunderstandings, and allay some of that irritation, amongst our American kinsmen, which have oc- casioned to us on this side the water one prevailing sentiment of anxiety and regret. Nor do I think that my motives in the introduction of this question are unworthy the gravity of the occasion; for it is my belief, on which those who are higher authorities in the party with whom I have the honour to act, entirely agree, that in this delicate and critical stage of negotiation no elements of party should be admitted into the resolutions I propose. And, indeed, I shall treat the whole subject not as between party and party, but as between nation and nation. And first, Sir, in arguing the differences between ourselves and the Government of the United States, I shall put out of sight as far as possible that contingency of an appeal to arms which has been somewhat prominently brought forward in the American THE HONDURAS QUESTION. 213 Legislature and journals, and which, perhaps, Some newspapers of our own have not sufficiently discouraged. I shall rather assume that here are two nations bound together by every tie of interest and affection, which have nevertheless disputes to settle, but cannot discuss those disputes without making use of the same mother tongue, which ought to suggest softened tones and con- ciliating expressions. The House is aware that the controversy between ourselves and the Government of the United States arose out of the inter- pretation to be given to a treaty made in 1850 for facilitating the construction of a canal and other modes of interOceanic com- munication across the isthmus of Central America. The disputes relate to subjects with which that treaty was only incidentally connected—viz., the Protectorate which Great Britain affords to the Indian tribe of Mosquitos; secondly, her Majesty's settle- ments at British Honduras and its dependencies; thirdly, our claim or title to Ruatam and the Bay islands. I shall deal first with that question most complicated, most immediately important, and which I think in America has been the most misrepresented—I mean the Mosquito Protectorate. It is absolutely essential to clear this question from every doubt as soon as possible, because if that Protectorate exists still and is binding upon us, it may at any moment become neces- sary to exercise it against General Walker or any other repre- sentative of the Nicaraguan Government; and if the Americans are led to believe that to that Protectorate we have no right, our attempt to defend the Mosquito Indians against the aggressions of General Walker might suddenly bring us into collision with American citizens; blood might be shed by One unlucky shot ; and war might thus inevitably break out between the two na- tions of the world, in whom war would be not only a crime but a blunder. The House will pardon me, therefore, if I go at length into this subject. We are speaking to-night not only to England but to America; and if I enlarge upon any topic which seems anti- quated, trite, or wearisome, you will forgive me when I assure you that I will touch upon nothing which I do not believe to 214 THE HONDURAS QUESTION. be of importance in dispelling some misapprehension prevalent amongst the American public. B'or that reason I do not bind myself to this book. I have examined all the available public documents on the subject ; and I think I shall go far towards the peaceful settlement of disputes, if, where I respectfully differ from the American Government, I can make the English honour and the English right incontest- ably clear to the eyes of the American people. For, as Mr Fox well said, “When a dispute is clearly stated, its settlement is more than half concluded.” You will see by the two statements of Mr Buchanan in this book, that on the part of the American Government he ques- tions, first, the genuine antiquity of the Mosquito Protectorate ; secondly, that he disputes our right to have renewed that Protec- torate after a convention with Spain in 1786, by which we bound ourselves to evacuate the Mosquito territory ; thirdly, that he asserts that for the last six years we have been guilty of bad faith, because the treaty of 1850 abolished the Protectorate, which nevertheless, in 1856, we still retain. To all these points I shall address myself with the respect due to the Minister and Government of a kindred and illustrious people, but also with that plain speaking which becomes a mem- ber of the British Parliament anxious to clear from the shadow of a doubt the good faith and honour of his country. Sir, our first connection with the Mosquito tribe followed close on Our conquest of Jamaica under Cromwell in 1655. Within four years after that event we commenced a settlement upon the eastern coast of Yucatan, principally for the purpose of cutting logwood. And Belize—which is a corruption from the name of Wallis, the Scotchman who first established a footing there, with the assent of the natives—became our headquarters. At that time there prevailed along the coast of that isthmus now called Central America—and according to a vast mass of con- current authorities, which gentlemen will find cited in the “Cor- respondence on the Mosquito Territory” presented to this House, July 3, 1848, in a district which ranged from Cape Honduras to the mouth of the river San Juan—a powerful and independent THE HONDURAS QUESTION. 215 tribe, the Moscos, to which we have given the name Mosquitos These Indians had never been conquered by Spain, never ceded to that power any territory or dominion. Naturally enough, we and these Indians, united by common hostility to Spain at that period, came into connection as far back as the reign of Charles II. ; and a Mosquito chief came to Jamaica and placed himself and his people under the protection of the British king. And here it is important to observe what both the United States and the Spanish republics at variance with us have totally lost sight of-viz., that in the famous Madrid Treaty which we obtained with Spain a few years afterwards in 1670, Spain ceded to Great Britain “not only full right of dominion and possession in all lands, countries, islands, colonies, and dominions what- ever, situated in the West Indies, but in any part of America. which Great Britain or her subjects did then hold and pos- sess.” And the treaty adds that, “under no colour or pretext whatsoever, should any controversy be moved concerning the same hereafter.” But that clause embraced Belize and the Mosquitos who had then passed under the British sceptre. The Governor of Jamaica had already established a settlement on the Mosquito coast, to which were sent, in the first instance, Justices of the Peace from Jamaica, and subsequently, in 1740, a Superinten- dent appointed by the British Crown. We erected a fort at our principal station on that shore, at Black River, mounted cannon there, and hoisted the British flag. The evidence of all this you will find in Macgregor's ‘Commercial Tariffs, Part 17, compiled from the State Papers of the Board of Trade and Plantations, and published before any disputes with the United States had arisen; and all this is extremely important to this part of our case in answer to the arguments of the American Government, in order to show first, the antiquity of that connection with the Mosquitos, which is now held to be a recent usurpation; and, secondly, that the Mosquitos were wholly independent of Spain; and that, there- fore, even granting that the Spanish revolutionary republics in- herited the rights of old Spain in those parts, they could not inherit what Spain never actually possessed; could not inherit that Mos- quito territory in which, to use the strong but not more truthful 216 THE HONDURAS QUESTION. words in the ‘Commercial Tariffs,” “the Spaniards never had any footing, claim of occupancy or possession, from the beginning of the world to this day.” And you will find, and so will the Americans, on referring to the documents I have cited, that the only civilised power which ever held possessions either at Belize or in Mosquito, was Great Britain; and that she held such possessions by the best of all possible titles—viz., the voluntary assent of the aboriginal natives. Sir, from the reign of Charles II. to this year of Queen Victoria in which we now are, there is no instance on record that this Indian tribe has ever broken a single compact made with us; and the question will arise, whether in honour and humanity you can so violate the compact which I will prove to you, you have made with them, and which still exists, as to leave those you have pledged yourselves to protect without any safeguard from exter- mination by the very enemies they have provoked in your behalf, and at your instigation. But in refutation of the antiquity of this Protectorate, Mr Buchaman was instructed by his Government in Mr Morcy's de- spatch of instructions, July 2d, 1853–published in the American edition of the Correspondence—to refer to a debate in the House of Lords, 26th March 1787; and Mr Morcy says that nothing could be more fatal than that debate to the pretensions now set up by Great Britain for herself and the Mosquitos. This debate was on a motion by Lord Roden condemnatory of the convention with Spain in 1786; and Mr Buchanan says that, in that debate, “Lord Thurlow abundantly justified the Ministry, and proved that the Mosquitos were not our allies, were not a people we were bound by treaty to protect.” I could not help smiling when I found that Lord Thurlow was raised into a valuable, and it seems unimpeachable, Parliamentary authority on a case of proof. An American statesman even as highly instructed as Mr Morcy or Mr Buchanan, is not bound to know all the characteristics of our departed lawyers. But according to the general opinion of his contemporaries, Lord Thurlow, though a personage of great learn- ing and talent, was the man of all others who as a Parliamentary THE HONDURAS QUESTION. 217 speaker made the boldest assertions, and supported them with the slightest testimony; so much so, that Lord Brougham, in his ‘Sketches of Statesmen’ says of Lord Thurlow's mode of debating that it was a “vamped-up, delusive, and almost fraudulent oratory.” I looked for the debate, curious to see what proof, in the teeth of historical facts, Lord Thurlow could have adduced. The debate is not in Hansard, but it will be found in the ‘Annual Register, and a fuller account in Debrett’s ‘Parliamentary Register.' Well, it is as I suspected. Lord Thurlow is stated to have gone into the his- tory of the Mosquito settlement from 1650 (which was a mistake to begin with, for no settlement had then begun) to 1777, deduc- ing arguments from the facts he mentioned in Order to prove that Mosquito could never be fairly called a British settlement; and he subsequently alleged that the “Mosquitos were not our allies, not a people we were bound to protect ; ” but of the proofs on which Lord Thurlow rested those arguments and assumptions there is not a vestige. But the proof is rather the other way; for Lord Stormont, who was really an authority on the subject as a former Minister, before whom the subject would have come officially, not only said “ that we held Mosquito by as good a claim as we held Jamaica, but quoted different periods to prove that our right was recognised by treaty ;” and Lord Roden produced documents signed by General Dalling, the Governor of Jamaica, to prove that a superintendent had been sent to the settlement on the Mosquito shore, there to form a government, and quoted a State Paper dated 1744 as a proof that there had actually existed there a Council of Trade publicly recognised by this country; and Lord Hawke corroborated this statement by instancing treaties as far back as 1672–1717. Sir, all those documents are still extant. And I may add that another State Paper, confirming these proofs of our peculiar and ancient con- nection with Mosquito, was presented to this House in 1822, and will be found in the 16th volume of our “Parliamentary Accounts and Papers.’ So much for the ipse dia.it of Lord Thurlow in an obscure party debate in one branch of the Legislature, by which it is sought to annihilate all the treaties and documents actually 218 THE HONDURAS QUESTION. stored in our archives, proving the existence of the Mosquito Protectorate for more than a century previous to the convention with Spain in 1786. Well, but in that year, Great Britain—in pursuance of the general peace with Europe and America, which, humbling though some of its conditions were, the exhaustion of our re- Sources compelled us to accept in 1783—agreed with Spain to evacuate the Mosquito territory, stipulating that no severities should be exercised against the Mosquito Indians for the assist- ance they had loyally rendered to us. And the American Govern- ment actually now contend that in consequence of that convention good faith for ever precluded us from renewing our connection with that tribe. Why, I should have thought that, of all men in the World, our gallant children the Americans would least permit their Government to deny that fresh wars destroy old treaties. Almost immediately afterwards Spain declared war upon us again, and the treaty of 1786 expired with the first cannon-shot ; as the Americans themselves tell us that their first cannon-shot would shiver into atoms the treaty they signed with us in 1850. But if we did in the renewal of the Protectorate violate our good faith to Spain, what power had a right to complain of us? The United States ? No; Spain, and Spain alone. But though, as I shall now proceed to show you, we renewed the Protectorate very Soon after war broke out again—though I will show you it was in full force when commercial treaties with Spain were renewed in 1814, and exercised while Spain still retained all her possessions in Central America—not one wordof complaint, reproach, or remon- Strance was ever addressed to us by that power. And Mr Buchanan's arguments, page 262, to the effect that we held ourselves bound by the convention of 1786, are all based upon his non-acquain- tance with the time when the Protectorate was renewed. He demands to know when we did renew it. Lord Clarendon gives him no answer. But as much stress is laid on this question; as Mr Buchanan infers that it could not be in various years rang- ing from 1801 to a considerable period after 1821; and as Mr Clayton in his speech in the American Senate, January 4th, 1854, lends the authority of his distinguished name to the assertion, THE HONDURAS QUESTION. 219 “that we did not renew our Protectorate till 1848, six days after the United States had acquired the country in the Pacific”— thereby creating a most irritating suspicion in the mind of the American public that we suddenly revived the Mosquito Protec- torate as a counterbalance to American progress: So I will give the answer that Lord Clarendon withholds. Sir, I will presently show, perhaps to the surprise of this House, certainly to the Sur- prise of America, that our Protectorate was renewed as far back as the year 1800; but the first formal act of our protection in- Volving our good faith and honour to the Mosquito tribe was on January 18th, 1816, when we formally crowned their chief in our own settlement at Belize. Now, that the House may see that this act of coronation was no mocking and childish proceeding— was not the farce which it has been represented in America, but a Solemnity animated by human, Christian, enlightened motives, and implying a pledge on Our part of the strongest nature—I will read some extracts from the very interesting letter of Sir George Arthur, our Superintendent at British Honduras, to the Mosquito King first crowned by us in 1816. It will be found at page 49, in the “Correspondence on the Mosquito Territory.” “BELIZE, January 14, 1816. “PRINCE GEORGE,-Your request to be crowned in the settle- ment, in the presence of your chieftains and such of your people as are assembled here, I shall most cheerfully comply with ; and beg to propose that the ceremony shall take place on Thursday, 18th inst., the day in which we commemorate the birth of her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen of England; and I sincerely trust that you will not be disappointed in the advantage you expect to derive by its being understood that you are in a par- ticular manner under the protection of the British Government.” (Observe, and above all, let America observe, how important these Words are as to the obligation on our honour thus formally in- curred as far back as 1816.) Sir George then proceeds to con- gratulate the king on having been brought up in the Christian religion, enumerates the victories the armies of our Prince Regent had obtained, and adds: “But dazzling as such glory is, it will not 220 THE HONDURAS QUESTION. . convey to his Royal Highness more sincere and lasting Satisfac- tion than he will enjoy if, through your means, the Mosquito nation, and the numerous tribes of Indians around you, are brought to partake of the blessings of civilisation. This was the great object which the King of England had in view when, on the death of your father, he held forth his hand to protect you and your brother.” Now, this passage answers the American query, When did our Protectorate recommence 2 It shows that it recommenced in 1800, exactly half a century before the Americans thought fit to complain of it ! Sir George Arthur goes on: “And from the same motive has his Royal Highness the Prince Regent continued to you his powerful protection;” and thus touchingly concludes: “If you would convince his Royal Highness, beyond the extent of words, that you are truly grateful and sensible of the blessings you have derived, I will tell you, Prince, how you may do so. Make your people happy; struggle to wean them from their pre- sent habits to a state of civilisation; introduce amongst them good and wholesome laws; above all” (says Sir George), “endeavour to introduce the Christian religion, in which you have been edu- cated. This will be the best reward his Royal Highness can feel.” Sir, is this the language of selfish ambition ? Are not these words that may find an echo, not only in the hearts of all present, but in every Christian home amongst our angry brethren on the other side the Atlantic. We crowned a second king in 1825, and a third in 1844—a momentous period, when disputes had already broken out as to the Mosquito territory with the Spanish republics, and when this country was under the Government of Sir Robert Peel, pre-eminent for many illustrious attributes, but for none more than a deliberate caution in all our foreign relations, which would have never allowed him so to sanction the Mosquito Protectorate if he had not resolved to defend it. Why have I thus established the antiquity of our connection with the Mosquitos, and shown that, with the exception of 14 years from 1786 to 1800, it con- tinued unbroken for nearly 200 years ? Not to deduce therefrom an assumption that we cannot, therefore, abandon this Protecto- rate, or that we would not strain every point to conciliate the THE HONDURAS QUESTION. 221 United States upon that score. No ; but to satisfy the Americans, as one honourable man may satisfy another, that the date of the renewal shows that it was not, as Mr Morcy calls it, a convenient pretension on our part either to countercheck the progress of the United States in California, or to molest the Central American republics, which did not then exist; and secondly, to show that our positive good faith is concerned not to abandon that Protecto- rate till some reasonable and efficient substitute be provided, and thus to induce the Americans to concur with us, as one friend would concur with another, in devising some mode by which we may reconcile our honour to their interests and wishes. And now we come to the time when the necessary exercise of this Protectorate against external aggression led to the present unfortunate disputes. The colonies of old Spain in Central Ame- rica had revolted, and become independent republics. Those little States were formed out of the captain-generalships of the Spanish Crown, and their territorial range had constantly varied in extent, according to the dignity of the respective officers placed over them. Their several boundaries were therefore very obscure and undefined. The territory of the Mosquitos, but more especi- ally an important station at the mouth of the San Juan river, which the Mosquitos claimed as theirs from time immemorial (and for a small settlement, 15 miles from which it appears at least certain that some settlers of old Spain had paid tribute to the Mosquito king), became an object of dispute with these republics. New Granada put forth the first claim to it; Costa Rica advanced her pretensions; and so did Nicaragua. Aggressions were made on the Mosquito territory. In 1838, while these States were united by confederation, we addressed to them a motification of our views as to the bounds of the Mosquito territory, and our obligations to protect the claim of the natives. In 1840, when that confederation had become virtually extinct, a commission was issued by Colonel Macdonald, Superintendent of British Honduras, for regulating the internal affairs of Mosquito, and in 1844, under the vigorous administration of Sir R. Peel, Mr Patrick Walker was sent there as Agent and Vice-Consul; and it appears by the despatches of Mr Chalfield, our Consul-General in Central Ame- 222 THE HONDURAS QUESTION. rica, that Lord Aberdeen, in 1845, decided that this station at least belonged to the Mosquitos; for Mr Chalfield writes, Sept. 11, 1847, page 56 of Mosquito Correspondence, “that he had not only claimed for the Mosquito king the territory from Cape Honduras to the mouth of the river San Juan, but had inserted the words ‘without prejudice to the right of the Mosquito king to any terri- tory south of that river, partly on the views of the noble Wiscount, but partly also on the views confidentially communicated to him in Lord Aberdeen's despatch of the 23d May 1845.” Thus, as all our disputes with the United States on this score arose out of our assumption that the station at the mouth of the river San Juan, now called Greytown, belongs to the Mosquitos; so, if we are wrong, we were led into that error by Sir Robert Peel and Lord Aberdeen, two of the most wary and experienced statesmen who ever governed this country. Meanwhile, however, the station at San Juan had been seized unceremoniously by the Nicaraguans ; various attempts were made to negotiate the matter to determine the right boundaries of the Mosquito territory, to settle the claims of the rival Spanish republics, and to induce the Nicaraguans peacefully to withdraw till these questions could be decided. Nicaragua refusing, and only answering by insult and threats, a small vessel was at last commissioned by our Government to place itself at the disposal of our Vice-Consul. That small vessel, at his orders, expelled the Nicaraguan Government off the station in January 1848, but with such chivalrous courtesy, that the heroic Nicaraguan commandant and other valiant officials, who had declared they would resist to the last drop of their blood, paid a polite visit to the ship that had expelled them in the course of the same evening, and partook of refreshment provided on the occasion by our English hospitality. The station then assumed that name of Greytown, by which it has since acquired so sinister a celebrity. And here I must observe, in vindication of the alleged harshness of this step, that it was not taken till several years had been wasted in vain upon friendly remonstrance, and that the protection afforded to the Mosquitos would have been a sham pretence, un- worthy this monarchy, if we suffered what we had declared to be their possessions—not only by the noble Wiscount, but by the THE HONDURAS QUESTION. 223 cautious lips of Lord Aberdeen in 1845—to be usurped by an ambitious and greedy neighbour; and that even granting the Mosquito title were doubtful, or, what we shall all admit, that that station ought to be occupied by a civilised people, other States besides Nicaragua then claimed the station; and it was just to all parties not to allow one State forcibly to possess itself of a port that might be of great commercial value to the whole of Central America, and to which its title was not satisfactorily proved. What was its title Nicaragua and the American Government have relied on a royal decree of Spain in 1796, by which they maintain that San Juan was made a port of the Second class for Nicaragua. Now, if Spain had never any right to this, or any part of the Mosquito territory, either by the conquest or cession of the natives, her mere decree could not assign away what did not belong to her. But granting that Indians have no territorial right in the eyes of civilised Christians, still, did that decree give an exclusive claim over the station at the mouth of the San Juan to Nicaragua No. I have looked into that decree myself, and I find that it made San Juan a port of the second class, not for Nicaragua alone, but also for the whole of the ancient viceroyalty or kingdom of Guatemala, within a range of 300 leagues from the capital, including, therefore, Costa Rica and New Granada. So that, even according to this decree, the Nicaraguan Republic had not the Smallest right to seize upon that place for its own special and monopolising possession. The Nicaraguans being thus expelled, appealed to the United States, as indeed they had done before when they anticipated that expulsion. The United States at first took no notice whatever of the appeal. But America about this time had annexed to itself, upon grounds which I do not presume to question, the very sub- stantial acquisition of California, in the previous possession of Mexico; Central America became an object of importance in con- nection with California; there was a project to unite the Atlantic and Pacific by a canal up the river. San Juan, and thus Greytown, situated at the mouth of that river, Suddenly arose into a place of great consideration in American eyes. The Democratic party in America were then in administration under President Polk; of 224. THE HONDURAS QUESTION. that Government Mr Buchanan was Secretary of State, and he sent an agent, Mr Hise, to Nicaragua, to arrange matters respecting this canal. Mr Hise made a treaty with Nicaragua which would have compromised the American Government to a clause that Sanctioned the Nicaraguan claims to Greytown, and pledged America to support that claim, even by arms if necessary, against Great Britain. But, fortunately, President Taylor and the Whig party now came into power, and this treaty they refused to sanc- tion ; they sent out another agent, Mr Squiers, who also made a treaty less comprehensive than the former one, but still containing clauses which, in acknowledging the Nicaraguan claim to the river San Juan from sea to sea, and engaging to protect an Ame- rican company in the secure enjoyment thereof, would have given to us America as a declared enemy if we contested that Nicar- aguan claim ; and if we at once acquiesced in it, would have made our surrender to the fear of a powerful State what we had just refused to the remonstrance of a weak one, humiliating and dis- creditable. This treaty was then before the American Govern- ment ; and if accepted by them and ratified by the Senate, such would have been the stern and perilous alternative before us. In this critical juncture my near relation, Sir H. Bulwer, was sent as Minister to Washington. He arrived in America when the whole of that republic, as you will see by these papers, was in a state of angry excitement against us, occasioned partly by the apprehension that the Mosquito claim to Greytown would inter- fere with the American plan of the canal up the river San Juan, partly because one of our vessels had lately taken a small island– Tiger Island—in the Bay of Fonseca, so that it was said we meant ambitiously to command the proposed interOceanic communication on either side. The first object of Sir Henry Bulwer was to soothe this irritation, by showing the fallacious grounds on which it rested. Explanations were given by him as to the accidental seizure of the island alluded to, which was also immediately aban- doned by our Government. That difficulty over, what remained 2 Why, the obstacle which the Mosquito possession of Greytown under our protection imposed on the construction of the canal, and on its freedom when constructed. For the purpose of solving THE HONDURAS QUESTION. 225 this difficulty, the project of a treaty was drawn up by him and Mr Clayton, the American Minister for Foreign Affairs. That treaty being entirely approved of by her Majesty's Government, was also finally accepted by the American Government, though the difficulties which stood in its way may be appreciated when I observe that a treaty of this nature has to be approved of in America, not merely by the President and his Government, but by the Senate and its Committee of Foreign Affairs; and these two bodies were then in opposition to each other, so that our diplomatic Minister had to negotiate as it were with both. Nevertheless, he succeeded in the principal object of his mission with such good fortune and rapidity, that within three months of his arrival at Washington, he had completed that treaty, the purpose of which Mr Clayton had declared just before his arrival he saw little or no hope of effecting at all; and while before that time, such had been the excitement and party spirit in America, that Mr Clayton said, “It would require great caution on both sides to prevent a collision between the two Governments.” I am certain that every Ameri- can will say that from the date of that treaty up to the day Sir Henry left Washington, England never stood more high in the affection and respect of the American people. It is not for me to speak of the abilities of a public servant with whom—since I have never myself served my country in a public capacity—it is natur- ally the pride and honour of my life to claim so near a relationship; but I scarcely remember any instance of a treaty which promised to be so important in its results, which involved questions so deli- Cate, and in which the assent of two parties in the State was to be conciliated, being settled, to the perfect and unqualified approba- tion of the home Government, with an equal degree of promptitude and despatch. Well, now, let us look to the intention of that treaty known by the name of its two negotiators. Every one who has read this book, however hastily, more especially the despatches of Sir H. Bulwer, Numbers 16 and 19, will see that it was not the purpose of the treaty to deal with the Mosquito Protectorate otherwise than was necessary for the purposes of the canal, and other modes of interOceanic negotiation. Why was this? Because the immedi- VOL. II. P - 226 THE HONDURAS QUESTION. ate object of Great Britain was to satisfy America that the canal should be made, and when made, free from British control; and the object of America was to obtain that satisfaction as soon as pos- sible. It was therefore obvious to both the negotiators, as it must be to our own common-sense, that to effect this, nothing should be mixed up in it to which neither America nor Great Britain could agree. America never has acknowledged the right of pro- tecting Indians as an independent sovereign tribe, and for this she assigns an adequate reason in one of her State Papers—to wit, that if she recognised our right to hold Indian chiefs independent, we might claim equally to protect Indian chiefs on the borders of her own great lakes and rivers. But on the other hand, we could not abandon our peculiar protection to the Mosquitos, to which the honour of the country had been pledged by every Government since 1800, without a due care for their safety, the provisions of which might be necessarily long and complicated; yet, since Mr Clayton had said, according to Mr Crampton's despatch, Oct. 1, 1849 (p. 4), “That the only part of the Mosquito territory of the least importance to Nicaragua–and that importance dependent On its connection with the proposed canal—was the part embrac- ing the river San Juan, and the territory claimed by Nicaragua from the Machuca rapids to the sea,” might not the Protectorate, since it could not be admitted expressly into the treaty, be so arranged that it should be left an abstract question, to be settled at leisure hereafter, and so defined and so restricted in the mean- while, that, to use Mr Clayton's own words in his speech in the American Senate, be an obstacle to the design in question? How could this best be done Z Fortunately, the American Minister in London, Mr Lawrence, had decided that point by asking the noble Viscount, then Minister for Foreign Affairs, in a note, Nov. 8, 1849—“Is it the intention of the British Government to occupy or colonise Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito coast so called, or any part of Central America 2° The noble Wiscount replies, Nov. 13th, it is not the intention of the British Government to do any of these things; “but with regard to Mosquito, however, a close political connection has existed between the Crown of Great Britain and the State and territory of Mosquito for a period of THE HONDURAS QUESTION. 227 about two centuries; but the British Government does not claim dominion in Mosquito.” Now, what was the nature of that close political connection with the Mosquitos ? It was their protection against external aggression. Well, what do the negotiators do They take the very question of the American Minister, and the answer it received from the English Government; they form the purport of those words into a clause of the treaty; and they define the political connection with the Mosquitos claimed by our Govern- ment by saying that “neither we nor America will make use of any protection either State affords or may afford, any alliance either State has or may have, with any people, to fortify, Occupy, colonise, or exercise dominion in Central America.” Something has been said about the ambiguity of our diplomatic language; but I fearlessly ask the House what could a diplomatist do more, in order to avoid ambiguity, than embody the very words of the accredited Minister of the opposite contracting party—the very answer those words receive from his own Government—and define and restrict the claims of his Government precisely in the sense in which that Government intended it 2 But if any one would contend that Sir H. Bulwer should not have negotiated this com- mercial treaty, unless he had settled without dispute the separate political question of the Protectorate, this Blue-book will show him that that treaty could not have been signed at all. What does Mr Clayton himself say on this score, at the very first hitch, the very first idea of delay, in his letter to Sir Henry, July 4th, 1850?–“It is not to be imagined that it is the object of your Government to delay exchange of ratifications until we shall have fixed the precise bounds of Central America” (but until those bounds were settled, you could not settle the Mosquito question), “for this would not only delay, but defeat, the convention.” And if it had been defeated, what then 2 All America would have believed that we intended to make the Protectorate an excuse for obstructing the canal on which she had set her heart; that treaty with Nicaragua, which would have given us a decided enemy in America, would have been completed; and before the end of 1850, the chances are that there would have been war with the United States. And this, not on the ground of our maintaining the Mos- 228 THE HONDURAS QUESTION. quito Protectorate, but on the much more plausible and popular ground, that we made the Protectorate hostile to the greatest com- mercial interest which the United States then conceived themselves to possess. Now, Sir, what is the question raised ? The American Govern- ment now does what I will show you generally the former Ameri- can Government never did at the time of the treaty, nor for two years after it was signed never did, till it was under a President who openly maintains the Monroe doctrine of America for the Americans, which would sweep us not only from Mosquito and Belize, but from Canada itself. The American Government now contends that the first article of the treaty not only restricts but abolishes the Mosquito Protectorate, and accuses us of bad faith because we cannot accept that interpretation. But is there a jurisconsult in all Europe who could so accept it ! Why, the protection is admitted; its continuance is admitted; you shall not do so and so, “in right of the protection you afford, or may afford.” “May afford” means the future. Exactly parallel instances oc- cur in ordinary life. Most gentlemen present have either let or hired a house or farm. Well, in the terms of Such tenure, how often are words put to the effect that you shall not, in right of your holding, carry on some kind of trade or factory in the house, or that you shall not sell the hay or straw grown on the farm 2 But is there a lawyer in Europe, in America, in every part of the world where the prolific family of lawyers have ever themselves gained occupancy or possession, who will contend that saying you shall not do such a thing in right of your holding, is not a proof that to the holding itself, with that exception, your right is undis- puted by the other contracting party ? But the strongest point Mr Buchanan makes in his ingenious statement is on the word “occupy.” He says, that “if any individual enter into a solemn and explicit agreement that he will not occupy any given tract of country then actually occupied by him, can any proposition be clearer than that he is bound by his agreement to withdraw from such occupancy?” The first mistake here is in the construction of the word “occupy" in its diplomatic sense. I have looked through the whole voluminous ‘History of Treaties’ by Count de THE HONDURAS QUESTION. 229 Garden, and I find that in the language of treaties, occupation in the territory of another power has invariably a military or imperial signification. Thus, when in 1810 the Emperor Napoleon desired to annex Holland to France, he insisted upon occupying Amster- dam—that is, to occupy it for a time by an armed force. But look at the word—according to Johnson's Dictionary, to occupy is to possess, or rather to take possession. In neither sense of the word did we occupy the Mosquito territory at the time of the treaty, nor do we so occupy it now. Do we occupy it as a possession for the English 7–so much the contrary, that the chief use we make of the Protectorate is to prevent the English obtaining possession —prevent their acquiring lands there by private bargains with the Mosquito chief. Do we occupy it by a garrison —certainly not. Do we assume dominion over the Indian king?—so much the contrary, that we compel the few English who are in the territory to acknowledge his sovereignty, of which the Americans complain. But granting that the ordinary interpretations of the word “occupy” will not be accepted by American grammarians, We will drop grammar, and come to mathematics. And it can be mathematically demonstrated that “to occupy” is something very different from to “protect.” The clause in question proves that; for its sense is, you shall not occupy, in right of the protection you afford, or may afford; but if the occupation meant the same thing as protection, then the only sense of the clause would be, you shall not occupy in right of occupation—which, in the language of Euclid, is absurd. But that this distinction between occupation and pro- tection was clearly understood by the Americans, through their representatives—that is, their Governments and Ministers—I will prove from their own official documents. Mr Lawrence, the American Minister, writes to the noble Wiscount, Dec. 19, 1853 (p. 102), to complain of an alleged outrage on an American vessel in the port of Greytown, by a British brig, for the purpose of col- lecting dues in that port, and asks if that outrage was authorised by our Government, and says: “Because, if answered in the affirma- tive, the President will consider the proceedings as a violation of the treaty of 1850, by which Great Britain has stipulated”—what? not to protect Greytown or the Mosquito territory 7 No;-—“not 230 THE HONDURAS QUESTION. to make use of any protection she may afford Nicaragua, the MOS- quito coast, or any part of Central America, for the purpose of assuming or exercising dominion over the same.” Can words more decidedly express that the treaty left the protection existing, but forbade it to be used for the purpose of dominion? and can any words show more clearly that by dominion was not meant what is now assumed—viz., the residence of a regular agent at Bluefields, who advises the Mosquito king; but what Mr Lawrence is there condemning—viz., an armed force under British colours, not needed for the purpose of protection, but collecting revenue, which is an act of dominion, and is therefore immediately dis- avowed and set right by our Government? For if it were then assumed by the treaty that we were to withdraw altogether from the Mosquito coast, abandon this Indian tribe, recall the agent who advised its king, was it not the very occasion in which the American Minister would have said, “But what business have you there at all ? You have resigned your protection by the treaty of April 1850; you are still occupying that territory, still exercis- ing dominion, because you advise its king. A year and a half have elapsed—when do you mean to go 2° But I have now a much more decisive testimony to adduce. Soon after the treaty was signed, Mr Daniel Webster, one of the greatest statesmen who ever adorned either the New World or the Old, whose fame was a link between two hemispheres, succeeded Mr Clayton as Minister for Foreign Affairs. Sir H. Bulwer knew Mr Webster intimately, and was constantly engaged with him, as this book shows, in various plans for settling all differences about the MOS- quito territory. Mr Webster, therefore, thoroughly knew the intentions of the negotiators, the spirit of the treaty, the nature of the Protectorate. And two years after the treaty was signed— March 18, 1852—Mr Webster writes to Mr Graham, the Secretary of the United States Navy, and uses these important words: “It is well understood that Great Britain is fully committed to pro- tect Greytown as belonging to the Mosquito Indians; and it is not probable that she would see Nicaraguan authority, or any other authority, take possession till pending negotiations are closed.” And now, Sir, I call into court as a witness on our side no less a THE HONDURAS QUESTION. 231 person than the American co-negotiator of the treaty, Mr Clayton himself. Is there any real difference of opinion between him and Sir Henry Bulwer as to the retention of the Protectorate 2 Not at all. Mr Clayton indignantly vindicates himself from the charge of General Cass, an eminent member of the Democratic party, that he (Mr Clayton) understood by the treaty that our Protectorate was abandoned; and says emphatically in his speech in the Senate, January 4, 1854: “It never was contended by me that the British Protectorate was abolished by the treaty of 1850. What I contended for is this, that the treaty disarmed the Protec- torate. It is stated in Lord Clarendon’s letter of the 27th that her Britannic Majesty did not by the treaty intend to renounce the Protectorate. I have not claimed that it did.” And he then proceeds to argue what we all agree to, that the treaty was in- tended to modify and restrict the uses we might make of that Protectorate. One more witness, and I close this part of the case. The then Attorney-General, Mr Reverdy Johnson, who was con- Sulted by Mr Clayton on the very words of the treaty as they now stand, says in a published letter to Mr Clayton, December 1853, “that though the object of the treaty was to disarm, it did not abolish, the Protectorate, nor (mark this) was it thought advisable to do this in ipsissimes verbis.” One word only as to the expression that the treaty disarmed the Protectorate. Sir, for all purposes of ambition and dominion it did disarm it, and effectually. Let America understand that we do not deny that. But when it is said that it disarmed us from actually protecting those we are still pledged to protect, and to such an extent that if the Mosquitos were about to be expelled or slaughtered, or their territory annexed by a freebooter, we could not land a soldier or arm a ship in their defence—if that interpretation be contended for, my only answer is, that such an interpretation is an insult to the honesty of England and the common-sense of mankind. I remember a heartless witticism, ascribed, I think, to an Italian potentate, who had promised his protection to an innocent man involved in a false accusation. The man Was condemned to death, he appealed to the prince, who was not stirring in his behalf, “Did you not give me your word to pro- 232 THE HONDURAS QUESTION. tect me?” “No, my friend,” said the prince, “I did not give you my word, but words.” And when this great nation pro- mises its protection, even to a helpless Indian, and he appeals to us to save him from the executioner, and cries, “Did you not give me your word to protect me.” 7 are we to answer, with the Italian prince, “No, friend ; we, the monarch and the people of England, did not give you our word, but words 2 ° Now I hope I have made thoroughly clear, both to the House and to the Ameri- can people, this part of our case; that I have shown—1st, the antiquity of the Protectorate which has been impugned; 2d, that by the date of its renewal in 1800, we could have had none of the sinister designs against American progress which has been assigned to us; 3d, that the treaty did not abolish the Protectorate, and that this was fully admitted by the American negotiator of the treaty and by the American Government for two years after the treaty was signed. I am now going to show how sincerely de- sirous we have nevertheless been, through all our Governments, Tiberal or Conservative, to remove all causes of dispute on that score, by voluntary resignation of the Protectorate on any terms that might acquit us of dishonour to the Indians we abandoned; for, indeed, as the noble Lord the Member for London, in a despatch to Mr Cramp- ton in January 1853, very justly remarked, the Protectorate had now ceased to be any advantage to us—we must desire to get rid of an unprofitable charge the moment we could do so with good faith to those Indians who had been so loyal to us. It is perfectly true, as has been stated, that all which the treaty left of the Protectorate was indeed a shadow. But what was that shadow Sir, it was the shadow of the British flag | That flag to which the weak have so often crept for refuge—that stans columna, which— “ Urbesque, gentesque, et Mare Bospori Regumque matres barbarorum, Et purpurei metuunt tyranni.” And that sublime banner could not be withdrawn from those it had sheltered for two centuries, until we could be sure that its departing shadow left behind it the safety which the substance had bestowed The book shows you that the moment the treaty THE HONDURAS QUESTION. 233 was signed, Sir H. Bulwer hastened to propose arrangements for the withdrawal from the Protectorate, and the cession of Greytown to a civilised State. The plan most favoured by him and the Government would have been to transfer Greytown and the Pro- tectorate of the Mosquitos, in such territory as might be allotted to them, to Costa Rica—to which, having been always on friendly terms with those Indians, we might more satisfactorily commit their charge. But, unluckily, the Americans had to a certain degree committed themselves to Nicaragua, and our Minister at Washington ascertained that Nicaragua would not hear, at whatever compensation to herself, of this transfer to Costa Rica. Under these circumstances, to so great a degree did England carry conciliation, so anxious were we to prove our desire to settle this matter in the way most agreeable to the United States, that though it was some mortification to our pride, Sir H. Bulwer was instructed by the noble Viscount to offer to resign Greytown to Nicaragua itself, provided the United States did not, by any clause in its treaty with Nicaragua, Sanctioning the claim of that republic, assume the appearance of hostile dictation; provided also that some indemnity were given to the Mosquito king—that he were left undisturbed in the territory assigned to him, and some favour- able concessions were made to the claim of Costa Rica to the South bank of the river San Juan, to which, having read all the docu- ments, I think its title is clear and undisputable. And now I begin to point out to the House a fact which ought to have great weight with America—it is not America herself that has been the obstacle to a settlement of this question, it is that unhappy little State of Nicaragua. This proposition was received with favour by America through her Minister, Mr Webster. It was discussed in the presence of the British Minister, Mr Webster, and the agents of Costa Rica and Nicaragua, the 11th July 1851. And while the Minister of Costa Rica fully assented to the English proposition, the Minister for Nicaragua refused, and put in one of his own, which Mr Webster, on the part of America, Said, “he could not urge her Majesty's Government to accept of.” And pray let America heed this—Mr Webster said, “the Nicaraguan pro- posal deferred matters to a long protracted and indefinite issue; ” 234 THE HONDURAS QUESTION. and the bent of his other arguments was to show that though there might be some little difficulty to be made here and there On the plan our negotiators had suggested, it was upon the whole such a one as it was for the interests of Nicaragua to accept. Here, then, America will see that our Government did, through Sir H. Bulwer, so far back as 1851, make a positive proposal for the entire settlement of the question of our Protectorate, which her own Minister favoured, and which Nicaragua alone prevented being carried into completion. Then all further question was deferred till the Nicaraguan agent could receive fresh instructions from his Government. But on the 12th of August, Sir H. Bul- wer reports that this agent had ceased to be representative of Nicaragua. A revolution broke out in that republic, and it became impossible to renew practical negotiations with it. England for these delays is therefore not to blame. Can she prevent revolutions in Nicaragua? But, however, Sir H. Bulwer had the satisfaction, before leaving the United States, to put everything on a footing that promised a complete arrangement of all debated matters. And all would, according to the natural consequence of matters as he left them, have been long since amicably settled, but for this intractable Nicaragua—ever in hot water, ever unable to govern itself, and ever insisting upon involving in its own wretched dis- Sensions the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon family. For after Sundry propositions, which I pass over as imperative, at length, in Lord Derby's short administration, and under Lord Malmesbury, to whose conduct in these affairs I do not think gentlemen opposite will deny the praise of great vigour and promptitude, and remarkable good sense, we were on the very point of settling the whole dispute. The basis of a treaty was actually signed by Mr Webster and Mr Crampton ; agents were Sent to Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Greytown to carry it out. Costa Rica agrees; Nicaragua again refuses; Mr Webster, as you See by Mr Crampton's despatch to Lord Malmesbury, page 198, declares that refusal so unreasonable, that he was ready to settle the matter without further reference to her. Unhappily about this time occurred the death of Mr Webster—that great man, whose lofty intellect commanded the field of politics from an emi- THE HONDURAS QUESTION. 235 nence high above the momentary passions of party, and whose fame wove a link between the two nations. Thus again, not by the fault of England nor of America, but of Nicaragua, the peace- ful settlement of these matters in 1852 falls to the ground as it fell in 1851. And now the noble Lord the Member for London came into office, and he suggested, by a despatch to Mr Crampton, in January 1853, that Greytown be declared a free and independent port, connected with Mosquito by such terms of friendship and alliance as may be agreed upon. Lord Clarendon Succeeding Sup- ports that proposition. The American Government declares, and still says, “Hand over Greytown and the Mosquito to Nicaragua, and, thanks to American citizens, Nicaragua has disappeared.” The House is aware that a band of originally Filibusters, under a skilful and daring adventurer—I beg him ten thousand pardons —now General Walker, has upset the Spanish Government of Nicaragua, publicly and ceremoniously shot her most popular general in the market-place of her capital, and being reinforced it is said by 2000 American citizens, now holds in contented ac- quiesence, or in timid subjugation, that martial spirit and that legislative wisdom which had defied all the armaments of England. The American Government says: “We will not help you; treat with the Government of Nicaragua;” and Nicaragua, according to America, has at this moment no Government at all to treat with ! The United States have refused to recognise the Govern- ment of which General Walker is Dictator, and to receive his diplomatic agents; nay, it is with the United States that General Walker—that is, the Government of Nicaragua–has come into collision; it is the property of their commercial company that General Walker—that is, the Nicaraguan Government—has just confiscated; it is in their Senate that General Walker—that is, the Nicaraguan Government—has just been declared by the nego- tiator of the treaty, Mr Clayton, “to be a ruffian and a pirate.” And therefore, if we were to do what the Government of the United States tells us to do, treat with the Nicaraguan Government—that is, with General Walker—and not consult the United States at all, it would surely be to the dignity of the United States that we should offerinsult and outrage. But to add to the embarrassments that be- 236 THE HONDURAS QUESTION. set this part of the question, General Walker has lately declared by an edict that Mosquito is annexed to Nicaragua; and may, for what we know, be about to enforce that insulting defiance to Great Britain at the point of the bayonet. And if the American Government, while declaring by solemn treaty that it will exercise no dominion in Central America, cannot prevent its adventurous citizens from obtaining dominion in the very republic whose independence it asserts, whose claims it espouses against ourselves —surely, at least, it might respect our position, thus grievously com- plicated, and give us the weight of its friendly influence against the difficulties which its own citizens have created. For what is the difference between us and the American Government on this score ? They desire us to withdraw from the Protectorate : we desire to do so. But we say before withdrawing, “We must see that somehow or other our poor Indian ally is safe from aggres- sion or extirpation.” They say, “No ; withdraw first, and leave what Mr Buchanan calls the miserable remnant of that tribe,”—to what ? Why, to the hope he expresses that Nicaragua, who cannot protect herself, will then recognise the qualified right of the tribe to occupy such portions of the soil as she may vouchsafe to them, and that Nicaragua alone is to have the right to extinguish that occu- pancy. And in this difference between us what has America to gain Nothing. What have we to lose ? Everything; for we should lose our honour. Do not let them reply by exag- gerated pictures of the degradation of these Indians. If the red men are degraded, is it not by contact with the vices of the white 2 And is that a reason why we should consign them either to a ruffian or a pirate, or, reduced in number and tamed from their old warlike habits, to those petty Spanish tyrants who boast that they are the successors of Cortes and Pizarro, and profess the same scorn- ful political creed by which these ruthless destroyers justified every crime and every treason upon a race which they excluded from the pale of civilised humanity? Is it not an American his- torian who has taught us to shudder at those crimes and those treasons, and warned us against admitting their repetition ? And is it not the indignant pathos with which he has described Spanish outrage and Indian wrong, that has made us place the volumes of THE HONDURAS QUESTION. 237 Prescott by the side of our Gibbon and Macaulay ? Gentlemen will all remember that old line of our schoolboy days— - “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.” Sir, it is said that that line was suggested to Terence by the great Scipio, and that when it was first uttered in a Roman theatre, all that heathen audience rose as if in electric recognition of its sublime and touching fellowship with mankind. Sir, I send that line across the ocean in answer to those who say that these poor Indians are aliens from our civilised faith and honour; and I speak it in this nobler theatre, and before this Christian audi- ence. Here, then, apologising for the time it has taken me, I close the case of the Mosquito Protectorate. I have shown the gen- uine antiquity of the connection ; the obligations it has imposed on our honour. I have shown that the treaty of 1850 did not abolish it by the admissions of the American negotiators, and by all American Governments before the present one. I have shown that we have made new propositions to withdraw from it, two of which were received with favour by the American Government itself; and that the sole difficulty in the way of meeting the wish of the United States to transfer the Protectorate to Nicaragua was occa- Sioned first by the obstimacy of Nicaragua herself, and now by the fact that Nicaragua has passed to the dominion of American citizens, whom the American Government can neither control nor acknow- ledge. This is our case: let Americans say if it be not a just one ; if it be not one that entitles us to the most conciliatory sympathy and co-operation on their part ; and whether they can accept so hollow a pretext to increase their naval armaments, and threaten war upon the land that was the cradle of their infant greatness, and is still the sacred burial-ground of their Saxon fathers. I now come to the two other questions of British Honduras and the Bay islands. I shall take them in connection with the more recent correspondence between our Government and the United States. Sir, the statement of Lord Clarendon (in reply to Mr Buchanan's statement) of May 2, 1824, seems to me unex- ceptionable, and, indeed, admirable in argument and temper; but 238 THE HONDURAS QUESTION. in Lord Clarendon's previous despatch of May 27, 1853, there occurs a mistake which occasioned the greatest irritation in America, the consequences of which we still feel. In that de- spatch Lord Clarendon says Great Britain has nowhere in the treaty of 1850 renounced, nor even had any intention to renounce, the full and absolute right which she possesses over her own lawful terri- tories in Central America, such as that designation was under- stood and declared by the negotiators of the treaty. Now, Sir, this mistake is doubly unfortunate. For the negotiators of the treaty understood, the Government understood, the noble Wiscount, as appears in his own despatch, September 10, 1851 (p. 541), under- stood, by the designation “Central America,” only the territories comprehended in the five Central American republics in which we have no lawful territories at all. If Lord Clarendon means by these words to refer to British Honduras or the Bay islands, then he gives up the very point for which our adversaries contend—viz., that those places are in Central America which we dispute. Or if he means them to apply to what alone we do hold in Central America, as that designation was understood by the negotiators of the treaty—viz., the Mosquito Protectorate, he cannot call it our lawful territory, and Say We had no intention to renounce it with- out a flagrant violation of the treaty of 1850, and a direct contra- diction of all that he himself and previous Governments since 1850 have declared. This sentence fell like a bomb upon the American public ; and as, unluckily, it reached America a few weeks after the President's inaugural address had reached ourselves, so it was said in the Senate that “it was necessarily supposed to be a note of defiance to that address.” Mr Clayton saying courteously, and thinking justly, that it must be a verbal inadvertence—that it could not apply to the Mosquitos, but by a mistake to British Honduras—and that a statesman so distinguished as Lord Claren- don could not persevere in such an error, addressed a letter to Mr Crampton, comprising questions to which he asked a prompt and full reply. That reply he received and read in the Senate. Mr Crampton says in it : “I regret that I am at present unable to sup- ply you with an explicit explanation of the passage in the dispatch, from which it seems to be inferred that Belize is stated by the Brit- THE HONDURAS QUESTION. - 239 ish Government to be in Central America, as I am not in possession of any official communication from my Government in which that question is distinctly treated. A fair inference, however, from the text of treaties and other documents to which I have access with re- gard to the title of Great Britain and its dependencies, would lead me to conclude that British Honduras is situated in Mexico, and not in Central America, properly so called. In this opinion I have good reason to think that the Government of the United States concur.” In comment on this note Mr Clayton emphatically says: “The only map upon which American statesmen can rely is that which presents Central America as defined by our own Govern- ment, and it is designated by a treaty with Central America, December 1825, with the five Central American States—Costa Rica, Nicaragua, San Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala; these are all that constitute Central America in any legal, political, or com- mercial meaning of that term. The subject is so understood by Great Britain as well as by us.” Now, while this shows a mistake upon the part of Lord Clarendon, and a mistake which was so far unfortunate that it has been subjected to a misunderstanding which has pervaded the spirit of all subsequent negotiation, yet, apart from a verbal error in our Government, it substantiates our case as a nation, and proves that by the treaty of 1850, every article of which is rigidly confined to Central America, we did not, as our adversaries contend, in the slightest degree compromise our claims to Belize and its dependencies, which are not included in that designation by the American Government itself. And when Mr Buchanan has raised a question thereon by a reference to old maps, perilous indeed would it be to the United States to allow any question to be raised as to the designation which limits Central America to the five said States; for if, on the one hand, Mr Buchanan would find any part of British Honduras or the island of Ruatan placed by such maps in Central America, so, in the very same maps, down even to the map published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, which has been quoted against us, he will find, as Mr Clayton himself says in his speech, the southern sides of Mexico, including Texas and Cali- fornia, placed within Central America; and therefore it would be 240 THE HONDURAS QUESTION. from California and Texas that, according to such maps, by the treaty of 1850, the Americans would have to withdraw all occu- pation and dominion. Thus Belize and its dependencies are exempted from the engagements of the treaty of 1850, and the American Government has not a leg to stand on, in raising thereon any dispute as to our possessions. But to place the matter beyond a doubt, the noble Wiscount, foreseeing that some cavil might be raised on the authority of old maps or geographical traditions, instructed Sir Henry Bulwer to obtain that declaration which I have before referred to, and by which Mr Clayton ex- empts from the treaty British Honduras, though with a slight variation from Sir Henry Bulwer's diction ; for he says, not British Honduras and its dependencies, but British Honduras and the small islands known to be dependent on it. It has been said that that variation was intended to affect Britain : if so, it would have been very disingenuous to do so by a side wind; but in point of fact I will presently show that it does not affect whatever may be our title to Ruatan at all. Yet I think it sound as well as conciliatory policy to volunteer a promise never to extend the territory we there held at the time of the treaty. For, to go back to the territory we held in 1786 by virtue of the convention with Spain in that year, is a demand which, made upon such a principle, this House could never permit a British Government to accede to ; for if we once established a precedent that we are to go back to obsolete conventions for the limit of domains, without regard to the subsequent wars that an- nulled them, it is more than Belize which would be affected; we should unsettle the title-deeds of our empire in every part of the world. Nay, such a precedent would shake the foundations of every throne in Europe. Before quitting this part of the case, I must respectfully point out to the Government what appears to me another mistake in the mode in which they have conducted their argument and created difficulties for themselves: this mis- take evidently grew out of Lord Clarendon's first verbal error on the proper designation of Central America, and it has pervaded and embittered all our subsequent negotiations. When I have seen it stated that Mr Clayton disputes our construction of the THE HONDURAS QUESTION. 241 treaty, I have been amazed ; because, as we have seen, he does not dispute it as to the retention of the Protectorate, or the exemption of British Honduras. I have asked Americans to explain, then, what is the construction Mr Clayton can dispute ; and I am told that it is that distinction which our Government has made between the past and prospective sense of the treaty. Neither, Sir, can I understand that distinction. It must, I think, have been suggested by some legal adviser, adopting Lord Clarendon's early mistake, that Belize might be included in the engagements of the treaty; for in point of fact, as far as I can see, no such distinction exists. As to Mosquito, you had no dominion there at the time of the treaty, and you are bound to have none hereafter. But if you had a dominion there apart and distinct from the Protectorate at the time of the treaty, I think your distinction would be wrong, and you would be bound to withdraw from it; and this you your- selves acknowledge, since, when Mr Lawrence complained of what would have been an act of dominion by the collection of revenue by armed force, you at once disavowed it. As to British Hondu- ras, since it was not referred to by the treaty in the past, it can- not be affected by the treaty in the future. I submit, therefore, to her Majesty's Government, to drop a distinction which has em- broiled the whole question into a vexatious quibble, which has led the American public to suspect that you have those ulterior am- bitious designs of which, as a nation, we are innocent; and if you have raised that distinction for the purpose of covering the coloni- sation of Ruatan, you have committed the mistake of involving all the strong points of your case in the questionable argument you have set up for the weakest. I come hastily to the question of Ruatan and the Bay islands ; as to the smaller islands annexed to Ruatan, I am not ashamed to say that I know little about them ; for I suspect there are few in this House who are much wiser. I shall leave it to the Government to enlighten us on that score with statistical information which will have all the charm of novelty, and the vantage-ground of a recondite learning which none of us will be able to dispute. But it is upon your claim to Ruatan that the other islands of the Bay colony, I presume, depends ; and about Ruatan I do know some- WOL. II. Q 242 THE HONDURAS QUESTION. thing. The question here, as to title, lies in a nut-shell. Does Ruatan belong to Central America? if so, you are bound to with- draw from it, unless you can show it to be bona fide a dependency of Belize. There is no reference to Ruatan in the treaty. But Mr Clayton admits in his speech, January 16, 1854 (and the ad- mission is important), that we, the American Government, knew that the British Government had, before the time of the treaty, laid claim to Ruatan, an island on the Atlantic side of the States of Honduras and Guatemala. But whether that island was or was not a part of the British West Indies or a Central American State, was a question which the American Government determined to leave to be settled hereafter.” It is clearly, therefore, out of the treaty. Nay, more—the American Government being cognisant of our claim to it in 1850, yet resolved to leave it to be settled here- after ; and Mr Clayton's declaration made simultaneously with the treaty, notwithstanding its reserved phraseology as to “small islands,” could not affect one way or the other what he thus ex- pressly declares his own Government left to be settled hereafter ; nor could he indeed have had it in his eye, since you see by Mr Crompton's last despatch that he says “we had as good a claim to it as we had to Jamaica.” It has now, therefore, to be regarded solely on its own merits. Now there are two points of view in which to look at this question ; first, as geographers and mere lawyers—secondly, as politicians and statesmen. Were I a geo- grapher or a mere lawyer desirous to assist our Government in re- taining this island, I think I could show strong reasons for believ- ing that our title to it is good; but not on the ground in which our Government are disposed to place it. I do not think you can fairly call it a dependency of Belize. And if ever it were so, surely it has ceased to be the dependency of a settlement when you have raised it into a colony under the Crown. As to the policy of that colonisation, though it is signed by the name of my right hon, friend the Member for Droitwich, the responsibility of it, I believe, rests with the previous Whig Government, by whom the Act had been framed and completed; and my right hon, friend only did what any one just coming into office, and whose attention had not been previously directed to the bearings of the question, might THE HONDURAS QUESTION. 243 naturally have done, when he affixed his name to a deed already completed by statesmen of great experience and distinction. As I am without the slightest data to conceive the motives or excuses for that act, I leave it to the Government to state their own case here—contenting myself with saying, meanwhile, that to me it seems to have been a very questionable and ill-advised proceed- ing. But Mr Clayton intimates what may be a better title to it than that of a boma fide dependency of Belize—viz, is it not a part of the British West Indies? For who is the highest authority of all modern geographers? the one whom all scholars are in the habit of accepting? Undoubtedly it is Malte Brun. And he enu- merates Ruatan categorically among the British West Indian Islands. Moreover, I think, though I will not presume to say that I am certain, that I could show not only by logical inference but documentary evidence, Spanish as well as English, that it was actually in our possession at the date of the Madrid Treaty in 1670, and formed a part of the West India possessions then ceded to us by Spain. But even if this be not so, still, seeing that it has been off and on in our possession for generations before the Spanish republics existed, or the term of Central America was heard of, it is for our adversaries to prove that it belongs to a State in Central America. But so difficult would they find that proof, that their utmost researches have hitherto failed to do more than show, that when at one time Great Britain suspended her hold on it," the republic of Honduras took possession of it, and was expelled by Great Britain as an illegitimate intruder. But that would give Honduras no better claim to Ruatan than a man would have to my hat if I left it on the hall table, on the plea that I had resigned my pretensions to it because it was not actually On my head. But it is one question whether the title be good, and another question whether the possession be desirable. And since I am not addressing geographers and lawyers, but statesmen and politicians, I think I can show you that we have no interest in the retention of Ruatan and the islands you have annexed to it, which can make them an obstacle to a general arrangement of all disputes. Lord Clarendon himself, according to a despatch of Mr Buchanan in the American edition of the Correspondence, allows 244 THE HONDURAS QUESTION. that Ruatan is of little value to us. To us, indeed, it can never be of the smallest use, except as a naval and military station—for what purpose ?—to overawe Central America—the very part of the world in which we are bound never to attempt dominion . If we are to do our duty to it as a colony, it must involve us in great expense, and constant anxiety and trouble. It is an island assail- able on all sides, and, considering the jealous neighbours by whom it is surrounded, it should be fortified and garrisoned; it abounds in creeks and coves favourable to filibusters and buccaneers. Your flag may protect you from the invasion of any regular State, but not from the perpetual harassment of lawless adventurers. You will have these General Walkers by the dozen And since Rua- tan really is the key to a great part of Central America, your re- tention of it is a standing grievance and menace to the whole of that isthmus. It will involve you in undignified and everlasting disputes with the petty Spanish republics; and above all, since Mr Buchanan is right in saying that the geographical position of Tuatan is such as would allow Great Britain, if she pleased, com- pletely to arrest the trade of the United States to and from the isthmus, so, as long as you keep that island, war with the United States is a thing probable—friendship with the United States is a thing impossible. And therefore, although there must be many preliminary considerations before resigning these islands,--first, as to whether they should be given to Honduras or raised into free ports—Secondly, as to the cautions against their becoming the nest for pirates and buccaneers, much more threatening to the peace and commerce of Central America than Great Britain can be, yet still I ask you to concur in the guarded proposition that they are not of such importance to us as to present an insuperable obstacle to some general and amicable arrangement for the solution of all disputes. But all disputes our Government has now, though somewhat tardily, offered to submit to arbitration. Mr Buchanan objects —but on what ground ! He says that his interpretation of the treaty is supported by the almost unanimous opinion in America. This, begging his pardon, cannot be ; for while he says the treaty necessitates our abandonment of the Mosquito Protectorate, Mr Clayton, its negotiator, and a chief of the great Whig party, says, THE HONDURAS QUESTION. 245 as We have seen, precisely the contrary. And while he would bring British Honduras into the terms of the treaty, General Cass, the organ of the great Democratic party, says, in his speech in the Senate, that “Sir Henry Bulwer obtained its exemption from the treaty so clearly by word and deed as to preclude all contro- versy on that topic.” And thirdly, while Mr Buchanan says that Ruatan is clearly an island in Central America, Mr Clayton implies as clearly that it is in the British West Indies. But I have seen it stated in American journals, and in the American Legislature, that the affair has gone beyond arbitration. Beyond Why, in 1813, a year after America had declared war on us, and while war was actually going on, it was the President of the United States who proposed to us the arbitration of the Emperor of Russia; true, that Great Britain then, not very wisely, rejected the offer; but in 1822 the Russian mediator was called in to determine the construction of the 1st article of the Treaty of Gand. But I find it is said, “Yes, we might accept Russia as an arbiter, but that is the only power sufficiently independent for us freeborn Americans.” Is it so 2 Why, in 1831 America accepted the King of Holland as an arbiter in the interpretation of the 5th article of the Treaty of Gand; for somehow or other—I say it good- humouredly—our American children, though uncommon acute on most matters, are apt to be rather dull as to the interpretation of treaties in any way disagreeable to themselves. Thus, so far as arbitration is concerned, there is ample precedent for it, and pre- cisely in parallel cases—viz., in the interpretation of treaties. But shall I say why I think the present American Government might be disinclined to arbitration ? The reason may be found in a pithy sentence in the Russian arbitrament of 1822, signed Nesselrode. Russia then said, “The question can only be decided according to the literal and grammatical sense of the article in dispute.” But as to the treaty of 1850, who can say that in the literal and grammatical sense of the words “the protection you may afford,” means the protection you must not afford 2 or that our other pos- sessions not mentioned in the treaty, and reserved from its engage- ments by a special declaration, have dropped out of her Majesty's empire through the gap of a grammatical ellipsis 3 And now that I have referred to the war of 1812, I must say 246 THE HONDURAS QUESTION. that if anything could warn the Americans from hostilities with us for a dispute of this kind, it is the fact that when they went to war with us in 1812 upon certain alleged complaints, that war ended leaving the complaints so much what they were before, that Count de Garden observes, in his ‘History of Treaties,” “The conclu- sion of the war decided nothing upon which the Americans had taken up arms, and only adjourned the solution of many grave diffi- culties.” Nor was it till 1842 that those differences which had lasted nearly half a century were settled. And how settled then 2 By arms, by threats, by insisting upon quarrel? No; by what I now press upon the American Government and people, I hope not in vain—by friendly arrangements which, to use the words of the convention of 1842, “contained nothing to compromise the honour and dignity of the two nations.” Sir, if the United States Government refuse arbitration, I urge it upon her Majesty's Ministers not to consider that the means of conciliation are exhausted; but then to propose what I think would have been far better, in the first instance, than the arbitra- ment of a foreign power—viz., commissioners similar to those who in 1842 produced such happy results. And I do this the most Sanguinely, because this is what Mr Lawrence himself suggested in 1849. This treaty of 1850 is worth preservation. True, that nature, more powerful than diplomatists, has raised unforeseen obstacles to the construction of that canal which it was intended to open and secure to the universal commerce of mankind. But it operates equally for all other international communication upon that favoured isthmus; under its provisions the magnificent railway of Panama unites the shores of two oceans and the enterprise of two worlds. Other communications will no doubt be effected. But grander than those communications themselves is the principle which that treaty first established, a principle designed to disarm the ambition of nations in order to promote the civilisation of the globe. And the document which records that Sublime idea ought not to be ravished from the archives of the Anglo-Saxon family by the miserable squabbles of Nicaragua, and the lawless audacity of desultory freebooters. * THE HONDURAS QUESTION. 247 Here I would fain conclude, but I am so anxious that the Americans should not be misled, that, not for the purpose of threatening, but for the purpose of inducing calm reflection amongst that highly educated people, I will add some truths that may not misbecome the lips of a member of this House. In a very influential American journal supporting the Democratic Government, and representing the opinions of what may be called the war party in the United States, there occurs an article com- mencing with remarks upon the bad faith of John Bull, &c., which I shall omit, lest they might excite angry feelings amongst our- selves, and proceeds thus: “All that is necessary to bring Palmer- ston and Clarendon to a definite understanding and reparation, is a bold and uncompromising demand for a yea or no, peace or war; a firm stand will secure the rights without the hazards of war, and, this being done, all further trouble for the future will be saved,” (how? by keeping faith with us as to the treaty No. 1 ?) “by knocking the Bulwer and Clayton treaty on the head, and by falling back on the Monroe doctrine of British non-intervention in the affairs of our independent neighbours.” Now this is cal- culated to instil a very dangerous error into the mind of the American public; and I would guard them, and, if I may say so without offence, I would caution certain of the most eminent members of this House, from anything that may encourage the belief, which more than all else involved us in the war with Russia—viz., that conciliatory expressions are the proof of cow- ardly dispositions. And do not let the Americans be induced by those agitators who abound in all free States to suppose that by making what they call a firm stand, yea or no, peace or war—in other words, by leaving to Great Britain no option to armed resistance except humiliation, and dishonouring any combination of powers on the face of the globe—can obtain from us the rights of war, which here mean the rights of conquest, without also incurring its hazards. Sir, it has been well Said in the American Senate that the government of individuals is temporary and ephemeral; but the government of principles which maintain the good faith and majesty of England will, I believe, last as long as there is a throne 248 THE HONDURAS QUESTION. to her sovereign and a free voice to her people. It is true that we are divided by parties, but I think that there is no party in the State that would condescend to make political capi- tal out of national dishonour. Where England is concerned in her bearing to foreign nations, or the maintenance of Solemn obligations, whether to monarchs or to savages—I turn fearlessly to the high-minded gentlemen beside, around, and before me, and ask them if I may not tell the world that there we can forget that we are partisans and only remember that we are Englishmen. In these American journals, and in the American Legislature, I have seen a vehement repetition of that cry which some amongst ourselves, from perhaps the noble error of too sensitive a national pride, have unreflectingly appeared to Sanction—viz., that in the late war with Russia we have lost military caste and prestige which we must be longing to redeem. I am not here to defend the whole conduct of that war. I have felt as painfully as any man every disaster we have incurred, every blunder we have committed. But I have seen as proudly as any man that with every disaster our spirit has increased—with every error our intelligence has quickened; and whether in the opinion of unjust and superficial critics we have lost for a moment military prestige or not, a calm belief pervades this country that at the close of the war we are in reality a far more formidable power than we were at its com- mencement. I do not think, therefore, on the one hand, that we have really any wounded national vanity which would tempt us to pick a quarrel with our neighbours for the purpose of recovering military prestige; and if we could cherish so puerile and paltry a desire, I am certain that the last people with which we would court hostilities are our own flourishing and giant children. But, on the other hand, it is not presumption to say—and I say it not to America, but to the whole world—that if any foreign State, relying on these chimerical notions of loss of prestige, should force us to war on behalf of our rights or those of the humanity We have undertaken to guard, it would find to its cost that it was no mutilated shield that it touched, no paralysed arm that it pro- voked, but that England had only cleared the rust from her aegis and added weight to the thunders of her bolt. And do not let our THE HONDURAS QUESTION. 249 noble kinsmen be led by their party zealots to expect that war will give them better terms than we would amicably offer now. Now, we will all go to the utmost verge of conciliation; but let one drop of British blood, nay, one drop of Indian blood under British protection, be unjustly shed by those whom we now earnestly solicit to be our friends, and will conciliation then be the thought uppermost in our minds ! Oh, Sir, let us all hope that America, being thus both propiti- ated and warned in time, will meet the frank cordial hand we extend to her, not with a clenched fist, but with as cordial and frank a clasp. I have loved that American people from my earli- est youth. In my connection with literature, if I may be pardoned for alluding to what, after all, next to the earnestness of my con- victions, is my best title to the kind indulgence the House has shown me, I have felt proud and grateful at the thought that I am perhaps better known in America than I am here ; and if I had not my own reasons to respect that people, I have learned enough of their high qualities from my nearest relations during a residence amongst them, to place them in my affectionate esteem, next only to my own countrymen. Well, then, let them judge of the general temper of the people of these realms, if I, with all these predispositions in their favour—I, no supporter of the Government except where that Government becomes the abstract representative of the royal dignity and the national renown—if even I say, “anything to conciliate America but the honour and dignity of England;’ and if she asks those—No, ten times no whatever be the hazard l’” But it is not thus I would conclude. I have referred to the arguments of Mr Buchanan with the frankness of discussion to which the citizens of free nations are accustomed, but I hope, also, without deviating from that respect due alike to his high personal repute and his late dignity as the Minister of an illustrious and mighty Commonwealth. It is said that he has left us as a candi- date for the highest office the American Republic can confer, and we may therefore presume that the conciliatory words he so grace- fully uttered on the occasion of the farewell dinner given to him in this metropolis were addressed not only to ourselves but to his 250 THE HONDURAS QUESTION. own countrymen; that he knew when he deprecated hostilities between them and us, he was speaking in conformity with the genuine sentiments and substantial interests of the people over whom he is going to preside. And, Sir, it is in order to support him in the gracious task of conciliation, and to invite the Ameri- cans to hasten the settlement of disputes we are anxious to close for ever, that I ask you to accept the resolutions I am about to sub- mit to the House. I ask you, while temperately upholding the honour of your country, still unequivocally to attest your desire to reunite yourselves to your American kinsmen, and prove that you cherish no ambition on the other side of the Atlantic so much as that which may retain the reciprocal influence and sympathy which Ought to last as long as the two nations utter in the same language the thoughts by which they civilise the earth, and the prayers which they address to Heaven. XXXVII. O UTILIN E OF A SPEECH INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 10TH OF JUNE 1859. ON Tuesday, the 7th of June 1859, the Address in answer to the Speech from the Throne was moved in the House of Commons by the Member for South Lancashire, the Hon. Algernon Fulke Egerton, and was seconded by the Member for Portsmouth, Sir James Elphinstone. Thereupon the Mar- quess of Hartington, the Member for North Lancashire, moved, by way of amendment, that the following words be added to the Address:– “But we beg humbly to submit to her Majesty that it is essential for securing satisfactory results to our deliberations, and for facilitating the dis- charge of her Majesty's high functions, that her Majesty’s Government should possess the confidence of this House and of the country; and we deem it our duty respectfully to represent to her Majesty that such confi- dence is not reposed in the present advisers of her Majesty.” A discussion arose upon this which lasted for three nights; at the close of the last sitting a, vote of Want of Confidence in the Ministry being carried upon a division by 323 to 310, giving a majority of 13 against the Government. But for the severe illness which alone prevented the then Colonial Secretary, Sir Edward Lytton, from taking part in the debate, the following speech would have been delivered by him in vindication of his ministerial colleagues. SIR,--I have often had cause to thank this House for the indul- gence with which it has honoured me ; but I have never so much needed that indulgence as now, when, to all other defects, I must add those which are inseparable from bodily suffering and weakness. 252 NO CONFIDENCE MOTION, 1859. Sir, my interest in the result of this motion is less personal than that of my colleagues, though I do not think it is less keen. For I only hold office because I cannot quit it while a motion, aimed at a Government whose responsibilities I have shared, is still undetermined. If the motion be carried I shall share the defeat of my colleagues; if it be lost, my successor will benefit by the triumph. In neither case, therefore, does the desire of office influence the views with which I regard the bearings of the ques- tions which the House is invited to decide. Sir, I fully recognise the principle so strongly urged by gentle- men who have preceded me—that whatever be the Government her Majesty may appoint, it should enjoy the confidence of this House. But I hold that there is a wide difference between the recognition of that principle and the adoption of a rule that the House is to have no confidence in any Government that does not find a clear majority in the party it more specially represents. If this rule is to be imperatively enforced, I do not foresee the possible duration of any Ministry formed from the ranks of the gentlemen opposite. For no man will tell us that because gentlemen sit yonder on the same side of the House, they are therefore all of the same party—all professing the same opinions, all advocating the Same objects. Nay, I will venture to say that there are at least one-third of the members I see before me who agree much more with gentlemen on this side the House than they agree with the other two-thirds with whom they are topographically connected. It may be as convenient in political records as it is in natural history to make general classifications comprehending the most copious varieties. But one specimen of the grand mammiferous division does not more differ from another in the length and breadth of its proportions, than one member in the general classifi- cation of Liberals differs from another in the length and breadth of his opinions. Indeed the varieties embodied in the verbal classifica- tion of Liberals are now so openly acknowledged, that we are given to understand that the next Liberal Cabinet is to be a Cabinet of Selected specimens. The noble Lord the Member for London is reported to have said at the meeting which witnessed the affecting reconciliation between himself and the noble Wiscount, that the NO CONFIDENCE MOTION, 1859. 253 next Cabinet should no longer represent one party; no, it should represent three—the old Whigs, the advanced Liberals, and the distinguished individuals on whom the honourable appellation of Peelites is bestowed. Thus, then, in order to obtain a Govern- ment which is to have a following superior in numbers to the single party of the Conservatives, no less than three parties—all classified, it is true, under the term of Liberal, but all having till lately expressed opinions utterly antagonistic with each other—are to be caged up in a Cabinet, and are henceforth to be brought into harmony and concord. On a former Occasion, the hon. gentleman the Member for Birmingham urged upon the two noble Lords, who are now profiting by his peaceful exhortation, the example of the old Scandinavian heroes, who spent their nights in Valhalla over the loving cup, poured out of the skulls of their enemies. But if they are now to resemble those mythological warriors, they are not only to drink the loving cup to-night, but with the morrow they are to start up in arms and renew the encounter. And how- ever differences and quarrels may be appeased for a special occasion, I do the distinguished men who are to compose the next Cabinet too much justice not to imagine that the loving cup will be ex- hausted by the heartiness with which they gulp down the reluctant draught ; and that when they meet in the Cabinet it will be with the true Scandinavian spirit—with flashing eyes, and arms out- stretched to destroy each other. For Surely it cannot have been merely personal dissensions that so long kept apart men of so lofty a public spirit. If it be so great an outrage on the Constitu- tion that the Government should be in a minority when it only counts its own party supporters, how could the noble Lord the Member for the City, to whom the Constitution is as it were put out to nurse—that Constitution which, with more than motherly fondness, he is always dandling, and rocking, and petting, and physicking—how could the noble Lord have allowed this grievous offence on that beloved Constitution for more than a whole year, without a struggle to defend it from the arms of this sacrilegious minority ? Certainly, if the principle be so Sacred, last year was the time to enforce it. The Government then were in an acknow- ledged minority, so far as their supporters were concerned ; war 254 NO CONFIDENCE MOTION, 1859. had not then burst forth in Europe—no dangers to our own country appeared in the distance. In a sudden change of administration there would have been but the average degree of public inconve- nience. But now, when men of all parties demand that our fleets should be strengthened, our armies increased ; now when, on the silent instinct of self-preservation, rifle-clubs are forming in every town, every village, and England, like Sparta, supplies the want of stone battlements by the living ramparts of armed men—now you find it the exact moment to displace one Government without a single element of concord, and doubting in that which is to suc- ceed it—I say, without a single element of concord, either in foreign affairs or domestic. In foreign affairs—who does not remember the character which the noble Wiscount has received from the gentlemen below the gangway, who are now to be his col- leagues for adjusting the balance of Europe? Is it domestic affairs? is it reform and vote by ballot? is it church rates? is it economy, or the disposition of patronage, who have been the great dispu- tants 2 Is it not the one half of the future Cabinet with the other half? And do you mean to tell us, when you speak of the necessity of a strong Government to command the deference of foreign powers, that it is a Government thus formed that is to impress Europe with submissive awe-that is, to preach the wisdom of moderation to Germany, and the virtue of sincerity to France 2 Sir, I think that the Liberal party, using that term in its widest and noblest sense, never made a greater mistake than in thus asserting the doctrine that the House of Commons must withhold its confidence from a Government, not on account of specific charges, not on account of overt acts plainly set forth in a sub- stantive motion and supplied by documentary evidence, but simply because all other parties patch up their differences and unite against the Government. They may outnumber its habitual supporters. I say it is a mistake, because sooner or later the precedent must be brought fatally against yourselves. It is the inherent necessity of a Liberal party to be subdivided into many sections. The more free Parliament becomes, the more popular Our representation ; the more that imperative condition of Liberal politicians will increase, the more numerous will become its sections, NO CONFIDENCE MOTION, 1859. 255 and the more distinct and vital will be the differences between them. It is with politics as with religion—in proportion as you allow liberty of opinion, sects will multiply. In religion you may class them all under the name of Dissenters, in politics you may class them all under the name of Liberals. You may unite the one or the other for the purpose of putting down here an Estab- lishment, or there a Government. But there is this difference between religious and political sects. Religious sects only com- bine to remove what they regard as a common grievance ; they do not afterwards combine to amalgamate doctrines and settle differences. But political sects must reconstruct as well as destroy. As soon as they have triumphed over the Government they would pull down, they must settle the articles of faith for the Govern- ment they set up. This will be always hereafter the great diffi- culty of Liberal politicians; but if they desire to make it insuper- able, they will adhere to the principle put forth to-day—viz., that a Government, without reference to its merit or its faults, must never count on the general protection of the House, but exclusively on the Support of its own partisans. For thus, in proportion as each section of the Liberals is thrown into power, preponderating more or less over the other sections, the Government it forms will in reality have but a minority of its own supporters, and be invariably at the mercy of any division in which the ambition of those on one side the House can join with the variegated discon- tent of those upon the other. I cannot help considering, then, that the House should be very wary of exercising its undoubted right to a want of confidence in the Government. Whenever an opposition party conceives that by uniting for the moment all the various sections within its scope, it may succeed so to scrape the ground as to glean a majority; but if that be prudence on ordinary occasions, it does seem to me a duty upon the present; because, put it as we may, the first requisite for England at this moment is to strengthen the Execu- tive in its attitude towards foreign powers. But how can that object be achieved by this motion ? Grant it to be successful, and the gentlemen opposite transfer themselves to these benches, it can only be, I apprehend, by a most narrow and hair-breadth majority, 256 NO CONFIDENCE MOTION, 1859. { comprising all those who a few months ago were at daggers-drawn with each other, and confronted by one of the largest and most united bodies that ever sat in opposition. And the only intelli- gible principle upon which, in the eyes of foreign nations, this new Government could have come into power, would be one of decided sympathy, not with Italian liberty, (for what Englishman would not sympathise with that?) but with the armed ambition which makes liberty its pretence and dominion its object. For what is the ground on which you insinuate attack on the policy of the present Government in this war 7 You say it has Austrian lean- ings; but if you would wait for the papers that will be shortly before you, you will find that that charge is wholly untrue ; that we have made no scruple in expressing our disapproval whether of the mode in which Austria governs the Italian territories that are hers by treaty, or of her interference in the affairs of Central Italy. But we have deprecated, and we do deprecate, the war, in which nothing seems certain but the sacrifice of human life. In Italy, I grant, among those who now share in that war, this dislike to the war itself is considered to be Austrian leanings. They say the power that is not with us is against us, and they anticipate with joy the downfall of Lord Derby's Government, because they con- sider its successor will pronounce its sympathy with the allied belligerents sufficiently loudly to necessitate in a short time our own appearance on the field. Read any Italian newspaper, and you will find that calculation plainly expressed. If you disappoint it by preserving in act that strict neutrality which we hold to be the duty and the interest of England, you will find all your difficulties, as a negotiator, multiplied a thousand-fold; for while Austria will regard you as an enemy, Italy will suspect you as a deceiver. If you do not disappoint that calculation—if you are led on to take any part in this struggle, you will hastem the rush of all Germany into the field, and will be lending yourselves to those objects for which France desires the destruction of treaties that now bind her boundaries, for which Russia has obtained at Villafranca her entrance into the Mediterranean, and sees in the depression of Austria her march towards the bed of the sick man. I put out of sight as reasons for this motion two excuses that can NO CONFIDENCE MOTION, 1859. 257 deceive no candid understanding: 1st, it is said that the Govern- ment should be displaced because, with the best intentions, it was unable to preserve peace; 2d, because, with larger concessions than a Conservative party ever made before, it was unable to frame a successful Reform Bill. Sir, I say no man believes in the substance of these excuses. With regard to the first—if you were sincere, you would wait at least for the evidences to be brought before you, and not judge the Government unheard. With regard to the second—if producing an unsuccessful Reform Bill disqualifies members from produc- ing another, the last man to aspire to office should be the noble Lord the Member for London. And if there be amongst gentle- men opposite any large party particularly anxious, not that the question of Parliamentary Reform should be kept, as Mr Fox re- garded it, as a convenient party flag to be taken out and paraded at general elections, and then to be carefully furled up and put by with the general lumber of drums and ribbons, or whatever else may in popular elections be the most noisy or the most flaunting —but as a measure which ought to be settled with as little delay and as little turbulence as possible, I defy those gentlemen to say that a Reform Act proposed by the party now in power would not Sooner be passed through the Legislature and become the law of the land, than any bill which may have to be filtered through all the degrees of purification from democracy in the Cabinet which is to unite Manchester and Tiverton. The real question is plain to us in this country—it is but a party trial of strength upon any pretences that can be found. Abroad, I fear it will not be so considered ; abroad, I fear it will be regarded as a direct expression of sympathy with a war that may not be limited to its first avowed object, but which may not rest till all Germany interposes to save Austria from being hurled out of the balance of power, and France and Russia united as the arbiters of Europe. - Sir, be that as it may, one thing that alone has occurred in this debate gives me hope amidst the dangers which I foresee. It is the declaration made here and elsewhere on the part of the Government, and, so far as I can judge, responded to by the lead- VOL. II. - R. 258 NO CONFIDENCE MOTION, 1859. ing statesmen in opposition, that, however this division may terminate, it will be for the strengthening of the Queen's Govern- ment, in upholding the dignity of England with foreign powers. Should the decision be in favour of gentlemen opposite, and they should succeed in forming an Administration, it would be my sincere desire not severely to criticise its materials, not ungener- ously to obstruct its policy, and to forget the triumph of an adverse party in remembering the immense difficulties which at this time beset every monarchy, and the grave responsibilities which every Englishman owes to our common country. On the other hand, should the present Government be victorious, I trust that a similar spirit will be shown by gentlemen opposite ; and that we may all remember that, whatever our desire to remain neutral, neutrality depends upon others as well as ourselves; and the more England manifests her power, the more her neutrality will be respected. But the power of England is not alone in her fleets and armies. We could not afford, like Austria, to leave 20,000 lives on a single battle-field. France alone may equal our fleet—France and Russia together would greatly sur- pass it. Our power is not in those demonstrations of physical force in which we should destroy ourselves if we sought to vie with despots; our power is in that ascendancy of mind over matter which belongs to the normal exercise of intellect and freedom, and which ought to find its utterance here. Foreign powers wishing to molest us, will ask less what number of soldiers can England spare, or what number of ships has she in the docks, than—what is the temper of the House of Commons 2 Are its actions So evenly balanced that nothing has there such interest as the strife for power ? If so, we need not fear England. Whatever we do to its prejudice, if condemned by the one faction, will find its advocate in the other. - But if diplomatists report to their royal masters, “Deceive yourselves not; the House of Commons, with its array of sturdy patriots and matchless statesmen, will forego all their quarrels and rally as one man round their country if you conspire against its interests or sully the whiteness of its honour.” Oh, then Eng- land will be safe! No spies will be sent to calculate what may be our fleets or what may be our armies. No CoNFIDENCE MOTION, 1859. 259 Meanwhile, if there be some gentlemen amongst the opposite ranks whose votes are not yet pledged, and who hold in equal affection the welfare of their country and the permanent interests of the Liberal party, with which they are accustomed to identify that welfare, I respectfully entreat them to pause, and weigh well the consequences of the vote they may give to-night. - For the country it is a serious thing to dislodge a Government that stands before Europe as having steadily, earnestly, consistently sought to preserve the peace of the world, and having declared firmly to all the powers already engaged in, or now upon the verge of war, that England will be impartially neutral—it is a serious thing to dislodge a Government which has unequivocally put forth this policy, upon pretexts and cavils which will lead the belli- gerents to suppose you do not condemn the war, and your neutrality will not be impartial. For Liberal measures, taking first the mere question of Parlia- mentary Reform, it is a great responsibility you assume when you say, We will reject all compromise with a party so rooted in this old land of ours as the Conservative party ever must be; we will disdain to enlarge the popular representation with their aid; we invite their opposition, and we will not effect a popular boon unless as a party victory which must divide all England at every hust- ings at the very moment you desire to unite all England against every foe. - But for the party itself—you are told that a motion of this sort is necessary to unite and keep you together. Permit me to remind you of a precedent in which exactly the same language was held, and I will leave you to consult history for the effects that precedent produced upon the Liberal party. Towards the close of the last century there were two divisions in the Liberal camp, each headed by eminent men calling each other noble and right hon, friend. I mean the Rockingham Whigs headed by Mr Fox, and the Chathamite Whigs headed by Lord Shelburne, º These two great men—and both possessed the most admirable qualities—had secret grudges against each other, the causes of which have never been made perfectly clear in the memoirs of the time. But it was judged by the Liberal party, as a whole, 260 NO CONFIDENCE MOTION, 1859. essential that these two statesmen should patch up their differ- ences and form a Cabinet in common. It was even then as now —that is the only way the Tiberal party can be united well. Lord Shelburne was a man of large ambition, of enlightened views, and profound though subtle policy. Mr Fox it would be superfluous to praise. He was the most forgiving of men, and ever ready to coalesce to-day with the politician he had devoted yesterday to the scaffold. These two great men therefore came together; they formed a Cabinet, as two noble Lords, who will pardon the comparison, may form one next week. What was the result 2 Human nature was human nature in the last century as it is in this; Secret animosities could not be appeased by open concord. Rancour found its way into the Cabinet. Lord Shelburne and Mr Fox might have quarrelled with comparative impunity to the Liberals if they had continued to sit apart, but they quarrelled in the Cabinet. One took refuge with Lord North—one struggled for a short time, to lose power for ever; and both together pre- pared the way for the rise of Mr Pitt, and the longest exile from power which the Liberal party has ever known. - Do you think there is nothing apposite in this precedent 3 Pause before you commit the hopes and strength of your party to the chance of an alliance between two noble statesmen, in whom friendship cannot be sincere unless they have outlived memory, and filled the loving cup in the stream of Lethe. Remember that the Latin poet puts into the same sentence— a sentence so hackneyed that at least we are all familiar with it —the “graves principum amicitias, and “ ignes Suppositos cineri doloso.” |XXXVIII. OUTLINE OF A SPEECH g INTENDED TO EIAVE BEEN DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 14TH OF JULY 1859. LORD DERBY and his colleagues having, in consequence of the adverse vote of the House of Commons on the 10th of June 1859, given in their resigma- tion on the following day, the Member for Haddingtonshire, Lord Elcho, gave notice on Thursday, the 30th of June, that upon the following Tuesday Week he would, with especial reference to the Italian Question and the policy of the late Government, move the subjoined resolution:- “That, in the opinion of this House, the correspondence respecting the affairs of Italy which has been lately laid before Parliament, shows that the late Government have perseveringly directed their efforts towards the main- tenance of peace, and an amicable settlement of the differences between the contending powers; and that, while they have preserved the strictest im- partiality, they have at the same time upheld the honour and dignity of this country; and that it is further the opinion of this House, that the policy of strict neutrality and mediation between the contending powers which has been pursued by the late Government, should be adhered to by her Majesty's present advisers.” On Tuesday, the 12th of July, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Lord John Russell, in announcing to the House the interview which had taken place the previous day between the Emperor Napoleon and the Em- peror of Austria at Villafranca, when the preliminaries of peace had been signed between the two sovereigns, appealed to the Member for Hadding- tonshire to withdraw his motion, then down for Thursday, the 14th of July, as inadvisable, if not actually obsolete, under the circumstances. Lord Elcho therefore readily assented to withdraw it, though, in asking for leave 262 THE ITALIAN QUESTION. to do so upon the date last mentioned, he spoke at some length in explana- tion of his motives in bringing forward his resolution. Had the discussion come on, which its proposal on this occasion must have necessitated, the following speech would have been delivered. . SIR,--I think the course which this country has hitherto adopted with regard to the war in Italy has been the right one. To my mind, the policy which it becomes a nation to observe in the dis- sensions which agitate its neighbours, has been very clearly laid down by Lord Bolingbroke in one of the best, though least known, of his political writings. He says that every nation belonging to the European system has an interest more or less in the preserva- tion of the balance of power; but that its interference for that pre- servation must be in proportion to the individual interest in the particular quarrel by which it is threatened or disturbed. To do otherwise, he says, would be to lose sight of Our Own particular interest in the pursuit of a common interest : it would be nothing better than to set up for the Don Quixotes of the world, and en- gage to fight the battles of all mankind. The state which keeps its own particular interest constantly in view has one invariable rule to go by; and this rule will direct and limit all its proceed- ings in foreign affairs, so that such a state will frequently take no share, and frequently a small share, in the disputes of its neigh- bours, and will never exert its whole strength except where its whole interest is at stake. Sir, Lord Bolingbroke makes these remarks as applicable to an old quarrel between France and Austria, in which he ridicules what he calls the absurd alternative to which England, by neglect- ing the rule he lays down, was compelled; the alternative either to conquer for France—which he says was equally impolitic and unjust—or against France, in order to conquer for the Austrian Emperor under the greatest disadvantages possible. And I think that Lord Bolingbroke's advice became doubly cogent by the apt- mess of the illustration by which the advice was enforced. We limited ourselves to that degree of interference which was propor- THE ITALIAN QUESTION. 263 tioned to our interest in the quarrel—an interference of remon- strance, of attempts to prevent bloodshed — and to substitute friendly mediation for the certain evils and uncertain benefits of war. - But peace having been now hastily arranged in a private con- ference between the two Emperors, the resolution of my noble friend would bind us to be as apathetic for the security of peace as we were neutral in the calamities of war. I must decline thus to fetter the hands of the Government. I must decline thus to Separate England from the side of every ally, and to proclaim her indifference to the security of the Christian world. It seems to me that we may be now called upon to take exactly that part in the dissensions of our neighbours which corresponds with our par- ticular interest. And precisely because it was not for our interest to enter into the evils of a war, it is for our interest to form one of a congress which may correct, amend, and consolidate the con- ditions of a hasty and imperfect peace. All that is said by my noble friend and others against the articles of that peace, as roughly sketched out at Villafranca, seems to be an argument against his motion. It is a peace, says my noble friend, in which England has not been consulted, in which the avowed objects of the war have not been fulfilled, in which Austria still holds her grip on the independence of Italy, in which there will be found all the seeds of revolutionary discontent and of future war. And the peace so characterised he would leave to its operations, without one generous effort on the part of England to improve the conditions that he blames, and prevent the consequences he foretells. Sir, I do not think that is the becoming position for a nation which not only occupies so high a rank, but which has always volunteered its voice on behalf of all that can advance or civilise mankind, even where its interests would not permit it to promise the succour of its arms. Some things in themselves are blessings, though their natural effects may be warped or frustrated. Free- domisin itself a blessing, though it sometimes suspends the Security of order. And Surely peace in itself is a blessing, even though its 264 • THE ITALIAN QUESTION. conditions may be crude, and its contingent benefits may seem doubtful. We have often interfered on behalf of freedom, and with a view to reconcile its action to the legal order it displaced. We may interfere on behalf of peace, and with a view to reconcile its conditions to the objects for which blood has been shed and dominions transferred. I cannot doubt what those objects will be in the eyes of an English Government responsible to the House of Commons. If England take any part in the councils of a Con- gress, that part must be on the side of all proposals which appear the best calculated to confirm the independence of Italy under such institutions as Italians may deem the best Suited to themselves and the necessities of the age. No matter who may be our Ministers, chosen from this side the House or the other, I can understand that they would widely differ if they had to negotiate in the con- duct of a war; but I am persuaded that they would abide by the same large and grand principle if they had only to advise on the conditions of a peace in which they spoke the voice of those Eng- lish doctrines by which populations have prospered and order has been inviolably preserved. And therefore I would not deprive Italy of a safe and rational adviser in a council in which her per- manent interests are at stake. • . But suppose it is Said, that the peace, after all, be concluded on principles as crude and as maimed as those on which it com- menced,—Would not England, if she took a part in the Congress, have a share in the discredit to which the peace might be ex- posed ? - . . Sir, I think not. As we had no share in the war, so we can- not be responsible for the fact accomplished in a sudden cessation of arms. No discredit can attach to us, even if we fail wholly to improve the conditions of a peace to which we were originally no party, which we neither made nor could prevent ; but credit and honour attach to us, as they do to all men who, whether they suc- ceed or not, cast their influence on the side of human interests; for success ebbs and flows with the tide of human affairs, but the con- sistent advocacy of good stands forth clearer and bolder in every ebb and in every flow, as the landmark of future ages. And it is THE ITALIAN QUESTION. 265 on that advocacy, often failing for the moment, but never dis- couraged, that England founds her repute, and identifies her Soli- tary power with the common interests of the world. And there- fore I Say, succeed or not, England would be untrue to her own fame if she neglected any peaceful chance of rectifying the errors and improving the condition of her neighbours. But take the other alternative. Suppose you rigidly abstain from a share in the Congress, however honourably invited—do you mean to tell me that we shall be in a station of greater dignity if the affairs of Europe be settled without us, or in a position of greater safety, when we have shown our Supreme indifference to the triumph of every principle and the interests of every ally 2 Sir, even neutrality in war has great hazards for a nation SO powerful and so courted as England. It may not be able, how- ever rigid its intentions, to preserve that neutrality free from the insult or aggression of the belligerents when the war is over ; deep discontent at the power which has taken no share in the strife of its neighbours is pretty sure to be bequeathed. No party owes it gratitude; all parties regard it as egotistical and Selfish. If Austria had not been neutral in the Russian war, I doubt much whether France and Russia could have agreed so cordially in her recent humiliation. But when a nation like England is not only neutral in war, but declines all interest in the peace that follows—when it withdraws its weight from both scales in the balance, and has neither arms for the war nor counsels for the peace—I cannot imagine a position more inevitably exposed to the resentment of human nature, And here there would be no pretext for this absolute segregation from the other civilised communities of Europe. A nation may have no interest in war—that is readily conceded. But every nation has an in- terest in peace—that no one can deny. And England in this instance has an interest clear and prominent, because all the belli- gerents are her allies—France, Sardinia, Austria. Alliance with each and all of them will be hollow and delusive if you say to those whom you call your friends, Fight or make up—you can have only reproach from us. We blamed your war too much to 266 THE ITALIAN QUESTION. have part in it, and now we condemn your peace so totally that we will not even consult with you as to its provisions. Sir, by this course it seems to me that we abdicate our place in Europe, and draw down upon ourselves the hoarded indignation of those with whom by skill and by wisdom we might now cement the ties of respect and friendship. YXXIX. O UTILINE OF A SPEECH INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E Q F C O M M O N S ON THE 12TEI OF MARCEI 1860. ON Monday, the 12th of March 1860, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. W. E. Gladstone, moved in the House of Commons the Second reading of the Paper Duty Repeal Bill. After some discussion a division was taken, when the motion was carried by 245 votes to 192. On Wednes- day, the 13th of June 1832—nearly thirty years previously—Sir Edward Lytton, then Mr Bulwer, as Member for the city of Lincoln, was the first to Submit to Parliament the advisability of abolishing what afterwards came to be generally reprobated as the taxes upon knowledge. Upon the later occasion just now referred to, the Member for Hertfordshire contented him- self with giving a silent vote among the majority. Had he taken part in the debate, something like the following speech would have been delivered. SIR,--I should have much preferred giving a silent vote on this occasion; but considering the importance which my hon, friends around me attach to their view of the question, it seems to me more respectful to them, and a duty I owe to myself, to state the reasons why I am compelled to differ from those with whom on so many other subjects I hold it an honour to agree. It is nearly thirty years since I first submitted to the House certain arguments against that class of taxes of which this paper duty is the last Survivor. My opinions against such taxes, and 268 REPEAL OF PAPER DUTIES. this excise duty in particular, have never altered; on the contrary, they are strengthened. And if I were now, at the very moment it most needs my support, to desert a principle to which publicly and privately I have expressed my undeviating attachment, I should only prove that there was something in politics which I valued more than honesty and truth. The last persons to excuse me for that would be the frank and high-spirited gentlemen amongst whom I sit. And, indeed, I am consoled for the thought that my vote and opinions on this subject may displease though it cannot surprise them, by the persuasion that on other subjects, vital to the permanent interests of their party, I may serve them less feebly in proportion as my defects as a debater are covered over by the belief that I am sincere. Here I am contented to leave, so far as I am personally con- cerned, the vindication of my vote. But as I have a warm inter- est in the Success of the measure, which was not a party one when We sate on the opposite benches, so I will ask the indulgence of the House when I state why I think, as a legislator, that the repeal of the paper duty is wise and good in itself—and why, as a Conservative, I hold that there are collateral reasons of policy which make it desirable that it should be settled at once. And first, before considering whether the paper, duty be or be not a tax upon knowledge, I take the simple fact which no one can deny, that paper itself is a manufacture. Upon that manu- facture an excise duty falls in the most unequal and unintelligible degree of severity. One description of material is taxed at 150 per cent, another at 3 per cent, and a third description is exempted altogether. It checks the fair play of competition by penalties equally inquisitorial and capricious; and for every million that it may yield to the Exchequer, it locks up another million of the money of the country which would otherwise flow through repro- ductive channels. Well, but is it not a general rule on which political economists are agreed, that an excise duty, even where it falls less harshly on a domestic manufacture, cannot be repealed without giving to that manufacture greater stimulus and develop- ment? Nay, is it not a grand financial truth, which on former occasions has been so firmly maintained on our side the House REPEAL OF PAPER, DUTIES. 269 that I have thought it an article of our hereditary political creed, that no mere relaxation of a custom duty ever gives to a domestic trade the same rapid and inevitable stimulus which it receives from the total abolition of an excise ? What on earth is there in this manufacture of paper which should make it an exception to all other manufactures, or justify that strange confusion of ideas by which gentlemen say, The repeal of this duty Only benefits a few, forgetful of that solid fact on which financial reforms rest their foundation—namely, that to widen a trade by relief from the fetters that Cramp it, is to give new employment to many ? Take all analogous experiments. In 1841, before the duty on glass was taken off, the number of glassmakers was 7407. In ten years after the duty was repealed, the number was 12,095. In 1841 the number of bricklayers and brickmakers was 3957. You took off the duty on bricks, and in ten years the number was 99,145. Can the application of the same principle fail us here in the paper duty —here, where you deal with a manufacture infinitely more Crippled and opposed than were either bricks or glass, and em- ploying a material adaptable to an infinitely larger variety of industrial occupations? For the great mistake which seems to have run through all the argument of the opponents to this repeal is, to assume that paper is only a something on which letters are written and newspapers printed. Now, it may be a matter of very fair speculation whether water - pipings or carriage - panels made of paper will answer — very fair speculation if we were engineers and coachmakers. But no one acquainted with the principles of mechanics can deny that the material we call paper possesses to a Superior, almost to an unrivalled degree, properties adaptable to the general purposes of Ornament and use. And I fearlessly ask the many gentlemen present, whose knowledge of that science of mechanics is far deeper than mine, whether they can tell me any other material which equally combines these qualities, so invaluable to the practical workman—elasticity, re- sistance to pressure, the minimum of weight with the maximum of durability ? Even in its thinnest and frailest form, a sheet of paper, nay, even of papyrus—this magnificent benefactor that we call paper—resists for countless ages the wear and tear of time. 270 REPEAL OF PAPER DUTIES. And to the tenacity of its plastic fibre we owe our knowledge of all in law, or in freedom, or in Science, which enriches the age we live in with the stores of all the ages that have gone before us; while, thanks to its quality of adhesion, you can render this seem- ingly flimsy substance not only more durable than oak, but as pliant as wax and as Solid as marble. I remember last year that I observed in the office of Mr Philip's auction-room an ornamental temple, which I admired extremely as one of the best specimens I had ever seen of oriental art. All its details were exquisitely sharp and clear, and the whole had that brilliancy of polish which can never be given except to a very hard substance. But it seemed so delicate that I was almost afraid to touch it. “Oh, sir, you need not fear,” said the office clerk; “you would find it very difficult to break the slightest bit of it. It has come a long way without the least injury.” “Indeed ' " said I; “is it not some rare kind of alabaster, which is a bad material for works of art, be- cause it is so brittle 2° “No, sir; it comes from Japan, and it is made of paper.” I mention this to corroborate the argument so powerfully urged by the Member for the Tower Hamlets, and to show that in this material of paper we have a substance which, when freed from this pestilent excise duty, will offer a variety of uses not now contemplated, and increase through numberless channels of art and trade those national resources which, after all, have no other fountains than English industry and English skill; and whoever will clear those wellsprings of national wealth from such obstructions as this excise duty, does much more than repeal an oppressive tax,−he feeds the channels that supply our Exchequer, maintain our armies, and employ our labour. I say labour, because, pass now from the manufacture itself to the labour which the manufacture creates and feeds, amongst the humbler classes of those rural tradesmen whose interests as a county member I am forbidden to forget. Hear on this what Mr M’Culloch says in his Commercial Dictionary: “The apparatus and machinery of the manufacture itself are of a nature that requires constant renovation and repair ; thus it effects a con- siderable demand for the labour of a great variety of trades—the carpenter, the wheelwright, the woollen manufacturer, the iron REPEAL OF PAPER, DUTIES. 271 and brass-founder, the wire-worker, &c.; and hence,” says Mr M’Culloch, emphatically, “this paper manufacture is of much greater importance as a source of employment than might at first be supposed, or than it was formerly considered by governments.” But if a source of employment now, when the manufacture is so fettered and crippled, how much more when the repeal of this excise duty will allow free play to inventions useful to almost every trade, applicable to almost every employment? And when my hon. friend the Member for Tamworth says, “This is the remission of a tax affecting the interests of a limited industry at the expense of the general public,”—I say, that I can conceive no tax so injurious to the general public as that which limits an in- dustry that may be extended wherever the arts of men require a plastic material unequalled for its combination of suppleness and durability. - My hon, friend the Member for Dorsetshire will forgive me if I do not admit his proposition that the excise duty on paper differs from that on glass or bricks because certain paper-makers say that they cannot get a sufficient supply of the raw material of rags. I thought that argument, if argument it be, had been sufficiently disposed of in former debates. But first, it is only a very small part of the manufacture which requires rags at all ; and secondly, that portion of the manufacture which does at present depend upon rags is deprived of that free scope for inven- tion by which a substitute for rags may be devised. And when it is said that a substitute is impossible, because a prize has been offered to find a substitute and no one has won the prize—my answer is this—Did you ever know a man worthy to win a prize who, after he left college, ever condescended to try for one Do you believe Lord Macaulay and Mr Hallam would have tried for a prize? Do you believe Mr Dickens or Mr Tennyson would try for one? And do you believe that what they would think below the dignity of literature, a Faraday and a Liebig would not hold to be below the still austerer dignity of Science 2 Of course no substitute for rags is yet discovered; and why Z Because your excise duty paralyses invention. It is scarcely fair to expect a man to discover new material for paper when the law leaves it 272 IREPEAL OF PAPER DUTIES. * uncertain what is paper and what is not. And again, your excise duty excludes competition; and it is competition alone that perpetually quickens and perpetually improves upon in- vention. I could say much more upon this head; but it forms no part of our business as legislators. Our vocation is to free the na- tional industry from that which our common-sense tells us must be an impediment and a clog, and then leave the national indus- try and the national intelligence to do the best they can to help each other. And when the paper-maker—who, when the inter- est of the land was concerned, was the most vehement of all free-traders—now cries out about his dependence on a foreign mar- ket for a raw material, I will first ask the representatives of manufacture and commerce whether they will accept for the paper trade a necessity not conceded to that great cotton manufacture, whose magnitude is so vast that its distress would be felt through- out the empire, but which cannot by any possibility get its raw material at home—and next, I ask my hon, friends the country gentlemen whether it would not indeed be an insult to the land, if Parliament conceded to the paper-makers the very arguments it would not hear on behalf of the farmer ? I pass now from the consideration of the benefits which the repeal of this duty would bestow on the inventions of manufacture and the employment of trade, and let us fairly see its operation as a tax upon knowledge. Here let me ask, not men of letters and Scholars, but all gentle- men engaged in the practical affairs of life—what is that which is most essential to a commercial and civilised community like ours? Is it not the freest and the cheapest channels for the communication of ideas ? How are ideas communicated so as to reach the widest audience and leave the most lasting impressions? Is it not by the medium of that material on which ideas are stamped and made the durable property of all men 2 Paper is thus the raw material of the most liberal of all manufactures—the manufacture of knowledge recorded and diffused. How, then, can we admit that the free circulation of ideas is essential to all that constitutes not only the local cminence or intellectual renown, but the positive hard REPEAL OF PAPER, DUTIES. 273 money-making wealth of the nation, and yet contend that a tax upon the material which all ideas are compelled to employ is no tax upon knowledge 2–and, said some hon. gentlemen, “the very last tax that you ought to repeal.” But it is said—when you have removed this duty, neither books nor newspapers will be any the cheaper. Sir, let me here place before the House what I believe to be the truth. There are three distinct classifications of literature. I will take first that with which the wealthier class of the public is most familiar—new works, affording interest or amusement to a wide circle of persons of good means and average education. I mean that which is generally called light literature, or the literature of the day. Here I own fairly that the item of the paper duty is very little felt either by the publisher or the nation. The wealthier public will have books of amusement ; they are accustomed to them in a certain form and type. And as the reader very seldom buys them, he cares very little at what price they are bought by the circulating library to which he subscribes. This class of literature the repeal of the paper duty will very little affect; and authors who obtain such success in it as to com- mand their own prices, may defy the power of the Legislature to harm as to help them. But there are two other kinds of literature without which the intermediate literature I speak of would be very frivolous or very fugitive:— First, the literature of scholars; secondly, the literature of the people. On both these classes of literature the operation of the paper duty is most burthensome and grievous. But especially burthensome and grievous to that higher kind of work which con- veys to the public the learning of universities and professions, of art and of Science. That kind of work, which, though it may ultimately confer a lasting renown on the author and his country, can only, at the first, have a very small number of readers, and may be many years before it becomes a standard addition to our libraries. Mr M’Culloch, in his Commercial Dictionary, calculates very accurately the cost of a book which sells at 12s, retail, and of VOL. II. S 274 REPEAL OF PAPER, DUTIES. which 500 copies shall be printed. Now 500 copies are a tolerably large edition of works of the graver kind; but I suppose these 500 copies were all sold. What is the sum at which Mr. M'Culloch estimates the net profit left to author, publisher, commission, and the interest of capital? Why, the net profit of the entire sale cost- ing £176, 18s, is only estimated by Mr. M'Culloch at £16, 8s. It is true, however, that Mr. M'Culloch then deducted from the profits 10 per cent for advertisement duty, since repealed; and the net profit, therefore, would be now £26, 8s. But what is the amount of the paper duty on this small profit 2 Why, £4, 15s., or more than a sixth part of the entire profit to be divided between author and publisher. But the publisher, as a man of business, naturally takes care of himself. He either declines to publish a work on which the returns are so small, or he takes care to secure himself from risk; so that, in point of fact, the whole loss from the paper duty falls upon the fund set apart for the author's remu- neration. It either stops him from publishing at all; or, as it falls exclusively on his share of the profits—and that share we may compute at the half—it robs him not of a sixth but of a third part of his profit; more than 30 per cent of his very scanty remunera- tion. Well, then, I think it is clear that this duty must be very prejudicial to the higher and graver class of literature, from which all other classes of literature take their noblest nourishment, and by which the knowledge that spreads throughout the many is con- stantly recruited and deepened by the severer thought and scholar- ship which are at first only addressed to the few. Ask the pro- fessional man, the surgeon, the divine—ask the philosopher, ask the scholar, who cannot expect to sell more than 500 copies of his work in the first instance, whether a duty that takes away a third or even a sixth part of all the profits he could gain if he sold all his copies, while it increases in an equal proportion all the risks of loss, ask him if this paper duty is no tax upon know- ledge; ask him whether it may not often serve to deter him, if his pecuniary means be small, from giving to the world what the world might find of lasting value;—and I should be perfectly con- tented to rest your vote upon his answer. Well, the tax next falls with immense weight upon the literature of the people—that is, REPEAL OF PAPER, DUTIES. 275 upon works sold at the lowest possible price, in the hope of ob- taining the widest possible audience. The paper consumed here is a principal item of cost, and the duty falls upon that paper so heavily that the first thought of a people's publisher is so much more what should be paid to the exciseman, than what should be paid to the author, that he very seldom includes that magnificent standard literature of ours in which the copyright is expired, and nothing to be paid to an author at all. Why is this? Because the paper duty necessitates the choice of books adapted to the widest class of readers—that is, books by living or very recent authors; and these books are chiefly books of fiction. I am the last person to disparage that class of literature, which often con- veys a good deal of instruction as well as amusement. It is, and always will be, the class of literature which has the largest sale. But I do desire that every class of my countrymen who read at all, should have full access to those other books which time has Sanctioned as the grandest heirlooms of the English mind. And those books will be introduced into a people's library, whenever the repeal of the paper duty allows a people's publisher to count On a fair profit by a comparatively limited sale. No paper duty could exclude any very popular author from a people's library, or lessen by a shilling the profits he might command. But I will tell you the writers whom the paper duty does exclude from their fair place in a people's library: it excludes not only Robert- Son and Locke, but Dryden, Addison, and Johnson. Well, then, I think I have made it clear that this tax does fall with impolitic severity upon the very classes of literature which we are most bound as Conservatives scarcely less than as states- men, to keep clear from all obstruction: first, those books which, though adapted to the time, are, if I may quote the noble illustra- tion of a great writer, “the aqueducts which convey to the plains and valleys below, the pure springs that first rise on the hill-tops of learning; ” and secondly, the works which are intended to Supply to the humblest readers channels not only of innocent re- creation, but of disciplined and manly instruction. And yet we have been told that the repeal of this tax is only a boon to the member for Birmingham and the penny newspapers. I say, on 276 REPEAL OF PAPER, DUTIES. the contrary, that if there be anything dangerous in the politics of the member for Birmingham, anything ignored or prejudiced in the doctrines favoured by penny newspapers, the best antidote must be in that free communication between science and lofty knowledge, and the literature read by the masses, which this tax, as far as a tax can do in the nineteenth century, tends to obstruct and cut off. With respect to the penny newspapers, I neither know nor much care whether they would be sold at a lower price or not. Cheapness does not depend only on the price; it depends also on the quality of an article. And I know that the repeal of the paper duty must tend to improve the quality of the low-priced papers, for these reasons: first, because the duty falls on the fund set apart for the writers, and must therefore narrow the market from which writers of high education and social position are ob- tained ; secondly, because though the penny newspaper may not lower its price, the fourpenny paper, such as the ‘Times’ and others, certainly will. And the nearer in point of price a paper of the vast resources and intellectual vigour displayed by the ‘Times’ approaches to a penny paper, the more the penny paper must exert itself to improve the character of its contributions, or else that approach of the ‘Times’ would destroy it. Well then, Sir, this duty is an obstruction to a manufacture, an extinguisher on invention, a hindrance to trade, a tax upon know- ledge, from the highest to the most popular; and lastly, it is a monstrous, and now perhaps the only exception, to that spirit of legislation which the public are determined to exact from any party that may hold the reins of Government. But I am now willing to throw aside all these arguments—to suppose the tax does no particular harm to manufactures, trade, or knowledge. And then I ask you to look, as general politicians, at the present condition in which the tax stands, and tell me whether, on all grounds of policy, the time has not come when it must be relinquished. When it is said that the tax is a permanent source of revenue, I close on that assertion with amazement, and I say that precisely be- cause it is not permanent, because it is loosened to its foundations, and has received so mortal a blow that it cannot possibly recover, T.EPEAL OF PAPER, DUTIES. 277 you ought to welcome its happy release from a lingering but inevitable death. Just consider. Can imagination conceive anything more the reverse of permanent 2 Take first the resolution of the House in 1858, which declared that the duty was not to be considered a permanent source of revenue—a resolution taken when we were in office, with the assent of the leader of our own party, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and who in reality Scouted the fall of the tax in one of those withering denunciations by which it is the glorious privilege of genius to blight and destroy injustice. After that resolution and that speech, are we to get up on this side of the House and exclaim, “Don’t touch that tax—it is a permanent source of revenue” 2 Next comes the report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue. What do they say? “The tax is no longer tenable. We cannot conceive a more undesirable position for the heads of a department than that in which we are placed, when, in answer to complaints from persons whose trade is anni- hilated by the exaction of a duty from which other competitors are exempt, we can only say that such is the necessary consequence of the existence of the tax.” I don’t pause to reply to those who have insinuated that this report was cooked up in subservient com- pliance with the desire of a Minister of the Crown. My own ex- perience of office was certainly very short, but quite long enough to convince me that the supposition that the heads of an English public department should, at the wish of an English Minister, commit their names and sanction to a deliberate falsehood, could only have proceeded from the gloomy imagination of some misan- thropical Chartist. But whether or not the Commissioners of Inland Revenue did conspire with the Chancellor of the Exchequer to deceive the country by a fraudulent report, I ask you whether, after that report was made public, any one could believe that the tax could be a permanent source of revenue. Then comes the vote of the House last session—the House of Lords rejects that bill on the ground that there was a deficit, and the country could not spare the money. This year the Govern- ment say there is a surplus; that surplus gentlemen on this side have admitted, because they have asked the Government to give it 278 REPEAL OF PAPER, DUTIES. away in something else. The Government again bring forward the repeal of the duty in a still more earnest and urgent form than they did last year, by making it a part of their whole financial system. And do you believe, after all this, that a single man out of doors can suppose that this tax, stricken, reeling, dying faster and faster at every attempt to delay its passage to the grave—is a permanent source of revenue 2 Permanent, No | Suppose my hon. friends succeed: that the tax is not abolished this session; that early next session my right hon. friends around me come into office, and find a surplus not larger, not less uncertain, than you have now. Do you believe that the abolition of this tax would not be a necessity on which their Cabinet must resolve 2 Either I know nothing of the House of Commons, after nearly thirty years' experience of it, or the House of Commons would exact this measure from a Conservative Government much more passionately than they ask it from the noble Wiscount's. But if there be a thing in the world which, as a Conservative, I deprecate, it is that the party I belong to and desire from my heart to serve and honour, should violently oppose on this side of the House the measure they meekly concede when they pass to the other side. Well, but if you feel what, as men of sense, you must feel, that this tax is not a permanent Source of revenue, then all the argu- ments by which you would retain it solely and wholly on the ground that it is permanent, are cut away from you. And indeed the whole argument which has induced so many of my friends to prefer a reduction of the tea duty to a repeal of an excise appears to me extremely fallacious. It is said, “Affairs abroad look uncertain. We may want in a year or two what we take off now, and let us take the tea duty. We can raise that again next year, if we reduce it this; but part with the paper duty, and we cannot reimpose it.” Why is this argument fallacious? Because if you really believe that affairs abroad look so threatening that you ought not to part with your surplus, then you ought not to have proposed the reduction of the tea duty. If you believed you might have to raise it again in a year or two, you gave no benefit to the English consumer, for the full benefit would be to the Chinaman; and REPEAL OF PAPER, DUTIES. 279 I cannot conceive anything more embarrassing to a trade than to reduce a duty, avowedly not for permanence, but because you thought it likely you could raise it again next year. Surely no man of business would like to rest British commerce upon a System of finance like that. And again, when you say that whatever the exigencies of the Country, you could not reimpose the excise duty on paper, you Say much more in favour of its repeal than I would venture to Say. For why could you not reimpose it? Finance is not like civil legislation, such as a Reform Bill, on which you can never go back; finance goes backwards and forwards with perfect indif- ference, seeking only where it can find the most money at the least injury to the consumer. And if you were right, and the repeal of the paper duty should do no good, but be only the wan- ton loss of a million and more, the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he wanted money would put on that duty again without the slightest remorse. If he doesn't put it on again, it is because, On the whole, the country would be richer without it than with it. And when you say it cannot be reimposed, it is only because the repeal would be found too beneficent to allow the re-enact- ment. I must take shortly the argument on which this motion rests. It is Said, “There is an artificial, uncertain surplus; don’t throw it away.” I say you cannot take that ground now. You might at the first have said, “We dispute your surplus—we will have a motion upon that ; ” and then if beaten you might have Said—not even then with much dignity or effect, but still with sufficient plausi- bility for a party question—“Well, since the House chooses to say there is an available surplus, devote it to tea instead of paper.” But when you first allow the surplus and ask to appropriate a quarter of a million more than the Government does to a relief which seems to you preferable to any other, you cannot, on being beaten, fall back and say, “Since we cannot dispose of the surplus according to our hobby, then we declare that there is no available surplus at all!”. Of course you may find subtle and ingenious reasons for this proceeding; but I am sure 280 REPEAL OF PAPER, DUTIES. that you will find none to satisfy the plain ample sense of the people of England. Finally, I come to the collateral reasons why this repeal of the paper duty is resisted. Gentlemen say, “It is put forward in an unconstitutional form, so as to insult the House of Lords.” I dismiss the constitutional argument: in that I agree with my right hon, friends the Members for Cambridge and Oxford Universities. There is nothing against the spirit and practice of the con- stitution in the mode in which the Queen's Government have incorporated their measure as part of one financial Scheme. And all that it really means is, -They think it so desirable that the question should be settled, that upon it they rest all their finan- cial operations, and their existence as a responsible Government. But then, nevertheless, it conceals some design to insult the House of Lords. - Well, on that I agree with the hom. and learned gentleman who spoke for the first time with so much promise and effect— that to judge of an insult you must look to the probable animus, the probable intention. Intention is revealed first by language; next, by the probable inclination and tendency of the party by whom the supposed insult is offered. First, as to language. In bringing forward this question, not a word about the House of Lords has been said by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, nor by any other member of the Government, that could have wounded the ears of the most sensitive admirer of that august assembly. Next, as to the probable intention and animus of the party by whom the supposed insult is offered. What is that party? The Cabinet by whom, not indeed any merely financial proposition, but any mode of framing it which could affect the rights and dignity of the two Houses of Parliament, and endure a sharp Parliament- ary contest, must have been thoroughly discussed and examined. How is that Cabinet composed ? Of men likely to go against the House of Lords 2 No; of all Cabinets within the memory of man, this is the Cabinet in which the House of Lords is the most largely and most conspicuously represented. Suppose there were REPEAL OF PAPER DUTIES. 281 a general election, and I said to every intelligent tradesman or farmer whom I canvassed : “There has been a terrible democratic conspiracy on the parts of the Dukes of Argyll, Newcastle, and Somerset, aided by noble persons of the names of Herbert, and Williers, and Gower, and Stanley, and Russell, and Temple, to insult the House of Lords in order to please the Member for Birmingham.” Do you think that one plain man in the kingdom would be goose enough to believe me? Is it not more likely that he would say: “Sir, I don't think that those great lords and fine gentlemen, whom any history of England tells me are amongst the first names in the peerage, meant to insult the House of Lords even to please the Member for Birmingham It is more probable, that as no men can possibly have a greater in- terest in the welfare and dignity of the peers, and as they had no doubt a great affection for the House of Commons, in which they are proud to have received their political education,-more prob- able that they thought this mode of settling the question was, upon the whole, best for the interest and dignity of both Houses. And I hope, Sir, that you, as a representative not of the Lords but the people, will not be less careful of the rights of the House of Commons over the taxation of the country, than a Cabinet that contains so rare a proportion of the loftiest names in the peerage is disposed to be "? No, them, I see no ground for suspecting the Government of an intention to insult the House of Lords. But what I do see, and do feel, is this, that any difference with the House of Lords on a question so delicate as that of the taxation of the country, no matter which is right or which is wrong, is in itself a very great evil. That evil must clearly continue until this duty is repealed. Succeed in your motion, delay the repeal, and you not Only prolong, you exasperate and embitter, the evil. The evil is felt in the embarrassment and hesitation which I, in common with all who cherish equal pride and reverence for our two legislative Chambers, cannot fail to feel in touching upon all the solemn con- siderations which a difference on such a matter as taxation Sug- gests, perhaps the most vividly to those who say the least upon it. I know not myself how to hint at those considerations with- 282 REPEAL OF PAPER DUTIES. Out a nervous fear lest, on the one hand, I should say something that might be misconstrued into disparagement of the true func- tions of that upper Chamber, which I believe to be as wise and patriotic a Senate as human ingenuity can devise; or lest, on the other hand, I may meanly compliment away that right which I am specially sent here to guard—the right of the House of Commons over the public purse. That right we are bound to maintain to the extremest point of its abstract principle, for with- out that right we have no constitutional powers whatsoever. And if this House were to accept certain doctrines, which I never thought I should live to hear from English lips—doctrines that would make the House of Lords the habitual and regular partner with us in the taxation of our constituents, if this House could so betray the memory of our ancestors, and the heritage of our children, I know not how one well-born gentleman of spirit and honour would condescend to accept a seat in it. This embarrassment, or this irritation, in considering a question that relates to the taxation of the people, ought not to be felt an hour longer than we can possibly help it. You can only end it by repealing this tax ; and, the House has sufficiently shown, by repealing it in the mode and manner which the Queen's Govern- ment, responsible to her for the dignity of both her Houses of Parliament, recommend to our adoption. - The more, then, I look at all the bearings of the question, the more I feel justified on the vote that I give. And I believe that my hon. friends could sustain no defeat on any other question that would cause them the same embarrassment, involve them in the same practical inconsistencies, accumulate the same difficulties round their return to office, as would follow their success upon this motion. Believe me, there is a something in the nature of this question as it now stands, which makes it desirable for us and good for the country to settle and dismiss the question itself as quickly and quietly as we can. XL. OUTLINE OF A SPEECH INTENDED TO EAVE BEEN DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S B O F C O M M O N S ON THE 2D OF AUGUST 1860. ON Monday the 23d of July 1860, the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, explained to the House of Commons in Committee the Government plan in regard to the fortifications, with a view to the improvement of the National Defences. The scheme, which involved within it an immediate outlay upon the year of £2,000,000, necessitated in the event of its adoption an aggre- gate expenditure on fortifications of £9,500,000 sterling. A discussion arose which lasted two nights. On the second night of the debate, the Member for Sunderland, Mr William Shaw Lindsay, moved by way of amendment, “That as the main defence of Great Britain against aggression depends on an efficient navy, it is not now expedient to enter into a large expenditure on permanent land fortifications.” At the close of the debate a division was taken, when the Ministerial proposal was carried by 268 votes to 39. Had the opportunity offered during that second night's discussion, the following speech was intended to have been delivered. SIR-I think the House is much indebted to the noble Lord the First Minister for the perspicuity with which he placed before us last week the general scheme of the Government, and for the manly tone—neither arrogant on the one hand, nor timid on the other—in which he seemed to me to represent less even to us than to our august ally, that all Europe must arm for defence so long 284 NATIONAL DEFENCES. as France accompanies professions of peace with preparations for war. But the more I recognise the courage and the wisdom of the noble Lord's admirable speech, the more I am astonished that he could ever have been induced to sanction the publication of this report. I should have thought, considering time and circumstance in Europe, that an Englishman would rather have bit out his tongue than blabbed the contents of this document to any listener not as English as himself. And it seems to me that the Secretary at War, in his excuses for that publication, greatly undervalues the good sense of the country and the patriotism of this House. The right hon. gentle- man Says that in a constitutional government we must risk a good deal—that a Government cannot use reserve towards the popular Chamber ; and, in short, that we cannot have military caution because we have a free constitution. Permit me to remind the right hon. gentleman that Belgium enjoys a constitutional govern- ment. But when, some years ago, Belgium feared invasion, and it was thought necessary to strengthen the defences of that country, she contrived to reconcile constitutional government with military caution. A Secret committee was appointed. Their report has never to this day been made known to the Belgian public. The Belgian Minister of War, in presenting to the Chamber the general plans for the national defence, only quoted a few discreet extracts from the report, and the sum required was voted without any revelation of details. The Belgian constitution is as free as our own—the Belgian representatives are quite as thrifty of public money as we are ; but the Belgian Ministers did not deem it necessary to publish for the instruction of French Cabinets and the excitement of French colonels, the exact places in which fortresses could be best assaulted, nor the exact amount of force to be placed on every garrison, nor the exact number of years or months that must elapse before the improvements could be effected, So that it might not be the fault of an enemy if he did not fall upon the country in good time. I think the English House of Commons would not have been less patriotic than the Belgian Chamber if the English Government had been as prudent as the Belgian. NATIONAL DEFENCES. 285 Whatever the differences of party between any of us and the noble Wiscount at the head of the Government, his vast experi- ence, his long public Services, his great European reputation, the popular and not unmerited belief in his diplomatic Sagacity, and his high spirit, would have given him the right to address us and his countrymen on such a subject as the national defences with an authority that few amongst us would have ventured to resist. And I think if the noble Lord had made such a speech as he made the other night—stating that his general Scheme was based upon the report of eminent professional persons, which it was obviously inexpedient to publish for the benefit of the very parties from whom attack might be anticipated, and promising that on all the details of that report the highest and most experienced naval and military officers would be consulted—he would have found it just as easy to obtain the sum required as I trust he may find it now ; but with this precious advantage, that you would not have told inflammable and angry populations, whose jealousies you have pro- voked, whose ambition you have opposed, all the precise places in which you are accessible, all the means you propose for defence, all the disasters you apprehend, all the months and years that must elapse before you can complete your preparations against the danger you increase, when you so openly own that you are afraid of it. But, Sir, I have heard it said, “After all, we publish nothing which was not perfectly well known before to such of our Continen- tal allies as take a friendly or a philosophical interest in ascertain- ing the easiest mode by which the conquest of England can conduce to the propagation of ideas.” Sir, it seems to me that this apology is so lame that it has not a leg to stand upon. If one of your neighbours, whose honesty you suspect, does happen to know where your butler keeps his plate-chest, and where the rails of your area were loose and broken, I conclude that you would shift the plate-chest and mend the area as quietly as possible ; but if, meanwhile, your butler were to send to this suspected neighbour an exact plan of the interior of your house, with the precise speci- fications of the proposed alterations, accompanied with a hint that the blunderbuss was out of repair, and the information of the date 286 NATIONAL DEFENCES. at which the new arrangements would be completed and the blunderbuss in order, your butler would not find a police magistrate ready to accept his excuse that really he only told the Suspected burglar what the burglar might have known before. Now, Sir, I can grant that the French Emperor and his War Department possess already some of the information contained in this document, though certainly not all the information. But it is one thing for the Emperor privately to know such matters, and another thing to make those matters as plain as A, B, C to our old friends the French colonels. The Emperor is an acute and Saga- cious calculator; he has lived in England, and knows the loyal enthusiasm which gathers round our throne if threatened by one breath of danger. He therefore may be quite aware that if it be easy to throw an army into this country, it would be very difficult to get that army out again. But the prudent considerations that would occur to the Emperor are not those which would present themselves to haughty and impetuous soldiers flushed with recent victories, longing for fresh employment, and Suddenly told by our own best authorities not only that we are altogether unprepared to resist an invasion, but that it will be more than three years before we can be prepared. The Secretary for War says: “I don't care about showing up our weak places, because the Parliament will assist the Government in making them strong.” But he forgets that before we can make them strong time elapses; and he shows up to the enemy the weak places three years before he can com- plete the operations that are to make them strong. Sir, the publication of this document will be the talk of all the regiments of France; and it will not only add to the knowledge which the few might already have possessed as to our weak points, but it will furnish to the ignorant many a feverish excitement, an eager intoxicating stimulus, which the Emperor himself may find it difficult to restrain. It holds out to all the powerful interests which the commercial treaty has provoked and banded against us, an excuse for a quarrel before the more benignant effects of the treaty can take root ; and it may madden the hot blood of the French armies to come upon us before our preparations are com- pleted, and while we ourselves acknowledge we might fall an easy prey to a prompt and vigorous invader. NATIONAL DEFENCES. 287 The gallant officer, the Member for Liskeard, said very truly the other night that he had always understood that in warlike opera- tions the thing essential was secrecy. That rule applies with special force to defensive warfare. All history teems with in- stances how weak garrisons that have kept the secret of their weakness have defied a siege, and how the strongest garrisons have fallen when a spy has betrayed to the enemy a hundredth part of the information by which this unhappy document is made the IFrench Spy of every dockyard, arsenal, port, and basin in the three kingdoms. - What, the other day, enabled even the barbarian Chinese to defeat the English 2 Was it not that the barbarian Chinese knew how to keep the secret of their own defensive preparations 2 But if the Chinese had favoured you with a document like this, do you think the English would have been defeated ? The First Minister alluded the other night to the memorable paper in which, when the chance of invasion was apparently remote, the Duke of Welling- ton confidentially suggested his apprehensions of danger and his schemes of defence. But who does not remember how angry the Duke was when those schemes and those apprehensions became accidentally public 2 And now schemes and apprehensions in- finitely more detailed, at a moment infinitely more critical, are thrown before the hungry gaze of wary and hostile critics; as if war was a game in which the first requisite was not only to show all your cards to an adversary, but also to tell him beforehand the cards you intended to play. But the Secretary at War has done equal injustice to constitutional government and the charac- ter of his countrymen in the stress that he lays on our habits of publicity. It is true that our people demand publicity in mattørs that ought to be made public; but no people on the face of the earth more jealously respect the wisdom of privacy in things that should not be blabbed abroad. When an Englishman says that his house is his castle, he means that he guards his hearth equally from tyrannical laws and malevolent curiosity. But the house which has a common Sanctity to all Englishmen is the castle of their native land. And the same Englishman who, when speaking to a fellow-citizen, will indulge the utmost freedom of criticism as to 288 NATIONAL DEFENCES. our laws, institutions, government, public men, or national writers, will discreetly guard his conversation when he speaks to foreigners, and would as soon tell to a stranger the faults of his mother, as expose to an exulting Frenchman the defects and infirmities of his country. There is something which shocks the dignity of that self-respect which a nation owes to itself—something which weakens our position and humiliates our character—in thus sending abroad to all our proud and scornful neighbours a confession of secrets similar to those which every individual gentleman amongst us would keep to himself. For what gentleman would whimper forth a confes- sion of the errors of his household—of the helpless condition of his family—of the fear with which he anticipates the challenge of an enemy—of all the precautions for personal Safety which it may be discreet to take, but ignominous to acknowledge 2 And such a confession in a private gentleman would be still more debasing to a Sense of honour, if accompanied with the very excuse made for this publication—namely, that without such a confession a man’s own children would not assist him. Is it for England to plead to the House of Commons for defence against foreign powers in the character of a beggar, who must show his sores before he can ask for alms ? I think, in thus doing, that England loses already one of her strongest Securities against danger in that moral awe which has been hitherto inspired by the honest pride of her character, the dignified quiet of her self-reliance, and the practical sagacity with which she has been accustomed to repair her defects before her neighbours had time to discover them. And it is not true that we, the House of Commons, have been so habituated to perfect candour on the part of our Governments, that we should have compelled her Majesty's Ministers to tell France when, where, and how England was to be defended before we would vote any money for that defence. Scarcely a week passes but what Some gentleman asks her Majesty's Government for in- formation on foreign affairs, or the publication of some stale corre- spondence, which the Government declines to grant as inexpedient for the public Service. And does not the good sense of the House NATIONAL DEFENCES. 289 always submit to that answer ? And of all matters in which one might suppose this House would concede to a Government the discretion of reserve, surely there would be no matters so entitled to secrecy as those which apprise the parties from whom you would guard against attack exactly where to find and how to hit you. Here, in this book, you employ the minutest calculations of pro- fessional science, in order to proclaim to any watchful enemy the precise number of troops he would have to encounter at any given spot—the precise depth of water in all your basins and harbours— the precise length of shore on which he may land with Safety—the precise length of time in which he may find you unprotected—and the precise nature of your engineering operations, so that his own engineers may have ample leisure to frustrate and counteract your precautions. You thus give to a hostile power not only all means of confirming and correcting information he may possess already, but all information that he could not have even guessed before, as to what you intend to do. And the Secretary for War excuses these strange violations of common prudence and ordinary practice, by saying that the English Parliament will have publicity in all things, however imprudent, when he knows that not a member of Parliament denies, or a popular newspaper disputes, the abso- lute right of the Government to refuse publicity to some com- paratively powerless paper about—not the hearths and liberties of our native land, but—some petty dispute at the antipodes. But if the publicity of this document was so imperatively neces- sary, why has it been so strangely delayed from the 7th of Feb- ruary to the 9th of June 2 Surely, if publicity was due to us in the question of this report, as involving finance and affecting tax- payers—surely, Surely our Government should have told us what should be our first duty, and what our most necessary expense, before they produced their Budget and vaunted the peaceful effects of their commercial treaty. Is it possible that this document, demanding eleven millions for the defence of the country, could have been kept back on purpose that the House might be misled blindfold into sacrificing revenue by the Budget, and flattered by fallacious promises of amity and peace, and reduced expenditure as the consequence of commercial interchange, into penitent appro- VOL. II. T 290 NATIONAL DEFENCES. bation of the treaty 2 Could the House have endorsed the Budget, or approved the treaty, if we had known what the Government knew when this report came into their hands ! What a satire on their own measures the Government kept concealed in their desks | The treaty says, “A million a -year, and you insure a customer for life: ” the report says, “Eleven millions down, or your customer will cut your throats.” The treaty says, “Send your iron and coal to assist the harmless industry of France :” the report says, “Against the armaments that the iron and coal supply, fortify the Thames and the Medway.” And when the Secretary for War declared there can be no reserve with the House of Commons—a Government must take the House of Commons into its confidence—I ask, Where was that candour in the month of March 2 Never was Budget so inflated with promises of peace —never was a Budget followed by a substitute so heavy with the charges of war. But the Government had the supplement in their hands before they laid the Budget on the table, and in order to secure the Budget they suppressed the supplement. And now the Secretary at War says: “Our Government can have no reserve with the House of Commons: we take the House of Commons into the confidence of brothers " I say, then, that if the publicity of this report was due to us, it was due to us four months ago, and that the moment you choose for its publication is that in which it can do the most mischief and the least good. For we cannot now recall the revenue we have squandered away; we can no longer consider whether it is discreet, with shores so defence- less, to enlist against us all those formidable commercial interests of France, which our treaty has alarmed, just when we would desire other powers to court our alliance. This document meets them with the piteous cry, “How can we help you ? See, we shall be more than three years before our own shores are fit to resist an enemy tº And if it be said by her Majesty's Govern- ment, as a reason for their delay in producing this report, that there is now more cause to fear the ambition of France than there appeared to be in the month of February, that excuse for delay would only double the offence of publication; because the more you cherish the attack of an enemy as probable, the less you should NATIONAL DEFENCES. 291 publish for his information the mode in which you would defend yourselves, and the date at which your defence will be completed. But if, as I think, there is cause for complaint against her Ma- jesty's Government for the manner in which they have dealt with the House and the country in regard to this publication, Sure I am that their faults would be trivial compared to our own, if we refused to place at the disposal of the Queen's responsible Minis- ters whatever money they declare to be essentially necessary for the defence of our Sovereign and our country. I will not discuss the question whether the sum asked be sufficient. That is a matter in which the responsibility of the Government is so serious that I can scarcely venture to interfere with it. For to ask six millions merely to throw away on imperfect and flimsy defences, rather than ask eleven millions for a complete and comprehensive scheme, would be a sin worse than misplaced economy—it would be a treason to the trust and generosity of the people who commit their safety to your care. I therefore take it for granted that you think six millions as much as you require for the present. As to the mode in which the money is to be raised, I share the objections of my right hon, friend the Member for Bucks to the plan of terminable annuities. However specious the argument may be in favour of a process which liquidates a debt in paying the interest on it, still the abstract principle of terminable annui- ties sins equally against the first maxim of thrifty borrowing, and against One of the wisest doctrines of political economy. Against the first maxim of borrowing—because that maxim is this, “Offer the most negotiable Securities you possess, in order to obtain the lowest rate of interest;” and against one of the wisest doctrines of political economy, because—but upon that head I will here quote the admirable exposition of Mr. M'Culloch : “Though it were true that terminable annuities were as readily negotiable as unterminable ones, we should not therefore be disposed to recom- mend their adoption. No Government should ever countenance any scheme of public finance that has any tendency to weaken the providence and forethought of its subjects; and such, we appre- hend, would be the effect of the adoption of any scheme of funding on terminable annuities, whether for a specified number of years or 292 NATIONAL DEFENCES. for lives. The purchaser of an annuity terminating with his life is in almost every instance desirous, not only of consuming the interest of his capital, but also the capital itself. The same prin- ciple most commonly influences, though not perhaps to the same extent, the greater number of the purchasers of annuities at speci- fied and not very distant periods.” Mr M'Culloch proceeds to argue these views with great earnestness, and finally sums up his opinion in these uncompromising terms: “As the system obviously strikes at the very foundation of the principle of accumulation, and of all those habits which are most conducive to the interests of society, it should certainly not receive any countenance, whether direct or indirect, from Government.” There, Sir, I leave the financial part of this question, with a respectful expression of surprise that a Cabinet which comprises such champions of progress, and such shining lights of political economy, should in one session go back, first, to the doctrine of commercial reciprocity, and secondly, to the reign of Queen Anne for the exploded arguments in favour of terminable annuities. With respect to the details in the scheme for national defence, it is only with great humility and deference that I can presume to offer any conclusion not based upon professional science. But while I admit the preliminary importance of Securing our dockyards and arsenals from any sudden assault, I think the Secretary for War dismisses much too hastily the opinions of military authorities, whose names carry great weight with them, as to the various modes by which the metropolis may be protected. The right hom- ourable gentleman, indeed, has only noticed one of these modes— that of detached forts a few miles apart ; and he then gets rid of the whole question as to the defence of London by saying its cir- cumference is too vast, and the land in its neighbourhood too dear. But there are military men of the highest reputation who do not assert that London should be defended by suburban fortifications, but that no city in Europe can be more easily and more cheaply secured from a rapid march by intrenched encampments on well- chosen situations—such, for instance, as Reading and Croydon. But these matters, and many other doubts that occur to me in detail, I leave to the criticism of the many eminent professional men whom this House includes amongst its members, only earn- NATIONAL DEFENCES. 293 estly and respectfully urging this upon the Government, that they will give us a distinct promise that before they adopt the scheme of the report, they will consult upon its various details with those illustrious officers whose professional knowledge has been expanded by the largest practical experience of actual warfare. If the Gov- ernment will give us that promise, I think our wisest plan will be to leave to their responsibility the re-examination of all those doubts which the report may suggest to ourselves. For my own part, judging from the past history of this country, in those instances in which a warlike force has effected a landing —not always for invasion, but sometimes in the vicissitudes of civil war—all that I would ask for internal defence is, that between the sea-coast and London there should be some stronghold, even if it be only an intrenched camp, which might detain an enemy till the country could recover the effect of a momentary panic or a first surprise. That is all that would be required, even if we were attacked next week, to make the whole land bristle with a force as compact and determined as those unpractised troops who Scaled the heights of Alma, with an army so knit together that an old veteran said to me, “Sir, they were like one red man l’ And this brings me to the consolation that I derive from the publicity given to this report, and, indeed, to the principal cause which has induced me to rise. Professional men are the best advisers to their country as to what should be done. But every member of Parliament has that knowledge of his countrymen which will not be without utility and weight when uttered to foreign powers from the floor of the House of Commons. I think the publicity of the report greatly increases the danger of invasion ; but I think nothing can diminish the firmness with which we should meet the danger. Let not any foreign nation suppose that because we admit that an invading army might land in spite of our fleets—because we admit that our ports and arsenals are not adequately fortified—let not any foreign nation suppose that therefore the invasion of Eng- land would not be the wildest and most perilous enterprise to which a sovereign ever committed the honour of his flag and the exist- ence of his armies. I grant all that Lord Overstone says with such force on this 2.94. NATIONAL DEFENCES. Report, as to the disaster to our commerce and to our monetary arrangements if an enemy were to effect a landing for a single hour, no matter what his ultimate fate might be. But it is well, since this report will be read throughout Europe, well that we should say where Lord Overstone, in his laudable zeal for self-defence, has omitted to show the whole state of the case. To us there would be distress, disaster. Granted. But to the enemy there would be annihilation. Lord Overstone speaks of the limited extent of our country. True. But that small country is intersected by railways, and the more limited the soil the more quickly the first moment of danger would collect and unite its inhabitants. That limited soil has thirty millions of population—five or six millions, at least, of men in the flower of their age—five or six million adults of that race which has achieved an empire wider than was ever compassed by the eagles either of France or of ancient Rome. Even apart from the mere population, and looking only to the military force we could at once command—including depots, militia, and volun- teers—we could bring into the field an army less, indeed, by one- half than France can levy, but four times as large as (after eluding or defeating our navies) France could land upon our coasts. We are not, like Italy, a divided people, hating our own institutions, and loathing our own kings: we should be Englishmen, nerved to tenfold energies, if fighting on our own soil of England; every old man loving his Queen as if she were his daughter—every schoolboy burning to defend her as if she were his mother. I grant, then, that this document proves how easily a French army could be thrown upon our coasts; but no military statistics can make me believe that that army would ever return to France ex- cept as a wreck, shattered by our force, and spared by our mercy. Our commercial disaster and distress might be great, but it would be short-lived. The vigour of this country is not less elas- tic than its resources. In a few years the nation would right itself, as one of its own ships rights itself, with all its sails and all its guns, after a noisy gust or a passing squall. But where would be the Emperor, and where the empire, of France 2 It would be swept from the face of the earth. Continental nations would feel NATIONAL DEFENCES. 295 that if the sea could not save England from French ambition, no pen-and-ink boundaries on their paper maps would be secure ; and Bngland, once stung by the insult, and roused by the horrors of invasion, would never rest till she had disarmed and paralysed the invader. The energies she has shown for the preservation of India would be puerile compared to those with which she would strain for the reduction of France to the limits of a power that should never again dictate terms to the civilised world. If for this pur- pose it were necessary to unite all Europe, she would subsidise all the kings of Europe as readily as Lord Chatham subsidised Fred- erick of Prussia. Heaven forbid that this should be the melancholy reversal of all those noble dreams which coloured the eloquence of the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer when he brought before us the picture of France and England joined in lasting peace by the bond of com- mercial interests. Heaven rather grant that these dreams, con- ceived by his humanity and brightened by his genius, may be finally realised; and that each great people, respecting the other, may convert the armed and menacing friendship of a broken alli- ance into the benignant strife of commercial rivals, seeking which shall most civilise and adorn the world. But equality is the condition of all magnanimous rivalship; and equality is impos- sible unless each State feels equally secure against the aggression of the other. Sir, why do I insist on the precaution of self-defence when I think that if we are attacked we could destroy the enemy 2 I say, first, because we have no desire to destroy an enemy, no desire to destroy the army, by whose side we fought for what we believed the safety of Europe before the walls of Sebastopol. But soldiers are soldiers; and we have no right to tempt human Cupidity and military enterprise by the display of wealth ill guarded. I say it next, because this mode of self-defence is so very much cheaper than the other mode which the Member for Birmingham commends to our preference. Take the utmost the commissioners ask—take eleven millions—and the interest of the Sum raised in the manner the Government propose would not amount to half the sum that we have lavished away this year Ostensibly for the boom of cheap wines, 296 NATIONAL DEFENCES. but in reality as an experiment of that mode of self-defence by which the Member for Birmingham would raise up the commercial interests of France as the best fortification against her military ambition. As far as the experiment has gone, it seems equally expensive and ineffectual. Lastly, I advocate the policy of self-defence, because, though I concede to the Member for Birmingham that it is not the interest of France to invade us, yet we all know that though alliances are founded on interest, wars are excited by passion. And of all reigning sovereigns the Emperor of France is the One on whose conduct you can least reckon, according to the ordi- mary rules of policy and self-interest. His whole career has been one portentous prodigy. It may be a mad Scheme to invade England, with all her armies and all her fleets; but it would not be so mad as his invasion of France, when he landed at Boulogne with a steamboat and an eagle. In the temperament and the genius of this modern Augustus—more daring, more restless, than his Roman prototype—imagination holds a sway that baſiles the calculations of Sober reason. He has those strange mysteries of character which we plain men call superstitions; but they are Superstitions of that mature which makes men's motives inscrut- able, and their actions marvellous—superstitions as to his mission, as to his destiny, which the startling incidents of his fate have Served to deepen and confirm, and which perplex the Sagacity of statesmen, as the eccentricities of a comet may perplex the science of astronomers. Deal with the conventional policy of orthodox potentates, and the red-tape routine of methodical cabinets, we, Sober Englishmen, very readily may; but deal with the splendid fantasies of a child of fortune and genius we never can do, except by a double stock of those vigilant precautions by which common- Sense defeats the chimeras of genius and commands the caprice of fortune. Therefore, I say, defend your shores. But I say more— defend them not against the Emperor alone. Do not credulously believe that if he were dead to-morrow Europe would be at peace, and England could return at once to the boast of her wooden walls. The noble lord, the First Minister, says—the atmosphere is NATIONAL DEFENCES. 297 charged with clouds which betoken the possibility of a tempest. I fear that he might have made his illustration still more forcibly. I fear that he might have said—those clouds, in their gathering, have collected so much inflammable matter, that the tempest must fall before the atmosphere can be cleared. If you look to the history of the world, I doubt if you can find an instance in which armies such as those with which France now casts over Europe So dark and so ominous a shadow, have ever been dispersed ex- cept in the shock of battle. And whatever the Emperor's per- sonal ambition, it is in vain to deny that his power over the French consists in this—that he is the representative of a thor- oughly French idea. What is that idea 2 The aggrandisement of France—the aggrandisement of France, not by the patient de- velopment of her own resources, but by the diminution and hu- miliation of every other power in Europe whose equal rivalry pro- vokes her jealousies or offends her pride. That idea is not new— it does not date from the French Empire; it was the mainspring of Richelieu’s policy. It was for this that Richelieu struck at Aus- tria; for this he intrigued in Spain; for this that, while he found- ed a despotism at home, he encouraged republics abroad; for this that he formented our civil factions in England, cajoled our popular chiefs, and could equally flatter a British Puritan or stir up an Irish Papist —anything, everything, for the aggrandisement of France by the affliction of her rivals. Richelieu left that policy as an heirloom to Louis XIV. ; and that heirloom the first Napoleon seized with the same hand that Snatched from Italy the iron crown of the Lombards—the same unscrupulous but Superstitious hand that, at Aix-la-Chapelle, robbed from the tomb of Charlemagne the talisman which that great founder of the warlike French race had worn, as a token that he had received from Heaven a mission to alter the boundaries of the earth. That talisman Napoleon ha- bitually wore, as if Charlemagne's talisman were a title-deed to Charlemagne's universal dominion. I have seen that talisman in the hand of a man who had as few scruples and as much supersti- tion—I have seen it in the hand of Napoleon III. Well, them, to this French idea of aggrandisement for France at the expense of her neighbours—this French idea which, in the 298 NATIONAL DEFENCES. midst of her first terrible Revolution, Burke so well described when he said, “The main object of France is not to be free, but to be formidable.”—to this idea, cherished by the French in all phases of their history, in all forms of their government, the present Em- peror has given new vitality and force; but if he died to-morrow, that idea would not perish with him. Just as the talisman of Charlemagne came fresh from his tomb as if it were made but yesterday, so the idea to which any man who achieves a high place in history may consecrate his life, cannot moulder with his dust. To every Frenchman the idea of the aggrandisement of France is the real talisman of Charlemagne. The next candidate to supreme power in France—whether it be the Emperor's son, or a prince of the House of Orleans, or a legi- timate Bourbon, or the President of a Republic—would perhaps largely outbid the present Emperor in the flattery to the national egotism, that in seeking to make France formidable renders the world unsafe. Therefore, again and again Irepeat—let us defend our shores. We say to other nations, “Make yourselves free with your own strong hands, and preserve that freedom by your own wise brains.” Let not other nations reply, “But your strong hands withhold the money, and your own wise brains neglect the means to insure for yourself that safety from foreign aggression which you preach to us as the first care of intelligence and the first lesson of duty.” Sir, let us not suppose that this appeal to Our forethought is the cry of a momentary panic. Every year that improves the inventions of science diminishes your safety as the inhabitants of an island, and compels you more and more to find in the precautions of art the securities that nature has ceased to give. This necessity has been made evident by recent circumstances. Let us rejoice that it has been so. But that necessity, thus forced upon us, ought henceforth to enter into all our estimates, and be the paramount care of every Minister who accepts the responsi- bilities of guarding from shame and danger the land and liberties of this English realm. |XLI. Olj TLINE OF A SPEECH INTENDED TO ELAVE BEEN DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 19TH OF JUNE 1861. ON Thursday the 7th of February 1861, the Member for Tavistock, Sir John Trelawney, introduced into the House of Commons a Bill for the Abolition of Church Rates; and on Wednesday the 27th of February, moved its second reading. Upon the latter occasion the Member for the University of Oxford, Sir William Heathcote, proposed by way of amend- ment, that the second reading should be assented to on that day six months. Upon a division, this amendment was negatived by 281 votes to 260. Having passed through Committee on Wednesday the 6th of March, the third reading of the Bill was moved by Sir John Trelawney, on Wednesday the 19th of June. Thereupon the Member for North Wilt- shire, Mr Sotheron Estcourt, moved by way of amendment that the Bill be read a third time that day three months. Upon a division being taken, the House proved to be equally for and against the original proposition— Ayes 274, Noes 274. The Speaker upon this giving his casting vote with the Noes, the Bill was thrown out. It was during this critical night's discussion that the following speech was intended to have been delivered. SIR,--The arguments in favour of this Bill appear to me to have been placed, upon the occasion of its second reading, on the broadest and most intelligible ground by the hon. gentleman the Member for Birmingham on the part of political Nonconformists, and by the noble Lord the Member for London on the part of conforming politicians. * 300 ABOLITION OF CHURCH RATES. The Member for Birmingham says: “Gentlemen on our side of the House not connected with Nonconformist Churches, are not aware of the exact state of feeling of those members on this Subject. I will tell you,” says the hon, gentleman, “what the Dissenters feel, and what they object to.” Here, then, we have an explanation long desired, often asked for, often evaded, not disguised in those ambiguous voices in which Subtile politicians seek to gratify Dissenters, yet not to alarm the Church;-we have the explanation from a Nonconformist, whose worst enemy cannot say that he ever wants the boldness to state a grievance, or the eloquence to make the most of it. “I will tell you,” says the hon, member, “what the Dissenters object to. It is not a pecuniary hardship—not a paltry matter of 2d. in the pound: it is a struggle for Supremacy—of Supremacy, too, on the part of a great Establishment, which is as much political as it is religious; against which their ancestors, the Puritans, fought, and against which they are still inevitably obliged to contend.” What I This, then, is what they object to . Not a Church rate, but the Church at any rate. And in order to make unequivo- cally clear what the hon. member means by the obnoxious word supremacy, he immediately proceeds to tell us “what it is that Dissenters in conversing with him find intolerable, and are determined to destroy.” Not this one isolated claim of the Church establishment, but the whole structure and Organisation of that establishment as an English institution. Not alone its Supremacy, but all the checks and Safeguards against a purely ecclesiastical Supremacy in the appointments it must receive from the Crown, in the patronage it must accept from the laity. All that renders the Church of England so peculiarly English, are the special objects of detestation and attack. “You,” says the hon, gentleman, “are the only Church in which the loftiest dignitaries are not appointed by ecclesiastical authority;” and he proceeds to commend to our preference not only the Organisa- tion of American Episcopacy, in which bishops are chosen by devout men of the congregation, but even the hierarchy of Rome, in which bishops are appointed by the Pope. I will not pause to defend what is here assailed, or it would ABOLITION OF CHURCH RATES. 301 be easy to show that the powers of appointment vested in the Crown, and even the lay patronage of livings—though in the last there are abuses which I should be glad to see corrected—were regarded by our ancestors as checks upon a purely ecclesiastical supremacy, and Safeguards against that segregation from the general interest of the community, which is supposed to be the bias of corporate bodies that are altogether Self-elected. But be our system good or bad, it is enough to know from a witness who comes into court for the express purpose of enlightening our ignorance, that the total abolition of Church rates is the first blow for the total abolition of all against which the Puritans fought—against all that distinguished the Church of England from a Papal hierarchy or an American sect. But before I here address myself to Churchmen, I would wish to argue the question fairly with the hon, member, on the very ground on which he says that Dissenters would place it. I thank the hon. gentleman for his historical reference. I thank him for reminding us of those stormy days in which the Puritans fought against the Church. I am not about knowingly to utter a single word against those earnest and resolute men; not a word, I hope, that may justly wound the ear of their descendants. I am disposed to grant much of what the hon, gentleman has said as to the obligations our freedom owes to the Puritans. Not indeed to the extent to which he goes in the pardonable heat of oratorical hyperbole; not to the extent that we owe all our liberties to the Puritans. All Our liberties result from a great variety of causes, but from no cause so potent and so acknow- ledged as the habit of Self-government and the right of a local majority to levy a rate for application to a local purpose. But still, up to a certain date, in the contest between Charles I. and his Parliament, the Puritans not only rendered great services to free- dom, but secured for themselves all that their descendants enjoy at the present day. Up to what date 7 Up to the moment before they fought against the Church. Before a sword was drawn they had obtained perfect equality with the Episcopal Church- men. They were the most powerful party in the House of Commons; they had even members of their body amongst the 302 ABOLITION OF CHURCEI RATTES. Peers. All this did not content them; and they resolved to fight against the Church. They had every advantage for that con- test in the time they chose. Never had our Church so many enemies; never—thanks to Laud and the Star Chamber—had it alienated so many friends. The word chosen by the hon, mem- ber is historically correct. The Puritans fought against the Church. For a time they triumphed. Bishops were expelled from the House of Lords; twelve of that body were impeached for treason. Laud's head fell upon the scaffold. The Episcopal Church was voted away by the House of Commons; a Pres- byterian Church was proclaimed instead—but that was never acknowledged by the nation, nor by the bulk of the Puritans themselves. In point of fact, the result of the fight was that complete severance of Church and State, that unfettered Com- petition of all varieties in religious faith to which the hon. gentleman would invite us to retrograde. But who were the ultimate sufferers ? was it the Churchmen 7 No, it was the Puritans. The most intelligent and gifted of those foes to the Church—the men who, by mental culture and generous human- ity, most resembled the divines and teachers of modern Dissent —were overborne, silenced, swamped by the wild fanatics who followed fast on the abolition of one standard discipline of wor- ship. The nation woke terrified, shocked by that reviling of ignorant zealots, outbidding each other in perversion of Scripture; and the main cause that gave Charles II, his throne without even a battle, without even one prudent check on his arbitrary power, was the yearning impatient desire of the people to have back a Church of standard doctrine and decorous ritual, which might guard the Sanctity of the Gospel and the dignity of human reason from the visions of a Harrison and the burlesque of a Barebones. The Church against which the Puritans had fought was restored; but how fared it then with the Puritans ? Where, then, were the power and prevalence of that once mighty party ? Sir, they had sown the wind and they reaped the whirl- Wind. All they had gained for England and themselves before they had fought against the Church, fell from their hands; and instead of being the haughty arbiters of conflicting fates, so ABOLITION OF CHURCH RATES. 303 sternly did public opinion visit upon them the issues of that fight, that two centuries elapsed before they rose again to the ranks of equal citizens, by the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. And that was the result of the fight against the Church 1 Therefore, I say, addressing myself solely to Dissenters, regard- ing the question from the very ground on which the Member for Birmingham tells us the descendants of the Puritans, place it, I say, that if history contains any warning by which politi- cians may profit, it is a warning not to renew against the Church, where it is infinitely more free from Salient points of attack, that strife in which a triumph so brief and so dearly purchased was followed by a reaction so signal and so complete, even amongst the very generation that had shouted for the expulsion of the bishops, and gathered round the scaffold of Laud. I have no sentiment of rancour against the Puritan ancestor of the Dissenter. I myself had an ancestor whose memory I venerate, whose name I bear, and who represented in the Long Parliament the same county I now represent—a man not indeed a Puritan, but voting with the Puritans in the same divisions as Hampden or Pym. And as his descendant I would say to the descendants of those with whom he was in that great war of the giants, continue to share with us in all things the blessings of that freedom for which our common ancestors strove—con- tinue to give to us Churchmen, competitors on these floors for all the high prizes of ambition and renown; but beware, for your own sakes, how you refuse to be the tolerators of a tolerant Church, which supplies to all your preachers the standard of a rational doctrine, and the example of a culture which stimulates a correspondent bearing on the part of Nonconformist divines. That Church you must summon to your aid whenever you have to meet a common foe. Against the wit and intellect, the philosophy or research, of infidel and sceptic writers, that Church —skilled in all the arguments, versed in all the learning, which the disciplined culture of endowments seems to bestow—stands by the Dissenter's side, to guard with him, guard for the poor and the ignorant, guard as the common inheritance of all the Sects and all the nations embraced by Christendom, one great 304 ABOLITION OF CHURCH RATES. manual of human duties, one grand brotherhood of human hopes. So much for the argument against the Church through the Church rate, on the very ground taken for the political Dissenter. I don't apologise for the length at which I have discussed it; because, unless you believe that the Member for Birmingham here fails in that plain speaking for which it is his rare distinction to be honestly and inconveniently conspicuous, much more of the real gist of the question now before us is to be found in his speech than in the speeches of those who separate themselves from his candour, but unite themselves to his purpose. For those sincere Churchmen who had advised us to adopt this measure for the sake of peace, are thus disarmed of their only cogent argument; because the articles of peace are precisely what the hostile belligerents refuse to sign. The passing of this Bill is no step towards peace; it is only the capitulation of a fort- ress to besiegers who do not make war for the sake of the fort- ress, but who want the fortress for the sake of continuing the war. This brings me at Once to the arguments of the noble Lord the Member for London. - - The noble Lord says with truth, “that it would be a great advantage to the Church if we could place it in respect to Church rates in the same position it holds in respect to tithes.” But tithes were not abolished till a substitute was found. Give us a substitute on equally good Security, and you may abolish Church rates as you abolished tithes. But in the same breath the noble Lord quotes the instance of Church cess in Ireland. He owns that in Ireland there was a fund existing on other property, but that here there does not exist the same means of supplying the place of a Church rate. And while, in One sentence, he suggests a substitute in a legal charge upon the land, in the very next sentence he bids us distrust the chance of that legal security, and share his unlimited confidence in the resource of voluntary contributions. Sir, voluntary contributions are an excellent aid but a bad security; and I don’t think there is a lawyer in England who would advise a transfer of capital to that high-sounding investment. The noble Lord then proceeds to what I may call ABOLITION OF CHURCH RATES. 305 the main plot of an argument, Čonceived and conducted on the tragic principle of gradually preparing the mind to submit its reason to the influence of terror. “This agitation,” says the noble Lord, “is bad for the Church. I know well what a Dissenting agitation is. I know how Dissenters combined to put an end to the slave trade and slavery. They will use the same machinery in this instance.” The very same machinery perhaps. But have they the same stuff for the fabric, have they the same force for the steam. Long before Dissenters were heard of, long before the word Protestant was known, long before the Papacy was armed with its temporal power and spiritual thunders, the genius of the gospel itself brought to bear against slavery in Europe the same machinery which was already fast reconverting the gods of the Pantheon into the inventions of Homer. And when that machine which had centuries before destroyed the slavery of the white men was employed against the slavery of the negro, the noble efforts of Dissenters were as nobly assisted by the eloquence and zeal of Churchmen. The slave trade, indeed, was condemned in Parliament before a single Dissenter had a seat in the House of Commons; and when at last slavery received its final death- blow throughout that empire by the emancipation of the West Indian slaves, to whom was entrusted that Crowning triumph of Christian humanity ? To an enemy of the Supremacy of the Church 2 No, to the very man who now, as Earl of Derby, gives all the authority of a name eternally connected with the abolition of slavery, against your proposal for the abolition of Church rates. How then can the noble Lord quote the success of an agitation, popular with Churchmen, headed by Churchmen, based on the broadest principles of our common Christianity, and so carefully anxious to conciliate the claims of property with the rights of men, that it sanctioned the vote of twenty millions for the vindi- cation of its unselfish object 2 How can he quote the instance of that success as an argument for the probable Success of an agitation which is to array the Church against the agitators, which is not to unite but to Separate the believers in Christi- 'anity; which has for its ostensible object the exoneration of property from one of its most ancient burthens, and for its VOL. II. U 306 ABOLITION OF CHURCH RATES. latent purpose the assertion of a principle by which all the property of the Church may hereafter be called in question ? For see what is asked from us in this Bill; and what must be the logical consequences if we give up what is asked | You would make it illegal for Churchmen to raise a rate among them- selves for the repair of their own churches. You are provided with no substitute, and you say, that for such repairs they may depend exclusively on the chance of voluntary contributions. What can be a more direct blow at the very root of a National establishment 2 For is it not the most absolute condition of any National establishment whatsoever, that it cannot depend ex- clusively on voluntary contributions for the maintenance of what is necessary for its uses as a National institution ? And can anything be more necessary to the uses of a National Church than the maintenance of places at which its members may wor- ship ! This is not all. Once make it illegal to support the fabric of the church otherwise than by voluntary contributions, and you cannot fail to facilitate and encourage the effort to make it also illegal to support otherwise than by voluntary contribu- tions, the ritual in doctrine, the hierarchy, which constitute the Only reasons why the Dissenter objects to maintain the fabric itself. The very argument you now found on the smallness of the sum raised by Church rates, that it is only £25,000—and if Dissenters were exempted from payment, it is only £150,000—is to me an argument against a Surrender which offers to the ordin- ary elements of human nature stronger temptations to larger demands. This Small sum does not much tempt the passions of Cupidity and envy; it offers no aid to secular purposes. But Once bring the law to cover the usual distinctions of meum, and tww.m., by taking from the Church, without any compensation, that which the Church had before possessed, and you licence those passions which covet our neighbours goods, you fix the eyes not only of all the enemies of the Church, but even of large numbers amongst the less educated classes who now peaceably recognise its benefits, upon all the wealth of its endowments, which an . application of the same principle might confiscate to the sup- ply of some popular want, or the relief from some unpopular ABOLITION OF CHURCH RATES. 307 burthen. If agitation can be so successful in the first pitiful nibble at Church property, the success will whet the appetite; appetite comes with eating, and that proverb is never so true as when the eating is at the expense of others. |For this reason I might dismiss, at once, that cry which in every discussion on the subject is raised with as much pretence as if it were an argument. It is said, “What do you fear that your parish churches will fall to ruin unless supported by rates? ‘What an accusation against the apathy and indifference of your own wealthy persuasion, to suppose that you could not subscribe among yourselves to support your own places of worship !” The answer to this is sufficiently obvious. It is not a question whether churches would or would not fall out of repair if left wholly to voluntary contributions. As long as the Church itself is acknowledged to be a National institution, so long it is not desirable to apply to the maintenance of the fabric a principle that would very soon after be applied to the maintenance of the preacher. If the parish churches did fall out of repair, there would instantly be this new cry, “How can you longer call your- Selves the Church of the Nation ? You fail in the very uses for which you defend an establishment. There, in those rural parishes, where Dissenters the least interfere with you, there, where you Ought most triumphantly to point to the civilising influences of your Christian mission, your venerable churches are dilapidated ruins. Down with an established Church which has ceased to fulfil the most simple and least disputed of all its objects | * On the other hand, if the parish churches did not fall into decay, if they were kept up by voluntary contributions as well as they are now, then the cry would be, “See the good effect of the voluntary principle ! You have applied it safely to the fabric of the church, even in the poorest and remotest rural districts— apply it now to the support of the clergy.” Sir, it seems to me an axiom in government as clear and as positive as any axiom in Euclid, that where an institution is avowedly maintained for national purposes, it can never be left exclusively, no matter how popular, no matter how generally acknowledged its uses may be—never be left exclusively to the 308 ABOLITION OF CHURCH RATEs. itinerant benevolence of the begging hat. Take an analogous case—take the Poor Law. If there be a virtue in the World which distinguishes our age and our land, it is charity to the poor. Let any call on extra benevolence be made, and voluntary contributions pour in from all parts of the country. But suppose One of those political economists, who are opposed to the principle of a poor law, were to employ against a poor rate the same cry that is raised against a Church rate. Suppose he were to say, “Do you think the poor would be left to starve if dependent solely on voluntary contributions See how largely you rely on voluntary contributions now—see how the poor rate, economical though it be in amount, fails to do all which it professes to do. Abolish this poor-rate, which no one has any great pleasure in paying, and rely alone on the well-known charity of your countrymen.” I know not how any reasoner could accept that argument so long as he believes it is the duty of a State, no matter how charitable its subjects may be, to secure some place where a man may find food for the body, if he will take the trouble to come to it; and I know not how any reasoner can accept your analogous argument so long as he believes it is the duty of a State, no matter how pious its members, to maintain Some place where a man may find food for his soul, if he will take the trouble to come to it. And surely our Christian brethren, the Dissenters, ought to forgive us if we cling to this doctrine as a positive duty. For it only embodies the truth which all our joint preachers enforce, that if man has an interest in his life, which is short, he has an interest much greater in the Soul, which lives on for ever, - Sir, if there be any gentlemen who are as yet undecided as to the vote they are called upon to give to-day, I respectfully entreat them to extend their view beyond the narrow point to which it is sought to confine their judgment. They should con- sider that this is almost the first question on which they have been asked to reverse that great characteristic of English policy, which declines to destroy till you are clear as to what you would reconstruct. It is this which has hitherto distinguished our reforms from those of other countries, and has made them ABOLITION OF CHURCH RATES. 309 durable and safe. I gather from the speeches of her Majesty's Government, that when they ask us to destroy the Church rate, they think it will be desirable, some day or other, to find a substi- tute for what they take away. What that substitute shall be they cannot determine. They invite us to pull down and take the chance of a squabble as to what we may afterwards build up. In private life a man scarcely allows his bailiff to pull down a barn or a cowshed, if the bailiff cannot clearly explain with what he intends to replace them. In public life the Trustees of the Nation are at Once to pull down what has hitherto been a part of the Church of the Nation, and when we ask the Government what they would put up instead, the only answer we can get is, “Something or nothing, as the case may be.” But do those gentlemen who sincerely think that a National Church is a National benefit, believe that they sufficiently dis- charge the debt of reason and conscience when they say, “We regret the language of the Member for Birmingham, we differ from his ulterior objects.” Do you regret his language 2 You ought rather to rejoice that a man so eloquent Scorns to deceive you— that he has told you as plainly as tongue can speak, that if you vote for this motion, you do—whether you like it or not— you do swell the march of the Puritan against the Church. It is no reason because you voted for the Second reading of the Bill that you should vote for the third. Many gentlemen may have voted for the second reading, in the belief that Some substi- tute for Church rate would be proposed in Committee. At the third reading nothing is before us but the naked question, “Ay, or No, shall Churchmen be forbidden, after a certain day, to tax themselves according to ancient custom, for the maintenance of their places of worship !” Ay or No, will you put the repairs of your national temples on that exclusive footing of voluntary contribution to which not a single parish in the vast metropolis would leave the reparation of its sewers ? - Sir, the noble Lord says, “we shall have this debate on every hustings P-Well, if it must be so, have we any reason to fear it 2 It has already been before every hustings in recent elections. I do not find that recent elections need fill us with gloomy despair. 310 ABOLITION OF CHURCH RATES. No, the more the question has been discussed, the better it has been for the Church; the more public opinion has recoiled from the unqualified abolition of Church rates, in proportion as Churchmen have evinced a desire to conciliate, and the enemies of the Church have avowed their unappeasable desire to destroy. Where is your old majority of 70 on a second reading 2 Last year it fell to 29,-this year to 15. These divisions are the watermarks of opinion, they show where the agitation, which the noble Lord fears may overwhelm us, recedes from the barrier that checked it. Slowly, perhaps, but Surely, as a tide when it once begins to ebb. But though I fear no battles on this question, I agree thus much with the noble Lord—the Member for London—I deplore them, and I should hold that statesman a benefactor to his country- men, and a true servant of that religion which teaches good will to all men, who shall devise for Church rate a substitute which both parties may accept with honour. But if these feuds con- tinue, the fault does not rest with us who have repeatedly sought to effect a settlement; it rests with those who forbid us even to redress the grievances of which they complain, unless we ac- knowledge that the worst grievance of all is the Church we are brought up to revere. If I decline now to discuss the compromise which has been suggested by my honourable friend beside me, it is because I think this first step to compromise must be the withdrawal of this Bill. When the Dissenter complains of a payment to the repair of a church which his conscience forbids him to enter, though much might be said to argue his complaint away, yet I own for my part that there is a something in my con- Science that makes me sincerely anxious to conciliate that scruple in his. But when he says “No, I reject an exemption from my- self, I demand a humiliating triumph over you. No change in the law will content me that does not make it illegal for Church- men to Supply what they are taught to believe the holiest of local wants by that System of local self-taxation which is the most ancient custom of English freemen.” Then, Sir, the Dis- senter Seems to me to unite liberty and the Church in the same cause, and we declare for Or against both in the vote that we give to-day. XLII. O U T L IN E O F A S P E E CH INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 4TH OF MARCH 1862. ON Tuesday the 5th of March 1861, the Member for Taunton, Mr Arthur Mills, moved in the House of Commons for a select Committee on Colonial Military Expenditure, and in regard to the general defence of the British Dependencies. The Committee was nominated on the 13th of March, and sat during the spring and summer of that year, its report being published by order of the House of Commons on the 11th of July. On Tuesday the 4th of March 1862, the Member for Taunton, who had presided over that Committee throughout, as its Chairman, moved in the House of Commons a resolution to the effect, “That this House, while it fully recognises the claim of all portions of the British Empire on Imperial aid against perils arising from the consequences of Imperial policy, is of opinion that colonies exercising the rights of self-government ought to undertake the main responsibility of providing for their own internal order and security.” Seconded by the Member for Maidstone, Mr Charles Buxton, this resolution upon the suggestion of the Member for Montrose, Mr William Edward Baxter, was supplemented with the words, “ and ought to assist in their own external defence.” So amended, the resolution was approved of by the Government, and agreed to by the House. During the discussion which arose upon this occasion, the following speech was intended to have been delivered. SIR,-This question appears to me to lie in a nutshell. If you want to keep your colonies, you will Support the prudent suggestions by which Mr Elliot modifies the extreme doctrine 312 COLONIAL MILITARY EXPENDITURE. recommended by Mr Hamilton and Mr Godley, if you want to get rid of your colonies, you have nothing to do but adhere to that extreme doctrine in all its well argued severity. In fact the difference between these two conflicting authorities is to be traced to their fundamental disagreement as to the ad- vantage of keeping colonies at all. Mr Godley, by whom I presume the report signed by him and Mr Hamilton was drawn up, considers that our political connection with our colonies is not that benefit to our commerce which is vulgarly supposed— he has said elsewhere, “that it is desirable to reduce to the mini- mum their dependence upon us”—in short, he regards them as burthens which we should gradually slip off from our shoulders and he bases his whole report on the assumption that we have no interest in our colonies sufficient to justify the trouble of defend- ing them. Mr Elliot, on the contrary, regards our colonies as sources of wealth, as the stimulants and feeders of commerce, as burthens, if you please, but burthens that strengthen the muscles which are trained to support them, and contribute to the health of the body politic by that habitual exercise and demand on energy which preserve youth and vitality whether to men or to nations. I believe, in this view, Mr Elliot to be right; that may be a matter for philosophical controversy, but One thing is clear, the Queen's dominions would not be safe in the hands of any Go- vernment that shall pronounce him to be wrong. There are three principles laid down in this report. On one of these principles Mr Elliot is agreed with Messrs Hamilton and Godley, namely, that you cannot defend all your colonies in detail. You cannot provide each colony with garrisons and regiments for its separate defence. That is a principle on which every statesman and every military authority will arrive at the same conclusion. It amounts to this, that you must concentre force, and not subdivide it. The fate of our Colonial Empire may be fought in the Channel by all the might of England; it could never be fought at Jamaica with two or three ships and two or three regiments. The second principle is that colonies should be divided into two classes. One class to consist of military posts, or those in COLONIAL MILITARY EXPENDITURE. 313 which garrisons are maintained for imperial purposes as distinct from the defence of the special colonies themselves, such as Malta, Gibraltar, Corfu, Bermuda. Messrs Godley and Hamilton think these places should be dealt with exceptionally, and not included in any general Scheme of colonial contribution. The distinction made here is in language both inaccurate and obscure. It is inaccurate, because, for instance, Corfu is not a colony at all, but a free and independent State, placed under British protection for European purposes, and bound by conven- tion to contribute a yearly sum to its own defence;—while there are colonies not glanced at in this definition, which are maintain- ed as stations for the general strength of the Empire apart from consideration for those colonies themselves. Such as Mauritius, Ceylon, the Cape, and others. Now, it is said that such places, held for imperial purposes, should be exempted from the general Scheme of contribution. I should observe that they at present contribute more than £153,000 a year. Is it intended that they should cease to do so 2 No colonies can afford the contribution better. But if that is not meant, it is impolitic to raise the question by placing them, by a distinction clear as to words but obscure as to sense and meaning, in a different category from the other colonies. The third principle is that in all the other colonies—that is where troops are stationed primarily if not exclusively for the defence of the lives, liberty, or property of the colonists—the entire management and responsibility of the troops shall pass away from the Crown and be vested in the colonies themselves, while a share of the expense (it is suggested a moiety) shall be borne by those colonies, say a joint contribution at an uniform rate, no matter how differently circumstanced each of the colo- nies, thus uniformly rated, may be. I am convinced, with Mr Elliot, that this is a dangerous principle; and if you attempt rigidly to enforce it, you will lose your colonies. - Take first those colonies in which there is a Small White popula- tion of planters amidst a numerous black population that your laws have made free. If our laws made the black men free, the white have a right to expect that your force will keep the White men 314 COLONIAL MILITARY EXPENDITURE. safe. Now, the whites are not numerous enough to protect them- selves, nor rich enough to raise the money to pay the troops that may become necessary to protect them. Even now there have. been recently two instances of riot in the West Indian Colonies, in which the whites, not having English troops at hand, applied for military force, once to Denmark, another time to France. But if foreign nations are to protect your colonies, it would better become the honour of England and the majesty of her Crown, to abandon them. For if in one of these West Indian Colonies, the whites, having the predominant power in the legislature, succeeded in Organising a military force for which England paid half, but which is as entirely under the responsible control of the colony itself, I am convinced that in any case where a chance riot broke out it would be ascribed to some terrible design on the part of the blacks, the military force would be ordered to act with that imprudent severity which is characteristic of a timorous severity, and that severity might be sooner or later followed by a retalia- tion on the part of the blacks, with that Sanguinary violence which characterises the outbreak of an angry population, and the revenge of an antagonistic race. - Again, take Some still Smaller and poorer settlement, in which, perhaps, not very wisely, you encouraged your Countrymen to settle many years ago among fierce barbarian tribes. Are you to tell these men, struggling for life on the coasts of Africa, that because they are poor, they must dispense with the luxury given to the humble pauper who calls himself a British subject, I mean the Security to life and property. To say that, whatever their danger and whatever their poverty, they are to contribute to their defence at the same uniform rate as Victoria and Canada, is to say, that when you invited them to colonise you entrapped them into a shamble. Take next a superior African colony, Such as Natal. At Natal there is a tendency to an aggressive policy against the Kaffirs, which requires the constant vigilance and stern discouragement of the Colonial Office. But suppose Natal got up a military force entirely at its own responsible Control, as is here proposed, I fear the result would be an armed COLONIAL MILITARY EXPENDITURE. 315 attack on the most cherished habits and prejudices of the Kaffir tribes, which might be followed in six months by the massacre of every white man in the colony. Lastly, take your greatest and richest &olonies—those in Australia and North America. These are colonies in which party spirit prevails even more than it does with us, and accordingly it is the wise maxim of the Colonial Office to have as few debatable points of corres- pondence with their Government as we possibly can. At pre- sent, slight as is the thread by which we hold those posses- Sions, it is as strong as steel, simply because there is no fric- tion. On it. But I can conceive nothing that would so wound the loyalty of those haughty provinces, as to start from the principle here laid down, that the mother country has no inter- est in their preservation, and that we can only send them troops On the same principle of payment with which the grand con- ferences of the middle ages let out their mercenaries to the Italian republics, or the Swiss indifferently lend themselves to the King of Naples or the Pope of Rome; and I can fancy no correspondence that would so rouse the spirit of party against us, and be so irritating and so feeble, as long public despatches backwards and forwards, all based upon that principle, and all Seeking to carry it out in detail, every time a ship was demanded and a regiment changed. The thing in itself would be impossi- ble. There is no place where a garrison is so required as Ha- lifax, for the safety of all North America. Well, but Halifax is in Nova Scotia, which is by no means rich; and is Nova Scotia to contribute to that garrison, while all the rest of British North America escapes contribution to the force that protects it. Take again Newfoundland. We all know the dangerous dis- agreements that exist between home and that colony with regard to the Fishing grounds. I do not think the high Spirit of this country would be reconciled to the tame surrender of the New- foundland fishermen to the navies of France. But if it Were desirable to send ships and men to protect Newfoundland, do you imagine we could wring from Newfoundland a contribution to their payment at an uniform rate with the gold bearing city of Melbourne 2 A danger that might be prevented at Once by 316 COLONIAL MILITARY EXPENDITURE. the timely appearance of a frigate or a detachment, may spring up at any moment in dimensions as vast as ever; but if be- fore dealing with the danger you wait to haggle about the pay- ment the colony is to make, either the colony may be gone Or it may need an army to recover it. Now, the whole of this re- commendation by Messrs Hamilton and Godley rests upon One abstract principle. But does not our experience of life tell us, that if there be an art beyond the power of statesmen, it is the principle. An old proverb says, “Beware of the men of one attempt to govern the varieties offlesh and blood upon one abstract book;” and I say, “Beware of the politician with one abstract principle.” This is true even if the one abstract principle be Sound. But is the principle here laid down a sound one 2 It is this, that England is not bound to contribute towards the de- fence of her colonies merely because she is interested in their defence; for in such case the obligation should be reciprocal, and the colonies, in their turn, ought to contribute systematically and habitually to the defence of London and Portsmouth, and that, therefore, the only reason why England is bound to contribute to the defence of her colonies is, that the Imperial Government has the control of peace and war, and is, therefore, bound in honour and duty to protect them against the consequences of its policy. This argument narrows our obligation simply to defend colonies when they are threatened with invasion. But I think this is an unsound view of the nature of our obligation. For why does England keep any colonies at all? Why accept the control of peace or war as regards them 2 It can be for no other reason than that she thinks that she has an interest in a colonial empire; nay, an interest So great that she accepts the terrible responsibilities of war for its defence. If that be the case, the interest of England enters into the whole consideration of the question, and cannot be got rid of by Saying that the interest must be so identically reciprocal, that if England defends New- foundland, Newfoundland should defend Portsmouth. Because an interest may be reciprocal without its being shown in exactly similar reciprocity of Service. If a policeman defends my house in London, I am not therefore bound to defend a policeman's COLONIAL MILITARY EXPEN DITURE. 317 house at Dover. I repay the State in another way, by a general Contribution to the wealth that finds a general police. And that is the way in which the colonies repay England, many of them in hard money, by the vast profit they yield to trade or com- merce. Mr Elliot cites Australia. She imports into the United Ringdom more than fourteen millions; she takes from the United Kingdom more than eleven millions of home produce. Aus- tralia receives from us at the rate of £12 a-head, while the United States of America, our best independent customer, re- ceives from us about 15s. a-head. I am aware that the answer of Mr Godley, seeking to depreciate the value of colonies generally, would be that the United States are a manufacturing population, and Australia has not yet arrived at that point of industrial progress; but the fact remains the same for the present, however it may be modified hereafter. Australia takes from you twelve times the amount in proportion to population that is taken from you by your best independent customer, and four times the amount of your expenditure, civil and military, upon all your colonies put together. Indeed, as a general principle, all colonies, from the greatest to the least, prefer commercial dealings with the mother country. The best proof of this is in French Cale- donia, which has much the same wants as Australia. French Caledonia deals with France as Australia deals with England. It would be said by Mr Godley that Australia would continue to do so if she ceased to have any political connection with us. That might or might not be, but I hope the Queen's Government do not mean to gratify the curiosity of political Science by trying the experiment. Meanwhile I take the question on a wider ground than that of trade. I say that our colonies repay England not in hard money alone, not, if you please to Say SO, in hard money at all, but by the rank and the dignity, by the moral power, by the weight in Europe, which are due to a sceptre that casts over earth a shadow so vast and so tranquil. There is an awe which belongs to these attributes of imperial grandeur; that awe strengthens the voice that comes forth from this island on behalf of humanity and justice; that awe may keep from inva- sion the island itself as the centre of that marvellous combination 3.18 COLONIAL MILITARY EXPENDITURE. of energy and intellect which seems to have found the secret of controlling the widest extent of empire by the Smallest amount of force. But if you lost your colonies either because you said with this Report that you could not afford to protect them, or because they left you when you placed their protection upon a principle ungracious in itself and impracticable in its applica- tion, your authority would forfeit an influence, and your very shores a security. I will take an illustration of that truth from the instance of Canada. Mr Godley would select Canada as an instance of the Small commercial profit a great colony, as it grows up, affords to the mother country. He would say, if Australia in its infancy deals with you more than the United States do, Canada, in its maturer growth, deals with you less than the United States do. Quite true. Canada imports from us at about the rate of 12s. a-head, Republican America at 16s. a-head. True, Canada meets our goods by a duty of twenty per cent. ; true, if Canada were independent to-morrow she might not take from us a single shilling the less. But will the House of Com- mons say that there would not be a thrill of alarm throughout all England, a cry of exultation from our enemies abroad, a more formidable bustle in the arsenals of Cherbourg and Toulon, if our First Minister came down to either House to inform us that Canada had ceased to belong to the Queen of England. But if that be so, then we have a direct interest in the political Con- nection with our colonies, and something in Our plain robust English understanding bids us reject this Report, which founds all its recommendations on the dogma, that we have no such interest whatsoever. Yet, if you accept the advantages of a great empire, you must accept its responsibilities. Foremost amongst these responsi- bilities is a humane care for life and property even where not threatened by invasion. England would hear with shame and horror that in any part of the world you called men British subjects, you placed them nominally under the British flag, gave them British laws, called them countrymen, and then left them to be butchered by Savages, or to be the prey of civil War With each other, because you said you had no interest in COLONIAL MILITARY EXPENDITURE. 319 their welfare, for they were too poor to pay the same price as the rich did. When I first entered the Colonial Office I found the saying of an illustrious predecessor, the noble Lord the Member for London, established there as a proverb. He is reported to have Said, “the best police is very often the sight of a red coat.” I believe this to be a true and a wise saying. The soldier should never be a policeman; but the knowledge that behind the policeman there is a soldier in case of need, is often the cheapest and best guarantee for the peace of the civil community, and the Safety of human life. Therefore I dissent from the doctrines of Messrs Hamilton and Godley. I think their abstract principle itself unsound; and with the fall of the principle, fall the reasonings which are based upon it. But I do not the less consider that many of their remarks, and the general spirit of their Report are emi- nently useful. I think they lead to these two safe conclusions,— First, that the best general way to protect our colonies as against the enemy, is to take care of our navy, and subdivide our forces as little as possible. Secondly, that the Secretary of State for the Colonies should use every exertion in his power to create in each colony, from the poorest and humblest to the richest and most powerful, a disciplined force for Ordinary occasions of de- fence against internal disturbance, whether as police or militia, according to their respective services, and that this should be as much as possible a condition for any extra help that necessity may call for. This was my strenuous object during the time I held the Colonial Seals; and I believe in many places where there appeared no great probability of success, the object has been greatly advanced. To take a few instances—I hear from private quarters, that in Bermuda, Barbadoes, and Prince Edward Island, the recommendations I was enabled personally to give to certain officers whom I sent there, have been actively carried out, and that a laudable spirit of self-protection has recently sprung up. I do not doubt that Our Own example of volunteers and rifle corps will have a great effect on all our colonies. By steadily pursuing this determined inculcation of Self-defence, We shall at last attain our end of rearing up brave and manly 320 COLONIAL MILITARY EXPENDITURE. communities, intent on their own internal protection, and by regular and quick degrees lightening the burthen of the mother country without loosening the ties that bind the Colonies to the Crown. But do not attempt to wind up all your clocks with a single key, nor set those at the antipodes by the minute-hand of the Horse Guards. I cannot better conclude than with these judicious and weighty remarks of Mr Elliot — “What has to be solved is not one problem but many. I despair of discovering among them any self-acting rule which shall be a substitute for the judgment and firmness of the Mini- sters of the Crown for the time being. They will, doubtless, always be guided by a policy, but they can hardly be expected to despatch such complicated and arduous questions by a single maxim.” Is not this plain good common sense ? By that common sense we now maintain our colonial empire, and it is Surely better not to desert that sober guide for the ingenious specula- tions of an adviser who tells us that the best way to manage our colonies is to start from the principle that we have no interest in keeping them. XLIII. O U T LIN E O F A S P E E C EI INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F C O M M O N S ON THE 1ST OF JUNE 1866. ON Thursday the 12th of April 1866, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Gladstone, moved in the House of Commons the second reading of the Bill then before Parliament, for the Extension of the Suffrage. A discus- sion arose upon the amendment moved by the member for Chester, Earl Grosvenor. At the close of the debate the Leader of the House again spoke at great length on Friday the 27th of April, when the original motion was carried upon a division by 318 votes to 313, giving a narrow majority of five to the Government. On Monday the 7th of May, the Chancellor of the Exchequer moved for leave to bring in a Bill for the Redistribution of Seats, which was, after some discussion, read a second time on Monday the 14th of May. While this measure was yet under the consideration of the House in Committee, the Member for Wells, Captain Arthur Divett Hayter, moved—by way of an amendment to the customary proposition for going into Committee, that Mr Speaker do now leave the chair—“That this House, while ready to consider the general subject of a Redistribution of Seats, is of opinion that the system of grouping proposed by Her Majesty's Government is neither convenient nor equitable, and that the scheme is otherwise not sufficiently matured to form the basis of a satisfactory measure.” A discussion arose upon this which lasted four nights, the amendment being carried at the close of it without a division, on Monday the 4th of June, the Speaker deciding that the Ayes had it. Upon the third night of the debate the following speech was intended to have been delivered. VOL. II. X. 322 THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. SIR,--I came down to the House, not without Some expecta- tion that Her Majesty's Government would save us and some of their own habitual supporters from a division on this question. But after what has fallen from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, it appears that they adhere to their former declaration, and that at every hazard they will stand or fall by this Bill, and in this session. Among the geographical conveniences which may be renewed with a certain latitude, the boundary of the Rubicon is not to be included. Well then, we on this have been asked so often in the course of this debate, why we do not hail the golden opportunity of settling, on better terms, it is said, than we shall ever get again, the question of Reform, that I will endeavour, in the remarks with which I shall trespass on the House, to state frankly and plainly the reasons why. Both the Law Officers of the Crown are positively pathetic in appealing to us to pass this conciliatory measure. The Solicitor- General admits its anomalies, but insists on its moderation, and assures us that it will be accepted with gratitude by the people. That touched me. To earn the gratitude of the people is the laud- able ambition of every public man. But in what part of the people am I to look for the gratitude 7 We are told that the large body of the Liberals will accept this settlement with the greatest reluctance. The reluctance is no less great on the Conservative side. And if those eminent legal authorities were not the advisers of the Crown, they might tell us to doubt the permanent felicity of any settlement which satisfies neither party, unless, indeed, they think that Reform is like matrimony, in which we are told on high authority, it is safest to begin with a little aversion. Well them, granting the aversion, which is indisputable, now as to the gratitude. Gratitude has been defined to be a lively sense of prospective benefits, and I do not deny that that sort of grati- tude may be found among that infinitesmal proportion of the people which occupies the front row of the Government benches. Because, while our acceptance of this Bill would save those gentlemen from a present embarrassment, they take especial care not to bind themselves from again reopening the whole subject, if by so doing they may embarrass any Government that succeeds to TELE REFORM BILL OF 1866. 323 them. But that reserve upon their part constitutes the first, though not the strongest, reason why we demur to the acceptance of their Bill. I am old enough to remember the Reform Bill of 1832. And One main reason which secured to that measure, of which I and those who favoured it, were not reluctant but ardent Sup- porters, the warm approval not only of the masses of the popula- tion, which this scheme does not obtain, but of the large propor- tion of the educated classes, which this scheme, I fear, fails to do, not only of historical Reformers, but of Liberals so moderate as the late Duke of Richmond, Lord Goderich, and other eminent disciples of Pitt, Mr Robert Grant, and Lord Palmerston—one reason for that warm approval was this—that Lord Grey's Cabinet, in proposing their measure, stated that in their opinion it was conclusive and binding, and that neither in Office nor Out of office would they sanction a disturbance of the settlement for which they made themselves responsible. And this was so well understood, that I remember hearing Sir James Graham, Seven years afterwards, in 1839, when the collateral question of Vote by Ballot was raised by Mr Hume, say these words, which are to be found in Hansard, “While finality with regard to a great nation does not exist, the pledge of finality was binding on the Members of Lord Grey's Cabinet one and all,” and he proceeded to quote this from a speech of Lord Althrop's on the first Re- formed Parliament, “He, Lord Althrop, appealed to every gentleman who was in the last Parliament while the question of Reform was going on, whether the promoters of that measure did not contend that so far as representation was concerned it was to be considered and was proposed as a final measure.” I do not attach to these words too severe an obligation. No doubt, many years afterwards, Sir James Graham thought that time had ab- Solved him from the pledge by which he had been so long bound; all I contend for is this—That the statesmen of Lord Grey's Cabinet held and abided by the doctrine that a considerable interval of years must elapse before a Government, which ob- tained the consent of various parties to a new representative System, in which there must be many sacrifices of individual Opinions and local interests, are honourably and morally at liberty 324 THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. to regard that settlement for which they are responsible otherwise than as final. But we search in vain through speeches of Her Majesty's Government for any satisfactory assurance that in going thus far while in office, they are not perfectly free to go much farther when- ever they are in opposition. Take a Member of the Government, whom we had reason to believe the most moderate, a man of talents so commanding, that he is to your side as Splendid an Ornament, and as high an authority as the Member for Belfast is to ours. Take the Attorney-General, what does he say ? “The measure cannot be considered more final than any thing else which rests upon an uncertain bases;” and he has no doubt in his mind that the time will come when all rated householders may be entrusted with the franchise. But he is clear and definite as to the finality of this settlement compared with the chief spokesman of the Government, the Chancellor of the Exchequer—for the only logical arguments and the only impassioned pleas which have been addressed to us by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on behalf of this measure, have been much more in favour of the millions whom it excludes, than of the thousands whom it admits to the franchise. And begging his pardon, if, as he said, “I misrepresented his meaning in the flesh and blood argument,” for I would never consciously misrepresent the argument of my most bitter opponent, still less the argument of a man, whom apart from politics, I consider it a great distinction to myself to call my Right Hon. Friend—putting aside the flesh and blood argument, still, if ever it be the destiny of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to enchant the National Reform League by an oration in favour of Universal Suffrage, he would only have to repeat the most bril- liant passages in these speeches, by which he sought to reconcile Conservatives to the amount of intellect, property and public virtue, which a £7 borough franchise would do—What?—Admit? No, still exclude from the pale of the constitution. Now, when we are invited to recognise the moderation of a settlement between contending parties, which one party proposes for the adoption of the other;-let me ask the Law Officers of the Crown, whether the first question that occurs to our common Sense is not this, “Is THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. 325 it a settlement at all? Do you mean it to be a bond fide settle- ment of your claims, or rather an unsettlement of all the grounds upon which the opposite party can resist the peril of further demands !” But, have I not said enough to show that Her Majesty's Government leave us in no doubt that it is not a settlement of their claims on behalf of what is called the Liberal party, but a Bill framed to pass—Why? In order to unsettle our legal powers to withhold assent from any claims which at any time may be required in favour of those very numerous litigants called fathers of families, or deserving but unenfranchised millions. When, therefore, you ask us to co-operate in what you pleasantly call a settlement, you invite us to risk our all in a lottery which does not offer to us a single prize. It is a hazard in which we think we have everything to lose, and in which there is not an honest man opposite who will venture to tell us that we have anything to gain. It is true that some kindly advisers on the opposite side say to us, “Till this question is settled you cannot hope for your fair share in the government of the country. You may come into power by accident, but it will be only upon sufferance. You cannot settle the question of Reform; and if you attempt it, We come in at any time by an abstract resolution.” Sir, that may or may not be true. But as to our incapacity to deal with the question of Reform, I doubt if it be in the power of that united stupidity which the Member for Westminster flatteringly ascribes to us, to frame a measure more characterised by the absence of the intellect which distinguishes himself. But if we cannot have the dignities of office, we as yet are not with- Out some weight, Some numbers, and Some dignity, as an Oppo- sition. And if, instead of opposing, we take this measure, with Such trifling amendments as you may permit, will any prac- tical politician tell us that we should meet the next Parliament in anything like the same numbers, with anything like the Same degree of power, against further organic innovation which we possess at present? No man will so tell us. The utmost any man can say is this, In the course of time, Say within three 326 THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. Parliaments, or at the end of nine years, such great blunders may be incurred by Liberal Governments that a Conservative administration very possibly may have fair play. Heaven. Only knows if anything which we now value may then be left to conserve; or whether, instead of seeking to save this mixed Constitution from Democracy—we should have been left with- out power to do that—we may not then rather be called in to save Democracy from that dictatorship which, in ancient states, is its natural successor and relentless destroyer. Danton lived to say that the Revolution, like Saturn, devoured its own children. Had he lived a very little longer, he might have learned that one child was saved from the jaws of Saturn, and was the Jove who dethroned his parent. Whenever democratic action is re- leased from the check of legitimate conservatism, the necessity for Order Soon replaces the passion for freedom, and the populace hastens to substitute for those constitutional Securities against itself which it had blindly destroyed, the force and the will of the single despot whom it creates and crowns, whether he be a Caesar, a Napoleon, or that advanced Reformer of Huntingdon, whose pikemen expelled the Parliament that had beheaded Charles. Are we then to be blamed for stupidity and blindness, if we See nothing very alluring in the prospect of ultimately recover- ing the strength and the numbers we are now invited to throw away; and being called in, at Some time or other as a Conserva- tive Government, to do—What? Why perhaps to save the gen- tlemen opposite from a repeal of their own Reform Bills. But, if we do not consent to a settlement, which, if it settle nothing else, will at least be sufficient to settle ourselves, What then 2 Oh then the hobgoblin argument, which Bentham places among his fallacies The hobgoblin of something worse. What is that something worse ? Will it begin by a dissolution of Parliament 2 Do you dare to dissolve on this question ? I agree with my hon. Friend, the Member for Malden, that Govern- ment ought to do so. The innovation proposed is so great—it affects so largely the existent representative body—that, seeing this Parliament, by the admission of the Attorney-General, was not summoned to deal with Reform, and the mere hustings-talk THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. 327 on the Subject was of the vaguest kind, it seems almost the duty of Her Majesty's Ministers to ask the constituencies how far they like the proposed transfer of power—a question to which Her Majesty's Government and their advisers might possibly get a very different answer than they obtain from those audiences of Selected agitators, at which, in their individual capacities they are such distinguished performers. But if the consequence of repealing this Bill be not a dissolution of Parliament, what then 2 A resignation of Government 2 and, let us take the worst, So great a difficulty to form another, that Her Majesty's Ministers come back again and propose another Bill? A Bill more violent, say the Law Officers, and those who bid us be wise in time. I wish you would give us a Bill more violent—1st, Because a Bill more violent would sufficiently alarm the country to range its educated classes still more largely on our side—2dly, Because though you could easily make a Bill more flagrantly violent, I defy you to make a Bill more insidiously unfair. You misconceive the feeling on our side if you think we dislike a Reform Bill in proportion as it is comprehensive. We only dislike a Reform Bill in proportion as it is unfair. No thoughtful man on our side cares how large, how comprehensive any Scheme is, by which you give a due and legitimate share of representation to the working classes or to the Liberal party, provided only you give the same due and legiti- mate share to the numbers, the property, and the educated cul- ture, which statistics, furnished by the Government, may prove to be arrayed in favour of our side of the House. What we say is this, that the more your Scheme pretends to be moderate, the more, when sifted by practical politicians, it is found to be craftily dishonest and elaborately unjust. No One can deny that Conservative opinion, however imperfectly we may repre- sent it in Parliament, is a mighty element in the social system of these three kingdoms—a mighty element that deserves to be fairly represented, whether you regard property, numbers, or educated intelligence. And yet we all know that it is quite pos- sible to devise a representative system, in which that Conserva- tive element is disfranchised altogether. It is disfranchised al- together in the metropolis. Hear what is said on that subject 328 THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. by a man who has the just reputation of a great thinker, and whose notions were, I believe, at One time honoured by the authority of the distinguished Member for Westminster. Hear what is said by Mr Hare, in his remarkable treatise on the Elec- tion of Representatives. “If we go through many of the streets and Squares of the metropolitan boroughs, and form our conclu- sions of the intellectual rank of the inhabitants from their pro- bable education and means of acquiring knowledge, and when we know that, of these, thousands would in vain approach the hustings to give expression to their views and opinions, it is impossible to look at the nominal representation of the metropolis as other than a mockery of the name.” I do not go so far as that—the advanced Liberalism, which forms a powerful party in all free countries, is worthily, and at this time most honourably, represented by the members of the metropolis. But the immense amount of Conservative opinion, intellect and property, which the metropolis includes, is as much disfranchised as if it did not exist. But that Conservative element finds its natural counter- poise elsewhere. It finds it in counties, and in those mixed borough populations where the suffrage is not so purely urban, nor so exclusively given to large numbers, as to overpower all the influences of property, of education, and of local predilections. That is our strength, that is the counterpoise. But the object of this scheme is to strike that counterpoise out of the scale—to destroy it, as far as possible, wherever it can be found. Let the House bear with me for a few moments, and follow my argu- ment. It is a general political truth, not only in this country, but in all communities, that the predisposition of large urban popu- lations is in favour of experimental novelties, and that the pre- disposition of rural districts is in favour of established institutions. And the experience of all historytells us, that urban populations are anti-Conservative in proportion as the franchise is lower, so as to give a preponderate influence to those voters who live by weekly Wages, and Who, whatever you may tell us of the value of their precarious income, have none of those capitalized savings which give them a sensible interest in the solidity of an existent order of things. Now, where a State that extends a very popular THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. 329 franchise to great towns, has a large agricultural population, there is one direct mode,-it seems a very bold one,—but I know of no other to correct that urban tendency of restless movement, which, if altogether unchecked, allows no hope of durability to any ex- istent form of Government. And that direct mode consists in framing those electoral districts, of which we hear so much, on Such principles as fairly represent the proportions both of urban and rural populations, and then admitting the working classes in both by a similar low rate of franchise. This is the system adopted, not only in America but in France. And Universal Suffrage in France is, no doubt, a Conservative safeguard against the democratic ascendancy of towns, because it calls on the rural Class to counterbalance those of the urban. And in order to awaken the prudent reflection of the poorer classes, in the con- Sequences of rash political change, and in order to enlist the material interest of the working men thus enfranchised on the side of property and established institutions, the profound Sagacity of the French Emperor devised a system of public loan or finance, in which the working classes were tempted to invest their Sav- ings, and to save in order to invest, so that they have the direct interest of the fund-holder in the safety of the Empire, and the maintenance of public credit. But though that system of fran- chise works well in France for the interests of the Imperial throne and its system of Government, Surely the indirect modes by which at present we in England endeavour to attain something of the same counterpoise between rural and urban populations, works better for English notions of freedom, and for the genuine interest of that opinion which large towns represent. But it is this indirect system in England which you are about to destroy; and I cannot conceive any mode of representation more fatal to the Conservative interest, more unfair to the proportions of pro- perty, intelligence, and even of population, which belong to it and its natural ally, the rural class, than the mode which the Government propose and commend for its moderation. In the first place, according to this scheme the ultra liberal element in the State is immensely strengthened by a borough franchise so low and so elastic, that in a very few years it will not only 330 THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. augment the preponderance of the operative class over the middle class, but the preponderance of the Order of the poorer working men over those artisans who are better educated and better paid. For, do let us consider what manner of thing in a very few years will be a £7 house in towns. This is easily ascertained, if you will ask yourselves the very simple question, which I ventured to put to you when this subject was debated Some years ago. What does a £7 house cost to build 2 A builder requires at least 7 per cent for the capital he invests on build- ing. A £7 house is therefore a house which is built for £100. But even in the provinces, where labour is comparatively cheap, a country gentleman cannot build a decent cottage for his rudest labourer for a £100. A cottage for a married man and his family cannot at present be built under from £120 to £130. Therefore the houses in the great towns, the occupiers of which will, in a few years, be the governing power of the country, must be greatly superior in point of the decent accommodation which morality and health require, to the rudest cottage a Small country Squire now-a-days builds for his rudest labourer. In propor- tion, therefore, as population and building extend, we may fairly presume that a £7 house in towns will be the very lowest tene- ment in which a working man above the grade of a pauper can possibly reside. Nay, even now in the metropolis a £7 rental So much implies, not merely poverty, but actual destitution, that in a list of instances of positive starvation, published under the head of “London Pauperism,” in the newspapers a few weeks ago, in cases in which families were found without a blanket to cover them, the rent paid for the houses of these objects of charity varied from 2s. 6d. to 3s. 9d. a week, or from £6, 10s. to even £9 a year. It is impossible to look forward a few years, and not see that such an abasement of the borough franchise universally applied, must swamp not only the middle class but the higher Order of educated artisans. Sir, in the classical mythology there are two symbolical re- presentatives of manual labour, the one is Vulcan, the skilled artificer, the child of Jove, the enemy of Mars, the benefactor of man. That is the archetype of the Educated Artisan, taking his THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. 331 high rank among the agencies, by the side of majestic Order. “Hinc avidus stetit Vulcanus—hinc Matrona Juno.” But the other is that king of the Cyclops, “informe, ingens cui lumen ademptum.” He is the archetype of an Uneducated Democracy, when it is made drunk and blind by any artful Ulysses, whose cunning can subjugate or delude its strength. I decline to en- throne this Cyclop. While you thus intensify and augment the democratic element of the State, you do all you can to enfeeble and annul the only Conservative counterpoise. You begin by a county franchise just high enough to exclude those of the humbler classes whose interests and whose feelings are bound up with the land, and you lower to let in upon the agricultural electors a deluge of urban voters, not only without any sympathy with owners and occupiers of the soil, but who regard those owners and occupiers with the jealousy of an antagonistic class. It is a mere mockery, as the Member for Calne has so admirably said, to talk of your generosity in giving more members to counties, when all the counties themselves are thus to be converted into the electoral appendages of towns. As the franchise even now stands, in the Scotch system, we are told that the urban population of Glasgow is sufficient to carry four Scotch counties, and the spirit and object of your scheme is to plant a Glasgow in every county of Pngland. So much for the destruction of the Conservative counterpoise in counties. Now for the distribution of boroughs. Every one knows that as my right hon. Friend, the Member for Bucks, showed in a speech not less remarkable for its profound reasoning than its accurate knowledge of the subject, the representation of Conservative opinions is not confined to counties. Her Majesty's Government, therefore, duly considering how to manipulate the boroughs they deal with, so as to oust the Conservatives from that relative share in them which they at present possess, begin by an arbitrary line of population of 8000 inhabitants instead of 10,000—as to which, so far as regards fairness to the Conservative party, I leave the whole question to the unanswered speech of the Member for Belfast—next they naturally turn their eyes to 332 THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. {. Scotland, and there they find a system of grouping boroughs by which not a single Conservative member is returned to Parlia- ment. “How does this system work in Scotland!” exclaims the Chancellor of the Duchy, in a transport of enthusiasm. “Are you dissatisfied with the result there; the result will be the Same in England.” I don’t doubt it. Accordingly, by Way of conciliating the Conservatives this is the system they trans- plant into England, only with this increase of the severity of the weapon they use against us, that instead of grouping round the present parliamentary boroughs the unrepresented towns, the rural districts and villages that lie nearest to it, and in which there would be that congeniality of interests and sympathies which is some check upon the undiscriminating passion for rest- less movement in urban democracies—they club together repre- sented boroughs lying far apart, even in different counties, and with no conceivable interest and sympathy in common. You travel miles out of your way in order to Swamp an agricultural borough, Sometimes by a Seaport, Sometimes by a manufacturing town. Why sir, cohesion is necessary to identity, and the chemist tells us that identity is destroyed by the separation of its atoms. You do not destroy the identity of the water as water, in this glass, if you add to it more water, with which it naturally coheres. But if you separate its atoms, and turn it into gas, its identity is destroyed though its atoms still exist— they are presented by gas and not by water, and So an agricultural borough would preserve its identity if added to a contiguous homogeneous neighbourhood with which it naturally coheres, but loses its identity when its atoms are separated, and appear twenty miles apart in combination with a distant Seaport or some re- mote manufacturing town. I need Scarcely point out how injuri- ous to the interest both of Conservatives and of moderate Liberals —in fact to all candidates who belong to what we call the class of independent private gentlemen—this mode of grouping is. The increased expense alone would be injurious. The Lord Advocate admits the expense, but then he says, “though the expense may be greater the bribery will be less.” But if you club together two or three discordant boroughs already repre- THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. 333 sented, and perhaps already partially corrupt, each with a separate staff of agents, each subjected to a severe contest, I cannot for the life and soul of me conceive how you can diminish corrup- tion by creating a poorer and more needy class of electors, who will learn by a telegram every hour of the polling the rising value of the price of votes. No, these are the seats you with- draw from the ambition of private gentlemen of moderate means and opinions, and put up for sale to monied speculators who covet a seat in Parliament, as proffering to them a substantial advantage in the career of directors to companies, and contrac- tors and speculative adventurers in that strange Sort of commerce which pretends to unite limited liabilities with incalculable profits, and which is now a-days called “finance.” Our ancestors gave it a ruder name. And as these strangers to the place having nothing to recommend them in local predilections or in distinguished names, will find their success more easy in propor- tion as they unite democratic Sentiment with aristocratic expen- diture, so most of these constituencies will be as much trans- ferred to the anti-conservative interest as if they were additions made to the metropolitan boroughs. The members for Calne and Belfast are at a loss to discover the principle of this scheme. To me it seems founded on a twofold object. The first, and no doubt, the most important is, the preservation of Tavistock. Tavistock is sacred. What the consecrated territory of Elis was to Greece, Tavistock is to England. All the rest of the land may be at war, but no invading footstep must profane that little nook of ground “in remoto gramine.” Amidst the general dis- order and the general havoc, Tavistock, crowned with its double representation, smiles down upon us calm and sublime. The second object is to eliminate as far as possible that comparatively small national trifle, the Conservative principle from the re- presentative system. That principle appears to be the most thoroughly eliminated in the metropolis and in the kingdom of Scotland. Accordingly, the Government significantly begin by an addition of four members to the metropolis and seven to Scotland, and then proceed to apply to the other constituencies a kind of franchise, a kind of grouping, and a kind of boundary 334 THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. which may most surely realise the process of Conservative dis- franchisement which is so successful in the metropolis and in the sister kingdom. And this is what Her Majesty's Govern- ment call a conciliatory compromise. Now, I daresay in the eyes of many ultra Reformers Out of doors—it may appear that nothing can be better for the country, nothing better for the Liberal interest, than the political extinc- tion of the Conservative party. But no Liberal member of Par- liament who has had as long an experience of the House as I have, and who adds to that experience, as most Liberal members at present do, the culture of an accomplished reasoner, will not agree with the Member for Calne, that it would be a great evil for the Liberal party if the Conservative were materially dimi- nished, and this not only for the reason he states, that if you had not an aristocratic party to deal with, you would be left free to face with one purely Democratic, but because even the Demo- cratic party would fall in pieces if it were not in some degree united by the presence of a strong Conservative opposition. It is the natural tendency of every movement party to sub- divide itself into hostile sections wherever the presence of a Conservative antagonist, they have in common, is withdrawn— and it is in those subdivisions that liberty itself incurs its most customary risk of destruction. It was so in the First Revolu- tion of France when Liberals alone found their way into the Convention, and wasted their destroying eloquence of hate upon each other. It was so again in France during that last discord- ant Republic, which perished by the coup d'état. It was so in our civil Wars, when the Royalists were banished from the House, and the feuds and squabbles of the conflicting Liberals had their result, first, in the absolute usurpation of Cromwell; and, secondly, in the yet more degrading despotism which followed the restoration of Charles II. Why, even now, one has only to look at the other side of the House to see how many subdivisions there now are, only kept from fighting with each other because as yet there is a Conservative array strong enough to attract on itself their stout English pugnacity. It was said by an illustrious Statesman, that political parties are like Serpents, and are moved THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. 335 by their tails. But if the parties opposite had not us to en- counter, I fear they would be less like Serpents than the famous cats of Kilkenny, and nothing but their tails would be left. There is, however, a fatal danger to the stability and the freedom of any State, in which—through some party juggle in the legis- lative system—any very large portion, even though it be a minority of the rank and intellect and property of the nation, is despoiled of its legitimate share of participation in public affairs. Now the chief, and indeed almost the only reason as- signed for your £7 franchise, is the danger of excluding a certain per centage of the poorer classes from the mere privilege of voting. And upon that ground we are so willing to meet you that we are ready to admit to the suffrage quite as many of the working class as you tell us your Bill would admit. And the difference between us is, that we think we could make that selection on principles more just to the other orders of society and more benefical to the working class itself. But if it be dangerous to exclude a mere per centage of men of humbler means and education than belong to any voters now enjoying the franchise, permit me to ask, whether the danger to the State would not be infinitely greater, if, seeing how large and substantial a thing the Conservative party really is—its immense social proportion of culture and energy, of wealth and rank—you devise a system of representation by which you are to extend, throughout these kingdoms, the same kind of virtual disfranchisement which awaits that Conservative proportion of our people in the metropolis of England, and the grouped boroughs of Scotland 2 Here you really would engender a most serious and rankling, a wide spread and perilous spirit of discontent among rich and powerful citizens, who could not be long favourable to any form of Government which ignored their claims and defrauded them of their just representation. There is no political lesson more striking in Machiavelli's great history of Florence, than the clearness with which he traces those disorders which made the social misery of that common- wealth, even in the most brilliant period of its stormy existence, to the original mistake of excluding from the Government of the State a certain section of the nobler classes, who were regarded 336 TEIE REFORM BILL OF 1866. and described by the advanced Liberals of Florence very much as the Member for Birmingham regards and describes the Con- servatives of England. But that mistake of vilifying and seeking to ostracize fellow countrymen for the crime of being well born and well educated, which might be pardonable in a Florentine shopkeeper 700 years ago, is not pardonable in the 19th cen- tury, in an English gentleman, who adds to his many other dis- tinctions that of an ardent admiration for the old times of the British Constitution. Sir, to sum up what I have said—although I am sincerely anxious to settle this question of Reform in a fair and concilia- tory spirit, I object to this scheme, first, because it is not a settlement at all even in the eyes of its advocates; and even if it were so, it is not a settlement with which we, the Conserva- tives, could “rest and be thankful.” It is so full, not only of those anomalies which must belong to every representative system, but anomalies more intolerable than those which already exist— Some of them so evidently created by party spite and by party favour, that this measure could scarcely pass into law before the opinion of the country would demand a new Reform Bill, and Conservatives themselves might be the first to raise that demand. Secondly, Because though I have chiefly confined my argument to a plea on behalf of the intelligence, the property, the numbers which belong to the party called Conservative, yet the plea is equally on behalf of the genuine interests of the Liberal party, and of the freedom and safety of that country which we have in common. For I hope I have shown it is against the interest of both to reduce to the minimum, as you now propose, the principle and party to which the word Conservative applies. Even if you unjustly regard us merely as the drag-chain on the wheel of progress, the more you will miss the drag-chain the faster you go downward and always downward. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has told us, that if by the rejection of this Bill the Government should fall, an avenger will arise out of their ashes. I venture to think that there is at least equal evidence in history for the prediction, that if the Bill is passed, and if a party in the nation immeasurably more insidious THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. 337 attain its object in the partial destruction of the Conservative party—Out of our ashes an avenger will yet most certainly arise—an avenger more lastingly fatal to you, the Liberal party, than it is in the power of the most unscrupulous fanatic of reform to increase the injury by which this legerdemain trick of legis- lation seeks to conjure us out of sight. I would not give you nine years from the date in which you put an end to that kind of temperate Conservatism which now exists, before the force of circumstance would create an avenger, who, uniting popular attributes with an anti-liberal philosophy, would seeks to destroy all that is now understood by the enlightened name of Liberal,— by that appeal to the genuine democracy of numbers, rural as well as urban, which the daring genius of Count Bismarck at this moment desires to make, when he would crush down the Liberals of Prussia, not by bayonets and military force—the time has passed for that—but by the flesh and blood of Universal Suffrage. “Time,” said the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in that perora- tion which thrilled us all by the exquisite beauty of its diction and delivery—“Time,” said the Chancellor of the Exchequer, “is on our side.” It is so. Time is on the side of all destroyers. Time is on the side of every agency which resolves into their ancient conflict that union of every element which informs States and Nations with individual vitality and soul. Time, while we speak, is no doubt at his silent work upon this old Commonwealth of ours. Even at the moment when it will seem to posterity an act of madness on our part to hazard by experiments fatal to every ancient State in which they have hitherto been tried, the doc- trines of a race which unites a freedom that seemed hopeless to the philosophers of Athens, a commerce that would have seemed a fable to the merchants of Tyre, with an empire unknown to the Roman Caesars, and unconceived by the wildest dreams of Alexander. Yes, no doubt, time is upon your side. But time is the enemy and not the friend of genuine patriots and careful statesmen. For it is their task not to hasten, but delay to the longest period permitted to human hope and to human genius, the ultimate victory of Time in the decline and downfall of their native land. WOL. II. Y 338 THE REFORM BILL OF 1866. To my humble reason it seems the duty of Ministers of the Crown, and Councillors to the people of England, to preserve a State not old enough for passive submission to decay, not young enough for violent innovation on its routine of habit, from those kill or cure experiments, which are only justified where the disease is terrible or where the life is worthless. I decline to submit to such experiments this mature, but this healthful and noble Monarchy of England. I decline to range myself on the side of Time. Because on the side of Time as against States and Nations, are the agencies of corruption and the instruments of ruin. XLIV. O U T L IN E O F A S P E E O H INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F L O R D S ON THE 23D OF JULY 1867. On Monday the 22d of July 1867, the Prime Minister, the Earl of Derby, moved in the House of Lords the second reading of the Bill for the Repre- sentation of the People. A long amendment was thereupon moved by the Earl Grey, expressing reluctant assent to the second reading, in the hope, that in the future stages of the Bill it might be found capable of improve- ment. The debate was adjourned to the following day, Tuesday the 23d of July, when, after a good deal of discussion, the original motion was carried without a division. Upon the second might of the debate, the following speech was intended to have been delivered. My LORDS,--I feel that I have need of all the indulgence of the House in rising to address your Lordships for the first time. If I cannot hope to merit that indulgence, I will endeavour at least not to abuse it, by delaying your Lordships for more than a few minutes. Whatever force we may give to the arguments so ably stated by the noble Wiscount in his opening speech, he has made it clear that one result would attend the adoption of his amendment —that result is delay. Such a delay in passing any measure of Parliamentary Reform as would necessarily arise from re-opening 340 THE REFORM BILL OF 1867. the whole subject in the House of Commons. For the ques- tion of the franchise is connected with that of the redistribu- tion of seats, as the noble Wiscount allows, but connected in a manner which he does not appear to me to have clearly per- ceived. It is notorious to all—though the noble Wiscount does not deign to observe it—that there are many members on both sides in the House of Commons who only gave their assent to the exten- sion of the franchise proposed, upon the understanding that the disturbance of the existent seats would be moderate and limited, and that understanding made a part of the compromise by which the measure has passed through that branch of the Legislature. If the Bill is to be sent back to the House of Commons, with the unexpected demand upon a much larger number of its mem- bers to sacrifice themselves and their constituencies, we take the best course to rekindle that kind of opposition which has for SO many years obstructed the passage of a Reform Bill. Naturally enough all the members whose seats may be threatened by this indefinite proposition, will unite with all those whose fears of the proposed franchise are yet more excited by the awful prophecies uttered in your Lordships' House. And it is not exactly in the month of August that members of Parliament will be in the best humour for re-debating all the abstract principles and all the complicated details involved in this very vague, but very important amendment. Those who belong to what is called the country party, will not unreasonably consider, that if you are to go into the question of redistribution on a large and bold scale, they are justly en- titled, according to relative property or population, to demand a much larger number of county representatives than they at pre- sent possess, or than the scheme Sanctioned by the Government awards to them. They have been, hitherto, very reluctantly reconciled to their own defective share of representation by the argument, that their interests or opinions obtain Some indirect and partial representa- tion in the Smaller boroughs. But there is no anomaly you can desire to correct, so great as the anomaly you would seek to perpetuate, if, upon the very ground of permanence and finality, THE REFORM BILL OF 1867. 341 you annihilate these smaller boroughs, remodel the constituency according to the principles of property and population, and then leave to the counties less than half the number of members which, according to those principles, statistics prove to be their due. Nor can this anomaly be met, nor the equilibrium of rival interests and opinions be adjusted by any device which the noble Wiscount can suggest, unless carried to such an extent as would require another year for the construction of another scheme. But that would be a year of angry agitation—agitation carried On by masses of the populace in the heat and ferment of great towns—another year of such agitation would do more evil than the wisdom of centuries could retrieve. And do not let us forget, as the noble Wiscount seems to do, that the Only popular agitation as to Reform has been with regard to the franchise, and not with regard to the redistribution of seats; and these agitators will take this amendment in connection with the Speeches that have been made against the franchise proposed. They will not fail to observe that the noble Earl, the leader of the Whig party, has spoken with much dislike of a franchise so popular, and declared it to be a change very much for the worse. And the amendment now proposed with his approval, will, I fear, seem to the great mass of the working class a pretext that may serve to defer and to jeopardize the measure which accords to them a franchise that the Supporters of the amendment do not cordially approve. No doubt that will be an unjust sus- picion which only the less enlightened part of the community will entertain. Practised politicians will perhaps more charitably believe that the amendment is formed in consistent adherence to principle-the principle of tactics which Mr Fox bequeathed to his successors, namely, that they would find it convenient to retain in the pigeon-holes of their bureaux a something or other about Parliamentary Reform, to be produced or supplied, like a something or other about Irish Church Reform—according as those successors might “rest and be thankful,” that is in Office— or be restless and dissatisfied, that is in opposition. My Lords, I will not follow the noble Wiscount through the articles of his dissent from the Scheme of the House of Commons, 342 THE REFORM BILL OF 1867. much as I might be tempted to show the objections to which I think they are exposed, because no man of ordinary experience and discretion would like to discuss off-hand the principles or details of a plan affecting future generations which is so loosely outlined in the programme of an opening speech. But let us look to the main argument in favour of this amendment. The argument is, that if we do not effect a larger and bolder Scheme of redistribution now, that subject will be immediately re-opened by a new Parliament, upon a scale much more extensive and much more hazardous. My Lords, I think that this apprehen- sion is not well founded. I believe, with Lord Macaulay, that the law of re-action proceeds in the political world as it does in the natural, and that after a vast organic change just completed, you will find that the public of a commercial, manufacturing, and intellectual commonwealth, will be very much inclined to enjoy a little repose, and very averse to favour any attempts to disturb the normal course of legislation, disquiet the operations of in- dustry, capital, and trade, and convulse the peace of the country by a new agitation for a new Reform Bill. In fact, the true reason why this measure has been suffered to reach your Lordships is not from any general desire of organic innovation, but rather from a fact which many of us seek to disguise from ourselves, the fact that the public is heartily sick of the whole question, and that having once satisfied the claims of the artisans to the franchise, it is firmly resolved that Parliamentary Reform shall not again be lightly made the shuttlecock of rival competition for power. I daresay much may be said about redistribution of seats at the hustings, and candidates may as well talk about that as about any- thing else. But I cannot believe that members returned after the next general election, will meet on the floor of the House of Com- mons with a heroic resolve to pass any measure which must crimi- nate the Parliament to which they have just been elected, and prematurely restore them to the pure but expensive embrace of a populous constituency; and such is the infirmity of human nature, that a desire to retain their own seats for the natural lifetime of the Parliament to which they are returned, will probably correct the impatience of the ardent Liberals to redispose of the seat of others. THE REFORM BILL OF 1867. 343 But if I am mistaken in these suppositions, and the next Parliament should be as much bent upon Democratic innova- tions as some of your Lordships apprehend, would its appetite for change be gorged and sated with the twelve boroughs by which the noble Earl flatters himself that he propitiates the Cerberus to whom he administers that dose ? No, rely upon it, that any scheme of redistribution which your Lordships would favour and the present House of Commons would pass, will be as unsatisfactory to the next Parliament, if that Parlia- ment be such as the noble Wiscount anticipates and fears, and therefore as little likely to be permanent as the measure which, in the opinion of the present House of Commons, meets the practical requirements of the time. I will add further, that against any very extensive scheme of redistribution, there is always this safeguard, that it cannot, as I have said, be justly effected without giving a much larger proportion to those agri- cultural constituencies which are considered to be the least democratic. I believe that the wisest men among the leaders of the movement are thoroughly aware of this fact; and, indeed, I have heard more than one of them express an opinion which is probably well founded, that even the scheme of electoral districts, with which we have been threatened as the ultimate goal of Democracy, would act in this country as it acts in France, so as to diminish the influence of the great towns, and increase that kind of influence which is called territorial. Eor all these reasons I think we may vote against the noble Wiscount's amendment, without any misgivings as to a reason- able element of durability in the scheme of redistribution ap- proved by the House of Commons and sanctioned by the govern- ment. Certainly, without any belief that a scheme upon the details of which it is clear that the noble Wiscount has not made up his own mind, would be one whit more permanent than that which his amendment condemns. And I am strengthened in my distaste for the noble Viscount's amendment, by my persuasion that though your Lordships have the most perfect right to deal with any question that affects the mixed constitution of these realms, yet that the noble Wiscount 344 THE REFORM BILL OF 1867. and the noble Earl select in their amendments, that special point of Parliamentary Reform on which it would be wise and gracious in your Lordships not to push your constitutional right to a dictatorial extreme. It is well known to us all, that the great difficulty in dealing With Parliamentary Reform has been that of inducing members to immolate their constituencies and destroy their own seats. And considering that, at least, the House of Commons does send us up a measure by which forty-five of their members have been Sacrificed on the altar of their country, it does seem rather a Stern proceeding on the part of noble Lords, Safe in the hereditary possession of their own Parliamentary seats, to insist upon a more general slaughter, on the floor of the House of Commons, and ask unsuspecting Members, just escaping to the moors, to become themselves the victims of that more inhuman sport to which they are so insiduously invited. I really think that the precise number of Heads to be rendered up as a poll-tax to Proserpine may be prudently left to that branch of the Legislature from which the Heads are exacted. And that if we adopt the amendment of the noble Wiscount or of the noble Earl, we should establish a precedent which might be dangerously brought to bear against Ourselves should the House of Commons, in its turn, ever volunteer its dictation, as to the precise amount of sacrifice which its views of reform might de- mand from the members of this august assembly. My Lords, I think that this Reform Bill, taken as a whole,_ franchise and redistribution altogether—is quite as large an in- novation as any reasonable man can desire. I confess, for my part, that I consent, or rather submit to it with great reluctance, and I am only reconciled to it by the conviction at which I believe most of your Lordships have also arrived, that the time has come when the question of Reform must be settled, and that the scheme to which both parties have agreed in the House of Commons has become the only mode by which that settlement can be practically effected. Still, though I regard the probable results of the measure with deep anxiety, I have not hitherto shared in those fears which have been expressed here and else- THE REFORM BILL OF 1867. 345 where, with that eloquence which is never more imposing than When it assumes the attributes of Superstition, and peoples the dark with spectres. But if by amendments like this, we are, under the pretext of aiming at an impossible finality, to unsettle that which the House of Commons had unanimously Settled, and reversing the natural functions of the two Houses of Parliament, make this branch of the Legislature rebuke the other for being too temperate and covetous in its distribution of the ex- istent constitution, then I shall begin to dread lest the gloomy predictions we have heard should be accompanied by that want of prudence by which fate has sometimes allowed to mortals the fulfilment of their own prophecies of evil. But I do not believe that prudence is a virtue which will ever desert the acknowledged Sagacity and moderation which characterize your Lordships' Councils, and I think that that virtue will never be more usefully exercised than in declining to incur the difficulties, the embar- rassments, the hazards to which we are so needlessly invited. Here, my Lords, I should close my remarks with a grateful Sense of the indulgence your Lordships have shown me, were it not for that kind of attack which the noble Wiscount has made upon my noble friend at the head of the Government. I have implied Or said, and I should be disingenuous or insincere if I had not done SO, that I have no great admiration for the new Reform Bill. But that which I do cordially admire is the courage and frankness with which my noble Friend has exposed himself to the eloquence of Sarcasm from an honest conviction that, under all the circumstances, he has done his best for the interests of the Country, believing that with the interests of the country must be identified the interests of any party which claims him as its leader. My Lords, let us hope, not for his sake, but for the Sake of that country which he adorns and advises, that a measure which so largely extends the foundations of the representative system, may only give additional stability to the fabric it Sup- ports, and thus ensure his lasting claims to the national gratitude which animates the ambition of patriots and consecrates the renown of statesmen, XLV. O U T L IN E O F A S P E E CH INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN DELIVERED IN T EI E H O U S E O F L O R D S ON THE 3D OF JUNE 1869. On Friday the 9th of April 1869, the Earl Russell moved in the House of Lords the first reading of the Life Peerages' Bill, when it was read accord- ingly after some discussion. The second reading was carried in like- manner after a single night's debate, on Tuesday the 27th of April. Eventually, however, after having passed with several modifications through committee, the Bill was thrown out at its last stage, the Earl of Malmesbury, having on Thursday the 8th of July, when it came on for a third reading, moved by way of amendment, that it should be read that day three months. Upon a division the original motion was lost by 106 to 76. On the first night's discussion of the measure, clause by clause, in committee, the following speech was intended to have been delivered. MY LORDS,--It is with great diffidence that Iventure to trespass upon your Lordships' attention for a very few minutes upon a question on which there are so many far better qualified to ex- press an opinion. But I think it is generally allowed that one great cause of strength and durability to the institution of the House of Lords is to be found in the theoretical principle, that its honours are accessible to every subject who has rendered adequate Services to the country, or exhibited talents of a nature to which a seat in the Upper House of Parliament is an appro- THE LIFE PEERAGES BILL. 347 priate recognition and reward. And the more completely that theoretical principle can be carried out in practice, the wider, of course, will be the range of persons who feel an interest in the maintenance of the institution. At present, however, the theoretical principle has, no doubt, this obstacle or drawback in practice—that the possession of landed estates, as that kind of property most readily transmitted from father to Son, is an essential condition in bestowing hereditary distinctions and privileges. And hence arises the difficulty, that if the conditions be too rigidly observed, the theoretical principle, that the honours of your Lordships' House are open to merit, would be practically too much confined to merit accompanied with property; and if, On the other hand, the condition be too frequently neglected, the order of the Peerage would necessarily become impaired, not Only in dignity but in strength. For it is indispensable to an hereditary Upper Chamber, that it should be regarded on the whole as a body of councillors with so great a stake in the per- manent interests of the country, as to render them careful to pre- serve a just equilibrium between too timid a concession and too obstinate a resistance to that spirit of change, which, whether for good or for evil, is the characteristic of a popular assembly. And I need scarcely say, that a nobility impoverished as a body, could not ensure that influence and command that respect which are necessary to the existence of an hereditary aristocracy. For these reasons I venture to think that the power of the Crown would be wisely exercised in a limited creation of Life Peerages, Such as is now proposed, thus on the One hand extending the range of ambition to all public Services and intellectual distinc- tion; and on the other hand, securing the Peerage as a hereditary institution from the dangers which result from a separation be- tween rank and property. It has been said that no one will care for a Peerage that he cannot transmit to his descendants. I believe, on the contrary, that who- ever may hold the office of first Minister, will find candidates for that honour so numerous, that I do not envy him the painful task of selection. I do not doubt for a moment that public men of high eminence and great capacities for business, but with Small 3.48 THE LIFE PEERAGES' BILL. comparative fortune, will feel sensibly alive to a distinction ex- clusively achieved by merit, and freed from the necessity of in- flicting upon their sons the burthen of a title without adequate means of supporting it. I put aside altogether the motion that men so elected to this House will not receive from your Lordships a degree of consideration equal to that with which you listen to the representatives of the largest estates and the most illustrious titles. I have not been long in this House, but I have seen enough of it to feel convinced that there is no assembly in the world, no, not even the House of Commons, in which a man is more valued for that which he is himself, and in which character, eloquence, and knowledge, have less need of Superior felicity in the accidents of birth and fortune in order to ensure influence and authority. And this conviction brings me to the considera- tion of another advantage which I think the creation of a limited number of Life Peers will bestow upon the general institution of the hereditary Peerage. We have seen it stated in Some of the public journals that the selection of Life Peers on the ground of special merit or distinction, will cause a comparison between Life Peers so selected and the hereditary members of your Lordships' House. I rejoice to think that comparison will be provoked; for I am persuaded that the result will be to show that the hereditary members of your Lordships' House need not fear competition with any Life Peers, however carefully selected; and the com- parison, therefore, will tend to elevate the character of the heredi- tary Peerage in public estimation, and this not on account of any temporary circumstance by which at this moment so large an amount of intellectual capacity is found on both sides of this House, but because of the very nature of the hereditary Peerage in this country, as distinguished from the mere titular mobility of the continent—because of the care with which the representa- tives of great names in this country are usually educated and trained towards a participation in public affairs—because of those habits of business which the Supervision of great estates, or the cultivation of the active duties which are essential to the main- tenance of territorial influence tend to create; and because of that previous discipline in the House of Commons through which THE LIFE PEERAGES BILL. 349 So large a number of those who are afterwards hereditary legisla- tors are brought into close connection with all classes of their Countrymen, and habituated to consider and decide between the conflicting varieties of political opinion. Now, I think that the more obviously these attributes of the hereditary members as at present constituted in England be forced upon public acknowledgment by the test of competition with the best men whom a Government can select for the dignity of the Life Peerage, the more the advantages resulting from the general constitution of this House will be made apparent, and the more discouraged will become all speculative theories for the Substitution of a senile or Upper Chamber constructed upon ad- verse principles. While thus agreeing with the general prospect and object of the Bill before your Lordships, I venture to think it would be expedient somewhat to diminish the number proposed, whether as a definite total or as the number chosen for each year. Cer- tainly the number proposed is not too large for all the eminent commoners in England, but it seems to me too large for the eminent men to whom a seat in a legislative assembly would be an appropriate distinction. And I need Scarcely say that the fewer the number the more the honour will be coveted and the principle of the Bill will be attained. This, however, is a mere matter of detail. I shall cordially vote for the Second reading of the Bill, believing, for the reasons I have stated, that it will tend to strengthen your Lordships' House in the confidence and affection of the people, enlist in its support the ambition of a wider range of intellect and energy, and prove by the competi- tion it accepts and courts, the value and amount of those quali- fications for the functions assigned to an Upper Chamber, which the hereditary principle secures to your Lordships' House. XLVI. O U T L IN E OF A S P E E CH INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F L O R D S ON THE 15TH OF JUNE 1869. On Monday the 14th of June 1869, the Leader of the House of Lords, Earl Granville, moved in that chamber the second reading of the Irish Church Bill. At the close of that night's discussion the debate was adjourned upon the motion of Lord Lytton, until the following day, Tuesday the 15th of June. The House met in that expectation. Upon the order of the day being read, however, for resuming the debate, the Earl Grey rising, opened his speech in the following words—“My Lords, before addressing myself to the remarks which I have to make on the question before the House, I may perhaps be permitted to apologise to the noble Lord behind me (Lord Lytton), for standing, as lam about to do, for a short time, between him and the House. I am quite aware of how much more worth his observations will be than mine; but by way of explanation I beg to say, that I rose to move the adjournment last might, not knowing that he was about to do the same, and that being, as I believe, in posses- sion of the House, I gave way because I understood that he was going to speak on that occasion. As this was not his intention, I hope there is no want of courtesy in my now availing myself of my claim to priority from having risen first to move the adjournment last night. I trust the noble Lord will accept this explanation.” But for the contretemps thus accounted for upon that occasion, the following speech would then have been delivered. MY LORDS,--It seems to me that the great difficulty of deal- ing with this question is one which demands a clear and definite THE IRISH CHURCH BILL. 351 understanding of the relations between England and Ireland. These relations are not merely political—they are not merely religious. But the political and the religious relations have be- come so complicated and so interwoven, that it requires the finest statesmanship to extricate and divide them. On the one hand, a very large numerical population is Roman Catholic, and in the midst of that population is planted a Protestant Church, with en- dowments, perhaps greatly exaggerated, but still large when we consider that it is the Church of the few imposed upon the reli- gion of the many, and that the religion of the many is absolutely without any ecclesiastical endowment at all. Nor can any de- fence for an anomaly so great in the elements of free government be advanced upon the plea that this Church of the few has so brilliantly succeeded in making converts and proselytes, that we may hope it will ultimately become the Church of the many. If we could here, as educated men willing to do justice without prejudice and favour, close the question at issue, there is but one conclusion at which we could arrive. But, my Lords, having thus stated fairly, I hope, that side of the question opposed to the Protestant endowments, it is essential to state no less im- partially the other side. - It is true that this Protestant Church is the Church of the comparative few in point of numbers, but then the payment of it falls upon property, and is favoured and cherished by the majority of the holders of property. Here you at once encounter a difficulty in itself amongst the greatest which a statesman can deal with. Property on the One side and Numbers on the other. The difficulty becomes excessively aggravated when you have also to consider that England and Ireland form an United Empire, and that the Protestants, though a minority in Ireland, form the vast majority in the three kingdoms of which that empire is com- posed. Still more is it complicated when there is no denying the fact that the Protestants in Ireland constitute the only portion of the Irish population firmly attached to the Union—the only men you can rely upon in case of civil rebellion and foreign invasion, and that if you inflict upon them any Substantial and permanent cause of discontent, you lose every friend you have in the sister 352 TEIE IRISH CHURCH BILL. island. Nor can any experienced politician for a moment believe that if by a vote of the legislature you annihilated the Protestant Church to-morrow you would propitiate the Roman Catholic population. They would only consider that they had conquered your strongest garrison, and were a step nearer to the realization of their dream—the dream of a sovereign commonwealth inde- pendent of all connection with England. I do not pause to ask why this should be. No doubt plenty of causes may be found in old historical grievances, an ample reply to those allegations might be given if the Irish majority were the same race as Ourselves. The English people have had plenty of grievances under their own rulers—under Normans, Plantagenets, Tudors, and Stuarts. But these grievances are things of the past with England—they would be things of the past with Ireland, if the past was not always present to a people who only look to the future with a wish to get rid not of their grievances but of their rulers. It is not with the majority of the indigenous Irish population a question whether they shall be well or ill governed. Ask any one of them, and he will give you the same answer as the people of the Ionian Islands gave to all attempts to prove how much better off they were under an English than under a Greek monarchy, that answer was—“Granted: but we prefer being ill governed by men of Our Own race, whom we choose ourselves, than well governed by the constraint of a race with which we have no relationship and no sympathy.” That is what the genuine Irishman will tell you. And do you suppose that he will be a whit more reconciled to your domination because you alienate your supporters and abandon your stronghold 2 These are questions, my Lords, which, on both sides, I humbly think, are not unworthy of your deliberate consideration, and these indeed are the questions which, secretly entertained but not openly avowed by the leaders of party on both sides, have retarded any earnest attempt to deal with the Irish Church. But are we for that reason to fold our arms and do nothing. My Lords, I think that is no longer possible. I believe it would not be desirable, it would not become a nation at the head of the world— not in military power, not in the influences which are exercised THE IRISEI CEIURCEI BILL. 353 by arms and arts, but in the opinion which prevails throughout civilized communities—that England, though sufficiently careful of the treasure and the blood of her people, tenacious of her rank as the parent of free states, and anxious to do what is right and just, not for the Sake of future gain, but for the sake of right and justice. And it is right and just that we should manfully face the difficulties of the question, and endeavour, so far as we can, con- sidering the unhappy nature of the circumstances, to decide im- partially between two parties in the sister kingdom—a minority in point of numbers, but preponderant in point of property—and invariably faithful to England, and a vast numerical majority, whom no measure respecting the Church is likely to conciliate to our rule. What, under these circumstances, should we do? That which every judge on the bench does, that which most men in private life are compelled to do every day. My Lords, I feel how much I need all your indulgence in addressing your Lordships for the first time, and on a question on which so many have a far better claim to be heard. But I am unwilling to give a vote on the principle of this Bill, with- out explaining the views I have of it, and offering some remarks upon the policy of which it has been made part and parcel. Lord Melbourne said in supporting the first Reform Bill of 1831—that up to that time, wherever the flag of Parliamentary Reform had been hoisted, he had ranged himself under the oppo- site banner, and gone beyond others in repelling every approach to Reform—and he then proceeded to enforce the distinction be- tween an abstract dislike to incur the hazards of a great change, So long as the people were undecided on its merits, and the practical wisdom of declining to incur the far greater hazards of resistance wherever the will of the people was unequivocally pronounced. My Lords, this must often be the case with the statesmen of an Upper Chamber, of which the highest attribute is that prudence which consults the safety of the nation; firstly, by ensuring ample opportunities to ascertain its opinion; and secondly, by avoiding its angry collision between all the elements of government, which an obstinate resistance to that opinion would create. For though it may often be the duty of the House VOL. II. Z 354 THE IRISEI CEIURCH BILL. of Lords to differ from the House of Commons, it is not in the nature of things that such an assembly should insist pertina- ciously in differing from the nation in whose interests it has so vast a stake. The excellence of its judgment consists in the Upper Chamber in determining where the House of Commons is or is not on any question in general accordance with the policy of the nation it theoretically represents. What are the circumstances under which this Bill is sub- mitted to your Lordships ? The main principle of the Bill, on the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Irish Church was distinctly set forth last year by the powerful party which have now embodied it in this measure. It was opposed with great ability by the late Government, and referred by them to the new constituency which their Reform Bill had created, referred to with all the advantages which are possessed by an administra- tion that has the dissolution of Parliament in its hands. The principle at stake was made clear at every hustings, and the re- Sult is, that that principle has been affirmed, and the Bill passed, not only by a singularly large majority of the House of Com- mons, but a majority elected by the very constituency which the Conservative Government opposing it had called into existence in Order to ensure a fuller and more perfect representation of public opinion. Under such circumstances I venture to submit that any legis- lative assembly which serves the purpose of an Upper Chamber, even were it framed, like the Senate of the American Republic, for the express purpose of acting as a check upon the democratic tendencies of a popular chamber, and armed with all the special powers for that purpose which are invested in the American Senate, would be indisposed to reject the second reading of a Bill, on which the will of the electoral population was so unmistakably expressed—and would rather reserve the exercise of its independ- ent judgment for the consideration of such amendments proposed in Committee, as accepting the principle, might more equitably adjust its details. For assuming that the measure is not with- out some evils in itself, those evils might only be aggravated, and fresh evils created, by a rejection which could not be continued TEIE IRISH CEIURCEI BILL. 355 for more than another year without bringing legislation to a dead lock. The agitation that would attend that delay would not be confined to this question alone—it would extend to other ques- tions connected with its substance, or rising out of its rejection. It is a delay that would thus strengthen the hands of the ultra democratic party in England, while in Ireland it would afford new excuses for denouncing the proprietors of land, to whose influence the rejection of the Bill would be largely ascribed. And to judge by speeches made during the late general election, this agitation would be the more dangerous to the State, inas- much as it would find its most eloquent leaders in Members of the Government, which, according to the theory of the constitu- tion ought to repress it. Your Lordships may remember that in the course of our war with the American provinces, Lord North said pathetically, “I don’t know if our Generals frighten the enemy, but I know that they frighten me.” My Lords, I don’t know if the speeches of our minister frighten the disaffected, but I know that they are enough to frighten the loyal. And what those speeches may be between this year and the next, if your Lordships should reject this Bill—our experience of the past may enable us to imagine. Seeing then that it can be but a question of time, whether the principle contained in this Bill should be suspended or approved, I come to this conclusion, that this delay is not worth the evils that would attend it, and that the Sooner the question is settled the better for the peace of England and the welfare of Ireland. Such being the case, Iown that I would fain do in this matter as we do in private life, whenever circum- stances compel us to make a choice which we do not altogether approve, and look on the brighter side of the question. But it is not our fault if the brighter side of the question be exceedingly obscured. For my part I have never been a partisan of the Irish Church as at present constituted, I am Willing to grant that there is much force in the abstract arguments by which that Church has been assailed. To establish and endow a Church, the religious creed of the great majority in One of the United Kingdoms, is opposed, and to refuse all aid to the Church to which that majority belong, is a policy we find it difficult to defend 356 THE IRISH CHURCH BILL. before foreign nations, and at variance with the Spirit of the age. But still, it is a grave thing for any Christian monarchy to refuse all sanction and all aid to any form of religion whatever. It is indeed a thing which no Christian monarchy has yet done. And when the statesmen of foreign nations have blamed our policy with regard to the Protestant Church in Ireland, they have invari- ably recommended the adoption of their own practice. For in- stance, in Prussia and other German States, where, in Some parts of their dominions there was a majority of one creed opposed to the creed of the Imperial State as a State, they have not disestab- lished both Churches, but have sanctioned and aided both, and you will find in the same district the Protestant clergy and the Catholic priests equally aided by the State, and living together in the most perfect amity and concord. It is said that a sentiment peculiar to a Protestant population forbade the solution of the difficulty which was recommended by Mr Pitt and Mr Burke, and favoured by many eminent statesmen of the Liberal party, and which was urged in vain upon the Liberal Government in 1866, in a very remarkable speech by the noble Earl on the cross benches. And thus no option was left between a very large reform of the Irish Church and its complete disestablishment. I should infi- Initely have preferred the former course—the country has decided on the latter. Well, but in carrying out that decision, which effects So vast a revolution in the sister kingdom, it seems to me that there were these two requisites for safe and honest legislation— First, that the most careful distinction should be made between private endowments and the national property, and that you should not pass by a hair's-breadth the boundary that divides what the State gave for State purposes, and that which indivi- duals granted and bequeathed in trust for specific objects of their own. Secondly, that in dealing so largely and so sternly with a Subject which must more or less alarm Protestants on behalf of their religion and proprietors on behalf of their property, the Government of the country should do their utmost to mitigate that alarm, and to dispel all notions that they seek the humilia- tion and downfall of the Protestant faith, nor will abet any wild Schemes for the dispossessing men of the property they lawfully THE IRISEI CHURCEI BILL. 357 hold. I find neither of those requisites in the course adopted by Her Majesty's Government. I take one instance of their disre- gard for the first. You date the acknowledgment of private endowments from the restoration of Charles II-1660—and confiscate as State property all the private endowments between that date and the Reformation. And upon what plea 2 Why, according to the Right Hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government, the ecclesiastical constitution of the Protestant Episcopal Church was not identical with the Church of England before 1660. My Lords, I maintain that this assertion is wholly without foundation. Go back a century, go back to 1560. In that year, as your Lordships well know, the Earl of Sussex, sent to Ireland by Queen Elizabeth, convenes a General Assembly of the Prelates and Clergy, for the establishing an identity between the Church of England and the Church of Ireland, in acknow- ledging the legal power in ecclesiastical affairs, and the adoption of the English Ritual instead of the Roman Catholic—nineteen prelates were present, and out of that number only two opposed these regulations. The clergy, as a body, offered no opposition to them; and from that date, in all the essential points which constitute a Church, the Churches became identical. In proof of this you will find the ecclesiastical dignitaries were exchanged from one kingdom to another, as they might have been exchang- ed from One English diocese to another. In 1582 a Bishop of Waterford is translated to St David's; in 1593 a Dean of York is made Bishop of Limerick, and again re-translated to Eng- land as Bishop of Bristol, and afterwards of Worcester. Would this interchange have been possible if the two Churches had not been considered identical. But all private endowments bestowed on the Irish Church during this sixteenth century are to be dis- allowed, and why Z Because certain Calvinistic doctrines as to predestination and grace—originating not in the Irish Church, but in the English Church, which had borrowed them from Ge- neva, favoured by English archbishops, by other prelates, and by large numbers of the English clergy, and especially favoured by the English University of Cambridge, as set forth in the famous Articles of Lambeth—naturally travelled to Ireland, and were, in 358 TEIE IRISH CEIURCH BILL. the year 1615, received into the Irish Church. But so little did they take root there, that nineteen years afterwards a canon was passed by the whole body of the Irish Church, with only one vote against it, approving and receiving the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, and proclaiming the agreement of the Church of England and Ireland in the profession of the same faith, according to the Convention held in London in 1562, and that agreement has continued in force up to the present day. Is it not then, a monstrous act of spoliation to Sieze upon all pri- vate endowments granted between 1560 and 1660, upon the pre- text that for nineteen years out of a space of three centuries, the Irish Church had accepted certain speculative doctrines that had been previously favoured by English prelates and an English university. Why, my Lords, in our civil wars the English Par- liament abolished the English Episcopal Church, and proclaimed the Presbyterian. But, if you were now legislating for the Eng- lish Church instead of the Irish, would you deny the sanctity of private endowments from the date of the Reformation or that of Elizabeth, upon the plea that for a certain number of years the English Episcopal Church was held, as it were, in suspense ? No, my Lords, Surely we cannot accept a quibble of this kind as a Substantial reason for robbing the Protestant faith of en- dowments conferred by men who did not distinguish the exact points of theological difference between Calvinists and Luther- ans, but who regarded the Protestant Episcopal Church, both in Ireland and in England, as constituting one and the same for- tress and defence of the Reformed religion against the doctrines and ritual of the Church of Rome. But when another pretext for this Spoliation is found in the assertion, that some portion of the private endowments before 1660, might be claimed by the Presbyterians, and all such endowments are therefore to be de- nied to the Episcopal Protestants, the iniquity becomes still more glaring. Because, it is making the claims of one party the excuse for defrauding both parties; or, in other words, it is rob- bing Peter in Order not to pay Paul. I content myself with this one instance for that disregard for justice and the sanctity of private rights and bequests, without enlarging on others which THE IRISEI CEIURCEI BILL. 359 will be better discussed in committee, and by noble Lords better qualified to treat them. But I must observe in passing, that there appears throughout this Bill a general spirit of animosity against that form of religion which our Protestant Church re- presents, in comparison with the Roman Catholic—a desire to eradicate the One and to nourish the roots of the other. For instance, capitalization of funds implies permanence. That ele- ment of permanence granted to Maynooth is denied to the Protestant preachers of the gospel; and whereas, by the Charit- able Bequests Act, an unlimited grant of land is allowed to the Roman Catholic priesthood, the Bill limits the acquisition of land, even by purchase, for the Protestant clergy, to ten acres at the utmost, and thirty acres for the houses attached to sees. The apparent animus of these and similar provisions, is not that of ensuring equality between the two religions, but of initiating a policy that favours the restriction and decay of the Protestant Church, and the permanence and spread of the Roman Catholics; and I think this animus or condemnation will be more apparent when we come to consider the manner in which Her Majesty's Government have regarded that which I have ventured to call the second requisite for Safe and honest legislation. Now, it seems to me that in proposing a measure for the abolition of the Irish Church, a statesman SO eminent as the present first Minister might naturally remember, that this Church, whatever its defects, is endeared to the large majority of proprietors in the country, those proprietors of a race akin to our own, settled in that country for many centuries, and en- couraged to settle by a continuous Series of British statesmen down to the time of Sir Robert Peel, who placed among the most prominent benefits of the encumbered Estates Bill, the proba- bility that British agriculturists would invest their capital in the purchase of Irish lands. And I should have supposed that the chief advisers of the Crown would have deemed it politic and certainly just to convince these Protestant proprietors that in abolishing an ecclesiastical establishment at variance with the creed of the population, he was animated by no hostility to 360 TEIE IRISH CHURCEI BILL. their influence as Protestants or their rights as proprietors. But what says the Right Hon. Gentleman to these Protestants and these proprietors? Virtually he say, “Do not flatter yourselves that the destruction of your Church is the only evil I have in store for you. That is but one of a group of questions. There is the land of Ireland, there is the education of Ireland, many questions, all of which depend upon one greater than them all; they are all so many branches of One trunk, and that trunk is the tree of what is called Protestant ascendency. It is upon that system that we are banded together to make war.” My Lords, I do not ask whether this is the kind of language” which the chief Minister of the Crown should address to men who had hitherto been the most stedfast friends of the Union; but I do ask whether the policy embodied in this language is one which the people of England intended to support when they gave their assent to the disestablishment of the Irish Church 2 What is this Protestant ascendency against which you are banded to- gether to make war : What are its constituent elements apart from the ecclesiastical establishment which we are told has rather impeded than extended its growth? Is it not an ascend- ency derived from causes which give legitimate ascendency to any class of men in any civilised community, causes which every enlightened commonwealth rejoices to find the sources of influence and power, Superior property, Superior habits of intel- lectual discipline and conduct, Superior immunities from crime, Superior veneration for law § Is it against an ascendency de- rived from these causes that a Protestant Cabinet is banded to- gether to make war 2 Is this the ascendency that you liken to the Upas tree, under which culture must wither and life must perish 2 Enter those parts of Ireland in which that ascendency most prevails, enter the great province of Ulster: there indeed you find strong and flourishing this tree that you pledge yourselves to destroy, root and branch, and under its shadow agriculture flourishes, trade prospers, property is sacred, life is safe. Is it this which is really the Upas tree ? Or is the tree under which culture withers and life perishes most found in districts where the Protestant ascendency vanishes, and a Romish THE IRISH CHURCH BILL. 361 ascendency prevails. My Lords, I had hitherto Supposed that it was the boast and pride of England that she represented in Europe that Protestant ascendency which your Protestant kin- dred represent in Ireland—the ascendency of a Protestant few in the midst of a Roman Catholic many, and derived exactly from the same causes, causes which have their root in that training of the human mind untrammelled by priestly domination, which it seems the nature of the Protestant form of worship to discipline and direct in every land where it offers its sacred counterpoise between ignorant Superstition and cynical unbelief. In the war that is thus threatened I am not prepared to enlist as a soldier, nor can I believe that the people of England will rally round its standard. I do not know whether in consenting to this measure they are prepared to regard it only as one of a group of questions that form a general crusade against whatever ascendency, pro- perty, education, or attachment to law or Order may have given to Protestant settlers of the English race. It is declarations of this kind which compel us to enlarge the scope of our survey from the abolition of the Church Establishment to the threatened attacks against Protestantism and property, of which it is thus avowedly the precursor, and I therefore make no excuse if I do So though in very few words. My Lords, it is idle for men to Say that they do not give encouragement to the Spoliation or the murder of landlords, so long as they proclaim the doctrine, that if Ireland were separated from England, the conduct of the land- lords is such that they would be at once exterminated by the vengeance of the people. Your Lordships may remember the story of the Quaker, who said to the dog that displeased him, “Friend, my principles forbid me to shed thy blood, but I will give thee a bad name,” he shouted, “Mad dog,” and the dog was exterminated by the vengeance that bad name had provoked. But, my Lords, I do not wish to attach undue importance to any mere indiscretions of language into a man of impulsive genius, little accustomed to the restraints of Office, like the Presi- dent of the Board of Trade, may have been hurried away by the rush of his own eloquence. But, coupling his reported belief and emphatic declaration that justice cannot be done to Ireland 362 THE IRISH CHURCH BILL. but by the process of such a change as may take the Soil from those who possess, and transfer it to those who covet it, with the vague threats against the property of Protestants volunteered by the head of the Government, and his intimation that it would be desirable to institute the experiment of dividing land among Small proprietors, I would ask your Lordships, I would ask the country, while it is yet time, to consider if this be a policy in the right direction—whether for the prosperity or for the peace of Ireland Ž As for the prosperity—is not the interest of the community proportional to the produce obtained from the land, and is not that produce proportioned to the capital judiciously expended upon it ! And how can you expect prosperity from any scheme that would transfer the land to owners with no capital at all, and starting with that load which breaks the back of any Small farmer in England—the incubus of a debt which he incurs for his purchase, and which has the first claim upon Savings that should be expended on improvements. And now as to the peace of the country, if you tell the people of Ireland that justice requires that a landlord, not tracing his descent to Celtic ancestors, should sell his property for the benefit of those whose pedigree is lost in the night of ages, and form legisla- tive enactments to effect that kind of justice—reflect on the en- couragement you give to agrarian violence Suppose the land- lord refuses to sell, suppose that in this he resembles the owner of land in England, and indeed pretty generally throughout Europe, and would not take 10 or 20 per cent. above the mar- ket value for property endeared to him by all his associations and habits—what an inducement you give to his Celtic neigh- bour to exterminate a landlord so insensible to Celtic justice I firmly believe that by any scheme of this sort the murder of landlords and their agents would no longer be the monopoly of a few privileged districts, but would extend to every part of Ireland in which a Saxon landlord and a Celtic population can be found. Nay, I even doubt whether a Roman Catholic land- lord, though he might be descended from Brian Boru, would not soon find his tenantry and peasants dissatisfied with an exclusion from the benefits bestowed upon the tenants and THE IRISH CHURCH BILL. 363 peasants of the Saxon intruder. My Lords, I warn Her Majesty's Ministers that so long as they identify justice to Ireland with Schemes for a transfer of land calculated to inflame the poor with the hopes of dividing the land of the rich, so long may they despair of establishing respect for the normal laws of property, or reverence for the sanctity of human life. No, my Lords, in assenting to the principle of a Bill by which the Irish Church is disestablished and disendowed, I would rather console myself by the convictions of an opposite nature, which I believe are shared by the majority of those who register- ed their votes in favour of that principle at the last election. I Would fain believe that the Protestant faith, relieved from what- ever invidious character a Protestant Church Establishment amidst a Papal population entailed in its doctrines, will gain more and more in that influence over the mind of man which is the loftiest kind of ascendency. Instead of selecting the Upas tree for its illustration, I would rather compare it to that Ilex of which it has been so nobly said— “Per damna, per caedes, ab ipso, Ducit opes animumque ferro.” I would fain, too, believe that the English people, having thus amply redressed that which their votes at the hustings have declared they believe to be a wrong, they will demand from the Government that strict vindication of the laws instituted for the protection of property and life which their own experience has taught them is equally essential to social happiness and political progress. So that we may approach all that groupe of questions connected with the ownership and tenure of land, armed with the power to exact from property all its duties, by evincing Our determination to maintain all its rights. For my own part, I would a thousand times rather sever Ireland altogether from the British dominions than retain her at the price of admitting into Our Legislature principles that shake the groundwork of the . wealth of nations, by bungling imitations of an agrarian law. Bereſt of Ireland, England might still be strong, strong in the 364 THE IRISH CHURCEI BILL. causes of that Protestant ascendency which she represents in the Parliament of nations. Butlet her once be false to that integrity which refuses to frighten, to juggle, or to bribe a man out of that which he possesses as his own, in order to divide it among others, on the plea of preventing revolt or disarming assassins, and she will perish amidst the Scorn of that civilisation whose interests her cowardice has betrayed, XLVII. O U T L IN E OF A S P E E C EI INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F L O R D S ON THE 7TH OF MARCH 1870. On Monday the 14th of February 1870, the Earl of Carnarvon, according to notice previously given, called the attention of the House of Lords to the present relation of the Colonies with this country. In doing so he took occasion to comment upon the somewhat startling circumstance of our having then a grave and dangerous crisis in New Zealand, and of our hearing of a rebellion in the Red River Settlement, at the very moment when a petition was lying before Parliament from certain agitators in British Columbia. Again, within less than a month afterwards, on Monday the 7th of March, the Earl of Carnarvon having, in compliance with Parliamentary routine, duly notified his intention beforehand, in- quired from the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Earl Granville, whether Her Majesty's Government would consent, under any conditions, to delay the departure of the 18th Regiment, still in New Zealand, but under orders to sail. Lord Carnarvon moved at the same time for corres- pondence. It was upon this latter occasion that the following speech was intended to have been delivered. cº My LORDS,--It is a matter of comparatively little moment whether Her Majesty's Government are right or wrong in the dispute with a single Colony like New Zealand. But it is of immense importance not only to England, but to the whole Scope and fu- ture destinies of the civilized world, whether in the antagonistic 366 COLONIAL GOVERNMENT. circumstances arising out of that dispute should be found here- after the cause of the dissolution of the British Empire. Whether it be or be not expedient to arrange certain easy terms with New Zealand, by which it may obtain the aid of the Queen's soldiers against a barbarous enemy, is a matter on which the warmest advocates for maintaining our Colonial Dominion may be divided. But if in discussing this point, principles are announced or a tone adopted by the Government which serve to offend or alarm the Australian and American Colonies in general, and create among these a belief that England has grown desirous to part with them, and only disguises that desire by a polite ex- pression of indifference whether they stay or go—that she declines to respect them as children, and only wishes to keep them as customers—then the question is enlarged into One SO vast, that I scarcely know the limits to which the consideration it involves can be confined. It is not only a national, it is a cosmopolitan question. It is a national question of the utmost importance—Whether England is really contented to abrogate her magnificent position, as the head and centre of a colonial system unrivalled for the extent of the territory it covers, for the intellect and energy of its citizens, for its unity of race, language, and religion, and still more for the loyalty of so many scattered populations, to the Sceptre of a single Queen. It is a cosmopolitan question still larger in its consequences to the human race—Whether we should thus acknowledge that a colonial system, without parallel in history, for its success in planting the cities, the commerce, the religion, the laws of a civilized race, in the midst of barbarous regions, and bestowing on those communities the freest exercise of Self- government, has been another mistake and failure So far as the ultimate interest of the parent State is concerned—that we dread it as a danger, Casting it off as a burden, and abandon these splendid communities, not when they have come to full growth and maturity, are able to protect themselves, and of their own accord desire and ask for independence, but while they are yet in the infant stage of their development, and more likely to unite themselves to some other Savage power able to protect them, and enlarge the Scope for their intellect and ambition, than assume COLONIAL GOVERNMENT. 367 for themselves a sovereignty, for the secure maintenance of which they have as yet neither wealth nor population sufficient for self-defence. To part from such communities, when consciousness of their own strength to stand alone, makes them demand the completion of National Sovereignty—to part from them thus may be wise and safe, for we then only relinquish unwilling subjects for attached allies. But to part with them now—and with cynical indifference to their security and welfare—is to leave behind the seeds of a rancour that will descend from generation to genera- tion, and to replace loyal Subjects by indignant foes. These new worlds have become so important an element of consideration to the old world of Europe, that there is not a European nation which has not a deep interest in considering what may be the future destinies of Canada and Australia, if England cuts the tie that binds them to herself and to Europe, and leaves them to develop their gigantic resources with no other sentiment for Europe than that of hereditary grudge to the nation from which they sprung. I think that for the sake of England, for the sake of the civilization of which England is still an illustrious representative, we are bound to seek from Her Majesty's Govern- ment a plain and clear statement of their views on colonial policy, and know in time for the péople of this country to pronounce its opinion, whether the Ministers of the Crown are converts to the philosophy of Mr Goldwin Smith, or whether they can cordially assure their descendants and fellow countrymen now, that they are not indifferent to the advantages and the glory of maintain- ing the noblest and the freest empire which Providence ever assigned to the sceptre of a single king. No doubt, my Lords, the terms on which that connection can be maintained so as not to overtask our powers, should be frank- ly stated. We should best avoid future misunderstandings by saying what we can do, and what we cannot do. And first, with regard to military assistance. It seems to me that wherever a nation plants its flag, it is bound to support its honour. In every war made against a colony for the sake of attacking Eng- land, that colony may rely on the utmost aid, military or naval, it is in our power to bestow. But, as we do not profess to have 368 COLONIAL GOVERNMENT. an unlimited military force, we have a right to expect from every such colony a skilled and Organised volunteer force in case of need. And in this exaction we confer much greater benefit than we receive. For the condition of the world must be greatly altered before any community can educate itself for sovereign independence that does not early acquiesce in the preparations for self-defence. In vain may you communicate to a colony your industry, your arts, your literature, and your laws, if you do not also communicate that Spirit of courage and manhood by which the inhabitants will submit to hardship and privations in fitting themselves to defend from aggression their hearths and altars. I think this rule especially applies to communities like New Zealand, surrounded by Savage tribes, and threatened by wars not incurred by the Imperial Government. And where in such wars it is expedient to send forth British troops, as very generally it may be expedient, I think that the Imperial Govern- ment has a right to demand that the whole polity of the war, the mode of waging it, and the terms of peace on which the war is concluded, should exclusively belong to itself. There is no part of Her Majesty's dominions, whether it be in a colony or at home, whether it be in New Zealand or the province of Yorkshire, in which the Queen's Soldiers should be employed in any mode of action that may seem to her responsible ministers idly to imperil or discredit the national flag. And the Sovereign, through her responsible advisers, should alone determine the best modes of employing the imperial forces, and the right terms of restoring tranquillity and peace. With this proviso, I think, that any hostilities from barbarous enemies threatening the lives and properties of British Subjects in a colony, are more likely to be terminated with humanity and despatch by a disciplined and dispassionate military ſorce, and thereby brought to a lasting peace, than by the unassisted efforts of the colonists themselves, with all the difficulty they must experience in getting scattered agriculturists to quit their homes and pursuits, and form them- Selves into an united body, and with all the revengeful passions which the nature of the contest must engender. And when we hear so much of the cost of providing such COLONIAL GOVERNMENT. 369 military force as an argument for abandoning any colony that requires it, we must not forget that even in that evil conse- quent upon extended empire, there is a compensatory benefit to Our Safety at home. For no political observer of ordinary Sa- gacity can look at the present state of Europe, or indeed consider those stormy elements which enter into the present composition of human nature—and believe that it would be safe for England, however much she may seek to withdraw herself from the councils and interests of Europe, to be without the nucleus and framework of a military force. That framework cannot be ade- quately formed and maintained within the precincts of these islands. A sufficient standing army at home would not be ac- ceptable to the free spirit of our institutions. Our colonies serve for their safest quarters, and our officers and Soldiers may ac- quire more knowledge of the real art and practice of war in the contests with an actual enemy—even though he be a barbarian than in a lifetime spent on reviews at Aldershot. And, my Lords, this consideration of the value of Colonies in the military point of view, brings me to the consideration of their infinitely more precious value in their bearings upon that social energy and that commercial enterprise, out of which have grown the wealth and the grandeur of the English nation. I would scarcely pause to examine the comparatively petty and isolated question, whether or not trade follows the flag. On this score it is said by the distinguished historian, Mr Froude, that even customers so good as the Americans import Only 10s. Worth of our manufactures per head in proportion to the population— while our imports to the Australian Colonies are at the rate of 10d, a head. And even Canada, in spite of her unfavourable tariff, takes four times per head the amount of our products taken by the people of the United States. If Australia left us, Or if Canada were united to the American Republic, who shall say that there would be no loss of custom. But this has always seemed to me a small item in the question of gain to a country that has become the centre of a colonial system, just as by a continuous strain upon his muscular force, a man gradually increases his physical strength. And thus in the old classical story Milo began VOL. II. 2 A. 370 COLONIAL GOVERNMENT. by carrying a calf just weaned, and carrying it every day, at length imperceptibly acquired the strength that could with ease carry the weight of the full grown ox. So a nation that has be- gun to extend its dominions to the range of infant colonies, finds itself unconsciously augmenting the fund of all its energies in like extent—maritime—commercial. The greater the strain upon its powers the more the powers increase and the more easy becomes the pressure. Suddenly remove that strain, suddenly bid these powers relax in their enterprise and their endurance—and the loss of strength follows the collapse of exertion. It is not in the diminution of custom with the colonies them- selves, that—if you renounce your colonial system—you will suffer. But you will lose in the general energy by which you now maintain England in the front of commercial nations. My Lords, is it necessary that we should abnegate the high rank in which Providence has placed our country 2 Shall we be content to imi- tate the example of Holland, without the excuse which alone justified Holland in withdrawing from the magnificent part she played on the great stage of European interests, and sinking into the silence and inertia of a fifth-rate power. The excuse of Holland was poverty and debt—was a national bankruptcy, which left her unable to support fleets and protect colonies. Have we come to this 2 And are we to hear this melancholy news from a cabinet composed of all the talents : Certainly it would be a miserable confession. But there is a confession infinitely more disgraceful, which much in the anti-colonial philosophy that I fear has infected our enlightened government, appears to imply. No, we are not grown too poor to support our colonial empire, but it is implied that we have grown too cowardly, we fear the enemies to which it may expose us, we dread to leave any point at which their Cupidity and ambition may assail us, we spend vast sums in improving our fleets and artillery, but only for holi- day display, just as the Chinese place numerous images in front of their ranks, not to fight, but to frighten the enemy. We are told—we, the men of a generation only younger than that which fought with Wellington and Nelson—we are told that Canada is a free-born possession, that it exposes us to attack from COLONIAL GOVERNMENT. 371 America, and the statesmanship of panic bids us get rid in time of a possession which we are afraid to defend. My Lords, no man is more for the policy of peace than I am, but I am prepared for any danger which honour compels us to risk—for without honour life is as worthless to a nation as it is to a man. But I am not prepared to encounter all the dangers that must befall England if she once, without a blush, makes that confession of cowardice to the new world and the old. Do it, and prepare for every in- sult and every aggression. Let Canada indeed Say, I wish to be a member of the American Republic; or, I am strong enough to hold my own as an independent State, and I would not utter a word to restrain her choice. But as long as Canada says—I am part and parcel of the British Empire, and am proud to be so, and I desire no change—I maintain that the honour and the Safety of England are as much bound to protect Canada from invasion as they are to protect Yorkshire. My Lords, I do not wish to accuse the Government unjustly. I do not doubt that much which has been said by the Noble Earl has been misinterpreted, and excited unnecessary alarm. But there is no doubt that from the acces- Sion of the present government to power, we must date the rise of an irritation, a disturbance, an unsettlement in the principal portions of our Colonial Empire, which it will task their states- manship to allay and remove. They succeeded to the admini- stration of that vast empire when it was singularly tranquil and loyal,—they have contrived in the space of a year to destroy that tranquillity and to endanger that loyalty. You have delegates assembling in London, with loud complaints that the interests and welfare of the colonies are not consulted under your present system of rule, and with schemes and theories for remodelling that system which have as yet no theoretical shape, which it may be impossible to harmonize into any better system than pre- vails now, if it were administered with conciliatory wisdom. And you find the youngest and the most rising and important of the colonies you have founded—a colony with harbours that could contain all the navies of Europe—with agricultural and mineral wealth that should court the enterprise of countless emigrants, and blest by a climate more temperate than that of England 372 COLONIAL GOVERNMENT. —you find that colony despatching a Memorial to the United States, begging their President to negotiate for the transfer of its allegiance. Nor can I sufficiently express my surprise and regret at the instructions which the Noble Earl, the Colonial Secretary of State, has sent out to the new Governor of that colony. I say surprise, for I cannot help thinking that the Noble Earl must have learned from the late lamented Governor, Mr Seymour, than whom no abler or more statesmanlike mind could be found in the whole Colonial Administration, that any proposal to force a premature union of British Columbia with Canada would be extremely distasteful to the general population of that colony. While it was clear from the mixed character of the population and its geographical situation, that any attempt to dictate its fusion with Canada, would turn its affections to the American Republic. I cannot, of course, say whether Mr Seymour conveyed these opinions to the Noble Earl, but I have reason to believe that he entertained them, and that such is the opinion of the ablest of the British Columbian colonists. I say this, without any hesitation, that colony having been founded by Her Majesty upon my advice as Colonial Secretary, and that advice having been justified by the rapid growth of the settlement, by the fact that none of our colonies ever cost so little to found or so quickly repaid the mother country, by demand for its manufactures and as a field for its emigrants. I have naturally a deep interest in its welfare, and maintain such acquaintance with its progress and opinions as I can obtain through private correspondence. Well, if there be one feeling stronger than another in that colony, it is a desire to retain connection directly with Great Britain, confident of the resources that will one day enable it to be an independent State, with far greater advantages for maritime and commercial development than are bestowed upon Canada, or indeed upon any State of its size in the new world. If there be any feeling of repulsion it has stronger than another, it is to become the colony of a colony, and merge itself and its prospects in the govern- ment of a province to which it has no convenient access of com- munication either by Sea or by land. Between these two feel- ings of attraction and repulsion intervenes the consideration of COLONIAL GOVERNMENT. 373 junction with the United States. And this consideration cannot fail to obtrude itself, partly because a very large proportion of the colonists are Americans by birth, partly because its nearest and most accessible relations are with the citizens of the United States. In a word, the colonists would prefer to remain English Subjects rather than American, but would assuredly prefer being American citizens to being colonists subject to the government of Canada. And I Say boldly, that these facts are so clear to any One who will inquire and examine, that I cannot sufficiently ex- press my surprise, that on the 28th of last October, the Governor of that colony should be authorised to publish a despatch from the Noble Earl, dated the 14th of August, going in the very teeth of the popular feeling, and converting this splendid field for English enterprise and emigration, into a petitioner for union with the American Republic. Consider for a moment the pre- sent population of this colony; a large proportion of the prevail- ing population is American, a large proportion German and other foreigners, and the rest is British, but not Canadian. It has no more connection with Canada than it has with Hong Kong. It is just as unwilling to be transferred to the government of such remote dominions as an inhabitant of Westminster would be. And with still better reason—for a man could get from London to Ottawa much more easily than he can get to London from British Columbia. Around this colony lie American dominions—to its haven come American ships: and can you wonder that when the British Government treat with contempt that splendid key to the Pacific, which the American Republic so ardently covets, and would merge it into an inaccessible dominion from which it can derive no earthly advantage, the offended pride and the national interest of the English settlers makes them lend a ready and Will- ing ear to the Solicitations of the American emigrants to become part and parcel of a republic which is able to enrich, to people, and to protect the land on which they have built their homes. Is it possible that a statesman could not have foreseen that this Memorial would have been certain to follow the pressure of our Government to incorporate the colony with the Canadian Dominion. And now what an additional element of difficulty 374 COLONIAL GOVERNMENT. this has created in dealing not only with the colony but with the United States. I presume that you will decline to negotiate with America for the transfer, that you will not purchase indemnity for the “Alabama” claims by the gold mines, the forests, the fish- eries, and the harbours of a country as large as England itself, and still more bountifully endowed by Providence. But your refusal, unless you reverse your policy, will only add to the irritation you have roused in the colony, and furnish new excuse and fresh strength to the ambitious claims of America. It is the first instance in our time in which a British colony has desired to place itself under the American flag. If that desire strengthen and become universal in that colony, it is only by force that you can maintain your hold, and you give an in- centive to the States to make war on you, because, at the first outbreak of that war, the whole of that country from Van- couver to the Red River Settlement will prove your enemy. If you assent to the transfer, do not believe that the Canadian Dominion you have lately united would hold together. Nova Scotia would revolt, and Newfoundland would follow the ex- ample. Desertion from One flag to another, once begun, is as con- tagious as an epidemic. Augustus asked his defeated General, “What have you done with my legions ?” Shall we live to ask our exulting Ministers “What have you done with our Empire 2° Just consider how our home population now presses on our limited area, and how rapidly population doubles itself. The genius of our ancestors, Supplying the niggard boon of nature, Secured to us magnificent fields for our surplus population, and amidst them planted colonies speaking the same language, governed by the same laws, kneeling at the same altar. Of all these possessions there was not one in which an Englishman Ought to have felt more at home than in the richer soil and milder climate of British Columbia. To these fields for enter- prise men might transport themselves, retaining all the rights of Subjects, entertaining, if they so pleased, the hope to return some day and take no mean place in their native land. You have a noble instance of this in your present Cabinet. Two of its most distinguished members began their career in life as colonists, COLONIAL GOVERNMENT. 375 they returned to give to their native land the benefit of their in- tellect and experience. And it is just when so signal a proof is afforded of the field for ambition which a colonial adventurer may obtain as a subject of England, and when in that proof we might lighten the bond between the mother country and its depend- encies, that our policy suddenly induces the colonies to believe that we are indifferent to their possession, and afraid to protect them. Can you suppose, with some pretended philosophers, that so long as we can shuffle off our surplus population anywhere, anyhow, it is all one to English interests, that it matters nothing whether Englishmen settle themselves on British or foreign soil, whether they and their posterity remain friends and kinsmen, or become enemies and aliens to us and to our children 7 Whether or not trade follows the flag, national sentiment does. And if ever the United States should be at war with England, all the English natives who settle in these States as American citizens, must pay the taxes and obey the councils and contribute to the forces by which the war against England is maintained. But if men discontented with our institutions here, settle in British colonies, imperceptibly, but rapidly, their discontent vanishes, and they become loyal subjects in the new quarters of our domi- nions. Canadians will tell you of numerous instances of Irish- men who left these shores with the hostile sentiment of Fenians, and becoming prosperously settled in Canada, have forgotten their hereditary grievances, and have become the warmest advo- cates of connection between Canada and England. Whether as customers for Our manufactures and merchandise, whether as outlets for our surplus population, or whether as healthful stimu- lants to enterprise and energy, I maintain that our colonies are of vital importance to the mother country, and immeasurably Overpay the cost and the perils which are the noble conditions of a great empire. My Lords, I can sincerely say that in the remarks I have thus obtruded on your attention, my feelings towards the noble Earl who holds the office of Colonial Secretary, are the reverse of hostile. There are few men who unite so many valuable quali- ties for the Successful administration of an office which demands 376 COLONIAL GOVERNMENT. knowledge of mankind, the study of complicated affairs and interests, and a love of justice united with generous views and conciliatory temperament. In such qualities I know no one whom I should prefer to see at the head of the Colonial Office, not only in ordinary times, but in times of difficulty and transition, provided only that he has a firm belief in the value of our Colonial Empire, and shapes his policy So as to retain and not to relinquish it. If such be his belief, and such the inclination of his policy, I think he will have no difficulty in explaining away any misunderstanding which have unfor- tunately occurred, and that it is yet time to reconcile British Columbia to a preference for English dominion, by a frank retraction of all attempt on the part of his government to in- duce that colony into corporation with the remote and inac- cessible dominion of Canada. Do not let him seek to fore- stall the work of time, and sink the obstacles interposed by Nature, or dream of uniting Vancouver to Ottawa, till at least the highways between them become accessible, and a direct com- munication links the Pacific to the Atlantic. If he persevere in these premature efforts, he may rely upon it that he will in- volve himself in immeasurably greater difficulties than are now apparent and will commence a revolution in which all hopes of founding an integral and independent dominion of British America will disappear. It was the boast of a famous hero of antiquity, that he had not indeed certain elegant accomplish- ments, admired by his country, but that he knew how to make a Small State great. May no Minister of England in our time reverse that claim to the homage of posterity, and leave it to history to say, that with many brilliant accomplishments he knew how to make a great State Small. XLVIII. O U T L IN E O F A S P E E C H INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F L O R D S ON TIIL 18tſI OF JULY 1870. On Monday the 30th of May 1870; the Earl Granville, as Leader of the House of Lords, moved that the British Columbia Bill be read"a first time, and it was so read accordingly. Previously, an order in Council had been issued by the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty, in accordance with the stipulation made by section 146 of the British North America Act, passed in the Session of 1867, empowering Her Majesty to admit the Colony of British Columbia to the Union of the Dominion of Canada. The British Columbia Bill was read a second time on Monday the 18th of July, after a very brief discussion, passed through committee on Thursday the 21st of July, and was read a third time on the following evening. The speech here given was intended to have been delivered upon the occasion of the Second reading. MY LORDS,--I will endeavour as briefly as possible to explain the reasons that induce me to invite you Lordships' attention to the motion of which I have given notice. In itself it refers to a single colony alone, but indirectly it touches upon our whole colonial policy and system. It was at my recommendation, when I had the honour to hold the Colonial Seals, that Her Majesty was graciously pleased to add to her colonial possessions the territory now called British Columbia. The necessity for that 378 BRITISH COLUMBIA. step was pressed upon me by the fact of the discovery of gold and the excitement which this discovery occasioned on the One hand among the native Indians and the white settlers belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company with whom those Indians had established friendly relations, and on the other hand, among the citizens of the United States in the adjacent American territory. I need not say that nothing more provokes the angry passions, which lead to bloodshed, than the discovery of gold in a territory unprotected by any legitimate Sovereign authority. And that ear- nest desire to prevent hostile collision with our American kindred, which has always, in my time, actuated the policy of Great Britain, necessitated placing soil which belonged to the Crown under the sanction of the British flag, and the authority of a government more recognised than that of the Hudson's Bay Company, and formally appointed by the Queen. The Creation of the colony was thus a political necessity. But by all the reports which subsequent experience has verified, it was also a political acquisition of considerable value to the people of this country. The Colony not only abounds in gold, but in other minerals, such as the most useful kind of lead, and inexhaustive Supplies of the most valuable kind of coal. Large portions of the land are exceedingly fertile, and the forests contain perhaps the finest timber in the world for the purpose of shipping. To these ad- vantages you must add a climate especially suited to English emi- grants, it being like that of England, but more genial and equable —its winters much milder than those of Canada, its summers more temperate than those of California. Above all, this colony so rich in its internal resources, enjoys a maritime situation of which it is scarcely possible to over-estimate its importance. British Columbia, in which I include, of course, the island of Vancouver, is the key of the Pacific. I will here quote what is said by that distinguished American officer, Admiral Wilkes, in his official report to the Senate, on the commerce of the United States:–“Except Australia, British Columbia would be the only important colonial occupation of the Pacific coast by Great Britain. That station of England will prove of great value in the future struggle for commercial, if not political, ascendency in BRITISEI COLUMBIA. 379 the Orient. The harbour of Esquemault is a magnificent haven, fit to shelter a whole navy in Safety.” Admiral Wilkes then proceeds to show the advantage of Vancouver as the naval station of England on the Pacific, and for the construction, repair, and coaling of vessels, and he then refers to the other advantages of the coast for fisheries, and a coasting trade, saying the Salmon, herring, and other fisheries of this region, will equal those of Norway. - It has been supposed that the colony is too remote from Ourselves for the purpose of emigration. But since the con- struction of the Pacific railway, we have, I believe, no British possession requiring emigrants, except the maritime provinces of Canada, etc., nearer to us in point of time. The journey to Van- couver was, I am informed, done by the last batch of emigrants' at the charge of the colony, in twenty-five days, and at cost of £25 each, and the price for fertile land is a dollar an acre. Assuming, then, that the maintenance of a colonial system still forms a part of the policy of Great Britain, and that, while we should firmly reject all overtures to plant, for the barren sake of possession, new colonies in unhealthy situations, and promising no prospective gain to our commerce, we should still hold it our interest and our glory to redeem from the wilderness those places which furnish healthful outlets to emigration, and in proportion as we people them, will give new scope to our trade, and new markets for our manufactures. Assuming this, I do not know a spot in the world in which colonisation offers fairer results to the parent State than the territory which comprises British Columbia and Vancouver. The colony has only been planted ten years; and in that short time—in spite of serious drawbacks to its natural development, all of which could be easily removed in its present connection with the Imperial Government, but which, as I will afterwards attempt to show, any premature incorporation with the Canadian Dominion would only tend to aggravate—it has amply fulfilled its promise of future importance. It is of no charge or cost to the mother country. It has secured a yearly and rapidly increasing revenue, which not only 380 BRITISH COLUMBIA, covers its ordinary expenditure, but provides a sinking fund for the debt it was obliged to contract for the construction of roads and harbours. It has even furnished a sum for the cost of emi- grants. It has laid the foundations of towns. It has established throughout its territory telegraphic communication. It has con- structed roads to its principal settlements, and though, Owing to faults of administration which I shall mention presently, its trade with this country has been greatly crippled of late, we have only to look to the returns of its imports from Great Britain to see how largely it has overpaid to our commerce all that it has cost us since its commencement. Its imports from the United Kingdom in nine years to the year 1868, are estimated at about a million and a half. ‘Now, while on this million and a half Great Britain received profits both on the goods and freight in British ships, Out of nearly £1,300,000 exports from the colony, nearly £1,200,000 has been paid to Great Britain in bullion on which the colony has received no profit, only £116,000 of colonial produce being received. The profit to our trade which our colony confers may be estimated at 20 per cent. On the million and a half, showing a tribute paid by the colony of £300,000, while, in the same proportion, Great Britain pays a tribute to the colony of Only #23,000 on the £116,000 she takes of colonial produce. - Among the drawbacks to the natural development of the colony, the first I will name is one which has given great trouble to those of the colonists who desire annexation to the United States. Will it be believed that nearly the whole of the land between the harbour of Esquemault and the town of Victoria (the capital of Vancouver), a distance of two miles—being exactly the district for which new settlers would most eagerly compete—is locked up by the Hudson's Bay Company, or indivi- duals belonging to it, who will not sell or lease an acre, and the road passes through a primitive forest on either side, without a tree felled Or a shanty built. Every man in the colony knows the ready manner in which, if the colony belonged to the United States, the Hudson Bay Company would be required, on pain of forfeiture, either to improve or to dispose of this land, as they ERITISH COLUMBIA. 381 were required to do with their land in the neighbouring territory of Oregon, where they attempted in vain to pursue the same obstructive policy. Every man in the colony knows in how short a time, did but the island belong to the United States, one uninterrupted street, alive with trade and enterprise, would join the harbour of Esquemault to the town of Victoria. But I believe it would demand no coercive measures to bring this land into the market, if our Government would only do its duty, I will not say to the colony, but to the trade of Great Britain. By a singular error of policy, Vancouver, which was originally a free port, ceased to be so when Vancouver was united to British Columbia—that is, as soon as the unrivalled advantages for free trade possessed by the harbour of Esquemault became apparent. And the consequence has been, that the im- ports of British produce and manufactures have been reduced to about one-half what they were in 1864. In 1864 the imports from the United Kingdom were £291,584, in 1868 they were only £152,280. Make the whole island of Vancouver a free port, placing a custom-house for the mainland at the mouth of the Frazer, and at once you assure the prosperity of the island, and re-open to much greater advantage than before, the markets for Our produce. The new harbour of Esquemault would attract ships from China, South Mexico, and the Sandwich Islands, while the great demand for English goods in the United States would create a steady and rapidly increasing trade with the Washington and Oregon territories and San Francisco. And the land now locked up by the Hudson Bay Company would so increase in value, that Self- interest would compel them to parcel it out in allotments, and thus realise the dormant capital which now brings them no return. Of course, if Great Britain would only condescend to take advantage of the unequalled harbour which Providence has added to her possessions, a dock would be necessarily constructed. This would be the first step taken by the United States if the colony belonged to them. American naval officers have ex- pressed their astonishment that the English Government—if 382 BRITISH COLUMBIA. even for the mere sake of economy—did not either construct a dock or offer inducements to a company to do so. Should any accident happen to one of the Imperial vessels in the Pacific, it must now be compelled to dock in a foreign port. The advan- tage of a dock in the colonial harbour has been pressed upon the home authorities both by the late able and lamented Governor, Mr Seymour, and the Admiral who was then on the station, but hitherto pressed in vain. The Colonial Office, I believe, fully re- cognise that advantage, but the Admiralty refuse it. And why Ž because—and here is another just complaint of the colonists, because, forsooth, the Admiralty chooses to transfer its naval station in the Pacific to the foreign port of Valparaiso, though no one can deny that our own port at Esquemault has, beyond all comparison, the finest harbours, beyond all comparison the healthiest climate, has all the advantages for docking which coal and ship timber, close at hand, can bestow. And since the Pacific Railway has been completed, communication with England is Safer, quicker, and more regular, than it can be with Valparaíso. While the colonists were flattering themselves that by the energy and intelligence of the Home Government obstacles to emigration and to commerce which were obviously against the interests of England as well as of the colony, would be effectually removed, they are met by the despatch of the noble Earl, dated 14th August 1869, ignoring alike their present difficulties and their prospective value to the mother country, and strongly urging the new Governor, Musgrave, to exert his influence, not for the improvement of the colony, but for its incorporation with the Canadian Dominion, which is infinitely more isolated and remote from it than Great Britain is, and which is, at present, utterly powerless to administer its government or develope its I’éSOULTCOS. I know not of course, upon what despatches the noble Earl founds his conjecture—“But though On Such a question the colony was not unanimous, yet the prevailing opinion was in favour of union.” The new governor, Musgrave, appointed in June, could but have just arrived at his destimation in August, and I should like much to see his latest despatches—now that he has BRITISH COLUMBIA. 383 had time to mature his judgment. But now permit me to state a few facts in the teeth of the conjecture, into which those de- spatches insidiously betrayed the strong sense the noble Lord so eminently possesses. In the year 1867 a very distinguished Canadian settler in the colony, Mr de Cosmas, and who may be considered the head of the confederation party, certainly carried a resolution through the Legislative Council, recommending con- federation. But in 1868, when he reverted to that resolution, and named the terms on which a union should be based—not I pre- Sume without authority from Canada—terms, in some respects tempting, for Canada was to take upon herself the debt and to effect a waggon communication to Ottawa in three years, provided the Imperial Government would guarantee the loan required for its cost—the legislative council rejected the motion by a majority of three-fourths, upon the ground that even discussion was pre- mature. Premature, not because the Red River Settlement was not then ceded to Canada, but because the Council had not sufficient information and experience of the practical working of confederation in the North American provinces to admit of their defining the terms on which such an union would be advantage- ous to the local interests of British Columbia. To make that decision still more practically convincing, Mr de Cosmas himself was rejected by his constituents of Victoria, the capital town of Vancouver, exclusively upon the ground of his advocacy of Confederation, while candidates who opposed confederation were everywhere returned. And strong as these facts are, constitu- tionally obtained, they become still more strong if taken in con- nection with the attitude recently assumed by the Red River Settlement. That Settlement is incalculably less remote from Ottawa than British Columbia is. The prospective advantages of confedera- tion are to it much more obvious and more accessible than can at present be offered to the wildest imagination of the British Columbians. And if the first impulse of the Settlement has been a revolt which in its very hopelessness of success, shows the heat and strength of the popular sentiment, judge what will be the opposition of British Columbia—which is still proud to 384 BRITISH COLUMBIA, consider itself a direct dependency of the English Crown. But if it is not to be that, it is at present more separated from Canada by intervening obstacles of nature, than almost any other British possession. You could far more easily join it to Hong Kong or to the Australian continent. The noble Earl, in his despatch, talked of British Columbia being made conterminous to Canada by the cession to Canada of the desert territory that lies between. New Westminster or Victoria is not brought nearer to Ottawa—because the wilder- ness between them may take another name on the map. And across this immense interval of inhospitable space, no commu- nication is even commenced. The noble Earl allows the want of communication, but he flatters himself that if by a stroke of the pen, New Westminster is declared to be subject to Ottawa, Canada would effect the communication. But before we can estimate the probabilities of such an enterprise, we ought parti- cularly to know whether Her Majesty's Government are prepared to endorse the conditions for which Canada appears to have stipulated in the proposals made by Mr. de Cosmas, and guarantee the loan required for the purpose. If they are so prepared, I do not say that I should object—I think that the United States are right in considering that the construction of roads available for military purposes is sufficiently an imperial object to justify State assistance. And my objection to immediate confederation would be greatly removed. But if Her Majesty's Government will not assist even a Waggon road by guarantee or contribution, then, I doubt, if Canada can find or raise the millions required for so colossal an undertaking as a railway, or whether any speculative company could be found in Europe for constructing a line of railway where no traffic is likely for generations to pay the shareholders a farthing dividend. At all events, the British Columbians would be imprudent in- deed if they did not say, “Let us see Canada begin this work— let us see what she does to join with Ottawa, the Fertile Belt and the Red River Settlement, before we trust to the chance of her affording us railways and markets on the other side of the Rocky Mountains. We will not willingly consent to relinquish BRITISH COLUMBIA. 385 our separate existence, and sacrifice the magnificent future which belongs to our maritime situation, backed by a mainland So richly gifted by nature, and comprising, with Vancouver, an area of two hundred and thirteen thousand square miles—that is, double the size of Great Britain,_more than three times the size of the average States of the American Republic,+eight times the size of New Brunswick—ten times the size of Nova Scotia, in order to be what ? Why, the province of a province, to which we have not even an access, except across the territory of a foreign power, which, in case of war, would be closed against us !” And the moment that this odious submission is pressed upon them by the Imperial Government, can you wonder that some of the colonists now—could you wonder if most of the colonists a little later—turn longing eyes to their next neighbour, the |United States ? They know how eagerly the United States covet that destined queen of the Pacific, which the parent state treats with such contempt, to which you grudge even a dock, to which you prefer the sickly and foreign station of Valparaiso They compare the contempt they receive from you—they com- pare the terms on which confederation is offered to them by Canada, to the generosity which the United States has shown to California—a far less valuable possession for maritime purposes, and even for mineral wealth, but to which the Republic has given nine million dollars for the development of its internal resources. And I ask the noble Earl fairly to consider whether, by this premature proposal of confederation, he cannot readily account for that Memorial despatched to Washington, soliciting annexation to the United States; and whether, if he continues to press his scheme, the desire for annexation may not so in- crease as to become a formidable source of difficulty with the American Republic, and lose for ever to Canada that outlet to the Pacific which the progress of time and civilization may otherwise secure to her. To that Memorial to Washington very few names are attached—I do not believe they amount to fifty, It is so improperly addressed, that the comity between nations ought not to allow the American Government to attend to it— of itself, we need attach to it no importance. But still it is one VOL. II. e 2 B -* * 386 BRITISH COLUMBIA. of those straws thrown forth which serve to show how the wind blows—when you remember the mixed population of the colony, Australians, Germans, French, Americans, as well as British, and consider how many settlers there are not connected with us by blood, who, though easily reconciled to confederation when communication through Canadian territory shall be effected, would look upon a premature union, that robs them of their re- venue, and gives them a very inadequate share of representation, as the ruin of their industrial prospects, and a vital blow to the growth of the colony, from which the sole chance of recovery would be annexation to the American Republic. And now, see how injurious to Canada herself may be at present, the acquisition of a territory which, one day or other, it must be her ambition to unite to her own. Suppose British Columbia to revolt—how is Canada to put down the revolt—how can she even get to the place, except through the territory of the United States ? Suppose that Par- liament consent that Great Britain shall assist her, and we send out a naval force. Of course we stamp out the rebellion, and in so doing stamp out the last sentiment of loyalty; and whether the revolt be quelled by the Canadian force or by the Imperial, the seeds of undying bitterness will be sown, to spring up, some day or other, not only against Ourselves but against the Cana- dian Dominion. The moment the colony could safely count on the Sanction and help of the American Republic, might she not throw off the yoke of a province more remote from her than England is from Siberia, and become part and parcel of a Re- public certain to enrich and able to defend her ? Might not the key of the Pacific be lost for ever to the Dominion of Canada and the empire of Great Britain 2 There is another forcible reason why Canada. Ought not yet to accept of this territory, and why it is unfair in us to transfer it to her. The Boundary dispute between us and the United States is still unsettled; and the Island of St Juan, which commands the mouth of the Frazer River—that is, the gate into the mainland—is still half occupied by an American force. And here let me say, that my last act on quitting office as Colonial Secretary, was to warn my BRITISH COLUMBIA. 387 successor, the Duke of Newcastle, which I did by letter, of the necessity of enforcing the directions I had given to the Admi- ralty, to have a ship of war constantly at Vancouver until the Boundary question was settled, in order to guard the Island of St Juan from that raid of American individuals to which I fore- saw that it would be otherwise exposed. For some reason or another—I know not with what department rests the fault or the misfortune—I know not whether a ship was stationed at the mouth of the Frazer, or whether, if so, its watch was suffi- ciently vigilant—but that which I foretold took place, the island was seized, and nothing but the prudence and moderation of the then Governor, Mr Douglas, prevented an armed conflict, which might have led to very serious results. But there still remains the Boundary Question as far from a settlement as ever, And there still remains the Island of St Juan, which dominates the capital of Vancouver, and the entrance into British Columbia, in the joint occupation of an English and American force. Can you suppose that all the difficulties and perils connected . with that unsettled dispute, and the alleged claims of the United States to the Island of St Juan, will not be immeasurably encreased if the colony is transferred to a dominion compara- tively feeble, and when every advantage is given to the United States, in the sympathy of all the colonists, who dislike to be in- corporated, and will then yearn to be annexed ? You will only confer upon Canada the heritage of a dispute, in which you will have Secured every advantage to the rival disputant. My Lords,--I should not have made these remarks if I did not believe they were made in season. I think it is not too late now, I fear it might be too late some months hence, to reconcile British Columbia to her present relation to the Crown, and to her future chance, when Canada has developed her resources, and constructed the necessary communications, of becoming the most important Seaport, and not the least flourishing and powerful State of that immense dominion. It is with the greatest regret that I oppose any desire of the Canadian Government, or people, for immediate confederation of this important colony. In the 388 BRITISH COLUMBIA. destines of Canada, I take the warmest interest, and I do not forego the sanguine hope that one day or other a direct line of communication through her territory may realise the noble dream of uniting the Atlantic with the Pacific. It is in the interest of Canada that I would adjure her states- men not to jeopardize her security and hazard her prospects, by attempting prematurely to clutch at a possession which is so difficult to reach, and might be no less difficult to hold. Were I myself a Canadian, I would not in common prudence desire the incorporation of the colony until diplomatists have settled whether the Island of St Juan, which commands its harbour and the entrance into its mainland, is legally to be occupied by an American force—and unless the Imperial Government would assist Canada in the construction of those communications, by which alone she could defend the possessions transfered to her. And I should regard the hasty gift of the colony with great sus- picion, as indicative of the desire of the Imperial Government to get rid of all North American possessions, and fasten upon Canada all the difficulties and perils connected with the Boundary Dis- putes. Meanwhile, Surely Canada has more than enough on her hands at present, to stretch to the utmost the experiment of incor- porating divided regions under one rule, an experiment of which the results must depend upon that law of nature, by which in the political world, as well as in the physical, vast masses are accumu- lated or dissevered according as their component particles are mutually attracted or repelled. We have in the Australian colonies an example that, at least for a time, kindred colonies may flourish more by Severance than confederation. I take One case in point. I obtained Her Majesty's permission to create the colony of Queensland by separating its territories from that of Sidney. And while Sidney has been thus freed from a constant source of trouble and irritation, the encrease of Queensland in prosperity and in population, has been sufficiently marked and rapid to approve the policy of taking into consideration other circum- stances than the fact of being on the same continent, in deciding Whether One British settlement should be severed from, or incor- poration with, another, BRITISH COLUMBIA. 389 Now, in this case I do not hesitate to say what course I should respectfully but earnestly commend to the enlightened and candid mind of the noble Earl. I should urge him to with- draw for the present all schemes of confederating British Columbia with the Canadian Dominion. I know that the noble Earl will say that he would not force the consent of the colo- nists; but that is scarcely enough. So long as he implies that immediate confederation is the wish of the home government, he keeps alive a dangerous rivalry between the party for con- federation, which is chiefly on the mainland, and the party for annexation, which is chiefly on the island, and the energies of the colony for separate self development become paralised. I would urge him, therefore, to direct the Governor to the inquiry, not what may be the eventual destinies of the colony, but what can be done to improve its present condition under the imperial rule. Inquire whether I am right in the suggestions I have presumed to volunteer as to the harbour, the dock, the naval station, the seaport, and the emancipation of the lands between Victoria and Esquemault. Let Great Britain but show her desire to retain and to assist the colony in its own efforts of self- development, and you will hear no more of Memorials for an- nexation to the United States. The colonists are still loyal to England; do not seem indifferent to that loyalty, and you will win all their hearts. My Lords, my natural interest in the fate of a colony which . I advised Her Majesty to found, and my desire to retain to the Crown and people of this country, an acquisition of which I have endeavoured to show the importance, must be my excuse for this long and tedious encroachment on the indulgence your Lord- ships have vouchsafed to me. I trust it is needless to say that in the remarks I have made I am actuated by no spirit of hostility to the noble Earl the Secretary of the Colonies. I say sin- cerely, and not in the mere language of compliment, that few statesmen appear to me so eminently to possess certain qualities invaluable for the office that he holds,-long experience of affairs, great knowledge of mankind, a liberal generosity of Senti- ment, and a felicitous grace of conciliation,-qualities which 390 BRITISH COLUMBIA. especially fit him to deal, not only with the questions I submit to his attention, but with those larger and more difficult ques- tions affecting our whole colonial system, which are now agitat- ing the public mind,-provided only that he sincerely feels, and will unmistakably express an Englishman's desire to retain to England her colonial dominions, so long as its subdivisions are Willing to recognise her sceptre. On this head, and in answer to much that has been urged in favour of shrinking from the responsibilities which superior rank and position devolve upon nations, even more than they do upon individuals, I might have Something to say, but it will be said by others, and on more fitting Occasions. To my mind, not even the remarkable gifts of the right hon. Gentleman at the head of Her Majesty's Government, not even the splendid assemblage of united talents and contrasted opinions which he has secured to his Cabinet, could bestow on the people of this country any benefits which could compensate for the injury inflicted, if to their policy should be traced the loss of the Colonial Empire. XLIX. O U T L IN E O F A S P E E C EI INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN DELIVERED IN T H E H O U S E O F L OR D S ON THE 281EI OF JULY 1870. Within three weeks from the death of Lord Clarendon, on the 27th of June 1870, his successor as Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the Earl of Granville, was asked on Friday the 15th of July, in the House of Lords, by the Earl of Malmesbury, for particulars in regard to the negotiations then pending in relation to the threatened war between France and Germany. Similar interpellations were addressed to the Foreign Secretary on Monday the 18th of July by Earl Russell, on Monday the 25th of July by Wiscount Stratford de Redcliffe, and on Tuesday the 26th of July by Lord Cairns. It was not until Thursday the 28th of July that Lord Granville felt himself empowered to enter into anything like a ministerial statement, as to the course pursued in the midst of these critical negotiations by Her Majesty's Government. Later on, another ministerial explanation was given by Earl Granville, on Monday the 8th day August, throwing addi- tional light upon the efforts made by our diplomacy to ward off the neces- sity of abandoning the exquisitely delicate matter in dispute between France and Prussia, to the supreme arbitrement of war. Upon the occasion of each of these statements a brief discussion took place, the earlier of the two being the one upon which the following speech was intended to have been delivered. My LORDS,--I think that whatever our differences of party, we may all join in cordial sympathy with the noble Earl, the 392 THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR. Foreign Secretary, in the sudden difficulties which attended his accession to the Office he now holds, and in approval no less cordial, of his efforts to preserve the peace of Europe. The noble Earl, on the part of Her Majesty's Government, has very ably and accurately expressed the wish of the English people to maintain a strict neutrality in the war between France and Prussia. And if France can realize the desire she has in- timated, to make the war between herself and Prussia a duel. between two nations, in which no other nation is required to interfere, and if that war can be concluded as a duel between two individuals generally is by a single conflict in a single field, it is idle to say that England will remain neutral. She could not be otherwise while the independence of Holland and Bel- gium were respected, and Russia, Italy, Austria, Spain, and Den- mark, preserved the tranquil attitude of lookers-on. But, my Lords, suppose the war between two such nations as Prussia and France has no analogy at all with a duel between two indivi- duals. Suppose that it cannot be decided by a single conflict in a single field. Suppose that it threatens such an unsettle- ment of the great landmarks of Europe as to involve in the dis- pute the other powers of the continent, will England long be permitted to retain the immunities of a moral lecturer on the calamities of war and the blessings of peace Z My own belief is, that though of late years England has sought to maintain her ancient influence over the civilized world by coupling the most absolute right to intermeddle with the sternest determination not to fight, England is too important to the Organization of Europe, and the Organization of Europe is still too important to England, to allow her to escape from the necessity of taking part with one side or the other, should the war last long enough to compel both France and Prussia to provoke fresh enmities and court fresh alliances. We see at this moment on how slight a pretext one civilized State can declare war on another that has given it cause for jealousy and resentment. But there comes a crisis in any European War, where the State which most provoked jealousy and resentment is the State which shrinks out of all participation THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR. 393 in the common danger. The example of Austria, in the Crimean war, may suffice to show the eventual evils incurred by a State which absolutely preserves a neutrality that seemed prudent at the moment. If Austria had taken part either with the Western powers Or with Russia, can any one believe that she would have encountered the disasters resulting from a neutrality which left both parties indignant at what they considered her selfish inaction ? If she had sided with the Western powers, does any One believe that France would have despoiled her of her Italian dominions ? if she had sided with Russia, does any one believe She would have been deserted by her old ally in the struggle, to preserve from Prussia, so fair a portion of her Germanic Dominions 2 My Lords, there is one territory, the independence of which we are bound by the most solemn obligations to see respected. I need not say that territory is Belgium. Each of the belligerents has promised to respect the independence of Belgium, provided the other does—not a satisfactory condition But history tells us that the promises made by two powers at the commencement of a war, rapidly disappear on the continua- tion of its progress, and that it is never difficult to find an excuse for Saying, that a State whose neutrality ought to be respected, has done something or other to forfeit its privilege. And the power readiest to find that excuse is not necessarily the power which is least honourable, but the power to which the neces- sities or the conveniences of war best reconcile the sense of honour to the pain of evading a disagreeable obligation. My Lords, I do not think that the explanations we have yet received as to the draft of treaty between France and Prussia have much tended to allay the anxiety and alarm with which its publication has filled this country. To judge of it fairly, more detailed explanations are required. But even as the matter now stands, one reflection it must awaken. If the seizure of Belgium ever was considered and discussed as pro- bable between France and Prussia, as one would think it must have been before the heads of a treaty could be drawn up, nothing could have been more unfortunate than a policy on Our part which has allowed other nations to suppose that England 394. TEIE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR. may be safely left out of all consideration on a question so vitally concerning her honour—that her navies are maintained only for show—that however she will bark she never will bite —and that Belgium might be disposed of without regard to her obligations, because without dread of her resentment. But if, my Lords, we cannot yet discuss the question of a treaty upon which one party says one thing and one another, neither can we discuss the pros and cons of the mere pretext for this terrible war. We hear too much about the mere pretext; since about the mere pretext we can learn nothing. Scarcely do we hear One statement but it is flatly contradicted by another, and the wisest judge could not determine a case in which the evidence is con- tradictory, and the witnesses cannot be cross-examined. Thus much only we do know, that we could not fairly examine the pretext any more than we can the treaty, without impugning the veracity and wounding the honour of one or the other of these contending parties. And why study these papers, why discuss the treaty at all? My Lords, I address statesmen too practical not to know that it is a mere pedantry to discuss the abstract rights and wrongs of a nominal pretext for doing that which the parties concerned had pre-resolved to do. I am not disposed to attach personal blame to either of the two Sovereigns, or the two Governments, for what appear in these papers to have been the irresistible impulse of their several nations. It is a war of the people on either side, the war of two antagonistic races, the One to maintain the hereditary position it has had for centuries, the other to keep, to confirm, and to extend the position it has recently acquired. The truth is, that we English are too much accustomed to consider that all other nations should see with our eyes and judge with our minds. We have thought fit to regard the doctrine of the Balance of Power as an obsolete chimera, and in so doing are in some degree answerable for the armed state of Europe during the last fifteen years—and indirectly for the war consequent upon the military Spirit engendered by the maintenance of vast armaments in the time of peace. According to the received theory of the Balance of Power in Europe, France and England could not be TEIE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR. 395 in the same Scale—they might maintain the most cordial terms of friendship—but the armed alliance of the greatest military power with the greatest naval power of Europe, could not but have filled with alarm the other European States, who saw the navies of England withdrawn from their side in case of need, leaving them exposed at any time to the armies of a power covetous of glory, and liable to frequent internal changes, in any of which a vent from domestic strife might be sought in foreign fields, in which an additional glory might conduce to the con- tented re-establishment of civil order. Thus, from the day on which the force of circumstances com- pelled us to an armed alliance with France in the Crimean war; and when certain political philosophers loudly asserted that such an alliance between England and France ensured the peace of the world—and still more —when after the Russian war was concluded, England let it be understood she had so far with- drawn from all interest in Europe, that whatever France might do, so long as she did not invade us, we should not do more than moralize and remonstrate, no matter what State was in- vaded by another; from that day all the great continental powers have been maintaining vast military establishments, and the continent has been agitated by a succession of wars which have altered the map of Europe. * But, if we have abjured the doctrine of the Balance of Power, France, in especial, has stedfastly maintained it as a fundamental principle of her hereditary policy—taking care, of course, as was natural to a power so eminent, that no continental power should have heavier weights in the scale than herself. This is the true reason, why in assisting the consolidation of Italy she deemed it essential to her relative position to extend her frontiers and con- firm her hold on the Mediterranean by the cession of Savoy and Nice. And this is the true reason why she feels it necessary to the maintenance of her relative position, and perhaps to the con- ditions of her very safety to check, while it is yet time, the aggrandizement of a neighbour so near and so warlike as Prussia, into the dominions of a Germanic Empire, with larger popula- tion and more ample resources than her own, 396 THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR. This consideration for her hereditary place in the Balance of Power may seem to an Englishman over sensitive, but he would certainly understand it as natural, and perhaps excusable, if he would put himself into the place of a Frenchman. And, on the other hand, if he would put himself into the place of a German, he would equally understand—why a German might consider that the sooner this battle was fought out the SOOmer the Con- summation of German unity might be effected—and why a Prussian statesman, sharing that opinion and courting this War, might yet desire so to control it that Prussia should be the chal- lenged party and not the challenger, since Prussia could not, as the challenger, have united all Germans for the invasion of France, but as the challenged party, could unite all Germans in the defence of Germany. Thus, my Lords, it seems to me that we might consider the true causes of this war, apart from the Ostensible pretext of its outburst, with a fair and candid allowance for the national enthu- siasm on both sides, and for the policy of the statesmen by whom the enthusiasm has been guided. And we might thus keep not Only our actions, but even our minds, in the only genuine neu- trality which could avail us if we are to become hereafter medi- ators—the neutrality of impartial sentiment and judgment. But this could only be, provided France—as, judging by all we know of the perfect loyalty with which the French Emperor has ob- served every engagement towards ourselves, we have a right to assume that she can and will—only provided France condescend to convince us that her Government never did propose, nor authorise to be proposed, any terms to Prussia of a treaty which comprehended the Seizure and conquest of Belgium. For if England is left to suppose that at the very time France was bound to us by the most intimate alliance, a French Ambassador did, either with the authority or the privity of the French Govern- ment, Suggest a measure so offensive to the honour of England, wermight still maintain neutrality in point of action, but neutrality in point of Sentiment would be impossible. - Meanwhile, I think, we may take this lesson from experience, that when other nations are armed to the teeth, it is penny wise THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAIR. 397 and pound foolish to discharge our seamen and disband Our soldiers, and I entreat the Ministers of the Crown to consider that despite all their endeavours to avert So stern a necessity, We may have to defend not only our honour but our empire— we may have to defend from invasion not only the people of |Belgium, but the soil of Ireland, as the Only spot in these king- doms in which sympathisers with an invader can be found. 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