_Texte anglais de l'extrait du discours prononcé par lord Palmerslon à
Tiverton, devant ses électeurs_ (Morning-Chronicle _du 30 juin 1841_).
We brought within British influence, in one campaign, a vast extent of
country larger than France, almost as big as half of Europe; and the
way in which this was done and the results which have followed are well
deserving of the people of England. There is a contrast of which we may
have reason to be proud, between the progress of our arms in the East
and the operations which a neighbouring power, France, is now carrying
on in Africa. The progress of the British army in Asia has been
marked by a scrupulous reference to justice, an inviolable respect for
property, an abstinence from anything which could tend to wound the
feelings and prejudices of the people; and the result is this that I
saw, not many weeks ago, a distinguished military officer who had just
returned from the center of Afghanistan, from a place called Candahar
which many of you perhaps never heard of, and told me that he,
accompanied by half a dozen attendants, but without any military escort,
had ridden on horseback many thousand miles, through a country inhabited
by wild and semibarbarous tribes who, but two years ago, were arrayed in
fierce hostility against the approach of British arms, but that he had
ridden through them all with as much safety as he could have ridden from
Tiverton to _John Great's house_, his name as a British officer being
a passport through them all, because the English had respected their
rights, and afforded them protection, and treated them with justice.
Thence it is that an unarmed Englishman was safe in the midst of their
wilds. The different system pursued in Africa by the French has been
productive of very different results; there the French army, I am sorry
to say, is tarnished by the character of their operations. They sally
forth unawares on the villagers of the country; they put to death every
man who cannot escape by flight, and they carry off into captivity
the women and children (_shame, shame!_) They carry away every head of
cattle, every sheep, and every horse, and they burn what they cannot
carry off. The crop on the ground and the corn in the granaries are
consumed by the fire (_shame!_) What is the consequence? While in India
our officers ride about unarmed and alone amidst wildest tribes of the
wilderness, there is not a French man in Africa who shows his face above
a given spot, from the sentry at his post, who does not fall a victim to
the wild and justifiable retaliation of the Arabs (_hear, hear!_) They
professed to colonize Algeria; but they are only encamped in military
posts; and while we in India have the feelings of the people with us, in
Africa every native is opposed to the French, and every heart burns with
desire of vengeance (_hear, hear!_). I mention these things because it
is right you know them; they are an additional proof that, even in this
world, the Providence has decreed that injustice and violence shall meet
with their appropriate punishment, and that justice and mercy shall also
have their reward, etc. etc.