ON THE FOREIGN POLICY OF ENGLAND; DELIVERED AT A BANQUET GIVEN IN HONOR
OF MR. BRIGHT, AT BIRMINGHAM, OCTOBER 29, 1858.
[The foreign policy of Lord Palmerston in the Crimean War had been
severely criticized by Cobden and Bright, and in consequence of
this criticism, Bright had lost his seat for Manchester. He was at
once, however, elected by Birmingham; and the speech here given was
delivered in the Town-Hall on the occasion of his first visit to his
constituents.]
The frequent and far too complimentary manner in which my name has
been mentioned to-night, and the most kind way in which you have
received me, have placed me in a position somewhat humiliating, and
really painful; for to receive laudation which one feels one cannot
possibly have merited, is much more painful than to be passed by in a
distribution of commendation to which possibly one might lay some claim.
If one twentieth part of what has been said is true, if I am
entitled to any measure of your approbation, I may begin to think
that my public career and my opinions are not so un-English and so
anti-national as some of those who profess to be the best of our public
instructors have sometimes assumed. How, indeed, can I, any more than
any of you, be un-English and anti-national? Was I not born upon the
same soil? Do I not come of the same English stock? Are not my family
committed irrevocably to the fortunes of this country? Is not whatever
property I may have depending, as much as yours is depending, upon
the good government of our common fatherland? Then how shall any man
dare to say to any one of his countrymen, because he happens to hold a
different opinion on questions of great public policy, that therefore
he is un-English, and is to be condemned as anti-national? There are
those who would assume that between my countrymen and me, and between
my constituents and me, there has been, and there is now, a great gulf
fixed, and that if I cannot pass over to them and to you, they and you
can by no possibility pass over to me.
Now, I take the liberty here, in the presence of an audience as
intelligent as can be collected within the limits of this island, and
of those who have the strongest claims to know what opinions I do
entertain relative to certain great questions of public policy, to
assert that I hold no views, that I have never promulgated any views,
on those controverted questions with respect to which I cannot bring as
witnesses in my favor, and as fellow-believers with myself, some of the
best and most revered names in the history of English statesmanship.
About 120 years ago, the government of this country was directed by
Sir Robert Walpole, a great minister, who for a long period preserved
the country in peace, and whose pride it was that during those years
he had done so. Unfortunately, toward the close of his career, he was
driven by faction into a policy which was the ruin of his political
position.[18]
Sir Robert Walpole declared, when speaking of the question of war as
affecting this country, that nothing could be so foolish, nothing so
mad, as a policy of war for a trading nation. And he went so far as to
say, that any peace was better than the most successful war.
I do not give you the precise language made use of by the minister, for
I speak only from memory; but I am satisfied I am not misrepresenting
him in what I have now stated.
Come down fifty years nearer to our own time, and you find a statesman,
not long in office, but still strong in the affections of all persons
of Liberal principles in this country, and in his time representing
fully the sentiments of the Liberal party—Charles James Fox.
Mr. Fox, referring to the policy of the government of his time, which
was one of constant interference in the affairs of Europe, and by which
the country was continually involved in the calamities of war, said
that although he would not assert or maintain the principle, that under
no circumstances could England have any cause of interference with the
affairs of the continent of Europe, yet he would prefer the policy of
positive non-interference and of perfect isolation, rather than the
constant intermeddling to which our recent policy had subjected us, and
which brought so much trouble and suffering upon the country. In this
case also I am not prepared to give you his exact words, but I am sure
that I fairly describe the sentiments which he expressed.
Come down fifty years later, and to a time within the recollection
of most of us, and you find another statesman, once the most popular
man in England, and still remembered in this town and elsewhere with
respect and affection. I allude to Earl Grey. When Earl Grey came
into office for the purpose of carrying the question of parliamentary
reform, he unfurled the banner of peace, retrenchment, and reform,
and that sentiment was received in every part of the United Kingdom,
by every man who was or had been in favor of Liberal principles, as
predicting the advent of a new era which should save his country from
many of the calamities of the past.
Come down still nearer, and to a time that seems but the other day,
and you find another minister, second to none of those whom I have
mentioned—the late Sir Robert Peel. I had the opportunity of observing
the conduct of Sir Robert Peel, from the time when he took office in
1841; I watched his proceedings particularly from the year 1843, when
I entered Parliament, up to the time of his lamented death[19]; and
during the whole of that period, I venture to say, his principles, if
they were to be discovered from his conduct and his speeches, were
precisely those which I have held, and which I have always endeavored
to press upon the attention of my countrymen. If you have any doubt
upon that point I would refer you to that last, that beautiful, that
most solemn speech, which he delivered with an earnestness and a sense
of responsibility as if he had known he was leaving a legacy to his
country. If you refer to that speech, delivered on the morning of the
very day on which occurred the accident which terminated his life, you
will find that its whole tenor is in conformity with all the doctrines
that I have urged upon my countrymen for years past with respect to our
policy in foreign affairs. When Sir Robert Peel went home just before
the dawn of day, upon the last occasion that he passed from the House
of Commons, the scene of so many of his triumphs, I have heard from
what I think a good authority, that after he entered his own house he
expressed the exceeding relief which he experienced at having delivered
himself of a speech which he had been reluctantly obliged to make
against a ministry which he was anxious to support, and he added, if I
am not mistaken: “I have made a speech of peace.”
Well, if this be so, if I can give you four names like these,—if there
were time I could make a longer list of still eminent, if inferior
men,—I should like to know why I, as one of a small party, am to be set
down as teaching some new doctrine which is not fit for my countrymen
to hear, and why I am to be assailed in every form of language, as if
there was one great department of governmental affairs on which I was
incompetent to offer any opinion to my countrymen.
But leaving the opinions of individuals, I appeal to this audience, to
every man who knows any thing of the views and policy of the Liberal
party in past years, whether it is not the fact that, up to 1832,
and indeed to a much later period, probably to the year 1850, those
sentiments of Sir Robert Walpole, of Mr. Fox, of Earl Grey, and of Sir
Robert Peel, the sentiments which I in humbler mode have propounded,
were not received unanimously by the Liberal party as their fixed and
unchangeable creed? And why should they not? Are they not founded
upon reason? Do not all statesmen know, as you know, that upon peace,
and peace alone can be based the successful industry of a nation,
and that by successful industry alone can be created that wealth
which, permeating all classes of the people, not confined to great
proprietors, great merchants, and great speculators, not running in a
stream merely down your principal streets, but turning fertilizing
rivulets into every by-lane and every alley, tends so powerfully to
promote the comfort, happiness, and contentment of a nation? Do you not
know that all progress comes from successful and peaceful industry,
and that upon it is based your superstructure of education, of morals,
of self-respect among your people, as well as every measure for
extending and consolidating freedom in your public institutions? I am
not afraid to acknowledge that I do oppose—that I do utterly condemn
and denounce—a great part of the foreign policy which is practised and
adhered to by the government of this country.
You know, of course, that about one hundred and seventy years ago there
happened in this country what we have always been accustomed to call a
“Glorious Revolution”—a Revolution which had this effect: that it put
a bit into the mouth of the monarch, so that he was not able of his
own free will to do, and he dared no longer attempt to do, the things
which his predecessors had done without fear. But if at the Revolution
the monarchy of England was bridled and bitted, at the same time the
great territorial families of England were enthroned: and from that
period until the year 1831 or 1832—until the time when Birmingham
politically became famous,—those territorial families reigned with
an almost undisputed sway over the destinies and the industry of the
people of these kingdoms.[20] If you turn to the history of England
from the period of the Revolution to the present, you will find that
an entirely new policy was adopted, and that while we had endeavored
in former times to keep ourselves free from European complications, we
now began to act upon a system of constant entanglement in the affairs
of foreign countries, as if there were neither property nor honors, nor
any thing worth striving for, to be acquired in any other field. The
language coined and used then has continued to our day. Lord Somers, in
writing for William III., speaks of the endless and sanguinary wars of
that period as wars “to maintain the liberties of Europe.” There were
wars “to support the Protestant interest,” and there were many wars to
preserve our old friend “the balance of power.”
We have been at war since that time, I believe, with, for, and against
every considerable nation in Europe. We fought to put down a pretended
French supremacy under Louis XIV. We fought to prevent France and
Spain coming under the sceptre of one monarch, although, if we had
not fought, it would have been impossible in the course of things
that they should have become so united.[21] We fought to maintain the
Italian provinces in connection with the House of Austria. We fought
to put down the supremacy of Napoleon Bonaparte; and the minister who
was employed by this country at Vienna, after the great war, when it
was determined that no Bonaparte should ever again sit on the throne
of France, was the very man to make an alliance with another Bonaparte
for the purpose of carrying on a war to prevent the supremacy of the
late Emperor of Russia.[22] So that we have been all around Europe, and
across it over and over again, and after a policy so distinguished, so
pre-eminent, so long continued, and so costly, I think we have a fair
right—I have, at least—to ask those who are in favor of it to show us
its visible result. Europe is not at this moment, so far as I know,
speaking of it broadly, and making allowance for certain improvements
in its general civilization, more free politically than it was before.
The balance of power is like perpetual motion, or any of those
impossible things which some men are always racking their brains and
spending their time and money to accomplish.
We all know and deplore that at the present moment a larger number
of the grown men of Europe are employed, and a larger portion of
the industry of Europe is absorbed, to provide for, and maintain,
the enormous armaments which are now on foot in every considerable
continental state. Assuming, then, that Europe is not much better in
consequence of the sacrifices we have made, let us inquire what has
been the result in England, because, after all, that is the question
which it becomes us most to consider. I believe that I understate
the sum when I say that, in pursuit of this will-o’-the-wisp (the
liberties of Europe and the balance of power), there has been extracted
from the industry of the people of this small island no less an
amount than 2,000,000,000_l._ sterling.[23] I cannot imagine how much
2,000,000,000_l._ is, and therefore I shall not attempt to make you
comprehend it.
I presume it is something like those vast and incomprehensible
astronomical distances with which we have been lately made familiar;
but, however familiar, we feel that we do not know one bit more
about them than we did before. When I try to think of that sum of
2,000,000,000_l._ there is a sort of vision passes before my mind’s
eye. I see your peasant laborer delve and plunge, sow and reap, sweat
beneath the summer’s sun, or grow prematurely old before the winter’s
blast. I see your noble mechanic with his manly countenance and his
matchless skill, toiling at his bench or his forge. I see one of the
workers in our factories in the north, a woman—a girl it may be—gentle
and good, as many of them are, as your sisters and daughters are—I
see her intent upon the spindle, whose revolutions are so rapid, that
the eye fails altogether to detect them, or watching the alternating
flight of the unresting shuttle. I turn again to another portion of
your population, which, “plunged in mines, forgets a sun was made,”
and I see the man who brings up from the secret chambers of the earth
the elements of the riches and greatness of his country. When I see
all this I have before me a mass of produce and of wealth which I am
no more able to comprehend than I am that 200,000,000_l._ of which I
have spoken, but I behold in its full proportions the hideous error of
your governments, whose fatal policy consumes in some cases a half,
never less than a third, of all the results of that industry which
God intended should fertilize and bless every home in England, but the
fruits of which are squandered in every part of the surface of the
globe, without producing the smallest good to the people of England.
We have, it is true, some visible results that are of a more positive
character. We have that which some people call a great advantage—the
national debt—a debt which is now so large that the most prudent, the
most economical, and the most honest have given up all hope, not of its
being paid off, but of its being diminished in amount.[24]
We have, too, taxes which have been during many years so onerous that
there have been times when the patient beasts of burden threatened to
revolt—so onerous that it has been utterly impossible to levy them
with any kind of honest equality, according to the means of the people
to pay them. We have that, moreover, which is a standing wonder to
all foreigners who consider our condition—an amount of apparently
immovable pauperism which to strangers is wholly irreconcilable with
the fact that we, as a nation, produce more of what should make us all
comfortable than is produced by any other nation of similar numbers
on the face of the globe. Let us likewise remember that during the
period of those great and so-called glorious contests on the continent
of Europe, every description of home reform was not only delayed, but
actually crushed out of the minds of the great bulk of the people.
There can be no doubt whatever that in 1793 England was about to
realize political changes and reforms, such as did not appear again
until 1830,[25] and during the period of that war, which now almost all
men agree to have been wholly unnecessary, we were passing through a
period which may be described as the dark age of English politics; when
there was no more freedom to write or speak, or politically to act,
than there is now in the most despotic country of Europe.
But, it may be asked, did nobody gain? If Europe is no better, and the
people of England have been so much worse, who has benefited by the
new system of foreign policy? What has been the fate of those who were
enthroned at the Revolution, and whose supremacy has been for so long a
period undisputed among us? Mr. Kinglake, the author of an interesting
book on Eastern travel, describing the habits of some acquaintances
that he made in the Syrian deserts, says, that the jackals of the
desert follow their prey in families like the place-hunters of
Europe. I will reverse, if you like, the comparison, and say that the
great territorial families of England, which were enthroned at the
Revolution, have followed their prey like the jackals of the desert.
Do you not observe at a glance, that, from the time of William III.,
by reason of the foreign policy which I denounce, wars have been
multiplied, taxes increased, loans made, and the sums of money which
every year the government has to expend augmented, and that so the
patronage at the disposal of ministers must have increased also, and
the families who were enthroned and made powerful in the legislation
and administration of the country must have had the first pull at,
and the largest profit out of, that patronage? There is no actuary in
existence who can calculate how much of the wealth, of the strength, of
the supremacy of the territorial families of England, has been derived
from an unholy participation in the fruits of the industry of the
people, which have been wrested from them by every device of taxation,
and squandered in every conceivable crime of which a government could
possibly be guilty.
The more you examine this matter the more you will come to the
conclusion which I have arrived at, that this foreign policy, this
regard for the “liberties of Europe,” this care at one time for “the
Protestant interests,” this excessive love for “the balance of power,”
is neither more nor less than a gigantic system of out-door relief
for the aristocracy of Great Britain. [Great laughter.][26] I observe
that you receive that declaration as if it were some new and important
discovery. In 1815, when the great war with France was ended, every
Liberal in England, whose politics, whose hopes, and whose faith had
not been crushed out of him by the tyranny of the time of that war,
was fully aware of this, and openly admitted it, and up to 1832, and
for some years afterward, it was the fixed and undoubted creed of
the great Liberal party. But somehow all is changed. We, who stand
upon the old landmarks, who walk in the old paths, who would conserve
what is wise and prudent, are hustled and shoved about as if we were
come to turn the world upside down. The change which has taken place
seems to confirm the opinion of a lamented friend of mine, who, not
having succeeded in all his hopes, thought that men made no progress
whatever, but went round and round like a squirrel in a cage. The idea
is now so general that it is our duty to meddle everywhere, that it
really seems as if we had pushed the Tories from the field, expelling
them by our competition.
I should like to lay before you a list of the treaties which we have
made, and of the responsibilities under which we have laid ourselves
with respect to the various countries of Europe. I do not know where
such an enumeration is to be found, but I suppose it would be possible
for antiquaries and men of investigating minds to dig them out from
the recesses of the Foreign Office, and perhaps to make some of them
intelligible to the country. I believe, however, that if we go to the
Baltic we shall find that we have a treaty to defend Sweden, and the
only thing which Sweden agrees to do in return is not to give up any
portion of her territories to Russia. Coming down a little south we
have a treaty which invites us, enables us, and perhaps, if we acted
fully up to our duty with regard to it, would compel us to interfere
in the question between Denmark and the Duchies.[27] If I mistake not,
we have a treaty which binds us down to the maintenance of the little
kingdom of Belgium, as established after its separation from Holland.
We have numerous treaties with France. We are understood to be bound
by treaty to maintain constitutional government in Spain and Portugal.
If we go round into the Mediterranean, we find the little kingdom of
Sardinia, to which we have lent some millions of money, and with which
we have entered into important treaties for preserving the balance of
power in Europe. If we go beyond the kingdom of Italy, and cross the
Adriatic, we come to the small kingdom of Greece, against which we have
a nice account that will never be settled; while we have engagements
to maintain that respectable but diminutive country under its present
constitutional government.[28] Then leaving the kingdom of Greece we
pass up the eastern end of the Mediterranean, and from Greece to the
Red Sea, wherever the authority of the Sultan is more or less admitted,
the blood and the industry of England are pledged to the permanent
sustentation of the “independence and integrity” of the Ottoman
Empire.[29]
I confess that as a citizen of this country, wishing to live peaceably
among my fellow-countrymen, and wishing to see my countrymen free,
and able to enjoy the fruits of their labor, I protest against a
system which binds us in all these networks and complications from
which it is impossible that one can gain one single atom of advantage
for this country. It is not all glory after all. Glory may be worth
something, but it is not always glory. We have had within the last
few years despatches from Vienna and from St. Petersburg, which, if
we had not deserved them, would have been very offensive and not a
little insolent.[30] We have had the ambassador of the Queen expelled
summarily from Madrid, and we have had an ambassador driven almost
with ignominy from Washington.[31] We have blockaded Athens for a
claim which was known to be false.[32] We have quarrelled with Naples,
for we chose to give advice to Naples, which was not received in the
submissive spirit expected from her, and our minister was therefore
withdrawn.[33] Not three years ago, too, we seized a considerable
kingdom in India, with which our government had but recently entered
into the most solemn treaty, which every lawyer in England and in
Europe, I believe, would consider binding before God and the world.[34]
We deposed its monarch; we committed a great immorality and a great
crime, and we have reaped an almost instantaneous retribution in the
most gigantic and sanguinary revolt which probably any nation ever made
against its conquerors. Within the last few years we have had two wars
with a great empire, which we are told contains at least one third of
the whole human race.[35] The first war was called, and appropriately
called, the Opium War. No man, I believe, with a spark of morality
in his composition, no man who cares any thing for the opinion of
his fellow-countrymen, has dared to justify that war. The war which
has just been concluded, if it has been concluded, had its origin in
the first war; for the enormities committed in the first war are the
foundation of the implacable hostility which it is said the inhabitants
of Canton bear to all persons connected with the English name. Yet,
though we have these troubles in India—a vast country which we do not
know how to govern,—and a war with China—a country with which, though
everybody else can remain at peace, we cannot,—such is the inveterate
habit of conquest, such is the insatiable lust of territory, such is,
in my view, the depraved, unhappy state of opinion of the country on
this subject, that there are not a few persons, Chambers of Commerce,
to wit, in different parts of the kingdom (though I am glad to say
it has not been so with the Chamber of Commerce at Birmingham), who
have been urging our government to take possession of a province of
the greatest island in the Eastern seas; a possession which must at
once necessitate increased estimates and increased taxation, and which
would probably lead us into merciless and disgraceful wars with the
half-savage tribes who inhabit that island.[36]
I will not dwell upon that question. The gentleman who is principally
concerned in it is at this moment, as you know, stricken down with
affliction, and I am unwilling to enter here into any considerable
discussion of the case which he is urging upon the public; but I say
that we have territory enough in India; and if we have not troubles
enough there, if we have not difficulties enough in China, if we have
not taxation enough, by all means gratify your wishes for more; but
I hope that whatever may be the shortcomings of the government with
regard to any other questions in which we are all interested—and may
they be few!—they will shut their eyes, they will turn their backs
obstinately from adding in this mode, or in any mode, to the English
possessions in the East. I suppose that if any ingenious person were
to prepare a large map of the world, as far as it is known, and
were to mark upon it, in any color that he liked, the spots where
Englishmen have fought and English blood has been poured forth, and the
treasures of English industry squandered, scarcely a country, scarcely
a province of the vast expanse of the habitable globe, would be thus
undistinguished.
Perhaps there are in this room, I am sure there are in the country,
many persons who hold a superstitious traditionary belief that, somehow
or other, our vast trade is to be attributed to what we have done in
this way, that it is thus we have opened markets and advanced commerce,
that English greatness depends upon the extent of English conquests
and English military renown. But I am inclined to think that, with the
exception of Australia, there is not a single dependency of the crown
which, if we come to reckon what it has cost in war and protection,
would not be found to be a positive loss to the people of this
country. Take the United States, with which we have such an enormous
and constantly increasing trade. The wise statesmen of the last
generation, men whom your school histories tell you were statesmen,
serving under a monarch who they tell you was a patriotic monarch,
spent 130,000,000_l._ of the fruits of the industry of the people in
a vain—happily a vain—endeavor to retain the colonies of the United
States in subjection to the monarchy of England.
Add up the interest of that 130,000,000_l._ for all this time, and how
long do you think it will be before there will be a profit on the trade
with the United States which will repay the enormous sum we invested
in a war to retain those States as colonies of this empire? It never
will be paid off. Wherever you turn, you will find that the opening of
markets, developing of new countries, introducing cotton cloth with
cannon balls, are vain, foolish, and wretched excuses for wars, and
ought not to be listened to for a moment by any man who understands the
multiplication table, or who can do the simplest sum in arithmetic.
Since the “Glorious Revolution,” since the enthronization of the
great Norman territorial families, they have spent in wars, and we
have worked for, about 2,000,000,000_l._ The interest on that is
100,000,000_l._ per annum, which alone, to say nothing of the principal
sum, is three or four times as much as the whole amount of your annual
export trade from that time to this.[37]
Therefore, if war has provided you with a trade, it has been at an
enormous cost; but I think it is by no means doubtful that your trade
would have been no less in amount and no less profitable, had peace and
justice been inscribed on your flag instead of conquest and the love
of military renown. But even in this year, 1858—we have got a long way
into the century,—we find that within the last seven years our public
debt has greatly increased. Whatever be the increase of our population,
of our machinery, of our industry, of our wealth, still our national
debt goes on increasing.[38] Although we have not a foot more territory
to conserve, or an enemy in the world who dreams of attacking us, we
find that our annual military expenses during the last twenty years
have risen from 12,000,000_l._ to 22,000,000_l._
Some people believe that it is a good thing to pay a great revenue
to the state. Even so eminent a man as Lord John Russell is not
without a delusion of this sort. Lord John Russell, as you have heard,
while speaking of me in flattering and friendly terms, says he is
unfortunately obliged to differ from me frequently; therefore, I
suppose there is no particular harm in my saying that I am sometimes
obliged to differ from him. Some time ago he was a great star in the
northern hemisphere, shining, not with unaccustomed, but with his usual
brilliancy at Liverpool. He made a speech, in which there was a great
deal to be admired, to a meeting composed, it was said, to a great
extent of working men; and in it he stimulated them to a feeling of
pride in the greatness of their country, and in being citizens of a
state which enjoyed a revenue of 100,000,000_l._ a year, which included
the revenues of the United Kingdom and of British India. But I think it
would have been far more to the purpose if he could have congratulated
the working men of Liverpool on this vast empire being conducted in an
orderly manner, on its laws being well administered and well obeyed,
its shores sufficiently defended, its people prosperous and happy, on a
revenue of 20,000,000_l._ The state indeed, of which Lord John Russell
is a part, may enjoy a revenue of 100,000,000_l._, but I am afraid the
working men can only be said to enjoy it in the sense in which men not
very choice in their expressions say that for a long time they have
enjoyed very bad health.
I am prepared to admit that it is a subject of congratulation that
there is a people so great, so free, and so industrious that it can
produce a sufficient income out of which 100,000,000_l._ a year, if
need absolutely were, could be spared for some great and noble object;
but it is not a thing to be proud of that our government should require
us to pay that enormous sum for the simple purposes of government and
defence.
Nothing can by any possibility tend more to the corruption of a
government than enormous revenues. We have heard lately of instances
of certain joint-stock institutions with very great capital collapsing
suddenly, bringing disgrace upon their managers and ruin upon hundreds
of families. A great deal of that has arisen, not so much from
intentional fraud as from the fact that weak and incapable men have
found themselves tumbling about in an ocean of bank-notes and gold, and
they appear to have lost all sight of where it came from, to whom it
belonged, and whether it was possible by any maladministration ever to
come to an end of it. That is absolutely what is done by governments.
You have read in the papers lately some accounts of the proceedings
before a commission appointed to inquire into alleged maladministration
with reference to the supply of clothing to the army, but if anybody
had said any thing in the time of the late government about any such
maladministration, there is not one of those great statesmen, of whom
we are told we ought always to speak with so much reverence, who would
not have got up and declared that nothing could be more admirable than
the system of book-keeping at Weedon, nothing more economical than the
manner in which the War Department spent the money provided by public
taxation. But we know that it is not so. I have heard a gentleman—one
who is as competent as any man in England to give an opinion about it—a
man of business, and not surpassed by any one as a man of business,
declare, after a long examination of the details of the question, that
he would undertake to do everything that is done not only for the
defence of the country, but for many other things which are done by
your navy, and which are not necessary for that purpose, for half the
annual cost that is voted in the estimates.
I think the expenditure of these vast sums, and especially of those
which we spend for military purposes, leads us to adopt a defiant and
insolent tone towards foreign countries. We have the freest press in
Europe, and the freest platform in Europe, but every man who writes an
article in a newspaper, and every man who stands on a platform, ought
to do it under a solemn sense of responsibility. Every word he writes,
every word I utter, passes with a rapidity of which our forefathers
were utterly ignorant, to the very ends of the earth; the words become
things and acts, and they produce on the minds of other nations effects
which a man may never have intended. Take a recent case; take the case
of France. I am not expected to defend, and I shall certainly not
attack, the present government of France.
The instant that it appeared in its present shape the minister of
England conducting your foreign affairs, speaking ostensibly for the
cabinet, for his sovereign, and for the English nation, offered his
congratulations, and the support of England was at once accorded to the
re-created French empire.[39] Soon after this an intimate alliance was
entered into between the Queen of England, through her Ministers, and
the Emperor of the French.
I am not about to defend the policy which flowed from that alliance,
nor shall I take up your time by making any attack upon it. An
alliance was entered into and a war was entered into. English and
French soldiers fought on the same field, and they suffered, I fear,
from the same neglect. They now lie buried on the bleak heights of
the Crimea, and except by their mothers, who do not soon forget their
children, I suppose they are mostly forgotten. I have never heard it
suggested that the French Government did not behave with the most
perfect honor to this government and to this country all through these
grave transactions; but I have heard it stated by those who most
know, that nothing could be more honorable, nothing more just, than
the conduct of the French Emperor to this government throughout the
whole of that struggle. More recently, when the war in China was begun
by a government which I have condemned and denounced in the House
of Commons, the Emperor of the French sent his ships and troops to
co-operate with us, but I never heard that any thing was done there
to create a suspicion of a feeling of hostility on his part toward
us. The Emperor of the French came to London, and some of those
powerful organs of the press that have since taken the line of which I
am complaining, did all but invite the people of London to prostrate
themselves under the wheels of the chariot which conveyed along our
streets the revived monarchy of France. The Queen of England went to
Paris, and was she not received there with as much affection and as
much respect as her high position and her honorable character entitled
her to?
What has occurred since? If there was a momentary unpleasantness, I am
quite sure every impartial man will agree that, under the peculiarly
irritating circumstances of the time there was at least as much
forbearance shown on one side of the Channel as on the other. Then
we have had much said lately about a naval fortification recently
completed in France, which has been more than one hundred years in
progress, and which was not devised by the present Emperor of the
French.
For one hundred years great sums had been spent on it, and at last,
like every other great work, it was brought to an end. The English
Queen and others were invited over, and many went who were not invited.
And yet in all this we are told that there is something to create
extreme alarm and suspicion; we, who never fortified any places; we,
who have not a greater than Sebastopol at Gibraltar; we who have not
an impregnable fortress at Malta, who have not spent the fortune of
a nation almost in the Ionian Islands, and who are doing nothing at
Alderney; we are to take offence at the fortifications of Cherbourg!
There are few persons who at some time or other have not been brought
into contact with a poor unhappy fellow-creature who has some peculiar
delusion or suspicion pressing on his mind. I recollect a friend of
mine going down from Derby to Leeds in the train with a very quiet and
respectable looking gentleman sitting opposite to him. They had both
been staying at the Midland Hotel, and they began talking about it.
All at once the gentleman said: “Did you notice any thing particular
about the bread at breakfast?” “No,” said my friend, “I did not.” “Oh!
but I did,” said the poor gentleman, “and I am convinced there was an
attempt made to poison me, and it is a very curious thing that I never
go to an hotel without I discover some attempt to do me mischief.” The
unfortunate man was laboring under one of the greatest calamities which
can befall a human creature. But what are we to say of a nation which
lives under a perpetual delusion that it is about to be attacked—a
nation which is the most combined on the face of the earth, with little
less than 30,000,000 of people all united under a government which,
though we intend to reform we do not the less respect, and which has
mechanical power and wealth to which no other country offers any
parallel? There is no causeway to Britain; the free waves of the sea
flow day and night forever round her shores, and yet there are people
going about with whom this hallucination is so strong that they do not
merely discover it quietly to their friends, but they write it down in
double-leaded columns, in leading articles,—nay, some of them actually
get up on platforms and proclaim it to hundreds and thousands of their
fellow-countrymen. I should like to ask you whether these delusions
are to last forever, whether this policy is to be the perpetual policy
of England, whether these results are to go on gathering and gathering
until there come, as come there must inevitably, some dreadful
catastrophe on our country.
I should like to-night, if I could, to inaugurate one of the best and
holiest revolutions that ever took place in this country. We have
had a dozen revolutions since some of us were children. We have had
one revolution in which you had a great share—a great revolution of
opinion on the question of the suffrage. Does it not read like madness
that men, thirty years ago, were frantic at the idea of the people
of Birmingham having a 10_l._ franchise? Does it not seem something
like idiocy to be told that a banker in Leeds, when it was proposed to
transfer the seats of one rotten borough to the town of Leeds, should
say (and it was repeated in the House of Commons on his authority) that
if the people of Leeds had the franchise conferred upon them it would
not be possible to keep the bank doors open with safety, and that he
should remove his business to some quiet place, out of danger from the
savage race that peopled that town? But now all confess that the people
are perfectly competent to have votes, and nobody dreams of arguing
that the privilege will make them less orderly.
Take the question of colonial government. Twenty years ago the
government of our colonies was a huge job. A small family party in
each, in connection with the Colonial Office, ruled our colonies. We
had then discontent, and now and then a little wholesome insurrection,
especially in Canada. The result was that we have given up the colonial
policy which had hitherto been held sacred, and since that time
not only have our colonies greatly advanced in wealth and material
resources, but no parts of the empire are more tranquil and loyal.[40]
Take also the question of protection. Not thirty years ago, but twelve
years ago, there was a great party in Parliament, led by a Duke in one
House, and by a son and brother of a duke in the other, which declared
that utter ruin must come, not only on the agricultural interest, but
upon the manufactures and commerce of England, if we departed from our
old theories upon this subject of protection. They told us that the
laborer—the unhappy laborer—of whom it may be said in this country:
“Here landless laborers hopeless toil and strive,
But taste no portion of the sweets they hive,”
that the laborer was to be ruined; that is, that the paupers were to
be pauperized. These gentlemen were overthrown. The plain, honest,
common-sense of the country swept away their cob-web theories, and
they are gone. What is the result? From 1846 to 1857 we have received
into this country of grain of all kinds, including flour, maize, or
India corn—all objects heretofore not of absolute prohibition, but
which were intended to be prohibited until it was not safe for people
to be starved any more,—not less than an amount equal in value to
224,000,000_l._ That is equal to 18,700,000_l._ per annum on the
average of twelve years. During that period, too, your home growth
has been stimulated to an enormous extent. You have imported annually
200,000 tons of guano, and the result has been a proportionate increase
in the productions of the soil, for 200,000 tons of guano will grow an
equal weight and value of wheat. With all this, agriculture was never
more prosperous, while manufactures were never, at the same time, more
extensively exported; and with all this, the laborers, for whom the
tears of the Protectionist were shed, have, according to the admission
of the most violent of the class, never been in a better state since
the beginning of the great French war.
One other revolution of opinion has been in regard to our criminal
law. I have lately been reading a book which I would advise every
man to read—the “Life of Sir Samuel Romilly.” He tells us in simple
language of the almost insuperable difficulties he had to contend with
to persuade the legislature of this country to abolish the punishment
of death for stealing from a dwelling-house to the value of 5_s._, an
offence which now is punished by a few weeks’ imprisonment. Lords,
bishops, and statesmen opposed these efforts year after year, and there
have been some thousands of persons put to death publicly for offences
which are not now punishable with death. Now every man and woman in the
kingdom would feel a thrill of horror if told that a fellow-creature
was to be put to death for such a cause.
These are revolutions in opinion, and let me tell you that when you
accomplish a revolution in opinion upon a great question, when you
alter it from bad to good, it is not like charitably giving a beggar
6_d._ and seeing him no more, but it is a great beneficent act, which
affects not merely the rich and the powerful, but penetrates every
lane, every cottage in the land, and wherever it goes brings blessings
and happiness. It is not from statesmen that these things come. It
is not from them that have proceeded these great revolutions of
opinion on the questions of reform, protection, colonial government,
and criminal law—it was from public meetings such as this, from the
intelligence and conscience of the great body of the people who have
no interest in wrong, and who never go from the right but by temporary
error and under momentary passion.
It is for you to decide whether our greatness shall be only temporary,
or whether is shall be enduring. When I am told that the greatness of
our country is shown by the 100,000,000_l._ of revenue produced, may I
not also ask how it is that we have 1,100,000 paupers in this kingdom,
and why it is that 7,000,000_l._ should be taken from the industry
chiefly of the laboring classes to support a small nation, as it
were, of paupers? Since your legislation upon the Corn Laws, you have
not only had nearly 20,000,000_l._ of food brought into the country
annually, but such an extraordinary increase of trade that your exports
are about doubled, and yet I understand that in the year 1856, for I
have no later return, there were no less than 1,100,000 paupers in the
United Kingdom, and the sum raised in poor-rates was not less than
7,200,000_l._[41] And that cost of pauperism is not the full amount,
for there is a vast amount of temporary, casual, and vagrant pauperism
that does not come in to swell that sum.
Then do not you well know—I know it, because I live among the
population of Lancashire, and I doubt not the same may be said of the
population of this city and county—that just above the level of the
1,100,000 there is at least an equal number who are ever oscillating
between independence and pauperism, who, with a heroism which is not
the less heroic because it is secret and unrecorded, are doing their
very utmost to maintain an honorable and independent position before
their fellow-men?
While Irish labor, notwithstanding the improvement which has taken
place in Ireland, is only paid at the rate of about one shilling a
day; while in the straths and glens of Scotland there are hundreds of
shepherd families whose whole food almost consists of oatmeal porridge
from day to day, and from week to week; while these things continue,
I say that we have no reason to be self-satisfied and contented with
our position; but that we who are in Parliament and are more directly
responsible for affairs, and you who are also responsible though in a
lesser degree, are bound by the sacred duty which we owe our country
to examine why it is that with all this trade, all this industry, and
all this personal freedom, there is still so much that is unsound at
the base of our social fabric?
Let me direct your attention now to another point which I never think
of without feelings that words would altogether fail to express. You
hear constantly that woman, the helpmate of man, who adorns, dignifies,
and blesses our lives, that woman in this country is cheap; that
vast numbers whose names ought to be synonyms for purity and virtue,
are plunged into profligacy and infamy. But do you not know that you
sent 40,000 men to perish on the bleak heights of the Crimea, and
that the revolt in India, caused, in part at least, by the grievous
iniquity of the seizure of Oude, may tax your country to the extent of
100,000 lives before it is extinguished; and do you not know that for
the 140,000 men thus drafted off and consigned to premature graves,
nature provided in your country 140,000 women? If you have taken the
men who should have been the husbands of these women, and if you have
sacrificed 100,000,000_l._, which as capital reserved in the country
would have been an ample fund for their employment and for the
sustentation of their families, are you not guilty of a great sin in
involving yourselves in such a loss of life and of money in war, except
on grounds and under circumstances which, according to the opinions of
every man in the country, should leave no kind of option whatever for
your choice?
I know perfectly well the kind of observations which a certain class of
critics will make upon this speech.
I have been already told by a very eminent newspaper publisher in
Calcutta, who, commenting on a speech I made at the close of the
session with regard to the condition of India, and our future policy
in that country, said, that the policy I recommended was intended to
strike at the root of the advancement of the British empire, and that
its advancement did not necessarily involve the calamities which I
pointed out as likely to occur.
My Calcutta critic assured me that Rome pursued a similar policy for
a period of eight centuries, and that for those eight centuries she
remained great. Now, I do not think that examples taken from pagan,
sanguinary Rome, are proper models for the imitation of a Christian
country, nor would I limit my hopes of the greatness of England even
to the long duration of 800 years.
But what is Rome now? The great city is dead. A poet has described her
as “the lone mother of dead empires.” Her language even is dead. Her
very tombs are empty; the ashes of her most illustrious citizens are
dispersed.
“The Scipios’ tomb contains no ashes now.” Yet I am asked, I, who am
one of the legislators of a Christian country, to measure my policy by
the policy of ancient and pagan Rome!
I believe there is no permanent greatness to a nation except it be
based upon morality. I do not care for military greatness or military
renown. I care for the condition of the people among whom I live.
There is no man in England who is less likely to speak irreverently
of the crown and monarchy of England than I am; but crowns, coronets,
mitres, military display, the pomp of war, wide colonies, and a huge
empire are, in my view, all trifles, light as air, and not worth
considering, unless with them you can have a fair share of comfort,
contentment, and happiness among the great body of the people. Palaces,
baronial castles, great halls, stately mansions, do not make a nation.
The nation in every country dwells in the cottage; and unless the
light of your constitution can shine there, unless the beauty of your
legislation and the excellence of your statesmanship are impressed
there on the feelings and condition of the people, rely upon it you
have yet to learn the duties of government.
I have not, as you have observed, pleaded that this country should
remain without adequate and scientific means of defence. I acknowledge
it to be the duty of your statesmen, acting upon the known opinions
and principles of ninety-nine out of every hundred persons in the
country, at all times, with all possible moderation, but with all
possible efficiency, to take steps which shall preserve order within
and on the confines of your kingdom. But I shall repudiate and denounce
the expenditure of every shilling, the engagement of every man, the
employment of every ship, which has no object but intermeddling in the
affairs of other countries, and endeavoring to extend the boundaries
of an empire which is already large enough to satisfy the greatest
ambition, and I fear is much too large for the highest statesmanship to
which any man has yet attained.
The most ancient of profane historians has told us that the Scythians
of his time were a very warlike people, and that they elevated an
old cimeter upon a platform as a symbol of Mars, for to Mars alone,
I believe, they built altars and offered sacrifices. To this cimeter
they offered sacrifices of horses and cattle, the main wealth of the
country, and more costly sacrifices than to all the rest of their gods.
I often ask myself whether we are at all advanced in one respect beyond
those Scythians. What are our contributions to charity, to education,
to morality, to religion, to justice, and to civil government, when
compared with the wealth we expend in sacrifices to the old cimeter?
Two nights ago I addressed in this hall a vast assembly composed to a
great extent of your countrymen who have no political power, who are at
work from the dawn of the day to the evening, and who have therefore
limited means of informing themselves on these great subjects. Now I
am privileged to speak to a somewhat different audience. You represent
those of your great community who have a more complete education, who
have on some points greater intelligence, and in whose hands reside
the power and influence of the district. I am speaking, too, within
the hearing of those whose gentle nature, whose finer instincts,
whose purer minds, have not suffered as some of us have suffered in
the turmoil and strife of life. You can mould opinion, you can create
political power;—you cannot think a good thought on this subject and
communicate it to your neighbors,—you cannot make these points topics
of discussion in your social circles and more general meetings, without
affecting sensibly and speedily the course which the government of your
country will pursue.
May I ask you, then, to believe, as I do most devoutly believe, that
the moral law was not written for men alone in their individual
character, but that it was written as well for nations, and for nations
great as this of which we are citizens. If nations reject and deride
that moral law, there is a penalty which will inevitably follow. It may
not come at once, it may not come in our lifetime; but rely upon it,
the great Italian is not a poet only, but a prophet, when he says:
“The sword of heaven is not in haste to smite,
Nor yet doth linger.”
We have experience, we have beacons, we have landmarks enough. We
know what the past has cost us, we know how much and how far we
have wandered, but we are not left without a guide. It is true we
have not, as an ancient people had, Urim and Thummim—those oraculous
gems on Aaron’s breast,—from which to take counsel, but we have the
unchangeable and eternal principles of the moral law to guide us, and
only so far as we walk by that guidance can we be permanently a great
nation, or our people a happy people.