from bigotry as he was eleven years ago, his party is more bigoted
than it was eleven years ago. The difficulty of governing Ireland in
opposition to the feelings of the great body of the Irish people is, I
apprehend, as great now as it was eleven years ago. What then must be
the fate of a government formed by the right honourable Baronet? Suppose
that the event of this debate should make him Prime Minister? Should I
be wrong if I were to prophesy that three years hence he will be more
hated and vilified by the Tory party than the present advisers of the
Crown have been? Should I be wrong if I were to say that all those
literary organs which now deafen us with praise of him, will then deafen
us with abuse of him? Should I be wrong if I were to say that he will
be burned in effigy by those who now drink his health with three times
three and one cheer more? Should I be wrong if I were to say that those
very gentlemen who have crowded hither to-night in order to vote him
into power, will crowd hither to vote Lord Melbourne back? Once already
have I seen those very persons go out into the lobby for the purpose of
driving the right honourable Baronet from the high situation to which
they had themselves exalted him. I went out with them myself; yes, with
the whole body of the Tory country gentlemen, with the whole body of
high Churchmen. All the four University Members were with us. The effect
of that division was to bring Lord Grey, Lord Althorpe, Lord Brougham,
Lord Durham into power. You may say that the Tories on that occasion
judged ill, that they were blinded by vindictive passion, that if
they had foreseen all that followed they might have acted differently.
Perhaps so. But what has been once may be again. I cannot think it
possible that those who are now supporting the right honourable Baronet
will continue from personal attachment to support him if they see that
his policy is in essentials the same as Lord Melbourne's. I believe that
they have quite as much personal attachment to Lord Melbourne as to
the right honourable Baronet. They follow the right honourable Baronet
because his abilities, his eloquence, his experience are necessary to
them; but they are but half reconciled to him. They never can forget
that, in the most important crisis of his public life, he deliberately
chose rather to be the victim of their injustice than its instrument.
It is idle to suppose that they will be satisfied by seeing a new set of
men in power. Their maxim is most truly "Measures, not men." They care
not before whom the sword of state is borne at Dublin, or who wears the
badge of St Patrick. What they abhor is not Lord Normanby personally or
Lord Ebrington personally, but the great principles in conformity with
which Ireland has been governed by Lord Normanby and by Lord Ebrington,
the principles of justice, humanity, and religious freedom. What they
wish to have in Ireland is not my Lord Haddington, or any other viceroy
whom the right honourable Baronet may select, but the tyranny of race
over race, and of creed over creed. Give them what they want; and you
convulse the empire. Refuse them; and you dissolve the Tory party. I
believe that the right honourable Baronet himself is by no means without
apprehensions that, if he were now called to the head of affairs, he
would, very speedily, have the dilemma of 1829 again before him. He
certainly was not without such apprehensions when, a few months ago,
he was commanded by Her Majesty to submit to her the plan of an
administration. The aspect of public affairs was not at that time
cheering. The Chartists were stirring in England. There were troubles in
Canada. There were great discontents in the West Indies. An expedition,
of which the event was still doubtful, had been sent into the heart of
Asia. Yet, among many causes of anxiety, the discerning eye of the right
honourable Baronet easily discerned the quarter where the great and
immediate danger lay. He told the House that his difficulty would
be Ireland. Now, Sir, that which would be the difficulty of his
administration is the strength of the present administration. Her
Majesty's Ministers enjoy the confidence of Ireland; and I believe that
what ought to be done for that country will excite less discontent
here if done by them than if done by him. He, I am afraid, great as his
abilities are, and good as I willingly admit his intentions to be, would
find it easy to lose the confidence of his partisans, but hard indeed to
win the confidence of the Irish people.
It is indeed principally on account of Ireland that I feel solicitous
about the issue of the present debate. I well know how little chance he
who speaks on that theme has of obtaining a fair hearing. Would to
God that I were addressing an audience which would judge this great
controversy as it is judged by foreign nations, and as it will be judged
by future ages. The passions which inflame us, the sophisms which
delude us, will not last for ever. The paroxysms of faction have their
appointed season. Even the madness of fanaticism is but for a day. The
time is coming when our conflicts will be to others what the conflicts
of our forefathers are to us; when the preachers who now disturb the
State, and the politicians who now make a stalking horse of the Church,
will be no more than Sacheverel and Harley. Then will be told, in
language very different from that which now calls forth applause from
the mob of Exeter Hall, the true story of these troubled years.
There was, it will then be said, a part of the kingdom of Queen Victoria
which presented a lamentable contrast to the rest; not from the want of
natural fruitfulness, for there was no richer soil in Europe; not from
want of facilities for trade, for the coasts of this unhappy region were
indented by bays and estuaries capable of holding all the navies of the
world; not because the people were too dull to improve these advantages
or too pusillanimous to defend them; for in natural quickness of wit
and gallantry of spirit they ranked high among the nations. But all the
bounty of nature had been made unavailing by the crimes and errors of
man. In the twelfth century that fair island was a conquered province.
The nineteenth century found it a conquered province still. During that
long interval many great changes had taken place which had conduced to
the general welfare of the empire: but those changes had only aggravated
the misery of Ireland. The Reformation came, bringing to England and
Scotland divine truth and intellectual liberty. To Ireland it brought
only fresh calamities. Two new war cries, Protestant and Catholic,
animated the old feud between the Englishry and the Irishry. The
Revolution came, bringing to England and Scotland civil and spiritual
freedom, to Ireland subjugation, degradation, persecution. The Union
came: but though it joined legislatures, it left hearts as widely
disjoined as ever. Catholic Emancipation came: but it came too late;
it came as a concession made to fear, and, having excited unreasonable
hopes, was naturally followed by unreasonable disappointment. Then
came violent irritation, and numerous errors on both sides. Agitation
produced coercion, and coercion produced fresh agitation. Difficulties
and dangers went on increasing, till a government arose which, all other
means having failed, determined to employ the only means that had not
yet been fairly tried, justice and mercy. The State, long the stepmother
of the many, and the mother only of the few, became for the first time
the common parent of all the great family. The body of the people began
to look on their rulers as friends. Battalion after battalion, squadron
after squadron was withdrawn from districts which, as it had till then
been thought, could be governed by the sword alone. Yet the security
of property and the authority of law became every day more complete.
Symptoms of amendment, symptoms such as cannot be either concealed or
counterfeited, began to appear; and those who once despaired of the
destinies of Ireland began to entertain a confident hope that she would
at length take among European nations that high place to which her
natural resources and the intelligence of her children entitle her to
aspire.
In words such as these, I am confident, will the next generation speak
of the events in our time. Relying on the sure justice of history and
posterity, I care not, as far as I am personally concerned, whether we
stand or fall. That issue it is for the House to decide. Whether the
result will be victory or defeat, I know not. But I know that there are
defeats not less glorious than any victory; and yet I have shared in
some glorious victories. Those were proud and happy days;--some who sit
on the benches opposite can well remember, and must, I think, regret
them;--those were proud and happy days when, amidst the applauses and
blessings of millions, my noble friend led us on in the great struggle
for the Reform Bill; when hundreds waited round our doors till sunrise
to hear how we had sped; when the great cities of the north poured forth
their population on the highways to meet the mails which brought from
the capital the tidings whether the battle of the people had been lost
or won. Such days my noble friend cannot hope to see again. Two such
triumphs would be too much for one life. But perhaps there still awaits
him a less pleasing, a less exhilarating, but a not less honourable
task, the task of contending against superior numbers, and through
years of discomfiture, for those civil and religious liberties which are
inseparably associated with the name of his illustrious house. At his
side will not be wanting men who against all odds, and through all turns
of fortune, in evil days and amidst evil tongues, will defend to the
last, with unabated spirit, the noble principles of Milton and of Locke.
We may be driven from office. We may be doomed to a life of opposition.
We may be made marks for the rancour of sects which, hating each other
with a deadly hatred, yet hate toleration still more. We may be exposed
to the rage of Laud on one side, and of Praise-God-Barebones on the
other. But justice will be done at last: and a portion of the praise
which we bestow on the old champions and martyrs of freedom will not
be refused by future generations to the men who have in our days
endeavoured to bind together in real union races too long estranged, and
to efface, by the mild influence of a parental government, the fearful
traces which have been left by the misrule of ages.
*****
WAR WITH CHINA. (APRIL 7, 1840) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF
COMMONS ON THE 7TH OF APRIL, 1840.
On the seventh of April, 1840, Sir James Graham moved the following
resolution:
"That it appears to this House, on consideration of the papers relating
to China presented to this House by command of Her Majesty, that the
interruption in our commercial and friendly intercourse with that
country, and the hostilities which have since taken place, are mainly to
be attributed to the want of foresight and precaution on the part of Her
Majesty's present advisers, in respect to our relations with China, and
especially to their neglect to furnish the Superintendent at Canton with
powers and instructions calculated to provide against the growing evils
connected with the contraband trade in opium, and adapted to the novel
and difficult situation in which the Superintendent was placed."
As soon as the question had been put from the Chair the following Speech
was made.
The motion was rejected, after a debate of three nights, by 271 votes to
261.
Mr Speaker,--If the right honourable Baronet, in rising to make an
attack on the Government, was forced to own that he was unnerved and
overpowered by his sense of the importance of the question with which he
had to deal, one who rises to repel that attack may, without any shame,
confess that he feels similar emotions. And yet I must say that the
anxiety, the natural and becoming anxiety, with which Her Majesty's
Ministers have awaited the judgment of the House on these papers, was
not a little allayed by the terms of the right honourable Baronet's
motion, and has been still more allayed by his speech. It was impossible
for us to doubt either his inclination or his ability to detect and
to expose any fault which we might have committed, and we may well
congratulate ourselves on finding that, after the closest examination
into a long series of transactions, so extensive, so complicated, and,
in some respects, so disastrous, so keen an assailant could produce only
so futile an accusation.
In the first place, Sir, the resolution which the right honourable
Baronet has moved relates entirely to events which took place before the
rupture with the Chinese Government. That rupture took place in March,
1839. The right honourable Baronet therefore does not propose to pass
any censure on any step which has been taken by the Government within
the last thirteen months; and it will, I think, be generally admitted,
that when he abstains from censuring the proceedings of the Government,
it is because the most unfriendly scrutiny can find nothing in those
proceedings to censure. We by no means deny that he has a perfect right
to propose a vote expressing disapprobation of what was done in 1837 or
1838. At the same time, we cannot but be gratified by learning that he
approves of our present policy, and of the measures which we have taken,
since the rupture, for the vindication of the national honour and for
the protection of the national interests.
It is also to be observed that the right honourable Baronet has not
ventured, either in his motion or in his speech, to charge Her Majesty's
Ministers with any unwise or unjust act, with any act tending to lower
the character of England, or to give cause of offence to China. The only
sins which he imputes to them are sins of omission. His complaint is
merely that they did not foresee the course which events would take at
Canton, and that consequently they did not send sufficient instructions
to the British resident who was stationed there. Now it is evident that
such an accusation is of all accusations that which requires the fullest
and most distinct proof; for it is of all accusations that which it is
easiest to make and hardest to refute. A man charged with a culpable
act which he has not committed has comparatively little difficulty in
proving his innocence. But when the charge is merely this, that he has
not, in a long and intricate series of transactions, done all that it
would have been wise to do, how is he to vindicate himself? And the case
which we are considering has this peculiarity, that the envoy to whom
the Ministers are said to have left too large a discretion was fifteen
thousand miles from them. The charge against them therefore is this,
that they did not give such copious and particular directions as
were sufficient, in every possible emergency, for the guidance of a
functionary, who was fifteen thousand miles off. Now, Sir, I am ready to
admit that, if the papers on our table related to important negotiations
with a neighbouring state, if they related, for example, to a
negotiation carried on with France, my noble friend the Secretary for
Foreign Affairs (Lord Palmerston.) might well have been blamed for
sending instructions so meagre and so vague to our ambassador at Paris.
For my noble friend knows to-night what passed between our ambassador
at Paris and the French Ministers yesterday; and a messenger despatched
to-night from Downing Street will be at the Embassy in the Faubourg
Saint Honore the day after to-morrow. But that constant and minute
control, which the Foreign Secretary is bound to exercise over
diplomatic agents who are near, becomes an useless and pernicious
meddling when exercised over agents who are separated from him by a
voyage of five months. There are on both sides of the House gentlemen
conversant with the affairs of India. I appeal to those gentlemen. India
is nearer to us than China. India is far better known to us than China.
Yet is it not universally acknowledged that India can be governed only
in India? The authorities at home point out to a governor the general
line of policy which they wish him to follow; but they do not send him
directions as to the details of his administration. How indeed is it
possible that they should send him such directions? Consider in what a
state the affairs of this country would be if they were to be conducted
according to directions framed by the ablest statesman residing in
Bengal. A despatch goes hence asking for instructions while London is
illuminating for the peace of Amiens. The instructions arrive when the
French army is encamped at Boulogne, and when the whole island is up in
arms to repel invasion. A despatch is written asking for instructions
when Bonaparte is at Elba. The instructions come when he is at the
Tuilleries. A despatch is written asking for instructions when he is at
the Tuilleries. The instructions come when he is at St Helena. It would
be just as impossible to govern India in London as to govern England at
Calcutta. While letters are preparing here on the supposition that there
is profound peace in the Carnatic, Hyder is at the gates of Fort St
George. While letters are preparing here on the supposition that trade
is flourishing and that the revenue exceeds the expenditure, the crops
have failed, great agency houses have broken, and the government is
negotiating a loan on hard terms. It is notorious that the great men
who founded and preserved our Indian empire, Clive and Warren Hastings,
treated all particular orders which they received from home as mere
waste paper. Had not those great men had the sense and spirit so to
treat such orders, we should not now have had an Indian empire. But the
case of China is far stronger. For, though a person who is now writing a
despatch to Fort William in Leadenhall Street or Cannon Row, cannot know
what events have happened in India within the last two months, he may be
very intimately acquainted with the general state of that country, with
its wants, with its resources, with the habits and temper of the native
population, and with the character of every prince and minister from
Nepaul to Tanjore. But what does anybody here know of China? Even those
Europeans who have been in that empire are almost as ignorant of it as
the rest of us. Everything is covered by a veil, through which a glimpse
of what is within may occasionally be caught, a glimpse just sufficient
to set the imagination at work, and more likely to mislead than to
inform. The right honourable Baronet has told us that an Englishman at
Canton sees about as much of China as a foreigner who should land at
Wapping and proceed no further would see of England. Certainly the
sights and sounds of Wapping would give a foreigner but a very imperfect
notion of our Government, of our manufactures, of our agriculture, of
the state of learning and the arts among us. And yet the illustration
is but a faint one. For a foreigner may, without seeing even Wapping,
without visiting England at all, study our literature, and may thence
form a vivid and correct idea of our institutions and manners. But the
literature of China affords us no such help. Obstacles unparalleled in
any other country which has books must be surmounted by the student
who is determined to master the Chinese tongue. To learn to read is the
business of half a life. It is easier to become such a linguist as Sir
William Jones was than to become a good Chinese scholar. You may count
upon your fingers the Europeans whose industry and genius, even when
stimulated by the most fervent religious zeal, has triumphed over the
difficulties of a language without an alphabet. Here then is a country
separated from us physically by half the globe, separated from us
still more effectually by the barriers which the most jealous of all
governments and the hardest of all languages oppose to the researches of
strangers. Is it then reasonable to blame my noble friend because he has
not sent to our envoys in such a country as this instructions as full
and precise as it would have been his duty to send to a minister at
Brussels or at the Hague? The right honourable Baronet who comes forward
as the accuser on this occasion is really accusing himself. He was
a member of the Government of Lord Grey. He was himself concerned in
framing the first instructions which were given by my noble friend to
our first Superintendent at Canton. For those instructions the right
honourable Baronet frankly admits that he is himself responsible. Are
those instructions then very copious and minute? Not at all. They merely
lay down general principles. The Resident, for example, is enjoined to
respect national usages, and to avoid whatever may shock the prejudices
of the Chinese; but no orders are given him as to matters of detail.
In 1834 my noble friend quitted the Foreign Office, and the Duke of
Wellington went to it. Did the Duke of Wellington send out those copious
and exact directions with which, according to the right honourable
Baronet, the Government is bound to furnish its agent in China? No, Sir;
the Duke of Wellington, grown old in the conduct of great affairs, knows
better than anybody that a man of very ordinary ability at Canton is
likely to be a better judge of what ought to be done on an emergency
arising at Canton than the greatest politician at Westminster can
possibly be. His Grace, therefore, like a wise man as he is, wrote only
one letter to the Superintendent, and in that letter merely referred the
Superintendent to the general directions given by Lord Palmerston. And
how, Sir, does the right honourable Baronet prove that, by persisting in
the course which he himself took when in office, and which the Duke
of Wellington took when in office, Her Majesty's present advisers have
brought on that rupture which we all deplore? He has read us, from the
voluminous papers which are on the table, much which has but a very
remote connection with the question. He has said much about things which
happened before the present Ministry existed, and much about things
which have happened at Canton since the rupture; but very little that
is relevant to the issue raised by the resolution which he has himself
proposed. That issue is simply this, whether the mismanagement of the
present Ministry produced the rupture. I listened to his long and able
speech with the greatest attention, and did my best to separate
that part which had any relation to his motion from a great mass of
extraneous matter. If my analysis be correct, the charge which he brings
against the Government consists of four articles.
The first article is, that the Government omitted to alter that part of
the original instructions which directed the Superintendent to reside at
Canton.
The second article is, that the Government omitted to alter that part
of the original instructions which directed the Superintendent to
communicate directly with the representatives of the Emperor.
The third article is, that the Government omitted to follow the
advice of the Duke of Wellington, who had left at the Foreign Office a
memorandum recommending that a British ship of war should be stationed
in the China sea.
The fourth article is, that the Government omitted to authorise and
empower the Superintendent to put down the contraband trade carried on
by British subjects with China.
Such, Sir, are the counts of this indictment. Of these counts, the
fourth is the only one which will require a lengthened defence. The
first three may be disposed of in very few words.
As to the first, the answer is simple. It is true that the Government
did not revoke that part of the instructions which directed the
Superintendent to reside at Canton; and it is true that this part of the
instructions did at one time cause a dispute between the Superintendent
and the Chinese authorities. But it is equally true that this dispute
was accommodated early in 1837; that the Chinese Government furnished
the Superintendent with a passport authorising him to reside at Canton;
that, during the two years which preceded the rupture, the Chinese
Government made no objection to his residing at Canton; and that there
is not in all this huge blue book one word indicating that the rupture
was caused, directly or indirectly, by his residing at Canton. On the
first count, therefore, I am confident that the verdict must be, Not
Guilty.
To the second count we have a similar answer. It is true that there
was a dispute with the authorities of Canton about the mode of
communication. But it is equally true that this dispute was settled by
a compromise. The Chinese made a concession as to the channel of
communication. The Superintendent made a concession as to the form
of communication. The question had been thus set at rest before the
rupture, and had absolutely nothing to do with the rupture.