stranger in order to benefit ourselves or those who are dearest to us.
Every stranger is entitled, by the laws of humanity, to claim from us
certain reasonable good offices. But it is not true that we are bound
to exert ourselves to serve a mere stranger as we are bound to exert
ourselves to serve our own relations. A man would not be justified in
subjecting his wife and children to disagreeable privations, in order to
save even from utter ruin some foreigner whom he never saw. And if a
man were so absurd and perverse as to starve his own family in order
to relieve people with whom he had no acquaintance, there can be
little doubt that his crazy charity would produce much more misery than
happiness.
It is the same with nations. No statesmen ought to injure other
countries in order to benefit his own country. No statesman ought to
lose any fair opportunity of rendering to foreign nations such good
offices as he can render without a breach of the duty which he owes to
the society of which he is a member. But, after all, our country is our
country, and has the first claim on our attention. There is nothing, I
conceive, of narrow-mindedness in this patriotism. I do not say that we
ought to prefer the happiness of one particular society to the happiness
of mankind; but I say that, by exerting ourselves to promote the
happiness of the society with which we are most nearly connected, and
with which we are best acquainted, we shall do more to promote the
happiness of mankind than by busying ourselves about matters which we do
not fully understand, and cannot efficiently control.
There are great evils connected with the factory system in this country.
Some of those evils might, I am inclined to think, be removed or
mitigated by legislation. On that point many of my friends differ
from me; but we all agree in thinking that it is the duty of a British
Legislator to consider the subject attentively, and with a serious sense
of responsibility. There are also great social evils in Russia. The
peasants of that empire are in a state of servitude. The sovereign of
Russia is bound by the most solemn obligations to consider whether he
can do anything to improve the condition of that large portion of his
subjects. If we watch over our factory children, and he watches over
his peasants, much good may be done. But would any good be done if
the Emperor of Russia and the British Parliament were to interchange
functions; if he were to take under his patronage the weavers of
Lancashire, if we were to take under our patronage the peasants of the
Volga; if he were to say, "You shall send no cotton to Russia till you
pass a ten Hours' Bill;" if we were to say, "You shall send no hemp or
tallow to England till you emancipate your serfs?"
On these principles, Sir, which seem to me to be the principles of plain
common sense, I can, without resorting to any casuistical subtilties,
vindicate to my own conscience, and, I hope, to my country, the whole
course which I have pursued with respect to slavery. When I first came
into Parliament, slavery still existed in the British dominions. I had,
as it was natural that I should have, a strong feeling on the subject.
I exerted myself, according to my station and to the measure of my
abilities, on the side of the oppressed. I shrank from no personal
sacrifice in that cause. I do not mention this as matter of boast. It
was no more than my duty. The right honourable gentleman, the Secretary
of State for the Home Department, knows that, in 1833, I disapproved
of one part of the measure which Lord Grey's Government proposed on the
subject of slavery. I was in office; and office was then as important
to me as it could be to any man. I put my resignation into the hands of
Lord Spencer, and both spoke and voted against the Administration. To my
surprise, Lord Grey and Lord Spencer refused to accept my resignation,
and I remained in office; but during some days I considered myself as
out of the service of the Crown. I at the same time heartily joined in
laying a heavy burden on the country for the purpose of compensating the
planters. I acted thus, because, being a British Legislator, I thought
myself bound, at any cost to myself and to my constituents, to remove a
foul stain from the British laws, and to redress the wrongs endured by
persons who, as British subjects, were placed under my guardianship. But
my especial obligations in respect of negro slavery ceased when slavery
itself ceased in that part of the world for the welfare of which I, as
a member of this House, was accountable. As for the blacks in the United
States, I feel for them, God knows. But I am not their keeper. I do not
stand in the same relation to the slaves of Louisiana and Alabama in
which I formerly stood to the slaves of Demerara and Jamaica. I am
bound, on the other hand, by the most solemn obligations, to promote the
interests of millions of my own countrymen, who are indeed by no means
in a state so miserable and degraded as that of the slaves in the United
States, but who are toiling hard from sunrise to sunset in order to
obtain a scanty subsistence; who are often scarcely able to procure the
necessaries of life; and whose lot would be alleviated if I could open
new markets to them, and free them from taxes which now press heavily
on their industry. I see clearly that, by excluding the produce of slave
labour from our ports, I should inflict great evil on my fellow-subjects
and constituents. But the good which, by taking such a course, I should
do to the negroes in the United States seems to me very problematical.
That by admitting slave grown cotton and slave grown sugar we do, in
some sense, encourage slavery and the Slave Trade, may be true. But
I doubt whether, by turning our fiscal code into a penal code for
restraining the cruelty of the American planters, we should not, on
the whole, injure the negroes rather than benefit them. No independent
nation will endure to be told by another nation, "We are more virtuous
than you; we have sate in judgment on your institutions; we find them
to be bad; and, as a punishment for your offences, we condemn you to pay
higher duties at our Custom House than we demand from the rest of the
world." Such language naturally excites the resentment of foreigners.
I can make allowance for their susceptibility. For I myself sympathise
with them, I know that Ireland has been misgoverned; and I have done,
and purpose to do, my best to redress her grievances. But when I take up
a New York journal, and read there the rants of President Tyler's son, I
feel so much disgusted by such insolent absurdity that I am for a moment
inclined to deny that Ireland has any reason whatever to complain. It
seems to me that if ever slavery is peaceably extinguished in the United
States, that great and happy change must be brought about by the efforts
of those enlightened and respectable American citizens who hate slavery
as much as we hate it. Now I cannot help fearing that, if the British
Parliament were to proclaim itself the protector and avenger of the
American slave, the pride of those excellent persons would take the
alarm. It might become a point of national honour with them to stand by
an institution which they have hitherto regarded as a national disgrace.
We should thus confer no benefit on the negro; and we should at the same
time inflict cruel suffering on our own countrymen.
On these grounds, Sir, I can, with a clear conscience, vote for the
right honourable Baronet's propositions respecting the cotton and sugar
of the United States. But on exactly the same grounds I can, with a
clear conscience, vote for the amendment of my noble friend. And I
confess that I shall be much surprised if the right honourable Baronet
shall be able to point out any distinction between the cases.
I have detained you too long, Sir; yet there is one point to which I
must refer; I mean the refining. Was such a distinction ever heard of?
Is there anything like it in all Pascal's Dialogues with the old Jesuit?
Not for the world are we to eat one ounce of Brazilian sugar. But we
import the accursed thing; we bond it; we employ our skill and machinery
to render it more alluring to the eye and to the palate; we export it
to Leghorn and Hamburg; we send it to all the coffee houses of Italy
and Germany: we pocket a profit on all this; and then we put on a
Pharisaical air, and thank God that we are not like those wicked
Italians and Germans who have no scruple about swallowing slave grown
sugar. Surely this sophistry is worthy only of the worst class of false
witnesses. "I perjure myself! Not for the world. I only kissed my thumb;
I did not put my lips to the calf-skin." I remember something very like
the right honourable Baronet's morality in a Spanish novel which I
read long ago. I beg pardon of the House for detaining them with such a
trifle; but the story is much to the purpose. A wandering lad, a sort
of Gil Blas, is taken into the service of a rich old silversmith, a most
pious man, who is always telling his beads, who hears mass daily,
and observes the feasts and fasts of the church with the utmost
scrupulosity. The silversmith is always preaching honesty and piety.
"Never," he constantly repeats to his young assistant, "never touch what
is not your own; never take liberties with sacred things." Sacrilege, as
uniting theft with profaneness, is the sin of which he has the deepest
horror. One day, while he is lecturing after his usual fashion, an
ill-looking fellow comes into the shop with a sack under his arm. "Will
you buy these?" says the visitor, and produces from the sack some church
plate and a rich silver crucifix. "Buy them!" cries the pious man. "No,
nor touch them; not for the world. I know where you got them. Wretch
that you are, have you no care for your soul?" "Well then," says the
thief, "if you will not buy them, will you melt them down for me?" "Melt
them down!" answers the silver smith, "that is quite another matter."
He takes the chalices and the crucifix with a pair of tongs; the silver,
thus in bond, is dropped into the crucible, melted, and delivered to the
thief, who lays down five pistoles and decamps with his booty. The
young servant stares at this strange scene. But the master very
gravely resumes his lecture. "My son," he says, "take warning by that
sacrilegious knave, and take example by me. Think what a load of guilt
lies on his conscience. You will see him hanged before long. But as to
me, you saw that I would not touch the stolen property. I keep these
tongs for such occasions. And thus I thrive in the fear of God, and
manage to turn an honest penny." You talk of morality. What can be more
immoral than to bring ridicule on the very name of morality, by drawing
distinctions where there are no differences? Is it not enough that this
dishonest casuistry has already poisoned our theology? Is it not enough
that a set of quibbles has been devised, under cover of which a divine
may hold the worst doctrines of the Church of Rome, and may hold with
them the best benefice of the Church of England? Let us at least keep
the debates of this House free from the sophistry of Tract Number
Ninety.
And then the right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board
of Trade, wonders that other nations consider our abhorrence of slavery
and the Slave Trade as sheer hypocrisy. Why, Sir, how should it be
otherwise? And, if the imputation annoys us, whom have we to thank for
it? Numerous and malevolent as our detractors are, none of them was ever
so absurd as to charge us with hypocrisy because we took slave grown
tobacco and slave grown cotton, till the Government began to affect
scruples about admitting slave grown sugar. Of course, as soon as our
Ministers ostentatiously announced to all the world that our fiscal
system was framed on a new and sublime moral principle, everybody
began to inquire whether we consistently adhered to that principle. It
required much less acuteness and much less malevolence than that of our
neighbours to discover that this hatred of slave grown produce was mere
grimace. They see that we not only take tobacco produced by means of
slavery and of the Slave Trade, but that we positively interdict freemen
in this country from growing tobacco. They see that we not only take
cotton produced by means of slavery and of the Slave Trade, but that we
are about to exempt this cotton from all duty. They see that we are at
this moment reducing the duty on the slave grown sugar of Louisiana.
How can we expect them to believe that it is from a sense of justice and
humanity that we lay a prohibitory duty on the sugar of Brazil? I care
little for the abuse which any foreign press or any foreign tribune may
throw on the Machiavelian policy of perfidious Albion. What gives me
pain is, not that the charge of hypocrisy is made, but that I am unable
to see how it is to be refuted.
Yet one word more. The right honourable gentleman, the late President
of the Board of Trade, has quoted the opinions of two persons, highly
distinguished by the exertions which they made for the abolition of
slavery, my lamented friend, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, and Sir Stephen
Lushington. It is most true that those eminent persons did approve of
the principle laid down by the right honourable Baronet opposite in
1841. I think that they were in error; but in their error I am sure
that they were sincere, and I firmly believe that they would have been
consistent. They would have objected, no doubt, to my noble friend's
amendment; but they would have objected equally to the right honourable
Baronet's budget. It was not prudent, I think, in gentlemen opposite
to allude to those respectable names. The mention of those names
irresistibly carries the mind back to the days of the great struggle for
negro freedom. And it is but natural that we should ask where, during
that struggle, were those who now profess such loathing for slave grown
sugar? The three persons who are chiefly responsible for the financial
and commercial policy of the present Government I take to be the right
honourable Baronet at the head of the Treasury, the right honourable
gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the right honourable
gentleman the late President of the Board of Trade. Is there anything
in the past conduct of any one of the three which can lead me to believe
that his sensibility to the evils of slavery is greater than mine? I am
sure that the right honourable Baronet the first Lord of the Treasury
would think that I was speaking ironically if I were to compliment him
on his zeal for the liberty of the negro race. Never once, during the
whole of the long and obstinate conflict which ended in the abolition of
slavery in our colonies, did he give one word, one sign of encouragement
to those who suffered and laboured for the good cause. The whole weight
of his great abilities and influence was in the other scale. I well
remember that, so late as 1833, he declared in this House that he could
give his assent neither to the plan of immediate emancipation proposed
by my noble friend who now represents Sunderland (Lord Howick.), nor to
the plan of gradual emancipation proposed by Lord Grey's government.
I well remember that he said, "I shall claim no credit hereafter on
account of this bill; all that I desire is to be absolved from the
responsibility." As to the other two right honourable gentlemen whom
I have mentioned, they are West Indians; and their conduct was that
of West Indians. I do not wish to give them pain, or to throw any
disgraceful imputation on them. Personally I regard them with feelings
of goodwill and respect. I do not question their sincerity; but I know
that the most honest men are but too prone to deceive themselves into
the belief that the path towards which they are impelled by their own
interests and passions is the path of duty. I am conscious that this
might be my own case; and I believe it to be theirs. As the right
honourable gentleman, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has left the
House, I will only say that, with respect to the question of slavery,
he acted after the fashion of the class to which he belonged. But as the
right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board of Trade,
is in his place, he must allow me to bring to his recollection the part
which he took in the debates of 1833. He then said, "You raise a great
clamour about the cultivation of sugar. You say that it is a species of
industry fatal to the health and life of the slave. I do not deny that
there is some difference between the labour of a sugar plantation and
the labour of a cotton plantation, or a coffee plantation. But the
difference is not so great as you think. In marshy soils, the slaves who
cultivate the sugar cane suffer severely. But in Barbadoes, where the
air is good, they thrive and multiply." He proceeded to say that, even
at the worst, the labour of a sugar plantation was not more unhealthy
than some kinds of labour in which the manufacturers of England are
employed, and which nobody thinks of prohibiting. He particularly
mentioned grinding. "See how grinding destroys the health, the sight,
the life. Yet there is no outcry against grinding." He went on to say
that the whole question ought to be left by Parliament to the West
Indian Legislature. [Mr Gladstone: "Really I never said so. You are not
quoting me at all correctly."] What, not about the sugar cultivation and
the grinding? [Mr Gladstone: "That is correct; but I never recommended
that the question should be left to the West Indian Legislatures."] I
have quoted correctly. But since my right honourable friend disclaims
the sentiment imputed to him by the reporters, I shall say no more about
it. I have no doubt that he is quite right, and that what he said was
misunderstood. What is undisputed is amply sufficient for my purpose.
I see that the persons who now show so much zeal against slavery in
foreign countries, are the same persons who formerly countenanced
slavery in the British Colonies. I remember a time when they maintained
that we were bound in justice to protect slave grown sugar against the
competition of free grown sugar, and even of British free grown sugar.
I now hear them calling on us to protect free grown sugar against the
competition of slave grown sugar. I remember a time when they extenuated
as much as they could the evils of the sugar cultivation. I now hear
them exaggerating those evils. But, devious as their course has been,
there is one clue by which I can easily track them through the whole
maze. Inconstant in everything else, they are constant in demanding
protection for the West Indian planter. While he employs slaves, they
do their best to apologise for the evils of slavery. As soon as he is
forced to employ freemen, they begin to cry up the blessings of freedom.
They go round the whole compass, and yet to one point they steadfastly
adhere: and that point is the interest of the West Indian proprietors.
I have done, Sir; and I thank the House most sincerely for the patience
and indulgence with which I have been heard. I hope that I have at
least vindicated my own consistency. How Her Majesty's Ministers will
vindicate their consistency, how they will show that their conduct has
at all times been guided by the same principles, or even that their
conduct at the present time is guided by any fixed principle at all, I
am unable to conjecture.
*****
MAYNOOTH. (APRIL 14, 1845) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON
THE 14TH OF APRIL, 1845.
On Saturday the eleventh of April, 1845, Sir Robert Peel moved the
second reading of the Maynooth College Bill. After a debate of six
nights the motion was carried by 323 votes to 176. On the second night
the following Speech was made.
I do not mean, Sir, to follow the honourable gentleman who has just sate
down into a discussion on an amendment which is not now before us. When
my honourable friend the Member for Sheffield shall think it expedient
to make a motion on that important subject to which he has repeatedly
called the attention of the House, I may, perhaps, ask to be heard.
At present I shall content myself with explaining the reasons which
convince me that it is my duty to vote for the second reading of this
bill; and I cannot, I think, better explain those reasons than by
passing in review, as rapidly as I can, the chief objections which have
been made to the bill here and elsewhere.
The objectors, Sir, may be divided into three classes. The first class
consists of those persons who object, not to the principle of the grant
to Maynooth College, but merely to the amount. The second class consists
of persons who object on principle to all grants made to a church which
they regard as corrupt. The third class consists of persons who object
on principle to all grants made to churches, whether corrupt or pure.
Now, Sir, of those three classes the first is evidently that which
takes the most untenable ground. How any person can think that Maynooth
College ought to be supported by public money, and yet can think
this bill too bad to be suffered to go into Committee, I do not well
understand. I am forced however to believe that there are many such
persons. For I cannot but remember that the old annual vote attracted
scarcely any notice; and I see that this bill has produced violent
excitement. I cannot but remember that the old annual vote used to pass
with very few dissentients; and I see that great numbers of gentlemen,
who never were among those dissentients, have crowded down to the House
in order to divide against this bill. It is indeed certain that a large
proportion, I believe a majority, of those members who cannot, as
they assure us, conscientiously support the plan proposed by the right
honourable Baronet at the head of the Government, would without the
smallest scruple have supported him if he had in this, as in former
years, asked us to give nine thousand pounds for twelve months. So it
is: yet I cannot help wondering that it should be so. For how can
any human ingenuity turn a question between nine thousand pounds and
twenty-six thousand pounds, or between twelve months and an indefinite
number of months, into a question of principle? Observe: I am not now
answering those who maintain that nothing ought to be given out of
the public purse to a corrupt church; nor am I now answering those who
maintain that nothing ought to be given out of the public purse to
any church whatever. They, I admit, oppose this bill on principle. I
perfectly understand, though I do not myself hold, the opinion of the
zealous voluntary who says, "Whether the Roman Catholic Church teaches
truth or error, she ought to have no assistance from the State." I also
perfectly understand, though I do not myself hold, the opinion of the
zealous Protestant who says, "The Roman Catholic Church teaches error,
and therefore ought to have no assistance from the State." But I cannot
understand the reasoning of the man who says, "In spite of the errors
of the Roman Catholic Church, I think that she ought to have some
assistance from the State; but I am bound to mark my abhorrence of her
errors by doling out to her a miserable pittance. Her tenets are so
absurd and noxious that I will pay the professor who teaches them wages
less than I should offer to my groom. Her rites are so superstitious
that I will take care that they shall be performed in a chapel with a
leaky roof and a dirty floor. By all means let us keep her a college,
provided only that it be a shabby one. Let us support those who are
intended to teach her doctrines and to administer her sacraments to the
next generation, provided only that every future priest shall cost us
less than a foot soldier. Let us board her young theologians; but let
their larder be so scantily supplied that they may be compelled to break
up before the regular vacation from mere want of food. Let us lodge
them; but let their lodging be one in which they may be packed like pigs
in a stye, and be punished for their heterodoxy by feeling the snow and
the wind through the broken panes." Is it possible to conceive anything
more absurd or more disgraceful? Can anything be clearer than this, that
whatever it is lawful to do it is lawful to do well? If it be right that
we should keep up this college at all, it must be right that we should
keep it up respectably. Our national dignity is concerned. For this
institution, whether good or bad, is, beyond all dispute, a very
important institution. Its office is to form the character of those who
are to form the character of millions. Whether we ought to extend any
patronage to such an institution is a question about which wise and
honest men may differ. But that, as we do extend our patronage to such
an institution, our patronage ought to be worthy of the object, and
worthy of the greatness of our country, is a proposition from which I am
astonished to hear any person dissent.