of sorrow; for I maintain, and I think history will bear out what I say,
that there is no generous and high-minded Englishman who can look back
upon the transactions of the last four years without a feeling of sorrow
at the course we have pursued on some important occasions. As I am
wishful to speak with a view to a better state of feeling, both in this
country and in the United States, I shall take the liberty, if the House
will permit me for a few minutes, to refer to two or three of these
transactions, where, I think, though perhaps we were not in the main
greatly wrong, yet in some circumstances we were so far unfortunate as
to have created an irritation which at this moment we wish did not
exist. The hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Seymour Fitzgerald) referred to
the course taken by the Government with regard to the acknowledgment of
the belligerent rights of the South. Now I have never been one to
condemn the Government for acknowledging those belligerent rights,
except upon this ground--I think it might be logically contended that it
might possibly have become necessary to take that step--but I do think
the time and manner in which it was done were most unfortunate, and
could not but produce very evil effects.
Going back nearly four years, we recollect what occurred when the news
arrived of the first shot having been fired at Fort Sumter. That, I
think, was about the 12th of April. Immediately after that time it was
announced that a new Minister was coming to this country. Mr. Dallas had
intimated to the Government that as he did not represent the new
President he would rather not undertake anything of importance; but that
his successor was on his way and would arrive on such a day. When a man
leaves New York on a given day you can calculate to about twelve hours
when he will be in London. Mr. Adams, I think, arrived in London about
the 13th of May, and when he opened his newspaper next morning he found
the Proclamation of neutrality, acknowledging the belligerent rights of
the South. I say that the proper course to have taken would have been to
have waited till Mr. Adams arrived here, and to have discussed the
matter with him in a friendly manner, explaining the ground upon which
the English Government had felt themselves bound to issue that
Proclamation, and representing that it was not done in any manner as an
unfriendly act towards the United States Government. But no precaution
whatever was taken; it was done with unfriendly haste; and it had this
effect, that it gave comfort and courage to the conspiracy at Montgomery
and at Richmond, and caused great grief and irritation amongst that
portion of the people of America who were most strongly desirous of
maintaining friendly relations between their country and England.
To illustrate this point allow me to suppose a great revolt had taken
place in Ireland, and that we had sent over within a fortnight of the
occurrence of such an unfortunate event a new Minister to Washington,
and that on the morning after arriving there he had found, that without
consulting him, the Government had taken a hasty step by which the
belligerent rights of the insurgents had been acknowledged, and by which
comfort and support had been given them. I ask any man whether, under
such circumstances, the feeling throughout the whole of Great Britain,
and in the mind of every man anxious to preserve the unity of Great
Britain and Ireland, would not necessarily be one of irritation and
exasperation against the United States?
I will not argue this matter further--to do so would be simply to
depreciate the intellect of the hon. Gentlemen listening to me. Seven or
eight months afterwards there happened another transaction of a very
different but unfortunate nature--that is the transaction arising out of
the seizure of two Southern envoys on board an English ship--the
_Trent_. I recollect making a speech down at Rochdale about the
time of that occurrence. It was a speech entirely in favour of the
United States Government and people--but I did not then undertake, as I
do not undertake now, in the slightest degree to defend the seizure of
those two envoys. I said that although precedents for such an action
might possibly be found to have occurred in what I will call some of the
evil days in our history, at any rate it was opposed to the maxims and
principles of the United States Government, and was, as I thought, a bad
act--an act which should not have been done. Well, I do not complain of
the demand that those men should be given up; but I do complain of the
manner in which that demand was made, and the menaces by which it was
accompanied. I think it was wrong and unstatesman-like that at the
moment we heard of the seizure, when there was not the least foundation
for supposing that the United States Government were aware of the act,
or had in the slightest degree sanctioned it, as we since well know they
did not, that we should immediately get ships ready, and send off
troops, and incite the organs of the press--who are always too ready to
inflame the passions of the people to frenzy--to prepare their minds for
war.
But that was not all; because before the United States had heard a word
of the matter from this country their Secretary of State had written to
Mr. Adams a despatch, which was communicated to our Government, and in
which it was stated that the transaction had not been done by any orders
of theirs, and that therefore, as far as they and we were concerned, it
was a pure accident, which they should consider with the most friendly
disposition towards this country. How came it that this despatch was
never published for the information of the people of this country? How
happened it that, during one whole month the flame of war was fanned by
the newspapers, particularly by those supposed to be devoted to the
Government, and that one of those newspapers, supposed to be peculiarly
devoted to the Prime Minister, had the audacity--I do not know whence it
obtained its instructions--to deny that any such despatch had been
received? Now, Sir, I am of opinion that it is not possible to maintain
amicable relations with any great country--I think it is not possible to
do so with any little one--unless Governments will manage these
transactions in what I will call a more courteous and more honourable
manner. I happen to know--for I received a letter from the United
States, from one of the most eminent men in that country, dated only two
days before those men were given up, in which the writer said--that the
real difficulty in the course of the President was that the menaces of
the English Government had made it almost impossible for them to
concede; and that the question they asked themselves was whether the
English Government was intending to seek a cause of quarrel or not. And
I am sure the noble Lord at the head of the Government, if such a demand
had been made upon him with courtesy and fairness, as should be between
friendly nations, would have been more disposed to concede, and would
have found it much more easy to concede, than if the demand had been
accompanied by menaces such as his Government offered to the Government
of the United States. Now the House will observe that I am not
condemning the Government of this country on the main point of what they
did. I am only condemning them because they did not do what they had to
do in that manner which would be most likely to remove difficulties and
preserve a friendly feeling between the two nations.
Then I come to the last thing I shall mention--to the question of the
ships which have been preying upon the commerce of the United States. I
shall confine myself to that one vessel, the _Alabama_. She was
built in this country; all her munitions of war were from this country;
almost every man on board her was a subject of Her Majesty. She sailed
from one of our chief ports. She is known to have been built by a firm
in which a Member of this House was, and I presume is, interested. Now,
Sir, I do not complain--I know that once, when I referred to this
question two years ago, when my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford
brought it forward in this House, the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr.
Laird) was excessively angry--I do not complain that the Member for
Birkenhead has struck up a friendship with Captain Semmes, who may
probably be described, as another sailor once was of similar pursuits,
as being 'the mildest mannered man that ever scuttled ship.' Therefore,
I do not complain of a man who has an acquaintance with that notorious
person, and I do not complain, and did not then, that the Member for
Birkenhead looks admiringly upon the greatest example which men have
ever seen of the greatest crime which men have ever committed. I do not
complain even that he should applaud that which is founded upon a
gigantic traffic in living flesh and blood--a traffic into which no
subject of this realm can enter without being deemed a felon in the eyes
of our law and punished as such. But what I do complain of is this, that
the hon. Gentleman the Member for Birkenhead, a magistrate of a county,
a deputy-lieutenant--whatever that may be--a representative of a
constituency, and having a seat in this ancient and honourable Assembly--
that he should, as I believe he did, if concerned in the building of
this ship, break the law of his country, by driving us into an
infraction of International Law, and treating with undeserved disrespect
the Proclamation of neutrality of the Queen.
I have another complaint to make, and in allusion to that hon. Member.
It is within your recollection that when on a former occasion he made
that speech and defended his course, he declared that he would rather be
the builder of a dozen _Alabamas_ than do something which nobody
has done. That language was received with repeated cheering from the
Opposition side of the House. Well, Sir, I undertake to say that that
was at least a most unfortunate circumstance, and I beg to tell the hon.
Gentleman that at the end of last Session, when the great debate took
place on the question of Denmark, there were many men on this side of
the House who had no objection whatever to see the present Government
turned out of office, for they had many grounds of complaint against
them, but they felt it impossible that they should take the
responsibility of bringing into office the right hon. Member for
Buckinghamshire or the party who could utter such cheers on such a
subject as that.
Turning from the Member for Birkenhead to the noble Lord at the head of
the Foreign Office, he, who in the case of the acknowledgment of
belligerent rights had proceeded with such remarkable celerity, such
undue and unfriendly haste, amply compensated for it when he came to the
question of the _Alabama_, by his slowness of procedure. And this
is a strange circumstance, which even the noble Lord's Colleagues have
never been able to explain, that although he sent orders to Cork to stop
the _Alabama_ if she arrived there, he allowed her afterwards, when
she had gone out of the jurisdiction of the Crown in these islands, to
go into a dozen or a score of ports belonging to this country in
different parts of the world. It seems to me that this is rather a
special instance of that feebleness of purpose and of action on the part
of the noble Lord which I regret to say has on many occasions done much
to mar what would otherwise be a great political career. I will not
detain the House on the question of the rams. The hon. Member for
Birkenhead, or the firm or the family, or whoever the people are at
Birkenhead who do these things, this firm at Birkenhead, after they had
seen the peril into which the country was drifting on account of the
_Alabama_, proceeded most audaciously to build those two rams; and
it was only at the very last moment, when on the eve of a war with the
United States on account of those rams, that the Government happily had
the courage to seize them, and thus the last danger was averted.
I suppose there are some shipowners here. I know there are many in
London--there are many in Liverpool--what would be the feeling in this
country if they suffered in this way from ships built in the United
States? There is a shipowner in New York, Mr. Lowe, a member of the
Chamber of Commerce of New York. He had three large ships destroyed by
the _Alabama_; and the _George Griswold_, which came to this
country freighted with a heavy cargo of provisions of various kinds for
the suffering people of Lancashire, was destroyed on her return passage,
and the ship that destroyed it may have been, and I believe was, built
by these patriotic shipbuilders of Birkenhead. These are things that
must rankle in the breast of a country which is subjected to such losses
and indignities. Even to-day I see in the newspapers that a vessel that
went out from this country has destroyed ten or eleven ships between the
Cape of Good Hope and Australia. I have thought it unnecessary to bring
continually American questions before the House, as some Gentlemen have
done during the last two or three Sessions. They should have asked a few
questions in regard to these ships; but no, they asked no question upon
these points. They asked questions upon every point on which they
thought they might embarrass the Government and make the great
difficulties of the Government greater in all their transactions with
the United States.
But the Members of the Government have not been wise. I hope it will not
be thought that I am unnecessarily critical if I say that Governments
are not generally very wise. Two years ago the noble Lord at the head of
the Government and the Attorney-General addressed the House. I asked the
noble Lord--I do not often ask him for anything--to speak, if only for
five minutes, words of generosity and sympathy to the Government and
people of the United States. He did not do it. Perhaps I was foolish to
expect it. The Attorney-General made a most able speech. It was the only
time that I have listened to him, ever since I have known him in this
House, with pain, for I thought his speech was full of bad morals and
bad law. I am quite certain that he even gave an account of the facts of
the case which was not as ingenuous and fair as the House had a right to
expect from him. Next Session the noble Lord and the Attorney-General
turned quite round. They had a different story about the same
transaction, and gradually, as the aspect of things was changed on the
other side of the Atlantic, there has been a gradual return to good
sense and fairness, not only on the part of Members upon the Treasury
Bench, but on that of other Members of the House.
Now, Sir, I would not willingly say a word that would wound either the
noble Lord at the head of the Foreign Office or the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, because I do not know amongst the official statesmen of this
country two men for whom I have greater sympathy or more respect; but I
have to complain of them. I do not know why it is that they both go down
to Newcastle--a town in which I feel a great interest--and there give
forth words of offence and unwisdom. I know that what the noble Lord
said was all very smart, but really it was not true, and I have not much
respect for a thing that is merely smart and is not true. The Chancellor
of the Exchequer made a statement too. The papers made it appear that he
did it with exultation; but that is a mistake. But he made a statement,
and though I do not know what will be in his Budget, I know his wishes
in regard to that statement--namely, that he had never made it.
Those Gentlemen, bear in mind, sit, as it were, on a hill; they are not
obscure men, making speeches in a public-house or even at a respectable
mechanics' institution; they are men whose voice is heard wherever the
English language is known. And knowing that, and knowing what effect
their speeches will have, especially in Lancashire, where men are in
trade, and where profits and losses are affected by the words of
statesmen, they use the language of which I complain; and beyond this,
for I can conceive some idea of the irritation those statements must
have caused in the United States. I might refer to the indiscriminating
abuse of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Sheffield; and I
may add to that the unsleeping ill-will of the noble Lord the Member for
Stamford. I am not sure that these two Members of the House are in the
least degree converted yet. I think I heard the hon. Member for
Sheffield utter to-night some ejaculation that looked as if he retained
all his old sentiments. [Mr. Roebuck: 'Exactly.'] I am sorry it is so. I
did expect that these things would be regretted and repented of; and I
must express my hope that if any one of you who have been thus
ungenerous shall ever fall into trouble of any kind that you will find
your friends more kind and more just than you have been to your fellow-
countrymen--for I will still call them so--at the other side of the
Atlantic. And as to the press, Sir, I think it is unnecessary to say
much about that, because every night those unfortunate writers are now
endeavouring to back out of everything they have been saying; and I can
only hope that their power for evil in future will be greatly lessened
by the stupendous exhibition of ignorance and folly which they have made
to the world.
Now, Sir, having made this statement, I suppose the noble Lord the
Member for Stamford, if he were to get up after me, would say: 'Well, if
all this be true--if we have done all these injurious things, if we have
created all this irritation in the United States--will it not be likely
that this irritation will provoke a desire for vengeance, and that the
chances of war are greatly increased by it?' I do not know whether the
chances of war are increased, but I will say that not only is war not
certain, but it is to the last degree improbable.
But, Sir, there is another side to this question. All England is not
included in the rather general condemnation which I have thought it my
duty to express. There is another side. Looking to our own population,
what have the millions been saying and doing--the millions you are so
much afraid of?--especially the noble Lord the Member for Stamford, who
objects to the transference of power to those millions from those who
now hold it, and, from his position, naturally objects. I beg leave to
tell the House that, taking the counties of Lancashire and Yorkshire--
your great counties of population--the millions of men there, whose
industry has not only created but sustains the fabric of your national
power, have had no kind of sympathy with the views which I have been
condemning. They have been more generous and more wise; they have shown
that magnanimity and love of freedom are not extinct. And, speaking of
the county from which I come--the county of many sorrows, whose griefs
have hung like a dark cloud over almost every heart during the last
three years--all the attempts which the agents of the Confederacy have
made there by money, by printing, by platform speeches, by agitation,
have utterly failed to get from that population one expression of
sympathy with the American insurrection. And, Sir, if the bond of union
and friendship between England and America shall remain unbroken, we
shall not have to thank the wealthy and the cultivated, but those
laborious millions whom statesmen and histories too frequently take
little account of. They know a little of the United States, which
Gentlemen opposite and some on this side the House do not appear to
know. They know that every man of them would be better off on the
American continent, if he chose to go there, and would be welcome to
every right and privilege that the people there are in possession of.
They know further that every man may have from the United States
Government a free gift of 160 acres of the most fertile land in the
world. [A laugh.] I do not understand that laugh, but the gift, under
the Homestead Act of America, of 160 acres of land is a great deal for a
man who has no land. I can tell you that the Homestead Act and the
liberality of the American Government have had a great effect upon the
population of the North of England, and I can tell you further--that the
labouring population of this country--the artisans and the mechanics--
will never join heartily in any policy which is intended to estrange the
people of the United States from the people of the United Kingdom.
But, Sir, we have other securities for peace which are not less than
these, and I find them in the character of the Government and people of
the American Union. I think the right hon. Gentleman the Member for
Buckinghamshire (Mr. Disraeli) referred to what must reasonably be
supposed to happen in case this rebellion should be put down--that when
a nation is exhausted it will not rush rashly into a new struggle. The
loss of life has been great, the loss of treasure enormous. Happily for
them, this life and this treasure have not been sacrificed to keep a
Bourbon on the throne of France, or to keep the Turks in Europe; the
sacrifice was for an object which every man could comprehend, which
every man could examine by the light of his own intelligence and his own
conscience; for if these men have given their lives and their
possessions, it was for the attainment of a great end, the maintenance
of the unity and integrity of a great country. History in future time
must be written in a different spirit from all history in the past, if
it should express any condemnation of that people. Mr. Lincoln, who is
now for the second time President of the United States, was elected
exclusively by what was termed the Republican party. He is now elected
by what may be called the Great Union party of the nation. But Mr.
Lincoln's party has always been for peace. That party in the North has
never carried on any war of aggression, and has never desired one. I
speak of the North only, the Free States. And let the House remember
that in that country landed property, property of all kind, is more
universally distributed than in any other nation, that instruction and
school education are also more widely diffused there than amongst any
other people. I say, they have never carried on hitherto a war for
aggrandizement or for vengeance, and I believe they will not begin one
now.
Canada, I think the noble Lord will admit, is a very tempting bait, not
indeed for the purpose of annexation, but for the purpose of humiliating
this country. I agree with hon. Gentlemen who have said that it would be
discreditable to England, in the light of her past history, that she
should leave any portion of her Empire which she could defend,
undefended. But still it is admitted--and I think the speech of the
right hon. Gentleman the Member for Calne (Mr. Lowe) produced a great
effect upon those who heard it--the House admitted that in case of war
with the United States, Canada could not be defended by any power on
land or at sea which this country could raise or spare for that purpose.
I am very sorry, not that we cannot defend Canada, but that any portion
of the dominions of the British Crown is in such circumstances as to
tempt evil-disposed people to attack it with the view of humiliating us,
because I believe that transactions which humiliate a Government and a
nation are not only disagreeable, but a great national harm.
But, now, is there a war party in the United States? I believe there is
such a party. It is that party which was a war party eighty years ago.
It is the party represented by hon. Gentlemen who sit on that bench--the
Irish party. They who are hostile to this country in the United States
are those who were recently malcontent subjects of the right hon.
Gentleman the Member for Tamworth. It is these, and such as these, to
whom the noble Lord at the head of the Government offers only such
consolation as that of telling them that 'the rights of the tenants are
the wrongs of the landlords,' who constitute the only war party in the
United States; and it was the war party there in the days of Lord North.
But the real power of the United States does not rest on that class.
American mobs--and, excepting some portion of the population of New
York, I would not apply the language even to them--for the sake of
forcing their Congress and their Executive to a particular course, are
altogether unknown. The real mob in your sense, is that party of
chivalrous gentlemen in the South, who have received, I am sorry to say,
so much sympathy from some persons in this country and in this House.
But the real power depends upon another class--the landowners throughout
the country, and there are millions of them. In this last election for
President of the United States, I was told by a citizen of New York, who
was most active in the election, that in the State of New York alone
100,000 Irish votes were given, as he expressed it, solidly--that is, in
one mass--for General M'Clellan, and that not more than 2,000 were given
for President Lincoln. You see the preponderance of that party in the
city of New York, and that is the feeling amongst them throughout the
State of New York; but, throughout the whole of the United States, it is
merely a small per-centage, which has no sensible effect upon the
constitution of Congress, or upon legislation or government.