requisition and remonstrance being all we did, the British diplomacy
and the British Navy were actually compelled to force an armistice
upon the Neapolitan Government on behalf of its revolted subjects,
and when their revolt was nearly quelled! After Messina had been
completely subdued, its forces routed, its walls crumbled, its
strongest place captured, our Admiral, having a fleet in those waters,
was resolved it should not be there for nothing. Hitherto he and his
captains had only expressed sympathy with the insurgents, and hatred
or contempt of their lawful Sovereign. Now that the rebellion was on
the point of being put down, by the capture of Catania and Palermo,
which, but for us, must both have immediately fallen, now that the
last hope of subverting the Throne of Sicily and installing a usurper
on its ruins was about to vanish from the eyes of the British seamen,
our Admiral, acting in concert no doubt with the British envoy, and
inspired with the feelings of our Foreign Office, required a respite
to be allowed the insurgents, and determined to back his requisition
with his ships. But he was not, we must admit, the principal in this
offence against the rights of an independent and friendly State. He
has not the blame to bear, or, if you will, he has not the praise to
receive, of having decided upon this intervention between the King and
his insurgent subjects. The French Admiral was the contriver of the
scheme. Admiral Baudin formed his own determination, doubtless in
order to gratify the mob of Paris, as well as the rebels of Palermo;
and our commander, afraid of being outstripped in his favourite
course, at once yielded to the Frenchman's request, the one looking to
the Boulevards of Paris for approval, the other to the Foreign Office
of London. Orders were issued to all our fleet, that they should use
every means to prevent the Neapolitans from following up their
victory at Messina; and sealed instructions were sent to direct their
proceedings should these peaceable efforts fail. Why not make the
instructions public? Why not give notice openly of our intentions? It
might have prevented the necessity of using force. However, the orders
were sealed, and they directed that first the guns should be fired
without shot; next, that they should be shotted, but not fired so
as to injure the crews of our ally's ships; and, finally, that they
should be used as hostilely and destructively as was necessary to
accomplish the purpose of forcing Naples to let the Sicilian rebels
alone. But then it is said, and it is the pitiful pretext of equal
treatment to both parties, that the orders were alike to prevent
action of the King's troops and the revolters. Was ever there a more
wretched shift, a more hollow pretence, than this? Keep the Sicilians
from breaking an armistice enforced to save them from utter and final
destruction! Keep the beaten Sicilian rebel from overpowering his
victorious masters! Keep the felon convicted from rushing to the
gallows in spite of the respite granted him! Can human wit imagine a
more ridiculous pretext than this, of affecting to hold the balance
even, when you are preventing the conqueror from improving his
victory, and only preventing the vanquished from attempting what
without a miracle he cannot do, cannot, even with all your assistance,
venture to try? But such was our just conduct in an interference which
we had not the shadow of a right to take upon ourselves. We showed our
friendly feelings towards an ancient ally by forcibly screening his
revolted subjects, and compelling him to delay for nearly seven months
the total defeat of those rebels and the complete restoration of
tranquillity. From the 10th of September, when Messina fell, to the
30th of March, when we were kindly pleased to let the armistice
expire, the English fleet persevered in reducing the King to inaction,
and saving his rebellious subjects from the operation of his armies.
But for our own fleet, there is not a doubt that Catania and Palermo
must have fallen in a fortnight, but we nursed, and fostered, and
prolonged the insurrection for above half a year. Talk of your
humanity! Boast of your Admiral and his French associate interposing
to save bloodshed! Whose fault was it that Catania, having profited by
the respite you forced the King to grant, still held out, instead of
opening her gates as soon as Messina had fallen, when the insurrection
must have been crushed in its cradle? Who but your commanders and
envoys are to blame for the necessity under which they placed
the King's troops of fighting a battle on the 6th of April? That
engagement no doubt put down the insurrection; but many lives were
lost in it. Five-and-twenty officers were killed and wounded on the
King's side, and some hundreds of men must likewise have expiated
their loyalty with their lives, to say nothing of the insurgent loss.
Palermo fell without a struggle, after all the boastings of your
envoys and captains, and consuls and vice-consuls. Would she have
resisted more fiercely in September? The insurgent chiefs fled, and
got on board the _Vectis_, one of the two vessels of war which you
suffered the Sicilian rebels to fit out in your ports, when you
refused all help to your ancient friend's ambassador in checking this
outrage on the law of nations, and when by a celebrated 'inadvertence'
you suffered those rebels to obtain from the Tower a supply of arms,
wherewith to fight your ally's armies.
My Lords, I cannot trust myself with the expression of the feelings
which are roused by the whole of the papers, to which I have only
referred occasionally; they are the feelings with which all men of
sound principles and calm judgement will read them all over Europe. I
will refer to them no further than to read the indignant denial which
the veteran General Filangieri, Prince of Satriano, gives to the
charge of cruelty brought against his gallant and loyal army by our
envoys and our consuls, and, I grieve to add, our naval commanders.
(Lord Brougham here read the vehement, and even impassioned, terms
in which the General refutes these foul calumnies, charging him, an
officer of above half a century's service, with suffering his troops
to commit enormities which no military man, of however little
experience in his profession, could have permitted.)
Rely upon it, my Lords, that if anything can make more offensive the
conduct of our agents in fostering revolt, and injuring the lawful
government of our allies, it is the adding foul slander to gross
indiscretion, revenging themselves on those whose valour and conduct
has frustrated their designs, by blackening their characters, and
committing that last act of cruel injustice, calumniating those you
have injured, through your hatred of those to whom you have given good
cause to hate you.
There is, my Lords, but one course for this country to pursue in its
dealings with other States; she must abstain from all interference,
all mischievous meddling with their domestic concerns, and leave them
to support, or to destroy, or to amend their own institutions in
their own way. Let us cherish our own Government, keeping our own
institutions for our own use, but never attempt to force them upon the
rest of the world. We have no such vocation, we have no such duty,
no such right. Above all, we have no right to interfere between
sovereigns and subjects, encouraging them to revolt, and urging
them to revolution, in the vain hope that we may thus better their
condition. Then, in negotiation, let us avoid the same meddling
policy--shall I falsely call it?--the same restless disposition to
serve one State at another's expense; showing favour and dislike
capriciously and alternately, guided by mere individual and personal
feelings, whether towards States or statesmen, displaying groundless
likings for some and groundless hatred for others; one day supporting
this Power in its aggression upon that, and when defeated, justly and
signally defeated, like Sardinia, clinging to the wish that it should
obtain from the victorious party an indemnity for its own foul but
failing aggression. Most of all let us abide by the established policy
of the country towards our old and faithful friends, not Naples
merely, but Austria, whose friendship has been, in all the best times
of our most eminent statesmen, deemed the very corner-stone of our
foreign policy, ever since the era of 1688; above all, since King
William and the Ministers and Government of his successor laid the
foundations of that system. But now I can see in every act done,
almost in every little matter, a rooted prejudice against Austria,
and the interspersing of a few set phrases does little to prevent
any reader from arriving at the same conclusion. 'Our feelings are
friendly towards Austria,' and 'God forbid they should be otherwise!'
I say Amen to that prayer, but when I read the dispatches with the
light shed on them by the acts of our Government, and of all their
agents and Ministers, when by these acts I interpret the fair words
used, I perceive the latter to mean exactly nothing, and that those
expressions which perpetually recur of an opposite kind speak the
true sense of our rulers. But this policy is opposed to the uniform
authority of our greatest statesmen. Even Mr. Fox, who was sometimes
believed to have a leaning towards Russia, from the accidental
transactions of 1791, when charged with undervaluing the Austrian
alliance in comparison, took immediate opportunity earnestly to
disavow any such opinion, and declared that our friendship with
Austria was the grand element of our European system.
My Lords, I have detained you longer than I could have desired; but I
felt it absolutely necessary to give your Lordships an opportunity of
fully considering this momentous subject. That such things as have
been done by the Government in Italy and elsewhere during the last
twelve months, should pass without awakening your attention, and that
your examination of the details should not call down a censure, if
for no other purpose than to warn the Ministers against persisting in
fatal errors, appears to me hardly within the bounds of possibility.
I have, therefore, deemed it my duty to give you an opportunity of
expressing the opinion which I believe a majority of this House holds,
and which I know is that of all well-informed and impartial persons in
every part of the world.
EARL RUSSELL JUNE 27, 1864 DENMARK AND GERMANY
My Lords, I have to lay upon your table, by command of Her Majesty,
the Protocols of the proceedings of the Conference upon the affairs of
Denmark and Germany, which has just been brought to a close. In laying
these papers upon your Lordships' table I propose to follow the course
which was pursued by the Earl of Liverpool in 1823, and I am confident
that in following that example I am pursuing a course which is
perfectly fair to this House and to the country. In that case the
English Government had been carrying on negotiations first at Verona,
the Conference at which place was attended by the Duke of Wellington,
and afterwards at Paris, on the subject of the invasion of Spain.
The Government of that day declared that the invasion of Spain was
contrary to all the principles of English policy, and that it was an
interference which was entirely opposed not only to the sentiments of
this country, but to the settlement of Europe which had been come to
some years before. They, therefore, protested against it, while at the
same time they thought it advisable to preserve peace and declare a
neutrality between this country and France. Upon the present occasion
I have to discuss a question which is of a very intricate nature, and
which for a long time was considered to be one that might go on for
many many years without raising any exciting interest, and which was
almost too complicated and too wearisome to engage much of the public
attention. For the last, year, however, that question has been in a
very different condition.