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 colour that he liked, the spots where
Englishmen have fought, and English blood has been poured forth, and
the treasure of England 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 of the fruits of the industry of the
people in a vain--happily a vain--endeavour to retain the colonies of
the United States in subjection to the Monarchy of England. Add up the
interest of that £130,000,000 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. The interest on that is £100,000,000
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. 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. 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 to
£22,000,000.
Some people think 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 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. The State,
indeed, of which Lord John Russell is a part, may enjoy a revenue of
£100,000,000, 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 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 anything 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. 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 honour to this Government and this country all through
these grave transactions; but I have heard it stated by those who must
know, that nothing could be more honourable, 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 have never heard that anything was done
there to create a suspicion of a feeling of hostility on his part
towards us. The Emperor of the French came to London, and some of
those powerful organs of the press, who 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 honourable character
entitle her to?
What has occurred since? If there was a momentary unpleasantness, I
am quite sure that 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, which was not devised by the present Emperor of the
French. For one hundred years great sums have 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 have 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; we, 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
anything 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 labouring 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
it, 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 for
ever 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 for ever, 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 franchise? Does it not seem something like
idiotcy 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 connexion 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.
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 the 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 labourer--the unhappy labourer--of whom it may be
said in this country,
Here landless labourers hopeless toil and strive,
But taste no portion of the sweets they hive,--
that the labourer 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 cobweb 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. That is equal to £18,700,000 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 labourers, 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 it shall be enduring. When I am told that the greatness of
our country is shown by the £100,000,000 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 should be taken from the industry,
chiefly of the labouring 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 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. 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 honourable and independent position before
their fellow men? While Irish labour, notwithstanding the improvement
which has taken place in Ireland, is only paid at the rate of about
1_s_. 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 lower 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 which 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 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, 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
opinion 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 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!