=Source.=—_Hansard._ Third Series, vol. cxii., col. 380.
[NOTE.—Although the resolution in the House
of Lords against Lord Palmerston’s action in regard
to the claims of Mr. Finlay and M. Pacifico upon
the Greek Government was confined to those matters,
the resolution of confidence in the Government,
which was moved in the House of Commons later as
a rejoinder to the action of the Lords, was in
general terms supporting the Government’s foreign
policy, so that Lord Palmerston was able to make
his speech a wide defence of his policy.]
The resolution of the House of Lords involves the future as well as the
past. It lays down for the future a principle of national policy which
I consider totally incompatible with the interests, with the rights,
with the honour, and with the dignity of the country, and at variance
with the practice, not only of this, but of all other civilised
countries in the world. The country is told that British subjects in
foreign lands are entitled to nothing but the protection of the laws
and tribunals of the land in which they happen to reside. The country
is told that British subjects abroad must not look to their own country
for protection, but must trust to that indifferent justice which they
may happen to receive at the hands of the Government and tribunals of
the country in which they may be.
Now, I deny that proposition, and I say it is a doctrine on which
no British Minister ever yet has acted, and on which the people of
England never will suffer any British Minister to act. Do I mean to
say that British subjects abroad are to be above the law, or are to
be taken out of the scope of the laws of the land in which they live?
I mean no such thing; I contend for no such principle. Undoubtedly,
in the first instance, British subjects are bound to have recourse
for redress to the means which the law of the land affords them when
that law is available for such purpose. It is only on a denial of
justice or upon decisions manifestly unjust that the British Government
should be called upon to interfere. But there may be cases in which no
confidence can be placed in the tribunals, those tribunals being, from
their composition and nature, not of a character to inspire any hope of
obtaining justice from them....
We shall be told, perhaps, as we have already been told, that if the
people of the country are liable to have heavy stones placed upon their
breasts, and police officers to dance upon them; if they are liable to
have their heads tied to their knees, and to be left for hours in that
state; or to be swung like a pendulum, and to be bastinadoed as they
swing, foreigners have no right to be better treated than the natives,
and have no business to complain if the same things are practised
upon them. We may be told this, but that is not my opinion, nor do I
believe it is the opinion of any reasonable man. Then, I say, that in
considering the cases of the Ionians, for whom we demanded reparation,
the House must look at and consider what was the state of things in
this respect in Greece; they must consider the practices that were
going on, and the necessity of putting a stop to the extension of
these abuses to British and Ionian subjects by demanding compensation,
scarcely, indeed, more than nominal in some cases, but the granting of
which would be an acknowledgment that such things should not be done
towards us in future.
In discussing these cases, I am concerned to have to say that they
appear to me to have been dealt with elsewhere in a spirit and in
a tone which I think was neither befitting the persons concerning
whom, nor the persons before whom, the discussion took place. It is
often more convenient to treat matters with ridicule than with grave
argument, and we have had serious things treated jocosely, and grave
men kept in a roar of laughter for an hour together at the poverty
of one sufferer, or at the miserable habitation of another, at the
nationality of one injured man or the religion of another, as if
because a man was poor, he might be bastinadoed and tortured with
impunity, as if a man who was born in Scotland might be robbed without
redress, or because a man is of the Jewish persuasion, he is fair game
for any outrage. It is a true saying, and has often been repeated, that
a very moderate share of human wisdom is sufficient for the guidance of
human affairs. But there is another truth, equally indisputable, which
is, that a man who aspires to govern mankind ought to bring to the task
generous sentiments, compassionate sympathies, and noble and elevated
thoughts....
With regard to our policy with respect to Italy, I utterly deny the
charges that have been brought against us of having been the advocates,
supporters, and encouragers of revolution. It has always been the fate
of advocates of temperate reform and constitutional improvement to
be run at as the fomenters of revolution. It is the easiest mode of
putting them down; it is the received formula. It is the established
practice of those who are the advocates of arbitrary government to say:
“Never mind real revolutionists; we know how to deal with them. Your
dangerous man is the moderate reformer; he is such a plausible man. The
only way of getting rid of him is to set the world at him by calling
him a revolutionist.”
Now, there are revolutionists of two kinds in this world. In the first
place, there are those violent, hot-headed, and unthinking men who fly
to arms, who overthrow established Governments, and who recklessly,
without regard to consequences and without measuring difficulties
and comparing strength, deluge their country with blood, and draw
down the greatest calamities on their fellow-countrymen. These are
the revolutionists of one class. But there are revolutionists of
another kind—blind-minded men who, animated by antiquated prejudices
and daunted by ignorant apprehensions, dam up the current of human
improvement until the irresistible pressure of accumulated discontent
breaks down the opposing barriers, and overthrows and levels to the
earth those very institutions which a timely application of renovating
means would have rendered strong and lasting. Such revolutionists as
these are the men who call us revolutionists....
The government of a great country like this is undoubtedly an object
of fair and legitimate ambition to men of all shades of opinion. It is
a noble thing to be allowed to guide the policy and to influence the
destiny of such a country; and if ever it was an object of honourable
ambition, more than ever must it be so at the moment at which I am
speaking. For while we have seen the political earthquake rocking
Europe from side to side—while we have seen thrones shaken, shattered,
levelled, institutions overthrown and destroyed—while in almost every
country of Europe the conflict of civil war has deluged the land with
blood from the Atlantic to the Black Sea, from the Baltic to the
Mediterranean, this country has presented a spectacle honourable to the
people of England, and worthy of the admiration of mankind.
We have shown that liberty is compatible with order; that individual
freedom is reconcilable with obedience to the law. We have shown the
example of a nation in which every class of society accepts with
cheerfulness the lot which Providence has assigned to it, while at the
same time every individual of such class is constantly striving to
raise himself in the social scale—not by injustice and wrong, not by
violence and illegality, but by persevering good conduct and by the
steady and energetic exertion of the moral and intellectual faculties
with which his Creator has endowed him.... I maintain that the
principles which can be traced through all our foreign transactions, as
the guiding rule and directing spirit of our proceedings, are such as
deserve approbation. I therefore fearlessly challenge the verdict which
this House, as representing a political, a commercial, a constitutional
country, is to give on the question now brought before it—whether the
principles on which the foreign policy of Her Majesty’s Government
has been conducted, and the sense of duty which has led us to think
ourselves bound to afford protection to our fellow-subjects abroad are
proper and fitting guides for those who are charged with the government
of England: and whether, as the Roman in days of old held himself
free from indignity when he could say, “Civis Romanus sum,” so also a
British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that
the watchful eye and strong arm of England will protect him against
injustice and wrong.