=Source.=—_Hansard_, Third Series, vol. cxxxvi., col. 1755.
MR. JOHN BRIGHT: We are in this position, that for a
month past, at least, there has been a chaos in the regions of
Administration. Nothing can be more embarrassing—I had almost said
nothing can be more humiliating—than the position which we offer to
the country; and I am afraid that the knowledge of our position is not
confined to the limits of these islands.
It will be admitted that we want a Government; that if the country is
to be saved from the breakers which now surround it, there must be a
Government; and it devolves upon the House of Commons to rise to the
gravity of the occasion, and to support any man who is conscious of
his responsibility, and who is honestly offering and endeavouring to
deliver the country from the embarrassment in which we now find it.
We are at war, and I shall not say one single sentence with regard to
the policy of the war or its origin; and I know not that I shall say a
single sentence with regard to the conduct of it; but the fact is that
we are at war with the greatest military Power, probably, of the world,
and that we are carrying on our operations at a distance of 3,000 miles
from home, and in the neighbourhood of the strongest fortifications
of that great military Empire. I shall not stop to criticise—though
it really invites me—the fact that some who have told us that we
were in danger from the aggressions of that Empire, at the same time
told us that that Empire was powerless for aggression, and also that
it was impregnable to attack. By some means, however, the public have
been alarmed as if that aggressive Power were unbounded, and they have
been induced to undertake an expedition, as if the invasion of an
impregnable country were a matter of holiday-making rather than of war.
But we are now in a peculiar position with regard to that war; for
if I am not mistaken, at this very moment, terms have been agreed
upon—agreed upon by the Cabinet of Lord Aberdeen; consented to by the
noble Lord the member for Tiverton (Lord Palmerston) when he was in
that Cabinet; and ratified and confirmed by him upon the formation of
his own Government—and that those terms are now specifically known
and understood; and that they have been offered to the Government
with which this country is at war, and in conjunction with France and
Austria—one, certainly, and the other supposed to be, an ally of this
country. Now, those terms consist of four propositions, which I shall
neither describe nor discuss, because they are known to the House;[6]
but three of them are not matters of dispute; and with regard to
the other, I think that the noble Lord, the member for the City of
London (Lord John Russell) stated, upon a recent occasion, that it was
involved in this proposition that the preponderant power of Russia in
the Black Sea should cease, and that Russia had accepted it with that
interpretation. Therefore, whatever difference arises is merely as to
the mode in which that “preponderant power” shall be understood, or
made to cease. Now there are some gentlemen not far from me—there are
men who write in the public press—there are thousands of persons in
the United Kingdom at this moment—and I learn with astonishment and
dismay that there are persons even in that grave Assembly which we are
not allowed to specify by a name in this House—who have entertained
dreams, impracticable theories, expectations of vast European and
Asiatic changes, of revived nationalities, and of a new map of Europe,
if not of the world, as a result or an object of this war. And it is
from these gentlemen that we have continually addressed to the noble
Lord the member for Tiverton language which I cannot well understand.
They call upon him to act, to carry on the war with vigour, and to
prosecute enterprises which neither his Government nor any other
Government has ever seriously entertained; but I would appeal to those
gentlemen whether it does not become us—regarding the true interests
and true honour of the country—if our Government have offered terms of
peace to Russia, not to draw back from these terms, not to cause any
unnecessary delay, not to adopt any subterfuge to prevent those terms
being accepted, not to attempt shuffles of any kind, not to endeavour
to insist upon harder terms, and thus make the approach of peace even
more distant than it is at present? ...
I appeal to the noble Lord at the head of the Government and to this
House; I am not now complaining of the war—I am not now complaining of
the terms of peace, nor, indeed, of anything that has been done—but I
wish to suggest to this House what, I believe, thousands and tens of
thousands of the most educated and of the most Christian portion of the
people of this country are feeling upon this subject, although,
indeed, in the midst of a certain clamour in the country, they do
not give public expression to their feelings. Your country is not in
an advantageous state at this moment; from one end of the kingdom to
the other there is a general collapse of industry. Those members of
the House not intimately acquainted with the trade and commerce of
the country do not fully comprehend our position as to the diminution
of employment and the lessening of wages. An increase in the cost of
living is finding its way to the homes and hearts of a vast number of
the labouring population.
At the same time there is growing up—and, notwithstanding what some
hon. members of this House may think of me, no man regrets it more
than I do—a bitter and angry feeling against that class which has
for a long period conducted the public affairs of this country. I
like political changes when such changes are made as the result, not
of passion, but of deliberation and reason. Changes so made are safe,
but changes made under the influence of violent exaggeration, or of
the violent passions of public meetings, are not changes usually
approved by this House or advantageous to the country. I cannot but
notice, in speaking to gentlemen who sit on either side of this
House, or in speaking to any one I meet between this House and any
of those localities we frequent when this House is up—I cannot, I
say, but notice that an uneasy feeling exists as to the news which
may arrive by the very next mail from the East. I do not suppose that
your troops are to be beaten in actual conflict with the foe, or that
they will be driven into the sea; but I am certain that many homes in
England in which there now exists a fond hope that the distant one may
return—many such homes may be rendered desolate when the next mail
shall arrive. The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land;
you may almost hear the very beating of his wings. There is no one to
sprinkle with blood the lintels and the sideposts of our doors, that
he may spare and pass on; but he calls at the castle of the noble, the
mansion of the wealthy, equally as at the cottage of the humble, and it
is on behalf of all these classes that I make this solemn appeal.
I tell the noble Lord, that if he be ready honestly and frankly to
endeavour, if possible, by the negotiations to be opened at Vienna, to
put an end to this war, no word of mine, no vote of mine, will be given
to shake his power for one single moment, or to change his position
in this House. I am sure that the noble Lord is not inaccessible to
appeals made to him from honest motives and with the deferential
feeling that he has been for more than forty years a member of this
House. The noble Lord, before I was born, sat upon the Treasury Bench,
and he has devoted his life to the service of his country. He is no
longer young, and his life has extended almost to the term allotted
to man. I would ask, I would entreat the noble Lord to take a course
which, when he looks back upon his whole political career—whatever he
may therein find to be pleased with, whatever to regret—cannot but be
a source of gratification. By adopting that course he would have the
satisfaction of reflecting that, having obtained the laudable object
of his ambition, having become the foremost subject of the Crown,
the dispenser of, it may be, the destinies of his country, and the
presiding genius in her councils—he had achieved a still higher and
nobler ambition: that he had returned the sword to the scabbard—that
at his word torrents of blood had ceased to flow—that he had restored
tranquillity to Europe, and saved this country from the indescribable
calamities of war.
[6] The four points were: (1) The protectorate of Russia over the five
principalities was to be replaced by a collective guarantee; (2) the
navigation of the mouths of the Danube was to be free; (3) the treaty
of 1841, concerning Russia’s position in the Black Sea, was to be
revised; (4) Russia was to renounce all official protectorate over any
of the Sultan’s subjects.