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SPEECHES OF EVIBMT MEN;
BEING
A COLLECTION
OF THE
BEST COTEMPORARY SPEECHES
DELIVERED
IN PARLIAMENT, AT THE BAR, AND ON THE
PLATFORM.
ARRANGED AND EDITED BY
ALSAGAR HAY HILL, LL.B.,
OF THE INNER TEMPLE, BARRISTER-AT-LAW.
LONDON:
ALFRED T. CROCKER, 303 Sc 304, STRAND, W.C.
1868.
PREFACE.
IN the present volume, which it is hoped is but the first of a long series, an attempt has been made to reproduce in a compact and popular form all the most conspicuous speeches delivered during the year 1865.
Hitherto the addresses of our leading statesmen and orators have only been preserved in the columns of the daily press, or, if spoken in Parliament, in the elaborate and expensive volumes of " Hansard's Debates."
To refer to such sources for information is often an inconvenient and expensive process, whilst in the case of the Reports in Parliament a large portion of the volumes in which these speeches appear is necessarily occupied with matters of pure business, possessing but slight interest for the general reader.
To bring, therefore, all the best utterances of the time on questions of general interest within the reach of all those who care to possess them, is the first object with which the present work has been undertaken.
Apart from the interest which attaches to these collected speeches as specimens of cotemporary eloquence, their value as the most express record of the political and general opinions of the time cannot, it is conceived, be too highly estimated.
For purposes of general reference, therefore, as well as of especial study by those to whom public speaking is a part of professional education, the " Oratorical Year Book " should have a peculiar value.
Accordingly, in this view it is thought that all the most representative addresses of the year, even where no high standard of oratory may have been attained, will appropriately find a place in such a compilation as the present.
With respect to the arrangement adopted in this work, it may be remarked, as to the first division, that in reproducing the Parliamentary eloquence of the time an endeavour has been made to reprint all the most importaut speeches delivered on the great questions in debate during the session.
iv	Preface.
A short summary of the less important speeches delivered on the same occasion in most cases accompanies those reprinted at length, and so it is hoped the scope and continuity of the debate will be kept up in the mind of the reader without swelling the book to an unnecessary bulk. For this summary we are mainly indebted to the columns of the Times newspaper.
The second division contains, it is believed, all the principal speeches delivered out of Parliament during the year on miscellaneous subjects.
In the division devoted to the speeches at the Bar only those judged most worthy of preservation as specimens of eloquence are included, and of these, it may be said, the past year has been singularly unproductive • at the same time the Editor regrets that the present imperfect system of reporting our forensic oratory has materially narrowed the circle of his selection.
As a fourth division a few foreign and American speeches have been added in the present volume, and the Editor hopes that in succeeding years this department may be more fully represented than circumstances allowed in this the first year of publication.
In all cases any criticism or commentary beyond a brief statement of the circumstances under which each speech was delivered would, it has been thought, be uncalled for, and on this ground all such remarks have been carefully avoided.
For several of the speeches reprinted in this volume the Editor has to acknowledge with thanks his obligation to the speakers themselves for the kind assistance they have afforded him in the supply of accurate reports, and in some instances for a careful revision of the proof-sheets before publication.
It may be stated in conclusion that should this work be so favourably received as to justify its continuance, arrangements will be made by which succeeding volumes of the " Year-Book" will be in the hands of subscribers as soon as possible after the opening of Parliament in each year, instead of at the somewhat late period of the spring at which this first volume goes forth.
THE TEMPLE, May, 1866.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
DIVISION I.
SPEECHES DELIVERED IN PARLIAMENT DURING THE SESSION OF 1865.
PAGF,
Speech of the Right Hon. James Whiteside, M.P. for Dublin University,
on the Belfast Commission of Inquiry .	.	.	.	.	.	3
Speech of Mr. J. A. Roebuck, M.P. for Sheffield, on the Condition of
Ireland	.	.	.	22
	Speech of the Right Hon. R. Lowe, M.P. for Calne, on the same	27
	Speech of the Right Hon. Viscount Palmerston, on the same .	.	.	36
Speech of the Right Hon. E. Cardwell, M.P. for Oxford, and Secretary
for the Colonies, on the Defence of Canada	.	.	.	.	.	42
	Speech of the Right Hon. B. Disraeli, M.P. for Bucks, on the same .	46
	Speech of the Right Hon. R. Lowe, M.P., on the same .	.	52
	Speech of Mr. J. Bright, M.P. for Birmingham, on the same .	.	58
Speech of the Right Hon. Viscount Palmerston on the same	.	.	.	74
Speech of the Right Hons. W. E. Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer,
on the Irish Church	.	.	.	.	.	79
Speech of the Right Hon. J. Whiteside, M.P., on the same	.	.	.	92
Speech of the Right Hon. Viscount Palmerston, on the Death of Mr.
Cobden	.	.	.	•	•	•	•	104
	Speech of the Right Hon. B. Disraeli, on the same .	106
	Speech of Mr. J. Bright, on the same .	.	.	.	.	.	. 107
Speech of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer,
on the Budget	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	109
Speech of the Right Hon. Sir G. Grey, Home Secretary, on the Assassi-
nation of President Lincoln .	.	.	.	.	.	.	. 144
	Speech of the Right Hon. B. Disraeli, on the same .	.	.	.	. 147
Speech of the Right Hon. R. Lowe, on the Extension of the Borough Franchise . . . . . . . . . . . 149
	Speech of Mr. R. Bernal Osborne, M.P. for Liskeard, on the same .	164
	Speech of the Right Hon. E. Horsman, M.P. for Stroud, on the same	169
	Speech of the Right Hon. B. Disraeli, on the same .	.	.	.	. 1:•3
Speech of the Right Hon. the Earl of Derby, on the Roman Catholic Oath
Bill	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.  	.	196
Speech of the Right Hon. Lord Westbury, on Resigning the Office of Lord
Chancellor .	.	2.11
vi	Contents.
DIVISION II.
SPEECHES DELIVERED OUT OF PARLIAMENT ON
MISCELLANEOUS SUBJECTS IN 1865.
PAGE
Speech of Mr. W. E. Forster, M.P. for Bradford, on Home and Foreign
Politics	. . . . . . . . .	. 217
	Speech of Mr. J. Bright, M.P., at Birmingham, 18th. Jan.	.	.	. 230
Speech of Mr. E. A. Leatham, M.P. for Huddersfield, addressed to his
Constituents, 24th Jan.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	. 243
	Speech of Viscount Amberley, delivered at Leeds, 31st Jan. .	.	. 257
Speech of Mr. W. E. Forster, M.P., on the Assassination of President
Lincoln, delivered at St. James's Hall, 29th April	.	.	. 266
	Speech of Mr. J. Stansfeld, M.P. for Halifax, on the same occasion .	. 268
Speech of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer,
at Liverpool, 18th July ..	.	.	.	.	.	. 272
Speech of Lord Stanley, M.P., on Workmen's Halls, delivered at Birken-
head, 3rd August .	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	. 284
Speech of the Right Hon. S. H. Walpole, M.P. for the University of Cambridge, on Missionary Enterprise, delivered at Salisbury, 18th August. 290
Speech of the Bishop of Oxford, on the same occasion	.	.	.	. 294
Address of Sir R. J. Phillimore, Q.C., on Jurisprudence, delivered at
Sheffield, 5th Oct.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	300
Speech of the Bishop of Oxford, on the Local Examinations at Manchester,
delivered on 24th Oct. .	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	. 314
Extract from Discourse of Dean Stanley, on the late Viscount Palmerston . 324 Speech of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer,
delivered at Glasgow, 1st Nov.	.	.	.	.	.	.	. 329
Speech of Lord Stanley, on Physical Education, delivered at Liverpool,
6th. Nov.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	340
	Speech of Mr. J. Bright, M.P., delivered at Blackburn, 30th Nov. .	. 345
Speech of Mr. J. Bright, M.P., on Reform, delivered at Birmingham,
13th Dec.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	356
Speech of Mr. Seymour Fitzgerald, delivered at Horsham, 15th Dec.	. 372
Speech of the Rt. Hon. E. Horsman, M.P.. delivered at Stroud, 28th Dec. 377
DIVISION III.
SPEECHES DELIVERED AT THE BAR' IN 1865.
Speech of Mr. J. D. Coleridge, Q.C., in a case for Breach of Promise of
Marriage, delivered in the Queen's Bench, Westminster .	.	. 383
Speech of Mr. Isaac Butt, Q.C., in Defence of T. Clark Luby, delivered at
Dublin .	.	.	.	' .	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	394
Speeches delivered at the Banquet given by the English Bar to M. Berryer,
8th Nov. 1864	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	. 409
Contents.	vii
DIVISION IV.
FOREIGN AND AMERICAN SPEECHES.
PAGE
Speech of the Emperor of the French on Opening the French Chambers . 425 Funeral Oration of M. Schneider over the Due de Morny, delivered at
Paris, 13th March	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	. 429
	Address of M. Rouher, on the same occasion .	.	.	.	.	. 430
	Message of Jefferson Davis to the Senate of the Confederate States .	. 434
Inaugural A ddress of Abraham Lincoln, on Re-election as President of
the United States .	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	. 441
Speech of President Lincoln, on the Conclusion of the Civil War in America 443 Address of H. Ward Beecher, on Raising the Flag of the United States at
Fort Sumter, 14th April	.	.	.	.	.	.	.	. 447
	Speech of Ralph Waldo Emerson, on the Death of President Lincoln	. 463
Speech of M. Thiers, on the French Budget, delivered at Paris, 2nd June . 467 Speech of Mr. William H. Seward, delivered at Auburn, 20th Oct. . • . 477
DIVISION I.
SPEECHES DELIVERED IN PARLIAMENT
DURING THE SESSION OF 1865.
REGISTER OF THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS IN PARLIAMENT
DURING THE SESSION OF 1865.
Feb. 7.—Speeches on the Address in both Houses. The Earl of Charlmont and Lord Houghton in the House of Lords, Sir H. Williamson and Mr. Hanbury Tracy in the House of Commons, being the Movers and Seconders of the Address.
March 27.—Debate on the proposed second readinc, of the Union Chargeability Bill. Sir R. Knightley, Sir E. Dering, Mr. Bentinck,'Mr. Floyer, Sir J. Trollope, and others speaking against the Bill ; Lord Henley, Mr. Scully, Mr. Neate, and others in support of it. Second reading carried by 203 votes to 131.
April 3.—Lord Palmerston, Mr. Disraeli, and Mr. Bright addressed the House on the loss of Mr. Cobden, who had died the preceding day.
April 27. —Mr. Gladstone made his financial statement.
May 1.—Address to the Queen moved in both Houses, expressive of sorrow and indignation at the assassination of President Lincoln. Earl Russell and Lord Derby the speakers in the House of Lords, Sir G. Grey and Mr. Disraeli in the House of Commons.
May 3.—Debate on Mr. Baines' motion for the second reading of the Borough Franchise Extension Bill. Speakers, Lord Elcho, Mr. Black, Mr. Lowe, and others in opposition to the Bill, Mr. Bazley, Mr. Leatham, and others in support of it.
May 8.—Adjourned debate on the Borough Franchise Extension Bill ; Sir G. Grey, Mr. Stansfeld, and Sir F. Goldsmid supporting the second reading ; Mr. Gregory, Mr. Horsman, and Mr. Disraeli opposing it. On a division, Bill rejected by 218 to 214 votes.
June 14.—Debate on Mr. Goschen's motion for the second reading of the Tests Abolition (Oxford) Bill. Mr. G. Duff, Mr. Forster, Mr. Hennessy, and others speaking in support of the Bill ; Mr. Gladstone, Mr. G. Hardy, Mr. Henley, and others opposing. On a division, second reading agreed to by 206 votes to 190.
June 26.—In the House of Lords.—The Earl of Devon moved the second reading of the Roman Catholic Oath Bill, and was supported by Earl Russell, Earl Grey, Lord Lyveden, and the Marquis of Clanricarde. Lord Derby, Earl of Harrowby, Lord St. Leonards, and Lord Chelmsford in opposition to the Bill.
July 3.—Debate in the House of Commons on Mr. Hunt's motion relating to the case of Mr. Edmunds, and the conduct of the Lord Chancellor in sanctioning a pension to that gentleman.
July 5.—In the House of Lords. —The Lord Chancellor gave• an explanation of the circumstances attending his resignation of office.
SPEECH
OF
THE RIGHT HON. JAMES WHITESIDE,
MEMBER FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN,
ON THE BELFAST COMMISSION OF INQUIRY.
[Subjoined is the speech of Mr. Whiteside, delivered in the House of Commons on the 17th February, on the occasion of Sir Hugh Cairns, M.P. for Belfast, calling the attention of the House to the Commission of Inquiry into the Disturbances in that town in August, 1864. This speech will perhaps be better understood by our putting the reader in possession of the leading points in the speeches which preceded it ; and for this purpose we append (from the Times of Feb. 18) a resume of the addresses of Sir Hugh Cairns, Sir Robert Peel, and others who spoke earlier in the debate. On the order for going into a Committee of Supply, Sir H. CAIRNS called attention to the commission of inquiry into the recent disturbances at Belfast ; to the circumstances connected with that commission, and to the administration of the law against processions in Ireland. After an exposition of the law upon the subject, and urging the importance of administering such a law with strict impartiality, he proceeded to show what had been the course taken in Ireland under the Act on the subject of processions. He observed that the facts he stated with reference to the O'Connell procession in Dublin last year gave rise to an impression that the Act had not been impartially enforced ; and he then directed his observations to the riots and disturbances at Belfast, and to the course taken by the Government in relation thereto. He considered the appointment of a commission of inquiry into the disturbances an irregular proceeding ; it could do nothing, he
said, but foment	in the town. He discussed the scope and object of this
Court, and its course of proceeding, pointing out the effect upon the minds of jurors and witnesses, and of the interests of prisoners awaiting trial, of the mode of investigation pursued by the Commissioners. He considered that there had been in this case a grave and serious miscarriage in the administration of the law.—Sir R. PEEL, after expressing his deep and heartfelt regret at the occurrences in Belfast, suggested whether, upon public grounds and in the interests of justice, it would not have been better to postpone the discussion till the report of the Commissioners, with the evidence they had taken (which would be forthcoming in a very short time), was on the table. Premising that he was prepared to show that the action of the Government had been strictly impartial, he reviewed the history of legislation upon the subject of party processions and the course which had been taken in cases of infraction of the law. He contended (and quoted an opinion of the Attorney-General for Ireland to that effect) that there was no ground for treating the Dublin procession as an illegal proceeding ; that there had been no breach of the peace, nor any violation of the law. With regard to the Belfast Riots, he accused the
B2
4	Speech of Air. Whiteside
local magistrates of having failed in their duty ; otherwise, he said, the riots might have been easily put down. He defended the appointment of the Commission of Inquiry, which he insisted had been properly conducted, and, as had been admitted, in a spirit of fairness and impartiality. The feuds in the province of Ulster, where the population was half Protestant and half Roman Catholic, were of long standing, and the ebullitions of sectarian animosity were apt to break out periodically. It was easy to legislate, but it was difficult entirely to eradicate the evil passions engendered by religious antipathies, and it had been the honest endeavour of the Executive of Ireland to administer the law, without favour or affection, impartially towards all classes. — Lord C. HAMILTON protested against the charge brought by Sir R. Peel against the north of Ireland—that it was the seat of religious discord and sectarian dislike. He maintained that the Dublin procession was a political demonstration, with the view of reviving the agitation for repeal by physical force, and that with its incidents of flags and tunes it was an illegal proceeding, at which the authorities appeared to have connived, and with reference to which the law, in his opinion, bad not been impartially administered.—Mr. M'MAHON regretted that the time of the House should have been occupied with a premature discussion, which had been forced on improperly before the Commissioners of Inquiry had made their report. He attributed the occurrences at Belfast to the different manner in which Ireland was governed, compared with England.]
I WISH to make a few observations upon a point which has not been, I think, sufficiently considered by those who have taken part in this debate. I agree with the last speaker, that some profit may be derived from the debate if we understand the principles that are involved in the discussion. The clear and temperate statement of my hon. and learned friend (Sir H. Cairns) has put the House in possession'of the question, which is in my opinion one of the utmost importance to the future government of a large kingdom. It is a question which touches the privileges, or what are supposed to be the privileges, of this House. The facts that led to this question are admitted. A warrant had been issued by a gentleman who was described by the right hon. baronet as the sole Lord Justice. Under what circumstances was that warrant issued ? A sad, melancholy, and stupid riot broke out in Belfast on the 8th of August ;—the House will notice the date. On that day where was the Government of Ireland ? I may be told that Lord Carlisle, whom we all respected for his virtues, his gracious conduct, and his admirable courtesies in private life, was at that time disabled. We understood he bad resigned ; at all events, there was no Lord-Lieutenant. It is admitted by the right hon. gentleman that he was absent. The Lord Chancellor was absent, and the sole Governor of Ireland was Sir G. Brown. There is not, I believe, a more gallant veteran in the British service. It is said he served under Wellington. He served in the Crimea ; he was sent to Ireland to enjoy his otium cum dignitate ; and in all Europe you could not find a gentleman more innocent of all know-
On the Belfast Commission of Inquiry.	5
ledge of the nature, effect, and tendency of the warrant lie issued. Let us consider for a moment what that warrant is ; for I fear we have on more than one occasion addressed the Crown to issue commissions of inquiry, to which commissions it was supposed the privileges and powers of the House were communicated. Our privileges are vast, but they are incommunicable. How can we communicate to a commission, even by an address to the Crown, the privileges we possess P We may summon witnesses, pay them, compel them to come, publish reports, and not allow any power in the kingdom to quarrel with us for so doing. But what is the authority of persons appointed as a commission under an address to the Crown by this House ? Lord Coke has been referred to, but in the days of Lord Coke, when the principles of constitutional law were better understood than they are now upon the Treasury bench, commissions of inquiry into crimes and offences were held to be void, because they wanted the warrant of an Act of Parliament, and the power did not exist even in the Crown to give these gentlemen the power they presume to exercise. This question arose in a very interesting way, when O'Connell was at the bar of Ireland. The House of Commons had just passed an address to the Crown to issue a commission to inquire into the corporations of Ireland. Observe what followed. There was no interference with the criminal law, there was no question of any trials about to take place, and there was no obstruction of public justice. The commission, with their reporter, visited Cork, and there arose the case which is known as the case of the " Golden Loaf." It arose in this way. The commission arrived and opened their court. They called upon all persons who had any accusations to make against the corporate body to come in and say what they pleased. Accordingly, a master baker, having a grievance, appeared before the Commissioners and narrated it. It appeared that some years ago a person, whom he named, was mayor of the city, and it was the custom of the bakers of the city to give the mayor a golden loaf. They, wishing him to regulate in their favour the assize of bread, presented to him what contained within it that which was acceptable to his feelings. This baker made his statement to the Commissioners, and the reporter took it down --" The Court.—Is there anything else you have to say P—Witness.--I have an instance of a 101.-note slipping into the mayor's pocket from off the Boardroom table of the House of Industry, and it never slipped out since." The mayor was absent from Cork at the time, and the first notice he got of anything before the Commissioners was the description of himself, which he read in the newspapers. The
6	Speech of Mr. Whiteside
reporter who accompanied these gentlemen handed the evidence to the witness, who corrected it, and then it was sent to the newspapers. The mayor was advised by an eminent counsel to move for a criminal information against the witness, upon the ground that he had been a party to a gross libel. The point was argued by Mr. O'Connell and Mr. Holmes, and it was said that the publication was privileged because it was a full and accurate report of the proceedings in a court of justice, or, at all events, in a court of inquiry, held under a resolution of the House of Commons, and that although the statement might be defamatory and scandalous, yet that the witness was protected, just as he would have been if the statement had been made before a committee of the House itself. It was insisted, on the other side, that there was no power in the Crown to issue such a commission, and that even an address of the House of Commons would not give it any validity. The case came by appeal to England, and the Lord Chief Justice of the day, in delivering judgment, said that it was contended that a right existed to report truly the proceedings of a court of justice, but that principle was not applicable to the present case, because this was a commission of inquiry and not a court of justice; it had not the characteristics of one, but was preparatory to some ulterior measures and for the purpose of inquiry merely. The evidence was entirely ex parte, and the proceedings bore less analogy to those of a court of justice than to those before a police magistrate or at a coroner's inquest. If, therefore, those proceedings were defamatory they might tend to prejudice the public mind and to defeat the ends of justice if the case were brought to trial. And Mr. Justice Burton said that it was impossible to say that those proceedings took place before a tribunal which had any analogy to a court of justice, for a court of justice had authority to hear and determine cases, whereas the tribunal in question could hear merely. The Commissioners were only to inquire into certain facts ; they could not give an acquittal. They were empowered to hear evidence, and that ex parte—not for the purpose of being communicated to the public, but of being returned to another place. He then said that anything which might inflame the public mind where a man was likely to be tried was a high crime and misdemeanour, and that to publish it was not merely unconstitutional, but illegal. Well, take another case—a case which I myself argued—I mean that of Mr. Jardine. Mr. Jardine was brought before the magistrates charged with baying been engaged in riotous proceedings ; but the charge was not entertained. He was brought up a second time, but the magistrates thought there was no case. Then the Government of
On the Belfast Commission of Inquiry.	7
Lord Clarendon ordered a gentleman, whom I call an illegal inquisitor, to go down and inquire into the case. I deny his authority. It was illegal. Where did he get this authority ? Two gentlemen arrived in a town and begin to inquire into your character, your behaviour, your politics, behind your backs. Is that legal ? Mr. Jardine brought the matter into the Court of Queen's Bench by applying for a criminal information against the newspaper which had published the report of the proceedings
of this unauthorized tribunal.	And it was admitted by the
Court that if there was in consequence of the report any prejudice done to the individual there was no justification. The matter was brought before the House of Lords by one who is not only a statesman and a poet, but a good lawyer also—I mean Lord Derby ; and there was a defence by Lord Clarendon to this effect—that knowing that the inquisitor could not act without a commission of the peace, he had made him a magistrate before sending him down. But any one acquainted with the law could have pointed out that in doing so he had acted with more cunning than candour, because the Commissioner was to act, not as a magistrate, but as an inquirer. At a later period a case arose which might be in the recollection of the House ; and only that gentlemen in Ireland are upon this subject quite incorrigible, I should ask the House to put an end to all dealings of this description—dealings which would not be tolerated in this country. Mr. Balfe had taken some part in an election. It was said that he had personated the voter ; but that was not the fact; and down went a Commissioner to know whether he had done this thing. The Government had as much authority to send him down to inquire as to cut off Mr. Balfe's head; and I know what I should endeavour to do in such a case. The Commissioner, who was a most courteous gentleman, politely put the question, " Will you consent to be sworn ? " for he seemed to have thought that there was a section of an Act which applied to such a case. The persons did consent to take the oath of the Commissioner, and without a jury, in the capacity of an illegal inquisitor, investigated the question of Mr. Balfe's guilt or innocence. The matter was brought before the House by the hon. member for Portar-lington, and the hon. member for Liskeard (Mr. Osborne) made one of his spicy speeches upon the occasion. The right hon. gentleman the late Secretary for Ireland, now the Colonial Secretary, with that gravity that belongs to him, said on that occasion,—" How can you complain ? Is there not a clause in the Act regulating the constabulary which enables the Lord-Lieutenant to appoint persons to administer an oath ? Parliament can do it. It says—' Be it enacted that the Lord-Lieute-
8	Speech, of Mr. Whiteside
nant shall have power to direct the Inspector-General to appoint two persons to examine into the conduct or misconduct of all persons connected with that vast force, and to administer an oath.' " The argument of the right hon. gentleman was that because the Act of Parliament gives power to administer an oath a person who had no Act of Parliament in his favour could do the same. That was the most unfortunate argument I think I ever heard from so clear-headed a gentleman. But the right hon. gentleman the Secretary for the Home Department flew to the rescue. I think, however, his candour forsook him on that occasion, for, even when he seems to be striving against it, I must do him the justice to say that despite all his efforts his native candour compels him before he sits down to admit what he.thinks.
Sir G. GREY.—I have got the words here.
Mr. WIIITESIDE.—Would you oblige me with them P I wish to quote them correctly. I certainly understood the right hon. gentleman then to give us a pledge that that ridiculous commission would be the last of the series. I understood that to have been the declaration of the right hon. gentleman. If I misunderstood him, so much the worse for him and his Government, because, I venture to say, before this debate closes every impartial man will be of opinion that a more ,unconstitutional act could not have been done than for Sir G. Brown or any other man to assume an authority which does not belong to the Sovereign that sits on the throne. It is said that this is a matter of small importance ; but let me touch for a moment upon the practice of administering an oath in illegal proceedings. We passed an Act of Parliament to forbid that a magistrate or any other person should presume to administer an oath unless in legal proceedings pending before him. In the time of a judge never to be named without respect for his noble character and for the constitutional principles which he always enunciated—I mean Lord Denman—a magistrate presumed to hold an inquiry and to take an affidavit affecting the character of a clergyman. This clergyman was advised to indict the magistrate, who was indicted accordingly, for administering an oath in a matter in which he had no jurisdiction. The case, known as " The Queen v. Knott," came before the Court of Queen's Bench, and when the counsel for the magistrate said it was a matter of small consequence, Lord Denman observed that false evidence might be given upon such an inquiry, though the parties would not be liable to perjury ; and thus a kind of mock tribunal was erected before which the characters of absent persons might be sworn away without relief; there was the semblance of a judicial proceeding without the reality. Can anything be more clear P " A monk tribunal ! " Persons adminis-
On the Belfast Commission of Inquiry.	9
tering an oath who have no legal authority to administer it. That is the case here ; and, therefore, if even this were an inquiry asked for by an address from Parliament, which it is not, I ask what kind of tribunal is that which allows the administration of oaths without the power to punish a witness for perjury, and without the power to protect him ? We have in England a beautiful system of law. We are not living under an American President, who can do what he likes. Our laws are clear and precise. I venture to think that they are the best in the world, and I desire to have them enforced as they are found recorded in the statute book, with all proper safeguards for liberty and for character ; not as they are laid down in Dublin Castle, even though stamped with the signature of that veteran soldier Sir George Brown. There is another point to be borne in mind. The courts of justice in England have, throughout a long course of time, been inflexible in punishing those who reflect upon men not yet tried. In the case of the Brighton riots, some years ago, an innocent man was shot by a soldier or a constable. Before the trial reflections were cast by a newspaper upon the person who had shot him. The newspaper said it seemed extraordinary that a town which above all others had been conspicuous for its order and tranquillity should all at once become a scene of tumult, and a place for the shedding of innocent blood. That seems moderate, but the journal in which this language appeared was brought into the Court of Queen's Bench, and Lord Ellenborough said it had commented upon the conduct of the civil power, represented the calling out of the military as unnecessary, and contained an ex parte statement of the facts, so that the rule for a criminal information must be made absolute. Nothing was more important, said this learned judge, than that trials should take place without the creation of prejudice in the minds of the jury on one side or other. In a subsequent instance Lord Ellenborough distinguished between cases in which comments were made upon the conduct of persons where the trials were not yet begun or not yet concluded, and those in which both sides had been heard and the matter finally determined, where public comment is salutary and must be permitted. He said that every one might be questioned in a court of law, and called upon to defend his character and life, and that there could be no security for either if comments were allowed to be made beforehand, and if the prejudices of the jury were thus excited. I could multiply opinions expressed by our best judges establishing the same principle ; and in what a perfect light is our law thereby exhibited ! Punish a man with hesitation. Punish
10	Speech of Mr. Whiteside
him severely and promptly ; but, even while the arm of the law is raised to punish, convince him that you do so with impartiality, with temperance, and with justice. That has not been done in the case before us. You see what is the principle laid down by the judges. And what is our complaint ? Those riots occur in August ; but from that hour to the present not one of the rioters has been brought to justice. [Sir R. Peel.—" They could not 1)e."] The right hon. gentleman is mistaken, for the custom has been in all riots of this kind to issue, after a certain interval, a special commission. It is true there are no winter assizes in Ireland; and the result will be that by the end of March these men will have been seven months imprisoned. Look at the hardship of that. The loose, desultory, and vague speech of the right hon. gentleman cannot extricate the Government from the consequences of this serious state of things. For what are the facts ? Two quarter sessions have elapsed since the riots ; but though some of the offences charged are trifling, and though gentlemen of high station sit at these sessions, which are presided over by one of Her Majesty's counsel, the authorities would not allow one ease to be tried there. Thus, no special commission being issued, there being no winter assizes, and no trials at the quarter sessions being allowed, none of the prisoners can be tried till the end of March. Meanwhile, to the surprise of the world, this warrant is suddenly issued from Dublin Castle. Now, there is no use in telling me that other commissions of inquiry have issued. My answer is, that we have complained of those inquiries ; we have brought them twice before Parliament, and twice into the Queen's Bench, and we now ask whether the House of Commons will sanction the appointment of this unconstitutional tribunal, and will sanction such a usurpation as in the case before us. Refer me to the book and page of the Act of Parliament which authorizes you to institute this court, and don't answer me by saying that you can issue a commission of inquiry into the fisheries or other subjects of that class. After a recital of the fact that riots had taken place, the warrant proceeded :—" We do authorize and nominate " the Commissioners to hold a court of inquiry ; the "we " being apparently Sir George Brown. The Commissioners were to inquire into—
" The existing local arrangements for the preservation of the peace of that borough, the management and jurisdiction exercised within it, and the amount, and constitution, and efficiency of the police force usually available there ; the proceedings taken by the magistrates and other local authorities towards the prevention or suppression of the said riots and disturbances : and whether these authorities and the existing police force are adequate to the future maintenance of
On the Belfast Commission of Inquiry.	11
order and tranquillity within the borough ; and whether any and what changes ought to be made in the local, magisterial, and police jurisdiction, arrangements, and establishment, with a view to the better preservation of the public peace, and the prevention or prompt suppression of riot and disorder."
Now, I will adopt the hint of the right hon. baronet, and will not read the opening statement of the learned Commissioner. It may be fancied by some of those who hear me that a judge should hear the evidence first and state his conclusions afterwards ; but the peculiarity and the novelty here are that the Commissioner begins by describing the whole affair, denounces the rioters, declares that the whole civilized world has heard of these occurrences, and, having pronounced this opinion upon the character of the riots, says that he will now proceed to hear the details. A solicitor appears next, as he states, on behalf of forty of the prisoners ; and this is the colloquy that passes :—Mr. M'Lean asked whether the Commissioners had power to examine witnesses on oath. The answer was "No." Then, he asked, had the Commissioners power to compel the attendance of witnesses ? The answer of the inquisitor was again " No." Then would a witness who stated an untruth be liable to proceedings for perjury ? The chief inquisitor, with considerable animation, said " Certainly not." Then Mr. M'Lean asked whether inquiry would be made into the causes of the riots. The answer was " Not directly," except so far as they bore upon the points of inquiry referred to in the warrant. Now, this gentleman said, "Under these circumstances I beg to withdraw," and he handed in on the part of certain persons a protest to the effect that the inquiry as conducted was calculated to reflect upon persons about to be tried, and would be productive of injury by disseminating false reports of their guilt among the jurymen who were to try them. The Commissioners received the protest, but gave no answer to it, and the Government have given no answer to it, save in the unconstitutional and elaborate speech of the right hon. baronet the Chief Secretary for Ireland, who appears to rest under the delusion that we, who represent something in that country, should allow him, who represents nothing there, to govern Ireland in the fashion he is doing. On what principles was the last inquiry at Belfast conducted? The commission sat forty days, and I have read a passage relating to one man with the deepest pain. He is committed for murder, and that man's case has been investigated, if the report laid on the table contains the same statement as has been laid before us. The Commissioners asked whether the details on which the counsel was entering were important, and the skilful nisi prius lawyer replied that they would be useful to show the time when the military came up. That was not it, but the
12	Speech of Mr. Whiteside
object was to prejudge the case with respect to what was described as a brutal murder, but which, when the accused man has the opportunity of being heard, will receive a very different colour. The Commissioners, after hearing the case, gave notice that they would not give any further attention to those details, unless the persons charged had the opportunity of appearing before them and refuting the accusation. What is that but trying the case ? The evidence was not on oath, perjury could not be assigned, and charges might be made behind a person's back. This is said to be English law, and is justified by those who boast of being the champions of English freedom in this country. Will you tell me how the accused man, who is in prison, could appear before the commission ? He would be very glad to remove from the place where he is. The man is charged with murder under these circumstances :—He went to the police-court two months before, and while standing there an inquiry was made whether an informant could identify a person accused. A number of persons were placed in a row, and the man I have referred to made one' of the number. The informant looked at the persons in the row, and said that none of them were in the riot. The man went back to his work in September, and in November he was arrested on the information of the very same person who had failed to identify him before. The man applied for bail, his master offering to become surety for him to the amount of £500, but the Court of Queen's Bench felt bound to detain him in custody. He must lie in prison till March, but not five minutes will elapse after the judge has charged the jury before he will be acquitted. Well, the Commissioners at last said that they would not hear a case reflecting upon a person unless the man so reflected on had the opportunity of appearing and answering the statements against him. But they had no right to demand an answer or to enter into any specific case, and every step of this proceeding shows the value of our constitution in not allowing new-fangled inventions to grow up, and in providing that persons shall be tried according to the good old practice, according to which the Court has the power to hear, to determine, condemn, or acquit. Many years ago a commission was issued on the pretence that it was necessary to inquire re-pecting the police force of Belfast. I formerly heard a merchant say that he remembered Belfast when it had only 25,000 inhabitants, and now it has 140,000; and it was, therefore, contrary to common sense to suppose that a police force which was adequate at the first period would be sufficient when the population was so much increased, and numbers of persons have poured into the town, some of them being restless and ill-behaved. Well, the
On the Belfast Commission of Inquiry.	13
Commissioners of 1857 investigated the subject, and reported that " these matters lead us to believe that in the constitution of the police force there are serious errors calling for immediate remedy, and to recommend that a total change should be effected in the mode of appointment and the management of the local police of Belfast." They add, at the end of the report, that they wish that two Roman Catholic gentlemen should be added to the police of the town. The very first thing done by the Lord Chancellor of Ireland under Lord Derby's Government was to offer the commission to two Roman Catholic gentlemen, and the thanks of the community were given for the measure so adopted. The next step taken by Lord Derby's Government was to introduce a bill in reference to the formation of the Belfast police ; and on the 4th of June Mr. (now Judge) Fitzgerald stood up on the floor of this House and said that the police of Belfast was in an unsatisfactory state, and he did not think that the Government would do their duty to the people of Belfast if they left the police in that condition. My noble friend, the then Secretary for Ireland, replied that a bill dealing with the police of the towns of Ireland was in preparation, and that when it should be seen he thought that all the wishes of the hon. gentleman would be fulfilled. Now, any hon. gentleman referring to the report of the then head of the constabulary in reference to the Belfast police, will see that some valuable suggestions of that officer were embodied in the bill which the Government of Lord Derby introduced. (Sir G. Grey.—" Not before July.") Better to do it in July than not do it at all. It is easy to object, but not so easy to perform. That bill was brought in, and it was opposed by the hon. gentlemen now sitting on the ministerial benches. My right hon. friend, then the Secretary of State for the Home Department, had approved that bill and gave us his assistance in preparing it, not thinking it unworthy of his position to visit us in Ireland for the purpose. If that bill was wrong in its details, why did you not correct them ? It was founded on a report, and designed to meet a crying evil demanding an immediate remedy ; and why did you not, when your own Attorney-General admitted it would be a failure to leave matters as they stood, bring in a measure that would have prevented a repetition of those disgraceful riots which the Commissioners feared would break out again if the police force were not remodelled ? The bill which we brought in was not a party measure, but one of a wise and prudent character, intended to preserve the peace of the country ; and when we are asked why we did not carry it, the answer is, because of the opposition you offered to it. But I acquit the right hon. baronet the Chief
14	Speech of Mr. -Whiteside
Secretary of all blame or even knowledge as to that, for I suppose in all sincerity that his mind was a perfect blank upon it ; he had not then been concerned with Irish affairs. Sir, I was surprised to hear hon. members below the gangway applauding the right hon. baronet while he was trying to vindicate the policy of this unconstitutional and inexpedient commission. What would the hon. member for the county of Longford think if while his proceedings at the election for the county which he represents were about to be inquired into, before he had au opportunity of being heard in the House, a commission was sent down to Longford to investigate his conduct ? A bad precedent, even though set against those from whom you differ to-day, may be set against yourselves to-morrow, and you may yourselves suffer from the mischievous and unconstitutional doctrine that you have sanctioned. If in the O'Connell case, to which the right hon. gentleman referred in his extraordinary speech, a commission had been issued before the trial to inquire into the riots or meetings on which the proceedings were based, you would have been the loudest in asserting that Mr. O'Connell ought to be tried fairly and according to the constitution—not by a commission issued 'alike against law, precedent, and the Constitution. Beware how you sanction such things. Ireland is our country, and if it is to be governed by English law the sooner we have done with it the better. That law is a perfect and wise system when it is not marred and perverted by these mischievous innovations. Let hon. gentlemen, then, not be too elated with the result of this commission, even though it was founded on the high authority of Sir G. Brown. The right hon. baronet began by complimenting my hon. and learned friend upon the moderate tone in which he had introduced a serious constitutional question to the notice of the House ; but, by a strange inconsistency, he went on to treat my hon. and learned friend's speech as a very intemperate piece of declamation. I don't know that the northern blood of my lion. and learned friend often leads him to indulge in impassioned invective ; but we may be all open to this censure ; and fortunate is it for us all that we have a mentor so calm, so philosophic, so unmoved as the right hon. baronet, to point out to us the path in which we should walk, and not only to instruct us about our own country, but to tutor us in that art of eloquence of which he is so great a master. The right hon. baronet hinted that my right hon. and learned friend had mistaken the law, and said it seemed to him that the law was originally pointed against processions of a certain character. The right hon. gentleman was wrong if he meant to represent that, under the 5th and 6th William IV., nobody could be prosecuted unless it was in con-
On the Belfast Commission of Inquiry.	15
nection with an anniversary known to the Protestants of Ireland. The Legislature was not so partial as that ; I deny it on behalf of the Parliament. It has been held that the walking in procession with banners on the 18th of December to commemorate the shutting of the gates of Derry, or to celebrate the return of Daniel O'Connell to Parliament, were offences against the Act of William IV., and certain funerals were held to be instances of the same thing. But the law which is now in force is as clear as daylight. I don't wish the House to think that I complain of Parliament for enacting this law, still less of the judges for enforcing it. Because if you choose to pass a law declaring that nobody in Ireland is to sneeze, you must send everybody to prison who is seen committing that illegality. If you pass a law declaring that no processions shall take place, the judges are bound to execute it—they are bound not to raise quibbles, but to do the thing which they are called upon to do. And what is that ? It is admitted on all hands that the words of the statute were adopted for the very purpose of including all kinds of processions within their scope. These words embrace all assemblies of persons who shall meet and parade together, or join in procession, or wear, bear, or have with them fire-arms, or other dangerous weapons, or a flag or other symbol, the display of which may be calculated to provoke animosity between two classes of Her Majesty's subjects, or who shall play music or sing any song which may be calculated to provoke animosity, &c. I will not say a syllable in favour of that law. It is very doubtful whether in a free country there ought to be such a law. I don't know why you should send to prison a man who thinks fit—it may be in his unnecessary display of feeling—to say that he rejoices in the revolution or in the advent of King William III., or why you should send to prison any gentlemen who think fit to meet to commemorate the life or character of Daniel O'Connell. But that has nothing to do with my argument now. When we come to consider whether we should renew that law, I will deal with that question. But what I say, and what I charge the Government with, is that the administration of the law in their hands has been feeble, partial, and unjust. Did the House observe how we were met to-night in argument P A novel and unconstitutional expedient was resorted to. A letter was produced, written by the Attorney-General for this debate, not on any case that has been submitted to him, but to serve the turn of a distressed Chief Secretary when in a difficulty. And that is the way in which the Chief Secretary goes through the mockery of representing Ireland here. If he is obliged to get a letter from his Attorney-General, on what was it founded ? Did he introduce
16	Speech of Mr. Whiteside
the M'Manus procession, which I don't understand any counsel at the bar to say was lawful ? There were many thousands present at that ceremony, and what was their language ? Treason, and nothing more nor less. Who was Mr. M'Manus ? I saw him tried. I was concerned in the case of Mr. Smith O'Brien, and also of Mr. Meagher, of whose career as a general in America we have heard so much. They were tried for their lives ; and I do not hold it to be any ground of censure against me that I did appear as counsel for those persons who, although I admit I did not agree with them, trusted their lives to my feeble advocacy. I was not prepared for the right hon. baronet's last comments on the discharge of my professional duty. He has a right to criticise as much as he pleases what I say here ; but I am not responsible to him for what I say elsewhere. He has no right to cut out the miserable quotation he gave us to-night of what I may have said twenty years ago, when I was, perhaps, not as wise as I may have since become ; for I was not so favoured then as I am .now with the right hon. baronet for my instructor. But this man, M'Manus, was sentenced to be executed. He was pardoned by the mercy of the Crown ; for I make bold to say that this is the most merciful country in the whole world towards those who attempt to subvert its laws and constitution. This gentleman was pardoned, and I believe he escaped to California. And when he was said to have died there, certain men holding his opinion spoke of bringing his body back to Dublin. The first thing we heard of was that the heads of his Church forbade the body being brought into any church of the Roman Catholic religion, and also forbade any priest appearing at the ceremony. It was clear, then, that they did not approve it. These men proclaimed their intention on a given day—the Sabbath-day—to perambulate the streets of Dublin in the large numbers to which I have referred, with the music which they thought suited to the occasion, and not to hold the ceremony for four or five hours after they began their march. They did not disguise their object. They had no fear of the Government. Their object was revolution. The procession turned out of its way to march past the Castle of Dublin. They said their object was to establish a Republican Government. They avowed that perfidious doctrine which inspires every good subject with horror—" England's weakness is Ireland's opportunity." They declared that they wanted to strike down that very Government that spared them in their folly and their madness. That was the procession ; it was a trealonable procession, and nothing else. That was the origin of what occurred afterwards. " What," it was said, " are we to be punished—we who walk and do nothing, when such a procession as that walked unnoticed
On, the Belfast Commission, of Inquiry.	17
before the Castle ? " What an encouragement to young men to adopt revolutionary opinions, and to break the law, which would assuredly bring down punishment on their heads afterwards ! If you could preserve your gravity, I would read to you the statement of a prosecution which was sent to me the other day. Here is the information, the indictment, and the trial. The House heard the right hon. baronet read from a paper that, in regard to this great procession, no information was laid before the Crown ; but is it a fact that not one of the police whom we pay to preserve order and peace announced to the Government what they saw and heard ? And might not the Secretary have said, " Go and lay an information against the ringleaders ? " Why did you not do so ? Because when that procession marched past you sat shivering for an institution you ought to defend. You had not courage to bring the law to bear upon them, and left them to walk unnoticed, while every constable by a general order all over Ireland makes an information whenever he sees a violation of the law. Is that the manner in which you would bind to you a high-spirited people ? Be just and equal in your administration ; then only will it rest on a firm basis in Ireland. Look at this case. Here is the information of Henry M'Cue. Three men in the County Down were observed in a cart ; one displayed an orange sash, another had two drumsticks. They were all arrested and indicted. They were charged with beating a drum—they had the sticks—in a certain public road or place in such a manner as was calculated and did lead to provoke animosity between different classes of Her Majesty's subjects. I have got an accurate report of the trial. The Crown prosecuted in this serious case ; and what was the defence of the prisoners ? if the author of the " Pickwick Papers" were here, I think he could dress it up to some advantage. Unless it could be said that because the horse went first, next the driver, and then the cart, with the three boys therein, a procession was constituted, there could be no procession. The case referred to by my hon. and learned friend the member for Belfast, and which was mistaken by the right hon. baronet in his hurry, took place on the 1st of August. The date of the great procession in Dublin was the 8th. On the 1st of August the question was raised, how many make a procession ? It was then held that these three lads formed a procession. The constable said, " I have you all." There was another procession. It consisted of eight persons. They were tried, found guilty, and sentenced to three months' imprisonment, every hour of which they endured. The judge stated that in all cases the question is left to the jury to say that they believe that the procession was such as was contemplated by the Act, to the terms of which the judge
L.	c
18	Speech of Mr. Whiteside
called their attention. It was of comparative unimportance whether any one was actually offended by the procession or not ; the real question was whether it was calculated to give offence. For a simple procession the sentence was three months' imprisonment, and where there was an unlawful assembly the punishment was double. Seven of the eight men were convicted and suffered three months' imprisonment for that trifling procession; but what was done when 80,000 men marched through Dublin on the 8th of August with music and mottoes ? It has been said there were no mottoes which would have justified the sending of the case to a jury. I can only say that a friend of mine read one of these mottoes, " Oh, for the swords of former days ! " and I turned to that impartial reporter Saunders', a paper without politics, to see whether my friend's statement was confirmed. I found there, among the banners described, the one I have named, " Oh, for the swords of former days !" The right hon. gentleman says the motion is premature ; but I have observed that that is always said of any motion which the Government does not like. They ask us to wait for papers, and when we consent the papers are not forthcoming ; and, in fact, the time never arrives when it is perfectly convenient to the Government to discuss a disagreeable topic. In regard to the Belfast affair, the right hon. gentleman threw the blame on the local magistrates. Had the Chief Secretary and the Lord-Lieutenant nothing to do with it ? I am happy to say that the present Lord-Lieutenant, whose conduct in Ireland has gained him general respect, had nothinab whatever to do with the matter ; but other members of the Irish Government are certainly open to reproach. The Lord-Lieutenant of the county of Antrim took upon himself to censure the magistrates ; but where was he himself all the time ? He was in Belfast, and had power to call out the military, the constabulary, the entire posse comita tus of the county ; but he did nothing of the kind. He contented himself with making a speech at the Freemasons' dinner, where he ought not to have made it, and left the military operations to the direction of the right hon. baronet. Those who had at their command the whole civil and military authority of the country, and who neglected to wield it for the preservation of the peace, were the principal offenders. Upon them ought to fall the burden of blame, and not upon the local magistrates, some of whom exposed their lives in the discharge of their duties, and whose case has yet to be investigated. A mayor of Bristol was once indicted for his conduct during certain riots which occurred there ; but he vindicated his character completely. If you turn to the report of the proceedings, you will find what a different
On the Belfast Commission of Inquiry.	19
thing is a calm, dispassionate trial before a constitutional judge compared with the calumnies and aspersions of an irregular inquiry by a commission. I do not complain of gentlemen leaving Ireland. It would seem that they all left it, and that
the country would have drifted out into the Atlantic if it bad not been held fast by Sir George Brown. I suppose the civil administration of the island will now be given to Sir George, while the Chief Secretary superintends the operations at the Curragh. I do not say that the responsible officials should never quit Ireland, but that when they do go away they should leave behind them some one acquainted with the circumstances of the people, and that they have no right to put forward their absence as an excuse for any difficulties that may arise if they neglect that precaution. I have been beliind the scenes only for a short time, it is true ; but still long enough to know that the stipendiary magistrates correspond directly with the Chief Secretary. The latter can give them instructions quite independently of the local authorities. Now, what is complained of by the men of all parties is that when the first report was sent up by the stipendiary magistrate explaining the absurd beginning of the riot in Belfast due to the proceedings in Dublin, direct orders were not sent to the stipendiaries to place patrols on the streets where the disturbances broke out when the workpeople were coming from the mills. Had such an order been given, further difficulties might have been averted. If the Government officials omitted to adopt these necessary measures, what right have they to shift the blame from their own shoulders upon those of the local magistrates ? The right hon. gentleman says that an attack has been made on Mr. Barry. This is an error. No imputation is made on that gentleman personally. All that is said is that no person who is charged with an inquiry into matters affecting the relations of the Government and the magistrates ought to be Government official, employed as private adviser at the Castle before he makes his report, and afterwards liable to be sent down to the spot to conduct the prosecutions. As to Mr. Exham, it is true that that gentleman did appear before the
commission, but only as counsel on a fiscal question for certain ratepayers who were afraid the recommendations of the Com-
missioners might increase their burdens. There can be no doubt
that the investigation has been altogether partial and onesided. The right hou. baronet, in addition to his own comments, favoured us with a number of choice quotations from Grattan, Macaulay, Berkeley, and others. It is satisfactory, of course, to receive this proof of his reading and erudition, and good quotations from eminent writers are always interesting; but I must own
c2
20	Speech of Mr. Whiteside
that I could not trace the bearing of the extracts on the question before us. I think they would apply almost equally well to any subject that is likely to come before the House during the next ten years. Nor could I comprehend what the right hon. baronet's comments on the " fury of theology " had to do with the present topic. The right hon. baronet concluded by saying that he stood alone. Now, I have a sincere personal respect for him, because he has always been courteous to me, and I have never heard him utter an opinion in regard to Ireland which did not do him credit ; but it is really painful to listen to such an admission. Why does the right hon. baronet stand alone ? He lectured the people of the north of Ireland on their violence in the expression of opinion—a violence which is subsiding among the upper and middle classes ; but has the right hon. gentleman forgotten the speeches he made on a memorable visit to the north, which were thrown in my face as being so much stronger, and having more the true ring than any that had been heard for a long time ? Is it for him to prescribe moderation of language and to asperse the honest, industrious, and good men of 'Ulster, who owe their prosperity to their own ability and activity, after such speeches as he then made, after making such a declaration as that he did not care two pins' points for the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland ? The present situation of the Government reminds me of a passage in our history. The noble lord the First Minister is a popular and sagacious statesman, and we all admire his genial temper and his cheerful, courteous way of managing the business of Parliament ; but it is quite possible for a Minister of the Crown to be at the height of favour in England, and in Ireland to be a feeble and unpopular administrator. There was a former Minister—Sir R. Walpole—who was also popular and sagacious, who was'called the saviour of his country, but who, nevertheless, established in Ireland the worst government with which it ever was cursed, the government of a narrow-minded ecclesiastic—Primate Boulter. Swift flattered himself he could make an impression upon Sir Robert Walpole on that point. He visited London and saw Walpole, to whom he was already known. He told him that the government of Ireland was in the hands of a clique, that the local gentry were ignored, and that it bad no sympathy for any class of the people ; but he made no more impression upon Walpole than Walpole did upon hinT. The minister and the patriot separated, Walpole telling him that the government of Ireland was what lie chose to make it. Walpole, however, in overlooking the warning he had received, was not aware what could be done by a man of genius, excited by indignation and inspired
On the Belfast Commission of Inquiry.	21
by patriotism. He returned to Ireland, and thenceforward devoted himself to writing down the Government and defying the Ministry. The consequence was that be became an idol in the eyes of the nation. That writer, despised by the popular and sagacious Minister, was the author of the crisis of 1782 to which the right hon. baronet has referred, and which induced Grattan, enraptured, to exclaim, "You are no longer a wretched colony, returning thanks to her Governor for his rapine and to her King for his oppression. Spirit of Swift ! spirit of Molyneux ! your genius has prevailed ! Ireland is now a nation ! " The moral of that is the same now as then. I warn the noble viscount that in spite of his high position and popularity the exhibition to-night will not strengthen his Administration. Ireland has been governed in a way to which we will no longer submit. We demand for our country a full measure of justice. No right-minded Irishman could be satisfied with less ; the highest ambition ought not to covet more.
SPEECHES
ON THE CONDITION OF IRELAND.
[The following speech was delivered on Feb. 27th by Mr. Roebuck, M. P. for Sheffield, in the adjourned debate on Mr. Pope Hennessy's motion on the condition of Ireland. On the first night of the debate, Feb. 24th, Mr. Gladstone, Col. Dunne, Mr. Bentinck, Sir R. Peel, and several other Members of the House took part in the discussion. We also reprint, after Mr. Roebuck's, the speeches of Mr. Lowe and Lord Palmerston, delivered on the same occasion.]
SPEECH OF MR. ROEBUCK,
MEMBER FOR SHEFFIELD.
I HAVE listened with considerable interest, but with still greater curiosity, to the debate of last Friday as carried on by Irish members. Now, I think I may say of myself that for many years past I have been what is called a friend of Ireland. There has been no discussion in this House with respect to the liberties of her people in which I have not supported those liberties. On this occasion I have not been disappointed, for my expectations were not raised ; but I have heard with sorrow a number of gentlemen who, for thirty years past, have enjoyed Parliamentary and constitutional government, advancing such statements as I heard upon Friday night with respect to Ireland. The hon. member who opened the debate deserves, I think, the approbation of the House for the manner and temper with which he executed the task he had undertaken. There was an utter absence of all party and declamatory matter. There my approval ends. There was nothing in the speech which the hon. gentleman made which probed to the bottom the mischiefs which now surround Ireland —nothing which suggested anything like a remedy. Really, Sir, the whole thing from the beginning to the end on the part of the Irish members was a sort of moan of a beggar—a sort of mendicant whine, for I may so call it, and no thorough understanding or appreciation of what the remedies ought to be. The hon. member who opened the debate began by stating two things with regard to Ireland which I am not going to contest. One was that Irish-
On the Condition of Ireland.	23
men as a body were much stronger than Englishmen or Scotchmen; and the next that Ireland as a country was very much more fertile than England or Scotland. Well, one would have supposed that the necessary conclusion from that would be that the Irish people would be more thriving and more happy. Then comes the next proposition of the hon. gentleman, which is really nothing more than a complaint of the Government of England. As to the proposal that the House " will readily support Her Majesty's Government in any well-devised measure to stimulate the profitable employment of the people," any statesman would know that it was mere idle and mischievous verbiage. But the real point of the whole debate was that Ireland was misgoverned. One hon. gentleman said that Ireland would be rescued from her miseries if the Shannon were drained. The hon. member for the Queen's County (Colonel Dunne) says that England has been draining Ireland for many hundreds of years, and that the drain is still going on. The lion. member for Dungarvan (Mr. Maguire) had his small means of remedying the mischief, and that was a Tenant-right-Bill. But the noble lord the member for Stamford said that any attempt to introduce a Tenant-right Bill was a mere matter of confiscation. Then the hon. member for the county of Galway (Mr. Gregory) said that the great mischief was what took place with respect to the Galway contract. I want to know whether there was ever such a collection of little things about a great subject. But I may be asked what T think about the present state of Ireland, and I will state it fully and fairly. It has been said time out of mind—ever since I have been in this House—that " something must be done " for Ireland. Now, I have a horror of that phrase. If a man tells me that something must be done, I know he is prepared to do nothing. If a man intends that something should be done, he points out what it is. But will any man look me in the face and tell me that the present emigration, and the miseries by which the Irish population are surrounded, would be relieved by the drainage of the Shannon ? Now, this goes to the real difficulty—the country is divided against itself. The first party in the country is that old party that for many centuries domineered cruelly over Ireland—I speak of the great Protestant party. They are said to be represented in this House by my right hon. and learned friend—for I hope he will allow me to call him so—the member for the University of Dublin, and by the hon. and learned gentleman the member for Belfast. The next party is the Catholic party, who were brought into political history in the year 1829. And then there is a third party, which is also represented in this House—the Republican party of Ireland, who call themselves Fenians, and who want to
24	Speech of Mr. .Roebuck
separate Ireland from Eggland, and to set up as a national government for themselves. Now, the first two parties I can discuss the question with. I can deal with them as to the condition of Ireland, and consult with them as to the modes of remedying it. But with the third I hold no parley whatever. Their efforts are directed to so vitally different an end that nothing can settle the question if they have the power but the sword. It comes to that,—it means rebellion, it means separation, and so long as I sit in this House I am prepared, Sir, to put them down,—ay, with the sword if necessary. Now, the first party of which I spoke—the old Protestant party of Ireland—in my opinion have made a great mistake. They have not accepted their mission, but have invariably turned their battery, since he has been in office, against the right hon. gentleman the Secretary for Ireland. Now, I think there can be nothing more unfair than the whole proceeding. I heard the debate upon the riots in Belfast. The right hon. gentleman the member for Dublin University (Mr. Whiteside) and the hon. and learned gentleman (Sir H. Cairns) really seem to be the representatives of the little dirty boys in Belfast—boys who got up a row which led eventually to the disastrous turbulence in Belfast, because the people of Dublin had been allowed to walk in procession in honour of Mr. O'Connell. Now, we are very often asked what has been done for Ireland. I will tell what I believe has been done in my time. At the beginning of this century Ireland was not governed as Ireland is now. There was the curse of a horrid bigotry upon that country ; there was cruelty, there was misery, there was every sort of mischief predominant in that land. In the year 1829 a light broke over us, and the emancipation of the Catholics was granted. From that time to the present the House has been endeavouring with all its earnestness and all its power to do justice to that country. Now, what has been the result ? Why, that Ireland now at this present moment is as well governed as any one of the three kingdoms. I defy an answer to that assertion. Is not law administered there with as much justice and honour as in England and Scotland ? Can you find a body of men more upright and respected than the judges of Ireland ? Does any man whisper against them that they are partisans, cruel, or bigoted ; and are not a large number of them Catholics at this present time ? In fact, there is no distinction between man and man on account of his religion. As far as law is concerned, Ireland is well governed. Well, then, coming to the administration of Ireland, I ask is there anything in it cruel or unconstitutional ? Is anything done in that country to controvert the right of any one individual that has not a voice in
On the Condition of Ireland.	25
this House directly ? Do we not do our utmost to do justice to every human being in Ireland ? Well, then, I say that Ireland is as well governed as any of the three kingdoms. But the hon. and gallant gentleman, the member for the Queen's County (Col. Dunne), says you are draining Ireland. Now, take a peasant and a man of £1,000 a year in Ireland. Do they pay one farthing more in taxation than persons of the same class in England? Does the man with £1,000 a year in Ireland pay more for his horses, his servants, or his house ? Does he pay more income-tax than he would pay in England ? Then look at the indirect taxes. Do people pay more in Ireland for their sugar and their tea than they pay in England ? If not, how is Ireland "drained ?" It is all very well to give us figures and facts ; I long ago found that figures and facts will prove anything. But the test I have just applied is one which you cannot answer. Taxation iu Ireland is no higher than in England. As a matter of State necessity you are obliged to tax the people of all the three kingdoms, but in doing so no favouritism is shown to an Englishman or a Scotch-man above an Irishman. Then, again, is not an Irishman's career quite as safe in England as that of an Englishman ? Though we know he is an Irishman by his peculiar manner in talking, do we care for that ? Don't we receive him everywhere as a brother and a friend ? Is there any difference in our treatment of him ? No; and yet Irishmen indulge in this constant whining, which they have sucked in from old nurses, who are thinking of the times of their grandfathers. They are the mere disciples of any old woman who chooses to talk to them of the difference between the two countries, and the wrongs of Ireland. Now, let me again advert to the right hon. gentleman, the Secretary for Ireland. He is in a very difficult position. The position he holds is the most important in the Government next to that of Lord Russell. I say this advisedly. And what has he got to do ? He has to deal with the combustible mass that I have described. If he favours the Catholics or does them a kindness, up jumps the hon. and learned gentleman (Sir Hugh Cairns), or my right hon. and learned friend (Mr. Whiteside), and accuses him of doing an injury to Ireland. If, on the other hand, he does a good-natured thing to the Protestants, he is found fault with by the Catholics. Now, to my mind it marks the goodness of the right hon. gentleman's government that it is thus found fault with by both sides. What is he to do in this difficulty ? Why, pursue the straightforward, manly course which an Englishman placed in that position ought to pursue. Go straight forward in the path of truth and honour, and do whatever truth and honour tell him to do. I sincerely believe that the faults which belong to the
26	Speech of Mr. Roebuck.
right hon. gentleman are very much the faults of the people among whom he dwells—be is too impulsive and he talks too much. If he would practise the art of silence—and a great art it is—if he would learn to shake his head with gravity, and use " wise saws and modern instances "—I think he would be a more effective Secretary for Ireland. Still, I cannot hide from myself that an injustice has been done to the right hon. gentleman. He has done what he believes to be for the good of Ireland ; he has brought a kind heart and generous hand to that country, and the people who turn upon him and find fault with almost every act of his administration cannot know how difficult it is to govern Ireland aright. Then, what do I propose for Ireland ? A Government grant ? Not at all. I think with the Chancellor of the Exchequer that well-devised schemes may possibly receive with advantage Government aid. But the mischiefs of Ireland lie deeper than that. The evil is that they quarrel among themselves ; and when I see men in the prominent position occupied by the two hon. and learned gentlemen pandering to small prejudices among Protestants, and doing what they can to alarm all the old women in the kingdom, I say there is little to expect from that party. Then I turn to the Catholics. They are led by their priests. Recollect the position in which the priests are now. At length the people have gone beyond their teachers. The late election at Tralee gives a curious instance of the declension of priestly power in Ireland. And I am very curious to know what will occur at Tipperary, because there we have a clear case of the Catholic clergy pitted against what is called " Young Ireland." The fact is that the Catholic clergy have gone beyond their mark. This does not surprise me. Napoleon said that if you scraped the varnish of civilization from a Russian you came upon a Kalmuck. So I say if you scrape off the varnish of civilization from the Irish priest he becomes the Irish peasant. The Irish priest has all the passions and prejudices, all the narrow sympathies and contracted views of the Irish peasant. It is the blind leading the blind, and that they should both tumble into the hole does not surprise me. To both parties, then, I say, " Break down the prejudices that have beset you for ages." I know that England has been a cruel stepmother to Ireland. I say so, and have said so—up to the year 1829. But from that time to the present, I defy anybody to show me anything in our legislation that you can find reasonable fault with, except the Coercion Bill for Ireland, which was about the last trait of cruelty manifested by this House. From 1829 to the present hour, with that exception, the great object of the House has been to do justice to Ireland, to make her people happy, to give them
On the Condition of Ireland.	27
the power of governing themselves, to make them in all things as far as possible the equals of Englishmen and Scotchmen. It now only remains for the leaders of opinion in Ireland to set an example of the same sort ; and if my right hon. and learned friend and the hon. and learned gentleman will tell their friends that the time for Protestant domination has ceased for ever, that henceforth all Irishmen must be equal before the law, and that the law must be paternal, kind, and good, they will have done a great deal to soften down the animosities on their side. To the Catholics and priests of Ireland I say, " Accept your position. Ireland is not a province of England. It is one-third part of the great empire. The people of the three kingdoms are all equal. We want Irishmen to be as well governed as ourselves. We want them to be as happy as ourselves. We want you to be one with us in happiness, one in greatness, one in virtue, and one in honour." I say that until Irishmen break down their petty prejudices and animosities, they will be condemned to be what they are now. It is not £100,000 or a million of public money that will lift them from their present condition. They must accomplish this for themselves. It is not enough to tell me that the centre of Ireland is lower than the sea coast, or that we have coal and Ireland has none. These things don't cause the miseries of Ireland. The miseries of Ireland are caused by her own children; by their weakness, their prejudices, their narrow views, their hostility one towards the other. While these continue the miseries of Ireland will continue ; and, once and for all, I say, until these things cease there will be no hope for Ireland.
SPEECH OF THE RIGHT HON. ROBERT LOWE,
MEMBER FOR CALNE.
I HOPE the House will allow me to recall its attention for a few moments to the more immediate debate of to-night, although the subject may be less exciting, perhaps ; and certainly, as far as I am concerned, may be in very inferior hands. The subject is one which has hitherto been unsolved, and is perhaps insoluble ; but, in obedience to the orders of the House, I spent last year a great part of my time in investigating the grievances and complaints of Ireland, and my reflection on the matter has led me to certain conclusions which I ask permission to lay briefly before the House. I quite agree with the hon. and learned gentleman (Sir H. Cairns) who has just sat down in what he has said with regard to the first proposition before us to-night--that we lament the decrease of the population of Ireland. In the abstract no
28	Speech of Mr. Lowe
spectacle can be presented to the human mind more melancholy or lamentable than a nation declining in population ; and if anything can increase the melancholy of such a prospect, it is that the decline of population is not slow or gradual, but effected by a great displacement of the people—a great transfer of human beings from one part of the world to another, which cannot take place without great and grievous physical suffering and laceration of the best feelings of humanity. But the hon. and learned member for King's County (Mr. Hennessy) does not lay before us an abstract proposition. His proposition is with respect to the existing state of the Irish population, and he calls on this House to lament its decline—that is, by emigration undoubtedly thinning its numbers. That is not to be taken in the abstract, but in the circumstances surrounding it. Now, what are the present circumstances of Ireland ? I gather them from Irish members who have taken part in the debate. They have stated—and I for one give implicit credit to the statement, as coming from gentlemen entirely to be relied on, and well knowing about what they speak—that there does prevail in many parts of Ireland very great distress, poverty, misery, discontent, and, I fear, some despondency. That is the condition of things in Ireland ; and I ask, if that statement is true, if there be among the population of Ireland so much misery, poverty, destitution, and discouragement, ought the House to lament that Providence, the scientific discoveries of the age, increasing intelligence from schools, and other similar causes, have opened to them and led them to the means of escape from a destiny so forlorn ? Ought we to lament that they are able to find a place in another country where they may attain that employment, that comfort, that hope for the future, which they are unable to find at home ? I can only regard this emigration, unpopular as the sentiment may be, as a double good,—a good to those who go and to those who remain—to those who go because they are lifted out of abject misery and dependence into, I hope, a condition of comparative comfort, and to those who remain because the wages of labour must necessarily leave more to be divided among a smaller number, and so far to ameliorate their condition. I admit the drawbacks that exist, the great misery and laceration of feeling that must occur. They are the best—not the poorest-=who go, and they carry their capital with them ; but still, looking to the matter as a national movement conducted on a great scale, I cannot bring myself to admit that it is not a good to those who go and a relief of misery to those that remain. Therefore I find myself unable to agree to the first proposition of the hon. and learned gentleman. The noble lord who spoke a little while
On the Condition of Ireland.	29
ago referred to the. causes of this emigration, and I think it well worth while for the House calmly and dispassionately to consider what are the causes which have led to this unparalleled phenomenon ; how, in a country divided only by a narrow strait from this great and opulent country, we should see our fellow-subjects, for whom we would do all in our power, reduced to such a state of misery as to quit their homes and seek employment with a distant and not very friendly Power. The question is one which must not be discussed in heat or anger, but calmly and dispassionately, and so as, if possible, to arrive at a right conclusion. The solution of the matter before the committee was this—the cause of the miseries of Ireland was to be traced to her overtaxation ; that she was ground down by an enormous taxation, and she was utterly unable to stand up under it. The principal argument stated before the committee was that the taxation of Ireland was similar to the taxation of England ; that Ireland was poor and England rich, and that Ireland could not bear the same taxation as England could bear. That argument would be very good if taxation were adjusted geographically, imposed on the two countries in the same proportion per mile. But I always thought that our taxation was regulated on a very different principle—that every man in Ireland, like every man in England, was taxed according to his ability. He either paid a certain percentage on his income, according to his poverty or according to his abundance ; or, if the tax was on commodities, it entirely depended on his expenditure what he paid, and therefore taxation was adjusted to individuals. When we speak of Ireland as a poor country, therefore, it is not Ireland that pays the taxes, but the people of Ireland, and the argument comes to this—that when a rich man lives in a poor country he ought to be more lightly taxed than a rich man who lives in a rich country, although the former having to pay the same taxes probably makes his money go further. If we look at the incidence of our taxation, now so admirably adjusted, it is impossible to say that it has prevented that rapid increase of capital, the want of which is one great evil of Ireland. Take the case of a manufacturer. There is no tax on raw material—he is merely taxed on his profits, returned by himself. Take the case of the peasant. The materials of which his cabin is built and the clothes he wears are all entirely free from taxation. The only form in which the tax-gatherer approaches him is in respect of the whisky, tea, and sugar which he consumes, and very little on the last. It appears, therefore, impossible to say that it is the incidence of taxation that has ground down the people of Ireland. I asked the witnesses, very intelligent gentlemen, who came before the com-
30	Speech of Mr. Lowe
mittee, what they would propose in the way of remission. They proposed the reduction or abolition of the income-tax. " What, I said, " in order to stimulate trade, or relieve the suffering of Ireland P" " Yes," they said ; and if that was not done what next, I asked P " Lower the duty on whisky," they said, in order that what they called a necessary of life may be had cheaper than at present. These were the sort of arguments addressed to us, and I must say that those who drew up the report have done well in not insisting on this part of the evidence. Then it is said that absenteeism has brought Ireland to her present state. But absenteeism is not an evil peculiar to Ireland. Many counties in Wales and Scotland have absentee proprietors. The colonies, also, have suffered from the same cause, and yet they all continue to prosper in spite of absenteeism. Without denying that absenteeism is an evil, it is obviously quite inadequate to account for the present state of misery and destitution in Ireland. Then I go further, and take the tenure of land. It is said if you had the power of recovering for improvements made by the tenant that would redress the balance ; and yet, in the same breath, we are told that great poverty prevails among the Irish tenantry. It appears to me quite impossible to attribute to the absence of a fixity of tenure, which the hon. member seems to think exists in England, but which is quite unknown here—it is impossible to trace to that the state of things which we witness in Ireland. The noble lord the member for Stamford said there was one thing peculiar to Ireland, and that was the English Government, and we were to infer that the evils of Ireland were due to that cause. I will not go into that question, for I need only refer to what has been so well said by the hon. member for Sheffield. Wherever the Irishman goes, though he may better his physical condition, he will not exchange the government under which he lives in his own country for a better. The last suggestion was that of the hon. member for Sheffield himself. He blames the unhappy discords and divisions in Ireland, but it is impossible to maintain that it is the discords and divisions in that cduntry which make the increase of capital so small that it is barely able to maintain its population. We have seen other countries torn by the most dreadful contests—the Republics of South America, for instance, the United States, or even our own country in former days ; and yet during all these periods, in all these countries—and I might enumerate many others—while there was discord, even to the shedding of blood, capital went on accumulating, civilization went on developing—not so quickly as if these things had not existed, but still with a certain progress, and without the onward current being arrested. And Irland
On the Condition 'of Ireland.	31
has this advantage, that we are there to act as peacemakers, to prevent any serious breaches of the peace. In my own experience, however, I may say, these riotings are not peculiar to Ireland. Even the Irishmen who emigrate to Australia keep up the practice. I recollect they used to send challenges .to each other to meet, not singly, but in large numbers, and fight it out ; and we were obliged to introduce the Party Processions and Party Emblems Act on the other side of the world. Yet, I am bound to say, that though that was so, the Irish in Australia were eminently prosperous. Whatever might be the disabilities which attached to them in their own land, when they got to the Antipodes they throve as well as any other race. Having noticed these different points, I wish to state what I think, after. much reflection, is not the solitary, but the principal cause of the evils of Ireland—and it can be stated without offence to any man or party. We have, I believe, undervalued altogether the climatic influences in Ireland. We speak of it as if it had the same climate as England, only a little modified by geographical situation. I believe the true analogy to the climate of Ireland is to be sought rather in the long belt of islands which stretch along the coast of Scotland up to the northern point of Lewis, and which form a breakwater, as it were, between the Atlantic and Great Britain. In these islands there was once—in Skye there is still—a large population struggling to subsist on agriculture, subject to periodical famine, and reduced to misery. And this was without any fault of their own, for they had excellent land to till, and every assistance; but they were unable, on account of the extraordinary humidity of the air, as well as the heavy falls of rain, to raise their crops. The influence of climate is not so bad in Ireland, because it lies farther to the south ; but, from what I have myself observed and have been told, something very similar is the case in that country. Ireland, unfortunately, relies upon agriculture, and upon agriculture in the forms in which it is most dangerous in respect of such a calamity as the failure of the crops—agriculture carried on by small cultivators on small patches of ground. Add to the disadvantages of climate and division of the soil the influence of the British Government. We chose to impose artificial impediments in the way of the importation of foreign corn, and raised up and fostered in Ireland the factitious industry of growing cereals, for which the climate is not adapted. An immense population was thus brought up dependent on an industry which the caprice of the climate must render eminently uncertain and fluctuating. Moreover, the people grew up subject to a contingency which would aggravate the failure of crops owing to the
32	Speech• of Mr. Lowe
badness of a season. This was, that the English people should come to their senses at last, accept the doctrines which science and common sense combined to demonstrate—the doctrine of free trade ; and remove all impediments in the way of importing foreign produce. Unfortunately, both these things fell on Ireland at once. There was a failure of the crops at the same time that the corn laws were repealed, and, however justifiable that measure, it was a heavy blow to be dealt to any country, and it has proved much heavier than any one was aware of at the time. But it is not right to say that the evil was caused by free trade. It was caused by protection, which fostered a vicious and factitious system, and provoked an inevitable reaction. We all know the misery that ensued. A little gleam. of light came out after a time, and Ireland recovered in some degree from her distress; but I fear the warning was not sufficient, and that there is still a disposition to cling to the previous style of cultivation—that of cereals. We have had similar experience in England. In some parts of this country people are not fully alive to the propriety of discontinuing the kind of cultivation which the corn laws had fostered, and taking to that for which the climate is better fitted—the raising of stock. But the bad seasons which have occurred since 1859, and the experience that followed, have led Irish proprietors very much to the conviction that it is vain to go on treating Ireland as a purely agricultural country. They feel that if they wish to derive any real profit from their estates they must convert them, more or less, according to circumstances —and, of course, some parts of the country must be treated differently from others—into pasture grounds. That is the change, as has been already remarked in this debate, which is taking place in Ireland. It is passing from the condition of a corn-growing into the condition of a pastoral country. The change, no doubt, is a melancholy one, because it involves the displacement of an immense quantity of labour ; but if it be true, as I believe it is, that the country is unable to bear, under the conditions of its climate, the population which has been raised up, then the change is inevitable, and one for which no government, no party, no individual, or aggregate of individuals, can be held in any way answerable. This being the state. of Ireland, the people are subject to the influence of economical laws which, though they act oa the will of men, are as certain to assert themselves as the laws of nature. If numbers of these small farmers and other agricultural labourers are displaced they must find other employment. Ireland offers them no other choice. In England there is a perpetual emigration from the agricultural districts to the large towns, and statistical inquiries
On the Condition of Ireland.	33
show that otherwise the population of the large towns would die out. But Ireland has not this resource. Ireland has no manufactures in which the displaced agriculturist can seek refuge ; and therefore, when a man is driven from the cultivation of the soil, he has no alternative but to starve or to seek a home elsewhere. I can imagine no condition more irritating, depressing, and discouraging than that. It is deserving of our utmost sympathy and compassion, and, if it be in our power, of alleviation ; but, unhappily, that is beyond our power. We can only deplore that there has been so fatal a miscalculation of the capacities of Ireland, and that the industry of the country has been fostered on an unsound and deceitful basis. When protection ceased Ireland found herself unable to keep on growing cereals in competition with countries more favourably situated ; and that cannot be helped. But are there hot causes which aggravate the present painful state of things ? I do not believe the taxation of Ireland to be one of the grievances of the country ; but there is a kind of voluntary taxation which must be particularly irritating to the people of Ireland—the taxation which the people out of their misery and destitution are obliged to impose on themselves for the maintenance of the ministers of their religion. I cannot conceive anything more vexatious to a nation than to find themselves, by the working of laws which they probably do not understand, and for which they not unnaturally blame the Government,' called upon to contribute to the maintenance of their clergy, and at the same time to see other clergymen, who, however exemplary in life and character, are not of their faith, and have but small congregations, living in comparative ease and luxury on public funds. Another unnecessary evil, in my opinion, is the way in which we govern Ireland. Quite contrary to the sound practice in England, we identify the head of the Executive Government in Ireland with the political party which is for the time in power. The consequence is that any political party, whatever it may be, not in office finds itself in opposition not merely to its antagonists, but to the person who represents Her Majesty in Ireland. Thus the people are taught by this vice of the Constitution, which we persist in sanctioning, to identify the Executive Government with the odium which attaches more or less to each political party, and to direct their energies not so much to replace the statesmen in whom they have no confidence by others in whom they do place confidence, but to the injury and damage of the Executive Government. That is another cardinal vice of the system. These are evils which, though checked, would not put an end to the distress of Ireland, but they are a grave aggravation to a lot which, from its misery and bitter-
n
34	Speech of Mr. Lowe
ness, needs no aggravation whatever. I have now explained my humble views as to the causes of the present misery of Ireland. I approach the more difficult part of the subject—the suggestion of a remedy. Some of the mischief cannot be remedied at all, some can be cured only by Ireland herself, and some little good can be done by this House. It is competent for the House to take into consideration, if it choose, the question of the Irish Church. Of course it is competent for the House, if it think fit, to adopt the colonial plan of apportioning the revenue set aside for public worship to each denomination in the proportion of its numbers to the aggregate of the population. It is competent also for the House to remove the evil of exposing the head of the Government in Ireland and the representative of the Queen to the odium and abuse which is directed against any political party by its opponents. The House can do these things if it please, and I hope some time or other it will do them. But more than that, in my humble opinion, it is impossible for it to do. It is impossible, in justice to the whole of the empire, that we should enter on the track suggested by the noble lord the member for Galway. It seems to me quite out of the question that we can give subsidies to the people of Ireland under the name of public works. Indeed the very case be mentioned—that of the Shannon—illustrates this. The effect of these improvements, paid for out of the public money, is obviously to improve the value of private estates. Rashly to undertake 'great public works upon Government responsibility would be unworthy of this House. We are asked to take the public money of the United Kingdom and expend it in Ireland, bidding against the labour-market of America, in order to retain the people of Ireland by employing them on public works. Was there ever a plan so hopeless as that ? In the first place, you cannot compete with the labour-market in America. What you would do would be to derange the whole system of private employment of labour and throw things into confusion. As to stopping the exodus from Ireland by such means, the thing is simply impossible. If I am right, and the present state of things is due to the change from an agricultural to a pastoral country, then the result must necessarily be that time and constant emigration can alone relieve Ireland. You cannot go on spending money on public works in Ireland. The expenditure must be very large, and then it cannot be continuous ; and after all that is done you are entering into a contest with the labour-market of America, with which you cannot compete. The superabundant population are going to a country where they can live and be happy, and they are leaving a country in which they may starve. There is
On the Condition of Ireland.	35
one other topic, and only one, to which I wish to allude. No doubt the miseries of the present state of things in Ireland would have been considerably lightened if Ireland had had those manufactures and those great works of different kinds which exist in England, and which form so convenient a refuge in times of agricultural distress. But to have these, Ireland must have capital. That capital she has not in sufficient abundance at the present time, but it abounds in England beyond all measure. In Australia we were deluged with English capital. It became a nuisance. England got up some foolish and disgraceful speculations. Half a dozen banks were set up, and conducted by disreputable characters, who took the money that was absolutely forced upon them. Yet, here is Ireland, only divided from us by an arm of the sea, hungering and thirsting for want of money, and capital won't go there. Well, Sir, hon. gentlemen may be very eloquent, but capital cannot be cajoled. They may menace, but capital cannot be coerced. She is a very coy, discreet, and retiring nymph. She flings herself into the arms of the industrious citizen, but she shuns the embrace of the fiery and brilliant agitator. In this case Ireland must minister unto herself. It is the fault of the Irish nation that those who have the disposal of English capital do not feel secure in investing it in Ireland. It is for those who can influence capital to remedy this state of things. When this is done, one great means of amelioration will be open to her. I thank the House sincerely for the attention with which it has listened to me. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this subject. The time may have been when Irish subjects were treated with indifference ; but to me this is the question of questions for this empire. Our foreign policy, owing to late events, has somewhat receded into the background. As to our domestic policy, we are so happily situated in this country that we can hardly get up a point of first-rate importance upon which we have any serious difference. But as to Ireland it is different. She is bound to us by an indissoluble tie. She is not like the colonies, in whose welfare and advancement we may feel pride, satisfaction, and interest, but whom, after all, we merely regard as young nations whom we are training to take their own course in the world, and to separate from the parent connection, rather than as integral and perpetual parts of the empire. It is not so with Ireland. For good or evil, for better or for worse, she is bound to us by a tie which we would perish rather than allow any one to break. That being so, how unspeakably important will it be if anything can be devised by our efforts of conciliation to place her in a position something like that occupied by Scotland ! The increase of the force of the empire, our dignity abroad, our self-
D 2
36	Speech of Viscount Palmerston
respect at home, and our influence in all quarters of the globe—no one can tell the augmentation. She is the only single drop of bitterness in the cup of our otherwise overflowing prosperity. It is for us to see whether there are no means possible by which we can alleviate the state of Ireland—not by attempting to arrest the miserable exodus, but by avoiding in this House all topics calculated to irritate and excite the feelings, by expressing our sincere wishes for her welfare, and by trying to heal the wounds of centuries of misgovernment.
SPEECH OF THE RT. HON. VISCOUNT PALMERSTON,
MEMBER FOR TIVERTON.
WHATEVER differences of opinion may have been expressed in the course of this discussion with reference to particular details, everybody must agree that the subject is one of the deepest interest, and that the debate has been conducted in the most temperate and creditable manner. The hon. member for King's County, who moved the amendment, set the example, and it has been followed by those who have succeeded him ; and although it often happens that in this House debates upon Irish questions are conducted with, perhaps, more effervescence than may be considered fitting, this is certainly an example to the contrary; and I trust that from henceforward such discussions will be conducted with the same temper and moderation as have been exhibited on the present occasion. The objects of the amendment are twofold: first, to ask the House to lament the diminution of the population of Ireland ; and, next, to exhort Government to take steps to relieve the existing distress. The foundation of the motion is the assumption that great distress prevails in Ireland. Undoubtedly there is distress in many parts of the country; but, at the same time, I would beg the House to recollect that four years ago everybody was congratulating himself upon the progressive improvement of Ireland, that it has only been the occurrence of three years of bad and unfavourable seasons which has thrown the country back, and that although that result has unfortunately occurred, it must unquestionably be admitted that the last year was one of a different character, and in some degree recovered Ireland from the distress from which it had previously suffered. I do not wish to overstate anything connected with the reviving gleam of prosperity in Ii eland. We will admit, which cannot be denied, that there is in the condition of Ireland much to be deplored, and which we
On the Condition of Ireland.	37
should wish to be able to remedy. As to lamenting the decline
in the number of the population, unquestionably in the abstract it must be a source of regret to see the people of any country flying from their native shores and seeking elsewhere those advantages which they are unable to find at home. But some years ago the great evil of Ireland was represented to be a redundant population, and the chief remedy which was then universally recommended was an extensive emigration. It is undoubtedly painful to contemplate the causes which lead to emigration. Emigration in itself is no evil. If those who emigrate find in another country a better condition than they enjoyed in their own, they become happier, their welfare is increased, and besides that, the condition of those who stay behind is improved by the circumstance that a smaller number of persons are left to enjoy the advantages which their native country may possess. That which we lament with regard to the emigration is that, unfortunately, the condition of Ireland is such that the people are able to find elsewhere a better state of things than exists at home. Hon. gentlemen have assigned various reasons for this. I believe that one great and almost paramount reason is that which has been assigned by my right hon. friend behind me—the peculiarity of the climate. Ireland is said by many to be a most fertile country. No doubt, there are in it great tracts of very fertile land, land far more fertile than many parts of either England or Scotland. I know land on which it is said that grain crops have been raised for sixteen years in succession, which cannot be said of any part of Great Britain. But there are also in Ireland great quantities of land which are wholly unproductive, bog and mountain ; and that ought to be taken into consideration when you calculate the population which the superficial area of the island is able to support. You cannot expect that any artificial remedies which legislators can invent can counteract the laws of nature, and keep in one country a population which finds it to its advantage to emigrate to another. It is impossible. Things will find their level, and until by some means or other there shall be provided in Ireland the same remuneration for labour, and the same inducements to remain which are afforded by other countries, you cannot by any laws which you can devise prevent the people from seeking elsewhere a better condition of things than exists in their own country. We are told that tenant-right and a great many other things will do it. None of these things will have the slightest effect. As to tenant-right, I may be allowed to say that I think it is equivalent to landlords' wrong. Tenant-right, as I understand it to be proposed, would be little short of confiscation ; and although that might cause the landlords to emigrate,
38	Speech of Viscount Palmerston
it certainly would not keep the tenants at home. The real question is, how can you create in Ireland that demand and reward for labour which would render the people of Ireland willing to remain at home, instead of emigrating to England or Scotland on the one hand, or to the North American States on
the other	Nothing can do that except the influx of capital. Ireland has many advantages for the employment of capital, but hitherto manufactures have taken but little root there. It is said that in Ireland there is no coal ; but there is coal there,—not in great abundance, but enough to supply manufactories to a certain extent. There is also a great deal of water-power in Ireland, and we all know that water-power is for many purposes better and cheaper than steam. What is it, then, which has hitherto prevented the influx of capital into Ireland ? Why, it is the double notion, first, that Ireland does not afford the same means for the profitable employment of capital that exist in England and Scotland ; and, secondly, that there is not the same security in Ireland. Therefore the concluding observations of my hon. and learned friend the member for Sheffield ought to sink deep into the mind of every Irishman. Hitherto the political and religious feuds which have prevailed in Ireland have created exaggerated notions in this country of the insecurity which attends the employment of capital in Ireland. If the capitalists of England and Scotland could be well persuaded that they would find in Ireland not only cheap labour and the means of working their machinery, but the same security for themselves and their capital which exists in this country, there could be no reason why capital which seeks employment in the most distant regions of the earth should not go over to Ireland and there find profitable employment for itself, and also improve the condition of the people. There cannot be a greater mistake than to suppose that commercial capital cannot be profitably and securely employed in Ireland ; and whenever that conviction shall implant itself deeply in the minds of capitalists one great source of the poverty of Ireland will be removed, and from that time we may date a progressive advancement in the condition of the people. The improvement of agriculture cannot prevent emigration, because one source of the poverty of Ireland is to be found in the minute subdivision of holdings. What improvement can a man make upon his land who holds only five, six, or ten acres, and has no capital except his own labour and that of his family ? No great improvement can be made in the agriculture of Ireland without the displacement of part of the population ; and therefore agricultural improvements, so far from materially checking emigration, would in some respects contribute to its increase. Nevertheless, much additional employment may be
On the Condition of Ireland.	39
found for the people in some parts of the country by the application of additional capital. If by private enterprise these improvements can be made ; if, by means of advances to be repaid in a certain number of years, landowners can be enabled to undertake operations for which their existing means will not provide, any such proposal would be one which it would be very desirable should be considered, and if it was adopted in a shape free from objection it must undoubtedly have a very beneficial effect upon the condition of Ireland. At the same time I would humbly remind landlords that the power of borrowing is one which it is very tempting to employ, but that the time for repayment must come, and therefore any landowner would do well to consider carefully what are the prospects of a remunerative return upon the capital to be
employed before contracting a debt either with the Government or with any private company. With regard to the first part of the resolution, therefore, I say that it is impossible to adopt the naked assertion that we lament the decline of the population of Ireland. That is a complicated question. We lament that the population of Ireland should find it more to their advantage to emigrate than to remain at home ; but if that is the result of a state of things such as I have described, we cannot lament that those who are in a bad condition at home should find a better state of things by emigration. With regard to the second part of the question, as to grants, I think that the feeling of the House has been decidedly expressed against gratuitous advances of money by the State for the purpose of local improvements. With reference to advances to be repaid, there are companies which have been established for the very purpose of making loans for agricultural improvements; and I apprehend that if good security were offered to them, and a fair prospect were shown of the remunerative employment of capital, from these private companies assistance might be obtained. The hon. baronet the member for Stamford suggested that the committee of last year should be reappointed for the purpose of inquiring how far reproductive advances from the public funds might be extended in Ireland to purposes of local improvement. I am not prepared to give a decided opinion upon a proposal of this sort until the particular terms are specified, and Government are able to understand exactly its bearings. But it is a proposal fairly entitled to consideration. I can only say that the Government fully share the feeling of deep interest and sympathy that has been expressed towards Ireland by all who have spoken in this debate. It is impossible for any man to know anything of the Irish people without wishing them every happiness which can be conferred upon them. They 'are a light-hearted and a warm-hearted race ; they are most
40	Speech of Viscount Palmerston.
industrious, too, wherever they can see the prospect that by industry they will get the reward to which industry entitles men. It is quite a mistake to suppose that the Irish are an idle race, unwilling to labour, and not prepared to make great exertions for the sake of accomplishing any legitimate object. They are a people for whom every man who knows them must entertain the utmost sympathy, and must feel the strongest desire that they should enjoy every advantage which can be conferred upon them by legislation, or by any artificial arrangements which it is in the power of the Government or of Parliament to make. Therefore it is unnecessary for me to say that the Government of this country would be most anxious to consider any proposals that were founded upon a reasonable prospect that they would tend to improve the condition of Ireland. Though undoubtedly much that has passed in this debate must inspire pain to those who have heard it—I mean as far as relates to the unfortunate condition of many parts of Ireland, and the distress which we cannot deny exists there, still I think that no man can look at Ireland without entertaining feelings of hope. It is demonstrable that if you compare the state of the country now with what it was thirty or forty years ago, there is a great, a visible, and a general improvement ; and that improvement is calculated to inspire a reasonable hope that in the course of time that progress will be accelerated, and rendered more rapid than it has hitherto been. I imagine that the hon. member who made this motion will not think it necessary to divide upon it. I think the debate which has taken place must satisfy him of the feeling both of the House and of the Government on this question ; and probably he will rest satisfied with having elicited opinions which in many respects coincide with those temperate views which he has himself expressed. If the hon. and gallant member (Colonel Dunne) or any other member should propose to reappoint the committee of last year, with a view to a more extensive range of inquiry, we shall be ready to consider such a proposal. Of course, our adoption of it will depend upon the wording of the reference; but we shall consider such a proposal with an earnest desire to find in it some way of remedying the existing evils, or, I should rather say, of assisting Ireland in extricating herself from the condition in which she is, too truly, I fear, represented by many persons as now being.
SPEECHES
ON THE DEFENCE OF CANADA.
[On the 13th of March Mr. Seymour Fitzgerald, M.P. for Horsham, called the attention of the House•to the report of Col. Jervois with reference to the defences of Canada, and thereupon a long and interesting debate took place. We here reprint the speeches of Mr. Cardwell, Mr. Disraeli, Mr. Lowe, Mr. Bright, and Lord Palmerston ; and for the better understanding of the arguments and references contained in them we add in this place a short résumé of other speeches delivered during the course of the debate. On the order for going into a Committee of Supply, Mr. S. FITZGERALD, after clearing himself from false imputations, and disclaiming any intention to attribute to the Federal Government or to the people generally a spirit of hostility towards this country, suggested certain possible contingencies which might lead to hostilities between this country and the United States, and against which we should not, he said, shut our eyes, nor disregard a certain proposal made during the recent conference between the Confederate agents and the Federal authorities. Under these circumstances, it was of importance to look to the defence of Canada, upon whom in the event of war the first blow would fall ; and, as no one would advise that the colony should be left to defend itself in a quarrel in which it would be involved solely on account of its connection with this country, he proceeded to consider what were its means of defence, and what it should be our duty to contribute towards its defences, the state of which he described. He referred to the proposals contained in the report of Colonel Jervois, and asked what steps had been taken by the Government to carry out those proposals, and to augment the defensive resources of the colony. He compared the activity of the Americans in fortifying all their vulnerable points with the apathy manifested by us in altogether neglecting the defences of our most vulnerable point, Canada. He urged this as a matter, he said, of pressing and paramount necessity, and that unless we set to work vigilantly, and came to an immediate understanding with Canada as to the proportion this country should bear of the cost of its means of defence, the consequences would be fatal. The next speaker, Mr. W. FORSTER, observing that if we were to undertake to put the whole frontier of Canada in a condition of complete defence the expense would be almost fabulous, said the question was whether in the present relations between this country and Canada, we ought not to call upon the colony to look to her own resources, and spend her own money in her own defence if she desired the connection should continue. But the real question was whether there was sufficient reason for increasing her means of defence at all. He believed that the fears of hostilities on the part of the United States were unreasonable and utterly groundless ; and he drew from some of the facts referred to by Mr. Fitzgerald conclusions consistent with pacific and friendly feelings on the part of that Government towards this country. Why then, he asked, should there be this extraordinary suspicion of America 1 It arose, he said, from the efforts of two classes,—one consisting of Confederate agents and sympathizers ; the
42	Speech of Mr. Cardwell
other disappointed prophets. Having insisted upon the groundlessness of the fears of war with America, he protested against rushing into an enormous expense for the defence of Canada.]
SPEECH OF THE RIGHT HON. E. CARD WELL,
MEMBER FOR THE CITY OF OXFORD.
THE hon. member for Horsham concluded his speech by saying that if ever a disaster overtook us from the want of proper energy and foresight on the part of the Government, he should feel the utmost satisfaction from the reflection that he had at least given early notice of the danger. But if such a contingency did ever arise it would be a still more natural source of satisfaction, either to a subject of Her Majesty or a citizen of the United States, that no syllable bad ever fallen from him which could have the remotest tendency to bring about the great calamity of a war between the two countries. My hon. friend the member for Bradford, in his eloquent speech, has called on the Government to answer two questions. He asked us to state distinctly whether we cannot truly assure the House that our relations with the United States are, as they ever have been, perfectly friendly. I can, without reserve, give that assurance to the House. My hon. friend has also asked whether there is not some correspondence, unknown to this House, varying the tenour of the demands made on this country for compensation on account of the destruction of American merchantmen. With equal pleasure and confidence I can assure my hon. friend that the answer I have to give is the answer which he desires. There are no papers• varying the tenour of the principle on which that question stands between the two Governments. The member for Horsham began his speech in a tone of which we can make no complaint. All I will say of it is that it contrasts most advantageously with the tone which has been taken by other persons on the same subject, and I sincerely trust that that tone will always be observed. I should feel deeply reprehensible if I allowed a single syllable to drop from me which would tend to exasperate any difference of opinion, or to turn that which might be a matter of passing controversy into a serious subject of dispute. The hon. member for Horsham told us that he did not see any evidence of hostility in the course pursued by the American Government with regard to the arrangement as to the number of vessels to be kept on the Lakes in times of peace. With regard to the Reciprocity Treaty, when notice shall have been given by the United States Her Majesty's Government will not lose a moment
On the Defence of Canada.	43
in endeavouring to renew negotiations on a subject of such importance to both the United States and this country. The hon. gentleman has referred in just terms to the cancelling by President Lincoln of the order issued by General Dix, and to the uniform courtesy manifested towards this country by the United States minister in London. I cordially agree with him in respect of what he has said of the excellent conduct of Mr. Adams, and I must say that in selecting their representatives in this country the Government of the United States have always paid us the compliment of choosing from among their first citizens. The hon. gentleman, after speaking in this mode in the early part of his speech, then passed with a rapid transition, through which I was unable to follow him, to a consideration of the dangers which he sees in the future. He thinks that after the present civil war is over there is imminent danger of hostilities between the United States and this country. I don't believe that, in using the expressions to which I refer, the hon. gentleman meant to give his sanction to the demands made by the United States, and which my hon. friend the member for Bradford and every one else in England disapproves ; but I understood him to say that the United States complained, not without reason, that their commerce had been interfered with. Well, whatever may be the hon. gentleman's opinion on that point, I will admit with him that whatever may be the prospects—and I hope the prospect of relations between the United States and Great Britain is not one in which we are obliged to see hostilities—it is not on the justice or goodwill of any other country, nor on the forbearance of any other country, we are to calculate for our self-defence. It is on our own position, on our own means of defence. The hon. gentleman has a right to call on us to state what we are doing with a view to the defence of Canada. He knows that for the last three years we have been impressing on Canada the necessity of making greater preparation as regards her defence. We are prepared to do our part in defending that colony ; but we have always held that for its own defence a country must mainly rely upon the spirit, energy, and perseverance of its own people. The hon. gentleman also knows that in England there were serious complaints that Canada had not shown herself disposed to take those measures for her own defence which this country had reason to expect from her. In 1863 a new Militia law passed, but the vote which passed in Canada last year was an inconsiderable one. In consequence of that circumstance a right hon. gentleman opposite was so dissatisfied with the state of Canadian preparation that last Session he felt it his duty to come down to this House and call on Her
44	Speech of Mr. Cardwell
Majesty's Government to concentrate all our forces at Quebec. We did not agree in that proposal, for reasons which appeared to us to be sufficient. It is now perfectly well known that when, in the autumn of last year, a proposal was made for the union of the British Provinces in North America a totally different spirit began to be manifested, and the Canadians manifested the greatest desire to prepare for their own defence. Anxious to promote that desire, we sent out Colonel Jervois, who held a friendly connection with Canada, and drew up a report on the Canadian defences, which now lies on the table of the House. The hon. gentleman asks me what we are going to do with reference to this report, and I shall answer all the questions he put to us, as far as I think the hon. gentleman is entitled to an answer. The report laid on the table points at the fortifications of Montreal and Quebec, positions of the greatest importance for the defence of Canada. The defence of Quebec we engaged to undertake ; the defence of Montreal we called on the colony to undertake. The armament of both we are willing to undertake, so that the division of expense will be about two-fifths to the mother country and three-fifths to the colony. The hon. gentleman speaks as if he thought the whole question of defence was mainly, if not entirely, for the mother country. [Mr. S. Fitzgerald intimated his dissent.] The hon. gentleman did not say so in terms, but I drew that inference from his remarks. If, however, that is not his opinion, it only helps my case. If it is not, he agrees with me. We think that is a right division ; that the position which is the gate of Canada, through which the military and naval forces of England are to enter to defend Canada, should be fortified by the mother country ; and that Montreal, the strategic and commercial capital of Canada, should be fortified at the expense of the Canadians themselves. And now, in answer to the hon. gentleman's first question—why did we not proceed sooner ?—I reply that, as long as Canada made no exertions, and showed no readiness to prepare for her own defence, we felt it would be wrong in us to come to the House and ask for Imperial money to defend Canada; but the moment that spirit was shown which was manifested in the autumn of last year it became our duty to come and ask the House of Commons to enable us to give assistance to Canada. As to his second question—why are we only asking £50,000 for the present year 2—the hon. gentleman himself has relieved me of the largest part of my answer, because he admits that £50,000 is as much as can be advantageously spent during the present year in the preparation of the Canadian defences ; and when the estimate comes to be discussed we shall satisfy the House that this
On the Defence of Canada.	45
sum is as large an one as it would be right and proper to ask for during the first year of the work. It has, I know, been represented that because we ask for only £50,000 the first year—the total amount of the estimate being £200,000—we are going to keep the works in hand for a period of four years ; but nobody would make that remark who is acquainted with the subject. In the first financial year you can make but a comparatively small progress with the actual works of such fortifications. Only the earthworks are raised in the first year, whereas in the second nearly the entire of the permanent works may be completed. The third question of the bon. gentleman I have already answered. Then with respect to Kingston, the first step towards the defences of the Lakes is the providing of a place of safety for coaling and harbouring our vessels. We have called the attention of the Canadian Government to that necessity. We regard it as the business of the colony, and not of the Imperial Government, to furnish that fortification. With regard to the hon. gentleman's sixth question, which is as to what we intend to do in future, I have to observe that I feel he is entitled to an account of what we have done and what we are doing, but I mint respectfully refuse to furnish him with information as to what we intend to do with regard to the defence of Canada at some future day and in some future emergency. The considerations connected with such an emergency are twofold. First, a war with Canada is a war with England. The Imperial forces will be brought to the aid of Canada, and wherever it will be most effective in destroying the power of the enemy, there the Imperial power will be exercised. Next, the defences of Canada must consist of the forces furnished by the mother country, to be supplemented by the military power of Canada. I have the satisfaction of stating that in Canada large bodies of officers are being trained to take the command of the militia in time of emergency ; that the number of training places has been increased, and is still being augmented ; and that other preparations are being made to bring a large number of militia into a state of active efficiency. This being the spirit in Canada, and the mother country acting in unison with this spirit, I think it may be said very confidently that defences are being provided for Canada. But I hope that nothing will ever occur in our relations with the United States to make it necessary that Canada should be defended against an enemy. I cannot express the feelings of regret with which I should view any controversy between the United States and the subjects of the Queen. I should look upon it as a calamity unequalled by anything that the world has ever seen ; and I sincerely trust that, however much
46	Speech of Mr. Disraeli
we may debate among ourselves these questions of the defences of Canada, and of the relations which subsist between that colony and the mother country, we shall be careful so to employ our language as not to irritate temporary differences, not to expand into great disputes questions which might shortly pass away, and to believe that the same kind and just feelings which we know to be prevalent among the educated classes and among the members of the Government of this country are equally prevalent in America.
SPEECH OF THE RIGHT HON. B. DISRAELI,
MEMBER FOR BUCKS.
I DO not think the Government, after placing the report of Colonel Jervois upon the table, could have expected that this subject would not be touched upon in this House, and I do not think it could have been brought forward with greater moderation than has been shown to-night. I am sorry that the hon. gentleman opposite should disapprove the opinion which he referred to as having been expressed in another place. I am myself at a loss—acting as I do merely upon my impression of the moment—to recall any such expression of opinion by the individual to whom he has alluded which would justify his remarks. If I recollect aright, on a particular occasion in recalling to the recollection of those whom he addressed the great irritation which was the result of the affair of the Trent, the individual in question naturally inquired why four years had been allowed to pass away without those preparations being made which it was confessed were necessary for the proper support of the dignity of the country. That appeared to me then, and appears to me still, to be a very difficult question to meet. With regard to the general opinion on American affairs expressed by the eminent statesman to whom reference has been made, and in whom I place the greatest confidence, I may say that I have frequently expressed similar opinions in this House, and that they are in all respects mutually concurred in and shared by Lord Derby and myself. With a full recollection of the facts, I do not believe that it is possible to recall any expression which has fallen from the lips of that noble lord during the last four years that can in any way justify the allusion and the references of the hon. gentleman. I am not here to-night to impute, and I have never imputed, anything against the conduct of the Government of the United States throughout this great struggle ; but, on the contrary, I am now prepared, after further experience, to
On the Defence of Canada.	47
repeat what I said two years ago, that, under circumstances of almost unprecedented difficulty, that Government has conducted itself with great energy and discretion. I am not of opinion that in the event of the termination of the American war we should be placed in any immediate danger of coming into collision with that Government owing to our connection with Canada. I do not pretend now to express any opinion as to what may be the termination of the present contest, as it appears to me to be quite foreign to the question under discussion ; but, even assuming that the result may be such as is anticipated by the lion. member for Bradford, I do not believe that the citizens of the United States of the North, even if entirely and completely victorious, will feel inclined to enter immediately into another struggle with a Power not inferior in determination and in resources to the Southern States of America. I form that opinion because I believe that the people of the United States are eminently a sagacious people. I don't think they are insensible to the glory of great dominion and of extended empire, and I give them equally credit for being influenced by passions which actuate mankind, and particularly nations which enjoy such freedom as they do. But they are a sagacious people, and I don't think they would seize the moment of exhaustion as being the most favourable for the prosecution of an enterprise which would require great resources and great exertions. There are other reasons which also induce me to dispute that opinion. I have not been influenced in forming my judgment upon points of such vast importance by that sort of rowdy rhetoric which has been expressed at public meetings and in certain journals in America, and upon which some people in this country found their conclusions as to the possible character and opinions of the American people. I look upon these expressions of opinion as I should look upon those strange and fantastic drinks of which we hear so much, and which are such favourites on the other side of the Atlantic ; and I should as soon suppose this rowdy rhetoric was the expression of the real feelings of the American people as that these potations formed the aliment and nutriment of their bodies. There is another reason why this violent course will not be adopted. The democracy of America must not be confounded with the democracy of the Old World. It is not formed of the scum of turbulent cities, neither is it merely a section of an exhausted middle-class, which speculates in stocks, and calls that progress. It is a territorial democracy, if I may use that epithet without offending the right hon. gentleman opposite. Aristotle, who has taught us most of the wise things we know, never said a wiser one than
48	Speech of Mr. Disraeli
this—that the cultivators of the soil are the least inclined to sedition and to violent courses. Now, being a territorial democracy, their character has been formed and influenced in a manner by the property with which they are connected, and by the pursuits they follow, and a sense of responsibility arising from the reality of their possessions may much influence their political conduct. And I believe they are very much more inclined to welcome the returning labourers to their fields, to see around them the products of the earth, and to behold happiness in those households to which they are so much attached, than to plunge into the miseries of a new and terrible war. But, although these are my opinions generally, I cannot conceal from myself that very great changes have taken place in America of late years, and these changes I have reason to believe are not regarded in this House with sufficient seriousness, while in my opinion they amount to no less than a revolution. I will ask hon. members to recall to themselves the state of North America when we met in this House four years ago. That portion of the world was then divided among what we may call three great Powers—first, the United States of America; secondly, Canada, and the settlements and dependencies belonging to our own Sovereign ; and thirdly, Mexico, a country which certainly did not possess much political power, but which in extent, resources, fertility of soil, and mineral wealth, was almost unequalled in the world. In every one of these three divisions there have been immense changes. In the United States a civil war has raged for four years, and even if that war should terminate as the hon. member for Bradford suggests, I cannot believe that we shall see the same society and form of government established—or even, if the form be the same, certainly the spirit will be al-tered—as existed before the civil war commenced. We must recollect that even if the Federal Government should be triumphant, it will have to deal with most perplexing questions and with a discontented population. I need not dwell much upon the then state of the Southern community, but the slave population will then be no longer slaves ; there will be several millions of another race emancipated and invested with all the rights of freemen, and, so far as the letter of the law is concerned, they will be upon an equality with the Saxon race, with whom they can possibly have no sympathy. We know from experience and practice that there is a difference between those who are recently emancipated and that—I will not call it a superior race, because that might offend hon. gentlemen opposite ; nor will I call it an inferior race, but a race that is not identical with the other. Nothing tends more to the discontent of a people than that they should be in possession of privileges and rights which practically are not recognized, and
On the Defence of Canada.	49
which they do not enjoy. These are the elements of political discontent, and it is possible that when this war is over the American Government may have to deal with great masses of discontented population. To do this successfully you must have a strong Government. What does that mean ? Why, you must have a centralizing Government ; and the American Government have found it necessary to have recourse to the centralizing principle during these events. The Government must have an army at its command in order to maintain the order and unity that it is bound to uphold. These are the elements that cannot fail to produce great difficulties in the United States, even if they come triumphant out of the struggle in which they are engaged. But what is the position of the colonies and dependencies of Her Majesty in that country ? Four years ago, when this struggle broke out, there was very little in common between them. The tie that bound them to this country was almost one of formality ; but what has been the consequence of this great change in North America ? You have now a powerful federation, with the element of nationality strongly evinced in it ; they count their population by millions, and they are conscious that they have a district more fertile and an extent of territory equal to the unappropriated reserves of the United States. These are the elements and prognostics of new influences that have changed the character of that country. Nor is it without reason that they do not feel less of the ambition which characterizes new communities than the United States, and that they may become, we will say, the Russia of the New World. Well, what is also the condition of Mexico Four years ago, when this war broke out, Mexico was a republic with a weak Government. It is now an empire, and it has become so by the interposition of two of the most ancient States of Europe—France and Austria. When we see all these immense changes it is impossible to deny that in North America a great revolution is occurring, and that when this struggle is over, when peace reappears, and tranquillity is re-established, you will find these communities governed by very different influences, and aiming at very different objects. I have often heard statesmen, and distinguished statesmen, mumbling over the balance of power in Europe. It has appeared to me always to be a great mistake, when we look to the distribution of power, to confine our views to Europe, because we shall end, and perhaps speedily find, that there are other influences in other quarters of the globe which will interfere to disturb our calculations. It seems to me that this war in America has rapidly precipitated the change. It shows us that the proper meaning of "balance of power" is security for communities in general against a predominant and
50	Speech of Mr. Disraeli
particular power, and that you have to take into your consideration States and influences that are not to be counted among the European Powers. It is impossible, notwithstanding what hon. gentlemen may say about the character of the United States, to conceal that there is a feeling among those influential landowners to whom the hon. gentleman the member for Bradford referred with regard to Europe of a peculiar character. I will not say that they look to old Europe with feelings of jealousy or vindictiveness, because epithets and words of that kind ought not to be unnecessarily used with respect to the relations between nations ; but it is undeniable that the United States look to old Europe with a want of sympathy. They have no sympathy with a country that is created and sustained by tradition ; and the only country to which they look with sympathy is that part of old Europe which is new. I have always observed this in their conduct. It is quite clear, then, it is impossible to know what relations may exist between the United States, this country, and Her Majesty's dependencies on the other side of the Atlantic. Taking these larger views, then, we ought to consider that—not to-morrow or next year, but that we are on the eve of events of very great importance. The question we have to ask ourselves is, Is this country prepared to renounce her American dependencies and colonies, of are we to retain that tie ? Now, if these colonies expressed a wish to separate the connection, and if they preferred to be absorbed by the United States, we might terminate our connection with dignity and without disaster. But if, on the other hand, those views are just which are more generally accepted—if there should be on the part of Canada and the other North American colonies a sincere and deep desire to form a considerable State and develop its resources, and to preserve the patronage and aid of England until that mature hour when we shall lose our dependency, but gain a permanent ally and friend—then it would be the greatest political blunder that can be conceived for us to renounce, relinquish, and avoid the responsibility of maintaining our interests in Canada at the present moment. If, from considerations of expense, we were to quit the possessions that we now occupy in North America, it would be ultimately, as regards our resources and wealth, as fatal and disastrous a step as could possibly be taken. Our prosperity would not long remain a consolation to us, and we might then prepare for the invasion of our country and the subjugation of the people. I infer that hon. gentlemen opposite do not express these views, which have, however, found utterance in other quarters ; but that they take a truly patriotic and English view of this subject —namely, not to force our connection on any dependency; but
On the Defence of Canada.	51
if, at a moment of revolution in North America, we find our colonies asserting the principle of their nationality, and if; foreseeing a glorious future, we find them still depending on the faithful and affectionate assistance of England, it would be the most short-sighted and suicidal policy to shrink from the duty that Providence has called upon us to fulfil. What is the course which we ought to take under these circumstances ? I cannot doubt that it is our duty to place our North American colonies in a state of proper defence ; and when we are told that you cannot defend a frontier of 1,500 miles, I ask who has ever required you to defend a frontier of 1,500 miles ? What we recommend and require—I do not speak of. this side of the House, but of those generally who hold these views—is to see that our troops in Canada are not placed in a position in which the utmost bravery and skill are of no avail, but that they should defend that country according to military practice. Austria does not attempt to defend the whole of her frontier ; but she provides a good army, and takes care that when her territory is invaded there shall be points round which her troops may rally, and which they may occupy against superior strength. We wish to see Canada placed in such a condition that if she has to be defended by her countrymen, assisted by the troops of Her Majesty, they may have the fair-play the troops have a right to expect, by having fortifications constructed with sufficient skill to double the number of her army and insure the success of a campaign. That is what we trust Her Majesty's Ministers have determined to do. I think that these four years need not have been lost, and that from the first the affairs of North America have not been considered of the importance to which they have now attained, and which from the first I have felt they must attain. I do not wish to employ taunts, but I form that opinion from judgments which have been expressed by members of Her Majesty's Government during the last four years. Those judgments upon the struggle in America and its probable consequences have been for the most part inconsistent. One day we were told by an eminent member of the Government that the South might be said to have completed her independence, and speeches have been made which led all England to suppose that a diplomatic recognition of the Southern States was to be expected. Very shortly afterwards another great authority, now lost to this House, and no one deplores that loss more deeply than myself—I mean the late Sir G. Lewis—told us that he did not recognize the existence of a single element of political independence in the South. Well, these inconsistent opinions perplexed the country, and have shown that from the first the
E 2
52	Speech of Mr. Lowe
Government have never taken that view of the situation which we had a right to expect. One day we were led to believe from the highest authority in the Government that there was on their part the utmost sympathy with those who were struggling in the Southern States ; while, on the other hand, the Minister whose judgment upon such matters has, of course, peculiar weight, and which was particularly watched by foreign countries, expressed opinions of a totally different character. Sir, I do not blame Her Majesty's Government because in a position of extreme difficulty they have made mistakes and formed opinions inconsistent with each other ; but what I do regret is the consequence of those discordant opinions on their part—namely, that all this time Her Majesty's colonies have not been defended as we are now all agreed they should be, with the possibility of dangers hanging over them ; that we have lost four years, and are now about to make an effort on a very small scale, and necessarily with very limited resources. But, Sir, that is, after all, but a very little matter, provided we are now following a sound principle. If the Parliament of England is determined to maintain our connection with the colonies of Her Majesty, founded upon an unequivocal expression of opinion on their part that to that connection they cling with feelings of a character which shows that the national sentiment is perfectly unimpaired ; if they prove that the reports and rumours which have been circulated of late years respecting the feelings of the colonies are wholly unfounded, and that they themselves are resolved to maintain it until they emulate us in our great career, and become our rivals as well as our allies and friends, then I shall not regret what has occurred. It appears to me that there are two consequences of public opinion being of late agitated upon this topic —that we are conscious now of what our duty to the colonies is, and that we are prepared to fulfil that duty in a manner which I doubt not will conduce to the strength and independence of the British empire.
SPEECH OF THE RIGHT HON. ROBERT LOWE,
MEMBER FOR CALNE,
I MOULD like to take up this matter just where the right hon. gentleman who has just spoken has set it down. I will not enter into any discussion as to the intentions or motives of the American Government, because it appears to me both dangerous and unnecessary. In the first place, it is dangerous, because,
On the Defence of Canada.	53
just as in private life, nothing irritates more than such discussions and examinations, and psychological dissections as it were—just as if they were mere natural curiosities. In the second place, it is unnecessary, because, whether the American Government have or have not any designs upon Canada, it is our duty to do what is needful. It seems to me perfectly plain that it is our duty in this extremity, whatever complaints we may have bad against Canada—and I think we have had many—to consider any attack upon them as an attack upon ourselves. This is not an occasion for picking quarrels or examining too nicely whether the Canadians have always acted towards ourselves as they should have done. Now is the time to stand by them, and to make it known that those who go to war with Canada go to war with us. But, having cleared up this preliminary matter, what I want to put to the House, and what it becomes us to consider, is what this country is bound to do for the defence of Canada. And upon that point I think we have had a difference of opinion. There is the hon. member for Horsham (Mr. S. Fitzgerald), who goes all along the St. Lawrence for 800 miles, and says we are to keep large vessels of war in those waters. Then he comes to the Rapids of St. Lawrence, and thence upwards is to be defended—I know not exactly how, but I believe with other vessels of war of a smaller kind. My hon. friend finally seems to think that it is the duty of this country to put, at the Imperial expense, the frontier of Canada in a complete state of defence, and to find all the maritime expenses that may be wanted. Then I take my right hon. friend the Secretary of State, and he says, with great force and pithiness, that the real defence of Canada is that she belongs to England. But he does not stop there ; he says that something must be done by Canada herself, and that what we do must be regulated by what may be done by her. It is my misfortune to differ from both. Let us look at the question on the supposition that we are actually at war. What does Colonel Jervois say will happen ? He says if you have no fortifications besides those which exist your troops will have to retreat to their ships, and they will be happy if they reach them. Therefore, says Colonel Jervois, make fortifications. But what is to happen if we have them ? He says as soon as the Americans invade Canada you will be driven like sheep into the fortifications, and then the hope is that the country will arise around you. You will become a sort of nucleus,—for that is the favourite expression on such occasions,—and this nucleus will gather to itself a sort of vapoury mass—the Canadian militia, whose existence has been of that nebulous order, through which you can see a star of the sixteenth magnitude. But look at this
54	Speech of Mr. Lowe
thing from a common sense point of view. Don't look to the old analogies of 1812 and 1814. The Canadians then made an admirable defence, and the Americans had nothing to boast of as to the result of the engagements on land. But on the Lakes we met the Americans, and on Lake Champlain we got right well thrashed, and the figure we cut on Lake Ontario was not a very agreeable one. Well, fifty years have elapsed since then; and have things remained the same P Are we going to embark on the defence of Canada as if the principles which we deemed sound in 1813 and 1814 were still to be relied on ? Take the Lakes. If America was more than a match for us in 1813 and 1814 on.the Lakes, what must she be now, when by means of the New York Central and Erie Railroads she can transport both men and means to the scene; when she can carry down gunboats, as many as she pleases ; when to one man of ours she can put ten, and if ten won't do she can put twenty ? Can anything be more idle, or more unworthy of a great nation, than to think of carrying on war on such a principle as that ? Then we are to attempt to fight with America on her own ground. Canada has not a gunboat to put on the Lakes, while America has boundless facilities of outnumbering us in any proportion she thinks proper. Are we really to enter with the money of the people of this country into such a matter as that ? Then let us turn to the land. I have no doubt that the few thousand men we have in Canada will fight. But what support have they from Canada ? Colonel Jervois tells us that you have 21,700 Volunteers, whom he has seen, and who have got through their exercise very well, and that there are some thousands besides whom he has not seen, but who, he doubts not, would do their duty equally well. And then there are 470,000 militia-men on paper, which nobody has ever seen at all. In fact, Canada has no materiel. We are told to-night that we are to find her materiel, for her fortifications are utterly antiquated. And with what forces could America invade ? Why, with any number that she thought proper,—and these trained, disciplined, veteran troops, ten times the number that we could bring into the field. It would not be as it was with General Montgomery in the War of Independence, when he had to struggle through impenetrable woods in the depth of winter. America has railways now to transport to the frontier any number of men she pleases, so that under these circumstances the disparity of forces would be absolutely and entirely overwhelming. You will say, perhaps, that this is a good argument for building fortifications. But it is impossible for me to describe to the House—what probably many have seen for themselves—the situation of the
On the Defence of Canada.	55
places that we are asked to fortify, and the difficulties which that situation creates. General Wolfe cannonaded Quebec from Point Levi, about three-quarters of a mile from the town, and was able to do this even with the artillery of that day. If Point Levi were seized now, it is certain that, with modern artillery, Quebec would lie absolutely at the mercy of the enemy. Then what are your means of preventing them from taking Quebec ? You may, perhaps, build a fort on Point Levi, but how are you to hold it against such a force and such artillery as America can bring against it ? Setting this aside, however, I have never seen a place which seems to be commanded from more points, and to be more entirely exposed, than Quebec is. The town is so built that you seem able to pitch a shell into every house in it, and it would be hard to find a better mark than the citadel itself. Mind, I don't grudge the money for these fortifications if they give any satisfaction to the Canadians. No doubt we can strengthen Quebec, because now it is not defensible in any way whatever. Indeed, I doubt whether it ever was defensible, because when Wolfe attacked it and gained the Heights of Abraham, Montcalm judged it prudent to march out into the open field instead of awaiting the assault behind his fortifications. I shall not object to fortifications if they are thought desirable. But it seems to me perfectly impossible that when our troops are once hunted into Quebec and Montreal—for that seems to be what it is thought will happen—they can ever escape again. Colonel Jervois, you must remember, assumes that you can only make war in Canada during the summer. But, in fact, in the rebellion the war was carried on in winter time, and General Montgomery, who besieged Quebec, made his way through Maine, where there were then no roads, in the depth of a severe winter. He assaulted Quebec at that time of year, and if an extraordinary casualty had not happened—if he, with seventeen of his staff, had not been killed by the discharge of a single cannon—he might have taken Quebec, and the destinies of Canada might have been entirely different from what they are to-day. What, then, is to guarantee your 8,000 troops against a similar catastrophe when the St. Lawrence is closed from November to May, and the besieging army have the means of passing across the natural bridge which the ice then makes for them ? It seems to me that to coop up our men behind these fortifications will be like enclosing them in a net for the enemy to take them at their discretion ; as Hannibal said at Canna', when the Roman Consul desired the cavalry to dismount and engage the enemy on foot, "Had he not better deliver them to me bound hand and foot at once 2" I cannot conceive why we
56	Speech of Mr. Lowe
should enter into arrangements which seem to imply that in time of war we are to keep these troops in Canada. There is another consideration which appears to me to be a most powerful one. When we once go to war with America—it may be about Canada —will Canada be the best place for us to carry on the war ? In such a struggle we must consider not merely local but imperial interests ; we must wage war in the mode least likely to injure the forces of the Empire, and strike at points which are vital to the interests of our antagonist. If we allow the Americans to lead us, if we follow them to the points they may choose to attack —points, after all, only of local and subordinate interest—leaving unguarded other places which are of imperial importance, such a policy would end in certain failure and disaster. We should be like the unskilful boxer of whom Demosthenes spoke, and who put his hands to the parts where he felt the blows instead of striking at the vital parts of his adversary in return. If that be so, the defence of Canada sinks into a small matter indeed, because, considered from an imperial point of view, the question is not what is the proper defence of Canada as the sole point of probable attack, but what are the points at which America will be able to attack us with the greatest power, and at which we can best attack her in return. It may be that the most effectual way of defending Canada would be by abandoning her altogether, and concentrating our forces upon a place of such importance to the enemy as would compel them to cease attacking Canada, and run to the vital point at which they were themselves assailed. As far as military considerations go, therefore, my conclusion is that it would be unwise, and indeed impossible, for us to retain any force worth speaking of in Canada in the event of so great and awful a struggle as that between this country and America—that we should want all our troops for the defence of these islands, or for other points more essential to us, and partaking more of the arx imperii, than Canada. Of course I do not profess to give any authoritative opinion on a military question ; but I should think that Bermuda and Halifax were much more important than any points in Canada, since the whole safety of our fleets in North American waters would depend on those two places. In the same way, it would be necessary to defend certain points in the West India Islands for the protection of our ships. I apprehend, therefore, that we should act very imprudently in case of war in keeping our men in Canada. But if it would not be prudent to keep our troops there in time of war, is it right or is it wise to keep them there in time of peace, thereby encouraging the Canadians to believe that they will have these troops if war should break out, though we know—at least those who take
On the Defence of Canada.	57
my view know—that the necessary result of the war which begins with the invasion of Canada must, if we are true to imperial interests, be the speedy withdrawing of these troops ? I say that, unless you are prepared to maintain that the same force should be kept in Canada in war as in peace, it is wrong to retain our troops there now, because we are thereby urging the Canadians on under false pretences. Better they should know the truth at once—know that they and not we are to fight the Americans ; that, with our small army, we should, as we did in the Crimean campaign, soon feel the wear and tear to be so severe that we should be compelled to withdraw our troops from Canada for our own protection. There is another point of view which I think deserves consideration. I believe that if war does break out nothing is so likely to cause it as the presence of British troops in Canada. There are those in America who look upon the presence of British troops in Canada as a standing menace. I believe that a sincere conviction prevailed among these persons that on the 4th of March England was about to recognize Mr. Lincoln as only the President of the Northern States, thus recognizing the South by implication. There is nothing which these people do not suspect. Then there is the Monroe doctrine ; and the presence of our troops in Canada seems to connect this
country with it, and to excite	against us. Another point of
still greater importance should be borne in mind. In my opinion nothing would be so strong an incentive in America to war with this country as the notion that they could catch a small English army and lead it in triumph. Never mind if they were thirty to one ; it would be all the same. The popularity which such a capture would confer upon the successful general or the president of the period would be irresistible. To humble us, and exhibit an English army • as captives and vanquished, would be to Americans a gratification which no words can express. Sir, I grudge them that gratification ; and therefore I say that we should act wisely in withdrawing these troops, which, while too weak to protect Canada, are quite numerous enough to give a powerful motive and incentive to war. That such a war may be averted must be the prayer of all of us. It would be one of the greatest calamities that could befall either country—perhaps even the whole human race ; and it is because I wish to destroy every excuse for war and every incentive to war—because I am convinced the English troops in Canada, though powerless to defend, are numerous enough to provoke—that I say our wisest course, both in the interests of peace and for the purpose of carrying on a successful war, if war there must be, would be at once to withdraw our troops from Canada.
58	Speech of Mr. Bright
[Continuing the debate, after observations by Sir J. Fergusson and Mr. J. White, Mr. C. FORTESCUE said, the British North American Colonies being desirous to remain attached to England, and being able and willing to exert themselves in their own defence, Her Majesty's Government deemed it their duty to make propositions to the House to enable them to perform their part in assisting in the defence. He combated the arguments and conclusion of Mr. Lowe.—Sir F. SMITH thought the House ought to have a full statement of what the whole cost for the fortifications and their armaments would be, and of the number of British troops that would be abstracted from the general force and retained in Canada.—Mr. WATKIN observed that the way to prevent a war with America was not to talk of abandoning Canada, but to declare that it was a part of the British Empire, and that we were prepared to defend it.—Sir. M. FARQUHAR dwelt upon the importance of the North American Colonies to England, and the large amount of capital there in which British subjects were more or less interested. —Lord ELCHO said, having listened to the debate, the impression upon his mind was that the speech which contained most practical sense and hit the right nail on the head was that of Mr. Lowe, and that the course he suggested was a practical and sensible one.—Mr. AYRTON considered the course taken by the Government most extraordinary and unsatisfactory. He complained of the entire want of information upon a variety of essential points, which ought to be brought clearly before the House, and without which it would be premature to form any judgment. The best way to protect Canada, he remarked, was to preserve proper relations with the United States, instead of which causes of irritation had arisen.—Lord R. CECIL, after remarking that this debate would operate against the interests of this country, observed that the ambiguity about the defence of Canada was more dangerous to the honour of England than any other course that could be adopted.]
SPEECH OF MR. BRIGHT,
MEMBER FOR BIRMINGHAM.
I AM not sure that I should have addressed the House on this occasion but for the remarks which have been made by the noble lord. I think he has been a little more frank in his declarations, and in pointing out the thing which I suspect is passing in his mind, and in the minds of many hon. gentlemen who have made no statement of their opinions during this debate. I hope the debate will be useful, though I am obliged to say, while I admit the importance of the question brought before the House, that I think it is one of some delicacy. Its importance is great, because it refers to the possibility of a war with the United States, and its delicacy arises from this, that it is difficult to discuss the question without saying things which tend rather in the direction of war than of peace. The difficulty now before us is that there is an extensive colony or dependency of this country adjacent to the United States, and if there be a war party in the United States—a party hostile to this country, that circumstance affords it a very strong temptation to enter without much hesitation into a war with England, because it feels that through Canada it can
On the Defence of Canada.	59
inflict a great humiliation on this country. At the same time, it is perfectly well known to all intelligent men, and especially to all statesmen and public men of the United States—it is as well known to them as it is to us—that there is no power whatever in this United Kingdom to defend successfully the territory of Canada against the United States. We ought to know that in order to put ourselves right upon the question, and that we may not be called upon to talk folly and to act folly. The noble lord at the head of the Government—or his Government, at least—is responsible for having compelled this discussion ; because if a vote is to be asked from the House of Commons—and it will only be the beginning of votes—it is clearly the duty of the House to bring the matter under discussion. That is perfectly clear for many reasons, but especially since we have heard from the Governor-General of Canada that in the North American Provinces they are about to call into existence a new nationality ; and I, for oue, should certainly object to the taxation of this country being expended needlessly on behalf of any nationality but our own. What I should like to ask the House first of all is this—Will Canada attack the States ? Certainly not. Next, will the States attack Canada, keeping England out of view altogether ? Certainly not. There is not a man in the United States, probably, whose voice or opinion would have the smallest influence, who would recommend or desire that an attack should be made by the United States on Canada with a view of its forcible annexation to the Union. There have been dangers, as we know, on the frontier lately. The Canadian people have been no wiser than some members of this House, or a great many men among the richer classes in this country. When the refugees from the South—I am not speaking of the respectable, honourable men from the South, many of whom have left that country during their troubles, and for whom I feel the greatest commiseration—but I mean the ruffians from the South, who in large numbers have entered Canada, and who have employed themselves there in a course of policy likely to embroil us with the United States—when they entered Canada the Canadians treated them with far too much consideration. They expressed very openly opinions hostile to the United States, whose power lay close to them. I will not go into details with which we are all acquainted—the seizing of American ships on the Lakes, the raid into the State of Vermont, the robbery of a bank, the killing of a man in his own shop, the stealing of horses in open day, nor the transaction, of which there is strong proof, that men of this class conspired to set fire to the greatest cities of the Union. All these things have taken place, and the Canadian Government made scarcely any sign. I be-
60	Speech of Mr. Bright
lieve an application was made to the noble lord at the head of the Foreign Office a year ago to stimulate the Canadian Government to take some steps to avoid the dangers which have since arisen ; but with that sort of negligence which has been seen so much here, nothing was done until the American Government, roused by these transactions, showed that they were no longer going to put up with them. Then the Canadian Government and people took a little notice. I have heard a good many people complain of Lord Monck's appointment; that he was a follower of the noble lord who had lost his election, and therefore must be sent out to govern a province ; but I will say of him that from all I have heard from Canada he has conducted himself there in a manner very serviceable to the colony, and with the greatest possible propriety as representing the Sovereign. He was all along favourable to the United States ; his Cabinet, I believe, has always been favourable, and I know that at least the most important newspaper there has always been favourable to the North. But still nothing was done until these troubles began, and then everything was done. Volunteers were sent to the frontier, the trial of the raiders was proceeded with, and probably they may be surrendered ; and the Canadian Chancellor of the Exchequer has proposed a vote in the new Parliament to restore to the persons at St. Alban's who were robbed, the 50,000 dollars which were taken from them. What is the state of things now P There is the greatest possible calm on the frontier. The United States have not a syllable to say against Canada. The Canadian people found they were wrong ; they have now returned to their right minds, and there is not a man',in Canada at this moment, I believe, who has any kind of idea that the United States Government has the smallest notion of attacking them, now or at any future time, on account of anything which has transpired between Canada and the United States. If there comes a war in which Canada may be made a victim, it will be a war got up between the Government of Washington and the Government in London, and it becomes us to inquire whether that is at all probable. Is there anybody in the House in favour of such a war ? I notice with the greatest delight a change which I said would some day come—and I was not a false prophet—in the line taken here with regard to the American question. Even the noble lord the member for Stamford spoke to-night without anger, and without any of that ill feeling which,' I am sorry to say, on previous occasions he has manifested in discussing this question. I hope there is no man out of Bedlam, or, at least, who ought to be out,—nay, I suspect there are few men in Bedlam, who are in favour of our going to war with the
On the Defence of Canada.	61
United States. In taking this view I am not arguing that we regard the vast naval and military power and the apparently boundless resources of that country. I will assume that you, my countrymen, have come to the conclusion that it is better for us not to make war with the United States, not because they are strong, but on the higher ground that we are against wars. Our history for the last two hundred years and more has recorded sufficient calamitous and, for the most part, unnecessary wars. We have had enough of whatever a nation can gain from military success and glory. I will not speak of the disasters which might follow to our commerce, and the widespread ruin that might be caused by a war. We are a wiser and better people than we were in this respect, and we should regard a war with the United States as even a greater crime, if needlessly entered into, than a war with almost any other nation in the world. Well, then, as to our Government, with a great many blunders, one or two of which I .will comment on by-and-by, they have preserved neutrality during this great struggle. We have had it stated in the House, and there has been in the House a motion, that the blockade was ineffectual and ought to be broken. Bad men of various classes, and, perhaps, agents of the Richmond conspiracy, and persons, it is said, of influence from France—all these are stated to have brought pressure to bear on the noble lord and his colleagues with a view of inducing them to take part in this quarrel, but all this has failed to break our neutrality. Therefore, I say, we may very fairly come to the conclusion that England is not for war. If anything arises on any act of aggression out of which Canada might suffer, I believe the fault is not with this country. That is a matter which gives me great satisfaction; and I believe the House will agree with me that I am not misstating the case. But, let me ask, are the United States for war ? because, after all, I know the noble lord the member for Stamford has a lurking idea that there is some danger from that quarter, and I am afraid the same feeling prevails in minds not so acute as that which the noble lord possesses. Now, if we could have at the bar of the House Earl Russell, as representing Her Majesty's Government, and Mr. Adams, as representing the Government of President Lincoln, and ask them their opinions, I think they would tell us what the Secretary for the Colonies has told us to-night—that the relations between those Governments are peaceable ; and I know, from the communications between the Minister of the United States and our Minister for Foreign Affairs, that our relations with the United States are perfectly amicable, and have been growing more and more amicable for many months past. And I will
62	Speech of Mr. Bright
take the liberty of expressing this opinion, that there has never been an Administration in the United States since the time of the Revolutionary War up to this hour more entirely favourable to peace with all foreign countries, and more especially favourable to peace with this country, than the Government of which President Lincoln is the head. I will undertake to say that the most exact investigator of what has taken place will be unable to point to a single word he, President Lincoln, has said, or a single line he has written, or a single act he has done since his first accession to power that betrays that anger or passion or ill feeling towards this country which some people here imagine influences the breasts of his Cabinet. If, then, Canada is not for war, if England is not for war, if the United States are not for war, whence is the war to come F I should like to ask—I wish the noble lord the member for Stamford had been a little more frank—whence comes that anxiety which to some extent prevails? It may even be assumed that the Government are not free from it, though they have shown it in the ridiculous form of proposing a vote of £50,000. It is said that the newspapers have got into a sort of panic. Well, they can do that every night between 12 and 6, when they write these articles ; they can be very courageous or very panic-stricken. It is said that "the City"—we know what "the City" means, the right hon. gentleman alluded to it to-night ; they are persons who deal in shares, though that does not describe the whole of them,—it is said that what they call the " money interests" are alarmed. Well, I never knew the City to be right. Men who are deep in great monetary transactions, and steeped to the lips sometimes in perilous speculations, they are not able to take a broad, dispassionate view of questions of this nature ; and as to the newspapers, I agree with my hon. friend the member for Bradford, who, referring to one of them in particular, said the course it took indicated its wishes to cover its own confusion. Surely, after four years of uninterrupted publication of lies with regard to America, it has done much to destroy its influence in foreign questions for ever. I must now mention a much higher authority, the authority of the Peers. I don't know why we should be so much restricted here with regard to the House of Lords. I think this House must have observed that the other House is not always so squeamish in what they say about us. It appeared to me that in this debate the right hon. gentleman (Mr. Disraeli) felt it necessary to get up and endeavour to excuse his chief. Now, if I were to give advice to the hon. gentleman opposite, it would be this—for while stating that during the last four years many noble lords in the other House
On the Defence of Canada.	63
have said foolish things, I think I should be uncandid if I did not say that you also have said foolish things—learn from the example set you by the right hon. gentleman. He, with a thoughtfulness and statesmanship which you do not all acknowledge, did not say a word from that bench likely to create difficulty with the United States. I think his chief and his followers might learn something from his example. Not long ago, I think, a panic was raised by what was said in another place about France ; and now an attempt is made there to create a panic on this question. In the Reform Club there is fixed to the wall a paper giving a telegraphic account of what is done in this House every night, and also of what is done in the other House ; and I find that the only words required to describe what is done in the other House are the words, " Lords adjourned." The noble lord at the head of the Government is responsible for that. He has brought this House to very nearly the same condition ; because we do very little, and they absolutely nothing. All of us, no doubt, in our young days were taught a verse intended to inculcate virtue and industry, a couplet of which runs thus :—
" For Satan still some mischief finds
For idle hands to do."
I don't believe that many here are afflicted with any disease arising from a course of continued idleness ; but I should like to ask the House, in a more serious mood, what is the reason that any man in this country has now any more anxiety with regard to the preservation of peace with the United States than he had five years ago ? Is there not a consciousness in your heart of hearts that you have not behaved generously towards your neighbour ? Do we not feel in some way or other a reproving of conscience ? And in ourselves are we not sensible of this, that conscience tends to make us cowards at this particular juncture ? Well, I shall not revive past transactions with anger, but with a feeling 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 on the transactions of the last four years without a feeling of sorrow at the course that we have pursued in some particulars ; and as I am anxious to speak with the view to a better state of feeling both in this country and the United States, I shall take the liberty, if the House will allow me, for a few minutes to refer to two or three of those transactions, regarding which, though not in the main greatly wrong, in some circumstances we were so unfortunate as to create the irritation that at this moment we wish did not exist. The hon. member for Horsham referred to the course taken by
64	Speech of Mr. Bright
the Government with regard to acknowledging the belligerent rights of the South. Now, I have never been one to condemn the Government for acknowledging the South as belligerents then except on this ground. I think it might be logically contended that it might possibly become necessary to take that step, but I think the time and the manner of the act were most unfortunate, and could not but have produced very evil effects. Why, going back four years ago, we recollect what occurred when the news arrived here of the first shot fired at Fort Sumter. I think that was about the 4th of April, and immediately after it was announced that a new Minister was coming from the United States to this country. Mr. Dallas had represented that, as he did not represent the new Government, nor the new President, he would rather not undertake anything of importance. It was announced that his successor had left New York on a certain day ; and we know that when we have the date of a departure from New York for this country we can calculate the time of arrival here to within 12 hours. Mr. Adams arrived in London on the 13th of May, and when he opened his newspaper the next morning he found it contained the proclamation of neutrality, and the acknowledgment of the belligerent rights of the South. In my opinion the proper course would have been to have waited until Mr. Adams arrived, and to have discussed the matter with him in a friendly manner, when an explanation might have been given of the grounds upon which the English Government felt themselves bound to issue it. But everything was done in an unfriendly mariner, and the effect was to afford great comfort at Richmond, and generally to grieve those people of America who were most anxious for the continuance of the friendly and amicable relations between that country and England. To illustrate the point, allow me to suppose that a great revolt having taken place in Ireland, and we within a fortnight after the outbreak sent over a new Minister to the United States, and that on the morning of his arrival he found•that Government had, without consulting him, taken such a hasty step as to acknowledge the belligerent rights of the Irish. I ask whether under such circumstances a feeling of irritation would not have been expressed by every man in Great Britain ? I will not argue this question further, as to do so would be simply to depreciate the intellect of the hon. gentlemen listening to me. But seven or eight months after that event another transaction, of a very different and of a very unfortunate nature, took place—namely, that which arose out of the seizure of the two Southern envoys on board an English ship called the Trent. I recollect at that time making a speech at Rochdale entirely in
On the Defence of Canada.	65
favour of the United States Government and people, but I did not then, nor do I now, attempt to defend the seizure of those persons. I said that, although precedents for such an action might possibly be found to have occurred in what I may call the evil days of our history, they were totally opposed to the maxims of the United States Government, and that it was most undoubtedly a bad act. I do not complain of the demand that the men should be given up. I only complain of the manner in which the demand was made and the menaces by which it was accompanied. I think it was absurd and wrong, and was not statesman-like, when there was not the least foundation for supposing the United States Government were aware of the act, or had in the slightest degree sanctioned it, immediately to get ships ready, and to make other offensive preparations, and to allow the Press, who are always ready to inflame the passions of the people to frenzy, to prepare their minds for war. That was not the whole of the transaction, however ; for the United States, before they heard a word from this country on the subject, sent a despatch to Mr. Adams, which was shown to our Government, stating that the act had not been done by their orders—that it was a pure accident, and that they should regard the matter 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 came it that the flame of war was fanned by the newspapers supposed to be devoted to the Government, and that one of them, said to be peculiarly devoted to the Prime Minister, had the audacity—I know not whence it obtained its instructions—flatly and emphatically to deny that such a despatch had ever been received ? How is it possible to maintain amicable relations with any great country, or even with any small one, unless Government will manage these transactions in what I may call a more courteous and a more honourable manner ? I received a letter from a most eminent gentleman resident in the United States, dated only two days before the Southern envoys were given up, in which he stated that the real difficulty encountered by the President in the matter was that the menaces of the English Government had made it almost impossible for him to concede the point, and he asked whether the English Govern inent was intending to seek a cause of quarrel or not. I am sure that the noble lord at the head of the Government would himself feel more disposed to yield, and would find it more easy to grant a demand of the kind if made in a courteous and friendly manner than if accompanied by manners such as this Government had offered to that of the United States. The House mill observe that I am not condemn-
66	Speech of Mr. Bright
ing the Government of this country on the main point, but that I am complaining merely because they did not do what they bad to do in that manner which was most likely to remove diffictilties and to preserve a friendly feeling between the two nations. The last point to which I shall direct your attention is with respect to the ships which have been sent out to prey upon the commerce of the United States, and in doing so I shall confine myself to the Alabama. This vessel was built in this country, all her munitions of war were obtained from this country, and almost every man on board was a subject of the Queen. She sailed from one of our chief ports, and she was built by a firm in which a member of this House was, and I presume is still, interested. I don't complain now, neither did I two years ago, when the matter was brought before the House by the hon. member for Bradford, that the member for Birkenhead struck up a friendship with Captain Semmes, who perhaps, in the words applied to another person under somewhat similar circumstances, " was the mildest mannered man that ever scuttled ship." I don't complain, and I have never done so, that the member for Birkenhead looks admiringly upon what has been called the greatest example that man has ever seen of the greatest crime that man has ever committed. And I should not complain even had he entered into that gigantic traffic in flesh and blood which no subject of this realm can enter into without being deemed a felon in the eyes of our law and punished as such ; but what I do complain of is that a magistrate of a county, a deputy-lieutenant, whatever that may be, and a representative of the constituency of the county, having sat in this ancient and honourable assembly, did, as I believe he did with regard to this ship, break the laws of this country, drive us into an infraction of international law, and treat with undeserved disrespect the proclamation of neutrality of the Queen. But I have another cause of complaint, though not against the hon. gentleman this time, for he, having on a previous occasion declared that he would rather be the builder of a dozen Alabamas than do something which nobody else had done, his language was received with repeated cheers from the other side of the House. I think that that was a very unfortunate circumstance, and I beg to tell hon. gentlemen that at the end of last session, when there was a great debate on the Denmark question, 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 to take upon themselves the responsibility of bringing into office and power a party who could cheer such sen-
On the Defence of Canada.	67
timents. But turning from the hon. 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, amply compensated for it by the slowness which he displayed in the case of the Alabama. And another curious thing, which even the noble lord's colleagues have never been able to explain, is that, although he sent after the Alabama to Cork to stop her, notwithstanding she had gone out of our jurisdiction, still she was permitted subsequently to go into a dozen or a score of ports belonging to this country in various parts of the world. Now, it seems to me that this is rather a special instance of that feebleness of purpose on the part of the noble lord which has done much to mar what would otherwise have been a great political career. Well, then, the hon. member for Birkenhead, or his firm, or his family, or whoever it is that does these things, after having seen the peril into which the country was drifting on account of the Alabama, proceeded at once to build the two rams, and it was only at the very last moment, when we were on the eve of a war with the United States, that the Government had the courage to seize these vessels. There are shipowners here, and I ask them what would be the feelings of the people of this country if they had suffered as the shipowners of America have suffered ? As a rule, all their ships have been driven from the ocean. Mr. Lowe, an influential shipowner of New York, has had three very large ships destroyed by the Alabama. The George Griswold, a ship of 2,000 tons, that came to this country with a heavy cargo of provisions of various kinds for the suffering people of Lancashire, that very ship was destroyed on her return passage, and the ship that destroyed her may have been, and I believe was, built by these patriotic shipbuilders of Birkenhead. Well, sir, these are things to rankle iu the breast of the country that is subjected to these losses and indignities. To-day you may see by the papers that one vessel has destroyed between 12 and 13 ships, between the Cape of Good Hope and Australia. If I had, as some hon. members have done, thought it necessary to bring American questions before this House three or four times during the Session, I should have asked questions about these ships ; but no ! You who were in favour of the disruption of the States do not ask questions of this kind, but refer to other points that may embarrass the Government or make their difficulties greater with the United States. But the members of the Government itself have not been very wise, and I shall not be thought unnecessarily critical if I say that Governments generally are not very wise. Two years ago, in that very debate, the noble lord
F2
68	Speech of Mr. Bright
at the head of the Government and the Attorney-General addressed the House. I besought the noble lord---and I do not ask favours from him very often—only to speak for five minutes words of generosity and sympathy for the Government and people of the United States. He did not do it, and perhaps it was foolish to expect it. The Attorney-General made a most able speech, but it was the only time I ever listened to him with pain, for I thought his speech full of bad morals and bad law ; and I am quite certain that he gave an account of the facts which was not so ingenuous or fair as the House had a right to expect at his hands. Next Session the noble lord and the Attorney-General turned right round, and. had a different story to tell, and as the aspect of things changed on the other side they gradually returned to good sense and fairness. They were not the only members of the Government who have spoken on this subject. The noble lord the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and the Chancellor of the Exchequer have also made speeches. Every one will feel that I would not willingly say a word against either of them, because I do not know among the official statesmen of this country two men for whom I feel greater sympathy or more respect. But I have to complain of them that they should both go to Newcastle, a town in which I feel great interest, and there give forth their words of offence and unwisdom. The noble lord, we all know very well, can say very good and very smart things, but I regret to say that what he said was not true, and I, for one, have not much respect for things that are smart but not true. The Chancellor of the Exchequer appeared from the papers to have spoken in a tone of exultation, and to have made a speech which I undertake to say he wishes he had never made. But the House must bear in mind that these gentlemen are set on a hill. They are not obscure men, making speeches in a public-house or in some mechanics' institute, but they are men whose voices are heard wherever the English language is known ; and, knowing what effect their eloquence produced in Lancashire—how they affected prices, and the profits and losses of every one, and changed the course of business, I can form an idea of the irritation that these speeches caused in the United States. Then, I must refer to the unwise abuse of the learned gentleman the member for Sheffield,
and, I may add to that, the unsleeping	of the noble lord
the member for Stamford. I am not sure that either of them is converted, for I thought I heard something from the lion. and learned member that shows he retains his sentiments. [Mr. Roebuck.—" Exactly."] I hope that these things are regretted and repented, and that any one who is thus ungenerous to the
On the Defence of Canada.	69
United States and the people of that country will never fall into trouble of any kind. But if you do, you will find your countrymen are more generous to you than you have been to the people of the United States. And now as to the Press. I think it unnecessary to say much about that, because now every night these unfortunate writers are endeavouring to back out of everything they have been saying. I only hope that their power for evil in future will be greatly lessened by the stupendous exhibition of ignorance and folly that they have made to the world. Having made this statement, I must expect that if the noble lord the member for Stamford could get up again he would say, if all this be true, and if these speeches created all this irritation in the United States, is there not reason to fear that this irritation will provoke a desire for vengeance, and that the chances of war will be increased by it ? I say that war from such a course is to the last degree improbable. There has been another side to this expression of opinion. All England is not included in the rather general condemnation I have thought it my duty to express. What have the millions been saying and doing ?—those whom you have been so very much afraid of, especially the noble lord the member for Stamford, who objects to the transfer of power into their hands. I beg leave to tell the House that, taking the counties of Lancaster and York, your two greatest counties, there are millions of men there who, by their industry, not only have created but sustain the fabric of our national power, who have had no kind of sympathy with the men whom I am condemning. They are more generous and wise. They have shown that magnanimity and love of freedom are not extinct among us. I speak of the county from which I come—•a county of many sorrows, that have hung like a dark cloud over almost every home during the last three years. In the country all attempts of the agents of the Confederacy, by money, by printing, by platform speaking, and by agitation have utterly failed to elicit any expression of sympathy with the American insurrection ; and if - the bond of union and friendship between England and the United States remains unbroken, we have not to thank the wealthy and the cultivated, but the laborious millions, whom statesmen and historians too frequently make little account of. They know something of the United States that the hon. gentlemen opposite and some on this side of the House do not know—that every man of them would be welcome on the American continent if they chose to go there, that every right and privilege which the greatest and highest in that country enjoy would be theirs, and that every man would have given to him by the United States a free gift of 160 acres of the most fertile land in the world.
70	Speech of Mr. Bright
Hon. gentlemen may laugh, but that is a good deal to a man who has no land, and I can assure them that this Homestead Act has a great effect on the population of the north of England. I can tell them, too, that the labouring population of these counties, the artisans and the mechanics, will give you no encouragement to any policy that 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 not less than these, and I find them in the character of the Government and people of the American Union. Now, I think the right hon. gentleman, the member for Bucks, referred to what might reasonably be supposed to happen in case the rebellion was suppressed. He did not think when a nation was exhausted that it would rush rashly into a new struggle. The loss of life has been great, the loss of treasure enormous. Happily for them, it was not to keep a Bourbon on the throne of France, or to keep the Turks in Europe. It was for an object which every man can comprehend who examines it by the light of his own intelligence and his own conscience ; and if men have given their lives and possessions for the attainment of the great end of maintaining the integrity and unity of a great country, the history of the future must be written in a different spirit from the history of the past if she expresses any condemnation of that temper. But Mr. Lincoln is President of the United States—President now for the second term ; he was elected exclusively at first by what was termed the Republican party, and he has been elected now 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 auy war of aggression, and has never desired one. Now, speaking only of the North—of the Free States—let the House remember that landed property, and, indeed, property of all kinds, is more universally diffused there than in any other nation, and that instruction and school education are also more widely diffused. Well, I say they have never hitherto carried on a war for aggression or for vengeance, and I believe they will not begin one now. Canada is indeed a tempting bait. The noble lord agrees in that—it is a very tempting bait, not for purposes of annexation, but 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 undefended which she could defend. But still it is admitted—and I think the speech of the right hon. gentleman, the member for Calne, produced a great effect upon those who heard it—that once at war with the United States for any cause, Canada cannot be
On the Defence of Canada.	71
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, understand, but that any portion of the dominions of the British Crown is in such circumstances that it might tempt an evil-disposed people to attack it with a view to humiliate us, because I believe that transactions which humiliate a government and a nation are not only discreditable, but do great national harm. Is there a war party, then, in America ? I believe there is, and it is the same party which was a war party eighty years ago. It is the party represented by a number of gentlemen who sit on that bench, and by some who sit here. They, sir, in the United States who are hostile to this country are those who were recently the malcontent subjects of the right hon. gentleman, the member for Tamworth. They are those and such as those to whom the noble lord at the head of the Government offers consolation, only in such a shape as this, when he tells them that the rights of the tenant are the wrongs of the landlord. Sir, that is the only war party in the United States, and it was a war party in the days of.Lord North. But the real power of the United States does not reside in that class. You talk of American mobs. Excepting some portion of the population of New York—and I would not apply the word even to them—such things as mobs in the United States for the sake of forcing either Congress or the Executive to a particular course of action 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 is in the hands of another class—the landowners throughout the country—and there are millions of them. Why, in this last election for the presidency of the United States I was told by a citizen of New York, who took a most active part in the election, that in that State alone 100,000 Irish votes were given "solidly," as it is called, 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 its vast influence in the State of New York ; but throughout the whole of the United States they form but a very small per centage, which has no sensible effect upon the legislation of Congress or the constitution of the Government. My hon. friend, the member for Bradford, referred to a point which, I suppose, has really been the cause of this debate, and that was the temper of the United States in making some demands upon our Government. Well, I asked a question the other evening, after one that had been put by the noble lord (Lord R. Cecil),
72	Speech of Mr. Bright
-whether we had not claims upon them. I understand the claims made by the United States may amount to £300,000 or £400,000, and probably the sum of our claims may amount to as much as that. But if any man has a right to go to law with another, he is obliged to go into court, and the case must be heard before the proper tribunal. And why should it not be so between two great nations and two free governments ? If one has claims against the other, the other has claims against it, and nothing can be more fair than that those claims should be courteously and honestly considered. It is quite absurd to suppose that the English Government and the Government at Washington could have a question about half a million of money which they could not settle. I think the noble lord considers it a question of honour. But all questions of property are questions of law, and you go to a lawyer to settle them. Assuredly, this would be a fit case for the senate of Hamburg, just as much as the case between this country and Brazil. Well, then, I rest in the most perfect security that as the war in America draws to a close, if happily we shall become more generous to them, they will become less irritated against us ; and when passions have cooled down, I don't see why Lord Russell and Mr. Seward, Mr. Adams and, I hope, Sir F. Bruce, should not be able to settle these matters between the two nations. I have only one more observation to make. I apprehend that the root of all the unfortunate circumstances that have arisen is a feeling of jealousy which we have cherished with regard to the American Union. It was very much shown at the beginning of this war when an hon. member whom I will not name, for he would not like it now, spoke of " the bursting of the bubble republic." Well, I recollect that Lord John Russell, as he then was, turned round and rebuked him in language worthy of his name, character, and position. I beg to tell that gentleman and any one else who talks about bubble republics that I have a great suspicion that a great many bubbles will burst before that bubble bursts. Why should we fear a great nation on the American continent ? Some fear that a great nation would be arrogant and aggressive. But that does not at all follow. It does not depend altogether upon the size of a nation, but upon its qualities, and upon the intelligence, instruction, and morals of its people. You fancy that the supremacy of the sea will pass away from you ; and the noble lord, though wiser than many others,
will lament that " Rule Britannia," that noble old song, should become antiquated at last. Well, but if the supremacy of the sea excites the arrogance of this country, the sooner it becomes obsolete the better. I don't believe it to be for the advantage of this country or of any other that any one nation
On the Defence of Canada.	73
should pride itself upon what it terms the supremacy of the sea, and I hope the time is come—and I believe it is—when we shall find that law and justice shall guide the councils and direct the policy of the Christian nations of the world. Now, nature will not be baffled because we are jealous of the United States. The laws of nature will not be overthrown. At this moment the population of the United States is not less than 35,000,000 souls. If the next Parliament live to the age of the present, the population of the United States will be 40,000,000, and you may calculate that the rate of increase will be at rather more than million per year. Who is to gainsay this ; who is to contradict it ? Will constant snarling at a great republic alter the state of things, or swell us islanders to 40,000,000 or 50,000,000, and bring them down to 20,000,0W or 30,000,000:? Hon. members should consider these facts, and should learn from them that it is the interest of this nation to be one in perfect courtesy and perfect amity with the English nation on the other side of the Atlantic. I am certain that the longer the nation exists the less will our people be disposed to sustain you in any needless hostility against them, or in any jealousy of them ; and I am the more convinced of this from what I have seen of their conduct in the north of England during the last four years. I believe, on the other hand, that the American people, when this excitement is over, will be willing, so far as regards any aggressive acts against us, to bury in oblivion transactions which have given them much pain, and they will probably make an allowance which they may fairly make,—that the people of this country, even those high in rank and distinguished in culture, have had a very inadequate knowledge of the transactions which have really taken place in that country since the beginning of the war. Now, it is on record that when the author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was about beginning his great work, David Hume wrote a letter to him, urging him not to employ the French but the English tongue, because, he said, " our establishments in America promise a superior stability and duration to the English language." How far the promise has been in part fulfilled we who are living now can tell. But how far it will be more largely and more completely fulfilled in after times we must leave for after times to tell. I believe, however, that in the centuries which are to come it will be the greatest pride and the highest renown of England that from her loins have sprung a hundred—it may be two hundred—millions of men to dwell and to prosper on the Continent which the old Genoese gave to Europe. Now, Sir, if the sentiment which I have heard to-night shall become the sentiment of the Parliament
74	Speech of Viscount Palmerston
and people of the United Kingdom, and if the moderation which I have described shall mark the course of the Government and people of the United States, then, notwithstanding some present irritation and some fresh distrust—and I have faith, mind, both in us and in them—I believe that these two great Commonwealths may march on abreast, parents and guardians of freedom and justice, wheresoever their language shall be spoken and their power shall extend.
SPEECH OF THE RT. HON. VISCOUNT PALMERSTON,
MEMBER FOR TIVERTON.
HOWEVER long this discussion may have been, I, for one, cannot regret that it has taken place; for by the majority of members • in this House two opinions have been expressed which cannot fail to be useful in the quarters to which they relate. The first opinion is that which has been peculiarly dwelt upon- by the hon. member who has just sat down—namely, an earnest desire that the most friendly relations should be maintained between Great Britain and the United States of America ; and next, the opinion that we should maintain the connection which exists between this country and our provinces on the North American continent so _long as the people of those provinces are desirous of maintaining their connection with the mother country. The hon. member who has just spoken has made what in one respect may appear a paradoxical, but what, I think, as human nature is constituted, was a very conciliatory speech towards the United States. Though he reviewed a long course of events to prove that the United States have been most greviously ill-treated by this country, I don't agree with him in any one of these points ; it is no doubt a part of human nature that you cannot please any man or any set of men better than by telling them they have been exceedingly ill-used. I won't follow the hon. member when he complains that we admitted the belligerent rights of the South—an admission which was the result of necessity and not of choice ; I will not follow him into the discussion of the Trent question, which I thought had been fully disposed of, and into the questions which have arisen between the Government, or rather, I should say, the people of some parts of Canada and the United States, because, 'as he admitted himself, the conduct of the Canadian Government has been such as to be acknowledged gratefully by the Government of the United States as a full and complete fulfilment of the duties of friendly neighbourhood. The hon.
Om the Defence of Canada.	75
gentleman says there exists in this country a jealousy of the United States. Sir, I utterly deny that assertion. We feel no jealousy of the United States. On the contrary, I am sure that every Englishman must feel proud at seeing upon the other side of the Atlantic a community sprung from the same ancestry as ourselves, rising in the scale of civilization, and attaining every degree of prosperity—ay, and of power, as well as wealth. I therefore entirely deny that there has been in this country any feeling of jealousy as regards the United States. Undoubtedly there are men who, differing from the hon. gentleman in their theory of government, cannot see with the same approbation which he feels the trial on the other side of the Atlantic of a system of government which we do not think is the best or the most conducive to the happiness of those for whom it was established. But that is an entirely different thing from the feeling which the hon. gentleman has supposed. No doubt during this contest in America there has been experienced, and probably felt, both in the North and in the South, some irritation against this country. But that irritation was caused by the natural feeling which two parties in a quarrel have, that a third party who does not espouse either side is to a certain degree doing both sides an injury, or giving them some cause of complaint or of jealousy. The North wished us to declare on their side ; the South wished us to declare on theirs ; and as we maintained a perfect neutrality between the two some slight degree of irritation arose on both sides against us. But I am equally persuaded with the hon. gentleman that among the great bulk of the people of the United States there are feelings deeper than that irritation—feelings of goodwill towards the country with which their ancestors were connected ; and I am satisfied that when this unfortunate contest shall have ceased, whatever its termination, the natural feeling of goodwill and relationship which ought to prevail between the two nations will take the place of any temporary irritation which the war may have occasioned. I am quite satisfied also that England will not give to America any just cause of complaint—that war will not proceed from us ; and if war does not proceed from our side, and if, as the hon. gentleman thinks, it does not proceed from theirs, then we may have a well-founded expectation that in spite of adverse appearances for the moment, and in spite of the prognostications of many, the friendly relations between this country and the United States will not incur any real danger of interruption. But that is no reason why we should not use the means in our power•to place our fellow-citizens, if I may so call them, in Canada and the Northern Provinces in a state of defence should they be attacked. There is no better security for peace
76	Speech of Viscount Palmerston,
than strength to resist attack, if attack should come. That is no provocation. It is an abuse of terms to say that when you employ means to prevent danger you are provoking that danger and irritating the party against whom those precautions may be taken. If no animosity exists these precautions can have no effect except that of inspiring confidence in the party in whose favour they are made. If, on the other hand, there be a disposition to attack, that disposition is sure to be lessened in proportion as the chance of success is diminished. Now, I cannot agree with my right hon. friend (Mr. Lowe) in thinking that whatever are the difficulties—and difficulties undoubtedly there may be—in successfully resisting an attack, if it should be made by America, we should regard the defence of Canada as an undertaking which we could not succeed in accomplishing ; I think, on the contrary, that Canada may be defended, and I also feel that the honour of England and the good faith which is due to our loyal fellow-countrymen in these Northern Provinces require that, at all events, we should make the attempt successfully to defend her. Not concurring, therefore, in the argument of my right hon. friend that Canada cannot be defended, least of all do I concur in his conclusion, that, assuming defence to be impossible, we ought forthwith to withdraw our troops. I neither admit the argument nor assent to its conclusion ; and I am anxious that there should be no mistake on the subject, and that it may be fully understood that it is not the intention of the Government to follow the advice of my. right hon. friend and withdraw our troops from Canada. On the contrary, I feel that the honour of England demands, and that our duty as a Government binds, us to do everything—moreover, that we shall have the sanction of the British nation in doing everything—that we
can to defend our fellow-countrymen in Canada.	s I have
already said, I am persuaded that the tone of moderation which has prevailed in this debate must be useful both in Canada and in the United States. No doubt there are those who have endeavoured to persuade the people of the United States that there exists in this country a spirit of hostility towards them, and that we are looking out for grounds of quarrel. There can, however, be no real and just grounds for quarrel between us. We certainly shall not seek such grounds, nor shall we invent them ; and if the speech of the hon.' gentleman who has just sat down be a true and faithful exposition of the sentiments of the people of the United States, there can be no well-founded apprehension that the peace happily prevailing between us is in danger of interruption. I can confirm the statement of my right hon. friend, that the present relations between the two Governments
On the Defence of Canada.	77
are perfectly friendly and satisfactory. We have no complaint to make of the Government of the United States ; they have acted in a fair and honourable manner in all the matters that may have arisen between us. No doubt there are claims which they have put forward, not urging them at present, but laying the ground for their discussion at some future time. No doubt, also, we have claims upon them which we do not put forward at present, but have announced to be claims which at some future time may be discussed. But I should trust that we both feel it to be for the interest, ay, and for the honour, of the two countries, that peace should be preserved, and that matters of this sort ought to be capable of a friendly and amicable adjustment. All I can say is that the Government, as long as they continue to be chargeable with the conduct of affairs, will do everything that the honour and interests of the country permit them to do to maintain inviolate the relations of peace and friendship between the two countries.
SPEECHES
ON THE IRISH CHURCH.
{The following speeches were delivered by Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Whiteside respectively in the House of Commons on the 28th of March in the course of the debate on Mr. Dillwyn's motion—" That in the opinion of the House the position of the Irish Church Establishment is • unsatisfactory and calls for the early attention of Her Majesty's Government." The opener (Mr. Dillwyn), Sir G. Grey, and Mr. Gathorne Hardy preceded Mr. Gladstone as speakers in the debate, and a short summary of their speeches is here given.—Mr. DILLWYN, in moving his resolution, began by clearing the discussion of irrelevant matter. His motion was, he said, not, as had been suggested, a covert attack upon the outworks of the Established Church of England, which rested upon a different foundation from that of the Irish Church, and would be strengthened, not weakened, by the success of his motion. He then addressed himself to the real question,the state of the Irish Church Establishment, contending that it had not fulfilled its functions as a national Church, and that it had failed as a missionary establishment. On the other hand, it
tended to create	and disaffection among the Catholic population,
increased by the manner in which ecclesiastical patronage was dispensed, and by the exorbitant revenues of some of the clergy. He referred to recorded opinions of the House as to the unsatisfactory condition of the Irish Church Establishment, to the various motions made in the House, and to the number of petitions presented upon the subject ; replying, in conclusion, to objections which he supposed might be offered to his resolution.—The motion was seconded by the O'DONOGHUE, who drew a distinction between the Irish Church and the revenues of that Church, which were, he said, wholly independent of each other. The question had nothing to do with religious belief ; the only question was whether it was just and reasonable that the ecclesiastical revenues of Ireland should be monopolized by a small minority of the Irish people.—Sir G. GREY rose to state, on the part of the Government, the course they felt it to be their duty to take upon this question, and that was, not to give their assent to the resolution. After some preliminary remarks he observed that the resolution consisted of two parts : it declared, first, that the position of the Irish Church was unsatisfactory; secondly, that it called for the early attention of the Government. If the House passed this resolution, the Government would be bound to submit a bill to Parliament on the subject. Mr. Dillwyn did not propose merely to reform the Church, and the Government were not prepared to propose a measure to give effect to an object which would inflict the greatest evils upon Ireland, aggravating religious animosities, and retarding the moral and social improvement of the people. Except as a matter of feeling, which could not be redressed without creating evils of great magnitude, he did not believe there was any practical grievance connected with the Established Church of Ireland. Mr. G. HARDY replied to Mr. Dillwyn, disputing his theory as
On the Irish Church.	79
to the origin of the Irish Church, and denied that there was any depredation submitted to by the Roman Catholics of Ireland. There were ecclesiastical differences, as there were religious differences ; but there was perfect religious liberty and perfect religious equality in Ireland. Though the resolution did not directly assail the rights of property, it would involve an invasion of those rights. This question had been considered by Parliament over and over again, and it had been found impossible to deal with it. He reviewed the engagements made with reference to this question at the Union, and the declarations of Roman Catholics, confirmatory of the contract, at the time of Catholic Emancipation, and contended that the present motion was an attempt to violate those engagements as well as the principles of the Reformation. It had been said that nothing had been done by this Church of the minority ; he asserted and showed that much had been done. He trusted that the motion would receive from the House a direct and emphatic negative.]
SPEECH OF THE RT. HON. W. E. GLADSTONE,
MEMBER FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.
THE hon. member for Leominster has stated his views, as we must all have expected, with conspicuous ability. I am free to confess that there are points in his speech, and those neither few nor unimportant, in which I agree with the hon. member, and there are some which will carry with them the almost universal concurrence of the House. For my part, the hon. member's view of what I may call the ecclesiastical history of Ireland is, I think, more near the truth than that of my hon. friend the member for Swansea, who contended that until the latter part of the eleventh century there was nothing that could be called a Church in Ireland. I agree, also, with the defence of the Irish Church which the hon. gentleman has made, so far as it rests on the assertion that there is to be found no such amount of flagrant abuses as would of themselves justify a violent interference with its existence, or any license of Parliamentary attack. My belief is that as far as abuses, in the common sense of the word, are concerned,—that is, those which depend on the conduct of the bishops and clergy, and which are remediable by the wisdom and energy of the clerical body, or the purity of life of its lay members—it is my belief that the Irish Church is perfectly free from such abuses. We must all accord to that Church this praise : that her clergy are a body of zealous and devoted ministers, who give themselves to the high purposes of their sacerdotal functions in a degree not inferior to those pf any Christian Church. With respect to her prelates, they are many of them men of great learning, of the highest possible character, of extended charity both in act and opinion ; and as to that one of her prelates who a few years ago
80	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
was removed from among men—the late Primate of Ireland,—I join in the regret that has been expressed that any single word should have been introduced into this debate which would. seem for one moment to call in question the remarkable excellence of that character, the princely munificence which was united in him with a dignity and meekness rarely, if ever, exceeded by any bishop of any Church. There is great force, also, in what fell from the hon. gentleman upon the cardinal question at issue with respect to the social influence and utility of the existence of the Irish clergy through all the districts of the country. It would be great presumption in me to found this opinion upon my own personal observation, but the general effect of the evidence is that great social utility is exercised by the presence of a body of educated Christian gentlemen throughout the country ; and if they are unhappily precluded from ministering to the wants of their neighbours in their highest functions, yet in their moral and social influence they render valuable services to the community. But still, Sir, these propositions, important as they may be, do not touch the essence of the case, for the speech of the hon. gentleman the member for Leominster, if I understood him aright—and I do not cavil about words, but take it in its broader meaning and direct purpose—puts a negative not merely upon the motion which my hon. friend the member for Swansea has put before the House, but also upon the proposition contained in that motion—that the present position of the Irish Church is unsatisfactory. I am not going to fasten upon the hon. gentleman (Mr. Hardy) the assertion that there is nothing to cure and amend in the Irish Church ; but I do say that the whole upshot of his speech went to show that in regard to all the great, leading, cardinal conditions that determine the action of Parliament, we are as far from being called upon to assert that the condition of the Irish Church is unsatisfactory, that it ought to be regarded as directly the reverse. I am bound to take my share of the responsibility of the course which it has been announced by my right hon. friend (Sir G. Grey) the Government intend to pursue. We are not, able to concur in the motion of my hon. friend, and yet those who listened to the speech of my right hon. friend will recollect that, while we decline to affirm that the motion ought to receive the assent of the House, we are not prepared to deny the abstract truth of a part, and that the most important, of the motion. The mption before the House may be divided into two propositions—first, that, in the opinion of the House, the present position of the Irish Church Establishment is unsatisfactory ; and secondly, that it calls for the
On the Irish Church.	81
early attention of Her Majesty's Government. And no one can consistently vote for my hon. friend's motion unless he is prepared to vote for both these propositions. For my part I confess that I cannot refuse to admit the truth of the first, and perhaps most important, of these propositions. With regard to the second, I think that I am not only not required by the fulfilment of duty, but that it would be a departure from duty on the part of Her Majesty's Government if they were to assent to the motion, unless they were prepared to grapple with this great problem, of which the hon. gentleman the member for Leominster has shown us the difficulty, and to bring this Session, or, if not this Session, still very soon, to bring before Parliament some plan for the purpose of removing that unsatisfactory character of the Irish Establishment which we should have joined in asserting. This is a question on which I do not think that the course adopted by the Government will be a very popular one. Nothing, I admit, can be more unsatisfactory to a deliberative assembly than to hear admissions made in one portion of a speech and retracted, or, at all events, not followed out to their legitimate conclusions, in another; and it is obvious that this must, on the first view, appear to be the conduct of Her Majesty's Government ; but for all this, nothing can excuse our declining to look the truth fully in the face. This, perhaps, is not so much a question for present as for future consideration. Those who now undertake the resporisibility of delivering their opinions upon this question ought not to regard so much the satisfaction which they may give to their hearers at the present moment as to be careful in laying down principles founded in truth and justice—principles which cannot be affected by any change of time or circumstance. In the few observations which I desire to address to the House, I shall endeavour to follow the example of most of those who have preceded me, and to avoid the use of a single word which by any possibility can give offence. My hon. friend desires us to affirm that the present state of the Irish Church Establishment is unsatisfactory ; and, following in the path set by my right hon. friend, I should not be prepared to refuse my assent to his invitation, looking at it as an abstract proposition. Now, what is the position of the Irish Church Establishment ? It is this :—In a nation of between 5,000,000 and 6,000,000 people, about 600,000 or 700,000 have the exclusive possession of the ecclesiastical property of the country intended to be applied to the religious instruction of all. The amount of the ecclesiastical property has been stated at between 500,0001. and 600,0001. a year. It is not necessary to argue minutely upon details, but I imagine
82	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
that these figures will hardly be contested. Over and above that amount, one-fourth of the whole value of the tithes of the country was given to the landlords by an Act passed, I think, in 1838, under the plea of a consideration for collection, but, in fact, as an important political expedient for the purpose of inducing the landlords to place themselves between the people on the one side and the Protestant clergy on the other. The ecclesiastical property of Ireland, therefore, were it actually at our disposal, is considerably greater than the sum actually enjoyed by the Established Church. This being the relation between the members of the Established Church and the people at large, are there any other circumstances which tend to heighten the effect of this arrangement ? Now, in my opinion there is undoubtedly this important circumstance, that those to whose enjoyment the whole of this property is devoted form the wealthy class of the community. That is to say, they comprise the great bulk of the wealth of the community—the class, as must, of course, be observed, the best able to make provision for its own spiritual wants ; whereas the most numerous portion of the population of Ireland have among them almost the entire poverty of the country. That is the position of those who by the conclusion to be drawn from the speech of my hon. friend opposite (Mr. Hardy) are satisfactorily provided for, but whose position, looking at the question in an abstract point of view, I cannot regard in the same light. The hon. member has dwelt with great force and with great ingenuity upon all the arguments which for a long period of time have been made available—and made available, I am bound to say, by persons of great authority, to prove that which he disclaims,—and let him have the full benefit of the disclaimer,—but that which I conceive to be the legitimate deduction to be drawn from his speech—namely, that after a due allowance for human imperfections, the position of the Irish Church is satisfactory. The hon. gentleman says that this motion is an attack upon the Established Church of England, and that the Irish Church is selected for this attack because it is an outwork of the English Establishment. I have, of course, no right to complaim of the hon. member, or of any one else, for employing such an argument if he thinks it will support his views, but those who look at this country as one enjoying free institutions, and those who believe that the institutions of this country have their most solid and most indisputable foundation in the general approval of the public, will be slow to assent to the argument employed by the hon. gentleman. On the contrary, they might be disposed to say that that argument is capable of being inverted. I do not
On the Irish Church.	83
believe that the Establishment in England is in the slightest degree weakened by the existence of a different establishment in Scotland, although in the present case there is no question raised as to the existence of a rival establishment. The only question before the House is whether the exclusive possession of the ecclesiastical property of the country by the Established Church is satisfactory. I am bound to express my belief that the English Established Church is in a much stronger position than it would be if across the border there existed another establishment precisely agreeing with it in every particular of doctrine, discipline, and government, yet representing the faith of only one-eighth or one-ninth of the population. I must, therefore, decline assenting to the belief entertained by the bon. gentleman, that an ulterior intention of attacking the Establishment of England is a fair or natural deduction to be drawn from a resolution affirming only the unsatisfactory state of the Irish Established Church. Then the hon. member falls back upon another argument, and asserts that the Act of Union is a perpetually binding contract. His doctrine is that by the Act of Union the Protestant people of England bound themselves to the Protestant minority of Ireland perpetually to maintain the Established Church in that country, with a view to supplying the spiritual wants of that Protestant minority. I am bound to say that I must differ from the doctrine to which the hon. member appears to incline—that the Protestants in Ireland or the members of the Established Church in any one of the three kingdoms —for I believe them all to be on the same footing—are solely entitled to have provision made for their spiritual wants, without any regard being paid to the requirements of the remaining portion of the population. Neither our constitution nor our history will warrant such a conclusion. There is not the slightest doubt that if the Church of England is a national Church, and that if the conditions upon which the ecclesiastical endowments are held were altered at the Reformation, that alteration was made mainly with the view that those endowments should be entrusted to a body ministering to the wants of a great majority of the people. I am bound to add my belief that those who directed the government of this country in the reign of Queen Elizabeth acted on the firm conviction that that which had happened in England would happen in Ireland, and they would, probably, be hardly less surprised than is my hon. friend, the member for Swansea, if they could look down the vista of time and see that in the year 1864 the result of all their labours had been that, after 300 years, the Church which they endowed and established ministered to the religious wants of only one-eighth
G 2
84	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
or one-ninth part of the community. Before quitting the Act of Union, I may say that I do not deny the importance of such great statutes. In one sense they may be regarded as the landmarks of our Constitution. The first responsibility of every legislature in every age must be to adapt the laws and institutions of the country to the wants of the country which it governs ; and it would indeed be a miserable excuse—nay, more, the hon. member himself, I feel certain, would be the last man to urge it —if we were to say that, although we did not think an institution was beneficial, we thought it ought to be maintained, and we would maintain it, because it was made by a Parliament of men now dead, who while alive were not gifted with second-sight, and who were unable to foretell the circumstances in which we should be placed. Well, Sir, I admit it is very natural to say, " We must not be in a hurry in these matters,. that we must not expect rapid instances of wholesale conversion of a country." I think the hon. member for Leominster considers the work of the Church of Ireland, regarded as an establishment, that it should be a Missionary Church. He distinctly intimated the opinion, and I confess I agree with him. That appears to me to be far more rational than the contrary opinion, that the members of that Church are a privileged body, to be endowed, while all else are to be left to shift for themselves. It is very material, after the lapse of so many generations and several centuries, that we should consider what progress has been made in this matter. In the latter part of the seventeenth century an estimate was made by Sir W. Petty of the relative strength of Protestants to Roman Catholics in Ireland. I now take all classes of Protestants together for the purpose of more convenient comparison, and I find the result he arrived at was—Roman Catholics, 800,000 ; Protestants, 300,000. The date of that estimate was followed by a century of application of most rigid penal laws. There is not, I apprehend, the least doubt that, as regards particular classes of society, those penal laws to a certain extent did their work, but yet they failed to impress the mass of the population. And now we come to the year 1834, the first year of any trustworthy and accurate religious enumeration of the people of Ireland, and there we find that those who were represented in the time of Sir W. Petty by 800,000 and 300,000 had come to be respectively 6,400,000 of Roman Catholics and 1,500,000 of Protestants of various denominations. If the proportion between Roman Catholics and Protestants that existed in the time of Sir W. Petty had been maintained, the Protestants of 1834 ought not to have been 1,500,000, but ought to have been 2,400,000. So far, therefore, under the
On, the Irish, Church.	85
operation of the system of law then established—although aided by the severest pressure of the power of the civil Government—so far were we from making progress in the direction in which upon every religious ground we might desire, that much ground had actually been lost, and that the proportion of Protestants to Roman Catholics was more unfavourable than it had been 150 years before. The hon. member adverted to the census of 1861, and he paid a compliment to the Churchmen of Ireland for their readiness to have the real figures made known. I agree with him as to that. And undoubtedly we find that the proportion of Protestants to Roman Catholics in 1861 is somewhat less unfavourable than it had been in 1834 ; for now, while the Roman Catholics are 4,500,000, the Protestants are 1,300,000. But what has happened in the interval ? A famine of unequalled and awful pressure has decimated the ranks of the majority of the nation, and simultaneously with that famine the vastly extended settlements of America opened the arms of that continent wider and wider to invite the poverty of Ireland across the Atlantic to partake of her abundance, and thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, year by year quitted the ports of this country in order to settle and establish themselves in America, of whom it cannot for one moment be doubted that the vast mass of the emigrants who have reduced the population of Ireland by something like one-third did not in any degree in point of religious faith represent the entire population of the country, but that it consisted, not altogether, indeed, but in an overwhelming proportion of the Roman Catholic population. This is a matter of opinion, but I am bound to say it does appear to me, when we take into view the immensely powerful operation, first of all, of the famine, and still more of the emigration, that it is impossible to believe that the slight change which took place between 1834 and 1861 in the proportions of the respective religious communities indicates any real advance of a definite or measurable kind of the Protestant population as compared with the Roman Catholics. I am bound to say that in the times in which we live it is not too hastily to be assumed. that the exclusive and peculiar position of the Irish Established Church is to be regarded as necessarily useful to the progress of Protestantism. No doubt it relieves members of the Protestant Church in a great degree from the duty and business of making provision for their own spiritual requirements ; but it is a mistake to suppose that the exclusive establishment of one religion is in all circumstances favourable to the progress of that religion. I am quite sure, if we could suppose such a thing as the establishment of the Roman Catholic religion at this moment
86	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
in this country, that it would be anything but favourable to the progress of the Roman Catholic religion here. The case in Ireland may not be so strong as in the rather violent supposition I have just made, but it may serve to illustrate my suggestion that we are incurring some degree of danger when we hastily assume that, under all circumstances, the aid of the civil Government, in addition to the endowments of the country, is favourable to the propagation of a particular form of religion, irrespective of all the other circumstances of the country. In other times, and perhaps in other places, it has been said that the exclusive establishment of the Protestant Church in Ireland is necessary for the maintenance of loyalty and order in that country. We have not heard that argument to-night, and I believe we shall not hear it. There can be no more fatal error on the part of those who are charged with the government of a country than to do acts or to make provisions which imply that loyalty to the laws, to the throne, and to the institutions of the country is the particular and exclusive property of a small minority of the people. In my opinion, no more certain specific for the propagation of disloyalty can be suggested than the use of such language. Then the hon. member says there is no surplus available from the property of the Irish Established Church. I then ask myself—how does the hon. member measure a surplus ? What is the criterion by which he arrives at it? Is it admitted that the provision for the Established Church in Scotland relatively to the number of its members, and the provision for the Established Church of England relatively to the number of its members, are liberal provisions? I think it is. But this is beyond doubt—that the provision of the Established Church in Ire]and, although the members of that Church represent a far greater average of wealth than the Church of England or the Church of Scotland, yet the provision of the Established Church of Ireland represents a larger average of public endowment for the members of that Church than do either of the other establishments. It is not necessary to descend to statistics, but not far short of 11. per head, I imagine, would be the quota given by the ecclesiastical property of Ireland, without taking into consideration the 25 per cent. now in the hands of the landlords of Ireland ; while I do not think any estimate fairly made of the property of the Established Church of England would give more than something like 7s. or 8s. a bead as the quota provided by endowments for the maintenance of the Church. But, unhappily, we are also met with this difficulty. It is not upon the question of what the surplus would be if the endowments of the Church were distributed
On the Irish Church.	87
equally over the country. The hon. member himself alluded to the immense disparity in that respect, the immense inequality which prevailed in different parts of Ireland. You have towns in Ireland presenting, perhaps not in the same degree, but still, I apprehend, to a certain degree, the same deficiencies in the means of spiritual instruction, as compared with the Church population, as are to be found in this country ; and on the other hand you have large portions of the country in which there are equally large and liberal endowments, while the Church population can hardly be said to exist at all. It is sometimes the practice to call this an abuse, and to say there must be a remedy if you would adopt the principle of redistribution—if you would take all the tithes and estates of the Church of Ireland, throw them into hotch-potch, and then re-distribute them substantially according to the proportions in which the Church population is distributed over the face of the country. I must confess it appears to me that there are the greatest difficulties not only in practice, but also in principle, to the application of any such remedy. I can hardly imagine that the population of Ireland—especially of the provinces of Munster and Connaught, where the Church population is about five per cent. of the whole—would be content to see the tithes and endowments of those provinces abstracted in order that they might be carried into Ulster, where the Church has one-fifth of the population, or into Leinster, where it has one-eighth of the population. If that can be done, at least, I know of no Government that has ever yet been bold enough to propose such an act. Some steps, some slight steps, have been taken in that direction, but in the main the endowments and the tithes still remain locally applied, and I do not hesitate to say that I believe it to be not only inexpedient but unjust, especially in the circumstances of Ireland, to interfere with the general application of the principle of local endowments. But if the principle of local distribution and enjoyment of endowments and tithes is sound, then the Church in its present exclusive possession of endowments is doomed, I fear, to the perpetual presentation of this painful anomaly—of a clergy appointed to do the work of shepherds of souls, while in many parishes of Connaught and Munster these flocks are to be reckoned, not by tens, but by units, presenting a most painful contrast—painful to every feeling mind, painful, I am convinced, to those clergy themselves—the contrast between the actual state of things and a National Church endowed for the spiritual wants of the country. The hon. gentleman in his argument, I am bound to say, has not maintained the proposition that tithes are the property of the landlord. But that is a proposition
88	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
that is commonly advanced. It is a proposition commonly maintained, that tithes are not paid by the soil, but are paid by the landlord, and therefore that entitles the tithes to be applied exclusively to the maintenance of the system which, in the great majority of cases, is the religion of the landlord. But I apprehend it to be perfectly clear, while not the property of the agriculturist they are not the property of the landlord either, but that they are property subject to restraint and conditions, and for the right disposal of which the country and the Legislature of the country are responsible, and which, considered as property, undoubtedly, if their hands were free, in any new case it would be their duty to apply for the benefit of the largest and the neediest portion of the community. All this appears to me to indicate in the present position of the Church of Ireland inherent elements which show that her difficulties cannot be surmounted by the wisdom of her rulers or by the piety and devotion of her clergy, but that they are essential elements of a false position. That I say without in the slightest degree pointing to what ought to be done if it were in our choice with respect to the Church of Ireland. I have spoken entirely with reference to her present position as the exclusive possessor of the largest endowments of the country, and I confess I am obliged to come to the conclusion to which the argument of the hon. gentleman who preceded me seems to lead, that this is an unsatisfactory state of things. My hon. friend the member for Swansea says that this unsatisfactory state of things calls for the early attention of the Government. What is the meaning of these words ? Now, we cannot take exception to the motion on the ground that it is obscure. No doubt the meaning of the first part of the resolution may be obscure ; for of course we are to read it according to its words, and not according to the speech of my hon. friend ; but there can be no doubt as to the meaning of the second part. It clearly says that within a very short period—if not in the dying days of this Parliament—the Executive Government of the country ought to grapple with these anomalies and inequalities which subsist in the ecclesiastical state of Ireland, and propose a measure for the purpose of settling them. Is that so ? What are the circumstances which determine the duty of a Government to grapple with a great national question of first-rate difficulty and importance ? The hon. member who preceded me stated, I think with great force, the many difficulties which we have here to encounter. But, above all, I dwell upon this fact, that neither the hon. member who moved the resolution, nor the hon. member for Tralee, who seconded it, while they described the existing evils in terms of a sufficiently strong nature,
On the Irish Church.	89
pointed out a remedy. The whole question is, What is the remedy ? I must say, I thought there was the greatest force in what fell from the hon. member for Leominster when he came to discuss the nature of the remedy. We no sooner come to look upon this question practically than we light upon a whole nest of problems of the utmost political difficulty. This is a subject not to be dealt with in schools or in the closets of philosophers. It is not to be dealt with in the debating societies of politicians. Abstract justice, irrespective of the circumstances of men, might dictate the adoption of measures which, upon the whole, would form, perhaps, as near au approximation of what was fair and equitable as human nature would permit us to adopt; but we live in a country where the course of policy is to be determined by the actual feelings of the country itself.' And what are the materials with which the Government is to undertake the settlement of the question ? Look at the success of those who have gone before us. The earliest dealing with this question was at the period of the Union, when it was the intention of Mr. Pitt to retain the Established Church in the possession of her privileges and endowments, but to make suitable provision for the Established Church by the side of that establishment. I cannot concur in the censures which have been passed on Mr. Pitt for the non-fulfilment of that intention. Why did he fail ? Because it was beyond his power, because the views represented in the mind of old King George III., who both in his virtues and his errors was a king eminently national, and who represented the convictions of his countrymen—the views of which old King George was the centre were too strong for Mr. Pitt to overcome. At a subsequent period the House of Commons showed its disposition to adopt mild and healing measures, without any interference with the temporal privileges of the Established Church, of a provision for the Roman Catholic clergy. But these propositions never received the sanction of Parliament, and it is fair to add that if they failed it was not on account of an opposition such as might, perhaps, have proceeded from the vast bulk of those who opposed the concession of privileges to the Roman Catholics. Don't let us forget that we are not dealing with a question of money alone. The endowment of a Church is undoubtedly accompanied with restraints, I will not say with burdens, and to those restraints objections have been felt by the Roman Catholic clergy, and a doubt has arisen, and is gathering strength from year to year, as to the propriety of accepting any such endowment accompanied by its restraints. Nay, if we are rightly informed, these doubts have reached such a point that the Roman Catholic clergy not only do not desire but would reject and repudiate any share in the endow-
90	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
meat of the Irish Church. What, then, is a Government to do with respect to this question P My hon. friend will not tell me that it will be consistent with the duty of the Government to frame a Bill and throw it on the table to take its chance, and say, " We have done our part ; the responsibility rests with the House." That is not the mode in which we should proceed with such a question. But where are the materials with which my hon. friend would proceed to work ? I suppose him to be in the position of the Government, and to have introduced his Bill. What support does he think he would receive ? Would the Presbyterians of Scotland readily support a measure which transferred the endowments of Ireland to the Roman Catholic clergy Does he think the Nonconformists of England would support him ? Were he on the Treasury bench, what support does he think such a project would receive with the hon. member for Sheffield at his post ? But it may be said there is another mode of proceeding : you may transfer these endowments from religious to secular purposes. I am bound to say that in my belief the mind of the country is against such a project, and I think my hon. friend would find this a more difficult proposal still. Could he, by the force of his own influence and authority, undertake to heal all these wounds, and solve all these difficulties ? He must have men, he must have representatives of the people, he must have the people out of doors. On what plan, by what mode of proceeding, does he expect to be able to unite such a force of public opinion as would enable him, I don't say to pursue this or that particular method of dealing with the question, but to substitute for the present state of things another which would be essentially better ? But if he is not prepared to assist us to materials, I confidently expect his assent to my next proposition. Surely it is not consistent with the first elements of the duty of a Government to promote the agitation of a question in this country, and to rake up all the embers of former animosities. What I am doing I can assure the hon. member is simply performing my duty as a member of this House, very imperfectly no doubt, and giving my opinion on the motion before us in common with other gentlemen, and in such a manner, I hope, as does not offend the personal feelings of any one. It is a serious thing for Governments to deal lightly with such questions. We are not without lessons from the history both of this and other questions of the same sort within the last twenty years. This question was taken up in 1834 and 1835 by the Liberal party of this country, then possessed of an ascendency—the remains of the great triumph of the Reform Bill—such, perhaps, as it has enjoyed at no other period. Frankly, I must say, looking back
On the Irish Church.	91
to the proceedings of those days, and endeavouring to form an impartial judgment upon them, the Liberal party boldly cast in its lot with the fortunes of this question and with the feelings of the Irish people, and well and stoutly was the battle fought. But the result tended seriously to damage the power and strength of the Liberal party in this country. The remembrance of one great repulse and of one signal defeat, for such it was, after a campaign of several years, is a serious warning to those who might be disposed prematurely to revive this question. The first question for a Government is whether they can do that which will tend towards the interests of the people over whose interests they are in an especial manner appointed to watch. The answer to that question must govern their conduct ; and it will not do for a Government to shape their conduct according to anything extraneous to that answer. If they can see their way to the attainment of a satisfactory end it is their duty to grapple with all the difficulties of the case ; it is their duty to consider whether there is a surplus or no surplus ; it is their duty t') consider what obligations of the Act of Union remain to be fulfilled, and how they ought to be performed ; it is their duty to consider whether in the event of any change, any modification, in the Established Church, the property of that Church ought to be applied in one way or another. But it is not their duty to consider these questions at all—it is not their duty to propagate one opinion or another on the subject, unless they see their way to using their influence, whatever that may be, to bring about a state of things most in consonance with the general principles of justice, the welfare of the whole community, and particularly with the feelings and happiness of the people of Ireland. The dictates of propriety and good sense must govern the proceedings of any administration which means to do its duty to the country. These principles must govern us on this occasion, whether or not we may be able to deny the proposition of the hon. gentleman with reference to the position of the Irish Church; and I for one am not able to deny it. We therefore feel that we ought to decline to follow him into the lobby, and declare that it is the duty of the Government to give their early attention to the subject ; because if we gave a vote to that effect we should be committing one of the gravest offences of which a Government could be guilty—namely, giving a deliberate, a solemn promise to the country, which promise it would be out of our power to fulfil.
92
SPEECH OF THE RT. HON. JAMES WHITESIDE,
MEMBER FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN.
ONE or two observations made by the hon. gentleman who introduced the motion, on his past conduct in this House with regard to the question before us, deserve to be noticed. The form and the words of his resolution are of no importance whatever. The real object we have before us is to discover what is the purpose of the hon. gentleman in moving the motion which he has laid upon the table of the House. The terms of the motions he has made from time to time have varied with the falling fortunes of his party. A few sessions ago, on a summer's night, I heard a motion made by an hon. gentleman who more thoroughly represented the opinion of the Old Puritans than any other speaker I ever listened to. That gentleman represented Rochdale, and I was then informed of that which I had not known before, that he was a leading member of the Nonconformist party. He spoke with great candour and fairness. He explained that if the opportunity of dealing with the Irish Church presented itself, he proposed to put all its property up tq auction in the Incumbered Estates Court ; and it was suggested that a portion of the proceeds should be devoted to the erection of a lunatic asylum. The question then arose, who ought to be the first inmate of the lunatic asylum to be so erected ? There was a remarkable sentence, though a short one, at the end of that revolutionary speech. When he disposed of the property of the Church, of the glebes and of the tithe rent-charges, the question remained, what was to be done with the churches themselves ? and the hon. gentleman answered it in these terms :—" With regard to the sacred edifices, I think perhaps that the most satisfactory arrangement might be to leave them to the believers in that Church." Turning to the names of those who voted in favour of the motion made on that occasion, I find " Mr. Dillwyn " among them. The hon. member now brings forward a motion in as vague terms and as indefinite as the right hon. gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer would desire it to be. The motion has no particular meaning, if interpreted according to the hon. gentleman's language; but if interpreted by the vote he gave on the occasion to which I have just referred, it means the abolition, the destruction of the Established Church in Ireland, with some doubt as to whether the Protestants of that country should be allowed to retain the edifices in which they worship. I say " Yes ;" for no doubt that speech was carefully corrected by the hon. gentleman who made it. A
On the Irish Church.	93
few days after he had made that speech I received a petition from a gentleman with whom I was not acquainted, the vicar of Rochdale, and it was accompanied by a letter stating that the hon. gentleman never would be allowed to repeat the able speech he had delivered that night. I doubt very much if the sagacious gentleman who now represents Rochdale would deliver a speech in the revolutionary strain of the gentleman whom he has succeeded. When I came into the House this evening, the hon. gentleman (Mr. Dillwyn) was saying how shocked he was at the corruption of a Bishop of the Church appointing his nephew or his son to a chaplaincy, or making him a rector. Now 1 beg of the hon. gentleman to extend his political vision to the conduct of judges and chancellors before he begins to moralize in an affected tone of hypocritical lamentation on the corruption of the Church of Ireland. Let him look around him and see the conduct of those to whom he lends his political support. The hOn. gentleman has been well rebuked for the remarks he made on the enormous wealth of the late Primate of Ireland. Ay, that most reverend prelate was wealthy, but how did he devise his riches ? What an example to your nobility and gentry ! The disposition of his property was in accordance with that charity and piety which had characterized his life. On that last day, when his body was being carried to the grave, it was followed by 600 gentlemen on foot, and in that procession was the Iliad of the Church of Rome and the head of the Church of Scotland in Ireland, who thus testified a respect to the Primate's memory in which I am afraid the hon. gentleman would be indisposed to share. The hon. gentleman says that various resolutions have been passed from time to time, but nothing has been done to relieve the Roman Catholics of Ireland with regard to the property of the Established Church. Observe, it is immaterial, for the purpose of my argument, how much or how little may have been done ; but have not tithes been. commuted, have not charges connected with the Church been abolished, has not ministers' money been done away with ? I remember a Catholic gentleman saying to me after ministers' money was abolished, " Your party seem angry because ministers' money has been voted away, but you ought not to regret that—it was the last practical grievance we had against the Church." By the tithe commutation, tithes were changed into a rent-charge, and the burden was shifted from the tenant to the landlord ; and I am glad to say that many landlords refuse to accept the 25 per cent., being too conscientious to receive it for the collection. The University of Dublin refuses to receive it. Then, what has .been
done in the case of the Church lauds	The occupiers of those
94	Speech of Mr. Whiteside
lands are enabled to buy the fee-simple, subject to a small rent-charge. The result is, that more than two-thirds of the present tenants have purchased the fee-simple, and the remaining tenants, no doubt, will follow the example thus set them. This real practical grievance follows—that the tenants on those lands are comfortable and happy ; they have nothing to complain of, they are more happy and prosperous than most of the tenants on the properties of private landlords. ThiS is what is said to be a case calling for immediate legislation to relieve the suffering tenants of Ireland. Now, having disposed of that point, I come to the principle of the motion : and I ask whether it is accurate of the hon. gentleman to say that nothing has been done to relieve the Roman Catholics. The Irish Parliament gave £8,000 a year to Maynooth when the population of Ireland was 8,000,000, the English Parliament gives £30,000 per annum when the population is scarcely more than 5,000,000. Some time past a grant of £25,000 a year for education was all that the most sanguine Irishman asked for, while the British Parliament has granted £300,000 per annum for that purpose ; and I have heard the Secretary for the Colonies state that of that sum the Roman Catholics received £240,000 for their schools. They have got chaplains in poor-houses, reformatories, and prisons, and in the army and navy, and I venture to say that since the Union the British Parliament has given no less than £300,000 a year to those who never before had a single shilling of the public money. I ask whether, under these circumstances, it can fairly be said that nothing has been done for the Roman Catholics ? The hon. member said his motion was a motion for restitution. Restitution of what, and restitution to whom ? Why, the argument of the hon. gentleman to-night—if he will excuse me, so far as it is intelligible—shows that he means spoliation of the Church and handing over the plunder to those to whom it never belonged, and who never had any equitable or legal title to it. Not satisfied with having given us his views on temporal matters, the hon. gentleman ascended into a question of a spiritual character. I should not be at all surprised to see the Roman Catholics and the Protestants combine to make a united attack upon him. He has found out the Island of Saints was only christianized in the year 1160. I am afraid he has fallen rather short in his reading, and if all his information is equally accurate he will be a valuable historical instructor to the House. If he had read the Confession, or Hymns of St. Patrick, which he would have found in the library of the House, he would have seen what the old records of the ancient Church of Ireland stated upon that point. We venerate and respect that ancient Church, which the hon gentle-
On the Irish Church.	95
man will find by the Book of Armagh, which was written in the Irish tongue in the sixth century, and which contains the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. That book was written for the purpose of instructing those who spoke the Irish language in those days, as well as the hon. gentleman who never heard of Christianity 'existing in Ireland before the year 1160. Speaking of the old Irish Church with all respect and veneration, and admitting that it was an ancient Church and an apostolic Church, our argument is that every record that is brought to light, translated, and published to the world, shows that the Church of England as it now exists does maintain the ancient truth which formed the original foundation of the Church of Ireland. It may be said that other things have been since developed, but we reject the theory of development, and prefer to stand upon ancient truth. The arguments as to the secession of the bishops I have listened to in silence. I reply that the bishops who sat in the House of Lords in Queen Elizabeth's time are confessed and admitted to be the ancient Catholic bishops of Ireland. They were learned men, well taught in their peculiar vocation, and they believed—as I have a right to argue —that the change then made was consistent with the ancient primitive Catholic faith of Ireland. I believe all those bishops, with the exception of one, did adopt the change of faith, and sat in the House of Lords in Ireland until their life's end. The present Dr. Trench is the direct successor of the then Archbishop, who was himself the direct successor of that Archbishop who was a witness to the charter of Runnymede, signed by King John, who was the legitimate successor of the ancient bishops of Ireland, as is admitted on all hands. I assure you it is so, and that Archbishop Wauchob, who is put into the picture of the " Council of Trent," was no more the Archbishop of Armagh than I am. The real Archbishop was Dowdell, who was recognized as such by Queen Mary, and sat as such in the House of Lords. The Roman Catholics have represented that Wauchob was the Archbishop, but he was never in possession of the see, having merely been appointed in Rome, as all antiquarians well know. I trust, therefore, that the next time the hon. gentleman makes a speech on the Irish Church he will recollect our Christianity began before the twelfth century. The hon. gentleman has represented that many petitions have been started upon the subject of the Church of Ireland, and this brings me to a very important part of the subject—namely, what originated the present motion. I had expected to have seen the hon. member for Birmingham in his place, and I am grievously disappointed that he is not here to maintain in free
96	Speech of Mr. Whiteside
and honourable debate the opinions and the principles he has lately propounded in a letter to the chief magistrate of Dublin, stimulating him to form with a Liberal party in this House a combination—I might rather call it a confederation—to attack the established institutions of this country. I ask, therefore, why is he not here to maintain his views to-night ? He has written, and recently written, and I presume it has led to the petitions which have been spoken of, as remarkable a letter as ever was penned, in which he says that if the Lord Mayor of Dublin and the people of Ireland will join a certain Liberal party—it is a mistake to believe in its existence—in this country, they will all act together for the destruction of the law of primogeniture and of the Established Church. That is a very natural and a very logical course for the hon. member for Birmingham to take, and if I held his opinion I should do the same thing,. because an Established Church and a pure democracy cannot coexist. Therefore, if I were in favour of a pure democracy, I should say get rid not only of the order of knighthood and of the nobility, but also of the Established Church, as being a standing opposition to the principles we maintain, and which we must clear out of the way in order to carry out our intentions of introducing a constitution which may be manufactured at Birmingham, but which is never heard of elsewhere. Now, this reads us an important lesson, for it shows that the Church of England is bound up in the property of the country, and therefore we ought to understand our duty as friends of the Church as well as the enemies of the Church know theirs ; and when they attack the Church and the property of the country, no matter under what form of words, it is our duty to resist their movements, regardless of the pretence, the excuse, or the sophistry by which they may seek to cover their attacks. The hon. gentleman concluded without any plan, without offering any direct idea, and without suggesting to the House what it should do. He has said nothing tangible, but has left us entirely in the dark upon the real point with which we have to deal. He cast upon the Government the responsibility of discovering the course which should be adopted, and they have placed that important duty upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who has made as satisfactory a speech upon the subject as it was possible to deliver. The Secretary for the Home Department has also made a very manly and honourable speech. I entirely agree with him that to carry the motion in the sense of the mover would directly tend to create civil confusion, and to the excitement of the worst feelings and passions in Ireland, and to the general disturbance of that country. I believe that was as accurate a description of the consequences
On the Irish Church.	97
that would ensue from the carrying of the motion in the sense in which it was made as it would be possible to give. I think it reflects credit upon that right hon. gentleman, that, entertaining, as he does, that opinion, he had the candour and the honour to express it in language that we can understand, and not to spoil it by hypocritical mystification. I thank the right hon. gentleman for having spoken the sense of the Government, which ought to have some opinions and some principles upon questions of this kind, which touch the fundamental interests of the country ; and I take the liberty of saying that if, when the institutions of the country are in danger, there is a want of profound conviction with regard to these questions, the want of established principles cannot be supplied by eloquence however brilliant, or by abilities however splendid, although that eloquence might mislead and delude, and those abilities might perplex and deceive. When I turn to the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I wish the House to ask themselves what was the motive of the right hon. gentleman in delivering it. He censured my hon. friend, the member for Leominster, for saying that the condition of the Church of Ireland was satisfactory. My right hon. friend did not say it in the terms or manner which the right hon. gentleman has supposed ; but I will put a question to the right hon. gentleman—Is the condition of the Church of England satisfactory ? Is it satisfactory in London ? What does the Bishop of London say upon that subject ? Is it satisfactory in many parishes throughout England ? Is it satisfactory in Wales ? I have before me a newspaper which contains the report of a dinner at Swansea, at which the gentleman who proposed the health of the borough member said, " As soon as the hon. gentleman has disposed of the Church in Ireland he will then be the better able to attack the Church in Wales." I ask the right hon. gentleman, Is the condition of the Church in Wales satisfactory ; and is the proper method of dealing with a great institution planted in the soil, and which is the mainstay of the monarchy, as I firmly believe, that which was adopted by the right hon. gentleman, who commenced his speech by asking whether the condition of the Church was satisfactory ? The condition of the Christian Church is scarcely satisfactory in any part of the world. It has still to contend against the vices, the sins, and the crimes of mankind ; and if it is sometimes baffled and defeated, he does not show himself to have very exalted ideas of the uses of a Church who relies upon its comparative failure as an argument for its abolition. The Chancellor of the Exchequer says that he will vote for the first part of the resolution. I ask the House to observe the conduct of the right hon. gentleman. The last time I
11
98	Speech of Mr. Whiteside
had occasion to offer a feeble reply to a speech of his it was upon the subject of Parliamentary Reform. He then made a speech in favour of the motion of the hon. member for Leeds, but he did it in such a manner, with so many provisoes, and safeguards, and involutions, that the hon. gentleman who expected his support found in the end that he had gained nothing practical. It appeared to me then, and I am confirmed in the opinion by the speech which I have heard from his lips to-night, that he desired to lay a foundation for the adoption of a new scheme of policy at another and not very distant day, when he may be able to say that the time has come and the change of feeling has been evoked out of doors which will enable him to do that which at present he fears to attempt. This, he says, is not a question for the present, but for the future. Observe, Sir, principle has nothing to do with the matter. There is no principle in the business—no conviction. " A speech has been delivered by the Secretary of State for the Home Department with which I cannot agree ; it must be qualified, it must be explained away and evaded, and the best way to evade an honest policy such as that of the right hon. baronet is to say that the time has not yet come when I can with safety sever the Irish from the English Church, and call upon the Protestants of Ireland to be loyal, dutiful, and respectful, when Parliament shall be found insensible to the obligations which past Parliaments have incurred, and, forgetful of their duty as statesmen and men of honour, adopt the part of political swindlers." I shall not allow the right hon. gentleman to escape by his argument upon the Act of Union. He shall not mention the names of Pitt and Castlereagh, and imagine that he can shuffle out of a great statute like that by such evasions and quibbles as he has resorted to to-night. Fundamental Acts of the Legislature are not to be got rid of in that manner, any more than the fundamental institutions of the empire are to be placed in danger, not indeed by any present Act, not by any present motion, but by laying the foundation and sowing the seeds of that future policy which will be adopted when the noble viscount is no longer at the head of the Government to restrain or to direct it. The right hon. gentleman says that he cannot negative the first part of the resolution. It seems to me to be the infirmity of a gifted mind such as he possesses to be unable, when a direct question is submitted to his understanding, to take a direct course in regard to it. He cannot deny the resolution, and the only way to act is to divide it into two halves, and having separated it into parts to say, " The first part of that resolution will enable me to make a speech in which I can indicate a policy
On the Irish Church.	99
upon which I do not intend to act now, and I will resist the last part of it because I have no plan, because I have nothing to suggest, because I am asked the question What is a member of the Government to do under such circumstances ? ' and I answer, To do what he has done,' to make as mischievous a speech as is possible. That, I think, is the course I ought to take." I am not complaining of the hon. gentleman who moved the resolution and his friends, who are conscientiously opposed to the existence of an Established Church ; but I do complain of a Minister who, himself the author of a book in defence of Church and State, when one branch of the Christian Church is attacked and in danger, delivers a speech every word of which is hostile to its existence when the right time comes for attacking it. The right hon. gentleman proceeded to make a statement as to the property of the Church. Was that honest ? In the calculation which he gave he seemed to me to have included only the members of the Church in Ireland, but in England every parishioner and all the Dissenting body. ( " No, no," from the Chancellor of the Exchequer.) I think you did. That is my opinion. If it was worth my while to detain the House I could show by documents before me that the right hon. gentleman has enormously exaggerated the property of the Church in Ireland. And why did he do so ? Was it not for the purpose of exciting feelings against the Church ? Was it in favour of the Church ? Was it to protect it ? Was it to preserve it ? Was it not to draw by the hand of a master a picture of the poverty of the country and the wealth of the Church, and to leave for future consideration what should be done with the institution which, according to the terms of the speech, was condemned ? I ask any one to consider what was the meaning of the picture which the right hon. gentleman drew of the two provinces of Munster and Connaught. His argument, if I understand it, means this : —" The property there reserved for the Church is far beyond its necessities. It is far beyond the wants of the Church in that quarter. That being so, what are we to do with it ? It is impossible for me to suggest what should be done with that property. That I leave to the councils of the future. I may hereafter be called upon to say what is to be done with it, but I wish that my speech should be on record in Hansard, showing that my argument was that that property may be abstracted from the Church for some purpose or other, either for the Roman
Catholic Church or for some other object ; but it is not to remain the property of the Church." If the argument did not mean
that, what.did it mean? I have from the Bishop of Cork and his chaplain an account of that diocese—which I cannot stop to
11 2
100	Speech of Mr. Whiteside
read—very different from that which the right hon. gentleman has given—an account of churches built, of flourishing congregations, and of the restoration of the ancient cathedral, partly by the piety and -munificence of those attached to the Church and partly by aid obtained from other quarters. Take, too, the case of Connaught. I have fi om Lord Pldnkett's son and chaplain an account of that diocese directly contrary to that which the right hon. gentleman has given. There are now flourishing congregations where formerly there were none ; there are twice the number of clergymen and three times the number of churches. " How many," said the right hon. gentleman, " are there of one persuasion and how many of another " A great statesman said formerly that it was an evil day for mankind when questions of government and policy were to be decided by a majority told by the head. The men who do most good in Connaught and Munster ; the men who are most active there—and I have heard Mr. Guinness describe the people as honest, faithful, and docile—would not go there if they could not enjoy the ministrations of a Christian Church. Abolish the Church, and all the men who are most useful, all the men who stimulate and reward industry, would quit the country where they were not allowed that worship. You say, " No ;" I say " Yes." The question is, How is it to be proved ? I venture to say that I know more of the feeling of these gentlemen than you do. Enlightened men may smile at the notion of persons being regardful of the ministries of the Christian Church, but you know nothing of the Protestants of Ireland if you think that this.is a matter of indifference to them. This argument as to the property of the Church, coming from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, fills me with amazement. The Attorney-General sits near him ; I should like to know whether he will endorse it. The Church is a corporation, and its property is vested in it as such. It got that property by no Act of Parliament. It got it at a period anterior to any Act of Parliament. The right hon. gentleman is under the delusion, which has been participated in by many, that the property of the Church was spoliated from Rome. I will not open this book (holding a volume in his hand), but it contains the Patent Rolls published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls, and any gentleman who looks at it will see in Ulster, for instance, estate after estate given to the Church upon condition that they should be enclosed, planted, and built upon. They have been enclosed, planted, and built upon. They have been possessed for 300 years, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer seeks about for arguments to cast doubts upon such a title as that. That is not all. It is true that the fortunes of the
On the Irish Church.	101
Church in Ireland went with the monarchy. As Queen Elizabeth passed through Cheapside the Lord Mayor presented her with a Bible. It was the principles of that book that she undertook to uphold, and those are the principles which the Church of Ireland has upheld since. If that policy was a mistake, then the great councillors, the famous lawyers, and the wise statesmen of that reign were all wrong when they endeavoured to extend to Ireland the institutions of this country, and to plant among that people a Church with a sufficient number of laymen, who might by their industry and energy maintain and support it. I grapple with those who say that the Protestants have not accomplished that object. Who built the towns in Ulster ? The Protestants. Who established manufactures there ? They did, and while there were only about 50 Protestants in the province. There are nearly a million now. Aud do you, let me ask, imagine that the Wesleyan Methodists, or the members of the Church of Scotland, who side by side fought in the same breach, will turn against each other to accomplish the designs of a few Scotch Radicals and English voluntaries ? The right hon. gentleman opposite does not understand the feelings of those against whom this motion is pointed. Whom does this flourishing province of Ulster return to Parliament ? Why, 30 members, some of whom have sat in Parliament for two centuries. If hon. gentlemen will read the list of representatives for Fermanagh in Parliament in the days of Oliver Cromwell they will find that it was then represented by Mr. John Cole, who is sitting here now. And it is well you should understand that the principles and convictions which prevailed in that province in the reign of Elizabeth and James I. exist there still, and that on the day upon which the Church of the Protestants in Ireland is struck down, the men by whom those convictions are maintained will be likely to become your deadly enemies. The Chancellor of the Exchequer says the argument derived from the Union is nothing, and has come to the conclusion that the Government of which he is a shining ornament can do nothing but sit where they are. But, says the right hon. gentleman, " the time will come when your patience shall be rewarded, if I can only induce you now to believe my mystical speech." That is the way in which I understand his argument ; but what, I would ask, does he think of the Act of Settlement ? When Charles II. was restored, that great fundamental statute provided that the property of the Church, alienated from it in times of violence and confusion, should be restored. That was accordingly done, and I should like, therefore, to know how that Act of Parliament which settled the property of private individuals, as well as of the Church, is to be
102	Speech of Mr. Whiteside
disposed of. But passing over the Act of Settlement we come to the Act of Union, and Lord Castlereagh, in introducing that measure, pledged the faith of England to the principle that if Ireland assented to the Union there should be one law and one Church for both countries, and that there could be no question of a numerical majority against the Church, because, after the passing of the Union there would be only one Church, and that the members in the whole United Kingdom should be regarded as being in a vast majority in favour of its protection. That principle is embodied in the fifth article of the Act of Union, which is declared to be fundamental, and Lord Lyndhurst, in speaking of it in a judicial judgment, pronounced it to be fundamental between the two nations. Yet we are told that it is in the power of the majority to overthrow this article of the Union. Now, all I have to say to you is that the day you do so the Union is at an end. The evidence of Dr. Doyle went to show that, even according to the maxims of the Church of Rome itself, it would be impossible to meddle with the property of the Established Church thus settled, and the whole body of the Roman Catholic bishops signed a declaration to the same effect. We now, however, gather from the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the whole question is to be reopened, and that not for the purpose of carrying out any definite plan, but of encouraging all that mischief which the right hon. gentleman the Secretary for the Home Department so graphically described. The speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is, I may add, calculated to separate him from the policy of the noble viscount at the head of the Government, who stated in his conclusive reply to the motion of Mr. Miall, to which I have already referred, in a manner worthy of the name he bears—for Sir J. Temple was one of those who supported the Act which secured its property to the Church—that upon this question we must do with the Church property in England as in Ireland, and that that property cannot be diverted from the great purposes for which it was originally designed. I have no doubt the noble lord will vindicate his consistency in this matter, and will not be induced to express approval of the ambiguous policy enunciated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It would be far more useful, far more beneficial, for the Government to say plainly and unequivocally what they would do, than to cause a question of this kind to agitate and vex the minds and feelings of all classes of the people of Ireland. The speech of the right hon. gentleman was calculated to produce those results, but its effect was cancelled by the peech of the Secretary for the Home Department ; and I have no doubt that the noble viscount, if he speaks, will maintain the
On the Irish Church.	103
principles he has ever expressed, and will not prove himself capable of being acted upon by the fascinating influence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. This is a very plain and easy question, touching the fundamental institutions of the empire. My argument is based, not upon the numbers we may happen to have in any parish—though we have a greater number in most of the parishes now than at any former period—my argument is that the property of the Church belongs to it as an ancient corporation, linked with the Crown, and linked with the peerage in the common bond of our free Constitution. And I trust sincerely that this Church, the United Church—one and the same, indivisible, in England and Ireland—may long continue endeared to the affections and cherished in the hearts of the people.
SPEECHES
ON THE DEATH OF MR. COBDEN.
[The following are the Speeches delivered in the House of Commons on 3rd April, the day succeeding that of Mr. Cobden's death, and in relation to that event.]
SPEECH OF THE RIGHT HON. LORD PALMERSTON,
MEMBER FOR TIVERTON.
MR. SPEAKER,—it is impossible for this House to have that order put without calling to its mind the great loss which this House and the country have sustained by the event which took place yesterday morning. Sir, Mr. Cobden, whose loss we deplore, occupied a prominent position both as a member of this House and as a member of the British nation. I do not mean, in the few words I have to say, to disguise or to avoid stating that there were many matters upon which a great number of people differed from Mr. Cobden, and I among the rest, but those who differed from him the most never could doubt the honesty of his purpose or the sincerity of his convictions. They felt that his object was the good of his country, however they might differ on particular questions from him as to the means by which that end was to be accomplished. But we all agree in burying in oblivion every point of difference, and think only of the great and important services he rendered to our common country. Sir, it is many years ago since Adam Smith elaborately and conclusively, as far as argument could go, advocated as the fundamental principles of the wealth of nations freedom of industry and unrestricted exchange of the objects and results of industry. These doctrines were inculcated by learned men, by Dugald Stewart and others, and were also taken up in process of time by leading statesmen, such as Mr. Huskisson and those who agreed with him ; but the barriers which long-established prejudice, honest and conscientious prejudice, had raised against the practical application of those doctrines for a long series of years prevented their coming into use as instruments of progress in the country.
On the Death of Mr. Cobden.	105
To Mr. Cobden it was reserved, by his untiring industry, his indefatigable personal activity, the indomitable energy of his mind, and I will say that forcible and Demosthenic eloquence with which he treated all the subjects which he took in band—it was reserved to Mr. Cobden, aided no doubt by a great phalanx of worthy associates—by my right hon. friend the President of the Poor Law Board, and by Sir R. Peel, whose memory will ever be associated with the principles Mr. Cobden so ably advocated —it was reserved, I say, to Mr. Cobden, by exertions which never were surpassed, to carry into practical application those abstract principles with the truth of which he was so deeply impressed, and which at last gained the acceptance of all reasonable men in the country. He rendered an inestimable and enduring benefit to our country by the result of those exertions. But great as were Mr. Cobden's talents, great as was his industry, and eminent as was his success, the disinterestedness of his mind more than equalled all these. He was a man of great ambition, but his ambition was to be useful to his country; and that ambition was amply gratified. When the present Government was formed I was authorized graciously by Her Majesty to offer to Mr. Cobden a seat in the Cabinet. Mr. Cobden declined, and frankly told me that he thought he and I differed a good deal upon many important principles of political action, and therefore he could not comfortably either for me or for himself join the Administration of which I was the head. I think he was wrong ; but this I will say of Mr. Cobden, that no man, however strongly he may have differed from him upon general political principles, or the application of those principles, could come into contact with him without carrying away the strongest personal esteem and regard for the man with whom he had the misfortune not entirely to agree. Well, Sir, the two great achievements of Mr. Cobden were, in the first place, the abrogation of those laws which regulated the importation of corn and the great development which that gave to the industry of the country, and the commercial arrangements which he negotiated with France, which paved the way and tended greatly to extend the intercourse between the two countries. When that achievement was accomplished, it was my lot to offer to Mr. Cobden, not office, for that I knew he would not take, but to offer him those honours which the Crown can bestow—a baronetcy and the rank of a Privy Councillor, honourable distinctions which it would have gratified the Crown to bestow for important services rendered to the country, and which I think it would not have been at all derogatory for him to accept. But the same disinterested spirit which actuated all his conduct, whether in private or in public,
106	Speech of Mr. Disraeli
led him to decline even the acknowledgments which would properly have been made for the services he had rendered. Well, Sir, I can only say that we have sustained a loss which every man in the country will feel. We have lost a man who may be said to have been peculiarly emblematical of the Constitution under which we have the happiness to live, because he rose to great eminence in this House. and acquired an ascendancy in the public mind, not by virtue of any family connections, but solely and entirely by means of the power and vigour of his mind, that power and vigour being applied to purposes eminently advantageous to the country. Sir, Mr. Cobden's name will be for ever engraved on the most interesting pages of the history of this country ; and I am sure there is not one in this House who does not feel the deepest regret that we have lost one of its proudest ornaments, and that the country has been deprived of one of her most useful servants.
SPEECH OF THE RIGHT HON. B. DISRAELI,
MEMBER FOR BUCKS.
SIR,—Having been a member of this House when Mr. Cobden first took his seat, and having remained in the House during the whole of his lengthened career, I cannot reconcile it to myself to be silent on this occasion, when we have to deplore the loss of one so eminent, and that too in the ripeness of his manhood and the full vigour of his intellect. Although it was the fortune of Mr. Cobden to enter public life at a time when passions ran high, and he himself by no means a man insensible to political excitement, still when the strife was over there was soon observed in him a moderation and a tempered thought that intimated a large intellectual horizon, and the possession of statesmanlike qualities. Though formed in the tumult of popular opinions, with which he identified himself, there was in his character a vein of reverence for tradition which, even unconsciously to himself, subdued and softened the acerbity of the cruder conclusions to which he may have arrived. That, in my mind, is a quality which in some degree must be possessed by any one who aspires to sway this country. For, notwithstanding the rapid changes in which we live, and the numerous improvements and alterations we anticipate, this country is still Old England, and the past is one of the elements of our power. Of Mr. Cobden's conduct in this House all present are aware ; yet, perhaps, I may be permitted to say that as a debater he had few
On the Death of Mr. Cobden.	107
equals. As a logician he was close, complete, acute, perhaps even subtle ; yet at the same time he was gifted with such a degree of imagination that he never lost sight of the sympathies of those whom he addressed ; and so, generally avoiding the driving of his argument to extremities, he became as a speaker both practical and persuasive. The noble lord, who is far more competent than myself to deal with such subjects, has referred the House to Mr. Cobden's conduct as an administrator. It would seem that, notwithstanding his eminent position and the various opportunities which offered for the exercise of that ambition which he might legitimately entertain, his life was destined to pass without his being afforded an occasion of showing that he possessed those qualities invaluable in the management of public affairs. Still, fortunately, it happened that before he quitted us there came to him one of the greatest opportunities ever offered to a public man, and it may be justly said that by the transaction of high affairs he obtained the consideration of the two leading countries of the world. There is something mournful in the history of this Parliament, when we remember how many of our most eminent and valued colleagues have gone from among us. I cannot refer to the history of any other Parliament which will bear to posterity so fatal a record. But there is this consolation when we remember these unequalled and irreparable visitations,—that these great men are not altogether lost to us ; that their opinions will be often quoted in this House, their authority appealed to, their judgments attested ; even their very words will form part of our discussions and debates. There are, I may say, some members of Parliament who, though they may not be present in the body, are still members of this House—who are independent of dissolutions, of the caprice of constituencies, and even of the course of time. I think Mr. Cobden was one of those men. I believe that when the verdict of posterity is recorded on his life and conduct, it will be said of him that, looking to all he said and did, he was without doubt the greatest political character the pure middle class of this country has yet produced — an ornament to the House of Commons, and an honour to England.
SPEECH OF MR. BRIGHT,
MEMBER FOR BIRMINGHAM.
I FEEL that I cannot address the House on this occasion. Every expression of sympathy which I have heard has been
108	Speech of Mr. Bright.
most grateful to my heart ; but the time which has elapsed since I was present when the manliest and gentlest spirit that ever actuated or tenanted the human form took its flight is so short that I dare not even attempt to give utterance to the feelings by which I am oppressed. I shall leave it to some calmer mo, ment, when I may have an opportunity of speaking to some portion of my countrymen the lesson which I think will be learnt from the life and character of my friend. I have only to say that, after twenty years of most intimate and most brotherly friendship with him, I little knew how much I loved him until I found that I had lost him.
SPEECH
OF
THE RIGHT HON. W. E. 'GLADSTONE,
CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER,
ON THE BUDGET.
[In the following pages we reprint at length the Speech delivered by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the 27th of April, on introducing the Budget for the current year. ]
THERE is, Sir, upon the whole, a somewhat remarkable contrast between the opening and the closing circumstances of the present Parliament. When the Parliament met we had been involved, although we did not know it at the time, in a costly and difficult war with China. The harvest of the year whic:i succeeded was the worst that had been known for half a century. The recent experience of war had led to extensive, costly, and somewhat uncertain reconstructions ; and clouds hung over the Continent of Europe, although the Italian War had terminated in such a manner as to create vague but serious alarm in the public mind. Since that period, Sir, those clouds have moved westwards across the Atlantic, and have burst in a tempest perhaps the wildest that ever devastated a civilized country—a tempest of war, distinguished, .indeed, by the exhibition of many most marvellous and extraordinary qualities, by valour, heroism, and perseverance ; and of which perhaps no scene has been so entirely painful as that of which the intelligence has last reached us—intelligence which now causes one thrill of horror throughout Europe. But as far, Sir, as this country is concerned, we have been mercifully spared. We see the state of the public mind tranquil and reassured, and the condition of the country generally prosperous and satisfactory. The history—the financial history—of this Parliament has been a remarkable one. It has raised a larger revenue than I believe ever at any period of peace or of war was raised by taxation, after taking into account the changes in the value of money, within an equal space of time. The expenditure of the same period has been upon a scale that
110	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
had never before been reached in time of peace. The amount and variety of the changes introduced into our financial legislation have been greater than within a like number of years at any former period ; and, lastly, it has enjoyed this distinction, that, although no Parliament ever completes the full term of its legal existence, yet this is the seventh time on which it has been called upon to make provision for the financial exigencies of the State. I proceed, Sir, to state the features of the case as it relates to the year that has just expired. The expenditure of the year 1864-65 was estimated at 66,890,0001. The Appropriation Bill, which has not materially varied it, stood at 67,073,0001. and the actual expenditure has been 66,462,0001., or less than the estimate by the sum of 611,0001. The variations between the votes and the actual results are not of very great consequence as far as the Army and Navy are concerned, because the final accounts of the expenditure for the year are not yet, and will not be for a considerable time, made up. But the miscellaneous civil expenditure, which was estimated at 7,638,0001., has, I am glad to say, only reached 7,257,0001., which may be taken as the final result. And it may be of some interest to the committee to compare that miscellaneous expenditure with what it has been in former years, adding to it, however, items which properly make up our civil expenditure, viz., what may be called the Consolidated Fund charges, which do not form the subject of annual votes by this House, the packet services, and an occasional payment made last year for the redemption of the Scheldt Toll, amounting to 174,0001. The total civil expenditure of the country under the four heads which may be said to represent the civil expenditure was 10,203,0001. In 1859-60, that is to say in the first year of the present Parliament, it was 10,820,0001., Therefore, it shows a reduction of 617,0001. In 1858-59 it was less—it only amounted to 10,040,0001., being apparently less by 167,0001. than in the year that has just expired. But as the expenditure of the year which has just expired was augmented by the payment of the sum of 174,0001. under no ordinary head of charge, but for the special purpose of redeeming the Scheldt Toll, the estimate on a fair comparison of the accounts should be 10,027,0001., or about the sum at which it stood in the last year of the preceding Parliament. So that this House of Commons is in a condition to state that the civil expenditure of the country has not been increased during the term of its existence. If we look to the total expenditure of the country, and compare it with the expenditure of former years, in order to make the comparison a fair one it is necessary to make several changes in the figures as they appear in the accounts of the Exchequer. It
On the Budget.	111
is necessary to add the special charge incurred under special Acts of Parliament for the erection of fortifications. It is necessary to deduct all those charges which, as compared with former years, do not appear in the first of the years that we compare together, but which do appear in the last; that is to say, the charges which swell the total on both sides, but which neutralize one another, and which it is requisite to withdraw in order to make a just comparison. It is necessary, also, I think, with a view to judge fairly of what we have been about, that we should bear in mind the great relief which we obtained in 1860 by the lapse of the Long and other Annuities, amounting to no less a sum than 2,149,0001. If we take, then, what I may term the true expenditure of the country, and if we likewise, besides the other charges which I have named, strike out from all these years the items of miscellaneous receipt, which tend rather to mislead than to instruct when we are engaged in an inquiry like this, the expenditure of the last year-1864-65—will be found to amount to 65,957,000/. The expenditure of the first year of the Parliament-1859-60—amounts, when rectified in the same manner, to 67,471,0001. ; so that there is a reduction since the year 1859-60, without charging 1859-60 with the sums paid on account of the Annuities then about to expire, of in round numbers one million and a half, or, more precisely, of 1,514,000/. If we go to 1860-61, which was the year of our highest expenditure, we show undoubtedly a very large decrease, amounting to 6,547,0001. If we look to the year 1858-59, the year before the extensive operations connected with the military and naval departments commenced, then we arrive at a different result, and instead of showing a reduction, we find an increase of expenditure, amounting to nearly 34 millions, or 3,442,0001. And if we recede one stage further, that is to say, to the very different scale of expenditure which prevailed before the Russian War, we find then, on comparing the expenditure of that period with that of the year which has just elapsed, that the total increase that has taken place in the annual charges of the country amounts to 12,459,0001., or very nearly 124 millions. That, Sir, is the state of the expenditure as compared with what it has been in former years, both in the civil branch alone, and likewise when regarded as a whole ; and I venture to say, speaking in a country of popular institutions, that although the expenditure of the period has been a large one, yet I do not believe that there has been any period of our history when the expenditure, whether small or great, has been more entirely in consonance with the general views, wishes, and feelings of the nation at large. Sir, I come now to close the account for the year by comparing its ex-
112	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
penditure with its revenue—a very simple and very satisfactory operation. The expenditure, according to the Exchequer account, made up to March 31, 1865, was 66,462,000/., and the revenue for the year ending on the same day was 70,313,000/., showing a surplus of revenue over expenditure, according to the usual and established method of statement, of 3,851,0001. If, however, we take into view—as we ought, perhaps, to take into view, and as the sheet I have laid on the table does take into account—the expenditure on fortifications provided for in a special manner by Parliamentary annuities, we must then add the sum of 620,0001. to the expenditure, which would then raise it to 67,082,000/., and deducting that from the revenue as I stated it, the surplus of revenue over charge, upon the least favourable showing, still amounts to 3,231,000. Now, Sir, passing to another branch of the subject, and comparing the revenue with the estimates of the year, the result is also satisfactory. The revenue, as estimated on the 7th of April, 1864, was 67,128,000/. The actual revenue has been not less than 70,313,000/., showing a surplus beyond the estimate of 3,185,000/., and that surplus extends, I will say, to every material head of the revenue. It extends even to the Miscellaneous, but the difference on that head has little to do with the actual condition of the country. It runs through the heads of Customs, Excise, Stamps, Taxes, Income-tax, and Post Office. The most remarkable of these augmentations of revenne, as compared with estimate, is the augmentation in the case of the Customs, which shows an excess of 752,000/. over the estimate. In the case of the Excise the excess is 1,538,000/. In the instance of the Customs there has been a rather general increase, and the only important article of decrease has been one upon which I, for one, always look on a decrease with great satisfaction—I mean the duty received on the import of foreign corn. The decrease of the revenue from foreign corn, which is the test of the goodness and abundance of the home supply—the decrease on the year just expired, as compared with the preceding year, is no less than 184,000/. The wine duty increased by 75,000/. It appears to have a pretty steady increase from year to year ; but the most important item, in which the greatest interest will be felt, is that of sugar, on which Parliament operated by the legislation of last year. The legislation of last year was calculated to give the consumer of sugar a relief to the extent of 1,719,000/. That relief, partially compensated by the recovery, it was, calculated would entail upon the Exchequer for the year a loss of 1,330,0001. But the circumstances have been favourable. The prices of sugar have fallen in combination with the operation of
On the Budget.	113
the reduced duty, and the actual loss has only been 926,0001., showing a recovery of no less than 404,0001. beyond the recovery on which I had calculated in the estimates of last year. If next we look to the remarkable case of the Excise, the Committee will doubtless be struck with the excess of receipts over the estimate. That excess is no less than 1,500,0001. beyond the estimate. And it is well that the Committee should always bear in mind that a new element of uncertainty has of late been introduced into the estimates of revenue from the Excise, as a result of the change which for a very important purpose has been made ; the shortening of the malt credits and receiving the duty for malt within a less period after the charge is incurred than at former times has had the effect of including within the current year a large portion of the malt revenue of the year, and therefore subjecting the estimate of the revenue to a portion of the uncertainty attendant on the produce of the harvest and the fitness of the barley for the production of malt. The sum of 1,500,0001. of excess under the head of Excise may be thus accounted for. The general prosperity has led to a general increase of the items included under the head of Excise ; but the two important items in which the mass of increase has occurred are malt and spirits. Malt was estimated to produce 5,800,000/. ; it has yielded 6,377,0001., or an excess of 577,0001. beyond the estimate. British spirits were estimated at 9,650,000/. ; they have yielded 10,173,000/., an increase beyond the estimate of 523,0001. The increase of the receipt from the spirit duty over the estimate and over the receipt of the preceding year is 432,000/. under the head of British spirits, and 309,0001. under the head of spirits imported from abroad, making together a total increase in the receipts under the head of Excise from the article of spirits of 7.11,0001. within the year. Now, looking to the comparison between the revenue of the year and that of the preceding one, we had estimated for a loss of 3,080,000/. ; but in lieu of that we have a small gain, which, according as it is stated, may be put at either 105,0001. or 147,0001. in favour of 1861-5 as compared with last year. That is not very material or significant, but what is material and significant is what I am desirous to bring under the notice of the Committee, inasmuch as it has a wide and important bearing on the gradual growth—the rate of increase in the revenue of the country. It is a matter which cannot be stated with mathematical precision, inasmuch as the statements that are made in the tables of the Board of Trade with regard to the gain of uew taxes and the loss from the repeal of old ones partake in a certain degree of the nature
114	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
of an estimate. Still, I do not think, in comparing one period with another, there is any great apprehension of serious error ; and, for the information of the Committee, I have endeavoured to estimate the annual rate of the growth of the revenue of the country at three periods. I begin with the period of 1840 and come down to 1852, the year immediately preceding the difficulties with Russia and the outbreak of the Russian war, which occurred before the next financial year closed. The mode I adopt is this. I take the revenue of the first year of that period, compare it with the revenue of the last, and find the difference between them ; then I take the amount of taxes repealed and the taxes imposed, and take the difference between these two ; adding the balance to the improvement in the revenue, I find the true measure of the real improvement of the revenue ;—supposing the sources to have continued the same, that is the true measure of the progress of the productive power of the country. Between 1840 and 1852 there were imposed taxes to the amount of 6,285,7931., and there were taxes reduced to the amount of 13,597,8581. The balance of taxes reduced over taxes imposed was 7,312,0651. During the same period the revenue, after deducting the item of Miscellaneous, showed an improvement of 5,051,0261. Adding these two items together, we get 12,363,0911., showing that during that period the revenue of the country, presuming the sources to have remained the same, really grew at the rate of nearly 1,030,0001. a year. I then take the period of the Russian war, ending before the considerable increase of our expenditure which took place in 1859—the period from 1853 to 1859. I will not trouble the Committee with details. The balance of taxes repealed in that period over taxes imposed is very small—only about 1,000,0001. The improvement in the revenue was between 6,000,0001. and 7,000,0001., and, as nearly as the calculation can be made, that sum would mark on the period from 1853 to 1859 an average annual growth in the income of the country from the same sources of 1,240,0001. I take the next period, from 1859 to 1865, the time at which I have the honour of addressing the Committee—a period during which very large changes have taken place. The balance of taxes repealed over taxes imposed in that period amounts to 6,137,0001., and adding to that the taxes repealed in 1858, but which did not take effect till 1859-60, and deducting from it certain taxes repealed in 1864, but the repeal of which only took effect in 1865-6, the real and true balance of taxes repealed over taxes imposed is 6,713,0001. At the same time the increase of the revenue is 3,968,0001., and the rate of annual growth in the income of the country from the same sources having been for
On the Budget.	115
the first period 1,030,0001., for the second period 1,240,0001., was for the third period 1,780,0001. Now, having represented a state of things which is evidently satisfactory as bearing testimony to the increasing power and vigour of the country, I must, of course, remind the Committee that this annual growth is not a growth which can at any time be safely relied upon prospectively for a single year ; because at any time not only calamities of a rarer kind but the ordinary calamity of a bad harvest would either greatly reduce the improvement in that item, or even destroy it altogether. Now, as regards the state of the balances, on the 31st of March, 1864, they amounted to 7,352,000/., and on the same day in 1865 they were 7,690,0001., showing an increase of 338,000/. The advances for public works, which usually contributed to feed the balances, had lately become a drain upon them. The advances made were 2,069,0001., and the repayments 1,706,000/., showing an excess of advances of 303,0001. The debt paid off in the year has been—of Exchequer-bonds, 300,000/. ; of Exchequer-bills, 2,100,0001., and of stock purchased with surplus revenue, 939,0001., making a total of 3,338,0001. The capital value of Terminable Annuities extinguished is 2,006,000/., making a grand total of 5,340,0001., subject to a deduction of the amount raised for fortifications, which has been 726,000/., leaving a real reduction of debt to the extent of 4,614,0001. I have ventured to state to the Committee what is the real condition of our debt as a whole, because I have to take, so far, blame to myself, although I might share it with those who have gone before me, of never having on previous occasions stated the absolute amount of the debt. We are indebted, in fact, to the Statistical Department of the Board of Trade for having adopted a very simple but effectual method of showing the full amount of the national debt. Our ordinary practice has been to look to funded and unfunded debt alone, and to make no allowance for the very heavy sums which we have been liable to pay prospectively in respect of Terminable Annuities. In the statement of the debt now presented by the Board of Trade from year to year—the " Statistical Tables "—there is included the full capital amount of the Terminable Annuities which we still have to pay. I have that full account to the 31st of March. Of course, the effect of this arrangement is that our debt is somewhat larger in amount than we believed it to have been, but for a comparison of the total debt of the country, I can give the particulars of the funded and unfunded debt, and the capital of the Terminable Annuities, if it be desired for the purposes of comparison. I may state that on March 31, 1859, our total debt was 825,934,000/., and on March 31, 1865, it was
116	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
808,288,0007., showing that since March 31, 1859, there has been a diminution of debt to the extent of 17,646,0001., or nearly, upon an average, 3,000,000/. a year. The estimated capital of Terminable Annuities was in March, 1859, 18,856,0007., and in March, 1865, the amount had risen to 21,778,0001. But, after debiting the account of 1865 with that augmentation, and giving credit for the reduction of the funded debt, which is very large—some 11,000,0007.—and for the reduction of the unfunded debt—about 7,500,0001.—the result is that the total reduction is not very far short of 18,000,0007., a sum which may sound, and does sound, well ; but, at the same time, I cannot say that it is a very brilliant result of our labours to find that 3,000,0001. a year are taken from our debt, considering the enormous amount of that debt and the difficulties in which we might possibly be involved if we were ever again to be engaged in a struggle for existence, and I cannot say that as legislators we have as yet risen to a sense of the full extent of our obligations with respect to a reduction of the debt. is ow, when I turn from the revenue of the last year to the movements of trade, there is but one particular branch of trade upon which I need trouble the Committee with any remarks. That is a trade in which this House has felt a peculiar, a natural, and an abiding interest. I will, therefore, just refer to the condition of the paper trade. I am very far from denying—on the contrary, I greatly deplore it—that the period of transition has been for many members of that trade a period of .very great severity. Of that I make no doubt whatever. At the same time, it is right to say that the paper trade, as a whole, not only has not left the country, but it shows no intention of leaving the country ; on the contrary, it evidently means to strike its roots deeper and deeper here, for it calls continually from year to year for the importation of more materials from abroad, while at the same time the consumers of paper in this country are supplied with paper more largely and more cheaply than at any former period. The importations of paper and paper-hangings from abroad have risen from the insignificant amount at which they stood six years ago to no less than 477,0001. in value in 1864, while at the same time the importation of materials for paper-making rose from 13,700 tons in 1859 to 20,400 tons in 1862, to 44,000 tons in 1863, and to 67,000 tons in 1864. It will be observed that this cannot be accounted for by the disappearance of cotton-waste, because for the last year or two, at any rate, the supply of cotton-waste has been tending to increase. It was in 1861 and 1862 that the supply of cotton-waste was at the lowest; but while the supply of that material from our manufactures has been scomewhat
On the Budget.	117
reviving, here is that immense increase in the importation of other paper-making materials from abroad. [An Hon.Member.—" Rags."] Rags are included, but I do not distinguish between rags and other materials for paper-making, of which there are a great variety. No doubt rags only form a small proportion of the whole, and raw vegetable products represent the mass of the imports. But that is a remarkable fact. Such has been the advantage of the stimulus given to the search for new materials for the manufacture of paper that the owners of cotton-waste now complain that they can only obtain half the price for that material which they used to obtain. That is the state of the case : and speaking of the papermakers as a class, I may say that it is not because less paper is made that cotton-waste does not fetch the same price as formerly, but because the paper-maker has found that he can obtain cheaper materials from other sources. A gentleman who himself produces a large quantity of cotton-waste has informed me by letter that in 1860, when middling cotton cost him 50. per lb., he could get 22s. per sack for his sweepings ; yet now, when he was paying so much for his cotton, he could not get more than 9s. a sack for the waste. I will now notice our trade with France, which is also a subject of special interest to this country, and there I find an increase. It varies, and although the export of British produce has slightly diminished since two or three years back, yet the total increase of trade with France has been steadily on the increase on imports as well as exports. In 1859 the total amount of our trade with France was 26,431,0001., and in 1864 it was 49,797,0001., showing an increase of 23,366,000/., or nearly 90 per cent. And there has not been a single year in that period in which, if we take our exports of all kinds together, our exports to France have not shown an increase over the preceding year. In comparing the condition of our relations with that country, I would desire to occupy a moment in removing a common misapprehension. It is believed, and it has been used by some of us as a consolation under the burden of our great expenditure, —it is believed that the public expenditure of France is much higher than the public expenditure of this country. That belief is erroneous. It is brought about by the mode in which the accounts are rendered, and in which local charges in France are passed through the medium of the Imperial Treasury. I have no account later than 1862, because, as is well known, although the French accounts are perfect models of scientific precision and clearness, yet they do not appear—the final accounts do not appear—until considerably in arrear of the period to which they refer. But for the purpose 1 have in view it will do just as well
118	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
to take this account. In 1862 the apparent expenditure of France was 88,493,0001., but of that expenditure a large proportion was for purposes of a local character and for purposes which do not at all appear in the Imperial expenditure of this country. The expenditure of France in that year, for the purposes of comparison with that of this country, was 60,815,0001. and the expenditure of this country in the year 1862-3—the nearest period I can take —was 70,352,0001., or an excess on our part of about nine millions and a half over the expenditure of France. The accounts, I think, now stand somewhat better. We have made a little progress since that period in reducing our charges. I am not quite sure that our neighbours and friends across the Channel have as yet been so fortunate, although they appear to have at length a prospect of obtaining the desired end. As regards the whole trade of this country, I stated last year the immense amount which it had reached. I think the total then reached was 445,000,0001. It has since undergone a large further increase in the year recently passed. The accounts of the year ending the 31st of December, 1864—for we do not take notice of the financial year as regards trade—those accounts show that our imports amounted to 274,000,000/., and our exports to 213,000,0001., or a total of 487,000,0001., being an increase of more than 219,000,0001. since the comparatively recent period of 1854. And here I come to a point of very great and clear interest which may deserve a few moments' attention. There is, again, a misapprehension that while the increase of the trade of this country of late years has been undoubtedly a remarkable increase, yet that it has been less than the increase in the trade of foreign countries. That is a matter which somewhat touches not only the reputation of the Parliaments of England, which for the last twenty-five years have attached so much consequence to the removal of shackles from industry and commerce, but also appears to press materially upon the wisdom or necessity of continuing that policy for the future. It is quite true that the trade of France exhibits a larger relative increase of late years than ours has done, but I will venture to say it would have been strange indeed if that had not been the case. And why ? The trade of France languished after the close of the great war, and especially after the wasting and crushing depopulation of the last years of that war, which destroyed almost one-half of the labouring and productive power of the country. It was not surprising, then, that for thirty or forty years that great country should have remained in an unnatural position as regarded its trade. It is not wonderful, then, that the trade of France should show a greater relative increase than that of England, which has never lost the energy and vigour of her commercial
On the Budget.	119
operations, and which happily has never been subjected to such sweeping losses of her best blood through the desolating influence of war. I am only able to compare the exports, but they are quite sufficient and effectual for the purpose. The exports of France in 1854 were 78,000,0001., and in 1863 they were 141,000,0001., being an increase of 81 per cent. The exports of the United Kingdom in 1854 were 116,000,0001., and in 1863 197,000,000/., an increase of no more than 70 per cent. I grant that if that fact stood alone it would authorize you to say that a country which had done little in the way of relaxing its commercial laws had achieved relatively more than a country which had done much, and had made great progress on the road of commercial freedom. But when we look at the absolute increase, we find that while France has added 63,000,0001. to her exports, England has added 81,000,000/. But if we want to have a fair comparison we should not take a country like France, placed under circumstances so abnormal in consequence of the ruin and ravages of war; let as take two neighbouring countries with free institutions, which have not undergone the same sufferings, which have been in a more normal condition, and which have been free from war and revolution,—and it is difficult to find countries on the Continent which have been free from war and revolution,—let us take Belgium and Holland. There is no country which has benefited more fully and more enormously than Belgium from the application of the railway system. The increase in the imports of England, as I have shown, from 1854 to 1863, has been 71 per cent., but the imports of Belgium, one of the most flourishing countries of the Continent, only grew in the same period from 28,000,000/. to 40,000,0007., or 43 per cent., and the exports of Holland only grew from 24,000,000/. to 30,000,0007., or 25 per cent. With regard to Austria it is difficult to make a favourable comparison. It is really lamentable to find that in a country of that vast extent and with that immense capacity, the exports, which amounted to 11,000,000/. in 1844, in 1858 (though there had been a great increase) had only risen to 22,000,000/. Let us hope that my right hon. friend who is now in Vienna engaged in the good work of communicating to Austria the results of our experience, may succeed in persuading the Imperial Government —not that it is a matter of vital importance to England that they should alter their tariffs, but that it is of vital importance to themselves, and that if they will act in that spirit, with a view to their own interests, we shall be perfectly satisfied with the share of the benefits which must necessarily redound to us in a process which always " blesses him that gives more than him that takes." Upon the whole, I come to this conclusion—that we have indeed
120	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
derived enormous, almost boundless, advantages from the inventive spirit which has distinguished the present age and from the application of new principles of locomotion. I believe that the railway companies have received from the public for the services they have performed above 30,000,0001. sterling, and I think it would be a moderate estimate to say that a further sum of 30,000,0001. represents the addition to the wealth of the country which has been gained by the introduction of the railway system, after making every allowance requisite for the capital invested in other modes of locomotion which have been either wholly or partially paralyzed by the introduction of railways. After all that has been said on the subject, all these figures go to show that immense advantage has also resulted from the apparently simple but in practice sufficiently difficult process of removing the bars, fetters, and obstructions devised by the perversity of man himself from the path of human industry, and trusting to the simple expedient of freedom for the development of the productive power of the country. It is no small honour that, as in regard to locomotion, so in regard to the freedom of trade and industry, it has been given to this country to lead the vanguard of civilization—in the words of one of our poets,—
" To serve as model for the mighty world, And be the fair beginning of a time,"
—of a time richly fraught not only with economical advantages, not only with results which can be exhibited in statistical tables, but fraught more richly still with results which lead to the union of class with class, and even, as we may hope, of nation with nation, throughout the earth. And in closing such a survey I hope I shall not trespass too much if I avow that I cannot forget the man who bore a larger share than any other man in realizing this system which has been so beneficial to the country. Well and nobly has testimony been borne to him within these walls, and it may be impertinence if I presume to repeat that testimony, but, closely associated as I was with Mr. Cobden in all the transactions connected with the conclusion of the commercial treaty with France, I cannot forbear rendering such a tribute as is in my power both to his character and his acts. The praises which have been bestowed upon him here, and the sorrow which has been felt for him by his countrymen, have spread all over the world. Those praises have been re-echoed, and re-echoed cordially, in every foreign land, and there is no civilized country which has not claimed to share with us in the honour we have paid him. Mr. Cobden requires no eulogies from me. His memory is part of the inheritance of his country,
On the Budget.	121
and this I feel, that, along with the recollection of his distinguished services, there will always survive among us a remembrance of his character, so true, so manful, so courageous, so simple, so unselfish, so devoted, so genial—a character which has added as much lustre to his greatest actions as it has received lustre from them. I come now to the estimate of the expenditure and revenue for the service of the year which has just opened. The charge of the funded and unfunded debt for 1865-66 is put at 26,350,0001.; the Consolidated Fund charges are 1,900,000/. ; the votes for the army, 14,348,0001. ; for the navy, 10,392,0001. ; the collection of the revenue, 4,657,000/. ; the packet service, 842,000/. ; and the miscellaneous civil services, 7,650,0001. This last amount is not yet precisely fixed, but it cannot vary much either one way or the other, and I have no doubt this sum will suffice for the total amount of these charges. That gives a total charge of 66,139,0001., which is 1,110,0001. less than the estimates voted in the year 1864-65. I will next take the revenue for the coming year. The Customs I put at 22,775,0001., the Excise at 19,030,0001., and in that estimate of Excise allowance is made for a considerable deduction from the receipts we have had this year on the article of malt. The Stamps I put at 9,550,000/. ; Taxes, 3,350,0001. ; Income Tax, 7,800,000/. ; Post Office, 4,250,000/. ; Crown Lands, 315,000/. ; miscellaneous receipts, 2,650,000/. ; and China Indemnity, 450,0001. In the miscellaneous receipts which come to our credit this year are included several sums mentioned in the first page of the Army Estimates, and which are there taken credit for as forming virtually a reduction of army charge. Formally they are not a reduction of army charge, because the money will be voted and repaid, but virtually and really they are, because they will come back to the credit side of the account as well as going into the debit side. They are chiefly connected with the repayments from India and the colonies. The total estimated income of the year is 70,170,0001., and the total estimate charge 66,139,000/., showing a probable surplus of 4,031,0001., or about 4,000,0001. I come now to the difficult question of the disposal of the surplus, and I will first call the attention of the Committee to several small changes which it will hardly be necessary for me to take into account, as they will make no change in the balance and income and expenditure, since they are of too insignificant a character, and will probably balance each other. It is proposed, with regard to the transfers of shares and conveyances, to make a change in the steps of the duty payable on those transfers for the convenience of parties, so as to enable them more precisely to adopt the amount of their transactions to the sum they have
122	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
to pay, instead of driving them to make two conveyances in lieu of one, for the sake of effecting a small saving. It is proposed that the anomaly which now exists with respect to the duty or. scrip certificates and receipt bonds shall be removed, as it is found to lead to inconvenience. At present the duty does not apply where the loan on the company is in a foreign country, but it does apply to all domestic transactions. As I am opposed to protecting the Englishman against the foreigner, I am equally opposed to protecting the foreigner against the Englishman. It appears to me that if the transaction have reference to a person living in this country, the stamp duty ought to be the same in one case as in the other. An application has been made to the Government, which I think is a proper one—it is that the stamp on the letting of small tenements for periods less than yearly should be reduced. It is now felt to be very burdensome. The stamp, so far as the sum paid conveys an idea of it, is not very burdensome,—for it only amounts to 6d. ; but when we come to consider that in many places houses are let at such low rents as 2s. 6d., 3s., and 3s. 6d. a week, it appears highly probable that the payment of the present stamp may have the effect of deterring people from using it. We therefore propose to reduce the amount of 6d. to ld. in the cases of these small lettings. In the case of the present minimum duty levied on property under 501. we propose to make an alteration. We propose that if the property only amounts to 5/. the duty shall be only 3d., instead of the present 50/. duty of 2s. 6d., and from 3d. we shall go upwards in proportion to the amount of the property. We propose to give relief to certain gentlemen who labour under an anomaly. How this anomaly arose I don't know. Special pleaders and conveyancers now pay the same license duties as attorneys and solicitors ; but the latter are allowed one-half the duty for the first three years, while special pleaders and conveyancers have not that allowance. We propose to give them the benefit of it. Then, with respect to the stamps on ecclesiastical licenses, we propose to make a reduction. It appears the present licenses are so high as either to be felt as a burden or to prevent the use of the stamp altogether. We propose to make an alteration with regard to the stamp on what is called the " charter party," and this will be a matter of some importance to several ports, especially in the north of England. The present duty is 5s. ; but we propose to reduce it to 6d., subject to the condition of having the document drawn in accordance with a printed form, and then put on stamped paper. We think it better to have a 6d. duty which we shall get, rather than a 5s. duty which we may not get, except in a few instances. We also propose a
On the Budget.	123
change in respect of policies of marine insurance, to the effect that policies issued abroad shall not be recoverable here except they be stamped within a certain time ; and we propose, likewise, to make the time for reinsurance in England less limited, as the existing limitation is found to be attended with inconvenience in the case of time policies of marine insurance. The last change we propose in respect of assurances of this nature is one to make more equitable the arrangement of the stamp duties on assurances given by certain companies for three purposes. Two of these hang together, but the third does not seem to be so closely connected with the other two as they are with each other. There are three classes of companies—one assuring a payment on accidental death, the second a payment on personal injury, and the third a payment on the breaking of plate-glass. Those assurances are somewhat alike, and the duties paid on them require an alteration which will bring them more in harmony with each other. Now, Paulo majora canantus. I come to a great subject which, one evening this session, received the attention of the House and formed the topic of an interesting debate. I refer to the malt duty. When that subject was under discussion on the occasion to which I allude my right hon. friend the President of the Board of Trade, on the part of Her Majesty's Government, expressed their sense of the great importance of the question, and stated that it required careful and laborious consideration at their hands. My right hon. friend stated so fully and clearly the reasons which prevented the Government from agreeing to the resolution moved by the hon. and learned gentleman opposite (Sir F. Kelly), that, though possibly he did not satisfy all who heard him, he must, at all events, have convinced many that we were justified in the course which we then adopted. In approaching the consideration of this question I will begin by deprecating an argument which has been constantly put forward by those who advocate the repeal of the malt tax. It is constantly stated, " In all your resolutions you have done nothing for the class of agriculturists." Well, I should like to know the class for whom you have done anything. In my opinion the most marked of all the characteristics of our legislation of recent years is that we have been steadily endeavouring to restrain ourselves from the vicious habit of looking to classes, and to as steadily legislate for the interests of the country generally. I know there are constituencies in the country by whom the opposite view has been taken, and by whom gentlemen who were disposed to place confidence in the present Administration have been rejected, on the ground that Her Majesty's Government were in favour of a policy injurious to the interests
124	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
of the agricultural class. But I want to know in what instance we have asked Parliament to surrender, or in what instance Parliament has consented to surrender, any portion of the revenue of the country which is the property of the country on any other interest but the broad and comprehensive interest of the country. I believe that legislation for the benefit of a class is a mistake of the grossest order. In the first place, it is a betrayal of our duty to the nation, whose trustees we are, without distinction of class ; and, in the next place, such legislation confers far less of ultimate advantage, even to the favoured class, than the share which they would derive from wise legislation impartially applied and spread over the whole community. I think that the only proposal we have made which has at all favoured a class—and I don't say it was an unfair one, because we had to deal with a peculiar case—was one in regard to which you, Sir, (Mr. Dodson), must take your share of the responsibility, though we ourselves are ready to take our share of it also. I allude to the measure for relieving the hop-growers from the duty which they had to pay. I propose to discuss, in the first instance, with the permission of the Committee, the important question of the amount of relief which the removal of the malt duty would confer upon the consumers of beer. It is stated, and stated seriously, that although the malt duty only brings 6,000,0007. into the Exchequer, yet the cost of that duty to the consumers is 20,000,0007. I think one distinguished gentleman in this House has elaborately stated so, and has supported in argument that bold proposition. We are reproached with being a beer-drinking nation, and we are told that the use of that excellent liquor deadens the imagination ; but, if there be conformity between the practice and the preaching of the advocates of the repeal of the malt tax, the latter assertion would appear not to be well founded. There seems to be no deficiency of imagination on their parts when they feel justified in asserting that a tax which brings only 6,000,000/. to the Exchequer costs 20,000,0007. to the consumer. When we come to that I. shall endeavour to show in a few minutes what is the real amount of the burden caused by the malt duty and by the licenses imposed on. the traders, in addition to the cost of the beer itself. The next accusation against the malt duty is that it seriously restricts the application of malt for the feeding of cattle. I am persuaded, however, that, as far as the purposes of serious discussion are concerned, we have heard nearly the last of that charge. A long series of experiments have been made which have incontestably established this proposition,—that if malt is to be used beneficially in the feeding of cattle it must be used only exceptionally and
On the Budget.	125
occasionally. It is for particular cases, and is not intended to be a substitute for any of the great modes of feeding generally in use. If, however, it be held by any person that malt is valuable, wholesale, for feeding cattle, I say that under the Act passed last year there are ample means now existing of supplying it for that purpose. Twenty-eight malthouses were opened for the purpose of preparing malt for feeding cattle, after the passing of the Act of last year. Out of those eleven are closed ; some of the remaining ones are doing an active business, and others, I believe, are doing but little. Now, shall. I be told that this result has been caused by the burdensome and restrictive character of the regulations which are imposed by the Excise on those houses ? There is to evidence of that ; but there is this significant fact on the other side,—that not one of the persons who have closed their malthouses have alleged that their having taken that course had any connection whatever with the regulations of the Excise. Their reason merely is that they have not found a sufficient demand for feeding malt, and that they find it more profitable to use their malthouses for the purpose of preparing malt to make beer. I have here the names of several of those gentlemen who have permitted me to quote their letters stating the cause of their having closed their malthouses ; and in not a single instance has the closing been attributed to difficulties arising from the restrictions imposed ou the trade. The next charge against the malt duty is that it operates injuriously upon the price of the middling and lower barleys. That is a charge of great importance, and to it I will presently, with the permission of the Committee, give my attention for a few moments. I think that the last serious charge against the duty is that it discourages brewing at home. Now, it is impossible that that charge should be maintained by those who say that the malt duty, although producing only 6,000,0001., yet, through the medium of the brewer, costs the consumer 20,000,0001., because the man who is to brew at home will be relieved only of his share of this 6,000,0001., while at present he pays a share of the 20,000,000/. It is evident that if all these factitious additions are made to the burden of the malt duty before the beer comes to the consumer, the present system is that which offers the highest possible premium upon brewing at home ; because, instead of paying these enormous sums, in which he is taxed through a factitious medium, all that a man has to do is to pay 218., or whatever it is per quarter, and then he can brew for himself. Now what is the question before us ? Are we asked to consider the abolition of the malt duty or its reduction ? I put aside the question of the abolition of the duty. The abolition of the
126	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
malt duty would be the death-warrant of the whole of our system of indirect taxation. It is idle and futile to the last degree to suppose that having beer made free from taxation you can tax wine and spirits on the one side, or tea and sugar on the other. The consistent man who supports the repeal of the malt duty is, if I may presume to say so, the sly but determined foe of indirect taxation. I can quite understand the speeches which are made by such gentlemen in favour of the repeal of the malt duty,—" Take it away," say they, " it is a very imprudent and improper tax." They make speeches in this House which are received on the opposite side with loud cheers, and they are on these occasions welcomed as allies with remarkable cordiality, the gentlemen who so welcome them not perceiving that the real end of all this must be the imposition of the whole burden of our taxation upon property. The repeal of the malt duty is the death-warrant of indirect taxation. I say, therefore, that the question before us is not that of the repeal, but that of the reduction of the malt duty. Now, confining the question to the reduction of the duty it must be admitted somewhat weakens the argument, because you still have all those magical terrors which are connected with the operation of our Excise ; and, more than that, you have all the real disadvantage, which amounts to something, and which must continue as long as you maintain a system of Excise at all. I take it for granted, however, that the practical question is, at what cost can we make such a reduction of the malt duty as will sensibly lower the price of beer ? That, I hope, states the question fairly and honestly. To answer that question we must ascertain what is the proportion of the present price of beer which is really due to taxation. I say now " to taxation," and not " to the malt duty," because, although the bulk of the taxation consists of the imposition upon malt, there is also the commutation of the hop duty, which comes out in the shape of the brewer's license ; and there is a trifling charge for the maltster's license, of which account may be taken. Now, Sir, this is a subject on which it is not possible for me to ask te Committee to accompany me through all the details of the inquiry through which we, however, have patiently passed. My right hon. friend the President of the Board of Trade stated that the malt duty imposed upon beer a tax of 121 per cent., and I am able to say two things—first of all, that I believe that that statement of my right hon. friend was a rigidly just one, in every sense of the word, for the purpose of comparison with the duty now imposed by law upon tea; and secondly, that very high authorities connected with the trade, men intimately conversant with all the details of the brewing trade,
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have, upon being applied to, given the very figure that was mentioned . by my right hon. friend—viz. 121 per cent.—as the value of the malt duty. The other minor duties of which I have spoken would not make an addition of more than from one to two per cent., so that undoubtedly upon that showing, the duty would not amount to more than from 14 to 15 per cent. However, I think it is possible that they may have in view the price to the consumer, and I will take it upon the barrel of beer; that is the fair way for the purpose of comparing it with the chest and half chest of tea ; and having, on the one hand, caused the officers of the revenue departments to make a most careful and sifting examination, and having, on the other hand, conferred with those whom I believe to be best informed, and who, at my request, have kindly gone with great care into the details, I am prepared to allow that the taxation upon beer, as sold in barrel, of which all but one or two per cent. is the malt duty, may, for the sake of argument, be taken at 20 per cent., and I think that I am safe in challenging any attempt seriously to impugn that statement. Well, then, Sir, if 20 per cent. is added to the price of beer by the duty upon malt, how much must we take off that duty in order to produce a sensible effect upon the price of beer ? I mean the price to the consumer, because although thus far I have been speaking of the price per barrel, the great bulk of beer is not ultimately sold in the barrel, but by the pint or quart ; and I do not think that anything which would reduce the price less than a farthing a quart ought to be regarded by Parliament as a sufficient object to induce us to interfere with the malt duty. I think that is a moderate statement. Some might go beyond it ; but I will assume that you must reduce the price by a farthing a quart. What is the reduction of the malt duty that would be absolutely necessary in order to reduce the price of beer by a farthing a quart ? We must reduce it to somewhat less than one-half of the present amount. It is now 2s. Sid. a bushel, and it must be reduced to ls. 2d. a bushel in order to give to the consumer a reduction of a farthing a quart in the price. Now, what would be the cost to the Exchequer of such a reduction ? because when the advocates of the repeal and the strong advocates of the reduction of the malt duty come to this question of the cost to the Exchequer, they have a dangerous habit of dealing in generalities, and of saying that in one way or other, especially by increase of consumption, the cost would be very greatly reduced. I will state, first, what would be the first cost, and then what would be the effect of the increase of consumption. The proper time at which to reduce the duty, if it was reduced at all, would, I think, beyond all doubt, be about the 1st of October. That is
128	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
the period at which the stock of beer iu the country is the lowest ; and it is, therefore, the period at which we should have to pay the most moderate amount of drawback. At that time we should have to pay drawback on about 15,000,000 bushels of malt, costing 1,160,000/. ; and we should have an estimated loss of duty charged for the remainder of the year of 1,320,0001. That is to say, that we cannot touch the malt duty for the purpose of giving to the consumer one farthing upon the quart of beer at a less cost to the Exchequer for the first year than 2,480,0001. But that is not the worst of the story. That is the cost of the first year, but what will be the cost of the second year ? According to the estimate formed at Somerset-house, the cost of the second year of the reduction from 2s. 82d. to ls. 2d. would be 3,360,0001. I might almost rest upon these figures ; they are far more eloquent than any comment that can possibly be made upon them ; but I must touch upon one topic that might possibly be raised, and that is the increase of consumption. We may be told that there would be a great recovery arising from the increase of consumption. Now, Sir, what I venture to say is this, that in the case of malt, not only would there not be a great recovery from increase of consumption, but that there would be no recovery at all ; and, on the contrary, it is probable that the increase of consumption, with whatever other advantages it might be attended—and I am not considering that ;- I am looking at it as a fiscal question—that the increase of the consumption of beer would in all likelihood be attended with a further loss to the Exchequer. Gentlemen may hear these words with some surprise, but the explanation is this,—If there is a large increase in the consumption of beer, a portion of that increase displaces the consumption of spirits. Very good ! Oh, set out upon your mission of philanthropy, and I am ready to go with you, perfectly ready to go with you, but then I beg you to find me the money from some source. We are now, Sir, looking at this question from the driest point of view, that of pounds, shillings, and pence, and after all, setting apart the hustings and the poll and everything else, it must at last come to that. Now, supposing that of every additional thousand pounds laid out upon beer after this reduction one-fourth part displaced spirits—and I do not think that an extravagant estimate, I believe that more would displace spirits—but taking it at one-fourth, what would be the gain to the Exchequer ? Why, Sir, it would take 8/. laid out upon malt after this reduction to bring into the Exchequer what 1/. laid out upon spirits now brings in ; and if 21. worth of spirits are displaced by the additional consumption of 81. worth of malt, it follows that we lose, and lose heavily, at every reduction that takes place. But I will not argue the question
On the Budget.	129
between malt and spirits further than this, that I have made good, and more than made good, my propositions—that if the malt duty is to be reduced it must be from 2s. 81d. to ls. 2d., that with such a reduction you must in the first year lose, in round numbers, 2,500,0001., that in the second year that 2,500,0001. will be raised to more than 3,250,0001., and that you must lay your account to a further loss in consequence of the increased consumption of beer, and the consequent displacement of spirits. Now, I am bound to say that I cannot put out of sight in dealing with this matter the Irish and the Scotch question. I think that in the nature of the Scotch there is great patience, and in the nature of the Irish great vivacity ; and I believe that the patient and the vivacious would combine together were we to reduce the malt duty for the benefit of this country, and would say, " In some manner or another—you may find out the way for your-selves—we insist, if you reduce this tax for the advantage of England, upon your doing something for us." To the three other sources of loss, therefore, which I have mentioned, a fourth would be added, arising out of the demands of the representatives of Scotland and Ireland. That, I am sure it will be admitted, would not be a very hopeful prospect for us in a financial point of view. What, let me ask, are the grounds for this great innovation, this dangerous inroad on our established fiscal system ? Is the consumption of beer declining ? Is the trade a dying trade ? Has the Englishman changed his nature ? Has he ceased to supply himself with Et sufficiently liberal proportion of this excellent and truly national drink ? On the contrary, the figures all point upwards. The members of the present Government and the right hon. gentlemen opposite, too, may claim the honour of having each done a good deal to promote the consumption of malt by means of the burdens laid on the consumption of spirits, and what has happened ? I find—I cannot give the returns for Ireland, but for the purpose of what I am about to state that is not material—that in 1841 the consumption of malt in Great Britain was 1.701 bushels per head of the population, while in 1863 it had risen to 1.793 per head. Now, that, I think, furnishes evidence of a very handsome growth. But how stands the case with spirits, on which year after year during the period to which I am referring additional burdens have been laid ? In 1841 the consumption per head of spirits in Great Britain was .763 gallons ; while in 1863, to my great joy and satisfaction, it sank to .645. The case, then, as represented by those figures, is not such a very bard one after all ; but there is another way of putting it. It may be said—" It is, perhaps, true that things, as regards the consumption of
130	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
malt, are a little better now than they were some few years ago ; but, then, let us go back to the good old times of our forefathers and see how the matter stands." Well, adopting that course, and going back to the year 1722, for I dare say that will be far enough, I find that the consumption of beer in Rngland was 6.000,000 barrels, or at the rate of a barrel per head. for the population at the time was only 6,000,000. In 1830 the consumption was 8,000,000 barrels, and in that year I regret to say, it had sunk from one barrel to two-thirds of a barrel per head. In 1864, however,—so powerful were the restorative processes which had been introduced, and so much had the consumption of beer been assisted by the legislation which took place with regard to spirits, and otherwise, — we go back, with a population of 20,000,000, to the good old scale, and consume 20,000,000 barrels, or exactly the same quantity per head as in 1722. I see before me my hon. and learned friend the member for Suffolk and my right hon. friend the member for Hertfortshire, whose able and eloquent addresses in bringing this subject before the House were overspread and coloured by a tone, I will not say lugubrious, but somewhat tragic ; and I am sure they will feel their arguments are capable of being qualified in an opposite sense to that which they intended, and that the facts of the case are not so unsatisfactory as they had been led to believe. But what, let me ask, is now the consumption of beer in England ? In some instances it is astonishing. I am about to relate an anecdote in connection with this point, which I may preface by saying that I have many good reasons to look upon it as authentic, though I confess I was disposed to be a little incredulous for the moment when I first heard it. The authority from which it came, however, entirely forbids the continuance of any such feeling. The subject of my tale is a labouring man, whose ordinary avocations are on the river Thames, and require great muscular exertion. An accident occurred to this man's hand, and he went into an hospital at the east-end of London. One of the surgeons there dealt with his case, but the result was not • quite satisfactory. The surgeon accordingly said he should wish to open the hand, but that before he performed the operation he was anxious to be assured that his patient was in every sense of the word a temperate person. He asked some persons who knew him whether he was temperate, and they informed him that he was. He put the same question to the man himself, and he said, " Certainly, I am temperate, and have always been so." " What quantity of beer do you usually drink ?" asked the surgeon. The reply was, " Never more than eight quarts a day." I inquired, that being
On the Budget.	131
the consumption of a temperate man, how much an intemperate man might be supposed to drink, and I was told that the quantity ran from 12 to 16 quarts a day. But if, including the whole population of the country, hon. gentlemen will have the goodness to
take the number of barrels of beer brewed annually in England, to reduce them to quarts, to make a fair deduction for the population of Scotland and Ireland, who drink but little beer, for women, who drink but a small proportion relatively t o the men, and for young persons under 15, who likewise drink but a very small proportion of the quantity consumed, they will find that every adult male in England consumes not far short of 600 quarts every year ; and when you take into account the pauper, the criminal, the sick, the wealthy, too, and that very large and respectable class who pass under the sobriquet of " teetotallers," all of whom come more or less into the calculation, I do not think the demand for the repeal of the malt tax can be supported by the argument that access to a sufficient quantity of beer is extremely difficult, or that the consumption of it is gradually dying away. More than 40,000,0001. sterling is, as far as we can learn, laid out by the population of England every year in the purchase of this valuable beverage. So much, then, for the consumption of beer, which I think I may fairly say is not declining, but is steadily on the increase. But what is the case of the pro-ducer—because, although I deprecate class legislation, I should like to see whether the producer of barley is suffering any hardship ? I will try the point by the fairest of tests—I am not now dealing with the question between the better and the worse class of barleys—and these are, first of all,—what is the average price of barley relatively to that of wheat now as compared with former years ? and. secondly, what is the price of barley absolutely during the same period? Taking the average price of barley relatively to that of wheat, I find it to be as follows :—For ten years before the repeal of the beer duty (1820-29), as 513 to 100 ; for ten years after the repeal of the beer duty (1830-39), as 57+ to 100 ; for ten years further (1840-49), as 581 to 100 ; for ten years further (1850-59), as 62* to 100 ; for the year 1864, as 741 to 100. Then you will say that the price of wheat has gone down greatly, and that this standard of comparison is not a fair one ; but, taking the price of barley without any reference to the price of wheat, I find it stands thus :—Ten years before the repeal of the beer duty (18Q0-29), 31s. 10d.; ten years after the repeal (1S30-39). 32.s. 5d.; ten years further (1840-49), 32s. 9d.; ten years further (1850-59), 33s. Qd.; while the average price for the five years ending 1561 was 31s. 4d. ; so that the price has regularly and progressively been tending upwards, and this greatly suffering interest—and I
K2
132	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
am now speaking of it as a whole—when its grievances are examined into, turns out to be the victim of an increasing consumption and a higher price for the raw material. I, for one, cannot see how, under these circumstances, the producers of barley can be regarded as having any just cause for complaint. Rut there is another topic to which I wish to advert : I allude to the relative taxation of malt as compared with other articles—a point which I look upon as of great consequence, although the right hon. gentleman the member for Oxfordshire found fault with my right hon. friend the President of the Board of Trade for the comparison which he made on the subject. Compare the taxation on beer with the taxation on spirits. Beer is taxed at one-fifth, or 20 per cent.; spirits are taxed at four-fifths, or -;0 per cent. If you want to mark your moral indignation at the use of spirits through the imperfect and defective medium of fiscal arrangements, I think you cannot well go further than a rate of taxation under which whenever a man is disposed to lay out 5s. he only gets ls.-worth of spirits for it, while the other 4s. go into the Exchequer. Upon that side, therefore, there is no injustice in the taxation upon beer. What is the case as compared with wine ? It has been said that the duties upon wine have been reduced practically to nothing, a duty of ls. a gallon amounting only to 2d. a bottle. But the relation which the wine duties bear to the whole of the wine imported into the country has been examined by the very competent gentlemen who look after that branch for the revenue, and it is found that while beer is taxed at 20 per cent., wines of all descriptions, from claret and champagne downwards, are taxed at 27 percent. But even that is a very fallacious way of stating the case; for the tax on clarets and champagnes has no relation at all to the price of beer; beer sold by the pot is not in competition with clarets and champagnes. If you want to estimate the relative taxation you must take. articles capable of coming into competition with one another ; you must, therefore, take the poorer and lower wines capable of being sold at prices somewhat approaching that of beer, and therefore of coming into competition with it. I have inquired into the character of the wines consumed by the poor, who are the great drinkers of beer ; and one of them is called Hamburg sherry. . The people of Hamburg have the reputation of being adulterers of wine, but it is always to be borne in mind that, according to their own view, they understand the chyrnistry of wine, and what we call " adulteration " they say is nothing but scientific mixture. The price of Hamburg sherry is 5s, a gallon, duty paid, and of that 2s. 6d., or 50 per cent., is duty ; beer is only taxed at 20 per cent. Spanish red wines have recently been imported to some
On the Budget.	133
extent, and the same observation applies as to duty upon them. The common sherries from Cadiz pay about the same rate—that is to say, they are sold at 5s. per gallon, the duty being 2s. 6d., or 50 per cent. The common clarets imported from France for popular consumption are sold, duty paid, at about 2s. a gallon. The duty upon them is ls. a gallon, or at the rate of 50 per cent. This class of wines, therefore, which might enter into competition with beer, is subject to a taxation of 50 per cent., while beer itself contributes but 20 per cent. I pass now to another view of the question. Malt lies, we may say, half-way between the stronger liquors, such as wine and spirits, on the one hand, and tea on the other ; and appealing, as I do, to gentlemen who make honourable manifestations of the strength of their disapproval of the consumption of spirits, I apprehend I shall find a way to their hearts without any difficulty when I plead for moderation in the impost upon tea. If beer ought to be taxed more lightly than the wines which compete with it, and more lightly than spirits—as I grant it ought to be—then I put it confidently to the House, ought tea to be taxed more heavily than beer? I ask attention to that proposition, because it is one which entails consequences. If the principle that tea ought to be taxed more heavily than beer be. sound, then it is desirable to uphold that distinction ; but if the principle be unsound, then it is very desirable that it should be exploded. The tax on beer, as I have already stated, is about 20 per cent. ; the tax on tea cannot be stated at less than 40 per cent. The short price of tea for some years past has not been above ls. 6d., per lb., sold by the chest ; a few days ago it stood at is. 3d. If we take the price of Is. 6d., the tax upon tea will be at least 40 per cent. ; if we take the price at ls. 3d., the tax will be about 45 per cent. Under the circumstances of such undue relative taxation, I ask, what ground is there for making the vast sacrifice of revenue that I have shown would be entailed by reduction of the malt duty ? And do I not further show that up to this moment we have failed to do full justice to the consumers of the article of tea?. It is alleged that injustice is done relatively to the lower and middle classes of barley, as compared with the higher classes of barley, by the present system of raising the revenue. I have shown that there has been a progressive and steady rise in barley, not merely year by year, but ten years after ten years ; and I might easily contend that the lower and middle classes of barley have participated in the advantages of these improved prices. But I admit that the incidence of the malt duty does press on barleys of the middle and lower qualities. The duty is laid on a measure of malt, which for the purposes of this discussion is
134	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
just the same as if laid on a measure of barley, and a bushel of barley of high quality will naturally yield more malt than a similar quantity of barley of lower value. We have been asked whether it is not possible to devise something in the nature of a remedy for the inequality created by the operation of this system, and I am happy to say that we have found a partial remedy at least, and which I hope will prove something more than a partial remedy. It would be very unjust to alter the form of the duty absolutely from a duty by measure to a duty by weight, because many persons might not wish to adopt the substituted system, and the growers of fine barley especially might believe that their interests would be affected. But what we think may be done, and what we shall ask the House to do, is to give to the maltster the option, if he thinks fit, of having the duty charged by weight. Hon. members will at once perceive the operation of the proposed plan. Those who wish to be charged by measure will not be subject to any change ; but in other cases a certain weight will be assumed as the yield of a bushel of barley of such quality as is now ordinarily used for malt, and the duty paid by that weight will be the duty payable hereafter by all the malt that may go to make up that weight. I hope it is not too much to expect that the effect of that change will be to improve the position of the middling and lower barleys in the market, by giving them fair play as compared with the higher barleys, which now undoubtedly derive something of a factitious advantage from the form in which the
duty is laid.	This measure, it is right that I should add, will not form any part of the taxation of the year, but will form the subject of a Bill that I shall have the honour to lay on the table. Perhaps it may be said that the prospect I have held out is a prospect of the indefinite continuance of the malt duties. On that subject I do not profess to offer any opinion. But I do venture to point out that our position with reference to the repeal of indirect taxation is scarcely as good as it may possibly be a short time hence. Down to the present time we have felt it a paramount obligation to apply whatever measure of relief we felt ourselves in a condition to give towards the
reduction of the income tax.	Supposing the reduction of
the income tax now to have reached its term, or when it has reached its term, it is evident that the state of things and the position of the House of Commons with regard to the remission of indirect taxation, will be different. The income tax having been abolished, or reduced to a point at which the House may deem that it is not called upon to do any more in that direction, this House will be free to deal much more largely than it can do
On the BudJet.	135
at present with indirect taxation. I do not presume, however, to hold out any prospect, or to offer any opinion on this point, nor do I ask the Committee to imply any such opinion. My business, and that of my colleagues, is simply, from the case before us, to arrive at the best conclusion we are able, and we have arrived at a double conclusion. First, that it is not in our power, with justice, to ask the House to absorb so very large a portion of the surplus of the present year as would be absolutely necessary, together with the further burdens that would be entailed, to make a partial remission of the malt tax ; and secondly, as the result of that examination of the relative weight of taxation to which we have been invited. we are of opinion that the first and best step we can ask the House to take is to do an act of justice which has hitherto remained undone, and to place the duty upon tea in the same position as the duty upon beer. Considering it our duty to make a proposal on this subject, we have thought it better to make a proposal of a decisive character, such as will afford to the consumer the benefit of a considerable reduction. Taking what is called the long price of tea, we find that it is usually delivered out of bond at 2s. 6d. This is somewhat higher than the present rate ; but if it should be lower, so much the better ; and we feel that if we can reduce the duty by so large a sum as 6d. in the pound. we shall cause a reduction in the whole price of 20 per cent. This reduction, with the increased importation which it will no doubt occasion, must give a powerful stimulus to the consumption of the article, and will, we trust, place this most valuable and most healthful of all the luxuries of the poor within the reach of many who now do not enjoy it at all, or only enjoy it in a very limited degree. Under this head I make a very considerable proposal, and I do so on this account, because if the Committee, when it comes to vote upon it, should agree to the change, it will not be in our power to make any other proposal bearing upon the subject of indirect taxation during the present year. The estimated consumption of tea, apart from the reduction of duty for the year 1865-6, was 92,000,000 lb., the loss upon which, at 6d. in the pound—supposing it were all loss—would amount to 2,300,000/. I have taken, however, the recovery upon that loss to be 225.0001., and I think that with favourable circumstances it may go higher ; but no higher figure could be taken in conformity with the usual prudent rule in the department, which is the best judge of the subject. That would cause for the full period of 12 months a loss of 2,075,0001. ; but a portion of the year would elapse—and indeed a month has already elapsed—before the change could come into operation. And here I may take the opportunity of saying that if it be agreeable to
136	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
the Committee, I should ask them to vote upon the resolutions I am about to submit upon the subject on Thursday next. On the assumption, then, that 1-10th of the year would have elapsed before the new duty would come into operation, and therefore deducting 207,0001. from 2,075,0001., the loss for the financial year by the reduction of the duty would be 1,868,0001., and in the year 1866-7 there would be a further loss of 207,000/. The next subject upon which I have to trouble the Committee is the question of the income tax. Now, I think that if this Parliament was challenged as to the reason why it has not dealt with the income tax in a more sweeping manner than it has done, it would be easy to point for an answer to a single one of the many figures which I laid before the Committee at an earlier period of my address, showing that 12,000,0001. a year have been added to the expenditure of the country. But, allowing for the relief from the Annuities in 1860, I think we may say that 10,000,0001. a year has been added to the public expenditure. Therefore it would not be just, even if it were possible. to have deferred all other remissions of taxes for the purpose of applying their whole force to the reduction of the income tax. Undoubtedly if we had done that we might now be in a position to extinguish that tax ; but I don't think it would be conformable to the equity and fair dealing which usually distinguish the proceedings of this House if any such plan had been pursued, independently of the fact that a wide-spread opinion prevails—which, for aught I know, may be the opinion of the majority of this House, but upon that point I don't undertake to say any-thing—that the income tax is a tax fit to be permanently retained. My own personal opinion has little to do with the matter : all I meant was that if this House had doubts as to the question, it is a subject of great importance which in another Parliament may have to be considered. But, at all events, I think it perfectly clear with regard to the fulfilment of that pledge which some hon. gentlemen are pleased to regard as an obligation contracted by me personally and not affecting anybody else—I do think it is appropriate to the function of this Parliament, and the Government is of opinion that it is part of the duty of this Parliament, that we should do what we can towards the reduction of the income tax. It is in our power to make a proposal which will leave the income tax within manageable limits. The income tax at present is at the lowest point it has ever heretofore reached—I mean practically at the lowest point. It is perfectly true that for a moiety of one year it was 5d., but for the other moiety it was at 7d., and the yield for the year has never been lower than 6d. Well, we propose to ask Parliament to remove
On the Budget.	137
from that tax of 6d. one-third of the amount. If that proposal be accepted—and I confess I don't anticipate its rejection—the effect will be to reduce the annual yield of the income tax to 5,200,00C/. That would be the amount of the tax, and that would be the condition in which we should hand it over to the new Parliament. I think that 5,200,0001. would be the produce of the income tax at 4d., for the value of the penny has progressively risen. It was once my duty to state for your pleasure that the value of the tax was one million for each penny ; it is now my duty to state, and it will give you no less pleasure to hear, that each penny of the income tax produces 1,300,0001. By giving an income tax at that amount over to the hands of the new Parliament, I think we shall accomplish a double object. If it be the pleasure of that Parliament to deal with it with a view to extinction, the amount of the tax will have been brought within such limits that it will not be beyond their reach to adopt measures which would enable that object to be gained. But if, on the other hand, it shall be the view of Parliament and the people that it is wise permanently to retain an income tax—an income tax at a low rate—as part of the ordinary financial provision of the country, that is the rate at which we believe it may be most justly and wisely so retained in,time of peace, and in the absence of any special exigency. A penny of the income tax produces, as I have said, 1,300,0001. The final loss to the Exchequer, therefore, and the final restoration to the public, from our proposal will be 2,600,0001. Of that sum a loss of not quite two-thirds will accrue in the year 1865-6—namely, 1,650,000/. ; the loss of the remainder, or 050,0001., will not accrue till the financial year 1866-7. So much for the income tax. And now I come to the only remaining resolution with which r shall have to trouble the Committee. There can be no doubt on the minds of those who hear me, even before I speak it, that 1 refer to the subject of fire insurance. I may remind the House that on the 21st of March it arrived at this resolution—" That, in the opinion of this House it is expedient that the reduction of the fire insurance duty made in the last Session be extended at the earliest opportunity to houses, household goods, and all descriptions of insurable property." On that resolution the House divided, with the following result :—Ayes, 137 ; Noes, 65. Among the " Noes " were found many gentlemen who have been the steady and invariable and constant supporters of the repeal or reduction of the fire insurance duty, and also many members of the Government, who in asking the House ineffectually not to adopt the motion, did not grapple with it upon its merits, acknowledged the fairness of the judgment which the
138	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
House had been pleased to give, and only deprecated what they thought—but the House did not think the same—a premature declaration. I have thus referred to the resolution, and in some degree analyzed the division for the purpose of showing that little room for doubt has remained upon the mind of the Government as to the course which they should take. Indeed, the two sums which I have given-1,868,0001. for the tea duty, and 1,650,0001. for the income tax, amounting together to 3,518,0001., show that there remains to us but a narrow margin. At the same time that margin is sufficient to enable us to meet the express wish of the House. Now the measure of last year will require notice for a few moments. The portion of the duty with which we dealt last year was essentially distinct from the portion with which we did not deal in this respect,—that the former was a tax upon trade, upon industry, and therefore virtually a tax upon consumption, whereas the remaining portion is
a tax upon property.	But let not the House be afraid that in stating that distinction particularly I am about to venture upon it as an argument for a difference of rate. The desire of the House for an uniform rate has been clearly and unmistakably expressed, and we have not the smallest idea of disputing it. The experiment of last year has not yet been fully tried ; it has been only nine months in operation, and we have not as yet got so much as a full year's receipt of the new duty upon stock in trade ; but as far as it goes it does not enable us to be very sanguine as to the ultimate results of the reduction in producing a recovery of revenue. There seemed to be high authority for taking a more sanguine view at the time; but although my estimate was framed upon a moderate recovery—namely, an increase of 10 per cent., which was included in the annual increase, the result has shown a figure even less. It was stated, and stated strongly, by hon. gentlemen in the 'discussion of last year that when we came to deal with property the result would be more satisfactory, and that a larger increase and a larger recovery of revenue would take place in regard to that portion of the tax. How that may be I don't presume to say ; but undoubtedly as far as stock in trade is concerned the remission has not been very successful in its results. Still I do not grudge the reduction which has taken place, because that tax, as applied to stock-in-trade, was comparatively a tax upon industry, and the benefit of the remission is certain to find its way to the consumer of those articles which are the subject of the tax. It has been usual to say in the House of Commons that the tax on fire insurance is a tax on prudence. In such arguments as I have ever employed, so far as I
On the Budget.	139
can recollect them, in resisting motions for the repeal or reduction of the duty I have not defended the tax upon its merits, but I have felt doubtful as to the sanguine anticipations of recovery upon which most of those motions have to a great degree been founded. However, I think that the definition of the tax as a tax on prudence may be amended, and that we may call it with greater accuracy a tax upon property with a double exemption ; the one being an exemption in favour of improvidence, and the other an exemption in favour of those large holders of property in the form of houses and buildings who are able to take their chance and perform the function which is called " insuring themselves." I must say that no part of the argument ever used on the subject of fire insurance has appeared to me so strong against the present state of the law as this, because it is said, I think unanswerably, " If you are to make insurance against fire the means of imposing a duty upon property"—and my hon. friend (Mr. Hubbard) showed clearly that the duty of 3s. per cent. was equivalent to an income tax of 7d. in the pound upon houses and buildings—" it ought to be imposed equally, and there ought not to be a virtual exemption on behalf of large holders of property." I think that that is an argument to which there is no reply. Now, as I have said; the general expectation of the House is that if we make the reduction which is pointed out by the resolution adopted on the 21st of March there will be a considerable recovery of revenue. Whatever recovery there is will undoubtedly be a very great good, because it will indicate some approach to equality in the imposition of the tax, and it will show that the inducement to self-insurance is operating with less force than that with which it has heretofore operated. We therefore at once admit, but especially under the authority of the House, that the experiment is perfectly well worth trying; and as we have still remaining in our hands the means of trying the experiment, we will propose a resolution to that effect. if the experiment should succeed ; if, relatively to the amount of reduction, the recovery should be large, then, as I have said, a great good will be accomplished. If the experiment should fail, then undoubtedly it may be the duty of another Parliament, and of other Governments, to look further at the question, and to say whether fire insurance ought not to be placed on a footing yet more liberal and free. I know there are those who hold that insurance against fire is a thing which ought not to be encouraged, because it is an encouragement to carelessness. I take it, however, that the House has adopted the opposite of that proposition, and desires to see fire insurance placed upon the best possible footing, and carried to the greatest possible
140	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
extent. It may, therefore, be the duty of some future Parliament and of some future Government to consider the question, if the results of this measure should not be satisfactory; and if it should be found necessary to give a further relief at some future time from the duty on fire insurance, undoubtedly the House will be disposed to look at the elements of which the duty is composed —one of them being a tax upon property, which must be considered in conjunction with other taxes upon property forming part of our fiscal system ; and the other a tax on insurance, which is purely a commercial operation, and ought to be looked at in regard to the nature of the risk rather than the value of the property to which it applies. I come now to the estimated financial effect of this reduction. The revenue from fire insurances in 1865-6, apart from any change, was taken at 1,450,0001. We propose to reduce the duty to a uniform duty of ls. 6d. from June
25.	We shall add to the resolution of the House a further change of minor consequence, which was not indicated in the resolution, but which I am quite sure will be universally approved, and that is the reduction of the duty of ls. upon the insurance policy, which is quite distinct from the 3s. imposed annually on the renewal of the policy. That charge of ls. forms a serious impediment to small insurances. In the larger, and even in the middling insurances, the company takes upon itself the payment of the shilling, but in insurances from 3001. downwards the company requires the insurer—and it is not at all unnatural—to bear this charge. The consequence is that the man who is insuring 100/. has to pay 4s. per cent. upon his first year, and the man who insures 2001. has to I ay 3s. 6d. We therefore propose to substitute for the shilling duty a penny stamp, but at the same time to require the penny stamp to be put upon the receipt given for the money, which the spirit of the present law requires, though I am not sure whether it is enforced. The financial result will then be this :—For the half-year we should receive the old duty. The old duty was taken at 1,450,0001., and half of that would be 725,0001., which we should get. The yield of the new uniform duty of ls. 6d. we take at 930,0001. That is a reduction of 520,0001. by the measure you are now adopting, after allowing for an increase of 10 per cent. upon the description of insurances we are now going to reduce. One half of the old revenue which we should get would be 725,0001. On the remaining half year we should get 465,0001., and putting these two sums together we have 1,190,0001., showing a loss for the present year of 260,0001., and in the next year of 260,0001. more. I can put together very simply the results of the several changes which we ask the House to adopt. First, I will give the total amount of relief which these
On the Budget.	141
changes will give td the public when they have taken full operation. The relief given upon tea will be 2,900,000/. ; upon the income tax, 2,600,000/. ; upon fire insurance, 520.000/.—the total of these figures representing the whole of the operations you are now called upon to sanction, will be 5,420.000/. I now come to the loss which we should have to experience in the financial year already commenced. The loss from the reduction on tea would be 1,808,0001.; from the reduction in the income tax, 1,650,000/. ; and from fire insurance, 200 0001. The total loss for 1865-6 would thus be 3,778,000/. In 1866-7 there will be a further loss upon tea of 207,000/. ; upon the income tax, 950,0001. ; and upon fire insurance, 260,0001. ; showing a further burden for 1866-7 of 1,417,000/., or a total loss for the two years taken together of 5.195;0001. The figure at which we have to look most minutely now is the total amount of the loss for the present year-3,778,0001. That has to be deducted from a surplus which I stated at 4,031,000/. ; and the remainder, a slight surplus which I ask the Committee to permit us to retain in our hands, will be 253,0001. It will be seen that, deducting that surplus from the burden of loss to be laid upon the year 1866-7 by the legislation proposed for the present year, there will be the sum of about 1,160,000/. which we are now imposing upon the resources of that year, and it may be asked whether that is a prudent measure. My answer will be twofold. In the first place, when you deal with taxes upon property, it is absolutely inevitable that you shall to a considerable extent affect the balance of the year succeeding that for which you immediately legislate. That is my first answer. But I likewise say that, looking to the state of the country and the fact that the increment of the revenue would, in the natural and ordinary course of things, come to a larger sum, I do not think that the Committee need scruple on the score of prudence to accede to the proposition I am now making. There is, however, another request which I have to make of the Committee, and which I trust they will be disposed to grant. It is that they will join with us in shielding against invasion the modest sum of a quarter of a million which I ask that we may be permitted to retain. Sir, we have been like persons enclosed within certain precincts, while outside the door we have seen crowds of hungry claimants. The more prosperous the country is, the larger the surplus available for the remission of taxes, the greater is always the number who demand remissions. We see them on all sides and of all kinds :—
" Circumstant fremitn denso, stipantque frequenter."
142	Speech, of Mr. Gladstone
We have let in those who we thought had the strongest claim. But there remain many behind. There are many Customs duties with which it will be still desirable to deal. It is not necessary to name them ; but there are the duties upon raw materials and other duties which undoubtedly it would be most desirable to repeal. But I hope the Committee will think with us that we have acted wisely in giving a heavy reduction on the great article of tea rather than in restricting it to what we should have been able to afford in small and less perceptible amounts. Then there is the claim to the abolition or reduction of the duties on public conveyances. That is, I think, a claim for which there is much to be said ; and glad shall I be when the time comes that a favourable ear may be given to the applicants on that subject. There is also the powerful claim of those who are connected with the business of marine insurance. I cannot say that I think their case is by any means so urgent ; yet at the same time it may be within certain limits a fair subject for future consideration. Sir, there are other claims immediately hanging over us in respect to which I trust that the House will support us in declining to make further inroads upon the Exchequer. And now I have in view a matter to which I was understood previously to refer—a proposal that will be made for the relief of a particular class from a duty to which they have for some generations been accustomed. I am sure that if the House is prepared to enter upon the question of the relief of one particular class from duties which it now pays, whether in the shape of an annual license, or in the shape of a stamp upon admission, it must be prepared to deal with the whole body of those interests in order to satisfy the demands of justice, and to deal with the whole body of those interests, or to deal with any of them, is neither compatible with financial prudence nor with the elementary principles on which the conduct of Parliament in fiscal matters should rest. I trust, therefore, Sir, that we
shall have that support from this House for which I have asked, if it thinks that our proposals are upon the whole reasonable and just, and carried to an extent as wide as the circumstances in which we stand warrant. I must confess that I cannot but entertain a very sanguine hope as to their acceptance. I am so sanguine as to believe that the immense difficulties I have described as being in the way of any effectual dealing with the malt tax may have made an impression even on minds which were favourably predisposed towards its remission. It is a great satisfaction to myself, as it is also to my colleagues, to believe that the proposals we now make are proposals which may not be unacceptable to hon. gentlemen on the other side of the House. They
On the Budget.	143
are few, they are simple, they are intelligible. They might probably have been imparted in fewer words than those of any Budget that has ever dealt with an extensive remission of taxation. I am, Sir, strong in the persuasion, first of all, that they are likely to win the approval of this House ; and secondly, that they will likewise obtain the favourable verdict of the nation over whose interests it is our duty to watch.
SPEECHES
ON
THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.
[The following Speeches were delivered in the House of Commons on the 1st of May—Sir G. GREY moving and Mr. DISRAELI seconding an address to the Crown expressing the sorrow and indignation of the House at the Assassination of the President of the United States, and praying Her Majesty to convey these sentiments on the part of the House of Commons to the Government of the United States.]
SPEECH OF THE RT. HON. SIR GEORGE GREY,
MEMBER FOR MORPETH.
I VERY much regret the unavoidable absence of my noble friend at the head of the Government, in whose name the notice was given of the motion which it now devolves upon me to ask the House to agree to. I feel, however, that it is comparatively unimportant by whom the motion is proposed, because I am confident that the Address to the Crown which I am about to ask the House to agree to is one which will meet with the cordial and unanimous assent of all. When the news a few days ago of the assassination of the President of the United States, and the attempted assassination—for I hope that we may now confidently expect that it will not be a successful attempt—of Mr. Seward reached this country, the first impression in the mind of every one was that the intelligence could not be true. It was hoped by every one that persons could not be found capable of committing a crime so atrocious. When the truth was forced upon us, when we could no longer entertain any doubt as to the correctness of the intelligence, the feeling which succeeded was one of universal sorrow, horror, and indignation. It was felt as if some great calamity had befallen ourselves ; for, in the Civil War, the existence and the long continuance of which we have so sincerely deplored, it is well known that the Government of this country, acting, as 1 believe, in accordance with the almost unanimous, or perhaps I may say in accordance with the unanimous feeling
On the Assassination of President Lincoln. 145
of this country, had maintained a strict and impartial neutrality. But it is notorious, and it could not in a great country like this. be otherwise, that different opinions have been entertained by different persons with regard to the questions at issue between the Northern and Southern States of America ; but still I believe that the sympathies of the majority of the people of this country have been with the North. I am desirous on this occasion of avoiding everything which may excite any difference of opinion. I may say, therefore, that in this free country different opinions have been entertained and different sympathies felt, and that in this free country the freest expression has been given, as should be the case, to those differences of opinion. I am sure I shall raise no controversy when I say in the presence of that great crime which has sent a thrill of horror through every one who heard of it, all difference of opinion, all conflicting sympathies for a moment entirely vanished. I am anxious to say at once, and I desire to proclaim that belief with the strongest confidence, that this atrocious crime was regarded by every man of influence and power in the Southern States with the same degree of horror which it excited in every other part of the world. We may, therefore—and this is all I wish to say upon this subject—whatever our opinions with regard to the past, and whatever our sympathies may have been—we shall all cordially unite in expressing our abhorrence of that crime, and in rendering our sympathy to that nation which is now mourning the loss of its chosen and trustful chief, struck to the ground by the hand of an assassin, and that too at the most critical period of its history. While lamenting that war and the loss of life which it has inevitably occasioned, it is impossible, whatever our opinions or our sympathies may have been, to withhold our admiration from the many gallant deeds performed and acts of heroism displayed by both parties in the contest ; and it is a matter for bitter reflection that the page of history, recording such gallant achievements and such heroic deeds, by men who so freely shed their blood on the battle-field in a cause which each considered right, should also be stained with the record of a crime such as we are now deploring. At length a new era appeared to be dawning on the contest between the North and the South. The time had come when there was every reason to hope that that war would speedily be brought to a close. Victory had crowned the efforts of the statesmen and the arms of the Federals, and most of us—all, I hope—had turned with a feeling of some relief and some hope for the future from the record of sanguinary conflicts to that correspondence which has but recently passed between the Generals commanding the hostile armies. And when we turned to Mr.
146	Speech of Sir George Grey
President Lincoln, I should have been prepared to express a hope, indeed an expectation—and I have reason to believe that that expectation would not have been disappointed—that in the.hour of victory and in the use of victory he would have shown a wise forbearance, a generous consideration, which would have added tenfold lustre to the fame and reputation which he has acquired throughout the misfortunes of this war. Unhappily the foul deed which has taken place has deprived Mr. Lincoln of the opportunity of thus adding to his well-earned fame and reputation ; but let us hope, what indeed we may repeat, that the good sense and right feeling of those upon whom will devolve the most arduous and difficult duties in this conjuncture will lead them to respect the wishes and the memory of him whom we are all mourning, and will lead them to act in the same spirit and to follow the same counsels by which we have good reason to believe the conduct of Mr. Lincoln would have been marked, had he survived to complete the work that was entrusted to him. I am only speaking the general opinion when I say that nothing could give greater satisfaction to this country than by means of forbearance, it may be of temperate conciliation, to see the Union of the North and South again accomplished, especially if it can be accomplished by common consent, freed from what hitherto constituted the weakness of that Union—the curse and disgrace of slavery. I wish it were possible for us to convey to the people of the United States an adequate idea of the depth and universality of the feeling which this sad event has occasioned in this country, that from the highest to the lowest there has been but one feeling entertained. Her Majesty's Minister at Washington will, in obedience to the Queen's command, convey to the Government of the United States the expression of the feelings of Her Majesty and of her Government upon the deplorable event; and Her Majesty, with that tender consideration which she has always evinced for sorrow and suffering in others, of whatever rank, has with her own hand written a letter to Mrs. Lincoln, conveying the heartfelt sympathy of a widow to a widow suffering under the calamity of having lost one suddenly cut off. From every part of this country, from every class, but one voice has been heard, one of abhorrence of the crime, and of sympathy for and interest in the country which has this great loss to mourn. The British residents in the United States, as of course was to be expected, lost not an hour in expressing their sympathy with the Government of the United States. The people of our North American colonies are vieing with each other in expressing the same sentiments. And it is not only among men of the same race who are connected with the people of the United States by origin, language, and blood, that these feelings
On the Assassination, of President Lincoln. 147
prevail, but I believe that every country in Europe is giving expression to the same sentiments and is sending the message to the Government of the United States. I am sure, therefore, that I am not wrong in anticipating that this House will, in the name of the people of England, of Scotland, and of Ireland, be anxious to record their expression of the same sentiment, and to have it conveyed to the Government of the United States. Of this I am confident, that this House could never more fully and more adequately represent the feelings of the whole of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom than by agreeing to the Address which it is now my duty to move, expressing to Her Majesty our sorrow and indignation at the assassination of the President of the United States, and praying Her Majesty that, in communicating her own sentiments to the Government of that country upon the deplorable event, she will express at the sometime, on the part of this House, their abhorrence of the crime and their sympathy with the Government and the people of the United States in the deep affliction into which they have been thrown.
SPEECH OF THE RIGHT HON. B. DISRAELI,
MEMBER FOR BUCKS.
THERE are rare instances when the sympathy of a nation approaches those tenderer feelings which are generally supposed to be peculiar to the individual and to be the happy privilege of private life ; and this is one. Under any circumstances we should have bewailed the catastrophe at Washington ; under any circumstances we should have shuddered at the means by which it was accomplished. But in the character of the victim, and even in the accessories of his last moments, there is something so homely and innocent that it takes the question, as it were, out of all the pomp of history and the ceremonial of diplomacy,—it touches the heart of nations and appeals to the domestic sentiment of mankind. Whatever the various and varying opinions in this House, and in the country generally, on the policy of the late President of the United States, all must agree that in one of the severest trials which ever tested the moral qualities of man he fulfilled his duty with simplicity and strength. Nor is it possible for the people of England at such a moment to forget that he sprang from the same fatherland and spoke the same mother tongue. When such crimes are perpetrated the public mind is apt to fall into gloom and perplexity, for it is ignorant alike of the causes and the consequences of such deeds. . But it
L 2
148	Speech of Mr. Disraeli.
is one of our duties to reassure them under unreasoning panic and despondency. AsSassination has never changed the history of the world. I will not refer to the remote past, though an accident has made the most memorable instance of antiquity at this moment fresh in the minds and memory of all around me. But even the costly sacrifice of a Caesar did not propitiate the inexorable destiny of his country. If we look to modern times, to times at least with the feelings of which we are familiar, and the people of which were animated and influenced by the same interests as ourselves, the violent deaths of two heroic men, Henry IV. of France and the Prince of Orange, are conspicuous illustrations of this truth. In expressing our unaffected and profound sympathy with the citizens of the United States on this untimely end of their elected chief, let us not therefore sanction any feeling of depression, but rather let us express a fervent hope that from out of the awful trials of the last four years, of which the least is not this violent demise, the various populations of North America may issue elevated and chastened, rich with the accumulated wisdom and strong in the disciplined energy which a young nation can only acquire in a protracted and perilous struggle. Then they will be enabled not merely to renew their career of power and prosperity, but they will renew it to contribute to the general happiness of mankind. It is with these feelings that I second the Address to the Crown.
SPEECHES ON REFORM.
[The four Speeches which follow are the principal ones delivered in the House of Commons in the long and important debate on the question of Reform, which took place on the 3rd and 8th days of May ; and the general scope and bearing of the debate will, we think, be sufficiently indicated by these specimens. The debate arose on the moving by Mr. E. Baines, M.P. for Leeds, of the Second Reading of the Borough Franchise Extension Bill, by which it was proposed to confer the franchise on 6/. borough householders. —Mr. BAZLEY having seconded the motion,• Lord ELCHO moved the previous question, and after a lengthy discussion, in which many of the leading members of the House spoke, a division took place (8th of May) on the previous question, when there appeared Ayes 214, Noes 288, and the Bill was accordingly lost. Amongst the speakers whose speeches we do not now reprint, were on the first day Mr. Black and Mr. Leatham, and on the second day Mr. Gregory, Mr. Liddell, Sir F. Goldsmid, Mr. Buxton, and Mr. Stansfeld.]
SPEECH OF THE RIGHT HON. R. LOWE,
MEMBER FOR CALNE.
IN order that I may obtain and merit the indulgence of the House I shall endeavour to confine myself as much as possible to the exact question at issue in this debate, which is, as I apprehend it, whether it is desirable to extend the franchise in boroughs by lowering its pecuniary amount. Now, that appears to me to be a sufficiently large question, because it involves the consideration whether it is or is not expedient, in the existing circumstances of this country, to make a further advance in the direction of democracy. I congratulate the hon. member for Leeds on having to-day succeeded in enlisting the advocacy of the hon. member for Huddersfield in favour of his one-barrelled Reform Bill, although I have no doubt that hon. gentleman would have preferred having to deal with a revolver. I cannot, however, congratulate the hon. member for Leeds on the arguments in support of his views which the hon. member for Huddersfield has advanced. Let the House for a moment reflect upon what fell from him towards the close of his speech. He said that if this bill were passed it would form an aristocracy Among the working classes, and that it would be regarded by the
150	Speech of Mr. Lowe
remainder of those classes with jealousy and dislike. The hon. gentleman has, moreover, reminded us of the agency ready to the hands of those who would be animated by this jealousy and dislike to enable them to extort from this House further reforms. Is the prospect he thus holds out to us, I would ask, satisfactory ? If I were to judge by this debate, no position it appears to me could be more happy or easier than that of those gentlemen who undertake to advocate the cause of democracy in the House of Commons. It is a task which seems to require the smallest amount of thought and a most copious vocabulary of words. One hon. gentleman says the working classes are " wrongfully " excluded from the exercise of the franchise ; another describes their exclusion as " unjust ;" a third looks upon them as being in consequence " degraded ;" while a fourth speaks of them as being " slaves." So we go on until we have an accumulation of about a dozen such terms, by the use of which some hon. gentlemen seem to think they have done sufficient to prove their case, and to throw the onus probandi—as it is now the fashion to say—upon those who differ from them in opinion. I should wish, therefore, to point out to the House that this question has scarcely been dealt with with that calmness and depth of view which we are accustomed to expect in dealing with many other subjects. Mr. Mill, for instance—a great authority—tells us that his ideal of good government is that every citizen should have a share in it ; while the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a still
greater authority, says :—
" Is it right, I ask, that in the face of such dispositions the present law of almost entire exclusion should prevail ? Again I call upon the adversary to show cause, and I venture to say, that every man who is not presumably incapacitated by some consideration of personal unfitness or political danger, is morally entitled to come within the pale of the Constitution."
Now, this kind of argument is the easiest in the world, and is widely different from that style of reasoning which the House is in the habit of demanding from its members on all other subjects. Hon. gentlemen will, I think, concur with me in thinking that the English view of the Government is that it is not an exact sum : that it is not capable of a priori demonstration ; that it rests upon experiment, and that it ought to be carefully scanned, modified and altered so as to be adapted to particular states of society. If that be so, nothing can be more difficult than to meet such arguments as those to which I have referred, because a man who is careful to weigh what he has to say on a subject like this, cannot put his arguments in a single sentence. And to what, let me ask, do the arguments of those who advocate the
On Reform.	151
right of the working classes to be admitted to the exercise of the franchise amount? Why, they proceed upon that assumption of the a priori rights of man which forms a subject of ridicule in every civilized country. When the right hon. gentleman, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that the onus probandi lay with his adversary, in this instance he must have meant, that anterior to the existence of society, there was vested in every man some personal a priori right which nobody had authority to touch. When Air. Mill, in like manner, speaks of every citizen of a State having a perfect right to share in its government, he appeals to the same a priori considerations, in accordance with which every man would be entitled, not only to be well governed, but to take part in governing himself. But where are those a priori rights to be found? The answer to that question would lead me into a metaphysical inquiry which I shall not now pursue. What I would ask is, can those alleged rights form a ground on which a practical, deliberate assembly like the House of Commons can arrive at a particular conclusion ? lf, 1 may add, they do in reality exist, they are as much the property of the Australian savage and the Hottentot of the Cape as of the educated and refined Englishman. Those who uphold this doctrine must apply it to the lowest as well as to the highest grades of civilization, claiming for it the same universal force as a deduction of pure mathematics. A man derives a right of this kind from God, and if society infringe upon it he is entitled, according to the theory of which I am speaking, to resist that infringement. But the same theory which arms the hand of the assassin is that upon which this doctrine of a priori right is founded; and it is a theory on which, whatever may be its merits, it is impossible to construct one single society. Those abstract rights are constantly invoked for the destruction of society and the overthrow of Government, but they never can be successfully invoked as a foundation on which society and Government may securely rest. 1 do not, I may observe, find such doctrines as those to which I am adverting advocated in the writings of that arch-Radical and advocate of universal suffrage—Jeremy Bentham. He utterly ignores them, for he says that Government ought to put out of consideration all those arguments which are drawn from abstract rights, inasmuch as whatever might be the metaphysical theories on the subject, they were such as could not lead them to any practical conclusion. But passing from those arguments, on which I thought it right to say a few words by way of criticism, I come to those which may be described as of a sentimental character. It is contended that it is our business to elevate the working classes, and there is not one of us, I am
152	Speech of Mr. Lowe
sure, who would not feel the utmost pleasure in doing anything towards effecting that object. But the way to elevate the working classes is not, it seems to me, to lower the means to that end, or to seek after that sort of elevation which has resulted in Australia in the franchise being so despised that people hardly care to pick it out of the gutter. But another argument is, that we ought to reward the working classes. This, however, is not a question of patronage ; it is a question of selecting the best agency on behalf of a great community to decide in the last resort who are the persons who shall sit in this House, and, therefore, indirectly, what shall be the policy which the British House of Commons is to pursue. It is not a question of sentiment, of rewarding, or punishing, or elevating, but a practical matter of business and statecraft, with the view of rendering our form of government as good as possible. It is said, however, that those who are deprived of the franchise are slaves and degraded. Now, on this point I should like to read to the House a few words which appeared to me to be extremely apposite :—
" Many persons do not inquire if a State be well administered, if the laws protect property and persons, if the people are happy. What they require, without giving attention to anything else, is political liberty—that is, the most equal distribution of political power. Wherever they do not see the form of government to which they are attached, they see nothing but slavery, and if these pretended slaves are well satisfied with their condition, if they do not desire to change it, they despise and insult them. In their fanaticism they are always ready to stake all the happiness of a nation upon a civil war, for the sake of transferring power into the hands of those whom an invincible ignorance will not permit to use it except for their own destruction."
Where do those words occur ? In the Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation of Jeremy Bentham, the advocate of universal suffrage. And now let me ask whether in all countries the happiness of the people at large is not the end which ought to be sought in the establishment of a government; and that end being as far as possible secured, are we to be called upon to overthrow the fabric by which it has been accomplished on these grounds of sentiment and a priori right ? That is a view which can scarcely be successfully maintained, and I therefore take the liberty of putting aside the sentimental argument, simply observing that the object at which we ought to aim is good government. We often hear persons speaking of killing two birds with one stone, but I apprehend that the man who tried to do so would be more likely to miss both than to kill either. There is another argument—the fatalistic argument—which has been put forward by the hon. member for Huddersfield, who seems to have constructed a sort of shifting scale of
On Reform.	153
•
all the fallacies on this subject, and who affords a good illustration of every one of them. " You must have it out," the hon. gentleman says, using a line of argument which is at once the foundation and the blemish of the great work of De Tocqueville ; " sooner or later you will have to give way." M. de Tocqueville assumed that democracy was inevitable, and that the question to be considered was not whether it was good or evil in itself, but how we could best adapt ourselves to it. The ignava ratio, however, is one by which I hope this House will not be influenced. If this democracy be a good thing, let us clasp it to our bosoms ; if not,.there is, I am sure, spirit and feeling enough in this country to prevent us from allowing ourselves to be overawed by any vague prestige of this kind, in the belief that the matter has been already decided upon by the fates and destinies in some dark tribunal in which they sit together. I come next to the argument of necessity. We are told that the working classes are thundering at our gates, and that we shall be in the greatest
danger if we do not accede to their demands. But when, in answer to this argument, it is suggested that they are not at our gates, and that they are making no noise, the reply is, " Oh, wait awhile and see what they will do." Now, I, for one, am disposed to take that advice, and to wait awhile. If this which we are asked for be a good thing in itself to concede, let us grant it without any compulsion ; but if it be bad, let us not be driven from our sense of manliness and duty to our country by any fear as to what may happen if we refuse it. I am inclined to think that democracy in the present state of things would be a great misfortune. If driven to it, we must, of course, submit, and it may perhaps be better to do so than to give rise to a great internal commotion or civil war ; but if we do so from fear of pressure hereafter, we may be met by evils equally great 1 have now gone through a series of arguments to which, in my opinion, the House ought not to attach any weight. To what kind of arguments, then, do I think they ought to listen ? I will not state them in my own language, but in the language of one the poetical charm of whose mind and style have perhaps a little overclouded his reputation as a political philosopher. I allude to Lord Macaulay, and these are his words :—
" How, then, are we to arrive at just conclusions on a subject so important to the happiness of mankind ? Surely by that method which, in every experimental science to which it has been applied, has signally increased the power and knowledge of our species, by observing the present state of the world, by assiduously studying the history of past ages, by sifting the evidence of facts, by carefully combining and contrasting those which are authentic, by generalizing with judgment and diffidence, by perpetually bringing the theory which we have constructed
154	Speech of Mr. Lowe
to the test of new facts, by correcting or altogether abandoning it, according as those new facts prove it to be partially or fundamentally unsound. Proceeding thus—patiently, diligently, candidly—we may hope to form a system as far inferior in pretension to that which we have been examining, and as far superior to it in real utility, as the prescriptions of a great physician, varying with every stage of every malady and with the constitution of every patient, to the pill of the advertising quack which is to cure all human beings, in all climates, of all diseases."
That, I humbly submit, is the way in which you must look at this question. You must deal with it as practical men, upon grounds and for reasons of which I have scarcely observed a vestige in this debate. What should be the nature of your previous inquiries into the subject I shall now venture to point out. To use the words of one whose name ought never to be mentioned in this House without respect, if not with a warmer feeling—the late Sir G. Lewis—I might say that what we have to do is to find out any practical defect in the Constitution, and then to suggest a remedy for it. No one has, however, in this instance, shown a single practical grievance under which the working classes are suffering which would be remedied by the proposed alteration. Mr. Holyoake, speaking on behalf of those classes, tells us that the Frenchman who has voted away his own liberty is far superior to the Englishman who does not possess the franchise. Hon. members, however, will scarcely concur in that opinion, and I think I may confidently assert, in opposition to the right hon gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that the onus probandi in this case rests not with those who deny the existence of the a priori right for which he contends, but rather on those who, unable to point out the existence of any practical grievance, call upon us virtually to destroy our present form of government and to put something else in its place. It may be said, however, that a practical grievance does exist, and that the interests of the working classes are not consulted by the House of Commons ; but, in answer to that argument, I would simply refer to the admirable speech of the noble lord the member for Haddingtonshire (Lord Elcho), who pointed out that hon. gentlemen frequently brought forward questions which really related to rich bodies, as if they were connected with the poor, convinced that by such means they would secure for their applications a degree of sympathy. I entirely deny, therefore, that the interests of the poor are neglected in this House, while I maintain that legislation is not altogether a matter of good will, but of intelligence and study, and that the abstruse problems which it involves cannot be satisfactorily dealt with by men engaged in daily labour. In 1842 there was an epoch in our annals because the Anti-Corn•
On Reform,.	155
Law agitation then began, and in that year the late Mr. Duncombe presented a petition to this House, signed by 3,000,000 persons. This petition may, therefore, I think, be looked upon as containing a fair expression of the views of the working classes, and in it they say :—
" Your petitioners complain that they are enormously taxed to pay the interest of what is called the National Debt, a debt amounting at present to 800,000,0001., being only a portion of the enormous amount expended in cruel and expensive wars for the suppression of all liberty by men not authorized by the people, and who, consequently, had no right to tax posterity for the outrages committed by them upon mankind."
There goes the National Debt. " Your petitioners deeply deplore the existence of any kind of monopoly in this nation ; and while they unequivocally condemn the levying of any tax upon the necessaries of life and upon those articles principally required by the labouring classes, they are also sensible that abolition of .any one monopoly will never unshackle labour from its misery until the people possess that power under which all monopoly and oppression must cease. And your petitioners respectfully mention the existing monopolies of the suffrage "—pointing, of course, to universal suffrage—" of paper money "—looking naturally to unlimited issues and greenbacks—" of machinery " —meaning property, because machinery is only another name for property—
of land "—of course there could be no question about that—" of the public press "—such portion of it as was opposed to their views—" of religion, of the means of travelling and transit, and a host of other evils too numerous to mention, all arising from class legislation." That was the working men's programme of the steps which Parliament ought to take for the regeneration of the country and the advancement of the class to which they belonged. The middle-class Parliament, if I may call it so, did not adopt that programme. It took another course, and carried out two different objects. It struck off the shackles from trade, meeting while doing so with every possible opposition from the working classes, who, organized by their leaders, did everything they could to break up the meetings of persons engaged in forwarding this beneficial policy. And it founded a system of education which, though no doubt imperfect, has been an enormous boon to the working classes. If the working classes had had their way then, instead of the middle class having had theirs, by which course of action would the working classes most have benefited ? Would it have been a gain to them to have obtained control over the affairs of the country ? I do not speak of the monopolists like ourselves, who, of course, would have disappeared off the face of
156	Speech of Mr. Lowe
the earth, but of the working classes themselves—would they have gained by the attainment of their own wishes ?
" Evertere domos totos optantibus ipsis
Di faciles."
I venture to think they would not have gained by it, and that the working classes, instead of being neglected by the existing Parliament, have been better cared for, and according to sounder and more carefully considered principles, than if they themselves had been charged with the administration. These are the reasons that appear to me to show that no satisfactory grounds have been urged which should induce the House to read this Bill a second time. And now I go a little further, and, thanking the House for the patience with which they have listened to an abstract and distasteful discussion, I propose to take on myself the burden of showing that the Bill ought not to pass. The first thing that strikes me is that this Bill will give the franchise to very few of the working classes in whose power it is not to obtain it now. And on that point I beg leave to read a passage from the report of the Factory Commissioners for the present year, which seems to me very interesting and suggestive. One of the inspectors, Mr. Baker, speaking of freehold land societies and others that have been eminently prosperous, says :—
" The simple fact of these savings being effected, and of these houses being erected, by the will of working men, is an immensely significant one. All these owners of houses are freeholders, and every man has earned his own freehold from a desire to possess it. While in the same locality, employed at the same work and the same wages, and without any extraordinary drawback, a vast number of those who possess no such properties live on from day to day, regardless of every enjoyment which is not sensual, exhibiting no desire for an elevation of character among their fellow-men, wasting their money in profitless pursuits, or in degrading pastimes, and being for ever unprepared for the commonest vicissitudes which bring such misery in their train."
I ask the House upon which of the classes here described will the Bill of the lion. member for Leeds operate ? Not upon the provident, but mainly upon the improvident class. For the provident are not only in possession of the franchise—they have soared far above it, and have got into the region of freeholders. It will, therefore, apply to the men who waste their time in these profitless and degrading pursuits, in order, I suppose, that they may be elevated and fished out of the mire in which they delight to grovel, introduced to power, and entrusted with control over the Constitution of the country. Not to take an extreme case, my right hon. friend the Chancellor says that 600 quarts of beer is a fair average consumption for every adult male in the course of
On Reform.	157
the year, and taking beer at 4d. a pot, that consumption represents an annual outlay of 101. If, therefore, persons who live in 81. houses would only content themselves with 120 quarts annually, they might at once occupy a 101. house, and acquire the franchise. That is the exact measure of the sacrifice which is required on their part to obtain this much-coveted right, to raise themselves from the position of slaves, to wipe off from their characters the mark of degradation and all the other horrors that have been so feelingly depicted. That is by no means all. I have no wish to put the working man into such a position as to stimulate him to any great amount of rigid self-denial. I am neither an ascetic in theory or practice. But I would point out that there is a certain amount of accommodation, especially of sleeping accommodation, which is absolutely necessary for the preservation of the commonest decency and morality, for the avoidance of the most frightful impurities and even crimes. The amount which it is necessary to expend for the preservation of the health of the poor man, attending to these considerations, and his family, will, with a very slight addition, infallibly obtain for him the franchise. And the question for you now to determine is whether you ought to bring down the franchise to the level of those persons who have no such sense of decency or morality, and of what is due to themselves and their children—whether you will, so to speak, degrade the franchise into the dirt, imperil your institutions, and put yourselves in danger of their overthrow—or whether you will make this franchise a vast instrument of good, a lever by which you may hope to elevate the working classes—not in the manner which a mawkish sentimentality contemplates, but really to raise the working classes in the social scale, by fixing the franchise at a reasonable level, requiring a little, and only a little, effort on their part to attain. Another objection which I have to the Bill refers to what is called the swamping aspect of the question. I have made an analysis of the figures presented to us in 1860—for we have no later ones—and I find this acknowledged, that the effect of . this Bill, which is described as harmless and innocent, would be in five large towns to treble, and in twenty-eight large towns to double, the constituencies. Now I ask hon. Members, when the present constituency is doubled or trebled by an Act of this House, what becomes of the present constituency ? You might as well abolish it altogether. Not only is it increased ; it is diluted ; and the additions being all of persons rated below 101., these have a sort of chemical affinity with the class a little above themselves, and the two united become masters of the situation. In these cases, therefore, the present constituency, including all the property and all the intelligence of the place, would be disfranchised without
158	Speech of Mr. Lowe
a prospect of escape; and this I venture to think would be a very great evil. The noble lord the member for Haddingtonshire has truly said that everybody wants something in the way of change ; but that something is anything in the world but what this Bill proposes. They want universal suffrage ; they want an educational franchise ; they want a provident franchise ; but nobody wants a 61. franchise. I know not whether that was the intention, but it seemed to me that the speeches in support of the Bill, especially the speech of the hon. member for Huddersfield, go direct to universal suffrage. Can you believe that this thing, which nobody wants, will be accepted as anything but a step to universal suffrage, or that it is likely to form in any way a permanent settlement of the question ? It is assumed by every speaker in favour of the Bill that when it passes the matter will be settled for ever, and that we shall be freed from these terrible visions of pressure from without which are always conjured up and brought in aid of the argument. But is that so ? If you cannot maintain a 10/. franchise, how can you hope to make a stand at 61. Look at the prestige surrounding this 101. franchise, created when the country was in the highest state of discontent. I can remember the time myself when the House of Commons was regarded not as representing the wishes and forwarding the views of the bulk of the English people, but as the greatest obstacle in the way of carrying out improvements which were desired. And that was not merely the opinion of the working classes ; it was an opinion shared to a great extent by the education and property of the country, and but for which conviction the Reform Bill never would have passed into law. Let me ask, have not the results fulfilled and exceeded the expectations of the most sanguine prophets of that time ? Look at the noble work, the heroic work, which the House of Commons has performed within these thirty-five years. It has gone through and revised every institution of the country ; it has scanned our trade, our colonies, our laws, and our municipal institutions ; everything that was complained of, everything that had grown distasteful, has been touched with success and moderation by the amending hand. And to such a point have these amendments been carried that when gentlemen come to argue this question and do all in their power to get up a practical grievance they fail in suggesting even one. The 101. franchise, if not the most venerable, is at any rate one of the most respectable institutions that any country ever possessed. The seven Houses of Commons that have sat since the Reform Bill have performed exploits unrivalled, not merely in the seven centuries during which the British Parliament has existed, but in the whole history of representative assemblies.
On Reform.	159
With all this continued peace, contentment, happiness, and prosperity, if the 101. franchise cannot maintain itself against such speeches as we have heard to-day, what chance have we of maintaining any other franchise whatever ? It is simply ridiculous to suppose that we could do so. The thing is fated from the moment that the House, abandoning a position which should never be yielded while hope remains, consents to take up another not one-hundredth part as strong, on the road to universal suffrage. It would be trifling with the House to suggest that when you have passed this Bill you have settled anything ; all that you do is to unsettle everything, perhaps to lay the foundation of a real agitation, because people, when they find that something can be gained with such little trouble, will be encouraged to ask for a good deal more. In candour, I am bound to add that two answers have been suggested. It is said that the working classes
will not act together.	Assertions are very cheap on such
subjects, but look at the probabilities. If you have a large infusion of voters from the working classes, they will speedily become the most numerous class in every constituency. They therefore have in their hands the power, if they only know how to use it, of becoming masters of the situation, all the other classes being, of necessity, powerless in their hands, Is it possible to suppose that in the present state of society, with the widely-conducted operations of the press, and public discussions on every subject, the working classes could long remain in ignorance of their power ? You cannot treat them like pigs or cattle, or Like Curran's fleas, " which, if they had been unanimous, would have pushed him out of bed." You know very well that they will soon possess the secret of their own power, and then what is to prevent them from using it ? What are the restraints that you propose ? I know that very pretty metaphors have been given us ; we were told, for instance, that society is divided into vertical, instead of horizontal strata, but, nevertheless, when men have power conferred on them, infallibly they will employ it for their own purposes. Are we without information to guide us in the matter ? Have we not examples before our eyes ? Look at Australia. There universal suffrage was conceded suddenly, and the working classes immediately availing themselves of it, became masters of the situation. Nobody else has a shadow of power. Does anybody doubt that in America the working classes are the masters ? Why, there is the greatest apathy among the upper classes, because though not actually disfranchised we know that virtually they are so by reason of the supremacy of numbers that weighs them down. And why should it be otherwise in England? It appears to me that nothing can be more manifest, looking to
160	Speech of Mr. Lowe
the peculiar nature of the working classes, than in passing a Bill, such as is now proposed, you take away the principal power from property and intellect, and give it to the multitude who live on weekly wages. I am sure the House will agree with me that it is an observation, true of human nature as of other things, that aggregation and crystallization are strong just in proportion as the molecules are minute. It is the consciousness of individual weakness that makes persons aggregate together, and nowhere is that impulse so strong as in the lowest classes of society. Nothing is so remarkable among the working classes of England as their intense tendency to associate and organize for the purpose of establishing benefit clubs, and to make provision for sickness and old age. These associations once existing for praiseworthy objects, one might suppose that they would end there. But no. Once having established the principle of association, this has been used for very different purposes. The working classes select leaders—by no means the best or wisest among them—and to those men they submit with a docility which would be admirable were it not perpetuated and enforced by the reign of terror kept up among themselves. I shall not refer to the subject of strikes ; but it is, I contend, impossible to believe that the same machinery which is at present brought into play in connection with strikes would not be applied by the working classes to political purposes. Once give the men votes, and the machinery is ready to launch those votes in one compact mass upon the institutions of this country. It is so in America. The wire-pullers and log-rollers there correspond exactly to the leaders whom the working classes follow in the matter of strikes at home. These leaders may be, and probably are, men little known ; apparently very retiring and insignificant, but nevertheless they wield the masses with the greatest ease. The elector, perhaps, does not know the name of the candidate for whom his vote is to be recorded. Papers for the election of every one, from a Governor down to a constable and up again to a member of Congress, are handed to him in a bundle, tied round frequently with a dirty piece of string, and the elector votes in the sense required—I have often seen it done—because his Mr. Potter or his Mr. Odgers desires him to do so. It is said, " Oh, but though we are to have an increase of democratic power, we shall also have safeguards," and Mr. Mill and Lord Grey, the philosopher and the statesman, have busied themselves in inventing these safeguards. I can fancy no employment more worthy for the philosopher and statesman than the invention of safeguards against democracy, but I can fancy no employment less worthy of either statesman or philosopher than counselling us to give a loose rein to demo-
On Reform.	161
cracy in order that we may see whether we cannot get back what we have given in another way. It may be very wise to throw 1001. out of the window to a mob, it may be very right to give largesse in that manner ; but it is the height of folly to throw out the 1001. in the hope and expectation that the mob will bring it back again to you. Besides, consider how this is trifling with a great question. If we make these concessions to the spirit of democracy, if we give facilities for getting rid of some of those monopolies to which I referred just now, are the gentlemen who lead the democratic party, and are the persons who make up the mass of that party, so silly as to allow themselves to be tricked out of the fruits of their victory by a few transparent dodges, so clear that they would not deceive a child ? The question is, are we making such concessions as are required to meet any practical grievance ? That we ought to do and no more ; if we make more in the hope of getting them back again we shall be allowing the fish to run away with the line, which we shall never be able to wind up again. I think I have shown the House that it is neither wise nor safe to rely on so puerile a line of reasoning. By adopting the measure before us we may be embroiling questions of high State policy upon the issue of which depend the destinies of this great country and the happiness of countless generations ; and we shall be doing this in obedience to some occult influence which drives us on against our better judgment in the direction of democracy, on the assumption that some terrible degree of intimidation is pressing upon us, or is likely to do so, which certainly does not exist now, and, I believe, never will. The only practical mode of dealing with this question, in a manner worthy at once the dignity of this House and the character of the English people, is to guide our course by the light of experience, gained from what has been done in former times—above all, in our own country, the great nurse of freedom and of the happiness of the whole human family. I have shown you that the Bill of the hon. member for Leeds, while it satisfies nobody, will cast us loose from our only safe moorings in the 101. franchise, and set us adrift on the ocean of democracy without chart or compass ; and I think I have also shown you that, as it is ridiculous to expect that the working classes, once in possession of absolute power, would refrain from using that power, the British Constitution ought never to exist upon sufferance. I am not going to inflict on the House an essay on the British Constitution, but this I will state—that it is the most complicated probably that the world ever saw. The number and variety of interests, and the manner in which these are entwined with each other, serve to
162	Speech of Mr. Lowe
make up a most curious piece of mechanism, but, in practice, well confirm the precept which Aristotle laid down 2,000 years ago in the words—" Happy and well governed are those States where the middle part is strong and the extremes weak." That description well embodies the leading merit of our Constitution. Are we prepared to do away with a system of such tried and tested efficiency as no other country was ever happy enough to possess since the world was a world, and to substitute for it a form of government with which we are well acquainted—that of clear democracy ? I am no proscriber of democracy. In America it answers its purpose very well ; in States like those of Greece it may have been desirable ; but for England, in its present state of development and civilization, to make a step in the direction of democracy appears to me the strangest and wildest proposition that was ever broached by man. The good government which America enjoys under her democracy—whatever estimate hon. gentlemen may be disposed to place upon it—is absolutely unattainable by England under a democracy, and for this reason :—America, in her boundless and fertile lands, has a resource which removes and carries off all the peccant political humours of the body politic. Turbulent demagogues out there become contented cultivators of the land ; there are no questions between landlord and tenant ; every one can hold land if he chooses and transmit it to his children. The wealth which America possesses is of a kind which America did not make, and which she cannot destroy; it is due to the boundless beneficence of the Giver beside whose works those undertaken and executed by the human race sink into insignificance. The valleys even of the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates, seem ridiculously small when compared with the valley of the Mississippi, which it has been calculated would afford residence to 240,000,000 of people, without overcrowding. No tumult, no sedition, can ever destroy these natural advantages. But what is our property here ? It is the fabric of the labour of generations, raised slowly and with infinite toil, and to continue it is indispensable that it should rest on secure foundations. Look at the land question alone. In America nobody covets land, because he can get as much as he likes there for less money than would represent the trouble of kicking anybody else out of his holding. But here the case is different ; nothing is easier than to get up a cry about land, and at this moment it is believed all over the Continent that there is actually a law in existence under which the possession of the land in England is confined exclusively to the aristocracy. Our prosperity rests more than anything else in the world upon our credit. What sort of credit should we maintain had we a Government like
On Reform.	163
that of America, where the rate of interest at which their national debt has been raised is something astounding ? Once introduce the American system of government here, and the mighty fabric of English prosperity would, I am satisfied, vanish immediately. And now I do solemnly ask the Liberal party to pass in review their own position with regard to this question. They have to make their choice, not merely on the fate which shall befall this particular Bill, but with the full knowledge that a general election is to follow. And I ask whether it is to go forth that the party of liberality and progress in this country does or does not for the future cast in its lot and identify its fortunes with that particular form of government called democracy, which has never yet been the government of this country. It is a momentous issue which we have to try ; and nothing but a sense of its enormous importance induces me to do what the House will believe is not a pleasant duty, to make my present speech in the neighbourhood in which I stand. I view this, however, as a question between progress and retrogression. So far from believing that democracy would aid the progress of the State, I am satisfied it would impede it. Its political economy is not that of Adam Smith, and its theories widely differ from those which the intelligent and clear-headed working man would adopt, did his daily avocation give him leisure to instruct himself. It is always introducing an ungrateful subject to make personal references, but perhaps I may be allowed for a moment to quote myself. Gentlemen think it the height of illiberality on my part, and believe that I am abandoning the cause of progress, because on this occasion I refuse to follow their steps. Of course, I was quite prepared for that ; but nevertheless I have been a Liberal all my life. I was a Liberal at a time and in places where it was not so easy to make professions of Liberalism as in the present day ; and I suffered for my Liberal principles, but I did so gladly, because I had confidence in them, and because I never had occasion to recall a single conviction which I had deliberately arrived at. I have had the great happiness to see almost everything done by the decisions of this House that I thought should be carried into effect, and I have full confidence in the progress of society to a degree incalculable to us ; and by the application of sound principles that the happiness and prosperity of mankind may be still. further augmented. But for the very reason that I look forward to and hope for this amelioration I regard as one of the greatest dangers with which the country can be threatened a proposal to subvert the existing order of things, and to transfer power from the hands of property, industry, and intelligence, and to place it iu the hands of men whose whole
al 2
164	Speech of Mr. Osborne
life is necessarily occupied in daily struggles for existence. I earnestly hope—and it is the object I have in view—that I may have done something to pick this question out of the slough of despond in which it has wallowed. Sir, I have been weary and sickened at the way in which this question has been dealt with. The way in which the two parties have tossed this question from one to the other reminds me of nothing so much as a young lady and young gentleman playing at battledore and shuttlecock. After tossing the shuttlecock from one to the other a few times, they let it drop and begin to flirt. The great Liberal party may be presumed to know its own business better than I do. I venture, however, to make this prediction, that if they do unite their fortunes with the fortunes of democracy, as it is proposed they should do in the case of this measure, they will not fail in one of two things—if they fail in carrying this measure they will ruin their party, and if they succeed in carrying this measure they will ruin their country.
SPEECH OF MR. BERNAL OSBORNE,
MEMBER FOR LISKEARD.
MR. SPEAKER,-I think it highly natural that, after five hours' debate on a question which was once reckoned great and important, some member of the Government should rise to answer the great, exhaustive, and philosophical speech that has just been delivered to this House—a speech than which,however I may differ from its conclusions, I will venture to say, none, even at the time the great Reform Bill was debated, was ever delivered with greater force or energy by any gentleman opposed to Reform of any kind. I could have wished that our great leader—I am speaking of the Chancellor of the Exchequer—would have risen, for he is probably the only man in the House who is equal to the work of answering such a speech. I say, I could have wished that he had sprung to his feet instead of putting the onus probandi on a Scotch official (the Lord Advocate), for, unfortunately, in this debate we have had little reason to regard the sons of Scotland either with hone or affection. My noble friend the member for
addingtonshire began this debate with a speech which, although he merely moved the previous question, was a speech directly against the previous question, and which, if it were worth anything at all, was for reading this Reform Bill—now for the first time called the revolutionary measure—a second time this day
On Reform.	165
six months. The noble lord was followed by another Scotch Reformer, an advanced Liberal of old days, and he fairly told the House that this was a revolutionary measure for which he could not vote. I say we have thus little to hope for from that great country of Scotland, and I should be sorry to interfere between the House and the learned lord who represents the interests of Scotland on the Treasury Bench, because it is due to some Scotchman in an official position to let us know that he, at least, of her Majesty's Government is not of that opinion, that he still clings to the early love of his youth, and is not afraid of being charged with entertaining revolutionary sentiments. But, Sir, this question of Reform has been treated, not only by the Treasury Bench but by the House at large, in an insincere spirit. All have pretended to be Reformers when it suited their purpose. While this Parliament was young and able we coquetted with a measure which we had no intention of passing into law. But now that Parliament is worn out and dying, we, as political invalids, come forward and seek to be canonized as reforming saints, when we know that we shall repeat the old game over again as elected convalescents, and shall discover that, although the question of Reform is well suited as a cry for the hustings, it is not adapted to the meridian of this House. Can we wonder that there is apathy without, when we see the way in which this question is treated by the representatives of the people ? You have all heard the speech just delivered by the right hon. gentleman, a speech which, if it was worth anything at all, was launched against all change. I was the more surprised at a speech from that direction—the more surprised at the civil war that has broken out' on this side the House, and which has been so artfully promoted by the silence of gentlemen on the other side. I was, I say, the more surprised at the right hon. gentleman's speech, because I could not help calling to mind that he sat in two Reform Administrations, and that he was present on one occasion and heard the following amendment put from the Chair, which hurled those gentlemen opposite into outer darkness. At that time we declared :—" That no readjustment of the franchise will satisfy this House or the country which does not provide for a greater extension of the suffrage in cities and boroughs than is contemplated in the present measure." This, Sir, was the amendment which we, the ardent and advanced Liberals—and the right hon. gentleman the member for Calne was one of the devoted band—passed in 1859, but which it is now discovered was not only abhorrent and destructive of all property, but revolutionary, and likely to overthrow the national debt, the landed aristocracy, and the Crown itself. I cannot help for a moment affecting to
166	Speech of Mr. Osborne
impugn the motives and conduct of my hon. friend the member for Leeds, although no one could have heard him and come to the conclusion that he entertains revolutionary sentiments. At any rate, a more quiet revolutionist has never existed. I cannot help remarking upon the different aspect which this question has presented to our notice on former occasions. Who does not recollect that this revolutionary measure has been urged upon our notice by four successive speeches from the Throne—that five Administrations have advocated this measure, which is to upset the kingdom ? The question has now rather fallen from its high estate. It may be said to be in the position described by the poet,—
" Deserted in its utmost need
By those its former bounty fed,"
and has become so shrunk and withered in its proportions that it is reserved for an honourable and independent member at a morning sitting to present a stump—as it were, a fragmentary stump—of the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill to contemplative Reformers on the eve of an expiring Parliament. Something has been said by my friend (Lord Elcho) about advanced Liberals throwing discredit on the Constitution. Now, I think that there is no more certain way of doing this than by both sides agreeing to play at battledore and shuttlecock with this question, as the right hon. gentleman has just said. We have affirmed the justice of the claim for an extension of the franchise, and yet, when the moment arrives for satisfying those just demands, we declare that we have no intention of conceding them because the claimants do not knock loudly at our door. That is my idea of throwing discredit on representative institutions. Why, Sir, what do we owe our seats to ? What were we sent here for but to vote for an amendment and extension of the franchise ? What are the special grounds on which the present Government hold office ? Why the amendment of the franchise. What has become of the compact entered into at the dancing academy five years ago ? I had the honour of being at that meeting, because I was out of Parliament at that time, and I remember seeing hon. members rushing about filled with joy at the idea that a Reform Bill was to be brought forward by Lord Palmerston at the head of the Liberals of England. What has become of that Reform Bill ? We have many Reformers in the Cabinet. We have aristocratic Reformers in another place. The noble lord the great progenitor of this measure sits in another place, and on the woolsack is a noble lord who when a member of this House made the strongest speech in favour of the Ballot
On Reform.	167
and Reform that I ever heard, but who has been silent on these subjects ever since he got upon the woolsack. My right hon. friend the member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Milner Gibson) is a member of that Cabinet. He is a tried Reformer, who goes much further indeed than my hon. friend the member for Leeds, and yet he now comes under the revolutionary category so forcibly depicted by the right hon. member for Caine. Then there is my right hon. friend the President of the Poor Law Board. What has become of him ? He confines his attention solely to the suffering poor, and he never thinks of the suffering working classes. Non meus hic serum. That was his real opinion when we sat in Opposition. There can be nothing so disheartening—nothing so calculated to open the eyes of the public out of doors—as the treatment which this question is receiving at the present time. We declared, when we passed that amendment in 1859, that neither this House nor the country would or ought to be satisfied without an extension of the franchise. We know, however, that the House is not very much dissatisfied, and that a Reforming Ministry are quite resigned to the present position and situation of the question. The conduct of the House and of my right hon. friend—who, if he did run away on one occasion, was, as I am in a position to know, excessively unwell at that time—our conduct, I say, on this question of Reform reminds me of those professional mourners at an Irish funeral, who, while they are groaning and bemoaning the dead, have a very keen eye to the good-will of the incoming tenant. We have all a keen eye to the incoming Parliament, and I agree with my hon. friend the member for Leeds that there cannot possibly be a better time for " waking " the corpse of Reform than the eve of an expiring Parliament, when the Liberal party are rather hard up for a cry. This, however, is not a question with which the House can trifle with impunity. We cannot take it up and lay it down without subjecting ourselves to the charge of shuffling and insincerity. My right hon. friend (Mr. Lowe) says that no one has brought forward any blots in the Constitution. Let us test that assertion. He is well satisfied with things as they are, and probably he has reason to be satisfied. But I will give a few instances of the anomalies that exist in regard to the distribution of the franchise. In Aberdeen there are 3,586 registered electors who send one member, while Honiton, with 269 electors, sends two members to this House. Does the right bon. gentleman think that a satisfactory state of things ? Lambeth contains 25,000 registered electors. I hear the members for Marlborough calling " Question ! " Marlborough has
168	Speech of Mr. Osborne
256 electors, and also returns two members. Then there is Caine. Caine has 173 registered electors, including six freemen, and it sends one member to this House, the same as Salford, which has 5,100 electors. Let us now take the smallest borough —Portarlington. Can it be said that Portarlington, with 99 registered electors, has a claim to one member, while the Tower Hamlets, with 31,000 electors, only sends two representatives ? This is the question. Why, one vote in Portarlington is equal to 290 votes in the Tower Hamlets. Gentlemen opposite appear to be satisfied with that, but do they suppose the country is satisfied ? Will the country be satisfied to read the speech of the right hon. gentleman declaring this Bill to be revolutionary and God knows what, and at the same time to see these shocking anomalies? I think that the right hon. gentleman might have reflected that the Bill of 1832 was a Bill that effected a transfer of power entirely to one particular class. It took away the power from the upper class to give it to the middle class, and he might have remembered that the working class on that occasion submitted to be deprived of an extended franchise in many towns, and gave their unflinching aid and co-operation in advancing the political power of the middle classes. I think, then, it would be a little hard of the middle classes to come forward now and, not openly, but covertly, to deny the extension of the franchise to the working classes. How many Bills have
we had during the last fourteen years	We have had five Bills
in this House. Look at the measure of 1852. That proposed a 5/. rating. Look at the way in which we treated the Bill of the right hon. gentleman (Mr. Disraeli). That might have been made a most excellent Bill. It gave a savings-bank franchise, and diminished the expense of elections for counties. But what is our dog-in-the-Manger policy? We will neither allow gentlemen opposite to bring in a Reform Bill nor bring in a Reform Bill ourselves. Therefore, although I think the time for bringing in this measure is most inopportune, still no one who has ever given a vote for Reform can help giving his support to this fragmentary measure. I am aware that it is impossible for an independent member to pass a measure of this kind ; but still, until we get a Minister who will risk the continuance of his power in passing a Reform Bill, we must take what we can get and support a measure of Reform, however fragmentary and however incomplete.
0 n Reform.	169
SPEECH OF THE RIGHT HON. E. HORSMAN,
MEMBER FOR STROUD.
I ASSURE the right hon. gentleman (Mr. Disraeli) that I make him every apology for interposing between him and the House, but he can command its attention at an hour when members less eminent cannot hope to do so ; and therefore I hope that he will forgive me if, for a few moments, I venture to trespass upon your patience. The House, which has been listening to the very able, argumentative, and ingenious speech of my hon. friend the member for Halifax, who has just sat down, cannot fail to have been struck by the very marked distinction which is discernible between the small and insignificant and harmless character of this Bill, as described in his speech, and its larger character and more important and inevitable tendencies as illustrated by his arguments. Ostensibly, it is a Bill to introduce a 61. franchise in boroughs ; but logically and practically, it is a Bill to abolish the 101. franchise established by the Reform Act, and substitute a new franchise under which the great bulk of the operative population shall be admitted to vote. I am sure that my hon. friend who introduced the Bill will
not object to that construction of it. [Mr. Baines.	I I clo."] If
my hon. friend repudiates that construction of his Bill, he must repudiate the speeches he has himself made in its support.
[Mr. B.A.INES rose to make an explanation, and was understood to say that he had said that only a portion of the operative classes would under this Bill be admitted to the franchise.]
The explanation of my hon. friend drives me for a moment to an entirely new line of argument. I should be extremely sorry to misrepresent him, but I think that, by reminding him of his own arguments, I need not despair of making him a convert to my construction of them. What has been the burden of his speeches ? They have gone to prove that the operative class are, as a class, so virtuous and intelligent that they ought to be admitted to the franchise. [Mr. Baines.—" Not universally."] If my hon. friend will be patient, I will remind him of his argument step by step. He gave us, as I am sure he will remember, a great quantity of industrial statistics to prove the fitness of that class ; he told us of their material and mental and moral elevation ; he enlarged upon the thousands of newspapers they read, and the millions of letters they write. He dwelt upon their cooperative societies, their savings-bank deposits, their schools and institutes ; and on one occasion he told us that there were no
170	Speech of Mr. Horsman
fewer than 3,000,000 teetotallers in the kingdom, principally of the operative class. Now, I want to know what could be the meaning of this vast amount of statistical information all about the operative class, and introduced into a speech on the lowering of the borough franchise, except to show that as a class they were fit for the franchise ? And having established that fitness, my hon. friend then proceeded to develope his great fact, his gigantic grievance, which he brings in this Bill to remedy. " Of all this vast, virtuous, and intelligent class," said my hon. friend, " so small, so infinitesimal a proportion possesses the franchise, that practically the whole class may be said to be excluded. That exclusion is unjust, it is unwise, nay," he said, in grave and solemn tones, " it is very dangerous, because, although at this moment the excluded masses are peaceable and loyal, they may not always remain so, for sooner or later the blood of Englishmen boils under injustice ; and, therefore, as a measure of justice, of policy, and even of safety, I offer you my Bill, and I entreat you to accept it as a means of removing discontent and insuring peace." I am sure my hon. friend will admit that I am not misrepresenting or in any way exaggerating his statements. [Mr. Baines nodded assent.] I am very happy that, so far, my hon. friend accepts my description of his language and his arguments. Well, Sir, but when we come to examine the Bill, the mighty instrument by which all these blessed results are to be brought about, what do we find ? Is it calculated to effect its purpose ? Is the Bill in harmony with the speeches made in its support ? Does it materially diminish the injustice complained of, or remove the incentives to agitation and disturbance ? Nothing of the kind. The great bulk of the operative class are entirely unaffected by this Bill. My hon. friend has just told me that he only wishes to enfranchise a small and select few. But they are so few and so select that after the Bill has passed, no less than 95 per cent. of this virtuous and intelligent class will still be excluded from the franchise. But how do you reconcile that exclusion with your own speeches P Is it right that 95 per cent. should remain excluded? Can you justify that exclusion? Do you intend to perpetuate it ? I challenge you to say in the face of this House and of the public whether the injustice you have denounced, and the dangers you have foreshadowed, can be materially diminished by this Bill ? Well, then, what do you intend to do ? Do you intend this Bill to be final ? Dare you proclaim its finality on the hustings at Leeds ? And, mind you, by finality I do not point to a vague and uncertain future, but I speak of current events and of the circumstances and changes of the present year, and I ask you this question,—" Suppose we pass this Bill in the course of
On Reform.	171
the present Session, how long do you intend it to last ? Remember, you have warned the House that it must satisfy the demands of the non-electors. What are those demands ? How far do they go ? If they exist at all—and of their existence you have not given us a shadow of proof, nor has a shadow of proof been supplied to you, for when we entered on the discussion last week the most advanced Reformers could not muster a petition apiece in favour of the Bill,—I say, if these demands exist at all, they go a great deal further than this Bill. You tell us you are the mouthpiece of the non-electors, but where did you get your commission ? The non-electors do not ask for this Bill. They won't accept it at your hands ; confessedly it is only offered as an instalment, and I must remind my right hon. friend the Home Secretary of that fact. When my noble friend (Lord Elcho) mentioned the word " instalment," he was responded to with loud cheers from this part of the House [below the gangway on the Ministerial side]. Well, then, this Bill is admitted to be only an instalment. That is a great admission. Suppose that we now pass it, can you doubt—do you not know ?—that another Bill, with a further instalment, will be introduced next year ? And when you are asked on the hustings to support it, what will be your answer ? Can you refuse? If you do, won't your own speeches be cast in your teeth ? Won't you be pelted with your own statistics ? Won't you be asked whether all the virtues you have ascribed to the operative class are confined to 6/. tenements ? My hon. friend says he only wishes to admit a select few, and the member for Bradford improved on that by saying he only wished to introduce the elite of the working class. But won't you be asked what right you have to make any selection at all, and, above all, a selection that leaves 95 per cent. still excluded? I must confess that on this point I have been a good deal disappointed by the speeches of the supporters of the Bill. If there be one virtue more than another which we ascribe to advanced Reformers, and upon which they pride themselves, it is their courage and their candour. My hon. friend (Mr. Baines) said that one great advantage of the motion and amendment was that they divested the question of all ambiguity ; and my hon. friend (Mr. Leatham), in a speech of singular ability, told us that the question was now arrived at a point when candour was of more value than statistics. The member for Bradford told us to-night that he would state the real case fairly and plainly to the House ; and yet all these gentlemen, with their profuse assurances of candour and non-ambiguity, affect to be surprised and aggrieved because the House will not fall into the manifest and palpable blunder of discussing and accepting this Bill as a sincere and satisfactory settlement of the
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question, though there is not one of them who does not know a great deal better than I can tell him that there has not been for months past a meeting of Reformers—certainly none that has ventured to publish its proceedings—at which this proposal of a 6/. franchise has not been contemptuously set aside as an antiquated and exploded Whig delusion. No, Sir, the modern School of Reform, so well and ably represented by some of my friends near me, and which is now the only school of Reform in which there is either vitality or logic, glories in a creed more in accordance with an age of enterprise and discovery. They have dis-covered—or if they are not the discoverers, they are the first to enunciate on anything like authority—the principle that the franchise is the birthright of every Englishman of sound mind and untainted with crime; though I must confess that I think even that limitation somewhat detracts from the comprehensive liberality of their creed. But that is their measure of justice, and they will be content with nothing less ; and although they will not refuse to vote for the unsubstantial measure of the member for Leeds, they do so only in the conviction that it takes them so far in the direction in which they wish to go, and is a first, convenient, and irrevocable step towards universal suffrage. Here, then, is fife principle, hardly concealed, of the Bill before us. There is not one of its supporters who will affect to believe that the 61. franchise contains within itself the solid basis of a settlement. The Home Secretary has told us this evening that there is no magic in the figure " 10." No, Sir ; but is there any magic in the figure " 6 ?" The promoters of this Bill know, and are acting upon the knowledge, that if there be a reduction from 101. to 61., the same facts, the same arguments, the same motives, will operate with increased force to compel a further reduction from 61. to 31., and from 3l. to 3s., and this first downward movement is but the commencement of a series of descents, with no sound footing or solid resting-place until we touch the bottom of the abyss. Well, Sir, thanks to the statistics of my hon. friend, illustrated by the speeches of his supporters, we are now arriving at an understanding of the real character of the Bill, and of the changes that are likely to follow its adoption. And now let us address ourselves to the arguments by which those changes are justified. The suffrage, we are told, is the birthright of every Englishman—it is his badge of citizenship—his charter of freedom. The unenfranchised Englishman is a degraded being. The Constitution shuts its door upon him. The Legislature owes no allegiance to him. I even heard an hon friend of mine say something in this debate about the unenfranchised being hewers of wood and drawers of water. The non-elector is, in fact, a
On Reform.	173
chattel rather than a free man. Now, these are the phrases current on the platform, coined and circulated among the masses to instruct them as to their condition and duty. But is it possible to conceive a string of fallacies more transparent, or a misreading of the Constitution more deplorable and more flagrant? And I join issue with my hon. friends on their very first point—the basis of their whole creed—the principle of the franchise. I entirely deny that the franchise is, or ever has been, in any sense whatever, the right of any man or of any class of men in England. The franchise is conferred by law, not as matter of private right or individual advantage, but as a public trust. It is for that reason that the Legislature has guarded its exercise with stringent pains and penalties. You punish the elector who sells his vote. Why ? Because the vote is not his to sell. You punish the candidate who buys a vote. Why? Because he corruptly contrives to procure the violation of a public trust. That public trust is conferred by law on individuals and classes, or it is withheld, solely upon considerations of public interest. An individual, therefore, has no more natural or constitutional right to be an elector than he has to be a magistrate, or a member of Parliament, or a judge. If public policy requires—and public policy in this country must always be founded on public opinion—that the electoral body should be extremely limited, that it should consist only of great landowners and rich millmasters, with a qualification of many hundreds or thousands a year, that ought to be the law. Or, if public policy, again, sanctioned by public opinion, requires that the electoral body should be very numerous and very poor,—that all employers of labour should be excluded, as Peers are now excluded, and that ploughmen and artisans should elect the Par-liament—that ought to be the law. There is no rule of law or claim of right as to the franchise, except the securing of public liberty and the promotion of the public welfare. And, even admitting for a moment that the franchise can be a private or personal right, even then the enlargement or abridgment of that right is within the competence of Parliament, to be decided exclusively on grounds of public policy. Then, Sir, if that be so, and I do not think any hon. member will dispute it,—if the franchise be a trust for public purposes—it is manifestly the duty of the Legislature to keep those purposes steadily in view, and to make it the sole aim and end of our electoral system to secure such a House of Commons as shall most effectually promote the national interests, and faithfully reflect the national character. In fact, -Sir, the best distribution of the franchise is that which shall secure us the best House of Commons, and by the best House of Commons I mean something very different from that which seems
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to be floating in the minds of some of my friends around me, whose ideal of a House of Commons appears to be that it should be so accurate a representation of the character and feelings of all classes in the country that it should represent their weaknesses and vices as well as their virtues, their ignorance as well as their intelligence. Now, my idea of the best House of Commons is that it should be the best selection and combination which the nation can furnish of those qualities of high intelligence and morality, of sound knowledge, of political experience and administrative capacity, that are the attributes of a great deliberative and representative assembly, traditionally honoured and revered as the grand council of the nation, the centre of the wisdom and the power which govern not England, but an Empire. Well, then, if it be admitted that it ought to be the sole aim and purpose of a Reform Bill not to admit or exclude any particular class, but to improve the composition and character of the House of Commons, let us try your Bill by that test. The first and most obvious effect of your proposed legislation will be to introduce a new class of voters, more numerous than all the other classes combined. I must confess I was not prepared for these expressions of dissent from my hon. friends behind me, who prefer candour to statistics. The phrase that I used was " proposed legislation," because this Bill is confessedly only an instalment. That is now denied, but from the very same quarter from which cheers proceeded before, when the word instalment" was mentioned. This Bill is but the commencement of a series. It is Bill No. 1 ; it is what my hon. friend the member for Huddersfield calls a single-barrel Reform Bill, and we know that there is a double-barrel ready charged. Suppose, then, that this Bill No. 1 does not swamp the existing constituencies, we know that No. 2 is ready to accomplish that which No. 1 may fail to execute. The first effect of this Bill, therefore, will be, as I said, to introduce a new class of voters more numerous than all those now existing combined. And this new class will have not only a share, but a preponderance, of political power. The old constituency will be swamped, and a new one enthroned. Now, the first question we have to ask is this, will the new constituency be an improvement on the old ? Tried by the standard of intelligence, it will not. The existing constituency is composed of a variety of classes with divers degrees of intelligence, but generally of a high order ; but your new constituency will be all of one class, and with a standard of intelligence very far below that of the body they are supplanting. And, strange to say, this change is justified on the plea of intelligence. The working classes are so intelligent ! But are the middle class not intelligent? What unfitness have they shown? what offence
On Reform.	175
have they committed—that they should be thus contemptuously set aside ? You tell us that new clases have become qualified for the franchise ; we don't deny that; but do you say that old classes have become disqualified? You dare not say that, but you do disqualify them, for you swamp them, and swamping is disqualifying, disfranchising, politically extinguishing. My hon. friends profess immense respect for intelligence. It is an idol of their worship ; but, mind you, only when it is allied with poverty. They have unbounded respect for the intelligence of the artisan, but they pass by with an indifference almost savouring of contempt the intelligence of the middle class—of the shopkeeper and employer. But surely you have no right to enfranchise one class because it is intelligent, if, by so doing, you disfranchise another which is more intelligent ; and I know no stronger condemnation that can be pronounced on your Bill than this glaring injustice on the face of it,—that it would deprive a higher class of voters of political power in order to give a monopoly to a lower. I know that I may be told, as others have been told before me, that I am disparaging the working class—that I am not prepared to trust them. Sir, I will trust the working class exactly as far as I will trust any other class, and no further. I would not give a monopoly of political power to an aristocratic class ; I would not give it to the middle class ; and, for precisely the same reasons, I would not give it to the working class. I acknowledge, as every observant and reflecting man must gratefully acknowledge, the advancing intelligence and morality of the working class. I cannot descend to the hypocrisy of complimenting them at the expense of other classes. I tell them what they know full well—that intelligence is the result of education, and in every country the class which has least leisure must have least education, and that is of necessity the working class. Still, I say, we have reason to be proud of our English working class ; and never, to my mind, is their intelligence more marked, or their character more deserving of respect, than when they turn a cold shoulder to those amiable but weak and enthusiastic admirers of democratic institutions, who appear to flatter their intelligence only to miscalculate their credulity, while they enlarge on fancied wrongs and imaginary grievances, which would have inflamed the ignorant multitude of twenty-five years ago, but are only listened to as matter of indifference arid sometimes even of entertainment, by the well-informed and well-contented masses of our day. But, although I do not approve the provisions of this Bill, I frankly avow that I never wish to see the day when the operative class in this country shall be indifferent to political affairs, and I am as alive as any of my friends can be to the desirabilty of admitting that class to a
176	Speech of Mr. Horsman
larger share of political power. But, unfortunately, the problem has never yet been solved, how to give to the masses a large share of political power without giving them a monopoly. I agree entirely with what has been so truly said by the hon. member for Leeds, that the uniform 101. franchise, substituted in 183'2 for the variety of franchises it swept away, was the great defect of the Reform Act; but that which was an accident in the hurry of revolution would become under this Bill an established rule, determining all future changes in the franchise ; every successive change diminishing the influence of wealth and education, and establishing the principle of numbers. But the principle of numbers involves the principle of equality.—that every man is equally fitted to choose a Member of Parliament—the ploughman as fit as the Prime Minister, the spinner as fit as the master manufacturer. Is that what you now mean to say ? Do you really think that a hundred artisans ought to have more political power than ninety-nine employers ? Ought a hundred labourers and ploughmen to have more political power than ninety-nine squires? You dare not say so in words, yet you propose to establish it by your legislation. These arguments, which might be multiplied and extended indefinitely, are, to any man who prefers a monarchy to a democracy, condemnatory of this Bill on its merits. But then another pressure is put upon us to induce us to accept this Bill. The faith of this Parliament is pledged to Reform ; the question is one of public character and honour. For six years, say my hon. friends behind me, has this perfidious Parliament gone on, disregarding its pledges, and cheating the country. But the hour of retribution is at hand ; the sinner is about to die ; and so his last moments are disturbed by the spectre of Reform stalking in, personified by my friends the members for Liskeard and Leeds, and standing by the bedside of the expiring criminal, urging him to repent and confess before it is too late. Now, Sir, it must be admitted that the occasion—on the eve of a dissolution—is peculiarly fitting for the task of self-examination and confession ; and it cannot be denied that the present position of the House of Commons in regard to Reform is so peculiar, so anomalous, so perfectly unexampled, that before we are dispersed, the country has a right to some explanation of these remarkable circumstances of our career, either in the way of apology or justification. For, as was ably and powerfully urged by my hon. friend the member for Huddersfield, the one question which this House of Commons was elected to deal with was so well understood, the circumstances under which the last Government was ejected from office were so notorious, the pledges under which the present Government took office were so positive and precise, and their
On Reform.	177
undisputed retention of office after the abandonment of their Reform Bill was at first sight so incomprehensible, that I do think we are bound to attempt some answer to the question of the member for Huddersfield, how it is that a state of things so strange, and apparently so little creditable to the House of Commons, should have been so long tolerated by the country ? Sir, to those who have watched and studied the Reform question long and anxiously and deeply, the explanation is not so difficult, nor is it on the whole so unsatisfactory as it appeared to my hon. friend. It is well known that all the abortive Reform Bills previous to 1859 were the work of one man. As long as he was a member of the House of Commons, Lord Russell appeared to have, on the question of Parliamentary Reform, positively a monomania. He had such an agreeable' recollection of the plaudits of 183•? that he seemed to think, whenever the popularity of his party was at a discount, he had nothing to do but pull a new Reform Bill out of his red box to insure a new lease of popularity and power. Of all the prominent persons with whom he was associated, ministers or statesmen, he was the only man who wanted those Reform Bills, and he was compelled to abandon them because the country did not want them. When the present Prime Minister was called to the head of affairs he showed himself of a more tranquil and sagacious temperament. He would not move on Reform ; he could not be got to move. But when a Conservative Government thought it right to produce a large measure of Reform, and when their opponents thought it right to turn them out upon it, then the noble lord had no alternative. He bent to the storm ; and so his Cabinet, in 1860, undertook to settle the Reform question, and, as their opponents have facetiously reminded them, settle it they did most effectually. But let me ask the House, was that settlement the work of the Government, or of Parliament. or of the country ? Well, let us be fair and speak out the truth ; it was the joint work of all three. The Ministry were not more responsible than the Parliament, nor Parliament more responsible than the public out of doors. The fact is, the question of the suffrage had never been seriously studied or considered until that Session of 1860. It was then only that its gravity was understood. Before that, gentlemen, especially on this side of the House, had been accustomed to deal in platitudes about Reform, without thinking what it really meant, how it was to be accomplished, or to what it was to lead. Extension of the suffrage had been a popular cry. a hustings plaything, a vague fiction rather than a reality. But when the Bill of 1860 was read a second time unopposed, and popular members were cheered with the glad tidings that their prayers for a large increase of their consti-
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178	Speech of Mr. Horsman
tuencies had at last been heard, then for the first time, extension of the suffrage presented itself to their minds as a real business question, and, viewed in that new aspect, the more they looked at it the less they liked it. And then they began to inquire of one another what extension of the suffrage really meant, on what principle it proceeded, what further changes and consequences it must necessitate ; and then they were startled by the discovery that the great problem it involved, how to give the masses a large share of political power without giving them a monopoly, had never been thought out ; and then uneasiness grew into alarm, and alarm strengthened into panic, as they found how carelessly they had been dancing to the very brink of a volcano ; and then the newly awakened consciences of honourable men pricked them in many places ; and then arose that strong and general determination, on these benches as well as those, to postpone by any .and every means this first, irrevocable, downward step, and gain, if possible, only one year of breathing time for a more statesmanlike and scientific investigation than had yet been brought to bear on this momentous change. And this feeling in the House was only a reflection of the feeling out of doors. The thought and intelligence of the country condemned the Bill. Among educated men, not avowed democrats, it had not a sincere friend ; and the nation became seriously alarmed as it gathered from the debates in Parliament how little real light was guiding the Government proposal, and that a rash and ill-considered measure was threatening to subjugate the whole State to the dominion of the masses. I appeal to any candid man who hears me for the truth of what I am now saying. And so it was, Sir, that only after the last general election the education of Parliament and the country on the entire bearing of the suffrage question may be said fairly to have commenced. All thoughtful men saw that the nation had had a great escape ; there was no inclination to rush into fresh danger, and the Government, wisely observant of this changed state of feeling, and perhaps having themselves acquired some new perception of the great principles and consequences involved, opened the Session of 1861 without a Reform Bill, and boldly challenged the judgment of Parliament on their conduct. And the challenge was accepted. My hon. friend the member for Brighton (Mr. White) promptly responded to that challenge. He at least was determined that the Reform question should not be laid aside without some of its loud-pro-
fessing friends making a stand and a protest in its behalf. He adopted the manly course ; he moved an amendment to the Address, affirming the necessity for Reform, and by implication censuring the Government for its abandonment. Now, here
On Reform.	179
was the issue which the Government had invited fairly raised, and if that amendment had been carried the Government must have gone out. My hon. friend the member for Brighton applied a test far better than this which is now being applied on the eve of a dissolution, to the sincerity and consistency of professing Reformers. Would they sacrifice Reform to the Government, or would they sacrifice the Government to Reform ? " And what," said my hon. friend, " what signifies the existence of a Government compared with the fulfilment of the great Reform mission ? Don't we all know that great questions have been always advanced by the sacrifice of Governments, and that nothing assists a popular question so much as the sacrifice of an obstructive Government which stands in the way of its advancement ?" My hon. friend, therefore, left to the House individually and collectively no escape. Those who believed that the Government had done well to abandon a scheme which the apathy and distrust of the country made it impossible to carry, voted honourably with the Government ; those, on the other hand, who thought their hustings' pledges the first consideration, and were determined to stand by those pledges, and at all hazards force Reform on the Government, voted manfully with the member for Brighton. Now, my noble friend (Lord Elcho) who moved this amendment, addressed an important, and, as it turned out, rather an embarrassing question to the member for Leeds on this point. He asked him which of the two contending parties had the advantage of his countenance on that memorable occasion ? And I must say that the answer, coming from this great champion of the unenfranchised, was perfectly astounding. He voted with neither party : he was not a supporter of the Government,—he was not a f'riend of Reform. To be sure, the member for Liskeard rushed to the fescue, and, carrying his memory back five years, he told us that he recollected that the member for Leeds was very much indisposed on that particular evening. But the indisposition must have been very sudden, because there is no doubt that my hon. friend was in the House when the question was about to be put. Sir, the hon. member for Leeds may return the compliment ; he may repay the service of his friend the member for Liskeard, because I am told, by those who looked to the division list, that the hon. member for Liskeard was also absent on that occasion. Now, I may ask, was the hon. member for Liskeard also suddenly indisposed ? The fact was, Sir, that when with all the dignity of the Chair, you enunciated those authoritative words, " Strangers must withdraw," a sudden epidemic seized these benches, and then the members for Liskeard and Leeds executed a strategic
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180	Speech of Mr. Horsman
movement, which deprived the hon. member for Brighton of the flower of his army. And so, being abandoned and betrayed by his most trusty allies, he fell an easy prey to the myrmidons of the Government. Sir, I would not presume to canvass or criticise the tactics of my hon. friends. We know that great heroes have run away from great battles from the time of Homer downwards ; but there was one novelty in this proceeding of my friends for which I can find no precedent in history, either ancient or modern, viz., that as soon as the battle was over, the fugitives and deserters should reappear on the field, brandishing their weapons, and exclaiming, " You have had a real fight now let us have a second, a sham fight, and you shall see how valiant we will be, and how mercilessly we will cut up the enemy." And then it appears more audacious still, that those who have stood by their colours in the hour of need should be denounced as traitors and renegades, because they will not parade themselves under the counterfeit banner of these resuscitated heroes, who took good care not to be among the killed and wounded, but were returned next day as " suspiciously missing." I have said that the Parliament on that occasion absolved the Ministry; one thing, however, remained—to absolve those who had absconded from the division. That, as the hon. member for Brighton knows, was no easy task, but it was cleverly accomplished. As legislation was confessedly impossible, there could be no harm in introducing a Bill of their own, and certainly never was there a more ingenious device for saving time, and trouble, and appearances. Here is the Bill before us, and what is it ? Nothing more nor less than word for word the franchise clause of the condemned and abandoned Government Bill, which the member for Leeds transcribed and handed in with as little thought or trouble as he would write an order for the gallery. But, if the Bill proposed by the Government was objectionable, surely this one naked unbalanced franchise clause, artfully improvised into an enactment, was infinitely more objectionable. For a Government Bill can grapple with the Reform question as a whole, and the House can add modifications and qualifications to a measure originally crude, so that, any one might very consistently vote for the second reading of a Government Bill, with the intention of moving or supporting amendments in committee. But this Bill consists of one single naked provision—that the franchise must move downwards ; and, affirming practically that the question is one which requires neither thought, nor deliberation, nor design, nor statesmanship, it sets the franchise rolling down hill with as much indifference where it may roll to as a schoolboy chucks a stone over a preci-
On Reform.	181
pice. You may by courtesy dignify this with the title of a Bill, but it appears to me that it resembles nothing so much as one of Hodge's razors, that were made not to shave but to sell. I have said that the Ministry were absolved by the House of Commons, but were not both the House of Commons and the Ministry absolved by the country? What happened? We have seen that the Government abandoned their Reform Bill, and retained their places, but they also retained the confidence of Parliament, and the undiminished support of the advanced Reformers, who now shower upon them those reproaches which they have suppressed through six long years, during which they have always been ready to give them their good word, and, what was more valuable, their good votes, to keep this faithless Ministry in their places. But what about the unenfranchised ? How did the Government stand with them ? We are told that they disappointed and deceived the unenfranchised ; but the noble lord who was the chief of this faithless Government was so little ashamed or afraid of what he had done, that, immediately after the abandonment of his Bill, he took the earliest occasion publicly and ostentatiously to visit the very constituency that has now become the focus of the Reform agitation ; and at the very time when they must have been smarting under a sense of their ill-usage, he presented himself before them and invited an expression of opinion from the non-electors of Leeds. Now, Sir, do not let us be told that it was within the compass of possibility that, on a question so vital to the masses, on which the country had been excited, the Parliament dissolved, and a Government turned out, an English Minister could dare to challenge a demonstration in the provinces if lie had really disappointed and deceived the country. That was manifestly impossible ; and I do not expect to hear from advanced Reformers any such imputation on the spirit and character of the masses. Well, then, when the noble lord was invited and received with enthusiasm at Leeds, when he was subsequently invited and received with rapturous applause at Bradford—(" No," from Mr. W. E. Forster)—I beg the hon. gentleman's pardon,—I say rapturously received by all classes at Bradford—again, when he crossed the border and received the same enthusiastic welcome from three or four of the most populous and advanced constituencies in Scotland—what did it all mean ? It could only mean one thing, that, in these great constituencies, the agitators for Reform,—those who were disappointed and displeased by the abandonment of the Bill, were a small and helpless minority, and that the great majority of these enlightened communities, — a majority so great as to carry their reluctant representatives
182	Speech of Mr. Horsman
with them in doing honour to this faithless Minister—not only took no exception to the withdrawal of his Bill, but heartily approved of and indorsed it They knew that the noble lord had never affected to consider the Reform cry as anything but artificial and unreal ; they knew that he had rather tolerated than heartily indorsed the large Reform projects of his colleague ; they recognized in that the noble lord's practical sagacity and intuitive perception of English feelings and requirements, and so they hailed him as a public benefactor who had saved Parliament from an enormous folly, and the nation from a very serious danger. And this is our answer to the promoters of this Bill. We tell you, Reason is not with you, Justice is not with you, Policy is not with you ; and, above all, the Nation is not with you. Even the unenfranchised stand aloof from you, and disown you, for they too have, been educated on Reform, educated by discussions at home and by events abroad, and they know that, as a class, they have more to lose than gain by democratic change, inasmuch as under our present system, theoretically imperfect as it may be, their wants, their feelings, their interests, are more considered and better cared for, and they possess a greater amount of liberty and comfort, than is enjoyed by their class in any other country in the world, and without one practical grievance to complain of. It must, however, he admitted that this House of Commons has not redeemed its pledges on Reform, and the member for Leeds especially affixes that stigma on the Liberal party, before whose eyes he dangles this Bill as a hustings' test, but which, I think, is used by some of its promoters less to test others than to whitewash themselves. Still, it must be admitted, the Liberal party have not redeemed their hustings' pledges on Reform—very much the reverse ; but have they really lost character by that? Only, Sir, if they now relapse into old fallacies and delusions ; only if they allow the member for Leeds to drag them through the mire of used-up pledges and shifty devices, and exploded electioneering claptraps ; then, indeed, there must be discredit and humiliation in the acknowledgment of unfaithfulness in the past, and the renewal of half-hearted utterances as to the future. But there is another, a far better, a wiser, ay, and a safer course, which redeems the past while it disembarrasses the future. It is to proclaim the truth ; that the mind of Parliament has changed—that the mind of the nation has changed—that successive Queen's speeches, promising large measures of Reform in a downward direction, were a mistake—that the Ministers who insisted on those speeches have been discredited--that the Liberal party has been damaged by its blindness and inconsider-
On Reform.	183
ateness on Reform, and that its recent silence has not been an evasion of duty, but a deliberate policy, caused by sincere conviction, resulting from improved experience, and enforced by its respect for the unmistakable feeling of the country. That, Sir, I venture humbly to suggest would be a course more dignified, and I am sure it would be more popular, than for Liberal members to suffer themselves now to be apparently coerced into the support of a measure which their judgment has notoriously condemned. Ay, and let me say, it would strengthen the Liberal party for their true mission of sincere and practical Reformers, ever ready and anxious to extend the true rights and enlarge the real liberties of the country. And it is in that character in which you yourselves wish to be regarded, as the protectors of the rights and liberties of all classes of your countrymen, that I now appeal to you, and tell you that it is your duty, as Reformers, to reject this, which is not an enfranchising but a disfranchising measure : which is not an extension but a diversion of the suffrage ; which is less a bestowal than a transfer of political power—which degrades and disqualifies education to give paramount power to numbers—and, under the guise of a Reform, blindly, rashly, and senselessly enacts a revolution.
SPEECH OF THE RIGHT HON. B. DISRAELI,
MEMBER FOR BUCKS.
SIR,-I could have wished, and once I almost believed, that it was not necessary for me to take part in this debate. I look on this discussion as the natural epilogue of the Parliament of 1859; we remember the prologue. I consider this to be a controversy between the educated section of the Liberal party and that section of the Liberal party, according to their companions and colleagues, not entitled to an epithet so euphuistic and complimentary. But after the speech of the Minister, I hardly think it would become me, representing the opinions of the gentlemen with whom I am acting on this side of the House, entirely to be silent. We have a measure before us to-night which is to increase the franchise in boroughs. Without reference to any other circumstances I object to that measure. I object to it because an increase of the franchise in boroughs is a proposal to redistribute political power in the country. I do not think political power in the country ought to be treated partially ; from the very nature of things it is impossible, if there is to be a
184	Speech of Mr. Disraeli
redistribution of political power, that you can only regard the suffrage as it affects one section of the constituent body. Whatever the proposition of the hon. gentleman, whether abstractedly it may be expedient or not, this is quite clear, that it must be considered not only in relation to the particular persons with whom it will deal, but to other persons with whom it does not deal, though it would affect them. And therefore it has always been quite clear that if you deal with the subject popularly called Parliamentary Reform, you must deal with it comprehensively. The arrangements you may make with reference to one part of the community may not be objectionable in themselves, but may be extremely objectionable if you consider them with reference to other parts. Consequently it has been held—and the more we consider the subject the more true and just appears to be the conclusion—that if you deal with the matter you must deal with it comprehensively. You must not only consider borough constituencies, you must consider county constituencies ; and when persons rise up and urge their claims to be introduced into the constituent body, even if you think there is a plausible claim substantiated on their part, you are bound in policy and justice to consider also the claims of other bodies not in possession of the franchise, but whose right to consideration may be equally great. And so clear is it when you come to the distribution of power that you must consider the subject in all its bearings, that even hon. gentlemen who have taken part in this debate have not been able to avoid the question of what they call the redistribution of seats—a very important part of the distribution of power. It is easy for the hon. member for Liskeard, for example, to rise and say, in supporting this measure for the increase of the borough franchise, that it is impossible any longer to conceal the anomalies of our system in regard to the distribution of seats. " Is it not monstrous," he asks, " that Caine, with 173 voters, should return a member, while Glasgow returns only two, with a constituency of 20,000 ? " Well, it may be equally monstrous that Liskeard should return one member, and that Birkenhead should only make a similar return. The distribution of seats, as any one must know who has ever considered the subject deeply and with a sense of responsibility towards the country, is one of the most profound and difficult questions that can be brought before the House. It is all very well to treat it in an easy, off-hand manner ; but how are you to reconcile the case of North Cheshire, of North Durham, of West Kent, and many other counties, where you find four or six great towns, with a population, perhaps, of 100,000, returning six members to this House, while the rest of the population of the county, though
On Reform.	185
equal in amount, returns only two members? How are you to meet the case of the West Riding in reference to its boroughs, or the case of the representation of South Lancashire in reference to its boroughs? Why, those are more anomalous than the case of Calne. Then there is the question of Scotland. With a population hardly equal to that of the metropolis, and with wealth greatly inferior—probably not more than two-thirds of the amount—Scotland yet possesses 48 members, while the metropolis has only 20. Do you Reformers mean to say that you are prepared to disfranchise Scotland ; or that you are going to develope the representation of the metropolis in proportion to its population and property ; and so allow a country like England, so devoted to local government and so influenced by local feeling, to be governed by London ? And, therefore, when those speeches are made which gain a cheer for the moment, and are supposed to be so unanswerable as arguments in favour of Parliamentary change, I would recommend the House to recollect that this as a question is one of the most difficult and one of the deepest that can possibly engage the attention of the country. The fact is this—in the representation of this country you do not depend on population or on property merely, or on both conjoined ; you have to see that there is something besides population and property—you have to take care that the country itself is represented. That is one reason why I am opposed to the second reading of the Bill. There is another objection which I have to this Bill brought forward by the hon. member for Leeds, and that is, that it is brought forward by the member for Leeds. I do not consider this a subject which ought to be entrusted to the care and guidance of any independent member in this House. If there be one subject more than another that deserves the consideration and demands the responsibility of the Government, it certainly is the reconstruction of our Parliamentary system ; and it is the Government or the political party candidates for power, who recommend a policy, and who will not shrink from the responsibility of carrying that policy into effect if the opportunity be afforded to them, who alone are qualified to deal with a question of this importance. But, Sir, I shall be told, as we have been told in a previous portion of the adjourned debate, that the two great parties of the State cannot be trusted to deal with this question, because they have both trifled with it. That is a charge which has been made repeatedly during this discussion and on previous occasions, and certainly a graver one could not be made in this House. I am not prepared to admit that even our opponents have trifled with this question. We have had a very animated account by the right hon. gentleman
186	Speech of Mr. Disraeli
who has just addressed us as to what may be called the Story of the Reform Measures. It was animated, but it was not accurate. Mine will be accurate, though I fear it will not be animated. I am not prepared to believe that English statesmen, though they be opposed to me in politics, and may sit on opposite benches, could ever have intended to trifle with this question. I think that possibly they may have made great mistakes in the course which they took ; they may have miscalculated, they may have been misled ; but I do not believe that any men in this country, occupying the posts, the eminent posts, of those who have recommended any reconstruction of our Parliamentary system in modern days, could have advised a course which they disapproved. They may have thought it perilous, they may have thought it difficult, but though they may have been misled I am convinced they must have felt that it was necessary. Let me say a word in favour of one with whom I have had no political connection, and to whom I have been placed in constant opposition in this House when he was an honoured member of it—I mean Lord Russell. I cannot at all agree with the lively narrative of the right hon. gentleman, according to which Parliamentary Reform was but the creature of Lord John Russell, whose Cabinet, controlled by him with the vigour of a Richelieu, at all times disapproved his course ; still less can I acknowledge that merely to amuse himself, or in a moment of difficulty to excite some popular sympathy, Lord John Russell was a statesman always with Reform in his pocket, ready to produce it and make a display. How different from that astute and sagacious statesman now at the head of Her Majesty's Government, whom I almost hoped to have seen in his place this evening. I am sure it would have given the House great pleasure to have seen him here, and the House itself would have assumed a more good-humoured appearance. I certainly did hope that the noble lord would have been enabled to be in his place and prepared to support his policy. According to the animated but not quite accurate account of the right hon. gentleman who has just sat down, all that Lord Derby did was to sanction the humour and caprice of Lord John Russell. It is true that Lord John Russell when Prime Minister recommended that Her Majesty in the Speech from the Throne should call the attention of Parliament to the expediency of noticing the condition of our representative system ; but Lord John Russell unfortunately shortly afterwards retired from his eminent position. He was succeeded by one of the most considerable statesmen of our days, a statesman not connected with the political school of Lord John Russell, who was called to power not only with the assistance of Lord John Russell and the leading members of the
On Reform.	157
Whig party, but supported by the whole class of eminent statesmen who had been educated in the same school and under the same distinguished master. This eminent statesman, however, is entirely forgotten. The right hon. gentleman overlooks the fact that Lord Aberdeen, when Prime Minister, and when all the principal places in his Cabinet were filled with the disciples of Sir Robert Peel, did think it his duty to recommend the same counsel to Her Majesty. But this is an important, and not the only important, item in the history of the Reform Bill which has been ignored by the right hon. gentleman. The time, however, came when Lord Aberdeen gave place to another statesman, who has been complimented on his sagacity in evading the subject, as if such a course would be a subject for congratulation. Let me vindicate the policy of Lord Palmerston in his absence. He did not evade the question. Lord Palmerston followed the example of Lord John Russell. He followed the example also of Lord Aberdeen, and recommended Her Majesty to notice the subject in the Speech from the Throne. What becomes, then, of the lively narrative of the right hon. gentleman, and what becomes of the inference and conclusions which he drew from it? Not only is his account inaccurate, but it is injurious, as I take it, to the course of sound policy and the honour of public men. Well, now you have three Prime Ministers bringing forward the question of Parliamentary Reform ; you have Lord John Russell, Lord Aberdeen, and you have even that statesman who, according to the account of the right. hon gentleman, was so eminent for his sagacity in evading the subject altogether. Now, let me ask the House to consider the position of Lord Derby when he was called to power, a position which you cannot rightly understand if you accept as correct the fallacious statements of the right hon. gentle-
man.	I will give the House an account of this subject, the
accuracy of which I believe neither side will impugn. It may not possibly be without interest, and will not, I am sure, be without significance. Lord Derby was sent for by Her Majesty-L—an unwilling candidate for office, for let me remind the House that at that moment there was an adverse majority of 140 in the House of Commons, and I therefore do not think that Lord Derby was open to any imputation in hesitating to accept political responsibility under such circumstances. Lord Derby laid these considerations before Her Majesty. I speak, of course, with reserve. I say nothing now which I have not said before on the discussion of political subjects in this House. But when a Government comes in on Reform and remains in power six years without passing any measure of the kind, it is possible that these circumstances too may be lost sight of. Lord Derby advised Her
188	Speech, of Mr. Disraeli
Majesty not to form a Goverment under his influence, because there existed so large a majority against him in the House of Commons, and because this question of Reform was placed in such a position that it was impossible to deal with it as he should wish. But it should be remembered that Lord Derby was a member of the famous Cabinet which carried the Reform Bill in 1832. Lord Derby, as Lord Stanley, was in the House of Commons one of the most efficient promoters of the measure. Lord Derby believed that the Bill had tended to effect the purpose for which it was designed, and although no man superior to prejudices could fail to see that some who were entitled to the exercise of the franchise were still debarred from the privilege, yet he could not also fail to perceive the danger which would arise from our tampering with the franchise. On these grounds Lord Derby declined the honour which Her Majesty desired to confer upon him, but the appeal was repeated. Under these circumstances it would have been impossible for any English statesman longer to hesitate ; but I am bound to say that there was no other contract or understanding further than that which prevails among men, however different their politics, who love their country and wish to maintain its greatness I am bound to add that there was an understanding at the time existing among men of weight on both sides of the House that the position in which the Reform • question was placed was one embarrassing to the Crown and not creditable to the House, and that any Minister trying his best to deal with it under these circumstances would receive the candid consideration of the House. It was thought, moreover, that a time might possibly arrive when both parties would unite in endeavouring to bring about a solution which would tend to the advantage and benefit of the country. And yet, says the right hon. gentleman, it was only in 1860 that the portentous truth flashed across the mind of the country—only in 1860, after so many Ministers had been dealing with the question for so many years. All I can say is that this was the question, and the only question, which engaged the attention of Lord Derby's Cabinet. The question was whether they could secure the franchise for a certain portion of the working classes, who, by their industry, their intelligence, and their integrity,, showed that they were worthy of such a possession, without at the same time overwhelming the rest of the constituency by the numbers of those whom they admitted. That, Sir, was the only question which occupied the attention of the Government of Lord Derby, and yet the right hon. gentleman says that it was in 1860 that the attention of the public was first called to the subject, when, in fact, the question of Parliamentary Reform had been
On Reform.	189
before them for ten years, and on a greater scale than that embraced by the measure under consideration this evening. I need not remind the House of the reception which Lord Derby's Bill encountered. It is neither my disposition, nor, I am sure, that of any of my colleagues, to complain of the votes of this House on that occasion. Political life must be taken as you find it, and as far as I am concerned not a word shall escape me on the subject. But from the speeches made the first night, and from the speech made by the right hon. gentleman this evening, I believe I am right in vindicating the conduct pursued by the party with which I act. I believe that the measure which we brought forward was the only one which has tended to meet the difficulties which beset this question. Totally irrespective of other modes of dealing with the question, there were two franchises especially proposed on this occasion, which, in my mind, would have done much towards solving the difficulty. The first was the franchise founded upon personal property, and the second the franchise founded upon partial occupation. Those two franchises, irrespective of other modes by which we attemped to meet the want and the difficulty—these two franchises, had they been brought into committee of this House, would, in my opinion, have been so shaped and adapted that they would have effected those objects which the majority of the House desire. We endeavoured in that Bill to make proposals which were in the genius of the English Constitution. We did not consider the Constitution a mere phrase. We knew that the Constitution of this country is a monarchy tempered by coordinate estates of the realm. We knew that the House of Commons is an estate of the realm ; we knew that the estates of the realm form a political body, invested with political power for the Government of the country and for the public good ; yet we thought that it was a body founded upon privilege and not upon right. It is therefore, in the noblest and properest sense of the word, an aristocratic body. and from that characteristic the Reform Bill of 183;2 did not derogate ; and if at this moment we could contrive, as we did in 1859, to add considerably to the number of the constituent body, we should not change that characteristic, but it would still remain founded upon an aristocratic principle. Well, now the Secretary of State (Sir G. Grey) has addressed us to-night in a very remarkable speech. He also takes up the history of Reform, and before I touch upon some of the features of that speech it is my duty to refer to the statements which he made with regard to the policy which the Government of Lord Derby was prepared to assume after the general election. By a total misrepresentation of the character of the amendment proposed by Lord John Russell, which threw the Government of
190	Speech of Mr. Disraeli
1858 into a minority, and by quoting a passage from a very long speech of mine in 1859, the right hon. gentleman most dexterously conveyed these two propositions to the House—first, that Lord John Russell had proposed an amendment to our Reform Bill, by which the House declared that no Bill could be satisfactory by which the working classes were not admitted to the fran-chise—one of our main objects being that the working classes should in a great measure be admitted to the franchise ; and, secondly, that after the election I was prepared, as the organ of the Government, to give up all the schemes for those franchises founded upon personal property, partial occupation, and other grounds, and to substitute a Bill lowering the borough qualification. That conveyed to the House a totally inaccurate idea of the amendment of Lord J. Russell. There was not a single word in that amendment about the working classes. There was not a single phrase upon which that issue was raised, nor could it have been raised, because our Bill, whether it could have effected the object or not, was a Bill which proposed greatly to enfranchise the working classes. And as regards the statement I made, it simply was this. The election was over—we were still menaced, but we, still acting according to our sense of duty, recommended in the Royal Speech that the question of a reform of Parliament should be dealt with ; because I must be allowed to remind the House that whatever may have been our errors, we proposed a Bill which we intended to carry. And having once taken up the question as a matter of duty, no doubt greatly influenced by what we considered the unhappy mistakes of our predecessors, and the difficult position in which they had placed Parliament and the country, we determined not to leave the question until it had been settled. But although still menaced, we felt it to be our duty to recommend to Her Majesty to introduce the question of Reform when the Parliament of 1859 met ; and how were we, except in that spirit of compromise which is the principal characteristic of our political system, how could we introduce a Reform Bill after that election, without in some degree considering the possibility of lowering the borough franchise ? But it was not a franchise of 61., but it was an arrangement that was to be taken with the rest of the Bill, and if it had been met in the same spirit we might have retained our places. But, says the right hon. gentleman, pursuing his history of the Reform question, when the Government of Lord Derby retired from office, " we came in, and we were perfectly sincere in our intentions to carry a Reform Bill ; but we experienced such opposition, and never was there such opposition. There was the right hon. gentleman," meaning myself, " he absolutely allowed
On Reform.	191
our Bill to be read a second time." That tremendous reckless opposition to the right hon. gentleman, which allowed the Bill to be read a second time, seems to have laid the Government prostrate. If he had succeeded in throwing out the Bill, the right hon. gentleman and his friends would have been relieved from great embarrassment. But the Bill having been read a second time, the Government were quite overcome, and it appears they never have recovered the paralysis up to this time. The right hon. gentleman was good enough to say that the proposition of his Government was rather coldly received upon his side of the House, but he said " nobody spoke against it." Nobody spoke against the Bill on this side, but I remember some most remarkable speeches from the right hon. gentleman's friends. There was the great city of Edinburgh represented by acute eloquence of which we never weary, and which again upon the present occasion we have heard ; there was the great city of Bristol, represented on that occasion among the opponents, and many other constituencies of equal importance. But the most remarkable speech, which " killed cock robin," was absolutely delivered by one who might be described as almost a member of the Government—the Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr. Massey), who, I believe, spoke from immediately behind the Prime Minister. Did the Government express any disapprobation of such conduct? They have promoted him to a great post, and have sent him to India with an income of fabulous amount. And now they are astonished they cannot carry a Reform Bill. If they removed all those among their supporters who oppose such Bills by preferring them to posts of great confidence and great lucre, how can they suppose that they will ever carry one ? Looking at the policy of the Government, I am not at all astonished at the speech which the right hon. gentleman the Secretary of State has made this evening. Of which speech I may observe, that although it was remarkable for many things, yet there were two conclusions at which the right hon. gentleman arrived. First, the repudiation of the rights of man, and, next, the repudiation of the 6/. franchise. The first is a great relief, and, remembering what the feeling of the House was only a year ago, when, by the dangerous but fascinating eloquence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, we were led to believe that the days of Tom Paine had returned, and that Rousseau was to be rivalled by a new social contract, it must be a great relief to every respectable man here to find that not only are we not to have the rights of man, but we are not even to have the 1862 franchise. It is a matter, I think, of great congratulation, and I am ready to give credit to the Secretary of State for the honesty with which he has expressed himself, and I only wish
192	Speech of Mr. Disraeli
we had had the same frankness, the same honesty we always have, arising from a clear view of his subject, in the first year of the Parliament as we have had in the last. I will follow the example of the right hon. gentleman and his friends. I have not changed my opinions upon the subject of what is called Parliamentary Reform. All that has occurred—all that I have observed ; all the results of my reflections, lead me to this more and more—that the principle upon which the constituencies of this country should be increased is one not of radical, but I may say of lateral reform—the extension of the franchise, not its degradation. And although I do not wish in any way to deny that we were in the most difficult position when the Parliament of 1859 met, being anxious to assist the Crown and the Parliament by proposing some moderate measure which men on both sides might support, we did, to a certain extent, agree to some modification of the 101. franchise—to what extent no one knows ; but*I may say that it would have been one which would not at all have affected the character of the franchise, such as I and my colleagues wished to maintain. Yet I confess that my opinion is opposed, as it originally was, to any course of the kind. I think that it would fail in its object, that it would not secure the introduction of that particular class which we all desire to introduce, but that it would introduce many others who are totally unworthy of the suffrage. But I think it is possible to increase the electoral body of the country by the introduction of voters upon principles in unison with the principles of the Constitution, so that the suffrage should remain a privilege, and not a right—a privilege to be gained by virtue, by intelligence, by industry, by integrity, and to be exercised for the common good of the country. I think if you quit that ground—if you once admit that every man has a right to vote whom you cannot prove to be disqualified, you would change the character of the Constitution, and you would change it in a manner which will tend to lower the importance of this country. Between the scheme we brought forward and the measure brought forward by the hon. member for Leeds, and the inevitable conclusion which its principal supporters acknowledge it must. lead to, it is a question between an aristocratic Government in the proper sense of the term—that is, a Government by the best men of all classes—and a democracy. I doubt very much whether a democracy is a Government that would suit this country ; and it is just as well that the House, when coming to a vote on this question, should really, consider if that be the real issue, between retaining the present Constitution—not the present constitutional body, but between the present Constitution and a democracy. It is just as well for
On, Reform.	193
the House to recollect that what is at issue is of some price. You must remember, not to use the word profanely, that we are dealing really with a peculiar people. There is no country at the present moment that exists under the circumstances and under the same conditions as the people of this realm. You have, for example, an ancient, powerful, richly-endowed Church, and perfect religious liberty. You have unbroken order and complete freedom. You have estates as large as the Romans ; you have a commercial system of enterprise such as Carthage and Venice united never equalled. And you must remember that this peculiar country with these strong contrasts is governed not by force ; it is not governed by standing armies—it is governed by a most singular series of traditionary influences, which generation after generation cherishes and preserves because they know that they embalm customs and represent the law. And, with this, what have you done ? You have created the greatest empire that ever existed in modern times. You have amassed a capital of fabulous amount. You have devised and sustained a system of credit still more marvellous, and above all, you have established and maintained a scheme, so vast and complicated, of labour and industry, that the history of the world offers no parallel to it. And all these mighty creations are out of all proportion to the essential and indigenous elements and resources of the country. If you destroy that state of society, remember this—England cannot begin again. There are countries which have been in great peril and gone through great suffering ; there are the United States, who in our own immediate day have had great trials ; you have had —perhaps even now in the States of America you have—a protracted and fratricidal civil war which has lasted for four years ; but if it lasted for four years more, vast as would be the disaster and desolation, when ended the United States might begin again, because the United States would only be in the same condition that England was at the end of the war of the Roses, and probably she had not even 3,000,000 of population, with vast tracts of virgin soil and mineral treasures, not only undeveloped but undiscovered. Then you have France. France had a real
revolution in our days and those of our predecessors—a real revolution, not merely a political and social revolution. You had the institutions of the country uprooted, the orders of society abolished—you had even the landmarks and local names removed and erased. But France could begin again. France had the greatest spread of the most exuberant soil in Europe ; she had, and always had, a very limited population, living in a most simple manner. France, therefore, could begin again.
0
194	Speech of Mr. Disraeli
But England—the England we know, the England we live in, the England of which we are proud—could not begin again. I don't mean to say that after great troubles England would become a howling wilderness. No doubt the good sense of the people would to some degree prevail, and some fragments of the national character would survive ; but it would not be the old England—the England of power and tradition, of credit and capital, that now exists. That is not in the nature of things, and, under these circumstances, I hope the House will, when the question before us is one impeaching the character of our Constitution, sanction no step that has a preference for democracy, but that they will maintain the ordered state of free England in which we live. I do not think that in this country generally there is a desire at this moment for any further change in this matter. I think the general opinion of the country on the subject of Parliamentary Reform is that our views are not sufficiently matured on either side. Certainly, so far as I can judge, I cannot refuse the conclusion that such is the condition of hon. gentlemen opposite. We all know the paper circulated among us before Parliament met, on which the speech of the hon. member for Maidstone commented this evening. I quite sympathize with him ; it was one of the most interesting contributions to our elegiac literature I have heard for some time. But is it in this House only that we find these indications of the want of maturity in our views upon this subject ? Our tables are filled at this moment with propositions of eminent members of the Liberal party—men eminent for character or talent, and for both,—and what are these propositions ? All devices to counteract the character of the Liberal Reform Bill, to which they are opposed : therefore, it is quite clear, when we read these propositions and speculations, that the mind and intellect of the party have arrived at no conclusions on the subject. I do not speak of hon. gentlemen with disrespect ; I treat them with the utmost respect ; I am prepared to give them the greatest consideration ; but I ask whether these publications are not proofs that the active intelligence of the Liberal party is itself entirely at sea on the subject ? I may say there has been more consistency, more calmness, and consideration on this subject on the part of gentlemen on this side than on the part of those who seem to arrogate to themselves the monopoly of treating this subject. I can, at least, in answer to those who charge us with trifling with the subject, appeal to the recollection of every candid man, and say that we treated it with sincerity—we prepared our measure with care, and submitted it to the House, trusting to its candid consideration—we spared no pains in its
On Reform.	195
prepgration : and at this time I am bound to say, speaking for my colleagues, in the main principles on which that Bill was founded—namely, the extension of the franchise, not its degradation, will be found the only solution that will ultimately be accepted by the country. Therefore, I cannot say that I look to this question, or that those with whom I act look to it, with any embarrassment. We feel we have done our duty ; and it is not without some gratification that I have listened to the candid admissions of many hon. gentlemen who voted against it, that they feel the defeat of that measure by the Liberal party was a great mistake. So far as we are concerned, I repeat, we, as a party, can look to Parliamentary Reform not as an embarrassing subject ; but that is no reason why we should agree to the measure of the hon. member for Leeds. It would reflect no credit on the House of Commons. It is a mean device. I give all credit to the hon. member for Leeds for his conscientious feeling ; but it would be a mockery to take this Bill ; from the failures of the Government and the whole of the circumstances that attended it, it is of that character that I think the House will best do its duty to the country, and will best meet the constituencies with a very good understanding, if they reject the measure by a decided majority.
SPEECH
OF
THE RIGHT 110N, THE EARL OF DERBY,
ON THE ROMAN CATHOLIC OATH BILL.
[The following speech was delivered by the Earl of DERBY iri the House of Lords on the 26th of June, in the debate on Lord DEVON'S motion for the Second Reading of the Roman Catholic Oath Bill. Earl Russell, Lord Harrowby, Lord St. Leonards, and other peers, also took part in the discussion, and on a division the Bill was lost by 21 votes.—The Bill in question proposed to abrogate the oath now taken by Roman Catholic members of both Houses of Parliament on their admission, and to substitute in its stead that prescribed by the 21st & 22nd Vict. c. 48, for all except Roman Catholics and Jews, with the substitution of the words " temporal or civil " for the words " ecclesiastical or spiritual," which occur in that oath.]
I CAN assure your lordships that it is with the greatest reluctance that I feel myself compelled to oppose the further progress of a measure which comes recommended by the attractive cry of political equality, irrespective of religious differences ; which appeals to your sympathy on behalf of those who form a small minority both of this and the other House of Parliament ; and, above all, which has been recommended to your lordships by a noble friend of mine, universally esteemed and respected, in a speech the temper and moderation of which were eminently calculated to conciliate your support. Yet I trust, if you will honour me with your attention, that I shall be able to show that it is not wise or expedient, especially under the circumstances of the present time, to adopt a Bill the result of which will be entirely to subvert one of the leading principles of that great settlement which, after many years of angry and protracted discussion and controversy, restored political and religious peace, and was accepted by those on whom it conferred the privileges of the Constitution as a full, satisfactory, and complete arrangement of all the grievances of which they had complained. For
On the Roman Catholic Oath Bill.	197
my own part, I live in a county which contains, perhaps, a larger number than any other of old and highly estimable Roman Catholic families, with many of whom I am on terms of intimacy, and with some of whom I am on terms of the closest friendship. I have a great number of Roman Catholic tenants, and for more than 40 years I have had the management and control of a property in Ireland which, if not exclusively, is in a preponderat-
ing proportion inhabited by Roman Catholics.	I defy any
human being to say that, either in England or in Ireland, whether in my social relations or in my dealings with my tenants, I have ever drawn the slightest distinction between Protestants and Roman Catholics, or that I have not treated both on precisely the same terms of personal equality, This, however, is neither a social nor a personal question ; it is a question of high political importance, and it is to be decided not by personal feeling and personal wishes, but upon that which is to be considered the good of the empire at large. If I may speak still further of myself, I think I might venture to refer to the political course which I have pursued for 43 years to show that I cannot be justly charged with having neglected the interests and the fair demands of my Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen. I have at all times been anxious to defend the rights and privileges of that Church of which I am an attached member. The first speech of any importance I ever addressed to Parliament was made 40 years ago in defence of that Protestant Establishment which now appears to be the mark of attack. Some of my earliest votes were given in favour of the relief of my Roman Catholic fellow-subjects from the restrictions which, in my opinion, were unjustly imposed on them ; and on more than one occasion I took a prominent part in relieving them from the disabilities under which they laboured, and which impeded the exercise of their religion and the development even of their religious organization. I have gone so far as to incur the censure of some of those who sit on the same side of the House as myself, and who entertain strong opinions with regard to the maintenance of ultra-Protestant precautions. I have not feared to expose myself to their observations, and even their censure, because I felt that the course which I was taking was the course called for by justice and fair dealing towards my Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen. Therefore, if I am now about to oppose the further progress at this time of a measure like the present, I hope my opposition will not be imputed by any one to unreasoning bigotry or to feelings hostile to the Roman Catholics. I have said that especially at this time I think it unwise and inexpedient to bring forward this measure. We are on the eve of a general election, and closely as
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parties are balanced, and important as political differences may be, yet, up to the present, there were no questions before the country likely to excite angry passions, to create personal animosity, or to lead to personal recrimination. It may be for electioneering tactics. I don't deny it ; but at such a time was it wise, was it prudent, was it statesmanlike or patriotic, to bring before the constituencies a question than which none more required to be treated with calmness, caution, and deliberation, and which of all others was more likely to call forth feelings utterly opposed to such a frame of mind ? But was it in the interests of Roman Catholics that the question should be brought forward at the present moment ? Of late years religious animosities have been softened, religious jealousies have been composed. Is it desirable for the interests of the Roman Catholics, for the preservation of religious peace, that a fresh stimulus should be given to those feelings—that on the one side the Roman Catholics should be represented as always dissatisfied and always aggressive, or, on the other hand, that the Roman Catholics should retort on their opponents with a charge of bigotry ? I can conceive nothing more likely to prejudice the cause of the Roman Catholics, to delay the removal of any real disadvantage under which they may labour, than to bring forward imaginary grievances at a time of such excitement. And then, my lords, let me ask by whom is this measure brought forward ? I recollect the times of the old discussion on Roman Catholic disabilities. I recollect the long and protracted struggle which lasted during the first years I was in Parliament, and I remember what excitement and what controversy it produced. The noble earl opposite was in Parliament at the time. I did not come in till 1821, and he will remember the petition presented by Lord Nugent ; that petition was signed by 8,000 Roman Catholics, including seven peers—a considerable number of baronets, and all the best Roman Catholic blood of this country. These men petitioned in those days because they felt that they had a substantial grievance—not a mere imaginary ground of complaint—that they were unjustly excluded from privileges to which they were entitled. Upon the present occasion who are the petitioners for the Bill? Who are they who bring it forward, and what are the privileges of British subjects from which they are debarred ? Where are the Howards, the Arundels, the Stourtons, the Petres, the Gerardes, and the Cliftens ? Where in Ireland are the Fingals, the Gormanstowns, the Tremlestons ? Where are all the great Roman Catholic families, the historic names which in former times have proved by their acts the sincerity of their allegiance to the Crown ? Not one of them is here now. And why ? Because they do not feel that
On the Roman Catholic Oath Bill.	199
any material grievance is suffered by them ; because they do not feel that they are deprived by this oath of any political privilege to which they have a right. Not one of them but knows that the restrictions, such as they are, which are now imposed upon them were not imposed by a grudging Protestant Legislature, but were framed, asked for, petitioned for, and actually proposed, by Roman Catholics themselves, by Roman Catholic prelates, by Roman Catholic laymen, by Roman Catholic lawyers, by Roman Catholic statesmen. They prayed and entreated for admission to a full participation in the privileges of British subjects, but I will show that they also prayed on more than one occasion that their co-religionists should not be admitted to sit in Parliament unless they were prepared to take one of these very oaths which my noble friend now proposes to get rid of. I must notice one statement which fell from my noble friend which rather surprised me. My noble friend says he proposes the same oath, with a slight modification, which is taken by Protestants. But what is that slight modification ? My noble friend is proposing nothing new. He is proposing simply what Roman Catholics desire at this moment —an exemption from taking the oath of supremacy in the sense of conferring ecclesiastical or spiritual jurisdiction. When my noble friend talks of this being a slight difference, he must be aware that that slight difference is just that, and that alone, which for years before 1829 prevented Roman Catholics from sitting in Parliament. It is said, why not have one oath ? My noble friend has suggested why we should not have one oath. It was necessary to introduce that slight difference, because, although you allow Roman Catholics from conscientious motives to decline assenting to that proposition of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, you are not, I believe, prepared to say that Protestant members of Parliament shall not, as an essential condition imposed by the Constitution, be called upon to declare their assent to that doctrine of the supremacy of the Crown as independent of any foreign Prince, potentate, or prelate with regard to all matters ecclesiastical and spiritual, as well as in temporal and civil jurisdiction. I could, indeed, understand the question if it were proposed to have one oath ; but that is not proposed here. We are now discussing what shall be the terms of an altered oath to be taken by Roman Catholics, and by them alone. In considering this oath of supremacy, it is rather singular to find that from a very distant period of time that oath of supremacy, that declaration of the independent ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Crown, was an oath not imposed by a Protestant Parliament. It was introduced previous to the Reformation, and was taken to Henry VIII. at a time when the assertion of Protestant doctrines would have led to
200	Speech of Earl Derby
awkward consequences to the person who professed them. But long after that, in the early part of the reign of Elizabeth, the oath was taken without the slightest objection by Roman Catholics and Protestants alike. In one of Lord Plunket's most able statements in the discussions upon the question of Roman Catholic relief he made use of these expressions. (The noble earl read an extract from Lord Plunket's speech to the effect that the oath of supremacy was, intended not as a test of religion, but of loyalty, in order to distinguish between well-affected Roman Catfiblics and those who denied the Sovereign title.) That shows that the Act was not directed against Roman Catholics on account of their religion, but as a precaution against suspected disloyalty. It is rather singular that in 1821 so strongly was that felt by Lord Plunket, that he, a distinguished advocate of Roman Catholic claims, introduced a Bill to enable Roman Catholics to-take the oath of supremacy with an explanation attached. (The noble earl here read an extract from the preamble of the Bill and the enacting clause of the Bill.) That Bill provided a form of oath proposed by a leading advocate of Roman Catholic claims in 1821, in which he not only called upon them to renounce the principles which were imputed to them, but also proposed to introduce the words which are now objected to—I do not say unnaturally or unreasonably objected to—by my noble friend, and to take the oath of supremacy in matters of ecclesiastical and spiritual jurisdiction with such modification and explanation as was expressed in the Act of Elizabeth. While the long controversies on the subject of the Roman Catholic Relief Bill were going on there were certain principles laid down and agreed to, great fundamental bases, upon which the discussion proceeded. Certain imputations were thrown out against the Roman Catholics, I believe unjustly thrown out, against which they thought it necessary to enter a protest and denial ; but, as I have said, certain principles were laid down—viz., conditions without which none of their supporters would have brought the question forward : that the Protestant supremacy should be held inviolate, that the Sovereign should be held to be independent of the power of the Pope to absolve subjects from their allegiance, that the settlement of property should be respected, and, above all, that the Established Church should be maintained as an integral portion of the Constitution. Those were not conditions which were put forth by the opponents of the Roman Catholic claims ; they were laid down by the advocates and supporters of those claims. It was upon those conditions alone—on the cordial assent of the Roman Catholics to those pro-positions—that they asked for them to be allowed to share in privileges which they admitted it to be otherwise unsafe to entrust
On the Roman Catholic Oath Bill.	201
to them. There were also various imputations, such as that it was a doctrine of Roman Catholics that faith need not be kept with heretics, that it was in the power of the Pope to absolve them from their oath, and that the Pope could also absolve them
from their allegiance.	I did not then give credit, and still less
now do I give credit, to those imputations, but I must be permitted to remind your lordships that there is not one of those imputations which may not be traced to some claim which has been put forward at some time or the other by the Supreme Pontiff, and which has not been vindicated and defended by the casuists whose opinions are received as authority by the Roman Catholics. When such claims are put forward by one exercising such high jurisdiction as the Pope, and are put forth in treatises and works professing to give an authoritative exposition of the Roman Catholic faith, it was not too much to expect that Roman Catholics should themselves deny and repudiate such doctrines as any part of their religious belief. When the Act passed in 18,29 there were certain restrictions imposed, respecting which I will say a few words presently ; but they were restrictions imposed by the Legislature with universal consent. Those restrictions were not harsh measures by which the grace of a great act of conciliation was marred, or made to appear as though it had been granted by a grudging Parliament or a reluctant Ministry ; but they were provisions which, as I have said, were framed by Roman Catholics, were urged by them, and were pressed on the acceptance of the Legislature by those who advocated their claims. Recollect the circumstances under which that great measure of relief was passed. There had been much controversy among the most distinguished and most able statesmen of the day. The subject had distracted and almost paralyzed the action of Government. The Government granted it, not because they felt it to be unattended with danger, nor, indeed, because they perceived that the objections which they had so long urged against it were without weight. They did so because, dangerous as they felt it to be, they saw that still greater danger would probably attend an opposite course. I am far from saying that that was a sufficient justification. The part which Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington had to take was one of great difficulty, and the decision to which they had to come was a painful one. I shall not soon forget the impression which was made upon my mind when Sir Robert Peel spoke of—
The sharp convulsive pangs of agonizing pride,"
when he found himself compelled to abandon convictions which he had entertained for many years. The unreformed Parliament
202	Speech of Earl Derby
of that day—for if it had been a reformed Parliament I don't know what would have been the result—was in regard to its liberality far in advance of public opinion. The Parliament carried the measure against what I believe was the strong sense of danger pervading the public mind. That measure was forced by Parliament upon a reluctant Ministry, and forced in its turn by that reluctant Ministry upon a still more reluctant Sovereign. It would have been inexcusable in those who framed that measure if they had not introduced every safeguard and provision in their power for the purpose of mitigating the danger which they foresaw, and which was perceived to an even greater extent by the public themselves. The alterations which were made were, I repeat, practically made at the instance of the Roman Catholics themselves. This is so important a part of my argument that, at the risk of wearying your lordships, I must trouble you to listen to the progress of these oaths, the manner in which they were introduced, the entreaties made to be permitted to take them, and to trace the question down from as early a period as 1757 to 1829. During the progress of the Revolution it is needless to say that the Roman Catholic mind was deeply agitated, and that at that time the Roman Catholics as a body could not be regarded as loyal to the Crown. I would even go so far as to agree in the opinion of the late esteemed Dr. Doyle, who thought that the connection of the Roman Catholics at that period with the Stuarts was such as to justify and render necessary the adoption of restrictive laws against them. Well, towards the middle of the eighteenth century public opinion had very much changed, the new dynasty had become firmly established, and the cause of the Stuarts was irretrievably lost. The settlement of property under Charles II. had been completely recognized ; and in speaking of that settlement I do not refer to the general right of property as possessed by individuals, but to the great Act of Settlement introduced by the Duke of Ormond in the time of Charles II. for the purpose of removing the restrictions introduced in the time of Oliver Cromwell, and restoring the estates to the persons from whom they had been taken. In the year 1757, the declaration of the Catholics of Ireland was framed by the Irish Catholic Bishop, Dr. O'Keeffe, denying that they entertained any opinions or intentions inimical to their behaviour as good and loyal citizens. That declaration also set forth that the Roman Catholics were willing to abjure in the most solemn manner, if admitted to a share in the elective franchise, any intention of exercising the privilege so granted them for the purpose of disturbing the Protestant religion or the Government of the country; and that they were content that this participation in the privileges of our Con-
On the Roman Catholic Oath Bill	203
stitution should be granted to those only who were willing to take an oath to this effect. In 1792 the petition of the Roman Catholics of Ireland to the Irish Parliament stated that the petitioners were perfectly satisfied with the present Church Establishment, and that they were willing to give every assurance of their intention not to interfere with it in any way. In consequence of this petition, the Roman Catholics in 1793 were, on taking these oaths and making these declarations, admitted to the exercise of the elective franchise ; and it is worth noticing that the Irish Parliament granted to the Irish Roman Catholics as early as 1793 that which was not granted to the English Roman Catholics by the English Parliament until 1829. [The noble earl then read a petition presented to Parliament in 1808, in which the petitioners make representations to the same effect.] In 1812 there is a similar declaration, and in 1813 Mr. Grattan, the most energetic and most eloquent advocate of the rights of the Roman Catholics, declared in the preamble of the Act which he introduced that the Protestant Church was established firmly in Ireland, and that it would tend to strengthen the Constitution if the disqualifications under which the Roman Catholics laboured were removed. I now pass on to a speech which was made by Lord Plunket in 1821 in support of the property of the Protestant Church, in which he, one of the most able and eloquent supporters of the Roman Catholic claims, says, that if he believed the redress of the grievances of which they complained involved danger to the Protestant Church, he would not press them on the attention of Parliament. He goes on to say that he considers the possessions of the Protestant clergy as being their absolute property, secured to them as completely as the property of any private individual, and that he held himself obliged by the most solemn ties to resist all attempts tending to their overthrow. Your lordships will observe that I do not quote the opinions of the opponents .of the Roman Catholic claims, but those of their own authorized advocates, who declare that they would not venture to submit their claims to the consideration of Parliament, unless they were in a position to give the sincere expression of their own conviction, that the terms which were imposed upon the Roman Catholics would be steadily observed. In 1825, again, Archbishop Murray, a most excellent and amiable prelate, with whom I have had the honour of having held personal intercourse, and whom I believe to have been utterly incapable of deviating from his pledged and plighted word —a man devoted to his own religion, but, at the same time, scrupulously alive to the claims of others—said, in answer to a question put to him, that there was not the least wish on the part of the Roman Catholics to interfere with the Church Establish-
204	Speech of Earl Derby
ment. Again, in 1826, we have a document signed by thirty Roman Catholic Bishops, in which they declared that they would defend to the utmost of their power the arrangement of property in Ireland as settled by law, and would not use any privilege they possessed to weaken the Protestant Church in the country. Only one of the thirty Bishops by whom the document was signed is at present alive—I allude to Dr. M‘Hale, who, considering himself bound by this declaration, has positively refused to form an association presided over, I regret to say, by another Roman Catholic prelate—a foreign ecclesiastic, whose express object is to subvert the Protestant Church Establishment, which Roman Catholic members of Parliament are bound by their oath not to endeavour to overthrow or weaken. This refusal, I think, is greatly to the credit of Dr. M‘Hale, particularly when we bear in mind how zealous he is in the advocacy of his own religion. It is clear that he must feel himself bound by the sense which he entertains of the voluntary engagement into which he entered to refrain from co-operating with a brother prelate in a movement which has for its object the injury of a Church to which he as much as any one is opposed. Evidence, moreover, has been given in the strongest terms by the late Mr. O'Connell and Dr. Slevin to the effect that there was not a shadow of a claim in the case of those interested in forfeited property in Ireland to ask for a reversal of the settlement of the land in that country. Lord Plunket also stated that he looked upon the Protestant Church Establishment in Ireland as forming a fundamental principle of the Imperial Constitution. [The noble earl read an extract from the speech of Lord Plunket the first year after he entered Parliament, in which expression was given to this and other opinions bearing upon the line of argument which he was pursuing.] Now, these are not the views of Protestant bigots, but of the most able and persevering advocates of the Roman Catholic claims with respect to the maintenance of that Church Establishment which the oath we are now asked to repeal was intended to protect and secure. It would, I may add, be a gross injustice to the memory of Sir R. Peel to suppose that he introduced this oath merely for the purpose of satisfying public clamour, and not with the conviction that it would to a certain extent operate as a restraint on those Roman Catholics who from conscientious motives might be desirous of disturbing the Roman Catholic Church. Having said thus much I shall, with your lordships' permission, proceed to analyze the oath as it at present stands. Here I may state that I am quite ready to agree with my noble friend who moved the second reading of this Bill in thinking it desirable that the Roman Catholics should be relieved from making any declaration
On the Roman Catholic Oath Bill.	205
or renouncing any doctrine the suspicion' of an adherence to the principle involved in which they consider a reflection upon their private honour. I draw, however, the widest distinction between the several grounds on which the abolition of the several parts of the oath is advocated. There are portions of it—such, for instance, as that which relates to the right of the subjects of any prince or potentate excommunicated by the Pope, to depose or murder him—which, if Roman Catholics think it offensive, I, believing it to be unnecessary and uncalled for, should not object to see struck out. Another part of the oath, also, that which relates to its being taken without any equivocation or mental reservation, I should not hesitate, if it be offensive to Roman Catholics, to sweep away, provided it can be done without any hazard in regard to points of real and vital importance, although it happens, singularly enough, that the declaration is one which is made by no less a functionary than the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, who, I never heard, had any objection to making it. I may be asked, If you are willing to dispense with a considerable part of this oath, why do you not assent to the second reading of the Bill ? Why, instead of laying yourself open to misrepresentation and misconstruction, do not you allow this Bill to go into committee, and then suggest such amendments as you have sketched out—viz., the omission of what you consider unnecessary and the retention of what you regard as essential ?" That is a very fair question, and I will give to it a frank reply. In the first place, that very proposition was made in the House of Commons, and was rejected, and I think that the occasions are very rare on which your lordships should seek to call upon the House of Commons to affirm an amendment which, after deliberate discussion, they have rejected in their House. But I was so anxious to avoid the necessity of calling upon your lordships to give a vote which might by possibility be misconstrued, by opposing the second reading of this Bill, that I addressed myself to Her Majesty's Government, and said that if they would consent to lend their influence in the House of Commons to restore to the Bill those portions of the oath which I conceived to be important and essential, I, for my part, would abstain from offering any opposition to the second reading of this Bill. I now repeat that if Her Majesty's Government, upon full consideration, think that such an arrangement might be advantageous to the interests of religious peace, might be satisfactory to Protestants, and might remove some portion of the objections of Roman Catholics—if I receive such an assurance, I will even now abstain from asking your lordships to pass any opinion upon the second reading of the Bill ; but if I am told by the Govern-
206	Speech of Earl Derby
ment that they cannot consent to such an alteration—that, in point of fact, they cannot consent to the passing of this Bill, unless it does away with all the security which was provided for the Established Church of Ireland and the maintenance of property in that country, then I say that I am reluctantly compelled to take the course of opposing as a whole that of which I believe one part to be absolutely essential. I do not say that that part of the oath which refers to the settlement of property is at this day absolutely essential, but this I know—and I shall be confirmed by many noble lords who are connected with Ireland—that even at this day there exists in the minds of the more ignorant of the peasantry and lower classes of the people of Ireland a belief that the time is to come when their estates are to revert to their former owners. Maps of forfeited properties are preserved, and there is a hope and expectation that at some time those whom they call the rightful owners will again be put in possession of their property. It is a wild hope which could enter into no imagination less sanguine than that of an ignorant Irish peasant ; but if they see you pass a Bill by which you expunge from the oath the declaration to maintain the settlement of property, will not their ignorance and sanguine temperament encourage them in those vain expectations, and lead them to believe that the Protestant party and the Imperial Legislature do not hold to that settlement as an essential part of the Constitution of this kingdom ? I have heard two objections to the oath as it at present stands. First, that it is ambiguous, and next that it is not binding; or that, if it is binding, it is binding only upon scrupulous and conscientious men, and not upon those who may try to find excuses to satisfy their consciences. The latter observation applies to every oath. I do not suppose that the oath of allegiance ever bound any person who was disposed to rebel, and yet you call upon all persons to take it. My noble friend in his amending Bill does not propose to exempt Roman Catholics from taking that or any other oath which Protestants are called upon to take ; but he says that the oath is ambiguous, that different people take different views with regard to the obligations and restrictions under which it places them, that it is in the judgment of many men a prohibition against Roman Catholics taking any part in the discussion of Church questions ; and 1 was surprised to hear my noble friend, in defence of that interpretation, quote a passage from a speech of Sir R. Peel, which appeared to me to have an entirely contrary significance. Mr. Willoughby Horton proposed the insertion of a clause specifically prohibiting Roman Catholics from dealing with Church questions. Sir R. Peel's answer to that proposal was—" I propose to make this a settle-
On the Roman Catholic Oath Bill.	207
ment so final and so complete that no one shall be entitled to say that it debars him from his liberty or fetters him in the course which he shall pursue with the exceptions which are strictly laid down in the oath." The oath not binding ! Why, my lords, I can point to noble lords and hon. gentlemen—I could point to one very eminent Roman Catholic judge, who adorns the bench upon which he sits, who has declared most solemnly that so long, as that oath remains upon the statute-book he should hold himself bound by the strictest religious ties to abstain from anything which might by possibility weaken or disturb the Protestant religion or the Protestant Government. Another very distinguished Roman Catholic, the late Mr. Lucas, said that he should as soon think of uttering blasphemy against the Gospel as of giving a vote which in his conscience he believed to be prejudicial to the interests of the Established Church. I know that the same principles have regulated the conduct of noble lords in this and hon. gentlemen in the other House of Parliament. When you speak of the oath being ambiguous, in what sense can it be ambiguous'? The person who takes it swears that " I will never exercise any privilege to which I am or may become entitled to disturb or weaken the Protestant religion or the Protestant Government of the United Kingdom." Does that swear that he shall not legislate upon Church questions ? Not in the least. If in his inmost conscience he believes that the measure which he is advocating is one not for the injury but for the benefit of the Established Church, he is as completely at liberty to legislate upon that question as is any Protestant member. Why, I myself brought forward some years ago a measure which reduced the number of bishops in Ireland, and altered the distribution of the property of the Church, infinitely, as I think, to the Church's advantage. Many Roman Catholics supported that Bill, and they supported it, believing conscientiously and honestly that it was not a measure for the weakening or disturbance, but, on the contrary, for the strengthening and support, of the Established Church. What motive a man has for a particular vote is know n only to God and his own conscience, and no one can judge the motives from which he takes a particular course ; but it is, I apprehend, as clear as day that a Roman Catholic member is precluded from giving any vote which in his inmost conscience he believes will be injurious, or which he intends and designs should be injurious, to the Protestant Establishment or the Protestant Government. Therefore, in opposition to my noble friend, I hold that to a certain extent this oath is a real security to the Established Church. It is a recognition by Parliament of the inviolability of that Church as a portion of the Constitution.
208	Speech of Earl Derby
It is binding upon men of honourable minds, and other men cannot be bound by any oath. It is not ambiguous if a man will look at it clearly in the light of those who framed it and imposed
it.	I believe that it has acted as a protection to the Established Church, and I believe still further, that its abolition would be a serious injury and heavy blow to that Church, and would indicate a disposition on the part of Parliament which, however it may be professed even in high quarters, will, I trust, meet with no sanction from your lordships, or even from the other House of Parliament. In the course of the debate elsewhere an hon. gentleman used an expression which was certainly more forcible than elegant. He said that " the object of this Bill is to unmuzzle the senators." Unmuzzle them for what purpose ? In dealing with the former part of the oath they say that it is not only unnecessary, but injurious, because it calls upon them to repudiate in words doctrines which they never desire to sustain ; but when you come to the latter part of the oath, which deals only with a malum prohibitum, and not a malum in se, the only bar to which. is a legislative prohibition, but yet one which we Protestants and which the people of this country maintain to be an important principle, and one which ought to be steadily adhered to and guarded by every safeguard which the law can throw around it—when you come to that, what is the argument ? Not that " we have not the least intention of doing that which you propose to prohibit." No, it is " because we desire to do the very thing which you wish to prohibit—unmuzzle us." " Um-nuzzle us," says an hon. gentleman who has lately been returned for an Irish county by the influence of the Roman Catholic priesthood—" unmuzzle us ;" and why ? Because we are harmless ? No. " Because we want to bite ? " If a man comes to me with a dog with a muzzle on and says, " Take the muzzle off this poor creature ; he will do us no harm, he is quite harmless, and, besides, the muzzle is half-rotten and affords no great protection," I understand him ; but if he says, " This is a most vicious animal, and nothing prevents his pulling you and me to pieces except the muzzle which is put round his nose, and therefore I want you to take it off," I am inclined to say, " I am very much obliged to you, but I had rather keep the muzzle on." The very argument which is made use of to induce us to take the muzzle off is in direct contradiction to the ingenious contention of my noble friend that, in point of fact, the restraint is perfectly inefficacious ; that it is only a vexatious impediment, and not one which affords any real protection. I feel deep regret at having detained your lordships so long, but I wish to place distinctly before you and the country the position in which I stand, and in which I desire to stand. For forty-three years I have been
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anxious to extend the fullest amount of civil and religious liberty to all my fellow-countrymen. I have invariably supported every claim of the Roman Catholics which I did not conceive to be injurious to or destructive of that Church of which I am an attached member. I believe that the removal of restrictions which do not really impose any burden or any hardship upon the Roman Catholics, who have obtained their present position in virtue of taking that oath, will be worse than useless, and will open the door to serious attacks upon the Protestant Church of Ireland. Is this the proper moment to select for taking off any of those restrictions which form the safeguards, however slight, , for the security of the Protestant religion ? Can we say that there is no desire at the present time on the part of a large portion of the Roman Catholics to subvert and destroy the securities for the Established Church in that country ? Can we say so in the face of the statements put forth in reference to the approaching election—that members will be returned for the especial object of subverting that Church ? Is this the moment to relax our vigilance, when from persons as high in authority as a Minister of the Crown the Church of Ireland is held forth as an object not for immediate assault, but for assault at no distant date ; and with that knowledge and conviction are you prepared not now to come to a vote that that Church be destroyed and overwhelmed, for that would be the honest course, but to take with your eyes open, and with these declarations made to you, measures relative to Roman Catholics which will pave the way for the contemplated attack, and leave the walls of the fortress absolutely undefended and open to the first assault made against it ? If this measure was to have been brought forward at all, it should have been brought forward after serious investigation of the arguments by which the restrictions were supported at the time of the passing of the Roman Catholic Relief Bill ; it should have been brought forward with the full strength and authority of the Government, who should not have sheltered themselves, as they have done on the present occasion, under the wing of a highly respectable, but still private but unimportant individual. The Ministers should have come forward in support of the measure with the authority of the Crown and of the Government, and there should have been a clear statement of their intentions and objects. They ought not to have allowed this question to have been thrown upon the House in the loose way it has been, hastily and inconsiderately, when the public mind is about to be excited by a general election. If I could have relieved the Roman Catholics from that which they feel degrading and harsh, I should have only been too glad to have joined in sweeping away that which is considered superfluous and offensive,
210	Speech of Earl Derby.
if Her Majesty's Government would have permitted me to do so ; but they say, " No, you shall not strike out this part of the oath unless you consent to strike out that part of the oath which was intended to be a safeguard to the Established Church," and the removal of which would agitate the Protestant mind of the country and would encourage the Roman Catholics to commit assaults upon the Church which appears to be about to be abandoned. If upon these conditions alone I could confer the boon I should desire upon the Roman Catholics, I should have no alternative but to stand by that Church which I have supported from the earliest period I could think, and which I am not likely to abandon for any fanciful advantages at the time when I am approaching the confines of the grave.
SPEECH
OF
THE RIGHT HON, LORD -WESTBURY,
ON RESIGNING THE OFFICE OF LORD CHANCELLOR.
[The following short Speech was delivered by Lord WESTBURY in the House of Lords on the 5th of July, after the resignation of his office, and the acceptance of that resignation by Her Majesty.]
MY LORDS,—I have deemed it my duty, out of the deep respect I owe to your lordships, to attend here to-day that I may in
person announce to you that I tendered the resignation of my
office yesterday to Her Majesty, and that it has been by Her Majesty most graciously accepted. My lords, the step which I
took yesterday only. I should have taken several months ago if I had followed the dictates of my own judgment, and acted on My own views alone. But I felt that I was not at liberty to do so, As a member of the Government, I could not take such a step without the permission and sanction of the Government. As far as I was myself personally concerned, possessing, as I had the happiness to do, the friendship of the noble lord at the head of the Government, and of the members of the Cabinet, I laid aside my own feelings, being satisfied that my honour and my sense of duty would be safe if I followed their opinion rather than my own. My lords, I believe that the holder of the Great Seal ought never to be in the position of an accused person, and such, unfortunately, being the case, for my own part, I felt it due to the great office that I hold that I should retire from it and meet any accusation in the character of a private person. But my noble friend at the head of the Government combated that view, and I think with great justice. He said it Would not do to admit this as a principle of political conduct, for the consequence would be that whoever brought up an accusation would at once succeed in driving the Lord Chancellor from office. But when the charges were first raised that were investigated by a committee of your lordships, I did deem it my duty to tender my resignation, and the answer which I then received, and to the prudence of which I gave my assent, was
P2
212	Speech of Lord Westbury
that answer of my noble friend which I have just described to you. When the Committee was appointed in the House of Commons, I deemed it to be my duty, acting upon the same principle, once more to tender my resignation ; but on this occasion, also, I deferred to the objections raised by the noble friend whom I have already mentioned. Again, when notice was given of the late motion in the House of Commons, I begged that that motion might be rendered unnecessary by my resignation being announced. But my noble friend thought it was my duty still to persevere, and, accordingly, my lords, my resignation, earnestly as I wished it to be accepted, was postponed in the manner I have described to you until yesterday. Let it not be for one moment supposed that I say this in order to set up my own opinion in opposition to the kind feeling which I experienced, and the judicious advice which I received, coming, as they did, from one whom I was bound to respect, and to whose authority I felt called upon to defer. I have made this statement. my lords, simply in the hope that you will believe, and that the public will believe, that I have not clung to office, much less that I have been influenced by any baser or more unworthy motive. With regard to the opinion which the House of Commons has pronounced I do not presume to say a word. I am bound to accept the decision. I may, however, express the hope that after an interval of time calmer thoughts will prevail and a more favourable view be taken of my conduct. I am thankful for the opportunity which my tenure of office has afforded me to propose and pass measures which have received your lordships' approbation, and which I believe, nay, I will venture from experience to predict, will be productive of great benefit to the country. With these measures I hope my name will be associated. I regret deeply that a great measure which I had at heart —I refer to the formation of a digest of the whole law—I have been unable to inaugurate ; for it was not until this Session that the means were afforded by Parliament for that purpose. That great scheme, my lords, I bequeath already prepared to the hands of my successor. As to the future, I can only venture to promise that it will be my anxious endeavour, in the character of a private member of your lordships' House, to promote and assist in the accomplishment of all those reforms and improvements in the administration of justice which I feel yet remain to be carried out. I may add, in reference to the appellate jurisdiction of your lordships' House, that I am happy to say it is left in a state which will I think be found to be satisfactory. There will not be at the close of the Session a single judgment in arrear, save one in which the arguments, after occupying several days, were
Ott Resigning the Office of Lord Chancellor. 213
brought to a conclusion only the day before yesterday. In the Court of Chancery I am glad to be able to inform your lordships that I do not think there will remain at the end of this week one appeal unheard or one judgment undelivered. I mention these things simply to show that it has been my earnest desire from the moment I assumed the seals of office to devote all the energies I possessed and all the industry of which I was capable to the public service. My lords, it only remains for me to thank you, which I do most sincerely, for the kindness which I have uniformly received at your hands. It is very possible that by some word inadvertently used—some abruptness of manner—I may have given pain or exposed myself to your unfavourable opinion. If that be so I beg of you to accept the sincere expression of my regret, while I indulge in the hope that the circumstance may be erased from your memories. I have no more to say, my lords, except to thank you for the kindness with which you have listened to these observations.
DIVISION II.
SPEECHES DELIVERED OUT OF PARLIAMENT
ON MISCELLANEOUS SUBJECTS IN 1865.
SPEECH OF MR. W. E. FORSTER,
MEMBER FOR BRADFORD,
ON HOME AND FOREIGN POLITICS.
[The following Speech, containing the Speaker's opinion on most of the leading topics of the day, was delivered by 11r. FORSTER to his constituents at Bradford, on the 10th of January.]
WHEN considering what I should say in this my annual talk to you—for I feel that it is the greatest help to me, the greatest pleasure to me, to be able to meet you once a year to take counsel with you upon public matters—I had at first thought that I would give some sort of history of the last Session—at any rate that I would go over all those questions in which I venture to take a part, however humble. But it is now some time since the last Session, and a great many of those questions are not of much immediate interest before the public, and perhaps I should weary you all if I were to take that course. I must, however, make some remarks upon one question which was of immense impor-tance—which was wearisome at the time it was before us, and therefore in our recollection is also wearisome, but which is of such great importance that I cannot avoid alluding to it.; it is that question which, we may say, haunted Parliament last Session from beginning to end—viz., whether our Government should or should not interfere in the quarrel between Denmark and Germany. As that was the great business of last Session, and as it resulted in a great party fight, the greatest party fight that has happened since I have been in Parliament, even on that ground I can hardly avoid alluding to it, still less can I do so because I trustThat the way in which that question has been disposed of has marked a new era in our foreign policy. Before, however, I go into that question I must just say one word upon another matter in which I was more immediately concerned ; for when
218	Speech of Mr. Forster
your representative ventures to initiate anything, to start anything in the House of Commons, he is bound to tell his constituents the reason why he did so. As I dare say you are all aware, I moved for a committee to inquire into the relations between the Foreign Office and the Board of Trade in natters of trade. I did so at the request of the Chambers of Commerce throughout the country, who did me the high honour of asking me to make that motion. I need hardly go into the details of that movement, for I may, perhaps, ere long, have another opportunity, before a commercial body, of doing so. I dare say, you are generally aware of them. There was a general conviction among men of trade throughout the country—and among none more than among the merchants of our own borough, from their personal experience—that the way in which our Government managed the relations of trade with foreign nations was very clumsy and very unsatisfactory. It was divided between two offices. We had to go to the Foreign Office and the Board of Trade, and scarcely knew where the responsibility rested—with the Foreign Office, who really had to do the work, or with the Board of Trade. Well, I moved for that committee, and I got it by the concession of Government and the unanimous feeling of the House, but I can assure you I found it was no slight task when I had got that committee. Being but a young member, I learnt this experience, that he must be a bold member who moves for a committee to inquire into the relations of any Government office. However, I cannot allude to any work that I had without at the same time expressing my gratefulness to my fellow-members upon that committee. I had upon it men of far greater experience and of far higher standing in the House than myself, who gave me the kindest possible assistance ; and I must acknowledge that I had as much assistance from the opposite side of the House as I had from our own side, with perhaps one exception, for I had upon it that man who of all others is qualified to give opinions and assistance in questions of this kind, and that is Mr. Cobden. I will only say with regard to this committee that the result of the inquiry has left two strong convictions on my mind. The first is that we in England, and not only we in England, but I may say all men in Europe, owe a far greater debt to Mr. Cobden than we had supposed. The services that he has rendered to civilization by procuring the treaty of commerce between us and France, and thereby setting all European courts and European countries to consider whether they ought not to establish the principles of free trade, is really, I believe, and hereafter I will be considered, almost as great a service to humanity as that other great service which he did in advocating the abolition of
On Home and Foreign Politics.	219
the Corn Laws. The consequence of what he has done is that there is hardly a statesman in Europe at this moment but has discovered that protection, and, still more, prohibition, are of very great injury to the interests of his consumer, and, what with statesmen has quite as much influence, perhaps even more, that they immensely diminish the revenue of the country. I believe that the movement which Mr. Cobden has set on foot will be to them of immense advantage, and will also be a great advantage to us as the great traders of Europe. Another result obtained from that committee was the fact that the Government had not been fully aware of what that great Englishman, Mr. Cobden, had done ; had not had their attention sufficiently directed towards the movement he had started, and had not estimated it at its proper value. I will now occupy your time for a few minutes upon the dull Schleswig-Holstein, Dano-German question. Dull as the question is, we must recollect that it has been the means, as I hope, of instituting a change in our foreign policy. It is within one or two days of this time last year when I had the pleasure of meeting you on a similar occasion to this, and I remember when on that evening I said that there was a fear of our country being dragged into war with Germany in order to subject the Duchies to Denmark, an air of incredulity spread over the whole audience ; and when I went to London, and saw two or three gentlemen there, some of whom agreed with me in political matters, and some who differed, I was told that my fear was a foolish one. But the danger to the country was great, and it became so great as quite to haunt the country with fear, and for a time almost to paralyze trade, and when information was obtained from the Government as to what really had been done, information which it took weeks upon weeks and months upon months to extract, we found that the danger had been far greater than we supposed. I don't know whether you are quite aware how great the danger was, but if you read the blue-books that have been published upon the matter, you will find Lord John Russell writing, in the name of the Government, to the Emperor of the French, asking him to join this country in defying Germany to war. The noble lord seemed to think that if England and France had united in defying Germany that country would have yielded; but I do not believe that in the excited state in which Germany was it would have been deterred from war. I am fully convinced that if it had not been for Louis Napoleon this country would have been engaged in war with Germany upon this question, whether the inhabitants of Schleswig-Holstein should belong to Denmark or not. And even though Louis Napoleon did inform the Government that he would not join
220	Speech of Mr. Forster
them in such a war it required all the exertion of the common sense of the country acting upon members of Parliament, and through the members of Parliament upon the Government, to induce a divided Cabinet to come to a conclusion that they should not plunge us into 'war second-handed, and to make them withdraw, at some cost of humiliation, from the position they never should have taken. Now, you may say, if that is your opinion as to the Government, why did you not join in the vote of censure, which was the basis of the great party vote of the Session ? Certainly it was not on account of one reason I am just about to mention that I did not join in that vote. When a vote of censure is proposed on a Government, and when every member knows that the result of its being carried may be the displacing of the Government, they are apt to consider not merely the special merits of the question at issue, but also whether it is good for the country that that Government should give place to another. I must candidly•confess that, Liberal as I am, the question of whether the present Government would be displaced or not did not weigh very much with me. I cannot say that I gave my vote on that ground at all. I have seen nothing to alter the view I expressed this time last year, that until this Government becomes more entirely Liberal than it is, it is not worthy of the support of the Liberal party. We shall be in a most unhappy state so long as we have a really Conservative Government with Liberal professions, and so long as we have at the head of the Government a man who, notwithstanding all his talents and the good he has done to his country—for no one will deny that in some respects Lord Palmerston is entitled to the respect of his countrymen—who, notwithstanding that he professes to be a Liberal, has the full confidence of the Conservatives, and has it deservedly. It was not, therefore, on that special ground, but for three reasons I will give you, that I did not join in the vote of censure. The first reason was this—that the time the vote was proposed was the very time when the Cabinet, long supposed to have been divided on the subject, came to the conclusion—the conclusion which I conceived to be the right one—to adhere to a peace policy and not to interfere at all in the quarrel. This being the case, I could not join in a vote of censure, which would look like punishing them for the one virtue of the Session. The second reason was that by passing that vote we should be misleading the Danes, whom we had misled too long before, for if the House of Commons, immediately after the Ministry had decided not to interfere, had passed on them a vote of censure, it would have been almost impossible for the Danes not to suppose that the House of Commons and the country disapproved the
On Home and Foreign Polities.	221
course taken by the Government. I knew that the House of Commons did not wish to interfere, that the country did not wish it, and that by passing the vote we should only be further misleading the Danes, and heaping upon them a greater loss than they had hitherto experienced in encouraging them to continue a hopeless contest. Another reason was that we had no assurance that the Conservative party if placed in power would have acted better than the present Government. An active member of that party, Lord Robert Cecil, was known to be strongly in favour of a war policy ; and the able leader of the party, Mr. Disraeli, carefully avoided stating what policy he should pursue up to the last moment. It must also be remembered that in this matter the Conservatives were just as much responsible as the Liberals for the measure which led to this difficulty and all this trouble-viz., the treaty of 1852, to which this country was foolish enough to be parties. You must just allow me to refer for one moment to the treaty of 1852. In the making of that treaty the ambassadors and representatives of England and the Great Powers met at a table, and they decided who should govern the people of Schleswig and Holstein at some future contingency. They never asked the opinion of the people of Schleswig and Holstein ; and that was the great mistake. The contingency came, and we found that we had pledged ourselves to do a thing which was for the interests of another people, which concerned them more than it did anybody else, and respecting which we did not ask their leave or permission, or consult them in any way. That was just one of those cases of meddling in affairs in which we ought not to have meddled, and because we had interfered, and felt it was our business to go on interfering, we were very nearly dragged into war to compel those people to submit to a king to whom a majority—some people dispute whether it was a majority or not—I consider it was a majority—at all events, a great proportion of them, did not want to submit. That was just that kind of intervention which this country ought never to consent to. The result of this has been that we have made a resolution, of which you may judge by speeches in the House of Commons and by the feelings of the country, not to commit a mistake of this kind again ; so humiliated are we at our failure in the Schleswig-Holstein question, and so aware are we of the tremendous loss it would have been to us if we had engaged in war on that account. The reason why I am troubling you with these remarks upon this matter is that I have no confidence in a resolution of the country which is based merely upon a feeling of humiliation that must be temporary, and upon a balance of material interests. There must be something stronger than either
222	Speech of Mr. Forster
of these two feelings to make this country change its course with regard to foreign affairs. The intellect of the country must be convinced, and, more than that, the conscience of the country must be at rest. It is because I do not think the intellect of the country yet fully convinced, and the conscience at rest, that already I find the lesson is beginning to be lost. I carefully watch what my fellow-members say from day to day, and I find they are talking less about the new era of politics, and more of the balance of power, and saying that they must judge of every question on its own footing. But I hear also this, and this is the reason why I think the lesson has not been fully learnt as yet—I hear this statement, " England will be forfeiting her position, and disregarding her duty, if she adopts the non-intervention isolated policy in the way you advise." Just one word. I say that if it is our duty to keep up this constant intervention in foreign affairs because England is great and powerful, I care not for the cost, I am willing to incur it. I believe that even upon a balance of material interests it is not the interest of any country not to fulfil its duty. But I say the duties of a country are like the duties of individuals ; you must not consider interests for themselves. Be only sure that it is a duty, and you must perform it. I will go further, and say that there are times in which it is necessary for a nation to step forward and to sacrifice its own money and the lives of its people in intervention in foreign affairs. But I think we must all acknowledge that before such a self-sacrifice is required, some conditions ought to be fulfilled. We ought to be sure that the object for which we interfere is certainly good, that we shall do good, that we can interfere with success, that our intervention would be effectual—would be beneficial. Those who say that it is our business to keep up a constant intervention in foreign affairs ought to feel a little doubt about advising that, when they remember that most of them told us in the strongest words they could use that it was our duty to interfere in this particular Schleswig-Holstein business. Just let us consider what would have been the effect of our intervention on that question. We see it has now come to an end—that a small country like Denmark has become still smaller. But, supposing we had interfered, what would have been the consequences ? We should have turned a local war into a general European war ; and we should have been responsible for that and for beginning a war which might have lasted for years and years over Europe. It is not merely the loss to ourselves—the money we should have spent and the lives we should. have sacrificed ; but the awful responsibility of spreading the scourge of war where it would not have come without us. Let us look at the possible future of our foreign
On Home and Foreign Politics.	223
policy. I do not go upon the principle that one country should resolve always to be isolated from all other countries. There may be cases in which isolation would be selfishness and a national crime. But look at the state of Europe now, and I think every one of us must come to the conclusion that, in all probability, a policy of strict non-intervention, a policy of isolation, will be the policy which England ought to adopt, on the ground of duty as well as on the ground of interest. Take the question most likely to start up—the Eastern question. I do hope that we have learnt enough now not to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives and millions of money to keep the Turks in Europe. I hope we have learnt enough to show us that duty does not call us to interfere to keep half-civilized Mussulmans in the heart of Europe any longer. I am told that there are such elements of confusion and difference at work that there must be a general war ; and men say that if there is a general war, England must be dragged in. I am thankful to say that they are saying that less now than they did a few months ago. Nothing is more dangerous than to go upon the supposition that, because there is an European war, we must be dragged into it. Why should we be dragged into it ? Certainly we are not likely to be dragged in by any attack upon us. If any general war does break out, it will be a conflict between two great feelings and principles—the old despotisms on the one hand and the new nationalities on the other. They are very well matched. They certainly will not interfere with us ; they will be too thankful to let us alone. I shall be asked, " If there is a great struggle like this, would you have England standing by and not supporting the right ?" There will be a balance of right very likely on one side, but it will not be a clear one on either side. There is a good deal to be said on both sides, and this alone ought to make us consider that it is our duty to keep off from that quarrel as much as possible. Again, we are an island away from Europe ; our frontiers are not in Europe. We have not and cannot have a large standing army like the great Powers of Europe. We have a fleet in truth ; but a fleet would not do the work by itself, and would be useless without an army to back it. We should need allies, and our ally would be France. If a war is ever to break out, and if it is to be a war of principle, though undoubtedly we should have principles, we shall not be able to impose our idea of liberty upon Europe. We shall be obliged to consider our allies, and I am not prepared to run the risk of sending any Englishman forth to die in order to spread the Emperor of the French's idea of liberty. Our principle of foreign policy ought to be to remember that war is a very dreadful thing ; and it is dreadful enough to undertake war in defence of your own country.
224	Speech of Mr. Forster
There it is necessary. But when you undertake war upon any other ground, at least be sure that it is necessary you should undertake it, that you have a reasonable probability of success, and that you will do good. I believe these conditions are not likely to be .fulfilled by any interference we may make in continental affairs in the lifetime of any one of you present. If these conditions are not all fulfilled, anybody who supports or encourages such a war is undertaking the awful responsibility of spreading the conflagration and increasing the miseries of war, of enlarging the area over which it extends,—in fact, of doing that which is, after all, the greatest crime which a nation can commit,
—viz., setting to work to fight and kill withouti	sufficient reason.
If our Government is to meddle less, so also must our House of Commons, so also must the country. Since I have had the honour of being present in the House of Commons, I have found that the popular questions have not been misgovernment in England, or misgovernment in Ireland, but misgovernment in some continental nation. I have found, too, a very extraordinary thing,—that just in proportion as our interests were not concerned have we been apparently the most anxious to interfere. Well, but men will say, " What! would you have us silent ? Would you have no expression of sympathy ? Would you have us see oppression without expressing our sympathy with the oppressed ?" All I say about this is, think of the oppressed while you express that sympathy, and be sure you are doing them good. Be sure the luxury to you of expressing sympathy is not injury to them. Be sure that the pleasure of going to a meeting and making fine speeches about the wrongs of a foreign country, if it is play to you, is not death to them. I feel this very strongly from the very intensity of feeling which I have had for those poor unfortunate Poles. I believe we have thought too much of ourselves, of gratifying our feeling of sympathy and wish to express it, and too little of the Poles when we have done so. I look back to the course of England in that sad struggle with no feelings of national pride. I believe we did to some extent mislead those unfortunate men, and induced them to carry on a hopeless contest by holding out hopes which, if we had properly considered, we should have known England would never fulfil. Take the Danish case also. There are men now—men who are my colleagues in the House of Commons, who try to give a salve to English feeling on this matter by saying we did quite right to express our feelings, and to use our moral influence against the injustice committed by Austria and Prussia to Denmark, and that we should have done wrong if we had been silent. But Denmark did not exactly know what we meant by our expression. My belief is that if England
On Home and Foreign Politics.	225
had been silent from the beginning, Denmark would have had Schleswig at this moment ; that it was because she thought that England would do more than talk, that she defied Austria and Prussia longer than she otherwise would have dared to do. I mean simply this, that so far from saying that there is no duty which we owe to foreign nations, not only the Government, not only the members of the House of Commons, but every free English citizen has this duty,—that the humblest of us ought to take no part in a foreign question without having thought the question out to some extent to himself ; without, in fact, asking himself this,—" What do I mean to do for this people ? and whatever I mean to do, let me not mislead them by meaning less than I say." I do not think there is so much danger about that for the future as there has been of late, because I think we have talked so much more than we have done in these matters that at last we have induced Europe to put our talk at pretty much its right value. For a time we supposed that our bark would be thought by them as good as other men's bite ; but I think they won't believe so any longer ; and it is the feeling that they don't think so, that they won't think so, that is, I believe, the bitter pill to many. I think that, after all, there is not so much a feeling of duty underneath in the minds of those who call out for constant intervention, as there is a feeling of vainglory and national pride. It was very briefly and very pithily expressed to me by a very clever man, who said to me, " No ; I, as an Englishman, hope the time will never come when a gun will be fired in Europe without England's leave." That is the feeling of national vainglory which we complain of in France ; let us be sure we don't fall into it ourselves. Again, I say that while I am prepared to vote your money and risk the lives of my fellow citizens to fulfil a duty, I am not prepared to do so to feed this vain ambition, this vainglory. But have I no ambition for my country ? Do I look forward to England being a second-rate Power—rich, but weak, corrupted by its riches, a prey to the spoiler, and dwelling in the mournful recollections of that glorious place among the nations which she has sold for commercial gains ? No, my dream for my country is very different. I look at what she is ; I look at what she may be. I say that England, so far from being likely to become a second-rate Power, has such a destiny before her as never was given by Providence to any other nation. A book which was sent to me and other members of Parliament lately—the " Statesman's Year Book "--states that our Queen rules over one-third of the area of the inhabited world and one-fourth of its population. Why, has not this country, which has such a responsibility as that, a great part to play if she does her
226	Speech of Mr. Forster
duty ? We have the East to civilize and Christianize ; we have to undo all the harm we have done, and to do all the good that Providence has put into our hands to do. And, to turn to our own colonies, was there ever such a task given to any nation as is given to us ? Surely we may leave dynastic and national quarrels, at any rate until we have performed that duty to the best of our ability. I will not despair of the greatest problem ever given to any race being solved by us—the problem of how a colony, when it has arrived at maturity, may yet remain in alliance with the mother country. What is happening now in connexion with the Canadian Confederation gives me greater hope that in future years, when our colonies in America, Australia, and Africa have risen to such positions as to be able to stand by themselves, we may possibly so arrange it that we shall be nominally the same country, and, whether nominally under the same rule or not, I am sure it will be because we don't do our duty if there is not the same close alliance and friendship, and the same practical advantages, as if we were. And I will not confine my remarks to English colonists alone. I turn to the English-speaking race on the other side of the Atlantic, and I don't despair of a close alliance and friendship with them. I do not despair that even they will join in that great alliance of the Anglo-Saxon race which shall be a pattern to the world, and shall teach the nations peace by the majesty of its success. Many may think me sanguine or Utopian, when they see that terrible war going on between two portions of a people, agreeing only in their dislike of us. Still, I do hope, because I see that day by day is departing the great cause of dissension with us by the triumph of freedom and the destruction of slavery. If there is one thing more than another politically which I have longed for, it is a close alliance between the English-speaking race on this side of the Atlantic and the other ; but, I have known that, whatever be the ties of blood, of language, of faith, and of trade, these ties are not sufficient to cement countries in close alliance and friendship, if there be a difference in the social principles on which their Governments are formed ; and therefore, so long as the old United States of America were governed by the slaveholders in the interest of slavery, I knew that a close alliance with America was impossible. I rejoiced, therefore, both on account of my sympathy for the oppressed negro and of love to my country, when in America a stand was made against that slaveholding, and I don't cease to rejoice, although it led to this terrible war. I admire the courage, the endurance, the self-sacrifice of the men of the South; but, courageous and devoted as they are, they have yet been recreant
On Home and Foreign Politics.	227
to those true principles of liberty which our common forefathers fought for in former days, and which are the principles on which
we believe every English commonwealth ought to be formed.
And I rejoice in the success of the North—not that I justify all the steps they have taken—because I believe they will build up a
new English-speaking commonwealth without this un-English
sin of slavery. The time will come when this struggle will be judged rather by the principles at stake than by the mistakes or
the misdeeds of the combatants; and then I think—and may I
not also say you, for the great majority supported me in the course I have taken—you and I will rejoice that in this great
struggle Bradford did not express its feeling on the wrong side, that we did our best to prevent our Government committing the greatest possible mistake and crime by helping an English people to establish a commonwealth upon the principles of slavery, and that we have done our best to hasten forward the time when the actions of private merchants who have thought fit to gratify their own desire of gain, to wage private war with our allies in their Alabamas, shall be forgotten, when the sneers and reproaches on both sides shall have been estimated at their nothingness, and when we shall be in real alliance with all men of the English race throughout the world, and our enterprising, colonizing, civilizing Anglo-Saxon race shall have increased to such a number that the very success of their alliance and the very advantages they possess will present such a lesson of the advantages of peace and good fellowship to other nations, that, by the very power of that example, those nations will feel themselves constrained to be at peace one with another. If we wish to do our duty to foreign nations, it is by doing our duty in this manner that we are more likely to perform it. But I must descend from dreams of the future to the realities of the present. We have got duties at home as well as duties to our colonies and to America. When I think of our duty to the United States, I at once think of the non-fulfilment of duty at home, which makes it so difficult to fulfil that duty to the United States, and that is the fact that in our dealings with those States we have to deal with many who were our fellow citizens and are glad to have ceased to be so. While dealing with the Anglo-Saxons on the other side of the Atlantic we have also to deal with Irishmen. This Irish question is fastening on us more and more. The fact is, Ireland is still a weakness and a disgrace to England. We think we are governing Ireland well because we do not misgovern her to the extent we did in former years, but we still do misgovern her, and in two of the most vital and important points in which misgovernment is possible. We misgovern her by the
Q2
228	Speech" of Mr. Forster
laws which we uphold in relation to the cultivation of the land, which is, after all, the most important part of the material interests in every country, and in no country so much as in Ireland ; and we also misgovern her in that which is more import tant and weighty than everything else, viz., in our legislation with regard to her religious faith. I cannot go into the question of how we misgovern her in relation to land ; but, in a very few words, I will say what •I believe cannot be disproved, that the laws which we uphold, and the customs to which we give the force of laws—the laws of eviction and distress, and those relating to tenants' improvements—fill the Irish estates with impoverished tenants and keep these tenants impoverished. And when we come to the question of the English Church in Ireland, what is that but a sign of conquest ? It is a memorial of oppression, and a legacy of injustice. Can we wonder that the Irish farmer hastens to leave that land when he is insulted by such a Church, and when he feels that he cannot reap the reward of his own industry ? Can we wonder that, in fleeing from this land, he carries with him hatred to the country that has fastened this Church upon him, and which upholds these laws ? I believe we shall be forced to entertain that question more seriously than we have yet done, but I have very little hope of doing it unless two conditions be fulfilled. One depends upon the Irish people and the Irish members of Parliament, and the
other depends upon ourselves.	After all, the initiation of
measures for the advantage of Ireland must come from Ireland. It has been up-hill work for any English member to attempt to introduce any Irish reform, because it was immediately said by its opponents, " If the reform be necessary, why is it not proposed by the members of those constituents who will be most affected by it ?" The hon. gentleman expressed his opinion that one reason why Irish matters had received so little attention in the past was because Irish members had too often discussed the affairs of Italy instead of those of Ireland, and said he rejoiced at the recent meetings in Ireland as the beginning of a better state of things. But there was one other condition required. The Irish members might do their duty, but before these reforms could be carried there must be a reformed House of Commons. [After replying to some criticisms on his late Reform speech, and alluding to the present position of political parties, Mr. Forster concluded by saying :]—It is difficult for me to define Mr. Disraeli's political faith, but he has lately been expressing a profession of faith which has surprised us all, and, I believe, his own party as much as us—that is, his belief in the necessity of an Ecclesiastical Court of Appeal, as it is called.
On Home and Foreign Politics.	229
He appears, indeed, to head that party in the country which wishes to make the Church independent of the State, and give it a power of self-government and self-control. His having done so certainly convinces me more strongly than anything else has ever done, that with all his talent and ability—and no man for a moment disputes them—Mr. Disraeli labours under the great disadvantage of not having the feelings of an Englishman. He always seems to me to treat English politics and English politicians as if they were tools to play with, and as if he had no feeling, no instinctive sympathy with what is going on, but is looking from without and seeing what can be done. If lie had had the sympathy of a thorough Englishman, his very instinct would have told him that there could not be a more fatal mistake, considering the feelings and sympathies of the people, than the idea that a political party should endeavour to render the Church independent of the State. I think he will find that out ; and that we shall find it will not be pushed very strongly by the Conservative party, because their leaders will see the disadvantage of such a course, and because a great number of those who are making this cry for the Court of Appeal will feel that their trying to emancipate the Church from the control of the State would be the strongest possible argument against a State Church. I am the more inclined to think that, from the endeavours which they make to escape from this interpretation of their views. The bishops, we are informed, are to tell the lawyers what the doctrines are, and the lawyers are then to decide. Well, I say that means nothing, or it means a great deal. In the minds of those who have brought it forward as a remedy I am sure it means something, and if it means anything it means that the declaration of doctrine by the bishops is to overrule and decide the decisions of the lawyers. That would do what was not done even in the days of the Papacy in England, what Henry VIII. set at rest for ever, it would make the Church an independent power under the command of the bishops, instead of under the command of the Queen. There is nothing more contrary to the feelings of Englishmen than that. It would be the greatest reinforcement to the Anti-State Church party, because when men say that the Church is to be independent of the State, the opponents of the Church will say that the Church ought not to receive any assistance or any protection from the State.
SPEECH OF MR. JOHN BRIGHT,
MEMBER FOR BIRMINGHAM.
[The following Speech was delivered by Mr. Bright on the occasion of the annual visit paid by himself and his colleague, Mr. Scholefield, to their constituents at Birmingham, on the 18th of January. The Mayor of Birmingham and Mr. Scholefield having first addressed the meeting, Mr. Bright said]
WHEN my colleague and myself had the pleasure last year of meeting you in this place, there was one subject which was pressing upon the minds of all of us, and causing great disquietude. We were encompassed by rumours of war. A small State in the north of Europe was surrounded by difficulties, mainly, I am afraid, of its own creation, and yet was assailed with what was considered almost a savage vindictiveness by a powerful people, comprising one great empire and several kingdoms. We were not disposed to go into that contest and to mingle in the war, and my hon. colleague spoke in the most emphatic language against the idea that we should enter into a war, first with Germany, and perhaps afterward with some other States in Europe, on behalf of Denmark ; and I said that any Government in Europe that plunged us into war for the sake of the integrity of Denmark would deserve not only the condemnation but the execration of the people. Although we took so decided a view, we can't conceal from ourselves that there was a certain restlessness in the public mind. The newspapers in London, particularly those which are understood to represent the Government, were strongly urging the country to war, and the papers which were supposed to represent the Opposition were urging the Government to pursue the same course, no doubt with the kindly intention of embarrassing and destroying the Ministry. But we had to recollect that at the head of the Government are two very ancient statesmen, the Prime Minister and the head of the Foreign Office, and remembering that about ten years ago they were the Ministers mainly responsible for the war with Russia, we could not but feel that the danger which impended over us was not entirely imaginary. How we escaped it we hardly yet know. Some say that the Queen was very much opposed to the war, as doubtless she would be opposed to any war which she believed could possibly be avoided. For that I am grateful to the Queen. It has been said that we owe peace to the younger members of
Speech of Mr. Bright at Birmingham.	231
the Cabinet—chiefly to Mr. Gladstone. If that be true, I tender my thanks to that majority of the Cabinet. Some say that the unusual speculative monetary engagements and investments of last year made all the moneyed interests of the country look on the prospect of war as something absolutely appalling and ruinous. If that be so, I tender my thanks to the moneyed interests of the country. But during the Session the question was incessantly discussed, and the Government exhibited its usual feebleness, and the Opposition its usual folly. If a question was asked about the destination of the fleet, an answer was given which might be read one way or the other ; and if the Opposition were not in favour of war, they made an incessant attempt to drive the Government to some act which should make hostilities inevitable. Towards the end of the Session there was a long debate, and then the feebleness of the Government and the folly of the Opposition were manifest, and the two sides of the House had to make some ridiculous revelations of all the policy that in past times they had appeared to defend. While the debate was going on I thought of the opposition of the ancient statesmen to whom I have referred. They have in times past held and professed opinions which I consider altogether unsound and pernicious to the nation. In the year 1.853, speaking on the subject of our foreign relations, at Greenock, Lord John Russell said,—" It is likewise to be considered, and I trust we shall never any of us forget it, that the country holds an important position among the nations of the world ; that not once, but many times, she has stood forward to resist aggression, to maintain the independence of weaker nations, to preserve to the general family of nations that freedom, that power of governing themselves, of which others have sought to deprive them. I trust that character will not be abandoned by a people which is now stronger in means, which is more populous and wealthy, than it has ever been at any former period. This, then, you will agree with me is not the period to abandon any of those duties towards the world, towards the whole of mankind, which Great Britain has hitherto performed." Now, you see what Lord Russell at that day proposed for us to do. You have heard that the hard-working man, and every one who receives his wages at the end of the week, was pledged by Lord Russell not to abandon any of the duties to the world which Great Britain had hitherto performed. We were to defend all weaker nations, and to take care that nobody was molested in any part of the globe. I merely read this to show you what sort of language was used by a Cabinet Minister only twelve years ago at a meeting of sensible Scotchmen ; but if I were to take the speeches of Lord Palmerston, I could find a_cartload of rhetorical rubbish of this
232	Speech of Mr. Bright
character. During all these years these very statesmen have been using such language as this, and their- newspapers have been reviling especially Mr. Cobden and myself for holding different views ; but now I find that Parliament, by an unanimous vote, has discarded, overthrown, and sent the whole thing, lie and superstition, to that receptacle to which all lies and superstitions must ultimately go. I think that Lords Palmerston and Russell, in their own mature age, must feel that they have been either greatly deceived themselves, or that they have done much to deceive their countrymen, and I hope they will learn from this lesson that it does not always happen that men are great statesmen be-
cause they fill great offices.	If Denmark was allowed to
be dismembered, I do not see how other countries are to be protected, although I agree with my hon. friend, that this country has other than commercial interests, and that it is a mean thing to do, as I am sorry to say our Government has often done, to count the exact cost and value of an island before it went to war or determined to maintain peace. My own opinion is that, taking the events of the last few years, the war in Italy and in Denmark, in which we took no part, coupled with the debate of last Session and the great division which took place on this question, I think that I am not much mistaken in pronouncing the theory of the balance of power to be pretty nearly dead, if it is not quite dead and buried. It is impossible to enumerate the sufferings which this theory has entailed on this country. It rises up, as I think upon it, as a ghastly phantom which during the last 170 years—during which its worship has prevailed in this country—has loaded the nation with debt and taxes. It has sacrificed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Englishmen, it has desolated the homes of millions of families, and it has left us, as the result of the profligate expenditure which it has caused us, a double peerage at one end of the social scale, and far more than a double pauperism at the other. We may now rejoice that this foul idol—fouler than any heathen ever worshipped—has at last been kicked out, and that one superstition the less has hold of the minds of English statesmen and the English people. If this is true, my hon. friend need not have so carefully guarded his observations with respect to the diminution of armaments, for the nation has determined not to send armies to the Continent, or fleets to blockade ports and people with whom we have no concern ; and at a time when the American colonies are about to unite themselves into a great confederation in friendly alliance with ourselves, when the Australian colonies are so powerful that nobody dare molest them, when the people of these islands are better fed—as I
At Birmingham.	233
believe they have been for the last five years—and are more loyal to the Crown and the institutions of the country, there is no necessity to maintain an annual military expenditure which is double that which the Duke of Wellington and Sir R. Peel thought necessary twenty-five years ago. If we are not next Session to have the question of Denmark, nor the question of Italy, nor the question of America, what is it that we are to discuss ? It is quite clear, to me at least, that, whether we have more disposition or not, we shall have a good deal more time to discuss matters of home affairs. What is the question which at Torquay, where a number of noblemen and gentlemen enjoyed a good dinner and made some very foolish speeches, Lord Devon, copying the language of his leader Mr. Disraeli, said was looming in the not distant future—what is that question which will not go to sleep ? Let me remind you of this, that really great questions which affect the true and lasting interests of millions of men can never be laid fast asleep ; but that somehow or other they come up again. There is a startling example of this in what is now taking place in the United States. For thirty years past the statesmen of the United States have voted the negro to be a very great nuisance ; they would not talk about him, and they swore themselves to silence. The negro's business was to grow rice, sugar, and cotton, and not to give trouble to Congress ; so they determined to bury that question, and they congratulated themselves that it was buried ; but now you see the North and the South engaged in deadly conflict, and the negro standing forth before the world, rubbing the marks of the branding iron from his forehead, while the shackles, which have so long oppressed him, are dropping from his limbs, and he is every day becoming more and more a free man. So here there is a question that will not be put to sleep ; it is the question of the admission of the people of this country to the rights which are guaranteed by every principle and by everything which is comprehended in the constitution of this United Kingdom. In 1861, as my hon. friend has described to you, this general question of Parliamentary Reform was voted a nuisance. It was betrayed, it was slain, and, as they thought, it was buried. It has been said that when a measure of this kind is submitted to Parliament the Ministers by whom it is submitted ought to stand or fall by that measure. Earl Grey made the declaration, and said that if it was their business and duty to bring in another Bill, if that before Parliament should be rejected, it would not be less efficient than the measure then under discussion. There is not a man who was in the House of CommQns in 1860, there is not a man in the present Cabinet, who does not know that if
234	Speech of Mr. Bright
Lord Palmerston had said that on one evening in that year, the Bill would have passed through the House of Commons without one single effective hostile discussion—and I have heard it from authority which cannot err on that question—that the sagacious leaders in the House of Lords had resolved that if the Bill came from the House of Commons they would not take upon themselves the responsibility of rejecting it. But that Bill and that question is not dead, it takes shape again, and somehow or other the Tories, and those Whigs who are like Tories, entertain uncomfortable feelings which approach almost to a shiver. Now, what is this apparition which alarms them ? They are afraid of the five or six millions of grown-up Englishmen, men who are allowed to marry, to keep house, to rear children, men who are expected to earn their living, who pay taxes, who must obey the laws, who must be citizens in all honourable conduct—they are afraid of these five or six millions, who by the present system of representation are shut out, and insultingly shut out, from the exercise of the franchise. We are proud tof our country, and there are many things of which we have a right to be proud. We may be proud that England is the ancient country of Parliaments. With scarcely any intervening period, Parliaments have met constantly for 600 years, and there was something of a Parliament before the Conquest. England is the mother of Parliaments. I ask you, men of Birmingham, who are a fair representation of the great mass of the five or six millions, why you should be thus treated in your own land ? You know our boast of what occurs when a negro slave lands in England ; one of our best poets says that
" If their lungs but breathe our air,
That moment they are free."
They touch our country and their shackles fall. But what is the case with respect to an Englishman ? An Englishman if he goes to the Cape can vote, if he goes to Australia he can vote, if he goes to the Canadian Confederation or to our grandest colonies, the United States of America, he can vote ; it is only in his own country, on his own soil, where he was born, the very soil which he has enriched with his labour and the sweat of his brow, that he is denied this right which in every community of Englishmen in the world would be freely accorded to him. I agree very much with the gentlemen at the Torquay dinner as to the apparition which alarmed, but I hope did not disturb, their formidable and robust digestion. This apparition is not a pleasant one ; this state of things is dangerous, and one.which cannot perpetually last. If may happen that the eyes of the five or six
At Birmingham.	235
millions all over the kingdom may be fixed with an intense glare on the doors of Parliament ; it was so in the years 1831 and 1832. There are men in this room who felt then, and who know now, that it required but one spark to the train and this country would have been in the throes of a revolution ; and these men, who are so alarmed at the proposition to give a 101. vote for counties and a 61. vote for boroughs, would have repented in sackcloth and ashes if they had given a vote against Earl Grey's Reform Bill. Accidents are always happening, not only to individuals, but to nations. It was the accident of the French revolution in 1830 that precipitated the great movement in this country. There may be accidents again, and I don't hold that to be statesmanlike which allows the security, the tranquillity, the loyalty of a people to be disturbed by an accident over which they may have no control. If these five or six millions of people once unitedly fix their eyes with an intense look upon the door of the House of Commons, I ask who shall say them nay? Not the mace upon the table of the House; not the 400 easy gentlemen who lounge in and out of that decorated chamber under the same roof; not a dozen gentlemen who call themselves statesmen, and who doze in Downing Street ; not even a power appalling and more menacing that has its lodgment higher up Whitehall. I say that as opinion now stands there is no power in this country that can say nay for one single week to the five or six millions, if they are intent on making their way within the walls of Parliament. This is the apparition which frightens the gentlemen at Torquay ; but it also gives trouble in other quarters to which I would pay more respect. It is evident from the pamphlets and letters which are written, and the speeches which are made, that every one who does not want Reform says that nobody wants Reform, and that people don't like it to be talked about, and yet they begin and make this subject the chief staple of their speeches. Mr. Charles Buxton—a very excellent person—puts forward a scheme the effect of which would be that two of your townsmen would poll at the next election, one of whom might vote for Mr. Scholefield and myself, while the other would give two votes to each of the candidates whom he might prefer, the only justification for such a course being that this one lived in a house rented at more than 101. a year, while the other lived in a house rented under that sum. Mr. Buxton has found that nobody was in favour of his scheme, and, as I understand, he has withdrawn it, and I hope he will keep it in the dark until it is asked for. The other person to whom I alluded is a member of the House of Lords, son of that Earl Grey to whom I have referred. He is an eminent and very capable man ; anything he says deserves every con-
236	Speech of Mr. Bright
sideration. I have a very great respect for Earl Grey for two especial reasons. I heard him as Lord Howick, in the House of Commons, make a speech against the Corn Laws, in which he quoted at grand and solemn passage of Scripture against that atrocious system, at which the Protectionists said that it was very vulgar to quote Scripture on such a subject. Earl Grey, again, made a great speech in the House of Lords against the Russian war, which showed not only great moral courage, but also, in my view, great intelligence and patriotism. Therefore I come to the consideration of anything that Earl Grey proposes with most favourable feelings towards him. He has undertaken to reconcile something like justice to the people with the existing supremacy of his order. It is not possible to attempt great political changes without some disturbance. The Bill of 1832 disturbed the boroughmongers in a remarkable degree, and the repeal of the Corn Laws disturbed landowners and farmers, while it did them nearly as much good as it did the people. I don't care a bit about political changes because they may make some disturbance. That is precisely what we want. What do you think Earl Grey proposed ? I wish you to see what one of the most acute minds in the country can suggest in opposition to the simple measures to which my hon. friend has al- , luded. He proposed to adopt a plan of cumulative votes, so that if there were two members each elector could give his votes for either candidate. Now, the result of this in Birmingham would be that if Mr. Acland had a body of 3,500 supporters, who voted together, they could give him 7,000 votes, whereas if Mr. Scholefield and myself had 6,500 supporters, and were in equal favour with them, we should have 6,500 votes apiece, and if Mr. Scholefield had one more than I had, I should lose my seat, and Mr. Acland would have a large majority over both of us. I have heard of a race between donkeys, in which the last won, and in this case it would be the slowest animal that would bear away the prize. Earl Grey also proposed to create more University or similar constituencies, but I don't think that for the last 70 years any University would have taken either his father or himself as their member. He also proposed that the professions should return members, not as citizens, but as lawyers and doctors. Now, I have had the misfortune to fall into the hands of the lawyers, and nothing can be more costly or more painful except to fall into the hands of the doctors. I have a great respect for them in their professional capacity, but I object to placing political power in their hands because they are lawyers and doctors. I know nothing like it except the advice of old Mr. Weller, who recommended his son to consult a friend of his on a matter of law
At Birmingham.	237
because he was egood judge of a horse. Lord Grey proposed that a certain number of eminent men should be nominated by the House of Commons to permanent seats, and he also proposed that others should be elected by certain trades, enough to speak, but not enough to rely on to influence the divisions. I had always thought that it was the duty of a statesman not to separate classes, but to unite them into one body equally treated by the law and equally loyal to the Government and their country. Beyond these Earl Grey proposed some things that were right. He would extend the suffrage, and abolish many, if not all, the small boroughs. Now, having made these concessions, he takes care to neutralize them in the way that I have just described. I warn you again to look with great suspicion on all fancy propositions. The question is a plain and simple one, and if any man conies before you with a complex and involved scheme difficult to understand, take note of it that he does not offer you a solid coin in payment of your claims, with the impress of the English Constitution upon it, but he offers you either flash notes or coin of an inferior workmanship. I am charged, as you know, with having too little reverence for the authorities of this country. Some have even dared in the public newspapers to charge me with disloyalty to the head of the Executive in this country ; but there is one disloyalty which I hold to be worse than this—worse than turning back on the Crown and on the peerage—and that is disloyalty to freedom and the people. If representation be not an art—and who in this country shall say that it is ?—what is the use of all these tricks, not to complete representation, but to evade and escape it? What is the representation which we consider the foundation of liberty ? If all the five or six millions were assembled on Salisbury Plain to decide a public question the body would be too large for business, and chaos would come. It has therefore been resolved that people in different localities shall send men to meet at a certain time and place, and to act honourably, in the face of God and the country, on behalf of the true and solid interests of the nation. But if you did decide a question on Salisbury Plain the majority must carry the day, and if you split the nation up into constituencies the majority must carry the day. There is a great fear of majorities among certain people. Why, what is a majority in Birmingham ? It holds one opinion, and.we are supposed to represent it. The majority in Liverpool holds a different opinion, and sends one man who agrees with us, and one man who always contradicts him. Surely the minority of Birmingham is represented in a certain sense by the majority of Liverpool, and taking one district with another, if there be an opinion that is held by any constituency it has a
238	Speech of Mr. Bright
representative somewhere who can speak in its behalf; but surely no one would ask that minorities should send members to say "No " when the majority send members to say " Aye." What is this fear of the people ? In Australia the franchise is lower than it is in this country, but still the Government legislates in accordance with the wishes of the people. Take the case of our North American colonies. We are going to form a confederation under the authority of an Act of Parliament. Mr. Brown, one of the most eminent of the Canadian Ministers, states the proposition to be that the duration of their Parliament will probably l)e limited to five years, that it will be composed of a Legislative Council appointed by the Government of the day, and a House of Commons, in which they are to obtain—and that they desire to obtain—representation on the basis of population. Therefore the Parliament is going to pass a Bill with regard to our British northern provinces which these gentlemen say would be wholly destructive if applied to this country. In the State of New York alone 700,000 men voted at the last Presidential election, and throughout the whole of the Free States not less than 4,000,000 votes were given with the most perfect order and tranquillity. Our opponents may say, Look at the legislative results of this wide extension of the franchise. I am ready to test it by these results, and I say, whether you go to South Africa, to Australia, to the British North American provinces, or the States of the Union (excluding those States where slavery injures the condition of society), you will find that life and property are as secure, that education is much more extended among the people, that there is quite as good a provision for their interests, that the laws are as merciful and just, that taxes are imposed and levied with as great equality, that the millions of our countrymen established in these countries are as well off in all circumstances of life, as are the people of this country whom they have left behind them. I will ask you to tell me what the people of Torquay are afraid of. In almost every sentence uttered something is said of our institutions, and it comes out that " our institutions " are Church and State. Now a man must be a blockhead beyond all power of argument to suppose that, in this great community, the ministers of our free churches and of the dissenting sects would be less thought of than they are at present if their fears should be realized. What they fear is this—they seem to have a notion that some institutions which have come down from mediaeval ages, from what some people call the dark ages, may not permanently harmonize with the intelligence and the necessities of the 19th century in which we live. Our institutions are safe enough. If the Government be in the hands of the institutions, and if the
At Birmingham.	239
peerage and the Established Church are to rule in England, I feel sure the peerage and the Established Church in their present condition will be permanently safe. And so I may say of patronage ; if it is to be dispensed perpetually among the ruling classes, they will take care of the patronage. Many men look upon patronage as a holy and untouchable thing. Hosea Bigelow says,—
" It's something a fulfilling the prophecies
When all the first families are in all the best offices."
But I protest against the theory that the people of this country have an unreasonable desire to shake or overturn institutions which they may not theoretically approve. Do these parties know what they admit by the expression of this fear ? I am also told that the people like the House of Lords very much. I have never thought it worth while to contradict this, for I am content to live under the institutions which the intelligence, the virtue, and the experience of my countrymen, fairly represented in Parliament, have determined upon. I have been told that when the present Government was formed I was to have been asked to take office, with my friends Mr. Cobden and Mr. Milner Gibson. Mr. Cobden was then in America, and although they don't like him better than they do me, I suspect that they disliked him rather less. He did not accept the offer, for reasons which were then made public—and for reasons given to me which came from Lord Palmerston—I suppose to be communicated to me—that I had delivered opinions with regard to the institutions of the country which the majority of Englishmen deemed injurious ; and this made it impossible for him, although he personally had no objection, to offer me a seat in his Government. I had attended meetings here, at Glasgow, at Edinburgh, at Manchester, at Bradford, and the largest towns. Now, at all these places no building could be found that could contain one half of those who wished to hear something said on the question which I was then discussing, and the speeches then made were supposed to be tinged with less reverence for the institutions of England than some people thought proper—although I was thought fit to be your representative, and although thousands of people applauded those speeches, I was not thought fit to be a member of Her Majesty's Government. Is it true that the people are against the Church ? Do they fail to hear with respect any one who acts as a Christian minister? If it is the Church of the poor man, it is the poor man who ought to know it ; and can you imagine that the people, acting through their representatives, would do anything with regard to that
240	Speech of Mr. Bright
Church which would damage its utility as a Christian institution, would make it less honoured or less influential in the spread of Christianity among the people of these islands ? Why are they so afraid of the people, if there should be another million more electors ?—and I believe that the last Bill only proposed to admit half a million. Is there any single interest that deserves the slightest consideration which a million electors, joined' with the present million, would combine in Parliament to attack and destroy ? I take it that the Crown, the most venerable of the institutions of the country, is not opposed to the admission of this million ; for on two occasions the Queen has signified to Parliament her consent to it. I believe that the people are grossly slandered ; for since the power of the Crown was limited, two hundred years ago, and since the power of the nobles was limited, thirty years ago, good government has gained greatly ; that the people in all circumstances are better off—and I am quite sure that their respect to the Crown is more general by far than it was before. But our Constitution involves a representation of the people, and in asking for this Reform we stand upon a foundation from which no argument and sophistry can ever remove us. The House of Commons is, in reality, the only guarantee we have for freedom. If you looked at any other country and saw nothing but a monarch—he might be a good king and might do his best, but you would say, " There is no guarantee for freedom," because you know not who would be his successor. If you saw a country with no crown, but with a handful of nobles administering the government of the country, you would say, " There is no guarantee there for freedom, because a number of nobles acting together have not the feeling of responsibility that one man has, and they will do things which one man would not dare to do." If there be a man here who feels himself and his prejudices rise up against the statements I am making, at least he will admit that the real and only permanent foundation for political freedom' in this country is in the establishment and maintenance of a system of representation in your Houses of. Parliament. At that dinner at Torquay a nobleman presided whom I had the pleasure of knowing a little when he was a member of the House of Commons, and another nobleman, whom I have also known, made the principal speech. Now, what do you think they did ? They had a number of toasts, which is a thing I don't much recommend, because they don't generally drink them in cold water ; and first, after what are called the ceremonial toasts, they proposed the toast of the House of Lords ; and then, after a long speech from Lord Devon, what did they propose next ? Not the House of Commons, but " The Conservative party in
At Birmingham.	241
the House of Commons." They did not propose the Conservative party in the House of Lords. Perhaps they thought the whole House of Lords were of the Conservative party, or else they thought the Liberal party in the House of Commons were not worth remembering, except to wish that it did not exist. These gentlemen do not comprehend our Constitution at all; they don't know apparently that it is only because there is something which the people still believe to be in some degree a representative body, and which stands between them and monarchical or aristocratic despotism, it is only the existence of that House which makes the institutions they are so fond of safe and permanent at all, and they are afraid that the five millions should somehow or other get into it ; and I beg leave to tell them those five millions will get into it. They may not get in all at once, and perhaps few men desire they should, for I am opposed myself to great and violent changes, which create needless shocks, and which are accepted, if they are accepted at all, with great alarm ; but I will undertake to say that a considerable and effective portion of those five millions will, before many years are past, be freely allowed to vote for members for the House of Commons. It is not democracy, which these gentlemen are always afraid of, that is the peril of this country ; it was not democracy • in .1.832 that was the peril; it was the desperate antagonism of the class that then had power to the just claims and rights of the people ; and at this moment, when they dined, and when I speak, I tell them that. Conservatism—they give it that name, but it is worthy of a very different name—Conservatism, be it Toryism or Whiggism, is the true national peril which we have to face. They may dam the stream, they may keep back the waters, but the volume is ever increasing, and it descends with an accelerated force ; and the time will come when in all proba-bility—and to a certainty, if wisdom does not take the place of folly—the waters will burst their banks, and these men, who fancy they are stemming this imaginary apparition of Democracy, will themselves be swept away by the resolute will of a united and determined people. Cast your eye over the face of Europe : there are only two considerable States that have not any representative institution—Turkey and Russia ; and Russia is now making progress in freedom equal to that of any other State in Europe. Representation is found in Italy, in Austria, even in almost all the German States, in Belgium, Holland, France, Portugal, and Spain ; it is found all over the American continent; it is also a firmly settled institution in Australia. Englishmen everywhere but at home are received in the bosom of this great, permanent, undying constitution and safeguard
242	Speech of Mr. Bright at Birmingham.
for human and national freedom ; but here they are slandered; they are insulted, they are reviled, they are shut out, they are invited to have a hundred ways of amusing themselves ; but if they stand at the House of Commons, or at the poll, and see their richer brethren go up to vote, they are not allowed to register their names in favour of principles for which their fathers before them and themselves have sighed in many a bitter hour of disappointment. I would change all this. I speak out of no hostility to any class or to any institution, but that man who proposes to exclude permanently five millions of his fellow countrymen from the right which the Constitution of his country makes sacred in their eyes,—I say that is the man who separates England into two nations, and makes it impossible we should be wholly and permanently a contented people. I demand this, then, which is but the right of the Constitution, that the House of Commons shall be made freely and fairly to represent the commons and the people of the United Kingdom. England has long been famous for the enjoyment of personal freedom by her people—they are free to think, they are free to speak, they are free to write.; and England has been famed ,of late years, and is famed now, the world over, for the freedom of her industry and the greatness and the freedom of her commerce. I want to know why it is that our people should not be free. Who is there that will meet me on this platform, or who will stand on any platform, and will dare to say to an open meeting of his fellow countrymen that this million for whom I am now pleading are too ignorant or vicious or destructive to be entrusted with the elective franchise ? I, at least, will never thus slander my countrymen. I claim for them the right of admission through their representatives into the most ancient and venerable Parliament which at this hour exists among men ; and when they are thus admitted, and not till then, it may be truly said that England, the august mother of free nations, herself is free.
SPEECH OF MR. E. A. LEATHAM,
MEMBER FOR HUDDERSFIELD.
[The following is the Address of Mr. Leatham, delivered, according to his annual custom, whilst Member for the Borough, to his constituents at Huddersfield on the 24th of January.]
MR. CHAIRMAN, electors, and non-electors,—I once heard of a fraudulent tradesman who, after having kept his creditors at bay for many years, when at last his books came into their hands was found to have inscribed in his ledger at the close of each year of successful swindling, " Laus Deo "—Praise be unto the Lord. And I think it would be equally profane and impertinent if, after having failed to meet all our engagements, after having
suffered all our bills to be dishonoured, and after paying 2d. in the pound, we of the Liberal party, perhaps I may say of the "very long firm of Westminster," were to present ourselves before you, our political creditors, upon these annual occasions, and indulge in pious and complacent ejaculations. It is therefore in no garb of triumph, and with no accent of exultation, but with the usual humiliation, and in the well-worn suit of sackcloth and ashes, that I present myself once more before you. " But," you may say, " if you don't approve of the way in which your friends carry on the concern, why did not you give your vote, when the occasion offered last summer, in favour of an operation analogous to that which is known in commercial circles as winding up under inspection ? " Because the transaction which so nearly brought the Government to grief was one of which I heartily approved. I heartily approved of their decision to remain at peace—a decision which, if rumour speaks the truth, was not arrived at without a great deal of dissension and difficulty, and without the exercise of a great deal of external pressure. I thought it would have been most ungracious to
urge, as we did urge, upon the Government the necessity of remaining at peace, and the moment they had committed themselves to that policy to turn round and say, " Your course has been illogical ; you have trifled with the honour of the country ;
we'll hand you over to the Philistines." And what Philistines ! How did the Philistines propose to maintain the honour of the
R 2
244	Speech Of Mr. Leatham, •
country ? What was their policy on the Danish question ? Was it logical ? was it dignified ? was it in accordance, I don't say with honour, but with common honesty ? Now as usual I sat opposite the Philistines during the session, and I had every opportunity of watching and scrutinising the faces of the whole host of them. I observed one thing: whenever the Danish question came upon the carpet, no matter who raised it or how it was raised, that moment the Opposition benches began to fill, eagerness and expectation were depicted on every countenance, and one might almost have supposed that the House of Commons was about once more to become an intelligent and animated assembly. If any one rose to ask a question about Denmark, an instantaneous hush came over us. For the first time in our lives we hung upon the liturgical accents of the member for North Warwickshire (Mr. Newdegate); and for the first time in our lives we drunk in, drop by drop, the occult wisdom which distils from day to day from the lips of the member for Devizes (Mr. D. Griffiths). Did any one drop a hint about the possibility of war, however vague the hint, however remote the possibility, he was sure of a patient hearing from the Opposition. Did any one blow the trumpet with no uncertain sound, he was sure of rapturous applause. If ever the policy of a great party was defined and pronounced upon a great question, it was that of the Opposition up to a certain point. At last we reached the crisis ; war and peace hung in the balance ; the betting was even, the odds inclined in favour of war. Then the Government declared for peace. But how about the Opposition ? After hounding on the Government, not only in the House but by their organs throughout the country, after crying " Havoc," until the House rang again, and after months and months of ceaseless and zealous partizanship, the supreme moment arrived, and the oracles were dumb. It was discovered that the Opposition'had no policy. No, Sir, it had only a plot—a plot to oust the Government and to seat itself on the official bench. Germans and Danes--what did it care for Germans and Danes ? War and peace—what mattered peace or war to them ? It was not a struggle for right and honour, but a low, base, despicable faction-fight for place and pay. Was I going to abet a conspiracy like that with my voice or my vote ? I did not think that the course pursued by Government had been either logical or dignified. Although they had not pledged the honour of the country, they had let fall language, used expressions in debate, and, worse than that, they had written despatches, only too well calculated to raise false hopes. They had been unguarded and imprudent, therefore they deserved censure. But at whose hands ? At the hands
To his Constituents.	245
of the Opposition, at the hands of men who backed every imprudence, cheered every taunt, echoed every menace, and who, when the Government declared for peace, would not declare for war ? Peace under the circumstances might involve a momentary loss of dignity. War under the circumstances, as I attempted to show you last summer, would have been not only a Quixotic enterprise but a deliberate crime against the interests of the world, and to have installed in office at such a crisis a Government without a policy would have been to have insured dishonour and to have imperilled peace. Nor was this the only occasion on which the conduct of the Opposition was undignified, and, as I think, unworthy of a great party. What are we to say about their persecution of my hon. friend Mr. Stansfeld Imagine a great party, which professes 'to embrace in its ranks the chivalry of England, conspiring with the police of a despotic prince to fasten upon an English gentleman a charge of com-plicity—in what? A charge of complicity in an assassination plot. Englishmen who should hare loathed and spurned, as they would poison, all contact with the creatures and emissaries of the imperial system in France, mixed up with them (ignorantly, we must hope—their dupes and not their tools) in hatching a counterfeit conspiracy ; for anything I know closeted with French spies, and all for what? In order that they might, if possible, damage the reputation of as honourable a man as ever breathed—and that, too, not from any mistaken sense of duty, but in the hope that, in dragging down him, they might drag down his party along with him. Oh, it was pitiful, and one begins to wonder what humiliation next is reserved for his devoted followers by the gifted and splendid Asiatic who steers the policy and keeps the honour of the great Conservative party ! Well, the Danish defeat coming on the back of the great moral reverse sustained by the Conservatives in the Stansfeld-Mazzini business, has, no doubt, so prostrated the party that in all probability the session, which will open this day fortnight, will prove as uneventful as the dullest of those which have preceded it. But there are a few questions which may come before us upon which I think it of great importance that there should exist between constituents and their representative a thorough understanding ; and I will, with your permission, refer to two or three of these. Now the first of these to which I will invite your attention is the one which is raised by what is called the Permissive Bill of my hon. friend Mr. Lawson. That is a question on which I understand great interest is felt in Huddersfield. Now I think it is a mistake to receive that measure with levity and ridicule, and as though it were altogether unworthy of the patient attention of the
246	Speech of Mr. Leatham
House of Commons. The high character of my hon. friend Mr. Lawson, coupled with the well-known fact that large numbers of earnest men up and down the country expect great things from this bill, ought to insure for its advocates a fair and reasonable hearing. With this view, without any hesitation, I voted for the first reading of the bill, but having done so, and having thus secured for my hon. friend a fair hearing, it became quite another question whether we were prepared to take another step, and a very long step, forward, and say by voting for the second reading, " We have heard all you had to say for your bill, and we accept the principle of the measure." Now there appear to me to be three very grave and formidable objections to the Permissive Bill. The first of these is a constitutional one. I object to all permissive legislation except in the merest matters of detail. I object to all partial and sectional legislation—to making one law for one parish and another for the next. If the minute vestries to whom it is proposed by this bill to entrust the rights and the property of large classes of their fellow-subjects are qualified to discuss a complex question like this, and to legislate upon it, it would be hard to find any question whatever upon which they might not exercise the same privilege. But it is in the essence of the representative system, that the class which elects, which is a smaller class than that which pays rates, shall possess no direct legislative powers, and it is the principle of the Parliamentary system, that not even the representative assembly shall alone legislate. You have taken extraordinary precautions to protect the rights and the property of Englishmen. You have fenced them both about with a triple rampart—the prerogative of the Crown, the privileges of the Lords, the authority of a representative assembly—all these constitute the threefold and inviolable shelter which you have thrown over the rights and over the property of the meanest subject in the realm. But here is a proposition which with naked and revolutionary simplicity proposes to entrust the property, the maintenance, and the rights of large classes of persons to diminutive, homogeneous, democratic, and irresponsible Parliaments, set up all over the country, in place of the central, responsible, compound and constitutional one. Well then, it seems to me, I may be wrong—and I am always open to conviction—but it seems to me that in this you strike at the very root of a constitutional and representative system. But other grave objections remain to be stated. My hon. friend is a man of peace. But suppose his bill were to become law, how long will he guarantee the peace of the community ? The passing of such a bill must be the signal for an instantaneous struggle all over the country between the advocates
To his Constituents.	247
of the measure and its opponents. Every parish in England would become the scene of an interminable conflict, again and again to be renewed with every recoil and fluctuation of opinion ; and there is no end to the bad passions, to the " envy, malice, hatred, and all uncharitableness," which these philanthropists, who come to us with the very best intentions and in the guise of angels of mercy and doves of peace—would by their deadly and desperate philanthropy engender and cherish in our midst. You say " No, no," but I know of no article of human consumption the forcible deprivation of which, to satisfy the will or to meet the scruples of a benevolent majority, would create the same ill-feeling and the same ill-blood. Not only all our notions of festivity, but most of our notions of hospitality, and many of our notions of ordinary domestic comfort, are, whether rightly or wrongly, still from immemorial usage, inseparably bound up with the use of this great article of diet. The man who strikes at all these notions strikes home. To show that I don't over-colour the picture of the evil passions to which the enactment of such a measure must give rise, I have only to refer to the conduct of the advocates of the Permissive Bill themselves. The fight has scarcely begun. There is no more immediate prospect of the passing of this measure than of a thaw in the Arctic regions. Yet from day to day we hear of men who declare they are prepared to make this question the sole political question—who unblushingly avow their intention of supporting at the next election that candidate who supports it—however preposterous may be his whole political creed—and that no length or magnitude of public service, no uprightness and no ability, shall shelter from their resentment and hostility, the man who dares to vote against it. You may say that there are irrational enthusiasts attached to every cause, but I maintain that the irrational enthusiasm is not that of individuals, but belongs to the avowed policy of the party. For what else is the meaning of this continual coquetting with two candidates of opposite and irreconcilable opinions ? and what else is the meaning of these deputations arranged systematically and ostentatiously to wait upon both upon the same day ? And why is there all this talk about pressure ? Do they think m'e are to be coerced against our judgment? And what is our judgment given us for if we are not to exercise it ? And what are our principles for if we are not to take our stand manfully upon them ? Let them convince me if they can; but the man who fails to convince me and then talks about pressure, and brings his menaces to eke out his logic, insults me. I cease to listen to his arguments, and I feel that I should be the better without his vote. Well, sir, but there is a
248	Speech of Mr. Leath,am
grave objection which remains still to be stated. I deny the right of any body of men whatever to lay a wholesale embargo upon a great and valuable article of human food. I deny the right of any man to interfere with the comfort and convenience of another man because a third man abuses what the other uses. I deny the right of my hon. friend (Mr. Lawson) or any one else to punish me because my neighbour is a drunkard. We are told that this is not tyranny. Well, I wonder what tyranny is, if ,this be not tyranny. I think it is tyranny of the very worst, the most despotic, and most intolerable kind—social tyranny. Well, it is no answer to tell us—worse than that, it is not only no answer, but it is positively dishonest to tell us—that there are already restrictions on the sale of drink, and that all they propose is to carry these restrictions a little further. There are no restrictions on the sale of drink which prevent a man from obtaining it as an article of diet with reasonable ease. The object of the licensing system, so far as it is not fiscal, is not to restrict the sale of drink as an article of diet, but to ensure, so far as may be compatible with public freedom, public order and decency ; but the object of the Permissive Bill is to abrogate altogether the right of the seller, of the purchaser, and of the consumer ; to ensure public order and decency at the price of individual freedom—the freedom too of the man who has not abused and therefore has not forfeited it. If, then, my hon. friend's bill should pass and be successful, it will be successful at the price of a breach upon constitutional legislative action—at the price of an inroad upon public harmony, and at the price of a gross outrage upon private and public freedom. And, Sir, I must confess, that, be the consequences what they may, and be the pressure what it may, I am not prepared to purchase an enforced morality at such a cost. But would it be successful ? That is a question which experience only can answer. For my own part, I believe that, like every other experimental short cut to morality which has been devised since the world began, it will prove a long way round. I believe that the recoil from an unnatural restraint will hurry the nation into indulgences and excesses which we should all equally deplore. I must confess that I trust for the elevation of the people, not to penal Acts of Parliament, but to the almost spontaneous and irrepressible development which I see going on on every side, which has made prodigious strides even in my own time, and the realization of which constitutes your claim to a part in the government of the country. But with what face can we ask your enfranchisement at the hands of incredulous opponents when you yourselves are the first to clamour for this Permissive Bill?—when you yourselves are ready to admit that your morality is so shaky and your intelli-
To his Constituents.	249
gence so feeble that you ask to be treated like positive children, and that all temptation may be taken completely out of your sight 9 What a confession this is ! what a picture of the people into whose strong grasp we supposed we were about to entrust so much of the future prosperity and so much of the future dignity of this country ! But I must confess, if I could believe that picture to be a true one I should cease this day to be a Reformer ; I should not dare to entrust so much to hands so feeble ; I should wait at all events until you felt strong enough to stand without a Permissive Bill. But I owe a great grudge, Sir, to this measure, because I see expended upon its advocacy a great deal of zeal and a great deal of labour which we can ill spare from other enterprises. While there is so much enthusiasm for the Permissive Bill, another question—a question far more possible, far more practical, far more vitally affecting not only the happiness of the working classes, but the whole community—is suffered to lie upon the shelf. If half the zeal, half the activity, which have been lavished upon the Permissive agitation had been bestowed upon the advocacy of Reform, we should not now be whistling for the wind and waiting for the rising of the tide. I don't speak of Huddersfield. If Huddersfield were England we should long ago have escaped from what my hon. friend Mr. Buxton calls the " dilemma of the Liberal party." Here, at all events, the reform spirit has never died out. I have often addressed you upon this question—and when have I addressed you on any occasion without referring to it ?—and never failed to meet with an instant and enthusiastic response. But Huddersfield, unfortunately, is not an epitome of England, nor, I fear, of the West Riding; and we cannot conceal from ourselves the fact that when Government abandoned Reform there was not that deep and wide-spread indignation which we had some right to expect. Indeed, at one time the apathy and indolence of the people appeared to be so great, that I for one began to fear lest the position of this question might remain for years a scandal not only upon the Government, a reproach not only upon the Liberal party, but, what would have been to me far more distressing and discouraging, a scandal and a reproach upon the working classes themselves. For let us review calmly and briefly what actually occurred, and see whether this was a state of things in which those who claim the franchise ought to have tamely and meekly acquiesced. When this Parliament was young—the old, hoary, impenitent sinner, who is now stretched upon his deathbed—when he was young, and blooming, and promising, he stood pledged to an immediate measure of Reform. A substantial Reform Bill formed the main feature in the Liberal programme. Every member of eminence, and a great many who
250	Speech of Mr. Leatham
had no eminence, gave in their public adhesion to it, and it was upon these terms, and these alone, that the Government of Lord Palmerston was permitted to supersede the Government of Lord Derby. Well ? although these pledges were so pompously and so publicly given, the man must be very ill-informed who supposes now that they were given by men who were really in earnest. It must always be a drawback to any movement in this direction that, the moment it is fairly within the walls of Parliament, it must more or less be entrusted to the hands of men who have no personal and direct interest in the issue, whose interest at best is indirect and sympathetic, and often even, perhaps, founded upon the exigencies of party rather than upon those of conscience. If I were not a Member of Parliament, I should say that this last class is most ably and largely represented in the House of Commons. They appear to regard Reform not as we regard it, as something to be advocated because it is just, but as something to be advocated because its advocacy is expedient. It is expedient at times to have a good cry. It is expedient at times to enlist the popular sympathies. But when you have got up your cry, and when you have enlisted the popular sympathies, and when the popular sympathies have carried you precisely where you wanted to go, the question which instantly arises in this class of mind is, not how with the greatest sincerity you may carry out your promises, but how, with the least danger to your reputation, you may run away from them. That is precisely what appears to me to have occurred at Westminster. The cry did wonders. It upset the Derby-Disraeli coach ; it started upon the road the Russell-Palmerston omnibus ; and when it had accomplished all that, perhaps it was unreasonable to expect any more from it. Whether so or not, the discovery was instantly made that it had become a nuisance. In the first place there was the Opposition. Nothing could be more inconsiderate and unreasonable than the Opposition. Staunch Reformers in office, the moment they were out of it nothing stunk in their nostrils like Reform. Pass a Reform Bill ! They soon put a spoke in the wheel, practically saying—We will exhaust every artifice and every delay to prevent its passing; and Mr. Speaker only knows what amount of delay may be got out of a judicious use of the forms of the House. Then there was the party of Reform itself—the great Reform party. What was their attitude ? I think I see them now upon their return from the country, shivering and shuddering like mariners just escaped from shipwreck. They said, " What ! will you thrust us into the storm again ? Look how wet and how dirty:we are. Here is a man with a soft place in his pocket; and here another with a hard place in his conscience. Is all this
To his Constituents.	251
sorrow, trouble, and expenditure to go for nothing ? Pass a Reform Bill, and we shall be in the presence of our beloved constituents to-morrow, paying, pledging, and promising as hard as ever. Oh ! can't you put it off, if it's only to give us time to take breath and button up our breeches pockets ?" When this was the attitude of the great Reform party, and when the Opposition put on so ugly a front, perhaps it was only human that it should have occurred to Ministers to consider whether it was impossible to make things pleasant to all parties. . " If you only could find a loophole to escape, look what immense advantages would be yours. It the first place you would disarm the Opposition. Then you would conciliate the weak brethren. Then you would postpone and perhaps avert the horror of horrors, a dissolution of Parliament, and you might take this useful question—this invaluable cry, laying it upon the shelf—for another rainy day—and keeping it handy, you might at some great crisis of party bring it out again as good as new, and repeat—who knows ?—the triumphant experiment which has just landed the Reform party in paradise, and Reform itself in limbo." Here was a sublime prospect ! Visions of immortality flitted before the eyes of the octogenarian Administration, a boundless vista of usefulness and emolument ; at least only bounded by the remote and ever-receding apotheosis of its chief : and all this might be acquired at the cost of something light as air—at the cost of a little principle. Well, you all know that a slice out of a cut loaf is never missed, and look how often that loaf has been cut. We cannot be very much surprised if such a temptation was found to be too strong for the frail and fidgety,•;virtue of Downing-street. One difficulty, however, remained—what was to be done with the people ? How about the people ? Was there no danger ? There are in the Cabinet statesmen whose knowledge of the people of this country is profound. Fifty years' experience has taught them that there is no more long-suffering people upon the face of the earth—that there are no bounds to your attachment to order and the law, and that there are no limits to the patience with which you will endure—what shall I call it ? it is the fashion now to use mild and parliamentary phrases—with which you will endure political conjuring, if the Davenport brother, who knots himself up so fast and who extricates himself so suddenly, has only the good sense to do his tricks with a jaunty air, a candid smile, and an ancient joke. These men are all-powerful in the Government, and so what did they do ? They knew that there was no danger ; they flung the French treaty as a sop to your watchdogs, and when they thought that everybody's back was turned, they strangled this great question in silence—and,
252	Speech of Mr. Leathom,
put it as you may—mince matters as you will, they committed as gross an act of political infidelity as ever disgraced a Government or prostrated a party. And they committed it with perfect impunity. For the very men who managed that Ministerial transaction have only to make their public progresses through the country, and there is no summit to the enthusiasm, and there is no bathos to the adulation, with which they are received. Now, can we be surprised if the true friends of Reform were cast down when they saw how easily every one had been outwitted, and how anxious every one was to condone and forgive ? But we consoled ourselves with this reflection : the people, whose spiritless inaction is so discouraging, are not really so enervated and debased. Puzzled and perplexed by a perfidy which they did not expect, and which they cannot comprehend, deserted and betrayed by those who bad volunteered to be their leaders, and not knowing exactly where to look for new ones, they would remain for a time quiescent. In the meantime, a cheap, free press is doing its work. Every day augments the number of intelligent political readers. Every day adds to the sum of unenfranchised intelligence. With intelligence comes ambition—the ambition to rule oneself and to help in governing the rest. In a free country, intelligence and ambition are the sure parents of political power, and they who are now slumbering so securely, with the Times under their pillow, dreaming that the people too are cast into a deep sleep, will awake some fine morning very early and find them thundering unpleasantly and inconveniently at the gate. Sir, I think that fine morning is not so very far off. There have been two or three events that have occurred within the last few months which go far to show that we are on the eve of a renewed and formidable agitation. The first of these took place in Parliament. My hon. friend Mr. Baines had moved in a most admirable speech—one which was listened to with the greatest attention by the House—the second reading of his Borough Franchise Bill. But my hon. friend was to be congratulated not only on his capital speech, but still more on a circumstance—I may say an event—which immediately followed its delivery ; I refer to the magnificent rise which he got out of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In the course of one of the strongest Reform speeches to which it was ever my good fortune to listen, Mr. Gladstone used these words : " I venture to say that every man who is not presumably incapacitated by some consideration of personal unfitness or political danger, is morally entitled to come within the pale of the constitution." He threw the burden of proof off the shoulders of the men who claimed the franchise on to the shoulders of the
To his Constituents.	253
men who refused it. The words were hardly out of his mouth when their immense significance was realized by the House. Below the gangway, we welcomed with loud, long, and reiterated cheering sentiments as generous and as liberal as ever were spoken in that House. The exultation below the gangway was only equalled by the consternation above it, and by the anger on the other side of the House. But, whatever might be the varied passions or sympathies with which those words were received by the various sections of politicians, they all agreed in one thing, and that was, the Reform question had entered on quite another phase when the foremost statesman of his age—a man still in the prime of life, a man of unimpeachable honour, of dauntless resolution, and of transcendent genius—had flung himself thus manfully into the breach. Sir, the right hon. gentleman has in his time, upon many and many an occasion, proved himself a benefactor of the country which he adorns. But in this high field of achievement, it surely remains for him to confer still greater benefits and to reap still more lasting renown. And where is the enterprise that can so fire the zeal or satisfy the aspirations of the patriot statesman, as the desire to make himself immortal by making other men happy and free ? And where is the man in this great audience—where is the man in that still greater sympathetic audience—who, thanks to the busy gentlemen below me, throughout the length and breadth of Lancashire and Yorkshire, shall read these words to-morrow—who will not join with us in the hope, I had almost said the prayer, that to the right hon. gentleman, the chief of the Liberal party, chief in preeminent position, chief in lustre, and chief in genius, may be reserved the crowning and imperishable distinction of linking his name for ever with this great measure of justice? I say, the words were hardly out of Mr. Gladstone's mouth when it was felt that they had breathed life and vigour into the party of Reform ; and to show how thoroughly the movement was on its legs again, you have only to refer to the success of the great meeting the other day at Bradford. At that meeting, for a very mournful reason, I was unable to be present. Had I been there, what I should have endeavoured to impress upon the meeting was that, taking it for granted we are speedily to have a Reform Bill, it remains, in a great measure, for the unenfranchised classes to say what kind of Reform Bill that shall be. I say, taking for granted that we are to have a Reform Bill, because I have always had a shrewd suspicion that one would make its appearance simultaneously with the next great party contest, and it is so obviously the policy of the great Liberal party to introduce one in the presence of a genuine agitation and of a general election, that I have no doubt this will
2M	Speech of Mr. Leatham
be their course. But there is one great difficulty and obstacle. The conduct of the party has been so unworthy, that if they volunteer Reform, and go about the country hawking their Reform Bills as they did in 1859, they will at once expose themselves to the well-merited taunt—" There you are, you see ; at it again." But the taunt will lose its pertinence if the demand precede the offer ; and the demand has preceded the offer ; the demand will gather urgency from month to month until the dissolution, and therefore it is, I take it for granted, that, in some shape or other, the offer will be made. My sole anxiety, then, is, that no Reform Bill be accepted that is not only broad enough for our immediate necessities, but broad enough to last our time. No paltry compromise suggestive of renewed and incessant agitation ; no perilous evasion by which half-hearted Liberals hope to deprive the working classes of their full share of political power; none of your plump voting and lump voting, if you please ; no patchwork of dilettante reformers ; but a measure so large, and full, and sterling, that the working classes shall at once feel that they are dealt with as honest and intelligent men. But, if you bring in such a Bill, our opponents say you will swamp the constituencies. Swamp them with what? With ignorance and brutality? I hardly think we shall hear that argument in the face of what we know of the good conduct, of the attachment to law and order, and rapidly increasing intelligence of the working classes. But if the new element is moral and intelligent, to maintain that the moral and intelligent working man possesses interests, special interests of his own, which, if he have the opportunity, he will serve,—which are inimical to, and incompatible with, the interests of the enfranchised classes—is, it seems to me, to make a gross and gratuitous assumption. I know of no sharp line dividing the interests of the unenfranchised from the interests of those who are enfranchised ; but what I do know is, that all the tendency and all the experience of the age points to the time when any apparent discrepancy will be removed, and to the blending, harmonising, and amalgamating of the interests of every class in the State. What, then, I would say to the governing classes is this :—Do not seek to impress on the unenfranchised classes that they have special interests of their own which are inimical to yours ; but accept what my hon. friend Mr. Stansfeld calls a policy of trust, that is, a straightforward, generous, open-hearted English policy. It is the policy, too, of the men who know the people best, who, if there were cause to fear, would have the greatest cause for fear, the great employers of labour—men like Sir F. Crossley and Mr. Forster—men who have spent their lives in contact with the people, and have learned to trust them. Let the ruling classes
To his Constituents.	255
believe that the men for whom we ask this imperial privilege are as good and loyal subjects as themselves, as remote from disorder and rapacity as they can be, and as anxious as they are to maintain the honour, dignity, and sovereignty of our great country. Let them trust for the maintenance of their wealth and rank and station, not to fraudulent franchises, not to arbitrary exclusions, but to the existence of those habits, instincts, and principles which are the common property of every class in the realm, and which are the strong and indestructible growth of a thousand years. Let them take, I say, this just and generous people frankly into their confidence, and the day will never come when they will repent that they, too, have been generous, or regret that they, too, have been just. I have already detained you very long, but there is just one more question upon which I have been in the habit of addressing you on these occasions, on which I should like, before I sit down, to say a few words. I refer to the civil war in America. Now, I do not think, in the last days of the rebellion, that the friends of the South will succeed in resuscitating in Parliament the dead and buried question of Southern recognition ; still, I hardly like to pass by so great a topic without making a few observations. I have always maintained, as you are aware, that there could be but one issue to this war, if the North were prepared to make the necessary sacrifices,fand that is the extinction of slavery and the subjugation of the South. I know that this is an opinion which has been the opinion of the minority in this country. It is, therefore, the more satisfactory to those who have fearlessly maintained it to find it borne out and verified by the actual course of events. The only element of uncertainty lay in the resolution of the North. I never doubted their power to quell this rebellion, I only doubted their will; nor had I ever very grave doubts on that score ; but since I last had the honour of addressing you, even this element of uncertainty has been almost taken out of the way. By an immense majority at the Presidential election, the country declared that it was now prepared to prosecute the war to the bitter end, to " put the thing through," as they say in America, and to make no guilty compromise with slavery. These were the issues clearly raised at the election, and the verdict of the country was precise and overwhelming. Now, I hold that verdict to be of more importance than a series of military successes. Even if defeat in place of triumph had rested on the national standards, still, armed with that verdict, I should have looked forward with confidence to the end of the war. But the exact reverse has been the case. The great moral triumph was only the herald of magnificent successes in the field. The march of Sherman, the capture of Savannah,
256 Speech of Mr. Leutham to his Constituents.
the defeat of Hood, followed so closely on the Presidential election that we cannot be surprised if it should strike the religious mind of America that the solemn decision of the nation has- received its ratification on high, and that the Lord of Hosts himself is going forth with her armies. But, however much we may rejoice at the probable vindication of right, and at the coming victories of freedom, in the presence of the stupendous sorrows which must attend their accomplishment, let us rejoice with trembling, and let the aspiration never leave our hearts that He, who in His wisdom and justice has ordained that the path of freedom should so often be a way of blood, will in His mercy still the enemy and the avenger, and restore to that distracted continent the inestimable blessing of a righteous and perpetual peace. Such a peace, Sir, welcomed and proclaimed by 30,000,000 of people, every one of whom shall be free, will not merely lay deep in America the foundations of a sounder prosperity,—a prosperity which, as I believe, no spectacle of human happiness has ever rivalled—but reasserting with prodigious emphasis the strength of free institutions, will impart a new impulse to the progress of opinion, and strengthen the hands of liberty throughout the world.
SPEECH OF VISCOUNT AMBERLEY,
AT LEEDS, 31sT JANUARY.
[The following Speech was delivered by Viscount Amberley, the eldest son of Earl Russell, at a large meeting held under the auspices of the Leeds Working Men's Parliamentary Association, in the Town Hall of that borough, on the evening of the 31st of January. The other principal speakers on the occasion were the Mayor of Leeds, Mr. E. Baines, M.P. for the borough, and Mr. W. E. Forster, M.P. for Bradford. At the general election Lord Amberley unsuccessfully contested one of the vacant seats, the former Members, Messrs. Baines and Beecroft, being returned by considerable majorities. As the first public speech of the son of a distinguished statesman, and therefore likely to possess some interest for political students, this address has been reprinted in this volume.]
You, Mr. Mayor, and some of the gentlemen who have preceded me, have been kind enough to allude in very flattering terms to my presence here. Perhaps it may not be unacceptable to you, and certainly it will be agreeable to myself, that I should preface the remarks I have to offer with a brief allusion to the feelings of cordial pleasure with which I am enabled to come among you on this occasion. I was particularly glad to receive the invitation sent me by your committee, partly because it appeared to imply a certain presumption on their part—a presumption that I trust you will consider to be justified by the event—that I should sympathise with the objects of this meeting, and partly because I rejoice to have this opportunity of meeting some portion of those who at the present time have the strongest claim upon the attention of Reformers. The subject upon which I am now called upon to speak is one with which I may be said to have a special historical connexion, nor does it at all detract from the gratification with which I have responded to your call, that I have not been invited to come here on account of any personal merits of my own, but simply as a son of that statesman by whom the first great Reform Bill was introduced, and who in 1831 and 1832 fought and conquered in that battle of Reform which modern Liberals are fighting now. They are fighting it, indeed, on a different battle-ground, but the arguments they employ themselves, and the arguments they have to meet from their opponents, are in many respects almost exactly similar to those
258	Speech of Viscount Amberley
which at that period of our history were employed by the Government on the one side, and by the Opposition on the other. Many of the principles which were urged in 1831 and 1832 in favour of a Reform Bill, by the Ministers of that time, are applicable now for a further extension of Reform, and in the same way, many of the arguments which were brought forward in order to defeat that Bill, are constantly brought forward now in order to oppose a further extension of Reform. I have alluded to personal and private causes of satisfaction for being here ; but there is another reason, of a public nature, of which I must speak—and that is, that I am glad to have an opportunity of witnessing one of those great meetings which furnish the best and most emphatic contradiction to the statement so often and so pertinaciously advanced, that the people of England do not care about the franchise. I am not about to dispute or deny that statement, although I must say that it generally proceeds from a rather suspicious quarter. It is made by those who, if they cannot entirely prevent the advance of this question, are, nevertheless, anxious to put it off, and. to prevent the adoption of a new Reform Bill as long as they possibly can. But if the case were as they say—if it be true that the people of England do not care about Reform—the conclusion I should draw from that fact would be the direct opposite of theirs. They advance it in order to impress upon Mr. Bright and others the hopelessness of persisting in a cause in which they do not possess the sympathy of the people. Now, it seems to me that if the people do not care about Reform, and if they are indifferent to the possession of votes, that should be regarded as a national misfortune. I know that it is called contentment ; but it rather appears to me to be the contentment of carelessness and ignorance than of enlightened reason. Therefore, if the people really are indifferent on this question, I would endeavour by all means in my power to put an end to that indifference, and if they really do not desire to possess the franchise, I would teach them to desire it. It is, I think, especially necessary that such meetings as this should be held, and that clear and decisive opinions should be expressed ; because you will find in the House of Commons a natural reluctance to effect its own reformation. Public bodies have in this respect some resemblance to individuals. There are individuals who may be anxious to correct the errors of their neighbours, but are not particularly anxious to correct their own, and I think you will observe in large bodies of men the same natural tendency. Thus you have found Parliament devising the appointment of Royal Commissions to inquire into our universities and our public schools ; and those commissions, by
At Leeds.	259
exposing the abuses which existed in the universities and public schools, have induced those bodies, or tried to induce them, to begin to reform. But it was necessary in that case to apply a certain amount of pressure from without, or else reform could never have been effected. Now, Parliament being the supreme authority in the land, it is necessary in every case that the pressure from without should be applied by the people ; and it is my own conviction that you will not obtain the Reform you desire unless you are earnest and steadfast in urging it upon the members of the House of Commons. A circumstance there is which is exceedingly surprising to me ; and it is that those who are so constantly talking about the apathy of the people upon this question have also another argument against Reform, which appears to me slightly inconsistent with the other. It seems, if we listen to what they say, that those listless and apathetic people—those who do not care about Reform—those people who have not the slightest desire for the possession of votes, if once they were enfranchised, would be converted into a frantic and unreasonable mob—a mob that would carry everything before them, and be determined to have everything their own way, and that would listen to no voice in the councils of the nation that was not in harmony with their own. Now, I confess it does seem a little strange that those who are so very indifferent to the possession of power should nevertheless be so immoderate in its use. This argument about mob government has been heard before. It was heard very loudly in the year 1831, and when I look back to the debates of that period I am strongly reminded of what is said upon the subject now. There we find eminent statesmen—men of such distinction as the late Lord Lyndhurst and Sir Robert Peel—using very violent language against the Reform Bill. Sir Robert Peel, on one occasion, informed the House of Commons that if the Reform Bill were passed there would be established in England one of the worst despotisms that ever existed—there would be a Parliament of mob demagogues instead of wise and prudent men ; and Lord Lyndhurst, in the House of Lords, told that terrified assembly that the House of Commons would be converted into a fierce and democratic assembly. Well, now we have had more than 30 years' experience of the state of things, and this experience enables us to judge of the value of such language. We have lived under that terrible despotism predicted by Sir Robert Peel ; we have experienced the government of this Parliament of mob demagogues—this fierce and democratic assembly ; but I do not think we have observed in the House of Commons any particular tendency either to abolish the House of Lords, to overthrow the Church, or to seize upon the property of
s2
260	Speech of Viscount Amberley
the rich and divide it among the poor. I think, therefore, we may safely regard these predictions as matters of very light importance. The great difficulty, undoubtedly, arises when we come to consider the question, where shall the line be drawn between those who are enfranchised and those who are not ; between those who take a certain part in the legislation of the country and those who do not? Upon this point the great speech of Mr. Gladstone, to which your resolution alludes, laid down a principle which I consider of the utmost consequence. Mr. Gladstone, in speaking upon this question of Reform, told his opponents that he laid upon them the burden of proof ; that it was not for him to show the reason why the great body of the people should be admitted to the franchise, but he left it with them to show why they should be excluded. He considered it the natural state of a free people to be in possession of votes, and when any large body of the people was not admitted to that privilege he thought there ought to be some strong and sufficient reason given for that deprivation. Now it appears to me, that is a principle of the utmost value in constitutional government, and I should wish that future Reformers in introducing their measures might always bear it in mind. It is said, no doubt, in answer to this, that it is necessary to exclude a large proportion of the people for the interest of good government, because, if admitted, they would by their violent and unreasonable proceedings make good government impossible or much more difficult. I confess I think such reasoning as this would go much further than it is intended to go ; that it might perfectly well have been said by the great landowners at the time of the Reform Bill, " We think it for the interest of good government that the power of legislation should be confined entirely to ourselves ; we think it extremely unadvisable that any portion of the people who have not the same stake in the country and the same interest in order as we have should be admitted to power ; and therefore it would be better to preserve such a constitution of the House of Commons as would make its members the nominees of the great landowners." Then, again, if we go a little further back in our history, I think it would have been open to the Stuart Kings—to Charles I. or James II.—to say in the same way, " We think it for the interest of good government that the sole power should be confined to the Crown." Now, representative institutions require that so far as possible the people should be admitted to the election of members, and the ultimate aim of representative institutions is not fulfilled when a considerable proportion of the people are still debarred from the exercise of the privilege. It is objected sometimes that, by the admission of
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the people, you would place the whole power in the hands of a single class. If any very violent or sweeping measure were proposed, this would no doubt be a serious objection and would demand serious consideration. It is no objection to the moderate measure now proposed ; and even if we were to go much further with Reform, and propose a much wider measure than this, I don't think it would be an entirely conclusive argument. I do not wish to place power in the hands of a single class, but at the same time it is exceedingly unjust that on account of this objection an important class should be deprived of power altogether. And when I see Mr. F. Peel in his recent speech saying that all classes and all interests are at present fairly represented in the House of Commons, and defending the present constitution of the House of Commons on that ground, I must confess that I am astonished at the boldness of his language. I quite perceive that land and capital are represented in that House, but I am unable to perceive that there is a fair representation of labour. Now, it is extremely difficult to say how far we ought to go in representing labour in the House of Commons. There are great difficulties in the way of sudden changes, and therefore it may be more desirable, and I am inclined to think it is, that we should proceed in this direction by gradual and successive steps ; but I cannot think that the task of Reformers has been entirely accomplished until something more has been done than even the moderate measure of Reform now proposed. I hope the day may come—I do not know when it may come, but still I trust the day may come—when it will be possible that every intelligent and honest man, whatever the class to which he belimgs, or whatever the employment he pursues, may be admitted to the exercise of the franchise. Then we are told, that if such extreme measures as this are to be allowed, we shall be making a violent change in the character of the Constitution. For my own part, then, I have no objection to violent changes in the character of the Constitution, provided only that they are changes for the better. The great Reform Bill might, I suppose, be described as a violent change, although effected by legal and peaceable means. But it was urged at that time, and I think justly, that the object of the Bill was not to overthrow the Constitution, but to remedy anomalies which bad crept into the Constitution. And I think the same argument may be applied now. It was urged then, that it was a great and marvellous anomaly that large towns, such as your own, and such towns as Manchester, Birmingham, and Sheffield, should be entirely unrepresented in Parliament. That no doubt was a serious anomaly, but it is also a serious anomaly that a large and important class of .the inhabitants of these towns
262	Speech of Viscount Amberley
should be entirely without representation. There is some difficulty in effecting a large increase in the representation, because it is supposed that in this way an unintelligent class of voters would come in who might be particularly liable to the influence of bribery. I will not attempt to disguise from you that on the subject of bribery I entertain the strongest opinions. I consider that the man who accepts a bribe in exchange for his vote is utterly unworthy to exercise it. Therefore, I conceive that it would be of the utmost importance that in admitting the labouring classes to the franchise we should endeavour by every means in our power to impress this truth upon them. It would be necessary, as far as possible, to teach them—I do not say exactly in what way, but you might teach them where they do not know it, and I see that you know it perfectly here, that the man who accepts a bribe violates a public trust. It would be necessary to teach them that it is as criminal and dishonest as the conduct of a man who being entrusted with a sum of money by another makes use of it for himself. This, I say, it would be necessary to do, but I do not imagine that in that way we could succeed entirely in getting rid of bribery. On the contrary, I believe that there would still unfortunately be many who would be unworthy of the privilege of voting. That is an unfortunate circumstance, but 1 cannot look upon it as a conclusive objection to the enfranchisement of the working classes. Nor is it an objection that could be made with very good grace by the upper classes, unless they could say their own political morality was immaculately pure. Really, to hear the way in which some persons talk against the enfranchisement of th.e poor, we might suppose that the rich never employed improper and illegal influences at elections. We might suppose that they never employed money for purposes of corruption ; that they never voted or induced others to vote, except upon the loftiest and most patriotic grounds ; but since this is not the case, I think, in endeavouring to reform the poor upon this subject, in endeavouring to teach them that they are not entitled to sell their votes, we should impress lessons of the same kind upon the rich also. But then it is said there are many, if you go low down among the population and admit a lower class than you have at present, who are entirely without education, and would be led away by any demagogue who happened to win their sympathy. I do not deny that the absence of education is a serious objection to the possession of the vote. It is, I think, of great consequence that education should precede enfranchisement, although at the same time I believe that enfranchisement conduces to education. But I cannot pretend to say it would be advisable to admit, in all cases, those who have little education and know nothing and care no-
At Leeds.	263
thing about politics. But when we are told that they are easily led away by demagogues, by orators who make ;use of their influence for selfish purposes, I reflect that there are two modes of influencing the votes of the electors. One method is employed by the large landowners, and another method is employed by the demagogues. And I have heard that the method of the great landowner is sometimes particularly successful, and they find their power of persuasion very great over the minds of their tenants. Now, I confess, if I had to choose between these two ways of influencing people to vote according to my opinions, I should say the method employed by the demagogue is infinitely the more constitutional and more straightforward one of the two. Then we have to consider the question, what are we to do with those those who, on account of education or want of interest in political matters, are as yet unfitted for the exercise of the franchise ? That is a difficult question, and I have not disguised from you my opinion that it might be wise to defer their admission to the privilege of voting. That I conceive to be a principle not so much of a Conservative as of a Radical description ; for if it were pushed to a logical conclusion it would lead to strange results ; and I should be inclined to warn Conservatives how they accept it. Let me ask you to fix your attention for a minute on that venerable and respected body, the House of Lords. If you look at the House of Lords you will find some, no doubt, who are able men and admirably fitted for the seats they, have in that body, but I am afraid you will find others who, coming into their seats simply by hereditary right, are not so fitted. You will find some who have no political education worthy of the name—who cannot be said to have any political convictions, because they simply adopt the opinions of their family, and cannot be said, either from their talents or from any other reason, to be fitted for the exercise of the great privilege of sitting in the House of Lords. Yet these men, whose whole range of political ideas is still confined within narrow limits, are permitted to sit and vote in the House, and obstruct the legislation of the country. Gentlemen, you will have been able to gather from the remarks I have now addressed to you, that I am not of those who regard the advance of democratical opinions with particular alarm. That there are dangers in democratic government, as there are in every form of government devised by man, I am willing to allow. Nor do I say that it will be possible to dispense with every kind of safeguard against the errors or excesses into which a democratic government may fall ; but I cannot look on the abolition of those distinctions, or the lines of demarcation which hitherto have subsisted between the various classes of men—I say I
264	Speech of Viscount Amberley
cannot look upon that with displeasure or regret. I believe you will find that those distinctions which democracy tends to get rid of are not real and natural distinctions, but artificial distinctions created by society. You may get rid of that distinction which subsists between different men solely on account of birth, but you cannot get rid of those differences which spring from character, talent, or education. You would yourselves perceive it to be a false and unnatural condition of society which asserted idleness to be on a level with industry, folly on a level with wisdom, or ignorance and incapacity on a level with knowledge and ability. It is my opinion these distinctions will not be got rid of by any form of government, but will still subsist. False distinctions, and those which produce mischief rather than benefit, will, I hope and believe, gradually disappear and vanish from among us ; but one of those false distinctions, which I trust to see disappearing in the course of time, is that which is still extant in this country between the governing classes and the classes which are governed. It is, of course, absolutely essential that we should have men set apart for the work of the executive government, and to conduct the business of the public offices ; but when I say I dislike the distinction between the governing class and the class to be governed, I mean that I do not approve of that state of society which gives some men facilities for entering upon a political career, and makes it more difficult for others to walk in the same line, although, perhaps, the ability of those who are excluded may be greater than that of many who are easily Admitted. It is desirable that there should be some facilities for all to exercise their talents. This ideal of a representative government requires that every class of the community should be equally interested, and equally concerned in the maintenance of order, in the preservation of freedom, and in the adoption of such laws as may be most conducive to the welfare of the community at large. Parliament, to be a representative institution, should always tend to such an ideal as I have described. And this is an ideal towards which you especially may combine with us in bringing this country nearer and nearer, for although it may be possible to prove by theoretical arguments that the working classes of this country should be admitted to the exercise of the suffrage, it is possible for you—you who belong to that class, you who have hitherto been unrepresented—to add an argument more conclusive still—,the argument of your own conduct. It is for you especially to refute the error that you are unfit for the exercise of that important and responsible duty. It is for you to prove both that you are earnestly and truly desirous to be admitted to that trust, and
At Leeds.	265
that you would, if admitted, exercise it wisely and well, and with a due and serious sense of the responsibility it brings. It is for you, in furtherance of these objects, to combine energy with patience, resolution with discretion, and a firm and unswerving adherence to your demands with courtesy and charity to those who still regard them with suspicion and dislike. And thus, although you may safely leave it to the eloquence and talents of others to urge your claims upon the House of Commons and the country, it is for you to add the final and convincing proof of the justice of your cause.
SPEECHES
ON THE
ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.
[The two following Speeches were delivered by Mr. W. E. Forster and Mr. Stansfeld respectively at St. James's Hall, on the 29th of April, a meeting having been convened, under the auspices of the Emancipation Society, for the purpose of expressing indignation at the assassination of President Lincoln, and sympathy with Mrs. Lincoln and the people of the' United States. Professor Fawcett, Mr. Shaw Lefevre, the Hon. Lyulph Stanley and others were also amongst the speakers on the occasion. ]
SPEECH OF MR. W. E. FORSTER,
MEMBER FOR BRADFORD.
IN moving this resolution * I shall say but few words. There are many speakers here this evening, and you will agree with me that it is a time when many should have an opportunity of trying to express those feelings, though few can find words capable of doing so. This is a time when that tie of blood which binds Englishmen to Americans, and of which we so often talk, is indeed truly felt, and the thrill of grief and horror and indignation which has swept over the length and breadth of Europe upon the receipt of this news pierces the heart of almost every Englishman, as though some fearful calamity had fallen upon ourselves. It is to the credit of our country—it would, indeed, be to its shame if it were otherwise—that, with very few exceptions, rich and poor, friends of the North and friends of the South—all are anxious to show that they forget all differences with their American kinsmen as regards social or political arrangements, all disagreements with them in matters of policy, in the overpowering sympathy which they feel with them in this their sore
* "That this meeting desires to give utterance to the feelings of grief and horror with which it has heard of the assassination of President Lincoln and the murderous] attack upon Mr. Seward, and to convey to Mrs. Lincoln and to the United States Government and people an expression of its profound sympathy and heartfelt condolence."
Speech, of Mr. W. E. Forster.	267
trial. But while America has an especial claim upon the sympathy of England, it certainly does pre-eminently become the society of which you, Sir, are the chairman, and all of us who, though not members of this society, have advocated its principles, and have believed with you that the restoration of the American Union with emancipation for its condition and freedom for its bond will be a blessing to this country and to the world, to hasten to come forward and try to show what we feel when this man is struck down ; to whom of all men it would seem as though God had entrusted the duty of restoring the Union and of freeing it from slavery—struck down, too, just at that time when he had reason to hope that that task at which he had been toiling with such devotion and such single-minded earnestness was on the point of being, accomplished. The handwriting on the wall was guiding him, and in those words of solemn beauty which he was allowed to utter at his recent inauguration—though even then the knife of the assassin was hanging over his head—he showed, to quote those very words, that he saw that " God had willed that this offence should cease, though there was woe upon all those, whether in the North or in the South, through whom this offence had come." And if we can surely prophesy any one result that will follow from this foul crime, it is this—that that offence will all the more speedily cease, and that this foul deed has sealed the quick and irrevocable doom of slavery. Like you, Sir, I do not lay this crime to the charge of the slaveholding leaders of the rebellion. It would be unpardonable for any Englishman to add fuel to that fire of anger from the burning up of his heart by which every American must pray that he may be preserved, by saying or insinuating that any of those leaders either instigated this crime or were cognizant of it. But, Sir, I do trace it to the influence of that system of slaveholding which those leaders have thought to preserve. Doubtless, this assassin and his miserable accomplices were men of a morbid nature—abnormal monsters, the growth of a social system by which every bad passion, provided only it were wreaked upon the weak and the helpless, was legalized—a system by which assassination was organized, for what, after all, was the lynch law of the South, which burned black men alive, and murdered white men because they were Abolitionists, but organized assassination ? I say it needed the influence of such a system as this to send such a man as that miserable Booth, as I see by The Times to-day, to gloat over the execution of John Brown, and train even him to this parricide. If there be any man left in the Free States whom the experience of the last few years has not taught that there is no peace, no safety for his country, until the sin of slavery is wiped out, that
268	Speech of Mr. Stansfeld
there are no terms possible between the Union and slavery, this crime will have convinced him. I have only one word more to add. We must not allow the ship which leaves our shores tonight to take merely the message of our sympathy with the widow and the orphans—with that country which has truly lost its father. I am sure this meeting will not be content with the mere expression of their sympathy with our kinsmen in this their present calamity, but we should wish to add to it an expression, of our faith in their future, our confident belief that they have learnt the lesson of our common history, that even in this hour of their trial they will show what strength a free and Christian people have to bear up against such a blow, than which none more severe ever fell upon any nationality, and to bear up against it, not only without their power being paralyzed, but without any diminution either of their self-reliance or their self-restraint. And, Sir, may we not also add an expression of our hopeful trust that those rulers to whom God has now entrusted their fate, will be so imbued with the spirit of the patriot statesman whom they have lost—that spirit of mingled firmness and moderation, which, exercised as it has been under circumstances than which none were ever more trying, has made the name of Abraham Lincoln one that will be pre-eminent in all future history—that they will continue his work of restoring peace to their country and of insuring freedom to all who dwell in it, undisturbed even by that temptation to vengeance to which I believe they will not yield, but which must beset them with a strength proportioned to the unparalleled atrocity of the crime which has provoked it ?
SPEECH OF MR. STANSFELD,
MEMBER FOR HALIFAX.
THE resolution which I have to move is in these words :—
" That this meeting desires also to express the entire confidence which it feels in the determination and power of the Government and the people of the United States to carry out to the full the policy of which Abraham Lincoln's Presidential career was the embodiment, and to establish free institutions throughout the whole of the American Republic."
Sir, we are assembled here to-night not so much that by speech—for who is there who does not feel his heart too full for fitting utterance ?—as that by our common presence and our common acts we may express the horror and indignation with
On the Assassination of President Lincoln. 269
which we have heard of deeds so foul that history cannot produce their parallel—that we may express our deep, our heartfelt sympathy with the wife who has become a widow, and with the nation which staggers wildly moaning beneath the loss of its elect. But we are here, it seems to me, for a further purpose. I at least can take no part in these proceedings, at this the time of its direst trial, at its momentous crisis, without also expressing my sympathy for a cause which began by being noble, which grew to be righteous, and which, above all, by the acts, by the life, and by the death of the martyred President, has become consecrated in our eyes. The cause of the North was in its inception noble. One who ranks high among us in influence and in position, and whose opinion upon this very question as well as upon many others deserves our respect—Lord Russell—once said that the North was fighting for empire and the South for independence. He has himself upon many occasions supplied the omissions which rendered incorrect and incomplete that definition of this mighty struggle. The South was fighting for independence, but for independence with the sole, the avowed, the deliberate purpose of promoting and perpetuating the institution of human slavery. Jefferson Davis, at a time when some of us, perhaps even some who wished well to this great cause, doubted of the persistency of the North, was said to have established a nationality. But the nationality which he established had no right of existence, for it was founded upon a national crime, and it has met with the deserved fate of those who set themselves alike against the laws of God and man. The North was fighting for empire! No ; the North was fighting for a common country, which it would share, but would not allow to be torn asunder. I am here to say that I for one should have justified the long persistence, at so much cost of life and suffering, in that war, had there been no other question than Secession concerned in it. But the crime of the South was from the very first the justification of that great cause of which the North was, it may be, at first in some part an unconscious, or, if you will, in some part an unwilling instrument. Well, then, this cause, which began by being noble, grew, as I have said, to be a righteous cause. Step by step the North grew to the height of this great, this holy argument. Every fear, every hope of those who wished ill to the Republic was disappointed. Each delay, each difficulty, each defeat, seemed to serve but to render more stern the resolve, to render higher and more pure the policy of the North, until from their original standpoint of the non-extension of slavery, up through the Emancipation Proclamation, to the final decree abolishing slavery throughout the
270	Speech of Mr. Stansfeld
States, the North rose to the full sense of that duty which perfected their right; and then, Sir, and not till then, victory was permitted finally to be theirs. We used to hear a good deal about the hypocrisy and the shortcqmings of the North on this question of slavery. I have never been able to understand how this view, even if correct, could justify positive sympathies and flagrant acts in favour of a Confederacy based and founded upon the institution of slavery. But who, let me ask, made these men judges of the fitting appointments in a providential scheme ? I for one cannot look back upon this mighty struggle without feeling that there was there a great and superhuman purpose, and without now rejoicing that it has been fulfilled, and that by the task of its fulfilment, through all their efforts and their suffering, the Union has been purified, and this mighty convulsion of our race has been justified in the decrees of God and ,,before the eyes of men. And now, who was it who from the first watched over and controlled for good the varying and progressive phases of this mighty strife ? Who was the man who took his stand first within the Constitution and the law, upon the ground of the non-extension of slavery to the territories of the United States, who then came to feel that as an act of war he might issue his Emancipation Proclamation, who next defeated the machinations of that party which loved the Union in such wise that for the Union they would sacrifice that sacred object which alone justified the war? Who was it who contributed more than any other man, perhaps, to the passing of the final abolition decree? Who was it who, when victory seemed already dawning upon the arms of the North before Richmond, was already there, thinking and busying himself about the work of reconstruction and of peace ? Who was it whose face we have been told ever since those days seemed radiant and illuminated with blessed thoughts of mercy and peace? Who was the man who, commencing amid the suspicions and the unfavourable criticisms of the world, simply by dint of his own simplicity of character, his own• steadfastness and faithfulness, and utter unselfishness of purpose, had won his way to the admiration of the world? Who was it but this man of the people, this uneducated man, without experience in great affairs, this man whose heart visibly before the world grew sadder and gentler to the last amid all the death and the suffering which he witnessed and which he might not allay to the end ? Who was it but Abraham Lincoln—Lincoln, the martyr of his country's and of freedom's cause ? Sir, it is right and it is necessary that we should say thus much. Great as has been the moral progress of the States, their greatest danger, their time of sorest trial
On the Assassination of President Lincoln. 271
and temptation, is not at an end. If anything can soothe and strengthen them for this trying time, I believe it will be the deep-felt, the spontaneous, the universal burst of sympathy which will crowd to them across the Atlantic from the nations of • Europe. Let us ardently hope, let us devoutly and earnestly pray, that they may be equal to this great occasion, that they may disappoint all vain fears, and if it be possible that now a malicious hope be harboured in any human breast that they may disappoint it too, and that the President, the Government, and the people of the United States may be true, as I believe—and as I ask you to say that you believe—them to be true to the memory and the example of him who was the guide and the martyr of their cause.
SPEECH
OF
THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE,
AT LIVERPOOL, 18TH JULY.
[The following Speech was delivered by Mr. Gladstone on the evening of the 18th of July, at the Royal Ampitheatre, Liverpool. As will be observed from allusions in the speech itself, the polling for the University of Oxford closed on the same day and nearly at the same hour on which Mr. Gladstone first addressed his new constituents in South Lancashire.]
AT 8 o'clock to night, when I have the honour of appearing before this crowded assembly, the poll has been appointed to cease for the University of Oxford. The very last thing that I could think of would be to connect that circumstance at Oxford with one single word either of disrespect or indifference as regards that ancient, great, and venerable University. Gentlemen, during eighteen anxious years I have been the representative of Oxford. It has been my duty in her name to deal, as well as my feeble powers would permit me, with all the questions bearing upon the relationship of religion and of education to the State which this critical period has brought to the surface. Gentlemen, I have endeavoured to serve that University with my whole heart ; and with the strength, or weakness, or whatever faculties God has given me, it has been my daily and my nightly care to promote as well as I could her interests, and to testify to her as well as I could my love. Long has she borne with me. Long, in spite of active opposition, did she resist every effort to displace me. 'At last she has changed her mind. God grant it may be well with her. But recollections of her confidence, which I have so long enjoyed, and of the many hours and many years that I have spent in her service, never can part from me. And if now, gentlemen, I appear before you in a different position, I do not appear as a different man. I have not forgotten my former existence in this free and happy country ; I know of no distinction between the various classes and various interests, and there is no reason why the man who has been, to the best of his poor ability, the faithful representative of the University, should not also to the best of his poor ability, if the constituency should be disposed to grant
Speech of Mr. Gladstone at Liverpool.	273
the trust, be the faithful representative of the electors of South Lancashire. In representing that University my task has been one of no small difficulty ; the desire of my heart has been to minister to her strength and to her prosperity, and I will not yield to my favoured competitor in devotion to her truest interests. As to the mode of promoting those interests, as to the best method of testifying to that attachment, there may be great differences between us ; my earnest desire, my heart's prayer is that her future may be as glorious as her past,—yet more glorious still. But if it is to be so, that result must be brought about by following a certain Mlethod of action, by enlarging her borders, by opening her doors, by invigorating her powers, by endeavouring to rise to the height of that vocation with which I believe it has pleased the Almighty to endow her ; that as in other times the Universities of tilt land, and Oxford the first of them, led the mind and thought of the country upon the path of improvement, so now they may still prove worthy of that high office. But if I am told, on the other side, that it is only by embracing the narrow interests of a political party that Oxford can discharge her duties to the country, then, gentlemen, I at once say I am not the man for Oxford. I hope, Sir, it will not savour of vanity if I detain you yet a moment longer upon this subject. We see represented in that ancient institution, represented more nobly, perhaps, and more conspicuously than in any other place, at any rate with more remarkable concentration, the most prominent features that relate to the past of England. I come into South Lancashire, and I find here around me an assemblage of different phenomena. I find development of industry; I find growth of enterprise ; I find progress of social philanthropy ; I find prevalency of toleration ; and I find an ardent desire for freedom. But, Sir, if there should be a duty more than another incumbent upon the public men of England, it is, so far at least as I am able to prove, the duty of establishing and maintaining a harmony between the past of our glorious country and the future that is still in store for her. In my humble and insignificant person, on the one hand representing that ancient body, on the other hand placed now for many years in the adminstration of the most responsible offices connected with the progress and well-being of the country, I have honestly, I have earnestly, although I may have feebly, striven to unite that which is represented by Oxford and that which is represented by Lancashire. .My desire is, that they should know and love one another. If I have clung to the representation of the University with desperate fondness, it was because I would not desert that post in which I seemed to have been placed. I have not abandoned it. I have been dismissed from it, not by
T
274	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
academical, but by political agencies. The great majority of the teaching body of Oxford, the great majority of those who devote their nights and days and the best years of their lives in rearing youths, have been at all times my supporters in the election, and have not now abandoned me. I don't complain of those political influences by which I have been displaced. The free constitutional spirit of the country requires that the voice of the majority should prevail. I hope the voice of the majority will prevail in South Lancashire. I don't for a moment complain that it should have prevailed in Oxford. But, gentlemen, I come now to ask you a question, whether, because I have been declared unfit longer to serve the University on account of my political position, there is anything in that position, anything in what I have said and done, in the arduous office which I hold, which is to unfit me for the representation of my native county ? It is sometimes said, but I really know not whether it is said in jest or in earnest, that the present Parliament has been distinguished by a series of attacks upon the Constitution, on Church and State. I am not aware that any of these attacks have been made ; if they have, they have not much fallen under my notice or knowledge. I don't mean to say that I concur with every opinion that is pronounced in respect to the Church in the House of Commons, and he would be a very ingenious man who could concur with them ; but I do say, gentlemen, that we, as a Government, and that I, as a representative of the University, have not been unmindful of our and my duty to study the interests of the Church. I admit that this is the special duty of those who are chosen to that high trust, and I want to know in what respect the interests of the Church have suffered during the administration of the Government and during the progress of legislation through the last six years? There never was a time at which the Church enjoyed freedom of speech in the degree in which she now possesses
it.	Her bishops and her clergy are permitted, according to the old formation of the Constitution. It is quite true that they do not exercise coercive powers, and I am sure that they are too wise to wish it ; but, at any rate, that freedom of speech, permit me to say, is of itself a valuable privilege to a body which must necessarily depend upon its moral influence ; for it cannot be defended by mere professions, written law, or prescriptions from a former time. If the Church of England is to live among us, she must flourish, and she must grow, and God grant that she may do all by making herself beneficently known in the discharge of her apostolic offices, by the faithful custody of the word which she has received, by making her ministration the friend and consoler of every man of every rank of life, by causing herself to be
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felt by each one of you in those actions wherein her assistance can be available—these are the functions in which I have cordially desired to promote her usefulness, these are the functions in which I believe she is growing stronger from day to day ; and on my part, as the representative of Oxford, on the part of those who have been honoured with the confidence of Parliament, we say we have in no respect betrayed our duty with regard to the Church of England. But, Sir, there is another view conscientiously entertained. I have no doubt there is another view as to the proper mode of promoting the interests of the Church of England, from which we essentially differ. If it is thought that the Church of England's interests are to be promoted by maintaining some odious stigma, I care not whether it be upon Protestant Nonconformists, or upon our Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen, I disclaim and repudiate such party modes of defending the Church. And I say that the misguided persons who, in their folly, would use such weapons for the purpose which they have in view, are merely contributing to defeat their own dearest wishes, and are not to be reckoned, as far as their acts are concerned, among her friends, but among her foes. Therefore, Sir, I hold that the promotion of the civil and religious freedom of our fellow-countrymen, so far from being a sign of disloyalty, is a very sure proof of that affectionate and intelligent service which a body like the Church of England ought to desire at the hands of her
children.	Well, gentlemen, I will not go into details. I
will not trouble you by arguing questions which have lately been under the consideration of the Legislature,—questions about the qualification of Dissenters ; questions about oaths of Roman Catholics. These are measures, with respect to which, in my opinion, a generous and conciliatory policy is the only policy of wisdom ; and whether I sit for Oxford, or whether I sit for South Lancashire, or whether I don't sit at all, I desire and I intend to act upon that policy so long as my life shall last. But now, Sir, I turn to secular matters, and will make observations upon one or two of the questions that have been lately brought copiously before the attention of the public during the election ; and, Sir, I will endeavour to do so in a manner as respectful and considerate as I can towards the feelings, not only of those who hear me, but towards the feelings of those out of doors who differ from me. The issue, gentlemen, which is before you I take to be this :—I am a member of a Liberal Government. I am in association with the Liberal party. I have never swerved from what I conceived to be those truly Conservative objects and desires with which I entered life.
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276	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
I am, if possible, more fondly attached to the institutions of my country than I was when as a boy I wandered among the sand-hills of Seaforth or the streets of Liverpool. But experience has brought with it its lessons. I have learnt that there is wisdom in a policy of trust, and folly in a policy of mistrust. I have not refused to receive the signs of the times. I have observed the effect that has been produced by Liberal legislation, and if we are told, and we are now truly told, that all the feelings of the country are in the best and broadest sense Conservative,—that is to say, that the people value the country and the laws and institutions of the country ; if we are told that, I say honesty compels us to admit that result has been brought about by Liberal legislation. Therefore, I may presume to say that, since the year 1841, when Sir R. Peel, who was then at the head of Her Majesty's Government, thought fit to place me in a position in the Board of Trade which brought me into direct, immediate, and responsible contact with the interests of the country, that from that time onward I have not swerved nor wavered, but have striven to the best of my ability in the work of improving the laws and promoting whatever could tend to the advantage of the people ; I have been delighted to witness the progress made in their condition, and their growing attachment to the laws under which they live; every year has brought with it its reward. We have seen the result of what has been done, not only in the growing wealth but in growing contentment, in industry, in growing morality. A blind individual must that man be who, after having been once privileged to take part in processes such as these, withdraws his hand from the plough, turns back his eye from the noble prospect that is before him, and returns to those obstructive ideas which are so detrimental to the real advantage of the country and to the permanent maintenance of its institutions. I venture to put it to this meeting, that although we may have been—I mean the members of the present Government May have been—the members of a party, yet that in associating ourselves with this work of beneficial legislation, and endeavouring to the best of our power to carry it forward, we have not been labouring for the mere interests of the party, but for those of the country at large, and I may, perhaps, without impropriety, be permitted to say now, when the elections have been for eight days in progress, that the country in its various divisions has recognized that truth, and has been pleased to seal our conduct with the verdict of its general approbation. But I wish to set before you more particularly one or two of the points upon which they are disposed to make a claim to confidence, on the ground that they have effected some retrenchment in the expen-
At Liverpool.	277
diture of the country. Now, on the other side I have observed this answer made, that we have not reduced the expenditure of the country since the year during which the party now in Opposition were responsible ; and their point is this, that the expenditure of the country in that year, namely, 1858-1859, was under 65,000,0001., and that it is now over 66,000,0001., and therefore that we have not really reduced, but have increased, the expenditure of the country, and if we have made a diminution of taxes it has been made, as some ingenious gentleman has stated, by taking off taxes which we had first put on. Now, gentlemen, let us see how that matter really stands : and before I enter into it I will say that I am not satisfied, as far as I am individually concerned. I am not satisfied that the expenditure of the country has yet been reduced to the lowest point consistent with its honour and security. Therefore I will say this, and say it without the smallest doubt, that if the electoral body of this country desires that reduction shall be effected in that expenditure, they have only to send to Parliament men who sympathize with that view, and the result which they wish for will be infallibly attained. But now we are upon a point of fact, and the allegation made is this, that 65,000,0001. only was the public expenditure during the year for which the Government that preceded us was responsible. Now, how does that matter really stand ? Pay a little attention to the dates. In the month of April, 1859, on the 1st of the month, a new financial year began. We were not then in office. Another Government was in office. That Government, when challenged upon its general conduct, called for a vote of confidence and thanks from the House of Commons, upon the ground that, discovering the inefficient condition of our military and naval establishments, they had set on foot what was rather pompously called the reconstruction of the navy ; that was in the month of April or May, 1859, and it was not until June, 1859, that we came into office. It was not until July when the new Parliament were able to examine the condition of the finances. We had then before us the boast of our predecessors, that they had set on foot the reconstruction of the navy ; and now I make the assertion, to which I challenge contradiction, that when we came into office in 1859 we found the expenditure going on and the Estimates of the year fixed, and three months of the year already gone by, not at the rate of 65,000,000/., but at the rate of 69,000,0001. a year. Now, I confess I am surprised to see that some of the very persons who glorify themselves and take credit to the country for the immense energy they had displayed in setting on foot the building of a number of perfectly worthless wooden line-of-battle ships, can actually think that we have
278	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
forgotten all these boasts,—that we are disposed to go back with them to the expenditure of a former year, from which they themselves claim the greatest credit for having departed. It was at 69,000,0001. a-year and not 65,000,0001. at which we found the expenditure proceeding when we came into office. In truth, gentlemen, the legacy which was bequeathed to me as Chancellor of the Exchequer—and most earnestly do I hope that no one of all this vast assemblage ever may have such & legacy left to him by his friends—the legacy bequeathed to me in the month of July, 1859, when between three or four months of the year were already passed, and a corresponding portion of money already spent, was how to find the means of meeting a deficiency of between four and five millions of money. Well, but then that's not all, gentlemen, because we are told, and told truly, that the expenditure did not stop at 69,000,0001., but in the year 1860 went up to 72,000,0001.—nearer, I think, to 73,000,000/. But why was that? Why, gentlemen, for the very same reason—we owed it to the kindness of our predecessors. In the exercise of their diplomatic wisdom they had to instruct an ambassador to sign a treaty with China, and it appeared to him that the signing of a treaty was an operation which could not possibly be performed in a satisfactory manner without a large fleet. The people of China, in some way or other, did not understand the necessity of a large fleet for the signing of a treaty, and thought that this large fleet must probably have some other object in view. Howeirer that may be, as you know, a great disaster occurred in the month of June, 1859, at the mouth of the Peiho, under the instructions of Lord Malmesbury, and before the present Government had assumed their office, or, at any rate, had been able to take any step in reference to China. The consequence of that disaster was that we had to find 6,000,0001. of money in order to restore our position with China. Therefore, I say that the undivided credit of the expenditure of from 72,000,0001. to 73,000,0001., which we rose to in 1860, is not with your humble servant, but those who preceded us in our office. Well, gentlemen, since that time we have effected something in the way of retrenchment. The expenditure, which was in 1860 nearly 73,000,0001., is now reduced to, I think, between 66,000,000/. and 67,000,0001. I don't say whether that is satisfactory. I don't say whether it is all that could be done ; but I think I may say this, that it was something. And now the question is—How has this been done ? And here, again, I have read, with considerable astonishment, statements that this reduction of expenditure which has taken place has been forced upon Her Majesty's Government by motions made from the opposite side of the House. Now,
At Liverpool.	279
gentlemen, upon the opposite side of the House there sit many excellent, and sensible, and enlightened men. In this happy country all parties, fortunately, entertain much of sound principle and of sound opinion, yet still we have preferences among ourselves, and especially so when we speak not of the character of individuals, but of the action of parties. Now, gentlemen, I venture to say, without fear of contradiction, that the influence exercised from the opposite side of the House has riot been an influence to reduce, but an influence to increase the expenditure. I know that that could be proved on careful examination of the records of Parliament. The adoption of motions and the questions of divisions would show how, beyond all doubt, the powerful influence which has been exercised from the opposite side of the House in promoting the giving of public money to Mr. A, or Mr. B, or Mr. C, or whoever wanted it—to every class and every clique, in fact—has been an influence not favourable, but adverse to retrenchment. I will give you, gentlemen, a single instance—I quote the name of the person because I quote it with respect. He is an old member of Parliament, and a man of considerable ability—a man respected by all, one of the most respected members of the opposite party, whom anybody might be proud to call his friend—Sir John Walsh, member for Radnorshire, who has been in Parliament for thirty or forty years, and should know what he is about. But, gentlemen, I tell you this. In 1864 or 1863, I forget which it was, Sir John thought the reduction made by the Government in the Navy Estimates so alarming that he deemed it his duty to make a special speech on the subject, and I assure you—for my own ears heard it—that he did not only state that the Navy Estimates, such as they are now, were totally unequal to the wants and necessities of the country, but that the proper way to bring them up to those wants and necessities would be to double them. Gentlemen, it is quite true that upon one occasion—I think in the year 1862—the House of Commons took a step in favour of retrenchment. By whom was that step taken ? A motion was made recommending that attempts should be tried to reduce the public expenditure. That motion was made by Mr. Stansfeld. I never saw the face of Mr. Stansfeld on the benches opposite. Those who sit on the benches opposite don't seem to me to have had any great love for Mr. Stansfeld, or to have appreciated the services he rendered to the cause of retrenchment, if we may judge from the steps which they afterwards took to procure the removal of that excellent man from office. Gentlemen, what I do claim is this, that to the efforts of the Government and the efforts of their friends, and also occasionally, I admit, and gladly admit, of en-
280	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
lightened men on the Opposition side of the House, is due the retrenchment that has been effected. I read in the report of the speech of Mr. Disraeli—and I speak of him with all the respect due to his position and talents—I read in the report of his speech a statement that retrenchment has been forced upon Government by motions made from his side of the House. I cannot explain that extraordinary statement, which he will have the opportunity, perhaps, hereafter of doing, if he thinks fit, on the floor of the House of Commons. I really think that the reporter of that speech must for once have been asleep, or some of the " heavy wet" of Buckinghamshire must for a moment have bewildered his brain, for he must in some way or other have turned inside out and upside down in the report of the speech an assertion that had been made by Mr. Disraeli. But then, gentlemen, I go from retrenchment to principles, and it is very fairly said that good harvests are not the work of Her Majesty's Government. That, gentlemen, is perfectly true ; but I recollect a time when instead of good harvests we had bad harvests : and when, in consequence of the miserable harvest of the year 1860, there was a deficiency in the proceeds of the public revenue as compared with the estimate, did I hear anything of the sound doctrine that the harvests are not the work of the Government? At that time, I do assure you, the Government, and especially the unfortunate Chancellor of the Exchequer, were held responsible for the harvest. There was not a waterspout opened in the heavens which he had not discharged upon the fields beneath ; it was he and he only that made them ; and what a progress, gentlemen, it is in civilization that a body of most excellent and respectable persons, who in 1860, when there was a bad harvest, were really so much be-darkened as to suppose that harvest was the work of the Govern-ment—they said the deficiency was its work, so it was the same thing—see what progress they have made, when in 1864-5 there happened to be good harvests, and thus they have awakened to the perception of the important truth that the harvest is not made by this or that Administration, but comes as it pleases Providence to send it. Well, but gentlemen, somehow or other, there is a word called luck, which has an immense effect upon the minds of men, and they say that the Government is the luckiest of all Governments, and that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is the luckiest of all Chancellors of the Exchequer. It seems that all the circumstances of the country since we took office have been so excessively favourable to economy, to saving, to moderate expenditure, to large revenue, that to that source alone is to be ascribed the happy state of things which exists.
At Liverpool.	281
But now let us consider what our state has been. I have told you our friends who preceded us left us a legacy of 6,000,0001. of expenditure in the war with China. That I don't call a remarkably good piece of luck. W ell then, gentlemen, the country went into a state of great and real apprehension, whether well founded or not, in the year 1860, with regard to its defences, and it determined to have a large expenditure upon fortifications for the security of our arsenals. Well, under the measures taken for that purpose we have spent some millions of money. However right or otherwise such expenditure may be in itself I am not now considering. It was the great desire and wish of the people of the country, and sure I am that the people of England will spend their money when they wish to expend it ; but you will admit with me it was not to be considered a great piece of luck for the Chancellor of the Exchequer. But that is not all, for besides the energetic administration of the navy in the year 1859, it set about that remarkable work, " Reconstruction of the Navy," which was a very favourite phrase at the time, though you do not hear quite so much of it now. Well, that is an expensive description of amusement for the First Lord of the Admiralty, that reconstruction of the Navy ; that building useless line of battle ships, which was really an attempt at reconstruction, rendered wise and necessary by transposition of the use of wood for that of iron in the building of vessels, which has been a most costly provision for the defences of the country. That is not " luck" for the finances of the country. Well, gentlemen, four years ago, by an awful visitation of Providence which rent for a time in twain the great Republic so nearly and deeply associated with us beyond the waves of the Atlantic, there came upon Lancashire that which is familiarly known by the name of the Cotton Famine. When we look back upon the Cotton Famine, and when we consider the noble qualities that were displayed in the times of that affliction—when we recollect how we then awakened to the consciousness of what treasure we possessed in the factory population of this country, we recognize the wisdom of Providence in drawing good from that which seemed to be unmitigated evil. But that is not my present point. I want to know how that Cotton Famine was to be considered as a piece of financial " luck." I find, on the contrary, it cut down our revenue when it was at its greatest intensity by from one to two millions, and, beyond that, it was one of the most special inflictions, from its peculiar nature, to which the Exchequer of this country ever has been subjected. Further than this, I thankfully join with you in acknowledging the bounty of Providence vouchsafed to us in the abundant products of the earth.
282	Speech, of Mr. Gladstone
I don't admit the doctrine that it is owing to luck ; but I do believe that we are enabled upon the period of a dissolution to show our faces before our fellow countrymen, and not to blush fur the financial condition of the country. But the points on which I have last been addressing you,—I admit points that more or less touch our distinctive professions as we sit on the right hand or the left hand of the Speaker's chair,—I am not ashamed of them, I don't lament, I don't regret, I do not mean to abandon the political associations in which conviction has placed me. But I do say to you, and I say through you to the people of South Lancashire, that to the Liberal party of the present generation, those members of the Conservative party, like Sir R. Peel, who preferred the interests of their country to their place and power, has been committed the extraordinary grace and favour of being enabled while they have held office, to address themselves, and to address themselves with effect, to the promotion of measures which ascend far above the height and descend far below the depth of every party consideration whatever. There are objects, gentlemen, which belong to our common country—to this England in which we live. We have around us vast populations ; they live under that dispensation which affects human kind, and by which we find that it is really possible for the mass of the community to secure to themselves abundance of the first necessaries and the first comforts of life. We know that in this free country that we admire and love so much, a century ago, the peasantry were ground down to the very dust, the manufacturing population was tainted with a disaffection that it is unfortunately too easy for us to understand, and too difficult for us to condemn. We know that at that time few were the labouring Englishmen who could see their wives and their children decently lodged, sufficiently fed and clothed, and tolerably educated. What is now the state of things ? Much may yet remain to be done. My belief is that there will always be ample scope for all the best energies and all the best gifts of legislators and public men ; but something, at least, we have carried. Education has gone forth through the length and the breadth of the land. Voluntary institutions, the best of all, have sprung up in multitudes. Wise laws abolishing the mischievous restraints upon capital and labour, have enormously added to the wealth of the country. In the last ten years the commerce of England has become nearly double what it was. With this series of acts relating to the material condition of the country have been joined, as I have said, numbers of others bearing upon its moral and social condition, and tending to set the masses of the community free in some degree from necessary and servile atten-
At Liverpool.	283
tion to their bodily wants, of the wants of each day as it arose, to that of their higher interests, of the cultivation of their intellect, of their position as rational, as moral, and as spiritual beings. But, gentlemen, this is no party matter. Oh, what folly it has been that there should be any party in the State that has allowed to its rivals and opponents the glory of almost monopolizing the prosecution of such a work ! But how happy, on the other hand, are they who have been permitted to take part in it ! Never can I be too thankful that, not owing to any deliberate choice of my own, but rather to the circumstances in which I have been placed, it has been my absolute duty to enter into that beneficent work, and to make the prosecution of it the main study and purpose of my life. It has been a work felt throughout the United Kingdom,—felt not only in the United Kingdom, but felt, I rejoice to say, upon many a foreign shore ; and those who formerly regarded England with jealousy or with hatred are now by degrees unlearning their ancient prejudices, and are glad to follow the beneficent example that has been set them by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It has been felt, then, through the world, it has been felt through the dominions of the Queen, it has been felt through those islands in which we live, it has been felt, if in any one place more than another, in the very place in which we stand. In Liverpool, in Manchester, in every industrious haunt and hive of this industrious country, has been felt the impetus thus given to the industry of man and the influence thus brought into play for bettering and improving his position. Gentlemen, it would be the height of arrogance in me were I to forget that I am a young, a late, a feeble labourer in this happy, I will say, in this holy cause. Many have gone before me, many have exceeded me ; but, with sincerity of heart and purpose, I have given myself to the prosecution of the work ; and I come before you who have known it in its beginning, known it in its progress, and its more ripe results, and I ask you to pronounce whether those who have been privileged to take part in such a work are or are not disabled or disqualified from sitting in the Parliament of England, from receiving the suffrages of electors of the community of Lancaster.
SPEECH OF LORD STANLEY
ON WORKMEN'S HALLS.
[The following Speech was delivered by Lord Stanley on the 3rd of August, on the opening of the Birkenhead Workmen's Hall and Club House. Earl Grosvenor, M.P., Mr. John Laird, M.P., and other gentlemen, also took part in the proceedings.]
LADIES and gentlemen, friends and neighbours—I thank you most sincerely for the kindness of this reception, but, although I feel it very deeply, yet I cannot help feeling also that I have not much right to stand upon this platform. It is hardly the part of those who have taken no share in the battle to come forward most prominently in celebrating the victory. But, however that may be, I have come here with great pleasure to be present at the opening of this hall, to take part in the successful conclusion of an undertaking of which the plans, as I believe, have been formed for several years, although the actual laying of the first stone did not take place until little more than a twelvemonth ago. Gentlemen, I am sure you will agree with me that it is quite time that some undertaking of this kind was set on foot in Birkenhead. Wherever a new city grows up rapidly, wherever a vast population gathers itself in a few years round some new industrial centre, there it will inevitably happen that many social wants will, for. a time, remain unprovided for. Men feel about a place of this kind as if it were to them rather an inn, or an encampment, than a home. Employers look forward to the time when they shall be able to leave off business. Working men have not the leisure, and in many cases have not the means, to assist in providing what is required. Now, that is the case more or less in all such towns as this, and it is peculiarly likely to be the case here, because I don't flatter you in saying that there is nothing in Eng-land—and there is hardly anything in America or in the colonies —more remarkable than the progress of this community of Birkenhead. When I hear that the rateable property of this township has doubled in the last ten years, still more when I learn that only 44 years ago—in the year 1821—Birkenhead contained a population of no more than 200 ; that between 1821 and 1841 that population multiplied itself just forty-fold, —from 200 to 8,000; and when I learn, further, that in less
Speech of Lord Stanley on Workmen's Halls. 285
than a quarter of a century—between the year 1841 and the present time these numbers have been again multiplied five-fold, and that for 8,000 then you have nearly 40,000 now,—when I hear all these things (and I have my figures upon what I believe to be good and undoubted authority), I am reminded, not so much of anything which we are accustomed to see in Europe, as of those new cities which grow up on the edge of the Western prairie, where, with a vast traffic, with crowded streets, and along with every luxury and convenience of life, you see here and there, in corners and byways, the stumps still sticking out of the ground to mark the remains of that old primeval forest that has hardly yet been cleared away. And, gentlemen, I think your progress is, upon the whole, more extraordinary than that to which I allude ; because these things to which I have referred take place in a new country, whereas your prosperity has grown up in one which is very old. Nobody is astonished if the schoolboy whom he has not seen for a year or two has grown a couple of inches in height ; but it would be a remarkable phenomenon if a similar change were observed in a grown man. Yet, after all, when one comes to think of it, that growth is not so extraordinary as it appears at first sight. We are in the habit of talking about Old England, and no doubt as far as our laws, as our customs, as our institutions, and our history are concerned, we are a very old country. But when one comes to look at those things which are the characteristic features of England at the present day—when one comes to look at our trade, at our manufactures, at our colonies, and at our Indian empire—it is almost startling to see the rapid growth of these things, and how much of what has made England what she is among the nations of the world is really the work of only three or four generations. That may be a digression, but it is one to which both the place in which I am speaking and the subject naturally lead us. Now, to come to what is more immediately before us. I understand the primary object of this building in which we are meeting to-night to be a club—a place of meeting, that is, either for business, refreshment, or for society, for the use of all those who choose to avail themselves of it among that vast population of mechanics and artisans who inhabit this shore of the Mersey. And I will tell you why I, who am not very fond of making speeches without any practical object, and who think that in this part of the world we are perhaps rather too much given to make a great display about inaugurations and openings of buildings, and laying of first stones, and ceremonies of that kind—why I, holding that opinion, nevertheless think that the opening of this building is an event which deserves to be celebrated in a public and formal manner. It is because
286	Speech of Lord Stanley
buildings of this kind are at present very rare, and because they ought to be very common. Now, I am not going to say one word on the old hackneyed subject of keeping men away from the public-house. Artisans are not children, and if they, working hard and earning largely, choose to spend their money in that way, they have as much right to do it as anybody else has to do a thing which is simply foolish. It is a question between their families and themselves, and I think we may leave them to the conjugal eloquence which is very likely to be exerted on such occasions. I have always thought that it was not for those who live more luxuriously to speak of them harshly in that matter. It is their business more than ours. But what we have a right to say is this, that no man ought to be driven to the public-house for want of any other place to go to. He ought not to be forced to go there because his club meets there, and he does not like to miss a club meeting, or because there is no other convenient place where •he can enjoy friendly talk and a fire on a cold wintry night, or simply because he has nowhere else to go. Of course it may be asked, Why cannot people stay at home ? Well, my answer to that is, that men in the richer classes, having a great deal more time at their disposal, and having, in the material sense, far more comfortable homes, do not make it a universal rule to pass their evenings with their wives and children. I say nothing of that class—I am bound to speak of them as an unfortunate class—whose home is a lodging, and who shelter their families whenever they put on their hats, but I say this, that social inter-course—free, friendly, easy talk—is as necessary to men as food, or sleep, or fresh air. A man does not live a healthy life without it, and therefore whatever enables him to enjoy that kind of intercourse in a comfortable and civilized manner, is not only a pleasure to him, but it is a benefit to him intellectually and morally. And I think, therefore, that places of meeting like this, which are meant to be real clubs, or places where clubs may meet—not schools in disguise ; not institutes, although institutes are very good things in their way ; not lecture-rooms, although this room will no doubt serve that purpose admirably well if it be required ; but places where talk, and newspapers, and refreshments may be had with a security against disturbance from drunken or rough and disorderly persons,—I say that places of this kind ought to exist, and I believe they shortly will exist in every great town in England, and in many of the little towns also. At present there are only a few here and there, but fashions spread fist—it is only the first step that gives trouble, and I think there are several good reasons why we, on the banks of the Mersey, should be among the first to set the example. In the first place, it is not our Lan-
On Workmen's Halls.	287
cashire habit—I really beg pardon, I had forgotten I was in Cheshire, but living on the other side of the Mersey I can assure you that we Liverpool people believe that we annexed Birkenhead long ago. At any rate, it is not our habit in these districts to lag behind when anything useful is doing. That is one reason. Well, then, I believe that we have in these parts more money—especially in the artisan and working classes—than is to be found anywhere else, except, perhaps, in Manchester and in London. That is another reason ; and there is a third, which is least flattering to ourselves. I am afraid we must admit that there are very few parts of the country where the outdoor aspects of nature are less agreeable than they are here in the neighbourhood of Liverpool. We are not favoured in that way, and that is all the more reason why we should endeavour to make compensation as far as we can by providing indoor comforts for the absence of that which we cannot have, however pleasant it might be in this summer weather—for the absence of the green fields, and the shady lanes, and the pleasant open commons of the south. Well, then, the question is asked, " What security have you that an erection of this kind will he supported ?" My answer is, that we hope and we confidently believe that it will be not only managed, but also to a great extent owned, by those for whose benefit it is established. Expressly for that purpose the shares have been made of very small amount. It is the anxious desire of the promoters that they should be so held, and they are so at present to some extent ; they will be so, I believe, to a much greater extent when the thing is fairly in operation ; and if they are not so held, it will not be for want of encouragement, because, by a stretch of liberality which appears to me even extreme, if I understand the arrangements rightly, preferential advantages have been granted to those who are holders of not more than two or three shares over those who hold a larger number, so that the former class are sure of their return. I should have thought that stimulus was unnecessary, but Mr. Laird has been the most active and prominent manager of the concern, and I think his name will be to you a sufficient guarantee that the arrangements are sound and satisfactory in a business point of view. One thing more I must say. If this club—or, rather, if this hall intended for the reception of a club—does not receive the support which is expected, that may arise from mismanage-ment—everything is possible—or it may arise from indifference, but of one thing I am sure, it is perfectly idle to contend that it will arise from the want of power in the working men to keep it going. There is a curious fallacy, there is a kind of mental confusion, that arises in the minds of newspaper readers from the
288	• Speech of Lord Stanley
use of that very vague, and indefinite, and unsatisfactory term " the working classes." People think, when that name is mentioned, of labourers in rural districts, and immediately picture to themselves a family whose weekly earnings barely suffice to meet their weekly wants. I need not tell the audience I am now addressing that a skilled artisan in these parts is not only above the reach of distress, except in such extraordinary circumstances as the breaking out of a war, a cotton famine, or the like; but that he is better off, so far as money goes, than very many of those educated men who embark upon the honourable perils of professional life. I have lately seen—it was drawn up for me—a statement of the rate of wages hereabouts, and I find that they range (I am speaking, of course, of skilled labourers) from 30s. to two guineas weekly. That is, allowing for those occasional holidays which we are all of us the better for having, and which I suppose none of us can do without, allowing, I say, for those, it is an income of from 701. to 1001. a year,—that is, for working in the usual way, for I am told that if a skilful artisan is employed by piecework he may generally command a higher rate. Now, I do not think I shall be told that men living upon these wages are unable to support a club ; and I think they might do much more than support a club, I see no reason why a large proportion of them should not, if they think fit, and supposing that the proper agency of supplying the demand is provided, as I am told it is here—I see no reason why a large proportion of them should not, if they choose it, live in their own freehold houses. Now, I have always looked upon five things as going together—cheap schools and institutes, which are only the schools continued ; cheap books and newspapers ; the savings bank and the insurance office, which is another form of savings banks ; the club ; and the freehold house. Three of these you have already ; the two others you may have if you choose to provide them for yourselves. And I am not in the least afraid, speaking in the interest of the employer, that a man will work one bit the worse for feeling himself in a higher and more satisfactory social position. I don't talk here about independence—independence is a word which is sadly abused—nobody is independent except the savage. We are all dependent upon one another—the rich upon the poor, the poor upon the rich, and the rich just as much as the poor. Civilized society cannot exist otherwise, but I believe every thinking and feeling employer would desire those who work under him to feel themselves independent in one sense, in the true sense of the word—that is, to feel that they are above the pressure of immediate distress, that they are not living from hand to mouth, and that they are not liable to the caprice or the dictation of any
On Workmen's Halls.	289
single individual. My belief is that the more you cultivate the feeling of self-respect, the more you cultivate independence in that sense among working men, the better, the pleasanter, and not more difficult you make the relations between them and their employers. I cannot speak from any practical knowledge myself. but no man has more of that than my friend Mr. Laird, and I hope he will say a word to you. Now, gentlemen, it only remains for me to wish success and prosperity to this undertaking, and to express a hope which I am confident will be realized, that those who have given their money and—more than money—who have given their time and their trouble, to its promotion, will be, as they deserve to be. long and honourably remembered among you.
SPEECHES ON MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE.
[The two following Speeches were delivered by Mr. Walpole and the Bishop of Oxford at Salisbury, on the 18th of August, at a large meeting held in the Council Chamber of the Town Hall of that city, in connection with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.]
SPEECH OF THE RIGHT HON. S. H. WALPOLE, M.P.
IN obedience to the orders of your Bishop, I am privileged for a few moments to address this great assembly. Standing, as I do here, a comparative stranger among strangers, I cannot but feel that, if I only consulted my own feelings, it would have been much more gratifying to have been an auditor rather than an actor in these interesting proceedings. But my right rev. friend has called upon me to say a few words on this occasion, and the topics which can be adverted to are not merely of local interest, but involve subjects deeply interesting to us all, as lasting as the obligations of Christianity itself, and as universal as the wants and necessities of man ; and in that one word " man" I cannot help pointing out to you, or rather reminding myself, that by man we mean the inhabitants of all nations, of one common blood, derived from one common ancestor, and therefore looking forward to the promise of one common inheritance. The particular ,mode in which our general duty can be best enforced, and the particular reasons we have for enforcing it at the present moment, involve considerations of very vast importance. First of all, I cannot but remember that for the first time in the history of this Society the four metropolitans of the United Church of England and Ireland have joined together in addressing the whole country, urging what a weighty duty there is upon us to encourage the objects of this Society, and alluding indirectly—although it was impossible to mistake the meaning of the allusion—to the peculiarities of the time which render the duty specially imperative. They point as general reasons to the scattering of our people throughout the world ; to the importance of not leaving that people to the chance hazard of having their religion taught to them or carried with them, and to the still greater importance that those people among whom they go as emigrants should have conveyed to them all the charity and all the purity of our blessed religion, instead of being
On Missionary Enterprise.	291
contaminated as they have been on more than one occasion by our vices and our sins. This duty, added to the vast field open to missionaries, is the first thing we should address to ourselves as a reason why such societies as this should receive every possible encouragement. The second reason is the vastness of the field of operations, and the difficulties which peculiarly at this moment the missionaries have to encounter. Now, I cannot help thinking that we sometimes fail to realize to ourselves all that we ought to realize, because we allude to either large numbers, or refer to large tracts of country, without having distinctly in our minds what those allusions properly point to. Unfortunately we all of us know that the Atlantic cable is supposed to have failed, but the missionary telegraph touches at this moment upon every quarter of the globe, and comes back to England in its circuit, showing the work which has been so nobly done. It goes, in passing, down to the tropics, where it has to meet the devil-worshippers, and it finds them encountering the faith of Christ. It touches then upon the Hottentots and Caffres, some of the most sensual people in the world; and there those who ought to be the first to uphold the faith have, unfortunately, done t,)o much to weaken and undermine it. Passing round by the Cape, it has sown good seeds in the Mauritius and Madagascar. From thence it ascends to the great strongholds of the heathen in India and Burmah. Moving southward beyond Ceylon to Borneo, it covers all that territory now called the fifth quarter of the globe ; and there, among our own people, however degraded some of them may have been, and however prosperous they may be now, it is doing that which I believe to be the best of all missionary opera-tions—not merely relying on aid from this country to establish its different stations, but gradually establishing itself as a self-supporting and self-extending society. This telegraph carries us on again to that which is the great triumph of missionary zeal and the great disgrace of political mismanagement—the islands of New Zealand ; and from thence it goes on to those islands the dowager queen of which is now in this country *—a lady, by all accounts, not merely royal by birth but in feeling; of spotless character where she is surrounded by evil, and doing good wherever she goes. The same missionary telegraph will give you news from Columbia, and from thence over the vast tracts of Rupert's Land by the Lakes of America to Quebec, Montreal, and Fredericton, where it branches off to the West Indies and Newfoundland, absolutely completing the circuit of the globe. From the West India Islands there are native Africans being sent to assist
* Alluding to Queen Emma of Hawaii.
u 2
292	Speech of Mr. Walpole
their benighted fellow-countrymen, and coming to England to tell what they have done. But notwithstanding all this, I am afraid if we take the map of the world in hand, and look at the dark paths of heathendom, comparing them with the bright paths of Christendom, we shall see how much yet remains to be done. I may add that the very success which this Society has had is one of the strongest inducements why it should continue to persevere. I would almost stop here, but there are two topics upon which I should like to say a word, although I know I am treading on somewhat delicate ground. There have been two circumstances happening in this country which may be said to have operated in some minds as a discouragement—I mean, first, the doubts and uncertainties which science, falsely so called, has raised in matters connected with religion ; and secondly, the altered relations between the Mother Country and the colonies, in consequence of those colonies receiving representative institutions. I hope I am not an over sanguine man, but I look upon these two circumstances not as discouragements to us in the least degree, but as most heart-stirring stimulants to do what we are endeavouring to accomplish. And why do I say so? I told you that I might be considered as standing on delicate ground, but when I know that I am urging this with reference to your missions I feel that the ground is as firm as a rock beneath me. We are not engaged here in matters of controversy, but of charity--not in the controversial refutation of error, but in the propagation of purity and of truth. When I recollect that every attack which has been made on the religion of the country heretofore has been invariably attended with this result, that the works in which those attacks have been made are mouldering on shelves, and are probably not known to one-fourth of the persons in this room, I recollect also that the replies which have been given to them are the great standard works of divinity, and everybody who takes them in his hand, has, with the Bible, a panacea against every error which may be attempted against our religion. I have often thought of this subject, and I cannot help bringing to your mind what has taken place with regard to it. Cartwright and Travers ! Who knows their names now ? Yet Hooker's " Ecclesiastical Polity " will live as long as our language. Persecution during the Civil Wars even prohibited the use of our own liturgies in our own churches. " The Liberty of Prophesying, " by Jeremy Taylor, put toleration on an eternal basis. When religion during those same Civil Wars was so nearly extinguished I was going to say—and I believe I might have said it with very nearly the truth—let us never forget, according to the Christian preface of Bishop Pearson himself, that it was to maintain our religion that the " Exposition of the Creed " was written.
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I might go on and point out how Hobbes and Spinoza wanted to turn everything into a miserable materialism, and how they were met by Bentley and Clarke with their own metaphysical weapons, and beaten with their own arms. Then, again, whence do we derive that splendid treatise, the unanswered and unanswerable treatise on the Pope's supremacy, which has once for all and for ever settled the question that Rome has no claim to be your mistress ? If I were to advert to the Tolands, the Middletons, and the free-thinkers of the beginning of the last century, I should find that their books are well-nigh forgotten, while the charming dialogue of Bishop Berkeley, " Alciphron, " and the divine " Analogy " of Butler, will not only last for ever, but will confirm the faith in hundreds and thousands now living and yet to come. Then I say that, instead of taking discouragement from these facts, the question is, Shall your missionaries go out with the crude notion that they may assert nothing distinctly, but throw doubts upon everything, and substantiate nothing whatever in its stead; or shall they do as this Society does—lay down as its rules, in temperate language, that they shall be instructed in the doctrines of their Church, as contained in its Articles and in its Homilies, with its worship and its discipline, as contained in its liturgy and its canons ? Thus armed, they can then meet the gainsayers of their faith in whatever quarter of the globe they may be. My belief is that, with the Bible in one hand and the works of the great divines in the other, the Christian Church has nothing to apprehend, but everything to hope for. And now one word as to the altered relations between your colonies and the Mother Church. I know there are good men who regret that alteration. I think myself that good will come out of ill, and I believe the effect will be that they will become independent Churches in one sense, while they are connected with you in another and a better sense. While they become established in the different dependencies, self-governing, self-extending, and self-supporting, you will become more and more free, not only to assist them, but to assist also those otfier parts of the globe which your missionary exertions have even not yet reached. It is true that they have now representative institutions—it is true that in that sense they are independent of the Mother Country; but it is equally true that those representative institutions are founded upon our system, and are united with us by the obligations which we all of us feel to be one of the great peculiarities of our happy country—namely, that we always combine freedom with order, progress with perseverance. And so let it be with your ecclesiastical institutions. They may be in a sense independent of us, but they will become new national Churches. They will be founded as ours are
294	Speech of the Bishop of Oxford
founded, upon the pure simplicity of the apostolic faith, and they will be united with us by the highest and holiest ties that can bind man to man—the desire for the good of man. Whether it be at home or abroad, whether it be by precept or example, in whatever clime or under whatever circumstances, they will strive to the utmost of their power, as we will strive to the very utmost of ours, to promote the glory of Almighty God, and the salvation of all mankind, through that knowledge which, however valuable other knowledge may be, cannot bear for a moment a comparison with it—through that knowledge which preaches and teaches, for the good of us all the Gospel of Christ, and Christ crucified.
SPEECH OF THE RIGHT REVEREND THE LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD.
I DO not know where we can look on the great mission field without seeing something that seems to demand at the present moment new efforts and greater endeavours. For instance, look at our attempts with the North American Indians and the present state of the North American continent. I must say that I think the cessation of the American intestine war, the circumstances of the cessation, the temper in which it has ended, the miserable population, disorganized and craving for some new excitement, which it has left thronging many of their towns—not the true American population, which I was told yesterday by Bishop Cox is returning in a wonderful manner to the pursuits of peace and industry, but a population which has been left by the war in all the great centres of the United States, composed of the very dregs of the whole earth ; men who have crowded together, with no American interests, in order that, like the vultures of the air, they might have a share in feeding on the dead bodies war spreads everywhere about, and who are now left without this miserable food, looking wildly and eagerly around for some way in which they can at once renew their energies and maintain their life ;—looking at all these things, and seeing how likely it is amidst the contingencies and the troubles of nations that the time may not be far distant when the British account shall be closed as a great dominant power in British North America; in the waiting moment, in the hush of the present, I think there is a call to us to be up and doing before the night sets in upon us. If I look to other parts of the world I find that it is just the same. An allusion has already been made to the Queen of the Sandwich Islands, now for a little while tarrying among us. I think the state of things there is a
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loud call for us to do something. One of the special motives for the royal visit to this country is to try and stir up among the English people a resolution to do something at once for the population of those islands, under the conviction of the Queen, that another 30 years, if they do not see a total moral change wrought in that people, will see their extermination from the earth. Is that not a call? You are told that in another half century, unless you send out the means of training the young of that race in habits different from those which English visits from ships touching there, with no other object than immediate pleasure and gain, have introduced among a docile and thoughtless race, your vices, transplanted to those islands, will in a great measure have eradicated the people who receive them from the face of the earth. At this moment you have everything to help you. The throne is filled by a monarch determined to do all he can to carry out your missions ; the people are craving for them—are wearied out by the mismanagement and maltreatment of American puritanism—are shrinking exceedingly from the Maryolatry of the Romish Church, and are saying, " Will you give us the morals of Christianity without these terrible alloys ?" Is that not a call to all to be doing something more ? It is very easy to say that they should do it for themselves. I was talking on the subject the day before yesterday to the Queen, and she said, " Our people are so poor that they have not the means. Our people are not like your manufacturers and agriculturists, able to do everything with large stored up capital. We have little more than sufficient to give us the merest clothing and the poorest elements of food; and it must be done from your country as an act of Christian gift, if Christianity is to profit my people." Then, I say, here is a call which at the present moment can hardly be exceeded, because when God does give a Christian nation the opportunity of doing something, and seems to intimate that unless it be done now the opportunity will be taken away, it seems an absolute charge upon us that we should go over to that Macedonia and help them. Let us turn next to the Cape of Good Hope, and I think that everything there is a summons to England. The judgment which at this moment has unsettled the Colonial Episcopate is a call. It says, " You are now set free to work, perfectly free, in all the strength of your apostolic administration. The State withdraws its aid, and withdraws the golden fetters which so very often limit the exertions of those who labour. There are two other reasons which seem to me to make that country loud in its call. First, there is the miserable fact of the state of the wretched colony of Natal. Shall it be that Britain, in one of the highest offices of its Church, shall
296	Speech of the Bishop of Oxford
send out one to teach the heathen to distrust the word of God; and shall not Christian England drown that miserable voice by a universal declaration of the truths of Christianity? The whole history of the Church, if it teaches me anything, teaches me this—that every single heresy to pervert the Church has been held by believing minds to be God's opportunity for exalting the truth. Let us so read the troubles of Southern Africa. One great source of satisfaction is that we have such a man as Bishop Gray of Cape Town at the head of that see. Every single man in Christendom who held the faith of Christ felt his heart burn and his arm strengthened when he knew that Atha-nasius was leading the hosts of the faithful. Did he not feel transfused into himself the lion heart, the noble loving spirit, and unmastered intellect of the great champion of the faith ? In the great continental war the Duke of Wellington estimated the presence of Napoleon in an engagement as worth 30,000 men. He meant that every single private in the French army was roused to an exertion which nothing else could kindle within him, by the knowledge that he was fighting under the eye of the great general himself. And the fact that God has so raised up a man so brave, so simple-minded, so great in the comprehension of his duty, so loving in his heart, and so faithful to the truth, as Bishop Gray, is a call to every English Churchman to use the opportunity for his Church. If I turn to New Zealand I find a like call. I think the cessation of the New Zealand war is a mighty call for us Christian people. A great deal may be said against those who have been engaged in that war, which does no honour to our Christian discernment or our Christian truth. I cannot help thinking that we goaded the natives to insurrection; and the man who has just surrendered—the Maori king—has displayed intrinsic gifts of greatness which ought to make us honour him. Although he has been our foe, I believe he has not only been brave, but that he has been just, and that throughout the war no single deed dishonourable to a Christian hand has, under the utmost provocation, dishonoured the arm of that native chieftain. Christian men may say, " If they are Christians, why do they quarrel with us ? " But why have we ever quarrelled with France ? Why have there been wars in Christendom ? Should we give up Christianity and worship Woden again because there have been wars among Christian people ? War is in itself a sin ; one of the most terrible of scourges and horrible of evils. We have, therefore, no reason to turn round on the New Zealanders and say that because they have got into troubles their Christianity has been an unreality and a sham. On the contrary, those things which have made
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the war so unlike what it once would have been are what Christianity has done ; while in the war itself we see how the evil of the Fall abides still even in the hearts in which Christianity has taken up its abode. At this moment there is a peace and a breathing time, and I say that there is the loudest call upon all Christian people to use it, and for this reason—because if you thus manifest your interest in these people you will certainly secure that they will be treated more fairly by the Government, and perhaps more wisely by those set over them. But of all the calls in foreign parts, that in India is the loudest. I think the hush there after the peace is a call to do God's work such as no other nation ever received. Only think if we were to rise next morning and the telegraph were to flash across to us the news of another uprising in India. And how easily that news might be flashed back. A mere rumour—one of those unknown things which, like the breath of an infection, spread over the minds of man—suddenly comes in the clouds of the night, and settles down in the dews of the morning. It is then found everywhere. Nobody is able to give an account whence it came, why it came, who brought it, or how it is to be subdued. One of these rumours pervading that immense population, and we should be driven at once from our proud supremacy in that peninsula. Putting these things together—the greatness of the peril, the completeness of the present calm, and the uncertainty of the continuance of power—they constitute a great claim upon us. I believe there never was before such a power of doing good—never such a power of spreading the truth of Christ, if we are in earnest in spreading it. Men say, " How little has been done in India !" but how little has been attempted there. What ! do you think of sending to convert very clever Hindoos and very bigoted Mussulmans one unsupported missionary to a district of country about as large as Great Britain and Ireland ? And yet you hug yourselves and say, " We send out missionaries, and they do so little." If from the foreign field of labour we turn to look at the state of things at home, we shall find a loud call here. I read it in the suggestions of those free-thinking ideas which are soiling so many—an innocent I was going to say; but so many—a spirit, with no mind or meaning to receive the infection of unbelief. We find that almost everywhere. I have no doubt that the last attempt on the truth of Christ will come, not with any open denial of its verity, but with a courteous admission of its truth ; but, at the same time, with a sapping of all its distinctive features. The result will be universal toleration and a deep respect for religiousness everywhere, always provided that it is not that troublesome thing which, by being believed, affects
298	Speech of the Bishop of Oxford
men's conduct, or ever troubles the course of society. If so, they will all agree to put it down. I have no doubt that unbelief contains in itself the seed of the most intensely hating persecution which the world has ever seen yet. Instead of being tolerant I believe that it is the perfection of intolerance. I believe that the very moment it has achieved its own victory the thing above all others which it will hate is the simple faith of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It must be so, because unbelief, in whatever form it comes, is the exaltation of the human intellect and the human will against the voice of revelation in common and in revealed knowledge. The stream flows on under the moonlight shining of its semi-intelligence with the most delicious smoothness when there is nothing to thwart it. They say, " Let us all love one another; let us be tolerant of each other's views. If you worship the devil, worship him, if you only worship him quietly. If you worship the anti-devil, do so, provided you do so quietly. Let us go on together in our old worldly ways and worldly thoughts, only holding nothing that shall be troublesome and disagreeable." Anything that is disagreeable in religion is such a shocking thing, and the most disagreeable thing probably is the revelation of divine truth. If you say you will have nothing to do with this fellowship with evil, and tell these unbelievers that they are handing themselves over to the devil under the pretence of liberty and emancipation from their shackles, they will forthwith turn upon you all the hatred of the rebel heart which the great rebel can stir up within it. Believing, as I believe, that there may be heard upon the wind these footfall echoes of the coming of the great antichrist, and that this which we hear whispered here and there, and see spreading we know not how through the air, is just the precursing atmosphere which comes before his advent, I say it is the time, if ever the time was, to be up and doing. There seem to me to be many things which ought to warn us that this is a season when the judgments of the Lord are abroad. Is not the mysterious disease which has attacked our cattle at this moment one of God's writing, written on a nation's wall to warn us to turn to Him ? Look at the newspapers. They tell us that men who have studied the subject most cannot tell whether it is an imported or an indigenous disease. Men of the greatest skill and wisdom tell you to kill at once every diseased subject, bury it, and hope for the best. Then, again, there is a whisper of the onward march of the pestilence of cholera now rustling in the breeze of the evening, and making men's hearts ache with the fear of what they may find when they wake in the morning. Are not these God's handwriting on the wall, warning you that you do his work, and
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turn to Him with a new zeal while yet the opportunity of turning is left to you ? Oh, my friends, may God give us such a spirit! And if Ile does, above all things let me say to you, Beware of small endeavours. There is nothing I think so dangerous in things spiritual as that which the great Duke of Wellington warned us against in things national, the fretting sore of a little war. Let us not be satisfied with insignificant missionary efforts —the sending of one or two men to confront heathenism in India. Each one of us must know that our offerings are very little—the very least that respectability or a moved cotscience will let us offer. Surely in our dealings with God we should be large-hearted, and large-hearted in our aspirations after success. This is the great lesson of all—that which we do we should do thoroughly. And there are two ways of doing it ; both eminently useful. First, by every one who can taking part this very night in giving material assistance to missions upon a new scale; and secondly, by sending out with that material aid the Church of Christ in the greater perfectness of its own spiritual strength. It is the feeblest of all feeble things to send out a weak Christianity to convert a strong heathenism. I know of nothing more dreadful than the thought of sending out a minister of Christ to Zulu-land who shall have so weak a hold upon Christianity that the Zulu-man's stronger grasp of heathen doubtfulness shall wrest from the hand of the Christian man the Bible that God has put into it. Our duty then is plain, and we may be successful if every one of us has a determination, first to pray, next to labour, and thirdly to bear witness upon all occasions that we will send out the Church of Christ as God has given it to us, in all its perfectness—that we will endeavour to send out, not the weakest and the poorest, but the best and the strongest, to this great struggle for the faith of Christ; and then, as it is not given us to go out and take upon ourselves the brunt, the burden, and the glory of the fight, let us help them as the weakest woman could help the chiefest of the apostles, by wrestling mightily for them in our prayers to God.
SPEECH
OF
SIR ROBERT J. PHILLIMORE, Q.C., D.C.L.,
ON JURISPRUDENCE.
[The following Address was delivered by Sir Robert Phillimore (Her Majesty's Advocate-General), on opening the Department of Jurisprudence and Amendment of the Law, of which section he was President, at the meeting of the Social Science Congress, at Sheffield, on the 5th of October.]
THE title of the department over which I have the honour on this occasion to preside, seems to have been chosen with care. The province of Jurisprudence alone has been a subject
of much dispute among institutional writers.	Writers of
eminence have confined it to the consideration how the existing law of a particular state may be brought into most effectual operation ; but without entering into the inquiry whether this opinion be even etymologically correct, at all events the title " Jurisprudence and Amendment of Law " presents to the jurist a subject of deeper thought and wider grasp, extending his office beyond the investigation of the historical fact of mere instituted law, to the further inquiry as to the relation which such law bears to the whole system of which it is a part, to the consideration not only of what is, but what ought to be law, to the examination of the legum leges, leading him to contemplate the law not as an isolated subject of a special science, but as one appertaining to the domain of philosophy. Philosophy, worthy of the name, requires for its operation the facts which jurisprudence supplies. Jurisprudence requires the aid of philosophy to marshal and generalize the materials so supplied. For law must be in a state of continual progress and development, adapting itself to the varying and manifold necessities of civilized man. No line of demarcation ought to be drawn between the theoretical and practical jurist. Theory, without a treasury of facts, is an idle pastime. Practice, without a knowledge of principles, is a blind mechanism. It is because law must be in a state of progress that it continually presents two aspects to the jurist,
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accordingly as he considers it as a history of facts or as a system of principles. In the latter point of view, the relation of each part to the whole is to be considered, and it is then seen that law is not a mere aggregate of legal propositions, but an orderly distribution of them, in proper subordination to a central principle. Among the prominent advantages of meetings like the present are—First : The opportunity which they afford for free discussion, undisturbed by any political elements, attended at the same time by a recollection of the severe scrutiny to which the opinions expressed during its sittings are certain to be exposed ; not only at the time, by those who take part in their discussion, but hereafter, and generally by competent persons, whose attention to the subject is more attracted than it otherwise would be by the publicity of these proceedings. Secondly : The international character of the meeting, having for its immediate object to obtain, by comparison of the laws of foreign countries, and by the experience of foreign jurists, information upon the deficiencies of English law, and on the possibility of applying remedies to them; having for its more distant object, perhaps, the hastening of that day foretold by the great orator and statesman of antiquity—when a general observance of the same principles of law upon the chief subjects affecting the wants and interests of humanity shall help to bind together the nations of the earth in the bonds of unbroken peace. And here I cannot help adverting with great satisfaction to one feature in the American civil war now happily closed. The belligerent rights of the United States came into frequent conflict—or, I would rather say, frequent contact—with the neutral rights of other states, especially those of Great Britain. But a code of international law existed which England had enforced when belligerent, and to which she cheerfully and at once submitted when neutral. The United States Prize Court has applied—I speak generally—with good faith and much judicial ability, the principles of the jus inter geiites to the particular cases which were brought before it, and the peace of the world has been preserved, which, had no such law been recognized, would have been probably exchanged for a long and bloody war. The excellent papers of Sir James Wilde and Mr. Reilly are in truth both due to this Association; and most valuable contributions they are, not only to our juridical literature, but to the real progress of legal reform. They deal with the very important questions of a digest and a code. The more these subjects are examined the better. Through discussion, written and oral, true principles, upon this as upon other departments of science, will fight their way through the many difficulties which obstruct their progress. I venture, therefore,
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at the risk of being censured for travelling again over ground already so ably trodden, to take advantage of this occasion to express the reasons which have had weight with my mind upon these subjects. I suppose that the number who think the present system of jurisprudence and legislation in England incapable of great improvement is very limited. There cannot surely be many educated persons who think that it is an a priori desirable state of things, that the law of a country teeming with wealth and population should be scattered over thousands of volumes of reports and more thousands of statutes; or that a fiction of the continual existence of an unwritten law, applicable to all our wants, ought to conceal the fact that no such law ever
did exist.	Mr. Mayne, indeed, points out, in his admirable work on ancient law, the good service such fiction has done in its time—in fact, that by recourse to it English judges were enabled to avoid administering injustice. The same remark applies to the separate system of equity. Both have practically been the means, however circuitous, of giving reality and life to the moral conceptions of the people. It cannot surely be reasonably contended that a proposition of law which can be clearly stated in a judgment of court or a statute, cannot be as clearly stated in a clause of a code. Great accuracy and precision of language are requisite, certainly, but equally for both—both will be equally subject to criticism and investigation in whatever case requires their application. The objection, therefore, that a code would deprive us of the advantage we derive from the application of principles supposed to be in gremio judicis ready for all circumstances, is really good for nothing. We know that this is not the fact ; we know that the judge, in the absence of a direct precedent recorded in a judgment, or stated in some work of received authority, has recourse to reasoning from the analogy of decided cases, and not to any repository of jurisprudence ; and that if the reasoning from analogy fail, the judge cannot supply the want, which he acknowledges and deplores, but must have recourse to the legislature. In such cases, therefore, until the remedial statutes be enacted, justice cannot be done. In a very recent case, worthy of attention upon many grounds, the question being whether the prosecutor might call witnesses to rebut the evidence of good character given by the prisoner—a point, most strange to say, never before decided—one of the judges is reported to have expressed himself to the following effect :—" The doubt on my mind is this : the law of England is the law of practice and precedent ; what has been the practice for years constitutes the law ; and when precedent or practice is found to be wrong, the legislature sets it right." I venture to think that a code is the goal to the
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ultimate attainment of which our exertions should be directed. A digest, indeed, must necessarily precede but it cannot be a substitute for a code. A digest is the collection of materials out of which the house is to be built; but it is from their subservience to this end that they are really valuable. A digest of English law alone is truly an arduous task, but the contributions to it are already many and rich, though they are widely scattered and leave much unprepared. A digest of cases, both at common law and equity, under proper heads—and such we have—lightens the labour of the jurist who prepares the digest of principles ; his labour is still further aided by the publication of leading cases, round which are grouped what ought to be legitimate children of the parent principles enunciated in the first case ; still further by treatises of acknowledged merit upon particular branches of the law, such as Abbot on Shipping or the treatises of Lord St. Leonard's, which always exhaust their subject. The separate jurisdictions of law and equity in this kingdom are often said to present an insuperable obstacle to a code. But if this separation be proved by discussion and reasoning to be evil on this as well as on other accounts ; if that enlightened public opinion which is naturally and invariably in advance of existing law, demands the fusion of the two systems; who can doubt that this fusion is only a question of time—that it is as certain as the triumph of any other sound principle relating to social progress in this free country ? Meanwhile a proper digest at the present time would show how the principles and practice of common law are checked, or modified, or aided by the court of equity, and the road would be paved for amalgamation. Then, as to the digest of the statute law. Every Act which on.a particular subject repeals all existing enactments, and embodies in itself whatever has been found useful in them, supplying whatever defects judicial decisions or the course of events have exposed in them, and adding whatever social necessities seem now to require, or whatever is good in foreign jurisprudence upon the same subject—such a statute as the Merchant Shipping Act, for instance—is a little code in itself on the particular subject. The same course, Mr. Greaves points out in his introduction to the Criminal Law Consolidation Act, might be pursued with regard to the law of landlord and tenant ; and the remark applies to many other subjects. But might not the digest of which I have such exalted notions, still further extend its usefulness, and perform its functions as the precursor of a code ? Might not the propositions of law taken from these sources be accompanied by a statement of the propositions contained in the Roman corpus juris civilis, upon the same subject ? Why is this
304	Speech of Sir R. J. Phillimore
rich mine to be left unworked ? There is no doubt that the Roman law was introduced into England at a very early period. The Ecclesiastical Court kept alive the spark (to use an Homeric expression) of that noble jurisprudence. The ecclesiastical chancellors of the court of equity founded their system upon it ; and many maxims from it, supposed to be of English origin, were in truth taken from it by judges of the common law. But various causes, too long now to dwell upon, prevented the introduction of that carefully matured and most refined system (which Leibnitz pronounced to have approached mathematical perfection in the accuracy of its rules for the conduct of men in the affairs of civil life) into the general jurisprudence of England ; but in the absence of these causes it took early and deep root in the continental states. On the European Continent law anticipated the usual stages by which it naturally arrives at maturity. If you analyse the process by which a system of law is built up in any country, you find that the moral conception of right and wrong " between whose endless jar (Shakspeare so well says) justice resides," is first implanted in the individual ; is further extended by the authority of the head of the family; it appears next in the usage of the tribe; and then the circle widens till it becomes the rule which governs the conduct of the whole community. It is in this last stage that law becomes the subject of philosophical treatment. But the Roman law was placed at once by the side of the rude cradle of the law of the barbarous races of the Continent, and the infant grew up by the side of the adult man. This was not in every respect an advantage. The science of jurisprudence was so much in advance of other sciences that it was for some time isolated from the general intellectual life of the community. It seems to have generated a distinct school of theoretical and political lawyers, whose opinions were, perhaps, somewhat crudely blended in the existing codes. For the codes of Austria and Prussia were not affected, as the code of France was, by political exigencies. In France two principal circumstances gave rise to the code —the havoc caused by the revolution in all jural relations springing out of feudal law, and the political necessity of abolishing the peculiar customs of the separate provinces in order to strengthen the system of centralization. To us in England, the careful and discriminating study of the Roman law presents, at the present time, almost every conceivable advantage. It affords us upon many subjects, especially the law of obligations, an unrivalled system of jurisprudence, in which philosophy and practical sense, and what we call law and equity, were, from the very peculiar circumstances of its growth, wonderfully combined and reconciled—a system which has stood the test
On Jurisprudence.	305
of eight centuries, and whicli lies at the root of the jurisprudence of the civilized world. Those who are afraid that the native strength of our indigenous justice may be violated by the foreign element, are no more to be reasoned with than those were who thought that the study of Michael Angelo and Raffaelle would destroy the native excellence of our indigenous painters—and such persons there have been. What attractions such a work would possess ! How different an aspect would it give to the study of English jurisprudence ! What a noble domain of judicial science, acquired in spite of their disadvantages by the labours of our forefathers, now hidden in reports and entangled in cases, would then be revealed ! How many intellects of the highest order, trained by classical education fur the greatest efforts, would be attracted to the Bar, which now turn away in disgust from the barbarous, uncouth, disorderly heap which is presented to the view of the bewildered student ! Such a digest, acceptable to every educated man, would render certain, at no distant date, the legislative enactment of the principles which it contained. This would be embodied in a code which would do honour to our country. But I do not mean to represent a code as a final adjustment of the law. As years roll by, and experience increases, and new circumstances arise, alterations will be required. Indeed, after any considerable lapse of time, the body of the law of any state aught to be examined, and, as it were, interrogated whether it fulfils its duty with respect to the needs of existing society. The weeds will spring up in the fairest herbage, but ignorance alone conceives them to be necessary for its growth ; the earth accumulates over the noblest monuments of architecture, but the blindest antiquary knows that it does not contribute to their ornament or use. The error which springs up round all human institutions must be from time to time cleared away, and the inheritance preserved and improved. Nor can it be contended that any code will render commentaries unnecessary. Such a result is impossible while human thought is conveyed through so imperfect an instrument as human language. But, it is asked, who is to prepare this digest ? and who is to pay the industry and talent which must be employed upon its construction ? Though neither of these questions could be answered satisfactorily, the argument as to the advantages incident to a digest as preparatory to a code would remain the same. I should not despair of the success of private energy. But I do not abandon the hope that Parliament, which votes 600,0001. or 800,0001. for the education of the people, will see the expediency of voting a few thousands for the object of inducing competent persons—and such are to be found on the Bench and at the Bar—to devote their energies to a
306	Speech of Sir R. J. Phillimore
matter so intimately connected with the interests of the people as the improvement of the common law. Parliament will do this if public opinion demands it; and by such meetings as the present the public attention is attracted to the subject. Nevertheless, much as I desire to see a well-instructed code of English law take the place of our present chaos, I deprecate with my energy the premature compilation of one. The observations of the wise and learned Savigny, a working successor of Donellus, are well worthy of attention, though I am afraid they are about to lose some of their force in my translation. He is speaking of the Prussian code. " The principle," he says, " which lay at the bottom of all these codes was the same—a principle which had for some time produced a great number of separate laws or enactments in many States. It was a desire to escape from the difficulties which had arisen, partly through the conflict of Roman and German institutes of law, partly through the imperfect theory and the frequently vacillating practice of the last centuries. This end could in truth only be attained when a purging of these defects of jurisprudence by an acute critical investigation had first taken place. But inasmuch as this was wanting, and as therefore the compilation of these codes was undertaken under the influence of the then imperfect state of judicial science, which it was intended to remedy, the improvement was necessarily external, accidental, and partial, while the internal and real defects became stereotyped, and thereby the future purification of them by the native vigour of science was, if not entirely prevented, at least rendered a task of much greater difficulty." These words seem written for the admonition of those who are anxious for the codification of our law. It is one of the evils incident to a sudden awakening of long dormant energies directed to the improvement of any department of social life, that legislative measures are proposed which have the double vice of carrying the office of the legislator beyond the limits within which human law can successfully operate, and of treating men as if their nature could be altered by human positive law. Perhaps the unsurpassed sagacity of Adam Smith is in no passage more conspicuous than that in which he strives to impress upon the legislator, and especially the reformer, the necessity of remembering that human creatures cannot be dealt with like the pieces upon a chess-board, which are subject only to the movements impressed upon them from without ; whereas, in the game of life, every separate piece has a principle of movement of its own, independently of that which any external power can impose upon it. The game is only played well—if it be allowable to carry further the illustration—when the two principles are brought into harmonious action. There is another mischief incident to the
On Jurisprudence.	307
same period of agitation—though the agitation itself is to be hailed as full of benefit to mankind, and immeasurably superior to the period of torpid acquiescence in admitted evil because of the danger of change—the mischief of hasty empirical legislation, the rash cutting of a knot which the mind has not patience or skill to untie. I regret to say that the most striking and apposite examples which at present occur to me are derived from the legislation relative to the Church and the institution of marriage during the present century. With respect to the Church, the stores of ecclesiastical jurisprudence, neglected, unknown, or despised by indolence, ignorance, or presumption ; the keen sense of a present evil ; the eager determination to get rid of it at any cost; the mistaking the symptom for the malady,—con-spired to produce the hasty statute, which, like the medicine topically applied by a quack, increased in other parts the disease which it skinned over in one. The hasty statute leads to another to explain, another to alter, probably another to repeal. " We had no notion that this would be the effect of the statute. We did not know that its interpretation, according to legal maxims, would bring it into contact with the other principle which it is of vital consequence to maintain." These are remarks which I have more than once had occasion to hear when the mischief was done. The over restlessness, combined with ignorance, of popular legislation, produced pretty much the same result as meddling, benevolent, ignorant despotism. But in truth this particular instance of legislation for the Church only illustrates the blot of our statute book. What is the main cause of its incoherent mass and tangled perplexity ? The absence of system, which springs from neglect of the true principles of jurisprudence and legislation. With respect to legislation on the institution of marriage, there was grave subject for complaint in the state of the law which governed the obligations of the marriage contract previously to the year 1855. The relief which passed under the name of divorce a mensd et thoro was slow and expensive. The dissolution of the marriage bond, divorce properly so called, was theoretically unknown to the law of England, but could be obtained in certain cases by those who were rich enough to procure a private Act of Parliament. A reform was certainly needed ; but was there ever a subject which ought to have been more entirely removed from the area of political parties—which ought to have been preceded by a more cautious consideration of the principle and the details upon which the reform ought to proceed ? The question lay at the very root of society. Independently of religious opinion, the dissolubility or indissolubility of the marriage bond was the question which, of all others, most deeply affected the morality and
A 2
308	Speech of Sir R. J. Phillimore
welfare of the people. I will not on this occasion dwell upon the experience which the working of the divorce statutes has furnished. But I wish to observe that vestigia nulls retrorsum is not always the language of an enlightened reformer of the law. To undo a mischief which has been unadvisedly done under the name of a reform, is as much an improvement of the law as the removal of an original grievance. If our own experience confirms that of France, which tried for several years and then abandoned the same experiment ; if it tends to show that it is the opinion of philosophers, statesmen, and divines—fortifying by their divergence on other subjects their agreement on this, that the interests of society require the indissolubility of the marriage bond, that indissolubility should become law. Meanwhile, if the general improvement of our law does not keep pace with the wishes of sanguine reformers, it is at least satisfactory to observe that it is not, as once, in a state of complacent and applauded stagnation ; that the stream flows, however sluggishly, in the direction which the wishes and wants of society point out. The work of purging and consolidating the statutes, a work with which the late Lord Chancellor's name will always be honourably connected, continues its useful course. Questions of farther legal reform have been discussed ; some have been enacted by the Legislature during the last session ; probably no year will be suffered to pass away unmarked by some contribution to the good object of repairing and improving, by pulling down, as well as by building up, portions of that great edifice of the law, on the proper structure and condition of which our welfare so greatly depends. The illustration which I have borrowed naturally suggests that a measure of reform more intimately connected than perhaps appears to superficial observers, both with the better administration of existing law, and indirectly with the future progress of jurisprudence, may be now considered as secured to the country—I mean the construction of proper courts of justice, and the abolition of those which are now a source not only of grave inconvenience, but positive ill health to the judge and the advocate, as well as an expense and a delay to the suitor, independently of the consideration of their shabbiness and discreditable unsuitableness to the grandeur of the kingdom. I t is a great satisfaction to me to reflect that the report of the Commission of which I had the honour to be a member. has at last borne fruit, and that the Legislature has decreed that money obtained from certain funds derived from accumulated fees, for which there was no legitimate claimant but the state, shall be expended upon the erection of one palace of justice, whereby all courts of justice will be brought under one roof upon a convenient site, and on a scale adequate to the great
On Jurisprudence.	309
purpose for which they are built. Let us hope that the new palace of justice will inaugurate an improved law. In the inconvenient, unhealthy, and mean courts, the English judges have done their duty—from the awkward fiction and the feudal theory, justice has been wrested by the keen intellect, the manly sense, and the free heart of the English judge. But the English judges will do their duty at least as well in a court of proper dimensions and due proportions ; and English justice will be administered at least as well as when it is derived from the perspicuous language of a written law, founded upon acknowledged principles of universal right, applied by sound philosophy and tried experience to the affairs of man. I observe that one of the questions chosen for discussion at this meeting is the expediency of removing the remaining restrictions on the admissibility of evidence in civil and criminal proceedings. The history of the law on evidence in all civilized countries, but especially in this, is very interesting and instructive. None, perhaps, better illustrates the merits and defects of the English system of administering justice. In looking back upon the different epochs of this curious history, we cannot fail, on the one hand, to observe the practical good sense, the keen appreciation of the value of time, the consequent dread of collateral issues, the love of fair play, which struck out, not originally by statute, but by clear judicial 'exposition, the general limits in which evidence should be restrained ; on the other hand, we must observe the subsequent technical manipulation of these principles, and their gradual settling down into an arbitrary system, in which the end was often sacrificed to the means. It is instructive to look bacjc from our present vantage-ground upon the obstinacy with which the attempts to widen these limits were long resisted; the deafness to the argument that the restrictions, in their anxiety to prevent temptations to perjury and the misleading of juries, in truth shut out the best evidence of the fact under discussion; the struggles of enlightened judges to convert questions of competence into questions of credibility, in order to prevent the gross failure of justice; the increasing uncertainty of this branch of the law; the powerful protest, in spite of its many defects of temper, style, and language, of Bentham ; the timid nibbling which preceded Lord Denman's great statute of 1843, which contained in its honest and vigorous preamble the memorable recital—" Whereas the inquiry after truth in courts of justice is often obstructed by incapacities created by the present law, and it is desirable that full information as to the fact in issue, both in civil and criminal cases, should be laid before the persons who are appointed to decide upon them, and that such persons shall
310	Speech of Sir R. J. Phillirnore
exercise their judgment on the credit of the witnesses adduced, and on the truth of their testimony." The conclusion, indeed, fell far short 'of the enlightened and philosophical premises ; probably, however, the Legislature was not then ripe for further progress. We trace the onward course, and in subsequent legislation, partly by direct statutes upon the subject, and partly by clauses in particular statutes, we see the peculiarly English mode and manner by which reason and philosophy have gradually triumphed over the inveterate prejudice of so-called practical men. The triumph is, I think, not yet complete. While any objection to the competency of a witness remains, evidence will be shut out from the court which not only the judge and the advocate connected with the case, but every sensible man, knows would, or at least might, throw light upon the fact in controversy, or, in other words, would lead to the discovery of the truth. The principal argument for continuing the exclusion of the prisoner's evidence is that it would be contrary to the spirit of our law and constitution to compel the accused person to bear testimony against himself, and that if he refused to answer the question put to him he would practically bear this testimony. I am not struck by the force of this argument ; the object is to discover the truth, not to shield the criminal. Then the rule operates severely against the innocent. man. It has happened that the accused person found guilty in the criminal court has been a witness upon a subject as to which he was found guilty in a civil court ; and that upon hearing his evidence, and seeing his demeanour, the jury have arrived at a conviction of his innocence of the offence for which he had been condemned. Nor is this phenomenon confined to proceedings in a civil court ; it has happened that the defendant has become, as in a late case, the prosecutor in a criminal case of the person who prosecuted him ; and then the situations being reversed, the late prosecutor's mouth being closed, and the late defendant's opened, the late prosecutor has been found guilty of perjury in the evidence by which the late defendant was convicted, and is suffering imprisonment. In the Act for amending the Law of Evidence and Practice on Criminal Trials, the preamble recites that It is expedient that the laws of evidence and practice on trial for felony and misdemeanour and other proceedings in courts of criminal judicature, should be more nearly assimilated to that on trial at Nisi Prius." This is a considerable improvement on the previous state of the law. It is again instructive to look back and trace the steps which led to it. At common law, no counsel was allowed to a prisoner put upon his trial for treason or felony, and Lord Coke discovered and approved of
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the reason—" Because," said he, " the evidence to convict a prisoner should be so'manifest that it cannot be contradicted." The injustice of the rule became apparent, and was as usual evaded, not altered. The judge at first allowed counsel to instruct the prisoner how to interrogate the adverse witness. The statute of 7 William III. c. 3, provided that a prisoner might be defended by two counsel, but no further progress was made till the reign of the next William. The statute of the 6 & 7 William 1V. c. 114, allowed all persons on trial for felony, and all accused persons in cases of summary convictions, to make answer by their counsel or attorney. And now this last statute of last session assimilates the law of practice as to the speeches of counsel in criminal trials to that which prevails in civil trials. The exclusion of the evidence of the husband and wife as to the fact of adultery, is most unsatisfactory on every ground. For in the Divorce Court, the question of the admissibility of the evidence of the husband or wife in the matter of adultery depends (such has been the careless structure of the statutes) upon the form of the suit—being admissible in one kind of suit and inadmissible in another—the fact of the adultery being really at issue in both. The law of evidence as to persons charged before the magistrates in cases of summary convictions appears still more indefensible ; but I will not anticipate the observations which will be addressed to the Congress on this point. Upon the interesting question of private international jurisprudence, relating to the expediency of establishing a uniform international law of freight, we are certain of hearing, from the gentleman to whose hands the subject has been confided, an excellent paper ; also, on the questions of municipal law relating to bankruptcy, and the bearing of the administration of the poor law upon the reform of criminals, we have reason to expect much valuable information. The treatment of convicted criminals appears to me one of the most arduous and perplexing subjects which it has ever been the duty of a legislator to consider. The records of the jurisprudence and policy of the most civilized nations of antiquity furnish no materials for our guidance in this matter ; and no Christian state can be said to have arrived at a satisfactory conclusion respecting it. Certainly our own experiments have been hitherto unsuccessful; though it is only just to add that, latterly at least, our failure has in great measure arisen from the absence of physical resources which some other nations possess, and which, till lately, whatever use we made of them, we had ourselves. The area within which the reformation of our criminals is to be worked out, is no longer a large and ample territory; the scene is no
312	Speech of Sir R. J. Phillimore
longer removed from the associates and objects connected with their guilt. It is within the walls of a narrow space in this densely populated land in which the crime was committed, and in which land the criminal, when his sentence has expired, is to earn his future livelihood, that the theory of the amendment of the criminal by prison discipline has been necessarily put to the test. Nobody denies that for the greater number of offences, limited imprisonment, with or without hard labour, is the necessary punishment. The convict must go into prison, but he must also come out; and the condition in which he comes out affects the interests of society quite as much as the power of putting him in. If he be practically taught, or internally convinced, that he has for ever forfeited the position of an honest man—that the world's hand will ever be against him, whatever be his repentance and amendment—in most cases his exit will be as much to be dreaded by society as that of a wild beast, retaining all the ferocious passions of its original. nature, but endowed with intellect, and informed by experience how to gratify them with least personal danger. The discipline of the prison should be such as to inspire not only horror for the punishment, but sorrow for the crime ; not only regret for the past, but hope for the future. In these last words lies the problem to be solved. But even as to sentences of imprisonment for life, ought there to be written over any gaol, " Abandon hope, all ye that enter here " ? or ought not the hope of bettering his condition—perhaps of ultimately regaining his liberty—to be seen even by those who have merited the terrible sentence, through the long vista of continual toil and penitential discipline ? The question of capital punishment is also on the paper for discussion. There are those who think that society has no right to inflict this punishment; there are others who admit the abstract right, but deny the expediency of inflicting it, and upon various grounds, but chiefly, 1 observe, because the scandalous scene of a public execution attracts the base and demoralizes the good. Surely, however, this publicity is not a necessary incident to the maintenance of capital punishment. The horror which it ought to excite for the crime would run no risk of being converted into compassion for the criminal if the execution took place under proper guarantees and precautions within the prison walls. The arguments against this much required reform have never seemed to me sufficient; at all events, it deserves to be well considered. There are other topics of much interest proposed for the consideration of this Congress, on which the passing hour admonishes me not to dwell. Let me, in conclusion, observe that it has not been permitted to many, as it has
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been to our illustrious President, to witness the reaping of the harvest sprung from the grain which his own hand scattered over what once appeared very unpromising ground. But let no man who contributes an honest endeavour to the melioration of the law be disheartened by the present rejection of his proposal. Nitor in adversum must be the motto of all reformers ; the seed which he sows may lie long in the earth before it ripens. It may be that, like Romilly, Mackintosh, and Granville, he will never behold the fruit of his labour. The outward man perishes, but the thought which he has uttered for the benefit of his fellow citizens survives. The lamp which he has kindled is not extinguished, but passed on to other hands for the future welfare of mankind ; and perhaps there are not many reflections more soothing to the close of life than the recollection that you have used the talent which God has given you, in the endeavour, however humble. to improve upon earth the administration of that justice which is only perfect in heaven.
SPEECH
OF THE
RIGHT REV. THE LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD
ON THE LOCAL EXAMINATIONS.
[The following Speech was delivered by the Bishop of Oxford at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, on the 24th of October, on the occasion of the presentation of certificates and prizes to the successful students in the Oxford Local Middle-Class Examinations for the Manchester Centre. We regret that the few concluding sentences of the Bishop's speech were not sufficiently reported to allow of their reproduction in this work.]
MR. MAYOR, Gentlemen, and Ladies,—You have been so kind as to speak of me in language far too strong, but welcome to me, as showing your own feelings on this occasion. I can assure you that I feel it a great privilege to be let to come from one of the ancient universities of this country to take my place in rejoicing with parents and friends at these successes of their sons and relatives. I have watched the countenances of the lads and young men who have obtained the prizes in this examination as they passed before me, and it was impossible for any one used at all to scan the features of youth to doubt about the intelligence, the vigour, and the earnestness of youth after youth as they passed under my eye. And I think I may assume that this which a few years ago was nothing more than an experiment, has now proved itself to be a great success. And not only have those classes, for the sake of which especially these university examinations were framed, reason to rejoice in that success, but I believe that the universities themselves have good ground to rejoice with them in the prosperity which has awaited this undertaking. Nothing could be worse for this country than that the old universities of the land should be severed by a gulf which could not be passed from the great middle classes of this great and industrious kingdom. In many ways the good which we may hope to do to you returns to us. It returns to us, in linking us amid those abstruser studies which belong of necessity to universities, with the life, and vigour, and energy, and breadth of thought, which belong equally naturally to the great industrial classes, and above all, to these centres of intelligence in our great manufacturing districts. We give something, but—I say it on our own behalf—we receive back much in return ; and in another way the universities profit. They profit by showing their readiness to do, so far as it is pos-
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sible for them to do, the work which the nation has a right to expect and to require at their hands. At this moment there is not a single man or woman in this great hall to-day who must not feel that the English people are, after all, a very grateful people to those who do undertake to do their work. The universal voice of sympathy and of regret which has followed to his still silent lying in his coffin the great statesman who has just been taken from us—the hushing of all party feeling—the agreement for a time to sink all differences and to forget all misunderstandings, in the acknowledgment of that debt of services—marks, I think, in characters which cannot be mistaken, that the great English people are a grateful people to those who do their work thoroughly. Therefore again, I rejoice that our Universities have been permitted to take this part in helping on the education of the great middle class, which is the distinguishing feature in so many respects of the people of England. Having said this for the universities, which, in one sense, perhaps, I may peculiarly represent, I need not be afraid of saying that I believe the benefit is very great to those to whom the examinations of the universities have thus been brought home. It is great in very many ways ; perhaps you will allow me to point out one or two of them. In the first place, then, I think that examination is the great test of the success of teaching. It is very easy, indeed, for persons to pass through a long and very varied course of teaching, and to get very little from it ; and yet it is very easy, with that gaining of little, to escape notice at the time it is going on. Examination is the proper test of that which is being conveyed by the teaching to the recipient minds of the taught. It is perfectly true, of course, that the great examination, after all, of all education is what that educated youth does in the world that is before him. That is the real ultimate, the abiding test. Education is to fit each one of us in our own station for doing the work which is before us as men or as women ; doing it thoroughly as to God, doing it honestly, as to man around us. Therefore, the great and abiding examination is the examination of the man in the world hereafter. I remember perfectly well how I was congratulated by a friend upon having passed my last examination, and he said, " Now you have done with being examined for life, and be very happy thereat." I said, " No, far from it ; I am examined every time I go into public." I am to be examined when I stand before you to-day. The fruit of education is to come out in each work which each man does his life through, whether that work be done honestly and truly, to the best of the capacity which God has given him ; whether it be done for his neighbour, as his neighbour bas a right to expect it at his band. But still, while this is the true and ulti-
316	Speech of the Bishop of Oxford
mate and great examination, I would have you notice this, that when that examination is brought to bear upon that man it is too late to mend the process, so far as his youth is concerned. If his education through his youth has been misconducted, you cannot make him a boy again, and send him back to be refashioned in his school. Wise men may mend it greatly in their after life, but it is by toil and labour, such as need not have been expended if the right season had been made the time of education. And, what is more, the result is hardly ever what it might have been if things had been kept in their right place, and the true education had been given at the true time for education. Therefore it is that intermediate examinations are the true test of the process. Some may say, " Oh ! but the parents and friends will see what the boy is getting in his training, and they will be the best judges, after all. Au examination is but a partial trial, and very often deceitful." I think that is not true ; for this reason : Education, like every other art, has its own secrets. It is not possible for an uninstructed man, in the middle of a process, to ascertain with any accuracy what is really the work of that manufacture up to that time, or what the result will be. Suppose you go to a man altogether unskilled in any one of the manufactures, and ask him, when the work was only half completed, to tell you whether the work had been done : he would not be able to give you an opinion worth having. You must have a man skilled in the work, who is able, because of his skill, to test what the uncompleted work is at that moment at which the test is applied, if you wished in the process of any great composite work to know how that work is proceeding in its progress before it reaches its completion. Upon this depends the whole principle of these examinations. You have men who are skilled in the art of education, who take this youth who is on his progress to manhood, in which the final life examination is to be brought to bear upon him, and you, because this young man is an expert in education, trust to the judgment he is able to form whether the work is going on as it ought to go on, or whether it has reached at this moment the point it ought to have reached. And that there should be such examinations the very least thought may teach any one of us. The great middle classes in this country have, as it seems to me, been long exposed to a very great injury in this subject-matter. The public schools of the land were in a great measure founded with a view to provide education for those classes. The universities themselves received scholarships and endowments, in a very great degree, that they might finish that education which the middle classes of the land had received in the grammar schools and public schools of the country. But that process of things, over which man in detail
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can exercise such a very slight control, has, as we all know, to a great degree altered this intended state of affairs. The universities had become almost exclusively, with some grand exceptions, the place of training of those who were not engaged in the great producing manufactures and industries and merchandise of this country; and public schools came to be the preparation for that new class who filled the university; and by degrees the great middle class found provided for them no such training-places as were provided by charity for the poor below them, or were provided by endowment for the rich and titled and ancient aristocracy of the land. The result of it was this. Of course we know perfectly well that demand will always create supply. There was no lack, therefore, of persons who undertook to educate the children of this class ; but observe, if I have shown you at all the truth in saying that examination is necessary, what examination was there which could be brought to bear upon the different separate schools which undertook this work ? I have seen a good deal of it myself in my own life. I have seen good public schools provided for that great class, and I have seen schools in which really next to nothing was taught—schools which followed, I believe, what you will admit to be a very general plan, whereby the multitude of the advertisements and the paucity of the good communicated were recompensed. Now mark the process in those schools. There being no mint-mark, as it were, upon places of education, which might lead and direct the minds of parents anxious to give their children a right sort of teaching—there being nothing answerable to the public school in that rank, these men, busy often themselves to the utmost of their power, and not having the means of selecting with perfect accuracy for themselves where they should send their children, sent them—some because of the loudness of the teacher's profession, some because of the friends of children who had been there before, some for one reason or another ; and the boy was sent at that precious sowing-time of his life, in which the field of his whole nature is to be impregnated with that which is to be the after-growth of usefulness and of power ; he was sent for those years to some place where, perhaps, he learned next to nothing. And how was it that the parent was taken in ? Just in this way : there was a mutual system—some-times one schoolmaster examining the school of another, and sometimes the schoolmaster examining his own school for himself. And what was the result ? He found that this particular boy, perhaps a boy it was very necessary to secure because of the importance of his parents, was really doing very little ; but the advertisement system came in, and the boy must be made himself a living advertisement. So a prize is given to him at the end of
318	Speech of the Bishop of Oxford
the school half-year—not a prize won, as these have been, by hard work, and real acquirement, and sifting examination, but a prizo given, not for the sake of what the boy has acquired, but for the sake of what it was desirable for the schoolmaster the boy should have been thought to acquire. But now, follow the boy home. Instead of coming back tested, as these have been, in the face of the intellect and industry and thought and loving care of such a vast city as Manchester, the whole thing was done in the quietest and most simple way in the schoolmaster's private study. There was none of the testing I noticed now; and, believe me, nothing is pleasanter to me than to hear the hearty sympathy of those young men when one who perhaps has carried away a prize from them walks off with it. And, observe, that prize was given as a reward
of past industry. That prize so won is a mark of some moral achievement over the temptations of youth to idleness and self-indulgence ; that prize so won is a mark of absolute acquirement, and it is, I rejoice to say, the promise of future success, if God will, in the path that lies before him. And it is all this because the examination is real, and being real it tests real progress. And in this view it is not at all a matter to be passed over that you will find the record of failures written down just as honestly as the record of successes. If every single youth who came under these examinations obtained his paper we should every one of us know that the examination was not a real and certain one, but that it was pretended and visionary. Therefore, the record of failures is the glory of success. But how was it with the private schools—not the good private schools, for I admit at once there were many good private schools; but how was it with other schools I have in my eye now ? Why, the boy received the prize because it was necessary he should go home with certain credentials of what his schoolmaster has taught. And I have seen these prizes myself. " Master Smith, distinguished highly for every conceivable attainment, and for the strictest moral character." Well, Master Smith goes home, and his admiring father, his delighted mother, and his gaping sisters, who never expected Master Smith to rise in this way into the constellations over them, look with wonder and amazement at what this prodigy of a master has been able to hew out of this shapeless bit of wood. But I am afraid that they very little guess that in Master Jones's little bag there had gone back a book which stated equally of him " that he is all that the master could have desired, everything that the scholars could have envied." It is, you see, a mere take in from beginning to end. There was nothing to test the real acquirements; and when at the end of the education the youth went out into the world, it was too often found in that hard but just trial which
On the Local Examinations.	319
awaits every man at the end of his preparation, that the prizes were all and the acquirements nothing. The remedy, it seems to me, was the simple remedy of providing an examination which should be above all question, and which should test truly the work and education as it proceeded. The universities had the means of offering such, and I rejoice that they have seized the opportunity, and that they have administered it. For see how it works. First of all, upon those schools where the work is real it brings at once credit. When I see such successes as these which have been to-day obtained in your own city of Manchester; when I read in the Educational Times of September last such commendations as this—" By adding the above list to the similar one for seniors it appears that Manchester Grammar School passes by far the greatest number at the present examination, and that many of its junior candidates are high in honours ; " and when I hear, as I heard in the report to-day, that Manchester had beaten London—I see then how it is that the schools which are doing their real work stand out under these examinations, as the true coin stands out when it is brought to the mint to be tested against the counterfeit and the sham. But observe another working of it ; it works upon the flashy establishments of which I spoke before, because the conductors of those schools do not dare to bring their pupils to the test, and so their shirking the examination betrays their deadly secret. You get, therefore, the very thing which I maintain you want in this matter—the test of the work as it is proceeding, by those whose judgment upon it is capable of being right, and cannot be suspected of being purchased. Then let me ask you for a moment to consider what the effect of this is in raising the education of this most important class. It raises it, I think, in every way. I suppose the great temptation at this moment in education, as in everything else in this nation, is to forestall ultimate results by snatching at premature advantages. We see it in our trade, in our manufactures, in our literature ; we see it, I think, everywhere in life, and we may be sure it is present in education too. It is the easiest subject-matter in which the delusion can be practised, because if an education, instead of being the real moulding and training and shaping of the powers of the future man for that future work to which he is to be called, is furnishing the ready apprehension of youth with what seems to be, but is not, the result, there must necessarily be a great apparent success which is contemporaneous with laying the seeds of a future failure. We know, every one of us, that the great thing in every single department, whether of science or of art, is this, that that which we are going to employ to procure the ultimate result shall be itself perfected as far as possible. What is
320	Speech of the Bishop of Oxford
the meaning of the wondrous accuracy with which our meters now are constructed ? Does a man think it too much trouble to have spent half a life in having invented some machine which enables him to measure some thousandth part of an inch with greater exactness than any man could measure it before P He does not, because he knows that the results of the proper working of thousands of machines will depend upon the exact accuracy of that meter in its thousandth part of an inch. Does a man think that he spends too much labour in hammering out and hardening the instrument which is to be hereafter employed, either in bearing some great mechanical strain, or in exercising some accurate and minute operation of cutting ? He does not ; he knows that lives incalculable may depend upon there not having been let enter into the first rude process of the manufacture the slightest negligence in operation, but that the ground was made good as he went on. And is it not so in the greater machine of man ? Is it not the object of education, not to produce an immediate result, not to make a clever boy even, still less to make a seemingly well-furnished boy, but to give to his mind, to his spirit, to his whole moral nature, that completeness, robustness, and breadth which shall enable him, when he comes indeed into the life trial, to show that he is a machine made perfectly in the time of manufacture to do the work that he is sent to do ? That being the case, I say that these examinations have a great tendency to produce that blessed result. They have that great tendency in many ways. I can see it in that which I notice also in this Educational Times: —" In the various languages a great improvement is manifested ; 450 passed in Latin, against 265 last year." I think that a great advantage. We have heard lately, and many of us have read in the papers, words in which we are told that the study of Latin conveys no nourishment to the mind—a very beautiful figure, but I believe a most figurative and immaterial statement. I, for one, believe, and will not shrink from saying it here, that accuracy of mind and conscientious accuracy in• doing whatever is done is one of the very highest attainments of education ; that the doing things in a slipshod way is just the very worst result of education ; and that I had rather have a son of my own do one thing thoroughly and accurately than do twenty things together inaccurately or amiss. If you agree with me in that, then I say that the study of the dead languages is one of the very principal instruments that we have in conveying that accuracy of mind to a boy. I believe nothing can altogether supply its place. Mathematics will do a great deal that classics will do; but there are gifts to the future man which the having been thoroughly trained in one of the dead languages will give to him which I
On, the Local Examinations.	321
believe no other amount of study can equally convey. Language is the distinguishing feature of man. It is his glory, it is his mark upon this earth wherein at once he stands above all the rest of the living creation. The mystery of language is so deep that no man has ever yet been able to reach down to its foundations. Whether it was originally a super-induced gift of the Creator to his creature, or whether man was enabled to devise language for himself, matters little as to what I am saying ; but I do maintain that it is so connected with the operations of mind that it is not only a great test but a great instrument of mental progress, and that the leading youths carefully to study all its intricacies, and all its beauties, and all its powers, has an influence upon their mental faculties which no study of another kind without it can adequately supply. Then, if this be so, there are the most marked advantages in the language which is so studied being one of the dead languages, because they are not liable, in the first place, to the mutations and the uncertainty of a living tongue, and because—and here is where I differ most, it may be, from those who hold that opposite theory—because they do not seem at the first to convey the same sudden acquisitions which an acquaintance with the poets of our own language does seem to convey. And observe that there is the greatest possible difference between resting contented with that which the knowing of the language has given you, and resting contented with the knowing of the language itself. The lore of that which the language expresses, whether it be scientific lore—whether it be the flights of poetry—whether it be the magnificence of philosophy—upon that the mind may rest, delight itself, and think it has made great acquirements, when it has really learnt nothing of that instructive lore, the structure of language in its nicety, the accuracy of expression in its perfectness. I say nothing of the great examples, of the mighty triumphs, and of the triumphant minds with which this commerce with the dead languages brings us into contact ; all that lies in another province, tending still to establish further my general position ; but I think that you go with me, and I rejoice to have the assent of such a gathering as this to-day to my principal proposition, that there is in the patient acquirement of these deadlanguages a signal instrument for giving to the mind of man accuracy in thought and nicety in expression. Then I say that this is just one of those things which the foundation of these university examinations tends to increase. It brings together the busy working every-day world with that world of the past which, like gems embedded in amber, sleeps it may be, but yet lives in those recesses of academical learning ; and I for one believe so firmly in the truth of this, and I confess, while I rejuice in that which has been done, I am not content to rest
322	Speech of the Bishop of Oxford
upon it. I most earnestly desire. in the first place, that the young men of these great and important centres were left longer under training before they were sent out to the life trial. I believe that it would repay them, and repay their parents, if they were left longer under this training before they took their place in the counting-house or the place of business. Instead of weaning them from it, which I know is the idea of some people, I believe it would tend in their eyes to elevate their own pursuits, and to make them understand that it is impossible to give too much either of intellectual or of moral greatness to the mighty interests of increasing the physical riches, and with them the physical efforts and strength of such a nation as this of England. But even with that, though you will think me very exorbitant, I am not content. I desire not only to see the youths of these great centres of living, acting, and thinking humanity left longer in your own schools, but I do most earnestly desire to see more of them sent up to our universities to compete there with men of every grade and of every class. And then I believe that, so far from the university curriculum leading them to look down upon that which is to be the pursuit of their life, the tendency would be for good both upon those whom they met in the university and upon themselves, and upon the community to which they belong. I think that anything which tends to break down those fanciful barriers between the different classes among us has a most healthy and useful effect upon the community at large. I know among the princes of commerce and of manufacture men of the calmest mind and of the largest comprehension, who went from the university to school—on the stool in the counting-house, and learnt there to put to practical effect what they had acquired in the learned body in which they had for a time tarried. I desire to see that increasing and abounding among us, and I think I see in all the progress of these preliminary educations marks that to that too we shall advance. I see it in this increase of the study of the Latin tongue, and in that which, above all, I myself rejoice in, in the present progress of this great cause, the greatly increased number of those who pass now annually in the examination in Faith and in Religion. I read again :—" For the first few years of the examinations, passing in Religion carried with it no marks. Year after year the number of successful candidates was on a decline. After 1862 marks influencing the candidate's position in the class list were allowed, and from that year a great improvement has taken place, showing the wisdom of the change." It is virtually become a regular system, and we read, " Both in seniors and juniors those passing in Faith and Religion are much in excess of previous years. This year 238 seniors entered for Faith and
On the Local Examinations.	323
Religion, 101 passed ; 660 entered of juniors, for the whole of the religious examination, and 526 passed." There are to my mind two separate grounds of gratification in this ; one, that I see in it the promise that this great country is becoming more and more settled down upon the great conviction that religion must underlie the education of redeemed humanity. Secondly, that this trust, freely, nobly given by many who differ in many material points from the Established Church of this land—which is so connected with the universities—shows that they can trust the examiners from these universities to examine fairly and honourably their sons in those matters of faith and religion which they for themselves take up. I think this, too, is a blessed omen, because if God gives to this people more trust one of the other, in these deepest verities, if He should give us hearts linked to one another in these abiding truths, if the jealousy of religious difference could be superseded by the trust of mutual religious confidence, I think one of the greatest boons which could be bestowed upon our common country would have been given to it. And so in this I rejoice too, and I see in it this omen : that there shall be less difficulty in all classes taking the full advantage of the whole university curriculum ; and I do desire to see the time when it shall be as natural for the son of one of the great princes of commerce to have been educated at Oxford as it is now for the son of any one of the great princes of agriculture. I desire to see the lords of these great physical manipulations of matter sending their children with the lords of the old soil of England to learn, and study, and compete together, and to go forth from the common discipline to serve a common master, and to bless a common country.
Y 2
THE VERY REVEREND DEAN STANLEY
ON THE LATE LORD PALMERSTON.
[The following extracts are from a Discourse delivered by Dean Stanley in Westminster Abbey on the 29th of October, being a few days after the death of Lord Palmerston.]
EACH human soul gifted above the souls of common men leaves, as it passes away from this lower world, a light peculiar to itself. As in a mountainous country each lofty peak is illumined with a different hue by the setting sun, so also each of the higher summits of human society is lighted up by the sunset of life with a different colour. Whether the difference arises from the materials of which it is composed, or from the relative position it has occupied, a new and separate lesson is taught by it of truth or of duty, of wisdom or of hope. What, then, are the special lessons which we learn from the life and character of the remarkable man who has just been taken away from us, and to whose memory so great a national tribute has just been paid First, there is this singular peculiarity—that the gifts to which the eminence of the departed statesman was due were gifts far more within the attainment of us all than is commonly supposed. It has been said of Judas NI accabeus, that of all the military chiefs of his time he was the one who accomplished the greatest results with the smallest amount of external resources. Of our late chief it might no less truly be said, that of all political leaders he achieved great success by the most homely and ordinary means. It was that which made his life in so many respects an example and an encouragement to all. The persevering devotion of his days and nights to the public service, and the toil and endurance of more than half a century in the various high stations in which he was employed,—these are qualities which might be imitated by every single person. They, whoever they may be, who are disposed, as so many young men are in the present day, to give themselves up to ease and self-indulgence—avoiding, if they can, everything which costs continued trouble, everything which demands honest, earnest, hard work—must remember that not by such faint-hearted, idle carelessness can either God or man be served
Dean Stanley on the late Lord Palmerston. 325
to any purpose ; or the true end of any human soul be attained, for either this life or the life to come. Let men, whoever they may be, who are working zealously, honestly, and humbly in their several stations, work on the more zealously and faithfully from this day forward, reflecting that in the honours paid to one who was in this respect but a fellow-labourer with themselves, the nation has, in the sight of God, set its seal on the value of work, on the nobleness of toil, on the grandeur of long days of labour, on the dignity of plodding, persevering diligence. Again, the departed statesman won his way not so much by eloquence, or genius, or far-sighted greatness, as by the lesser graces of good humour, gaiety, and kindness of heart, tact, and readiness—lesser graces, doubtless, of which some of the highest characters have been destitute, but graces which are not the less gifts of God, and which even in the house of God we do well to reverence and admire. They who may think it of little moment to take offence at the slightest affront—who by their presence throw a chill over whatever society they enter—they who make the lives of others miserable by wounding their keenest sensibilities—they who poison discussion and embitter controversy by pushing particular views on to the extremest consequences, and by widening differences between man and man—they who think it their duty to make the worst of every one from whom they dissent, and enter a never-ending protest against those who may have done them wrong,—such as these may have higher pretensions, and, it may be, higher claims to honour and respect, yet they will do well to understand the silent rebuke which arises from the new-made grave, and which God designs for their especial benefit. From a statesman who had always a soft word to turn away wrath—who, when attacked, never bore malice towards his enemies, and who was rather the more desirous of seeing in those who opposed him the true merit and value of their essential characters—from him and from the honour paid to him, many an eager partisan, many a hard polemic, many a stern moralist, may learn a lesson. Yet again, the long life which has just closed was an enduring witness to the greatness of that gift which even the heathen recognised—of hope, cheerful, lasting hope. The vicissitudes of the octogenarian chief seem to say to us, " Never despair." From a youth of comparative obscurity, from a middle age of constant turmoil, passing through a career of many changes, were attained at last that serene and bright old age, and that calm and honoured death, which in a measure are within the reach of all, if God so permit, and which we should all try to achieve. Let us never think it is too late, or that our day is past ; let us never lose heart, but hold on to the end, and
326	Dean Stanley
we may at last be victorious and successful, even as he was—it may be in a still nobler cause, and with still more lasting results, to ourselves at least, if not to nations. Nor let us say that it was only the natural result of a buoyant and vigorous constitution. To a great degree no doubt it was so, yet it was also due in a large measure to a kind of quiet conviction that the fitting course for man was to do what was good for the moment, without vainly forecasting the future ; to do the present duty and to leave the results to God. " I do not understand," he once said, " what is meant by the anxiety of responsibility. I take every pains to do what is for the best, and having done that I leave the consequences altogether alone." That strain was, indeed, of a higher kind. It was the strain of inspired wisdom in ancient days,—" Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest." This leads us to another view of the policy of the late Lord Palmerston, in which the humblest may take an interest. If any one were asked what was the thought or belief that from first to last most distinctly guided his policy, he would say his unfailing trust in the greatness of England. He was an Englishman even to excess. It was England, rather than any particular party ; it was the honour and interests of England, rather than the Constitution or the State or the Church of England, that fired his admiration, stimulated his efforts, and secured his fame. For this it was that his name was known throughout the world—in the most secluded village of Calabria, along the shores of the Caspian Sea, or among the wildest solitudes of Thibet. To England the vast length of that laborious life, with whatever shortcomings, was in all simplicity and faithfulness devoted. Let us, then, earnestly reflect on what should be our own duty in our own place in that mighty commonwealth of which we are members no less than he was, and for which we, no less than he, are bound, in the sight of God, to lay down our lives and spend our latest breath. As citizens of England, think of our marvellous history, slowly evolved out of our peculiar situation; think of the fusion of hostile races and hostile institutions within the same narrow limits ; think of the long continuous line of our literature, such as is unknown in any other country ; think of our refuge for freedom ; think of our temperate Monarchy and Constitution, so fearfully and wonderfully wrought out through the toil and conflict of so many centuries ; think of our pure domestic homes; think of the English Prayer-Book, the English Bible woven into our inmost and earliest recollections : think of our liberty of conscience and of speech, which gives to conscience and to speech double and treble value. These.
On the late Lord Palmerston.	327
are some of the elements that go to make up the whole idea that is conjured up by the sacred name of England, and for which our lamented statesman lived and died. What England is or will be, depends in great measure on her own individual sons and daughters. Nations are the schools in which individual souls are trained. The virtues and sins of a nation are those of each one of its citizens, on a larger scale, and written in gigantic characters. To be a citizen of England, according to our lost chief, was the greatest boast and the greatest claim on protection and influence that a man could show in any part of the world. To be a citizen of England, in the fullest sense, worthy of all that England has been and might be, worthy of our noble birthright and of our boundless opportunities, we should seek, every one of us, not in presumptuous confidence, but in all Christian humility, to redeem the time that is still before us, and to understand what the will of God is for ourselves and for our children. It is impossible not to feel that we are witnessing not only the flight of an individual spirit into the unseen world, but the close of one generation and one stage of our history, and the beginning of another. We have climbed to the height of one of those ridges which mark off the past from the future, we are in the water-shed of the dividing stream. We have reached the turning point whence the stream of political and national life will flow in another direction, taking its rise from another source, to fertilize other climes. On that eminence, so to speak, we now stand, and to this new start in our pilgrimage each one of us has now to look forward. It is not in England as in other countries, where the national will is but little felt, compared with the will of a single ruler. That public opinion of which we hear so much, and which was believed to be the guiding star of the sagacious man who is gone, is moulded by every one who has a will, or a heart, or a head, or a conscience of his own, throughout this vast empire. If it be true that to follow, not to lead, public opinion must henceforth be the course of our statesmen, then our responsibilities and the responsibility of the nation are deepened further still. Just as in a beleaguered city, where every sentinel knows that on his single fidelity might depend the fate of all. A single resolute mind, loving the truth only, has before now brought the whole mind of a nation around itself ; a single pure spirit has, by its own holy aspirations, breathed itself into the corrupt mass of a national literature ; and a single voice raised honestly in behalf of truth, justice, and mercy has blasted for ever practices which were once universal. So I would call upon men, in the prospect of the changes and trials, whatsoever they are, which are now before them—in the midst of
323 Dean Stanley on the late Lord Palmerston.
the memories by which they are surrounded, in the face of that mighty future to which they are all advancing—to forget " those things that are behind"—to forget in him who is gone all that was of the earth earthy, and reach forward to his character in all that is immortal—in his freedom from party spirit, and in his self-devotion to the public weal. Let men forget, too, in the past and present generation, all that is behind the best spirit of our age, all that is before in the true spirit of the Gospel, all that is behind the requirements of the most enlightened and the most Christian conscience, and reach forward, one and all, towards those great things which they trust are still before them —the great problems which our age, if any, might solve—the great tasks which our nation alone can accomplish—the great doctrines of our common faith which they may have opportunities of grasping with a firmer hand than ever they had before—the great reconciliation of things old with things new, of things human with things sacred, of class with class, of man with man, of nation with nation, of Church with Church, of all with God. This, and nothing less than this, is the high calling of the nineteenth century—this is the high calling of England—this is the high calling of every English citizen ; and he who answers not to this high call is utterly unworthy of his birthright as a member of this our kingly commonwealth.
SPEECH
OF
TIlE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE,
AT GLASGOW.
[The following Speech was delivered by the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the City Hall, Glasgow, on the 1st of November, on which day the presentation of the freedom of that city to Mr. Gladstone took place. Mr. Gladstone had previously addressed a large meeting at the Trades Hall.]
I NEED hardly tell you that it is with the liveliest and deepest feelings of satisfaction that I accept from your hands, my lord, the gift you have been pleased to present to me, to be preserved, I hope, for many long years among the records and the treasures of my family. I have no doubt—indeed I feel too well assured—that a critical judgment might find ample scope for remark upon the too flattering terms in which you have been pleased to advert to my public conduct, but still I presume to say that such acknowledgments as you are pleased to make, on occasions like the present, of the feeble and humble efforts of any individual to render services to his country, are the choicest rewards that we can receive for the past, and are the greatest encouragements and incentives, the greatest and most powerful aids, for the future. But such occasions lead us to review the position in which we stand, and to reflect upon that which has been and that which is to be; and perhaps it might at first sight appear strange if upon an occasion so joyous, when I have received at your hands an honour so deeply valued, I confess to you that a powerful, perhaps a predominant, feeling in my mind at the present juncture is a feeling of solitariness in the struggles and in the career of public life. The Lord Provost has alluded briefly, but touchingly and justly alluded, to the loss we have just sustained, and has intimated to you that the covenant which brings me before you was,a covenant concluded before that loss had taken place ; but indeed the retrospect of the last five years is in this regard a touching and melancholy retrospect. Sad, numerous, and wide have been the blanks which death has made in the ranks of our public men, and not alone of our official public men,
330	Speech of Air. Gladstone
for many in this country are the public men, many are the statesmen who render true and vital service to the land, but who have never touched a public salary. Within these five years we have lost him whom I must name as the most illustrious in his position and his office—the beloved husband of our Queen, revered, admired, loved by all classes of the community, and one whose departure from this mortal home has inflicted on the Sovereign so dear to our hearts a loss that never on this side the grave can be repaired. I pass from the Prince Consort to another name, widely, indeed, separated from him in social rank, but yet a name which is great at this moment in the esteem of the country, and which will be for ever great in its annals—I mean the name of Richard Cobden—so simple, so true, so brave, and so far-seeing a man, who knew how to associate himself at their very root with the deep interests of the community in which he lived, and to whom it was given to achieve, through the moral force of reason and persuasion, numerous triumphs that have made his name immortal. But if I look to the ranks of official life, perhaps it may cause even surprise, though we know that our losses have been heavy, when I say that my own recollection supplies me—and there may be more which that recollection does not suggest—that my own recollection supplies me with the names of no less than 17 persons who have died within the last five years, and whose duty and privilege it was to advise the Sovereign as members of the Government of this country. As to the last of these men, the distinguished man whose loss at this moment the whole community in every class and in every corner of the land deeply and sincerely deplores, we have this consola-tion—that it had pleased the Almighty to afford him strength and courage which carried him to a ripe old age in the active service of his country. It has not been so with all. It has been my lot to follow to the grave several of those distinguished men who have been called away from the scene of their honourable labours—not, indeed, before they had acquired the esteem and confidence of the country, but still at a period when the minds and expectations of their fellow-countrymen were fondly fixed upon the thought of what they might yet achieve for the public good. Two of your own countrymen, Lord Elgin and Lord Dalhousie, Lord Canning, Lord Herbert, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, and the Duke of Newcastle, by some singular dispensation of Providence, have been swept away in the full maturity of their faculties and in the early stages of middle life—a body of men strong enough of themselves in all the gifts of wisdom and of knowledge, of experience and of eloquence, to have equipped a Cabinet for the service of the ,country. And therefore, my
At Glasgow.	331
lord, when I look back upon the years that have passed, though they have been joyful years in many respects, because they have been years in which the Parliament of this country has earned fresh and numerous titles to the augmented confidence of its citizens, they are also mournful in that I seem to see the long procession of the figures of the dead, and I feel that those who are left behind are in one sense solitary upon the stage of public life. But, my Lord Provost, it is characteristic of this country that her people have been formed for many generations in those habits of thought and action which belong to regulated freedom, and one happy and blessed result of that description of public education is, that the country ceases to be dependent for its welfare upon this man or upon that. There never has yet been in the history of the world a nation truly free—I mean a nation that is free not only in laws and institutions but also in thoughts and acts ; there has never been a nation in this sense possessed of freedom, and which has likewise had large and spreading and valuable interests, which has found a want of men to defend them. Nor, my Lord Provost, I am thankful to say, have we yet been reduced to this extremity, and I trust that I am not going beyond the liberty of an occasion such as this when, standing before you at a moment of such public interest, I venture to express my confidence personally in the state of the Government and the country. Her Majesty, well aware of the heavy loss which we have sustained, and wisely exercising her high prerogative, has chosen from among the statesmen of the country Earl Russell to fill the place of Prime Minister. I know well the inclination of those whom I am addressing, and also of the whole community, to trust more to the evidence of facts than to that of words, which may be idle and delusive, and I presume to say before you that the name of Lord Russell is in itself a pledge and a promise to a people. A man who fought for British liberty, for our institutions, and for our laws, but with a view to the strengthening of those laws, who has fought on a hundred fields for their improvement, is not likely now, when in his 73rd honourable year, to unlearn the lesson of his whole life, to change the direction of his career, and to forfeit the inheritance which he has secured in the hearts and memories of his countrymen. Therefore, my Lord Provost, I venture to think that the country has reasonable assurance in the name of the person who has for the second time assumed the responsibility of guiding the councils of a Crown, with the aid of many experienced and distinguished persons whom I am happy to call my colleagues,—I therefore hope that the country has reasonable assurance that the same wise and enlightened spirit which has for the last 30 or
332	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
35 years distinguished in the main the policy of British legislation, and the conduct of the Executive Government, will still continue to be exhibited by those who will have the responsibility and direction of public affairs. My Lord Provost, if we look to the acts of the period through which we have been passing, they are indeed too numerous to allow of reference in detail. The acts of legislation and of government in which my share has been, if earnest, yet secondary—those acts of legislation and government have embraced almost every subject that can be of interest to a free and civilized community. In the period which our own recollection comprehends, we have seen the popular franchise wisely and temperately, yet boldly, enlarged ; we have seen the education of the people immensely extended, with, at the same time, all due regard to the sanctity and integrity of religion on the one hand, and to the feelings of private conscience on the other ; we have seen religious disabilities, for the most part, swept away ; we have seen questions of social policy, deeply interesting and deeply momentous, asserting from year to year greater and still greater importance ; we have seen, as I have said, the principle on which and the method by which taxes are taken from the people largely reconsidered and revised ; and we have seen all these changes made with a view to the promotion of one great end—the freedom of intercourse not only among the members of our own community, but also among the various members of the great human family, the nations of the world. Well, my Lord Provost, in my prime I have taken part in the struggles of political parties, and it may be my lot to continue to bear a share in them. I do not desire to shrink from them, and I will not disavow nor undervalue the use of party combinations. It is by means of party combinations as a general rule, and by those means alone, that the matured convictions of experience can find the final and distinctive expression in the form of laws and institutions ; but yet party is only an instrument ; it is an instrument for ends higher than itself, and those ends are the strength, the welfare, and the prosperity of our country. We may now presume to say, that it is the peculiar felicity of our time that the good of each to the country is not now to be regarded, as it was in old times, as something distinct from the good of the rest of mankind ; but, on the contrary, when we labour for the advancement of our countrymen we labour likewise for the advantage of the whole world. Therefore, my Lord Provost, when I look back on the numberless changes in these various chapters of legislative and constitutional improvement, I confess that the most fertile result of all,—although I have no desire to disparage the others, for they are intimately woven
At Glasgow.	333
together, as it were, with a silver cord,—the most fertile result, probably, is that which I may describe in the well-known familiar and beloved words, the promotion of free trade. It is quite unnecessary before this audience—I may venture to say it is unnecessary before any audience of my countrymen—to dwell at this period of our experience upon the material benefits that have resulted frorri free trade, upon the enormous augmentation of national power which it has produced, or even upon the increased concord which it has tended so strongly to promote throughout the various sections of the community. But it is the characteristic of the system which we so denominate, that while it comes forward with homely pretensions, and professes, in the first instance, to address itself mainly to questions of material and financial interests, yet, iu point of fact, it is fraught and charged throughout v. ith immense masses of moral, social, and political results. I will not now speak to the very large measure of those results which are domestic, but I would ask you to consider with me for a few moments the effect of the system of unrestricted intercourse upon the happiness of the human family at large. Now, as far as that happiness is connected with the movements of nations, war has been its great implement. And what have been the great causes of wars ? They do not come upon the world by an inevitable necessity, or through a providential visitation. They are not to be compared with pestilences and famines, even; in that respect, though we have learnt, and justly learnt, that much of what we have been accustomed to call providential visitation is owing to our neglect of the wise and prudent means which man ought to find in the just exercise of his faculties for the avoidance of calamity ; but with respect to wars, they are the direct and universal consequence of the unrestricted, too commonly of the unbridled, passions and lusts of men. If we go back to a very early period of society, we find a state of things in which, as betweeen one individual and another, no law obtained--a state of things in which the first idea almost of those who desired to better their condition was simply to better it by the abstraction of their neighbour's property. In the early periods of society, piracy and unrestrained freebooters among individuals were what wars, fur the most part, have been in the more advanced periods of human history. Why, what is the case with a war ? It is a case in which both cannot be right, but in which both may be wrong. I believe if the impartiality of the historian surveys a very large proportion of the wars that have desolated the world—some, indeed, there may be, and undoubtedly there have been, in which the arm of valour has been raised simply for the cause
334	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
of freedom and justice—that the most of them will be found to belong to that less satisfactory category in which folly, passion, greediness, on both sides, have led to effects which afterwards, when too late, have been so much deplored. We have had in the history of the world religious wars. The period of these wars I trust we have now outlived. I am not at all sure that there was not quite as much to be said for them as for a great many other wars which have been recorded in the page of history. The same folly which led to the one led in another form to the other. We have had dynastic wars, wars of succession, in which for long periods of years the heads of rival families have fought over the bleeding persons of their people to determine who should govern them. I trust we have overlived the period of wars of that class. Another class of wars, of a more dangerous and yet a more extensive description, have been territorial wars. No doubt it is a very natural, though it is a very dangerous and a very culpable sentiment, which leads nations to desire their neighbours' property, and I am sorry to think that we have had examples—perhaps we have an example even at this moment before our eyes —to show that even in the most civilized parts of the world, even in the midst of the oldest civilization upon the continent of Europe, that thirst for territorial acquisition is not yet extinct. But I wish to call your attention to a peculiar form in which during the later part of human history this thirst for territorial acquisition became an extensive cause of bloodshed. It was when the colonizing power took possession of the European nations. It seems that the world was not wide enough for them. One would have thought, upon looking over the broad places of the earth, and thinking how small a portion of them is even now profitably occupied, and how much smaller a portion of them a century or two centuries ago—one would have thought there would have been ample space for all to go and help themselves ; but, notwithstanding this, we found it necessary, in the business of planting colonies, to make those colonies the cause of bloody conflicts with our neighbours ; and there was at the bottom of that policy this old lust of territorial aggrandizement. When the state of things in Europe had become so far settled that that lust could not be as freely indulged as it might in barbarous times, we then carried our armaments and our passions across the Atlantic, and we fought upon American and other distant soils for the extension of our territory. That was one of the most dangerous and plausible, in my opinion, of all human errors ; it was one to which a great portion of the wars of the last century was due ; but had our forefathers then known, as we now know, the blessings of free commercial intercourse, all that bloodshed
At Glasgow.	335
would have been spared. For what was the dominant idea that governed that policy ? It was this, that colonizing, indeed, was a great function of European nations, but the purpose of that colonization was to reap the profits of extensive trade with the colonies which were founded, and, consequently, it was not the error of one nation or of another—it was the error of all nations alike. It was the. error of Spain in Mexico, it was the error of Portugal in Brazil, it was the error of France in Canada and Louisiana, it was the error of England in her colonies in the West Indies and her possessions in the East ; and the whole idea of colonization, all the benefits of colonization, were summed up in this, that when you had planted a colony on the other side of the ocean, you were to allow that colony to trade exclusively and solely with yourselves. But from that doctrine flowed immediately all those miserable wars, because if people believed, as they then believed, that the trade with colonies must, in order to be beneficial, necessarily be exclusive, it followed that at once there arose in the mind of each country a desire to be possessed of the colonies of other countries in order to secure the extension of this exclusive trade. In fact, my Lord Provost, I may say, such was the perversity of the misguided ingenuity of man that during the period to which I refer he made commerce itself, which ought to be the bond and link of the human race, the cause of war and bloodshed, and wars were justified both here and elsewhere—justified when they were begun and gloried in when they had ended—upon the ground that their object and effect had been to obtain from some other nation a colony which previously had been theirs, but which now was ours, and which in our folly we regarded as the sole means of extending the intercourse and the industry of our countrymen. Well now, my Lord Provost, that was a most dangerous form of error, and for the very reason that it seemed to abandon the old doctrine of the unrestricted devastation of the world, and to contemplate a peaceful end ; but I am thankful to say that we have entirely escaped from that delusion. It may be that we do not wisely when we boast ourselves over our fathers. The probability is that as their errors crept in unperceived upon them they did not know their full responsibility ; so other errors in directions as yet undetected may be creeping upon us. Modesty bids us in our comparison, whether with other ages or with other countries, to be thankful—at least, we ought to be—for the downfall of every form of error, and determined we ought to be that nothing shall be done by us to give countenance to its revival, but that we will endeavour to assist those less fortunate than ourselves in emancipating themselves from the like delusions. I need not
336	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
say that as respects our colonies they have ceased to be—I would almost venture to say a possible, at any rate they have ceased to be a probable cause of war, for now we believe that the greatness of our country is best promoted in its relations with our colonies by allowing them freely and largely to enjoy every privilege that we possess ourselves ; and so far from grudging it, if we find that there are plenty of American ships trading with Calcutta, we rejoice in it, because it contributes to the wealth and prosperity of our Indian empire, and we are perfectly assured that the more that wealth and prosperity are promoted the larger will be the share of it accruing to ourselves through the legitimate operation of the principles of trade. But the beneficial influence of free trading intercourse is far wider than this. You stated that a treaty had been made with France, and certainly a treaty with France is even in itself a measure of no small consequence ; but that which gives to a measure of the kind its highest value is its tendency to produce beneficial imitations in other quarters ; it is the influence which is given to the cause of freedom of trade by the great example held out by the two most powerful nations of Europe; it is the fact that in concluding that treaty we did not give to one a privilege which was withheld from another, and that our treaty with France was, in effect, a treaty with the world. And what are the moral consequences which engagements of this kind carry in their train ? I know there is no part of the providential government of the world which tends more deeply to impress the mind with a sense of the profound wisdom and boundless benevolence of the Almighty than when we observe how truly and how universally great effects spring from small causes, and high effects from causes which appear to have been mean. Now, we have said that, with respect to the freedom of commercial intercourse, reduction of tariffs, abolition of duties, and readjustment of commercial laws, that these are things which in the first instance touch material interests, and there are some men so widely mistaken as to suppose that they touch material interests alone. There are some men, aye, and high-minded men too, who would bid you beware of such things lest they should lead simply to the worship of Mammon. Now, the worship of Mammon is dangerous to us all, but, as far as regards the great masses, the more numerous masses of every community, that portion of the human family which at present has not much to spare in respect to the essentials of raiment, of food, and of lodging—that portion of the human family has hardly yet reached the province in which the worship of Mammon is wont to be dreaded ; but that is a subject for the private conscience, and a subject of the greatest
At Glasgow.	337
importance. There is no doubt that an infinity of moral danger surrounds a state of things in which multitudes of men find themselves rapidly possessed of great fortunes and entirely changing their social position. I do not deny that at the proper time and in the proper place it is a subject for the most solemn consideration ; but I don't think it the duty of Parliament to withhold laws which are good from any fear of their leading to the worship of Mammon. That is an argument which, if good in one case, would be urged with equal force against all blessings of Providence; for what is more dangerous to the human soul than those blessings of Providence when their great Author is forgotten ? But, I say, it is marvellous to see how the Almighty makes provision through the satisfaction of our lower wants and appetites for the attainment of higher aims, and the relations of business are doubtless founded upon pecuniary profit, as are also the relations of the tradesmen and customers ; yet what is their immediate aim ? The customer wants to be supplied wherever those supplies are best and cheapest, while the tradesman seeks to dispose of them wherever they are dearest. What are the relations between the employer and employed ? The master wishes to produce as cheaply as he can, and the workman wishes to get the best wages he can. The landlord obtains the highest rent he can safely ask, and the tenant obtains his farm as cheaply as he can; and such is the rule that runs through all these pecuniary relations of life. Human beings on the two sides of the water are coming to know one another better, and to esteem one another more ; they are beginning to be acquainted with one another's common interest and feeling, and to unlearn the prejudices which make us refuse to give to other nations and peoples in distant lands credit for being governed by the same motives and principle as ourselves. We may say that labelled upon all those parcels of goods there is a spark of kindly feeling from one country to the other, and the ship revolving between those lands is like the shuttle upon a loom, weaving the web of concord between the nations of the earth. Therefore I feel that that which may be in its first and in its outer aspect a merely secular work, is in point of fact a work full of moral purpose, and those who have given themselves to it, either in times when the system of free trade has become prosperous, or in earlier times before those principles were accepted as they now are, could easily afford to bear the reproach that they were promoting the worship of Mammon, or that they were conversant only with the exterior and inferior interests of men. In all cases it is the quiet, unassuming prosecution of daily duty by which we best fulfil the purpose to which the Almighty has appointed us ; and the humble task, as it may appear, of industry and of com-
z
338	Speech of Mr. Gladstone
merce, contemplating, in the first instance, little more than the necessities and the augmentation of our comforts, has in it nothing that prevents its being pursued in a spirit of devotion to higher interests; and if it be honestly and well pursued, I believe that it tends, with a power quiet and silent, indeed, like the power of your vast machines, but at the same time manifold and resistless, to the mitigation of the woes and sorrows that afflict humanity, and to the acceleration of better times for the children of our race. Wars, my Lord Provost, are not to be put down by philosophical nor, I believe, even exclusively religious argument. The deepest prejudices of man and the greatest social evils are only supplanted and undermined by causes of silent operation ; and I must say that, for my own part, I am given to dwell upon the thought that the silent and tranquil operations of these causes in connexion with the vast industry of this country constitute for us not only a promise of stability and material power, but likewise a mission that has been placed in our hands, that in being benefactors to ourselves we may also hope to be benefactors to the world. And, Sir, I trust, and I may say I feel well convinced, that the ideas upon which the whole of these movements depend are now well rooted in this country. Such prejudices as may remain adverse to freedom of industry or freedom of trade in any of the multiform developments are, I hope and believe, gradually fading away. It is not easy to part with them, because we must admit, and especially we must admit so far as the working classes are concerned, that the first reorganization of these principles may involve, or may appear to involve, something of a personal sacrifice ; but the whole mind in this community is perfectly, I believe, fixed in the conviction that these principles are the only principles upon which a country can be justly governed ; nor need I say that which is so well known, that this, at least, is a country in which the conviction of the country must be the regulator of the State. My Lord Provost, I once more thank you for the honour that you have been pleased to do me. I think that, so far as the prospects of our politics are concerned, the reference that I have made to the name of the distinguished person who has succeeded to the head of the Government is, perhaps, more becoming, and is likewise of a character to carry greater weight, than any mere professions that I could lay down before you of a desire to serve my country. It is an arduous task to which we are called. I do not hesitate to say that the most painful, the most frequently recurring sentiments of public life must, I think, be a sense of the inadequacy of resources, inadequacy of physical strength, inadequacy of mental strength, to meet its innumerable obligations; at the same time that pain is not aggravated by a sense that our shortcomings are
At Glasgow.	339
severely judged. We serve a Sovereign whose confidence has ever been largely given to the counsellors who are charged with public responsibility, and we act for a people ever ready to overlook shortcomings, to pardon errors, to construe intentions favourably, and to recognise with a warmth and generosity beyond measure any amount of real service that may have been conferred. We ought, therefore, to be cheerful ; we ought, above all, to be grateful in the position in which we stand. And these are not mere idle words, but they are what the situation evidently demands and exacts from us all, when we assure you that it is a rich reward to come among great masses of our most cultivated and intelligent fellow-citizens, to find ourselves cheered onward in our course by acknowledgments such as that which you have given me to-day. We have little to complain of ; we have much, indeed, to acknowledge with thankfulness ; and most of all we have to delight in the recollection that the politics of this world are—perhaps very slowly, with many hindrances, many checks, many reverses, yet that upon the whole they are—gradually assuming a character which promises to be less and less one of aggression and offence ; less and less one of violence and bloodshed ; more and more one of general union and friendliness ; more and more one connecting the common reciprocal advantages, and the common interests pervading the world, and uniting together the whole of the human family in a manner which befits rational and immortal beings, owing their existence to one Creator, and having but one hope either for this world or the next.
SPEECH
OF
THE RIGHT HON. LORD STANLEY
ON PHYSICAL EDUCATION.
[The following Address was delivered by Lord Stanley on opening the new
Gymnasium at Liverpool on the 6th of November.]
IN proceeding to open this gymnasium, which I believe to be in point of size, of arrangements, and of its fittings, one of the most perfect yet established anywhere in Europe, I need not trouble you with more than a few introductory words. You probably know its history as well as I do. You know that in the main it owes its existence to the energy and perseverance of one townsman of yours. I mean our friend Mr. Melly. It was mainly by his efforts, aided by those of a few supporters as zealous as himself, that the requisite sum of 10,0001. was raised for its construction. I think it is creditable to Liverpool that such an amount could be raised without thought of profit to the contributors for such a purpose. I say without thought of profit, for I believe those who have invested in it most largely will be the first to tell you that though, for the sake of the example, and as an encouragement to others, they will be glad to see an ample return, yet, so far as their personal interests are concerned, every one of them will be perfectly satisfied if the concern only pays its way. And that it will pay its way I think you have every reason to expect from the very brief statement of facts which I shall give. The total cost has been under 14,0001., of which 10,0001. has been raised by shares, and the remaining 4,0001. by a mortgage on the building. The yearly expenses, including interest, are calculated not to exceed 1,0001., and since the returns for the six months are 7001., with arrangements hardly completed and the whole plan still untried, I think there is no reasonable doubt of the institution being self-supporting. Now I lay some stress on that, not for the sake of the thing itself—Liverpool is rich enough to pay both for its pleasures and its wants—but because the experiment is new. I am not aware that it has been or is being tried on an
Speech of Lord Stanley on Physical Education. 341
equally large scale anywhere else in the United Kingdom except in Edinburgh, and if it can be made to work there, there is no reason why it should not work equally well in every large town throughout the country. I hear it said, and believe it is true, that in Manchester they are only waiting to see the result, and if the result be what we expect, a similar building will very soon be set on foot there. I will just mention, before leaving this part of the subject, that the subscribers for evening attendance are 500, who pay 1/. each for six months, and 30s. for the year. There are, in addition, other subscribers, at a higher rate, entitled to daily admission. The number of this last as yet is not great, 60 or 70 I believe, but it is increasing daily, and there is yet a third class, young lads chiefly, for whom the place is open on certain days of the week, and special training provided. Of the arrangements I need say nothing ; you can judge of them for yourselves ; but I congratulate the managers on having in Mr. Hulley a director w ho is working not merely for the salary which he earns, and which they will be the first to admit is a very inadequate recompense for his labour, but who is working out of a real and even enthusiastic interest in the business which he is employed to do. And uow one word as to the object, or rather the objects, which the promoters have in view. Many people look on a gymnasium, a place of teaching, that is, for athletic exercises, as though it were a yacht club, or a chess club, or an Alpine club—a thing which is a bobby to a few individuals, and which others join for amusement or because it is a fashion, or because it helps to pass the time. Now if it were only that, though I should say nothing against it, and though I should think that the promoters had made a very sensible investment of their spare cash and their spare time, I should hardly have considered that it required or deserved the formality of a ceremonial opening, and assuredly I should not have done that which is never to me perfectly agree-able—I should not have stood up to make a speech on the subject. But I hold that it is far more than a mere place of amusement. We in Europe, and more especially we in England, are entering on a new phase of social existence. Already more than half the population of England resides in towns. With peace maintained, and with an increase or even a continuance of present rate of prosperity, the proportion will in a few years be far greater. But I need not appeal to general statistics. We who have lived to middle age in this neighbourhood—we who have seen this great city extending from the new docks of Garston on the one side to the sand-hills of Bootle on the other, who have watched the gradual disappearance of the green fields and the spread in their stead of streets and lanes, and who have daily before our eyes the
342	Speech of Lord Stanley
long lines of villas which spring up at every adjoining railway. station—at Broad Green, at Huyton, and at Roby—should require no proof from books or Parliamentary returns to tell us how rapid and how continuous is the increase on the part of the population engaged in some one of the many branches of commerce, and destined, for the most part, to sedentary pursuits in crowded localities. What is happening here is, though not quite to an equal extent, happening also in a great part of England. But we know, also, something else. We know that even under the greatly improved sanitary conditions of the last few years (and let me say, in passing, that it is nothing less than a shame to us, that notwithstanding all that has been effected—and it is a great deal—Liverpool should stand nearly highest on the death-rate of England), even after all that has been done—all that drainage, and water supply, and wide streets, and parks can do—urban life is never so healthy as that which is passed in the pure air and active pursuits of the country. What are the causes of that difference ? I am not now speaking of the labouring and artisan class, with whom, I admit at once, that this institution has little to do. But if I come to the class above them—to the class of clerks, of young men engaged in shops, of all whose days are passed sitting on stools in offices, often close and crowded—and I might take in a higher class still—I say at once, that one great cause of feeble constitution and depressed energies is the absence of bodily or muscular exertion, combined with the pressure of what is in some degree mental occupation, though often mental occupation of a very mechanical kind. Of course habit will do much. Of course, also, individual constitutions vary. But every medical man, and every one who has studied sanitary matters, knows that life passed within four walls during the week, with only the variety of a walk on Saturdays and Sundays, will very seldom be a healthy life in the true sense. For by " healthy " we mean, or ought to mean, not the mere absence of disease, not the mere capacity to go through an ordinary day's work, but that state in which existence itself is felt to be an enjoyment, in which all simple and natural pleasures are appreciated, and the little everyday anxieties of our business sit lightly upon us. If there are, as is undoubtedly the case, classes among us who run all to muscle, and with whom brain never gets a chance of being de-veloped—navvies, ploughmen, and the like—so there are classes who seem to have no further idea of using their muscles than is implied in walking to their place of business (and very often they take an omnibus to save the time), and whose utmost bodily exertion is driving a pen for hours together, and handling their knife and fork at dinner. Now I say, and I hope without offence,
On Pliysiccd Education.	343
that in the latter class the human result is to my mind hardly more satisfactory than in the former. Take your navvy, and you have a fine sample of animal development, hut I am afraid you have very little else. Take your clerk, shut up from year's end to year's end : you have a quick, active brain, the nervous system over-excitable, but the animal frame feeble and badly developed. I respect him. I am sorry for him. The fault is not his ; but that of the life he leads. But I say of him that he is not, physically speaking, the stuff out of which we wish the middle classes of England to be made. If it were possible—which I fear it hardly is—to trace the history of families in detail, we should be startled to find how many of those engaged in purely sedentary pursuits die out ; and how the gaps have to be filled up, year after year, from the hardier rural population. There are other evils of a purely sedentary life, to which in this company I can scarcely advert. One is that physical feebleness leads to depression. That depression may be relieved by the easy and always accessible resource of drink ; and then, sooner or later, we know the end. In other respects, too, medical men and all who have studied health questions will understand the very vague phrases I have used. It is not easy to overrate the degree to which habits of morality, among men under middle age, are connected with healthy physical conditions, and, above all, with sufficient bodily exercise. Well, then, I think we shall agree as to this proposition, that in Liverpool, as in all great towns, there exists a class, exceedingly numerous and yearly increasing, for whom, in the course of their business, no opportunity of bodily training or exercise is provided. Can they make such opportunities for themselves ? Of course, in a certain sense, they can. There is no physical impossibility
in it.	But our climate is damp and dull, our streets are not
attractive, and perhaps one of the least entertaining of human occupations is what is called " taking a constitutional " on the high road. There is also the expenditure of time. An establishment like this gives exercise in a concentrated form ; and its rooms will be open—will probably be must frequented—in the evening ; that is, at the time of day when, during several months in the year, out-door nature, especially in the town, is not very agreeable. So much I have to say of the uses of this building. Only one word more. I do not fear that support will be wanted. Those who have watched the progress of the movement tell me that, among the young men who take to these exercises, many do so with a kind of enthusiasm which is quite remarkable to witness. Still, I find no fault with that. We all like to see men take up a thing in earnest, whether it be work or play. But to those who are keenest about it I would offer one word of warning.
344 Speech of Lord Stanley on Physical Education,.
Recollect that it is a thing that may be easily overdone: Do not ride a hobby too hard ! The object, the national object of a training of this kind is not to make athletes out of men who have not to live by their muscles, but to develope sound and healthy and manly constitutions.
SPEECH
OF
MR. JOHN BRIGHT, RP.,
AT BLACKBURN.
[The following Speech was delivered by Mr. Bright at Blackburn on the 30th of November, on the occasipn of a public banquet being given in that town to Mr. J. Pilkington, late M.P. for the borough.]
You will not be surprised when I say that I attend this meeting with feelings of a very mixed character. I am very sorry that the opportunity should have arrived to give you cause to hold this meeting for the purpose of showing that, although your late representative is no longer your representative in Parliament, you entertain for him an undiminished respect ; but I am very glad to be here that I may add my share to the general testimony of respect which we are paying to him to-night. You know Mr. Pilkington in Blackburn, and I have known him for eighteen years in London, and I venture to say that I believe during those eighteen years there has not been a man in the House who has more intelligently and faithfully fulfilled his duty to his constituents than has your late respected representative. He had that peculiar quality which my experience has led me to observe is so often wanting in members of Parliament—the quality of an absolute and entire trustworthiness. I regarded your late election as what I should call a blunder, by which men who did not mean to do so much mischief as they have done by bad management have brought a temporary catastrophe upon the borough ; and although I have often heard from Mr. Pilkington that the state of his health made it very doubtful whether he could long remain in Parliament, yet I venture to hope that at some not distant period his health will still permit him to stand before you again as a candidate to receive almost an unanimous election from his fellow townsmen, and from those who know him so well. But whether your election was a blunder or not, I have asked myself how it happens that there can possibly be in a populous manufacturing town a Tory party strong enough to return two members to Parliament, and I find that in this county, which very ignorant people at head-quarters sometimes fancy to be very democratic, we
346	Speech of Mr. Bright
have three great populations, each of which is represented by two Tory members—the great commerciality of Liverpool and the great manufacturing boroughs of Preston and Blackburn. Now, if we did not know this to be the fact, we should scarcely believe it to be possible,
for hardly anything can be more strange, hardly anything more discreditable, hardly anything which it is more difficult to account for, than that these great manufacturing and industrial populations should permit themselves to be represented in the Imperial Parliament by members of that party whose whole career has been one of permanent and virulent hostility to com-merce—this Tory party ; for it is extremely busy now, and has been for some years, in depreciating the great body of their countrymen, and denouncing them as unfit to vote for members of Parliament. I shall take the trouble to look back for a little over what the Americans would call the records or history of this party. The great charge which I have to make against this party is this —that it has been as long as it has endured in our history opposed to right, to justice, and to morality in all legislation and administration of the affairs of this kingdom. We need not go back to 1760, when this party, as it now is, first took shape, and obtained possession of power, which it continued to hold almost uninterruptedly for about seventy years. The history of that Administration is the history of almost continuous war, of enormous debt, of crushing taxes, of wide-spread pauperism, and during its later years especially,—the later years of the great war, and the years which succeeded that war,—a period of almost the extinction of freedom in this country. It is not necessary to go back so far. We need only go back to the times which are clearly in the recollection of most of us, something less than forty years. There is not a single question on which we now pride ourselves as an intelligent, an advancing country,—there is not a single great measure Which has administered to the welfare of the great body of the people, which has not been systematically opposed by the Tory party. Not forty years ago there existed on the statute-book of this country laws which were enacted in the time of Charles II., —laws which were intended to weigh with especial force upon members of the Roman Catholic Church, and upon all persons connected with the Nonconformist and Dissenting Churches. I allude to the Acts called the Test Act and the Corporation Act. The objects of those Acts were these : of the Test Act, that no person should hold office, or receive emolument, or perform duties under the Crown of this kingdom, except after taking certain tests, which neither Roman Catholics nor Dissenters could take, the object being absolutely to exclude them from the rights of citizenship, from its duties, from its honours, and from its rewards. The
At Blackburn.	347
Corporation Act was intended to exclude the same portion of the population from all participation in the municipal government of the various towns and cities of the kingdom ; and yet, when it was proposed in 1828—so short a time since as that—that these Acts should be repealed, and a Bill for that purpose was prepared by the present Prime Minister, the whole Tory party and the Tory Government of that day were opposed to the repeal. Then, if you come to the next year, there was another great measure touching a similar question,—the question of the relief of the Roman Catholic population, which being six millions in number in Great Britain and. Ireland, was not permitted to have in Parliament a single representative a member of its own Church ; and when it was proposed that that monstrous and iniquitous system should be abolished, it was done in the teeth of the Tory party, by what they call the treachery, but we call the inevitable concessions, of their leaders, who, as we all know, forfeited for a long period the confidence of their supporters by the measure of justice which they accorded to the Roman Catholic population of the kingdom. Three years after there came that other great measure, which gave a share in the representation to the town of Blackburn, with its cotton factories, its steam engines, and its great population ; but at the time, as you well know, every Tory—I speak of them as a party—every Tory yearned towards rotten boroughs, and denied the right of the people to be heard in Parliament ; and with such persistency and resolution did they do this, that they drove this country to within twenty-four hours of a revolution. Indeed, it was not till there was a manifestation of opinion and of power, for which they say they are waiting now, that they consented that the Reform Bill should pass ; and, if you have ever seen a picture—an engraving of which I have in my house—of the passing of the Reform Bill, and of the Royal assent being given to it in the House of Lords, you will find that the Ministerial side of the Hodse is full of Whig and Liberal peers, while the benches of the Tory and Opposition side are entirely empty. They did not give their countenance, their noble countenance, to confer on the people of this country the most plain and undoubted of all their constitutional rights—that of being represented in the House of Commons. In 1835 the Bill passed which corrected the corruptions of our municipal and corporate system, and gave to all our towns and cities the power to become corporate boroughs for the purposes of self-government; but this measure, which I hold to have been of the greatest value and importance, was opposed by this party with the same determination, and, I am happy to add, with the same want of success. In 1839 there was the question of education, and the Tory party had
348	Speech of Mr. Bright
great objection to voting the public money to be dispensed through other channels than those of the Established Church, and they almost prevented the establishment of the present system of national help to education on account of their differences with the Government of the day on that particular point. I am not here to defend the present system, which I think has many defects and ought to be improved. It shows the truly selfish, unwise, and antinational policy, and the purely sectarian objects of the Tory party when they refused to allow Parliamentary votes to be distributed among the various denominations for the purpose of the improvement and education of the people. We now come to the next great measure, that of 1846, which repealed a law that I venture to say was the most odious, the most obviously unwise, that in modern times, and among modern nations, existed on any statute-book ; it was a law which condemned the people of this country to periodical returns of famine. We all recollect perfectly well that in those times the population of the manufacturing districts after one or two bad harvests were plunged into a state of suffering more extreme and intolerable than anything endured during the last few years, until at length the wretchedness and necessities of Ireland compelled the Government of Sir Robert Peel to abolish the Corn Laws. The Tory party, cruel, selfish, and unrepentant to the last, quarrelled with that great statesman, inflicted upon him summary vengeance, and in their bitter animosity to a change so beneficial to the country, even, in their desperate passion, shattered their own party. The sugar monopoly came next. In 1840 the people of the country paid 6,000,000/. sterling more for their sugar than it was worth in the world's market, and they did not get nearly as much as half what they would have consumed bad it been cheaper. The sugar monopoly was maintained for the benefit of spendthrift and bankrupt West India proprietors, and the sugar monopoly, of course, was always strenuously supported by the Tory party. The navigation laws, which were intended to make the transit of every article of your manufactures to other parts of the world and of those things which you received in return unnecessarily costly,—the navigation laws, of course, were supported strongly by the Tory party; and when we come to those various tariff reforms, some of the most extensive of which were begun by Sir Robert Peel, and by which he greatly lost the confidence of his party, and others which have been carried out by the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, all those measures have received either a most reluctant and cold support, or a strong opposition from a considerable portion of the Tory party. Let us take now another question, the question of newspaper taxes. There never was anything in this country that was intended to
At Blackburn.	349
live, so taxed as a newspaper. Every advertisement paid a tax of ls. 6d., every newspaper paid a tax of one penny. Thirty years ago it was much higher; and the paper itself was taxed enormously by the Excise. You know the fight was hard in the House of Commons to abolish what were called the taxes on knowledge, and the very last measure we carried, the abolition of the duties on paper, the Tories made a great party question ; they told you the finances of the country would be disordered and the credit of the nation destroyed by the abolition. They did not care one single farthing about the great question of education, nor did they understand their own position, for they did not know that there were not 300 men in the whole country to whom a cheap newspaper was more necessary than themselves. When the House of Lords threw out the Bill for the repeal of the paper duty, thus breaking in upon the recognized and undoubted privileges of the Commons, I saw leading men of the Tory party stand up at the table of the House and express their thankfulness that the House of Lords had dared to take the step they had taken. We come now to that other great measure—the French treaty. There could not be a measure more calculated to add power and influence to the cause of free trade than that treaty, and yet, as you all know, the Tory party, not quite unanimously, for some of them represented constituencies that would not permit it, but, on the whole, speaking of the bulk, they pertinaciously opposed every measure that was necessary to enable the Government to carry that treaty into effect. Now the Tory party had opposed all these measures on principle, not as two men of the same party might differ as to whether the time was suitable to propound a certain measure, or whether it was the proper degree to which it ought to be carried ; they did not say that these measures should not be proposed now, but at some future time, but they opposed all, on the ground that their opponents were wrong, would continue to be wrong with respect to them, and that Parliament was not acting wisely in taking them into consideration with a view to the settlement of them. We may, therefore, now very fairly come to the conclusion that if the Tories had been dominant during the last forty years, as they were during the preceding forty—if their policy had been sustained by Parliament and the country, every one—certainly almost every one—of these measures would not have been carried. To this hour the Catholics and the Dissenters would have been, if not persecuted, at least, under the Test and Corporation Acts, exposed to continual insults and degradation. To be exposed to continual insult and degradation is, I think, the same as to be persecuted. Rotten boroughs have existed all over the country,—there are some of them even now,—but, if these
350	Speech of Mr. Bright
gentlemen had bad their way, they would have been universal, not the exception, as in past times. The old corporations would have remained, as they were, in the hands of the lords of the manor, or the half-dozen gentlemen who managed all the affairs of the town, and who did all the jobbery and corruption of the neighbourhood. The Corn Laws would still have been on the statute-book, we should have continually been in fear of famine, and no doubt, in every portion of the country, at periods of two or three years, we should have had conspiracies and insurrections which would have been very different from the state of things now existing, at least, in Great Britain. If the newspapers had now sold for 6d. instead of ld., it is quite obvious that there would have been much more ignorance, and where there are ignorance and suffering together, there is much more discontent ; and I undertake to say that during the last few years the extension of the newspaper press has been of signal importance, and has explained to the great mass of the people when they have been suffering, truly and distinctly the causes of that suffering. The newspapers have given them patience, and the grounds of hope to look forward to better times, which, if they are not already arrived, we may believe will soon approach. If the French Treaty bad not been passed, our intercourse with France, as the intercourse of our forefathers had been, would have been one of suspicion and hostility. Now it is one of constantly increasing friendship. I may ask you if it is not the Tory party—which is a supercilious and insolent party—that treats the masses, through the mouths of its orators and through the pens of its writers, as though they were not Englishmen, loving their country and anxious for its welfare ? Where should we have been now—where would this country have been—if that Tory party for the last forty years had been dominant in England, and if the principles it has avowed had been continually sustained by Parliament and the Government ? Nothing can be more certain than this, that there is, and has been, no anarchy in Europe that could have matched the anarchy that must have existed in this country. The people would have been by millions and millions in a condition of poverty and abject degradation. If your Queen had been pure and just as one of the angelic order, her Throne would not have been safe under such a state of things as I have pictured; and as for the members of the House of Lords, in all human probability they would long ago have been emptied into the Thames. I take upon myself to charge this great party, heretofore so powerful in the government of this country, with a general opposition to right, to justice, and to morality, in the course they have adopted in public affairs. Would it have been
At Blackburn.	351
just and right and moral thus to persecute the Catholics and Dissenters ? Would it have been right and just and moral to defraud the whole people of representation by the permanent maintenance of rotten boroughs ? Would it have been just and right and moral to have maintained wherever they existed the corrupt corporations which existed in this country previous to the year 1835 ? Would it have been right and just and moral to raise the rents of landowners for ever, by inflicting the sorrows and the sufferings of famine upon the great body of the working people of this nation ? Would it, I may ask, be right and just and moral to strangle the press with taxes that the people might be kept perpetually in ignorance ? I will say more, and I ask you, as almost their very last crime, would it have been right and just and moral to refuse to ratify the treaty with France, a treaty which, I will say, is one everlastingly honourable to the memory of him who made it, and blessed for ever as widening the circles of good which it has conferred on two great nations, and which it is destined to confer on all the nations of Europe ? Well, if it was right, moral, and just to have done all these things, then am I not correct in saying that the Tory party for the last forty years has been continually at war with right and justice and morality ? Now there is another peculiarity connected with this party ; they never seem to learn anything, and now they are equally disposed to evil, or, I leave them the option, they are equally ignorant. I look to their conduct. During the very last session they opposed a matter of such obvious justice as the repeal of the law under which church-rates are collected ; they opposed the abolition of certain tests by which the universities, those great and noble institutions for the promotion of learning, are made sectarian, when by right they ought to be really and truly national. They opposed also a proposition of great importance towards settling the affairs of Ireland by diminishing or abolishing the establishment of the Protestant Church in that country. They wonder that in Ireland there should be constant discontent and constant conspiracy and insurrections. There is no other part of this earth on which has been put so gross and so scandalous an insult. You may try batches of Fenians in Cork and in Dublin, but every few years there will be another crop of conspirators, as long as universal discontent prevails, and that discontent is founded on such ,a just complaint. This Tory party is now opposed to any improvements in the representation of the people in Parliament. Sir John Bowriug did not say much about his toast. His toast was "The Commons House of Parliament." I shall not say much about it, but I may confess that this is the first time that I
352	Speech of Mr. Bright
have been asked to return thanks for the House of Commons. I have been a member of it for about twenty-two years ; I ought, therefore, to know a good deal about it, and I can say that a great many very good measures have passed that House since I became a member of it—I am afraid very few of them because they were good. But they have passed, and I rejoice in their passing. And this moment there is a general impression that however much men may speak in favour of the English House of Commons, it is an institution that might be in some degree altered, and in a very great degree improved. One of the objects of this meeting, I take it, is this, that whereas we admit that the House of Commons is the great security this country has, among all fits institutions, for its freedom, it is still its bounden duty to make that freedom more extensive, and, if possible, to lay down for it more enduring foundations. Out of about 6,000,000 of men in this country,—I believe there are really 7,000,000 of grown-up men,—only 1,300,000 have their names on the registers of counties and boroughs. Of these, 300,000 are down twice ; and probably, even with the greatest expenditure, it would not be possible to bring to the poll more than 1,000,000 voters. Then would there be much harm in permitting another half-million, or even a million, to exercise that privilege ? There would still be 5,000,000 left out. I hope they are not worthy of that depreciation and bad language which we sometimes hear applied to the unenfranchised, but there would be still four or five millions left out. The Government scheme of 1860 proposed to bring down the franchise from 50/. in counties to 101., and from 101. in boroughs to 61. I have heard a good many members of the Radical party object to that Bill as being very small and unimportant, and as not being worth fighting for. Now, I entirely differ from such an opinion. We must bear in mind, in this country, that we can only go on in the manner the general opinion of the public in the country will sanction ; and as I regard the Reform Bill of 1832 as a measure of prodigious value, so I regarded that of 1860, and I would regard now that proposition, if it were enacted by Parliament, as a measure of great importance to the object we have in view—namely, the fair and honest representation of the people in Parliament. The Tory party oppose it, and their pretence is that they fear very much for the ignorance of the working man. You must bear in mind, however, that they always point to that most unfavourable specimen of the working man who does not save any money and who never works on a Monday. If this Bill had passed, and a portion of the working men had been let in, some of them might
At Blackburn.	353
not vote very wisely—nay, even a percentage might vote for a Tory candidate, but if I were told, and if it could be demonstrated beyond all dispute, that the class which we propose to admit would as systematically vote wrong as the Tory party have done for the last forty years, my anxiety to have them admitted would be much diminished. For forty years the Tory party have been always wrong. The State chariot, laden with good to the people, has been by them impeded at every step and at every revolution of its wheels. Their deeds are so patent to all their countrymen and to the whole world that they never can be unwritten, and by Englishmen should never be forgotten. This same party, who are deemed by every writer of ordinary intelligence to have been wrong on all these questions, are now coming forward with measureless effrontery, and asking us to refuse to admit the working man, who has never even had the chance of doing wrong, for fear, if admitted, he should not always support those measures which are for the true interest of the country. Take Lord Derby himself for an example. He is the eminent leader of this most obtuse, incorrigible party, and for the last thirty years his opinions, his speeches, and his votes have in the main been directed against all that policy which the vast majority are thoroughly convinced has been for the true interest of the country. There is a great Italian writer, Machiavelli, who has expressed an opinion which, I think, applies very well to this particular case. He was, as you are aware, a very illustrious writer, but lie is often very much abused, as all men are, I suppose, if they say something that is not pleasant. He says, in the capacities of mankind there are three degrees. One man understands things by means of his own natural endowments, another understands things when they are explained to him, and a third can neither understand them of himself nor when they are explained by others ; and he says, further, that the first class are rare and excellent, the second have their merit, but the last are worthless. Now, I should like to ask you, looking back at the annals of the Tory party for the last forty years, what is the worth of the political capacity and the political career of that party to the country in which they live ? Happily for us, this Tory party is now a decaying faction. It may seem an odd thing to say iu a town like Blackburn, in which the Tory party are for the moment triumphant, but I nevertheless repeat it, that in this country the Tory party is but a decaying faction, and the Liberal party, composed of the most intelligent and just of the aristocracy, with the great majority of the middle classes, and the most instructed and advancing of the working men, is rapidly becoming, and, indeed, has now become, the governing power in the nation.
A A.
354	Speech of Air. Bright
At this moment, perhaps, more than ever, this is apparent. We have just had an election, and there is a large majority pledged to Liberal principles. The Tory party will muster less in Parliament than they have mustered for many years past, and I believe it only requires that we should have a really honest and liberal Administration to enable a Liberal Parliament to do liberal things. Speaking of the Administration, which somebody has said is very much the same as it was, I venture to say that it is very different. I think that I know almost every member of the Administration, and many of them with that kind of intimacy which comes from long attendance in the House of Commons, and I should say that it is composed of men more entitled to confidence, probably, than any other Administration of our time. It is pledged to introduce a measure of Parliamentary Reform and of extended suffrage for the people, and I believe it will redeem that pledge. I believe, further, that it will not introduce a measure of less dimensions or of less value —I speak now only of the suffrage—than the Bill which was introduced and withdrawn in the year 1860. I could easily suggest improvements in that Bill ; but I think the Government would have a right to say that if their measure is as comprehensive as that, they will have fulfilled their pledge, and have done that which was of service to the cause which in office they now chiefly represent. I believe they will bring in a Bill free from all tricks, from all childish propositions for representing minorities, from all those schemes which some have cleverly devised of giving something with one hand and taking it back with the other. My own opinion is—and I will not give up that hope and opinion until I see myself disappointed—that the authors of the Bill do not believe in the dangers which are ascribed to popular representation, but are willing to accept the power and authority which such a representation gives to the Administration which it sustains. Now, I will say that I believe there has been a real change in the Government, and in my opinion this change is a very auspicious event for the people of England ; but Earl Russell does not come into office without finding himself immediately in face of difficulties of no common order. It is rare that a Minister immediately on stepping into office finds himself confronted with events such as those which have recently occurred in Jamaica. I dare not trust myself to speak what I feel on this subject. I fear that the fame of England has never received a deeper wound or a darker stain than it has from the recent transactions in that island. I judge only from the statements made by those who are living and who are most concerned. The dead can confess nothing of their offences, and they can make no com-
At Blackburn.	355
plaints of the wrongs which they have endured. I take my opinion only from the documents furnished here by those whose interest it is to put the most favourable interpretation on their conduct ; and I say that murder is foul, and there is no murder more foul than that which is done by men in authority under the pretence of law. I say, if murder has not changed its name, and be yet a crime visited with punishment in this country, then I hope that the Governor of Jamaica and his accomplices will have to stand at the bar of justice for the murder of Mr. Gordon. No words of appeal or remonstrance to Mr. Cardwell, the Secretary for the Colonies, under whose department these matters more particularly come, will be sufficient. It is not a question for a Secretary of State or for a Department ; it is a question for the Crown, it is a question for the Prime Minister, for the whole Cabinet, for Parliament when it shall meet, and for the whole nation, whose character for justice and for mercy is at stake. I will not believe that Lord Russell in this matter, any more than in the matter of Reform, will disappoint the just expectations of the people. I believe he will honestly and thoroughly inquire into the matter ; and until I see otherwise, I believe he will say, " Let justice be done." And, uniting as I believe with the bulk of the people of this country, may I not say that we are disposed to give a large measure of confidence to the new Minister ? I hope it may be justified by the courageous and honourable course of action which he will pursue on that lofty eminence to which he has been called by the favour of the Queen, and, I think I may say, no less by the general suffrage of the nation ; and I trust that the last years of his life may be sweetened by the thought that God has twice enabled him to render signal service in the glorious work of building upon broader and more lasting foundations the ancient liberties of his country.
A A 2
SPEECH
OF
MR. JOHN BRIGHT, M.P,,
ON REFORM.
[The following Speech was delivered by Mr. Bright at a large meeting of the . inhabitants of Birmingham held on the 13th of December, in the Town Hall of
that place, for the purpose of taking into consideration the question of Parlia-
mentary Reform.]
MR. MAYOR, Ladies, and G-entlemen,—I lament very much that on this occasion we have not the presence of my hon. colleague Mr. Scholefield. I regret it the more because his absence
arises from the state of his health.	My opinion is that,
like a great many men who are in parliamentary life, he has worked too hard, and is suffering from overwork. I have, as you know, before I was politically connected with this borough, passed through a period of great physical weakness, and I can sympathize with any one suffering from the same cause. I may tell you further that that hard work and overwork has been to a large extent given in your service, and therefore I feel that I may ask you to have whatever forbearance may be necessary to give to Mr. Scholefield, should it be needful, such a period of relaxation as the state of his health may require. Since I was permitted on the last occasion to speak from this platform a considerable change has taken place in the condition and prospects of public affairs. Since that day we have had the election of a new Parliament completed ; we have also got a new Minister at the helm, and further, we have a new policy avowed. With regard to the new Parliament, I hope it will be found that there is a larger majority sitting on the Liberal side of the House than has been found in any preceding Parliament of our time, excepting that one which was elected immediately after the passing of the Reform Bill. With regard to the new Minister, although he is new, yet it must be admitted that he is somewhat old. He is old in the services rendered to his country, and I think—not forgetting any errors in his political career—that he must be considered old also in his attachment to freedom. With regard to
Speech of Mr. Bright on Reform.	357
the policy which I have described as new, although it is apparently now new, yet after all it is but the illustration of the ancient policy of the Whigs and the Liberal party. Now, I fancy that in this matter we feel that the prospects of the country—I speak now of its political prospects—are brighter and better than they have been for some time past. I suspect that that is also the opinion of the country, for I venture to say that the sentiments that will be uttered in this meeting to-night, and the resolutions to which I believe you will give an almost unanimous support, will meet with the approbation and consent of the great body of the people of the United Kingdom. But it seems in almost all mundane affairs that everybody, after all, is not quite content ; and, judging from writings in certain portions of the press and from some recent speeches, I presume that our old friends the Tories are by no means in a cheerful mood. They are subjected to what I should call spasmodic apprehension, and, whenever any change is about to take place, which a few years afterwards they all admit. was a very beneficent change, and which by and by they begin to support, they behave as if they thought the deluge was coming back again, and that there was no ark in which they could find refuge. We have had very recently a speech from rather a conspicious member of the Tory party, who represents a very small borough perhaps twenty or twenty-five miles from here. I speak of the member for the borough of Droitwich. Now, I will not depreciate the member for Droitwich, and I do not wish to depreciate the borough which he represents. It is a borough which ought to have been disfranchised by the Reform Act. But instead of that, I am told that it was made to include a good many miles of agricultural district, and that the character of the borough was thereby changed. I see from parliamentary returns that the borough of Droitwich occupies no less than forty-one square miles of ground, which I believe is about three times as much as is occupied by the whole borough of Birmingham. Still, Sir John Pakington is member for Droitwich, and he sits in the House of Commons, and he has been Colonial Secretary of State and First Lord of the Admiralty, and a member, of course, of the Cabinet of Lord Derby. Being, then, a conspicuous man, we may judge a little of what is going on from what he says. When I refer to his speech, I see that he positively bemoans the condition and the prospects of his party. He is anxious to get rid of absolute fancies and old enemies. Well, the Tories have once changed their name to Conservatives, and I suppose that being found out, it will be necessary to have some other name ; and Sir John Pakington asks that they shall have " a great constitutional
358	Speech of Mr. Bright
party." Now, he does not think that the Government will be able to carry a Reform Bill such as we want, because he believes that the House of Commons will not listen to such propositions, for that there are many men on the Liberal side of the House who will coalesce with the Tories to prevent any Bill of the kind being passed. He then refers to the speeches made on our side of the House, especially to the speeches made last session by Lord Elcho, Mr. Horsman, and Mr. Lowe, which he praises highly. He classes these gentlemen as three of our best states-men—and evidently, and very naturally, looks to considerable support from that quarter. As for Lord Elcho, I find that he is enthusiastically in favour of the Governor of Jamaica : therefore I do not believe myself that the Liberal party, or Liberal opinions, or a Reform Bill of any value, will have the slightest need to regret if Lord Elcho has gone away to his own proper place on the other side of the House. But this idea of a coalition of Sir John Pakington's is worthy of consideration for a moment. Who are the parties to be got rid of ? I suppose on his own side he must get rid of Mr. Newdegate. Mr. Newde-gate is a gentleman who is generally wrong in his views, but who is in the main sturdily independent. I do not know also how he will be able to keep such parties as the leader whom he follows ; for we all recollect that when the Aberdeen Government was first formed Mr. Disraeli with an oracular voice proclaimed that England did not love coalitions. I suppose, therefore, Sir John Pakington will get rid of Mr. Newdegate on the one hand, and his leader, Mr. Disraeli, on the other. I do not know how many he expects from our side of the House to join in the coalition. But bear in mind that the constituencies will have something to say in this matter, and if members on our side selected as Liberal members, and expected to vote for a Liberal Government and in favour of a measure of Reform, desert their pledges and violate their promises, their constituencies, I hope, are independent enough and Liberal enough to look after their representatives in this matter, and keep them to their duty and dismiss them from their service. Sir John Pakington proposed to form a great constitutional party, and he said that its cry will be " Constitutional progress," not the cry of despair which he is now uttering ; a party which is ready to grant all reasonable demands which the real interests of the country require, and not less firmly disposed to resist all dangerous concessions. All the blessings that we have been receiving for the last thirty years Sir John Pakington and his friends were contending ought not to be granted but resisted, and they have been resisted with the power and forces which that party possesses. But he says further—and this is
On Reform,.	359
rather a remarkable expression—he says, " I think I may sum up the condition of parties in one brief expression : While the Whigs and the Tories are quarrelling, Republicans are advancing." Now, I suppose, unless we are greatly mistaken, we know what the Whigs are and we know what the Tories are ; but up to this moment we have no practical guide as to who are the Republicans of whom he speaks. I presume he must mean the Liberals who are Liberal without being bound to the Whig party ; and if so, I am not certain that it would not include a very large portion of this meeting, and possibly he might fall into the mistake of including me in that list. Now, I should like to give Sir John Pakington and a friend of his a little advice. I have to complain very much of the inaccuracy, and I would almost say the untruthfulness, of two right hon. gentlemen of your neighbourhood. Sir John Pakington is one, Mr. Adderley is the other. I think since I was here last Mr. Adderley made a speech at a dinner within your town, and in that speech he took the liberty of saying in reference to me--I speak from memory—that I was one who would wish to substitute a President for the Queen of this realm. Now, I make a good deal of allowance for Mr. Adderley. Mr. Adderley, if he speaks to the questions belonging to his party, has not before him a very lively subject, and he never was a very lively speaker ; and although it may be convenient to make the personal and what I call the insolent and untruthful remarks which he made respecting me with the view of giving a little spice to his speech, yet I think, considering the position which he holds in the county and in the country, and also the position which he has held in the Government, he ought to be a little more careful about what he says. And I would say the same to Sir John Paking-ton. He has no right to say that a political party in this country which includes the vast majority of the people can fairly be styled in this monarchical country as republican. He is doing what in my opinion is not a very wise thing, and what, if he does not know that we are republicans, is not a very moral thing for him to do. But these men, your Pakingtons and Adderleys, I dare say they have read history, although I would not guarantee it, when they were at Oxford or Cambridge. But they appear to have gained no knowledge from what they have read. We have seen republican triumphs ; we have seen monarchies overthrown. But what does history tell us of these events ? When the English monarchy was overthrown 200 years ago, who were the persons really responsible for that catastrophe ? Why, every reader of English history must know that Buckingham, and Strafford, and Laud, and the duplicity of Charles I., were responsible for the great catastrophe which happened in English history. And if you come
360	Speech, of Mr. Bright
to the close of the last century, and examine into the history of France, and ascertain how it was that one of the oldest and one of the greatest monarchies came to an end, and the king himself to an end equally terrible with that which befel Charles I., you will find that these evils came from a corrupted Church, from a tyrannous and a profligate Court. And if, coming to our own day, within the last six years, you ask what has destroyed and extinguished the dynasty which ruled over the Neapolitan kingdom, you will find it was the darkness of the priesthood and the feebleness and corruption of the administration. And, further, if you ask what it is that has convulsed the United States, what it is that spread the terrors of war over a country on that continent equal in extent to half a dozen European kingdoms, you will find that it was not the friends of freedom, but the conservative slave-holders. These are the men who endeavoured to destroy the most free Government, and, as has been proved, the most powerful nation, on the face of the earth. But in Birmingham it seems a work of supererogation to talk of these things ; for the very stones of your streets could teach us something of these matters. Thirty years ago, or a little more, your streets resounded with the triumph of tens of thousands of men gathering together in favour of Reform. The air was full of menaces of war, and the very ground seemed to be trembling beneath their feet. And what happened ? The revolutionists of that time, the borough-mongers, and the Tory peers, succumbed. That great crisis passed, and there were no disturbances of the public peace. Look now at the great changes which have taken place since that stirring event—changes, all of which, with scarcely any considerable exception, have been in favour of freedom, and in favour of the right and true interests of the great masses of our population. But, leaving out of view the question of the effect upon the people, what has been the effect of these changes upon the position of the Throne ? Does any man deny that the Queen of England is more securely upon the throne of England than any monarch who has sat upon that throne during any preceding period of English history ? There is no man in this island certainly who wishes to wrest the sceptre from her hand. The realm has been for years more tranquil, and for a longer time, than at any previous period of our recorded history. And the cause of it is this, that the people feel that the Throne is no danger, no enemy of freedom, nor is its influence lent to that faction of which Sir John Pakington is the latest spokesman. But now, why is it that these gentlemen either feel or pretend so much alarm ? " Russell and Reform" is a vision of thirty years ago. But, after all, if these men had a little more courage, and would examine the question a little more, they would
On .Reform.	361
find that their fears were foolish and childish. The Bill of 1860, I suppose, will be the foundation, and probably somewhere very near the Bill which will come into Parliament next month. When it was brought into the House in 1860 it passed a second reading without a division. The Tories did not object. They could not, dared not, object to its principle, and I believe it wanted very little to have induced them to allow the Bill to pass the House of Commons even without a division. They themselves brought in a Bill in 1859. It was not a very honest Bill. It was too clever by half. It proposed a 101. qualification for counties, and as a balance to shut out all freeholders in boroughs from voting in counties, the object being to continue the county representation strictly in the hands of the landed proprietors. It did not presume to reduce the rental franchise in boroughs, but it proposed several modes of allowing in a few people who happened not to be in, but who, for the most part, are not really of those whom it seems a pity to exclude in bulk, namely, the working classes. But even in regard to that, two very respectable members of that Cabinet, Mr. Walpole and Mr. Henley, differed from their colleagues. They were in favour of reducing the borough franchise from 101. to 81., and, differing from their colleagues, they resigned and left the Government. There does not seem to be such a frightful chasm between certain main propositions of that Bill and that of the succeeding year that a man was to be frightened out of his senses if he was asked to leap over it. Assuming that the Government will bring in a Bill—I am not authorized to say anything about it, for really I know nothing about it—but assuming that the Government will bring in a Bill which will give the franchise to 101. occupiers in counties and in boroughs, either to all persons rated to the relief of the poor, or to all householders—either of which would be much better than the proposition to give the franchise to the occupiers of 61. houses—whichever of these propositions they offer to Parliament and the country, I should like to know on what authority Sir John Pakington dares to assume that those who are in favour of this measure of emancipation are republicans, and hostile to the constitution and monarchy of this country. Lord Aberdeen was a Minister of the greatest probity, of great wisdom and moderation. He approved of a measure almost precisely the same with regard to the borough franchise. But was Lord Aberdeen a revolutionist or a republican ? Was Mr. Sidney Herbert a republican ? Was the late Duke of Newcastle a republican ? Was the long-experienced Sir James Graham a republican ? Was one of the most learned statesmen of our time, the late Sir G. C. Lewis, a republican ? Is Mr. Gladstone deserving of that name, or Lord Russell himself,
362	Speech of Mr. Bright
politically representing one of the wealthiest and most powerful and most honourable aristocratic families of England—is he one of the party upon whom a ban is to be laid by styling them republicans, and therefore revolutionists P But we may go further. What of the Queen herself ? In 1860 the Queen gave her hearty assent to that measure, and I do not suppose that the Queen does not know what she is doing. The Queen has never been merely a mechanical sovereign, putting her hand and signature to public documents without understanding them. She has a great responsibility upon her. She studies these questions, and she comprehends them. She gave her support to the Bill which was about to be brought in. And not only in 1860 did the Queen, but the Prince Consort. He who was then at her side—a wise and loving counsellor—gave his support to that measure. All the persons I have mentioned knew, and all those who are now living know thoroughly well, that the Throne is only safe, not when it is based on the privileges or the monopoly of a faction, but on the affection of a trusted and well-governed people. Sir John Pakington cries for what he calls the formation of a great constitutional party, which shall stand in the House of Commons on the broadest and safest principles, and whose cry shall be " Conservative progress." Now, I should like to ask Sir John Pakington a little about constitutional history, but I dare say it is a point that he has not very minutely examined. We have been accustomed to understand that the political constitution of this country involves the existence of the Crown, of the Peers in their House, and the Commonalty in their House. Now, we are the Commons. In this noble hall there are assembled several thousand persons, and it would not be possible in any building or hall in the United Kingdom to collect together 5,000 or 6,000 persons of whom it might be said with more accuracy, We are the Commons of England. I said at the beginning of my observations that the sentiments uttered here to-night, and the resolutions which will be passed, will meet with the approbation of the majority of the people. And I say again, as I said before, that we here assembled are speaking in the name of the country of England. Now, the history of England—the history that is to be relied upon—has not a page of ancient time on which there is not written some account of a system of representation. We had a representative Government, more or less perfect, from the earliest times. We have had a monarch wearing the crown and bearing a sceptre. Does any one dare to affirm that the Crown at this moment is not in all its powers free and unmolested ? That branch of the constitution is still perfect and powerful,
On Reform,.	363
although not so powerful as it once was. We come next to the peerage. Within the last hundred years the peerage has been almost or about doubled in numbers. We are not calling into question any of the rights which belong to them under the constitution, or their wealth, or their wisdom in their own chamber. But if the Crown be free from molestation, and if the privileges of the Peers in the main are independent, have not we, the commons of England, an undoubted right to examine whether we are fully and fairly represented—whether the people are fully and fairly represented in that branch of Parliament which we call theirs ? They are the nation; and if these five millions of men—the heads of five millions of families —are entirely unrepresented, and not by any mistake—it was not by any mistake in the Reform Bill of 1832—it was an intentional deed, which shut the doors at 10/., when they knew that the great body of the people did not live in houses of more than 5/. value—shut them out without absolute purpose of exclusion ; they represent twenty-five millions of people—men, women, and children — who, as times go, constitute a considerably large nation and comprise a very large proportion of this community,—I should like to know from this new constitutional party — it is most obsequious to the Crown, it delights to circle round the Throne, it is deferential to the House of Lords—I should like to ask whether they think this question, this demand of five millions of men, is a reasonable request to be granted, or a dangerous concession to be resisted to the utmost. If Sir John Pakington was here he would probably get up after me and try to give an answer to this question. I hope that when it comes to be discussed in the House of Commons we shall hear what he has to say in reply to it. Does any man doubt ? Is any man so utterly incompetent to comprehend any question of history as to say that the demand that the people are now making would change the character of the monarchy, or alter the constitution of the House of Peers ? Does any man dare to say that this demand of being represented in the House of Commons is one that is not right and constitutional for you to make ? If any one dares to say so I must refer a little to history again. There is a book recently published by Mr. Forster : it is " The Life of Sir John Eliot." He was a great man, a great friend of freedom, and in the first years of the reign of Charles I. he was a great parliamentary leader. He struggled with that monarch for the rights of Parliament and the rights of freedom. By illegal conduct and tyrannous conduct he was incarcerated in the Tower for a long time, and died during that imprisonment. Mr. Forster's book
364	Speech of Mr. Bright
is a valuable addition to English history, and especially with respect to the times of Sir John Eliot. I find that in 1628, on the occasion of a great many petitions being presented to Parliament immediately after a general election, the electors complained that people were shut out from voting by a small clique who had returned the sitting members. There is the case of the neighbouring town of Warwick. The question there was whether the mayor and corporation or the commons should return the members. The decision was in favour of the latter—the commons in general. It is also a remarkable fact that a counter petition was got up by the mayor and corporation, who had induced upwards of 200 persons to sign it and disclaim that right to vote for their members. The committee rejected their petition, and resolved that the right of electing their members rested with the commons, and with no mayor or town council. The electors of Colchester had to petitiou. The dispute was between the bailiff and the common councilmen, who met in the upper room, and the burgesses, who assembled in the lower room. The power of election was adjudged to be in the common sorts of burgesses exclusively. From the borough of Lewes there was a petition. In that borough neither mayor nor bailiffs existed, and the election had been made by a small number of constables. It was taken from them and given to the inhabitants. At Bridport the question was whether the election resided in the commonalty in general or in the bailiffs and the thirteen capital burgesses, and the decision was in favour of the commonalty ; and the resolution on the journals of the House was that the commonalty ought to have a voice in the election of burgesses for Parliament. At Boston there was a dispute between a select number and the commonalty, and it was decided in favour of the latter, and the House declared that nothing should restrict such rights but prescription and constant usage beyond memory. In 1628 Parliament, which made a most magnanimous struggle in favour of the rights of the common people, declared that in all cases the right of election in boroughs resided in the commonalty in general. But, coming to a later period, I will give you an authority no less important, and this authority I recommend particularly to the notice of the present Prime Minister. In the time of William III., in the year 1702, there was a question discussed relative to the passing of the Occasional Conformity Bill. It was a bill of an infamous character, passed by a violent Tory majority in the House of Commons. The object of it was to cut off from the elective franchise every man in the kingdom who was not connected with the Established Church, or who would not take the tests that only members of
On Reform,.	365
the Established Church could take. Therefore it would have disfranchised all the Dissenters throughout the kingdom. At that time Lord Somers was a very important person in the House of Lords. He was the most distinguished man ever connected with the Whig party in this country. He was not a man of aristocratic birth and connections, but the son of a solicitor in Worcester or the neighbourhood. But he was a man of extraordinary ability, of great industry, and of remarkable knowledge and acquirements. He came to have the greatest authority in this country under the King. He opposed that Bill, and there was a conference between the two Houses—the Commons were determined to pass the Bill, and the Lords were determined if possible that it should not pass. On that occasion the Lords were more liberal than the Commons, and they would be much more liberal now if they had not been so greatly increased in number during the last hundred years. Now, what did Lord Somers say at this conference ? I hope every person in this room will carry away with him the language of this most distinguished statesman. He was speaking for the Lords in this conference, and he said that " the Lords, allowing that no man can claim a place by birthright, yet conceive that giving a vote for a representative in Parliament is the essential privilege whereby every Englishman preserves his property, and that whatsoever deprives him of such vote deprives him of his birthright." If you want to see more about this matter, and will turn to the life of Lord Somers in Lord Campbell's " Lives of the Chancellors," you will read a very interesting biographical history of one of the most remarkable men who have ever influenced public affairs in this country ; yet Lord Somers says distinctly—and it is on record, and cannot be unwritten, and no greater authority can ever exist on the question—" The Lords conceive that giving a vote for a representative in Parliament is the essential privilege whereby every Englishman preserves his property, and that whatsoever deprives him of such vote deprives him of his birthright." But these men—we are discussing now Sir John Pakington and his fellows—are an inferior race of statesmen altogether. If you go back to the opinions of Mr. Pitt, you will find that he was not afraid of Parliamentary Reform. If you seek the opinions of Charles James Fox, of Lord Grey, or of the Duke of Richmond of that time, you will find that they were far more in accordance and in unison with ours than with the opinions of the men Sir John Pakington represents. Go also to the time of the Reform Bill, and to the opinions of the late Lord Durham. He was a most eminent and distinguished man, and we owe it to him to a great extent that
366	Speech of Mr. Bright
the Reform Bill was as good as it was. Doubtless, if he had had his way, and if Lord Russell, who was not then in the Cabinet, had also had his own way, I believe that the Reform Bill would have been better than it was. I have mentioned other men of Lord Aberdeen's Government, of that of Lord Palmerston, and who are in the present Cabinet ; and I ask you, as men of practical sense, whether the opinions of all those authorities are not such as to outweigh the dictum of Sir John Pakington, or the opinions of any of those statesmen with whom he has been associated. I wonder, for my own part, how these men propound any opinions at all. If you had a lawyer who invariably lost every cause with which he was connected, who always gave opinions which the judges on the bench reversed, you would not then, I should think, have much confidence in his legal knowledge. If you had a doctor, and it was an invariable rule that every house he entered to give advice he entered again a fortnight or so later to attend his patient to the churchyard, you would not have much faith in such a doctor. You would say, indeed, that this lawyer and this doctor must have a marvellous effrontery to dare to offer an opinion at all, and still more to take a fee for it. I should say that men of this character were audacious pretenders. These very statesmen, after having howled and shouted " Danger to the Crown ! "—" Danger to the Constitution! "—" Danger to the Church "—danger to everything, ever since we were little children, even now, at this very moment, when everything that they have cried is falsified by the event, are just as ready to shout " Danger " as they ever were before. The other day there was a meeting at Maldon. I do not know much of that part of the country, but judging from what we have heard from that quarter, I should say that, politically speaking, it is by no means a lively part of the country to live in. Several members of Parliament spoke on that occasion. One of them, with a flippancy positively alarming in so young a statesman, said that if they gave the working man the franchise he would not know what to do with it. If any one were to ask the working man this question—I mean any one of the party who does not intend to give it to him—let him turn round and reply, " What have you done with it ? You have had a vote ever since you were twenty-one years of age, and what have you done with it ? Have you given a vote in support of any of the Government measures over which the country is now rejoicing all this time ? You may rely upon it that I will make as good a use of my vote as ever you have done of yours." It is just the same as if the debtor is asked to pay a sum of money, and were to reply that he would not until the creditor gave him a guarantee that he
On Reform.	367
would employ it for the debtor's benefit. They want a guarantee that the working man, when enfranchised, shall do as his employer or landlord wishes him to do with his vote. I hope that the only course that the working man will follow with respect to his landlord and his employer will be, that he will consider the wishes of his landlord and employer, and see whether he considers their example one that is to be followed, and follow it if he does, but not otherwise. If I were to tell these gentlemen certain things they would not be so ready to give you a vote. If I told them that in this civilised and Christian country a man would be sent to prison for the sake of preserving and to a great excess a sport that is absurd in this thickly populated country, they would not be more disposed to give you a vote if they thought that you would provide a remedy for this state of things. Neither would they be if I were to tell them that in the great manufacturing districts the working man has no regular education, and that half the children are growing up without anything at all that is called instruction. And I should say that if the people had their franchise they would remedy all this, and there would be no danger if you did anything of the sort. Foolishly underrating, and not comprehending even their own Church, they would refuse to give you the vote lest you should do so great a good to your people. I have just seen a report of a speech delivered last night by Mr. Watkin, who has recently returned from the United States. Speaking of education, he says that, taking the nine Northern States to contain ten millions and a half of people, he found there were 40,000 schools, and an average attendance of 2,133,000 children, the total cost of their education being 9,000,000 dols. In the four Western States, with a population of 6,100,000, there are 37,000 schools, and an average attendance of nearly one million and a half scholars, at a cost of 1,250,000 dols. Then in a population of sixteen millions there are 77,000 schools, to which every poor child can go, at a cost of 3,000,0001. a year. He thought this highly to the credit of our American cousins, and I perfectly agree with him on that point. But I venture to say that if the franchise in this kingdom were as wide as it is in these Northern and free States, within five years there would be established in this country a system of education as universal as that which produces such admirable results amongst our cousins across the Atlantic. If a man were to turn to Ireland, where, I am sorry to say, things are not so pleasant as they are in this country, what would he say if I were to point out to him that during the lifetime of the oldest person in this room that has been a country in which there have been continual insurrections, or attempts at rebellion ? In that
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country the principles of the great constitutional party that resists all dangerous concessions had been carried out to their fullest extent. With regard to the land, there have been 200 Acts of Parliament passed in favour of the landlord, and not one in favour of the tenant. Look at their Church. I am always sorry to have to say things which appear injurious to the character of the Church. The Church Religious is one thing—the Church Political is another. Don't let any labouring earnest Protestant clergyman in Ireland think I am undervaluing any services he may render to religion. I speak of the Church as a political institution set down in that country, not by the opinion of the people, but by the power of the Tory people in England. 1 say that so long as that Church exists there never will be—there never can be, in the nature of the human mind—there never ought to be, content and tranquillity in Ireland. And this is not all that we suffer. Look at America in connection with this question. How many Irishmen have emigrated to America ? Myriads have gathered there whom rage or fear drove from their wasted homes ; and in America they form a portion of the people perpetually hostile to England. The Scotch who emigrate—and the Scotch are a people no more disposed to put up with insult and wrong than the Irish—but the Scotch who emigrate, whether to Canada or the United States, are not there the enemies of this country. They speak of England, of Scotland, of Britain, of the United Kingdom with respect and affection ; and if the Irish bad been treated as the Scotch have been treated, the whole of that Irish nation on the American continent, instead of being hostile—bitterly and unchangeably hostile—to England, they would have been, I believe, much smaller in their number, and just as friendly to us as the emigrants from Scotland are. I should like to ask of this great constitutional party which is to be formed by Lord Elcho, Mr. Horsman, Mr. Lowe, Sir John Pakington, and anybody else—I should like to ask them whether it is intended that the Irish Church should be perpetually maintained, or whether it should fall, as I am certain before long it must fall, before the advancing intelligence and sense of justice of the people of the United Kingdom. What these gentlemen fear is this—a transfer of power. I recollect in 1860, when the Franchise Bill was under discussion in Parliament, a noble lord who sits on the opposite side of the House, and who is very acute, and sometimes very candid, rising and saying that it was nothing to him to know that the working people were industrious and frugal, intelligent and independent ; what he objected to was the transfer of power from the persons who now hold it in this country. But in 1688 there was a consi-
On Reform.	369
derable transfer of power. The monarchy for a time was in great danger. James II. either ran away or was driven away, and the succeeding monarch had his power very much limited by the action of Parliament. Does any one believe that the Ministry has been worse off or that the people have not been better ? In 1832 the aristocracy of the country, the territorial aristocracy, which ruled from 1682 to 1832, was shorn of some of its authority. Does anybody believe that the aristocratic families of this country, or their heads, have really suffered by that change ? I hold that as the people grow in wisdom, independence, and intelligence, there must be a gradual transfer of power. The Crown has lost the power which it once had ; but I do not think that any one proposes to diminish its power further. The peers have likewise lost some of the power that they once had, but are they any worse ? The people have more than they had before, and there is little doubt that the people are all the better for the change. Now, let me refer for a moment to the great and useful changes that have been made during the last thirty years ; but there still remains, as I said, millions of heads of families entirely unrepresented. Now, confine your attention for a moment to the case of these families. There is among them one million, or rather more than one million, in the United Kingdom, who are classed in the unfortunate list of paupers. There is another million just above pauperism, but always in peril lest they should become paupers. Their condition and prospects are not more favourable than that. Now look to the ignorant and lower strata of this portion of the community. Look to their abject condition, to their poverty, to their suffering, to their utter hopelessness of any good. Why, in the United States, even in the Southern States during the reign of slavery, every negro had an idea that there was a day of jubilee for him. But to these people, to this class of the lowest strata in this country, I am here to state that there is neither the belief of anything better nor scarcely an aspiration after it. Have you read a paragraph which lately appeared in the newspapers about John Cross, a Dorsetshire labourer ? He worked six days in the week, had an excellent character from his employer, for whom he had worked twenty-four years at the rate of eight shillings per week. John Cross had a family of seven children to provide for out of these wages in his hovel that is his castle--for a feeble wife and an infant child. He took—legally, I believe, he stole—a wooden hurdle of the value of sixpence. For this offence he was tried before the magistrates and sentenced to fourteen or twenty days' imprisonment. I am not defending the stealing of hurdles. No doubt certain English newspapers will say that I am. I am not
33 13
370	Speech of Mr. Bright
even finding fault with the magistrates who committed the man —I will not speak evil of dignitaries ; but I can tell you that many thousands of cases like that of John Cross are to be found throughout the country, and especially in the south, and that their condition is such that hitherto the most anxious investigator has been unable to solve the mystery as to how they keep body and soul together. Now cast your eye over the country, and look at these five millions of families, and the desperate condition of this strata of them. Is it not true that the unenfranchised nation may be said to toil and toil, and know almost no rest Compare it with the ruling class—but if I do 1 shall be charged with communism. It will be said that I wish to divide the property of the rich and squander it amongst the poor ; that I want to take the lands of the rich and divide them amongst the poor. But compare this great toiling and unenfranchised nation with the section who may be considered the governing classes. Look at its wealth ; look at its ostentation ; look at its luxury. Behold its weariness—for there is weariness amongst them, but it is the weariness of satiety—and see how they rush from place to place. as it were, to discover some new pleasure. But that great nation of whom I have spoken—that great nation who have built up the power of this country—this unen-franchised people, without whom England would be nothing but a power which a division of a continental army might subdue and annex—that great nation of five millions of families is excluded from any share of political power, and the small section, containing vast numbers of excellent persons, is potentially the governing power in this realm. Now, let me put to you before I sit down a simple proposition ; and putting it to you, through the gentlemen who sit below me [the reporters], to whom freedom in this country is so greatly and so constantly indebted, it is put through them to all the people of this kingdom. If of the five millions who are now shut out, one million were admitted—you will mark the extreme, or, as some will say, the blameable moderation of that suggestion—but if only one million were admitted, would not the cry of the toil-laden and the suffering, which even now ascends to heaven, reach further, and be heard even on the floor of Parliament ? For do not forget that the ear of the Supreme is nearer even to the lowliest of us than is that of our rulers. But if that voice were heard in Parliament, would it not perchance do something to still the roar of faction, and to bind the powers of statesmanship to the high and the holy purposes of humanity and justice ? I speak not the language of party. I feel myself above the level of party. I speak, as I have ever endeavoured to speak, on behalf of the unenfranchised—the
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almost voiceless millions of my countrymen. Their claim is just, and it is constitutional. It will be heard. It cannot be rejected. To the outward eye monarchs and Parliaments seem to rule with an absolute and unquestionable sway, but—and I quote the words which one of our old Puritan poets has left for us—
" There is on earth a yet auguster thing,
Veiled though it be, than Parliament or King."
That auguster thing is the tribunal which God has set up in the consciences of men. It is before that tribunal that I am now permitted humbly to plead, and there is something in my heart—a small but an excellent voice—which tells me that I shall not plead in vain.
B B 2
SPEECH OF MR, SEYMOUR FITZGERALD,
AT HORSHAM.
[The following Speech, delivered on the 15th of December, may well succeed that of Mr. Bright, the greater portion of Mr. Fitzgerald's address being devoted to a vindication of the Tory party and a reply to the member for Birmingham's remarks at Blackburn and elsewhere. The occasion of the Speech was the annual exhibition of stock at Horsham, for which place Mr. Fitzgerald was member in the last Parliament, and an unsuccessful candidate at the general election in the summer. We have omitted from the Speech, as originally delivered, a few preliminary remarks of Mr. Fitzgerald's on his local position, and also some observations on the cattle plague.]
I THINK that I may be allowed to venture a few observations on that which is the great public question of the day. We are told that we are to have a change in the system of representation, and a great deal has been said by a distinguished public speaker as to the demerits, the failings, and almost the crimes of one great party in the state in reference to that measure. We are told that what Mr. Bright calls the Tory party have always been averse to all those great questions which for some years past have been carried, and which have advanced the prosperity and welfare of the country. In his speeches he is constantly quoting to us the example of America. I am one of those who regard with the greatest admiration the system which has been pursued in America, the efforts they have made in the direction of self-government, the enormous extension of education, and the position which that republic has been enabled to take in the councils of the world. There is no man more willing to tender a meed of admiration to the course pursued by the American nation than I am—Tory as I am, and as Mr. Bright chooses to call me. But what will suit a new country with new institutions, which they began to build up from the foundation, will not suit a country where the interests are so complicated, where the institutions that exist are so interwoven in the heart and feeling of the nation, as in this country. What suits the one will not suit the other, and it is impossible to reason by any method of analogy whatever, from the success of the institutions of America, that the same success would attend similar institutions here. Now, as regards the abuse which has been thrown on one great party in the state by the distinguished speaker I have alluded to, we have this great consolation, that
Speech of Mr. Fitzgerald at Horsham.	373
although he now abuses us, it is only a few months since he abused our opponents just as much. There is not one single word of reproach, of contumely, and of condemnation which he now throws upon us, which only a few months ago he did not as unsparingly and emphatically lavish on those whom he now calls his friends. What do I argue from that ? Why, that he thinks it is desirable in the present instance to give his full support to a Government that will bring in a Reform Bill, be it wide or not, because he is determined to take whatever he can get, with a view upon the very first occasion of getting more. I believe there is not one man I now address who does not feel, with regard to these great constitutional questions, that what we ought to labour for and ought all to desire is a settlement, and the removal of these questions as soon as we possibly can from the arena of agitation. We should settle them, if not once and for all, at least for a sufficient period to last out the life of any single man I now address. But the fault, as it seems to me, and that which is the great obstacle in the mind of every thinking man, is the difficulty, in any change of our representative system, of finding some spot where we can stop, and where we can say, " Here we stand on principle. Here is a fair ground of settlement beyond which we will not go ; but to this, as a matter of principle, we are willing to advance." If you say you will lower the franchise to 81. and do so, there is an immediate demand that you should admit 71. From 71. you would be called on to go down to 61.; from 61. to 5/. ; from 5/. to 4/. ; and, if we come to a test of that kind, we shall soon find that there is no resting point. We cannot hit upon any mode which would enable us to settle for a lengthened period that question, upon the solution of which I believe the greatness and the happiness of this country for many years are at stake. One point which has struck us in reference to the late speeches of Mr. Bright is that he affects a moderation which I am afraid he does not feel—a moderation very different from that which he has expressed in former times. He tells us there are 5,000,000 heads of families unrepresented, and he only asks that 1,000,000 of them shall be admitted. Hall the 5,000,000 are entitled to be admitted, he is certainly making a moderate demand in asking that only one in five should be admitted ; but there lies all the question.. The constituencies now number 1,500,000, and if you introduce 1,000,000 men all of one class, of one feeling, and with one general interest, you at once introduce into your constitution a disturbing element. You do not do that which will settle or that which will conciliate, but that which will derange and disturb. You will introduce a class that will almost counterbalance all the other interests put together, and it would be perfectly
374	Speech of Mr. Fitzgerald
certain to have a monopoly of power unless those who shared in the representation were of one thought and mind. In support of his views, Mr. Bright, to my extreme surprise, in his last speech quoted the opinion of the great Lord Somers. There is no name in the wide history of England or in the annals of our constitutional history, which is entitled to be regarded with more admiration and respect than the name of Lord Somers ; but any one who knows the writings and opinions of that distinguished man will be astonished to find that if the words quoted by Mr. Bright are to be taken literally, Lord Somers is quoted as an advocate of universal suffrage. The result of Mr. Bright's moderation is that he either asks too little or he proves too much. If five millions are entitled to a vote, why does Mr. Bright stop and say that he will only ask for one million to be admitted ? He does so because he knows that if he expressed an intention, nakedly and broadly, of going for this enormous addition to the franchise, his proposition would be at once and definitely rejected. But there is a greater, I will almost say, crime in the course which has been taken by Mr. Bright at this time. He says, in the very last speech which he delivered, " I shall be told that I am advocating communal opinions. I am doing nothing of the sort." But when he makes this disclaimer, what is the tenor and the course of his observations ? He is addressing thousands—perhaps 10,000—of the working men of Birmingham, and he says, " I ask you to look at those who are the governing class of this country. Look at their wealth, look at their luxury, look at their ostentation, and look at their weariness," which he calls " the weariness of satiety." He says they are called on to move from place to place in order to escape from the position of wealth and luxury which they occupy. Now, does he mean those who are really the governing classes of the country ? I think not. The governing classes are the middle classes of the country. It is not with the peers and the rich, with those who have this wealth and ostentation, that the great power of the country rests. But it is with you, the farmers, the shopkeepers, the merchants and tradesmen, that the real power of the country rests. When Mr. Bright points to the governing classes and says, " Look at their ostentation and their wealth," what does he mean ? He means to separate and single out a particular class—to * separate the wealthy and the noble, and to hold them up to a great assemblage of working men as having interests different from their own, and depriving them of what he tells them is their birthright —namely, a participation in the representation of the country. Now, in making such a statement he does that which is a disgrace to any public man—he does that which is calculated to raise up
At Horsham.	375
bitter and angry feelings between class and class ; he singles out those whom Providence has placed in great and distinguished positions, and he holds them up to the working men of the country as those who are their greatest enemies and opponents. If he means that the governing classes are those who exclude the working men from a share in the representation, it is not the rich, the wealthy, and the noble, but it is the great middle class, and those who support the middle class, because they believe, having much to lose, having a great stake in the country, that their opinions are stable, firm, and sound. It is to them that Mr. Bright's remarks must apply, and they are not to be addressed only to the wealthy and rich and noble of the land. Let Mr. Bright ask himself a question. He speaks of the great success of liberal and democratic institutions, and he says that if there was this wide extension of the suffrage in this country it would be accompanied by an extension of education over the whole surface of the country such as has never yet been seen. He is certainly referring to the agricultural districts as being districts where there is a total want of education, where the peasants are brutalized and debased, and are like the serfs upon a Russian estate. Now, I would ask him to refer to the report which has recently been made by a Royal Commission as to the condition of the children in some of the great departments of industry in the North. I ask him if he has ever been able to read, without his cheeks blushing, with shame, that account of the condition of the children employed in the large works in the North. We are told that there are children even of the advanced age of nine or ten who do not know the name of the Sovereign, the days of the week ; who never heard of a Saviour, and who do not know even the meaning of a God. If he wishes to seek for a class of children where there is a total failure of education, where there is an ignorance such as scarcely can be paralleled on the face of the whole globe, it is not to the agricultural districts that he must turn. It is not where he says the labourers are paid a poor pittance, such as almost to justify robbery, but he must go to those districts where fortunes are heaped up and obtained in a very short time. I admit that some of the manufacturers, like Sir Francis Crossley, expend their fortunes with a most princely munificence ; but, as a general rule, you will find that where fortunes have been rapidly made by means of the labour of the practical class, the interests of the practical class have never been rightly or justly considered. Let me remind Mr. Bright of this—for he read his recantation in the House of Commons—let me remind him that he was the most persistent opponent of those laws by which the labour of women and children was proposed to be limited, simply with the intention
376	Speech of Mr. Fitzgerald at Horsham,.
of enabling those women and children to obtain education. He has been the persistent opponent of those laws, and yet, in spite of all the opposition brought to bear against them by the manufacturing interest, they were passed, mainly through the instrumentality and by the assistance of the country gentlemen of England. There is one other point on which I wish to say a word. Mr. Bright addressed himself very strongly in his last speech to some Observations made by a right hon. friend of mine, the member for Droitwich, who showed how moderate men of different shades of opinion might be got so to combine as to form an administration possessing the confidence and respect of the country. My right hon. friend also said, quoting an old sentence of one of the leaders of our party, that " England dislikes coalitions." That is very true, but I understand by that expression the conjunction of men in office differing in opinion, but who will yet consent to waive the opinion they entertain in order to enable them to act together. I do not understand by a coalition a number of men who have hitherto sat on different sides of the House, but of men who, although they may differ on certain questions, yet upon great public questions have found their opinions the same. My right hon. friend simply suggested that that is more probable than many men imagine, from the eagerness with which Mr. Bright deprecates any such course, and seeks to place an impossible chasm between that party and their opponents. He says that if moderate men of both parties can be brought to act together, the game of those who seek extreme measures is gone. He talks of a coalition, but what can be such a coalition as a union between himself and those whom he calls Whigs, whom he has been for years systematically abusing ? He does this because he fears that moderate men would forget party ties, and, looking only to the interest of their country and the settlement of those great questions, will say, We have been long separate, but for common interests and for the attainment of one common object let us forget what is past, and unite over an effort jointly to support the Throne, to improve the Constitution, and to extend the representation as far as we can, so as to admit the working classes to the benefit we ourselves enjoy. Let us unite for these purposes, and I believe that, if honest men do so combine, the member for Birmingham will not
long enjoy the authority which	he now possesses.
•
SPEECH
OF
THE RIGHT HON. E. HORSMAN, M.P,,
ON OUR DOMESTIC POLICY.
[The following short Address was delivered by Mr. llorsman at the annual banquet given to the members of the Stroud Volunteer Rifle Corps on the 28th of December, Mr. Horsman undertaking to distribute the prizes on that occasion.]
I ALWAYS take pride to myself that I was one of the first to originate and promote and encourage in every way the Volunteer system. We all remember the public feeling by which the Volunteer movement was called forth. We remember the apprehensions which existed in many men's minds, and we remember that in many others who felt no apprehension still there was a feeling of regret that the voice of England in the councils of Europe, upon which the tranquillity of the world depended, was insignificant and uninfluential abroad, because we were known to be weak and vulnerable at home. Now, we must remember that the real battles of Europe are fought, not by armies on the battlefield, but in the Cabinets of Ministers. It is the diplomatist that is the advance-guard of armies. It is only when the diplomatist retires from the field, foiled and vanquished, that the military are called in to the banquet of death, to accomplish by brute force, by bloodshed, by carnage, that which in an enlightened age, in an age of Christianity, ought to be accomplished in a purer and more peaceful spirit. You all remember that memorable day when the Queen reviewed her Volunteer army in Hyde Park—that day on which she was enabled to tell the nation that a quarter of a million of the stoutest of her subjects had enrolled themselves for the defence of their native soil ; from that day England had assumed a new attitude in the councils of Europe. Courtesies and civilities were substituted for threats and menaces ; professions of peace instantly took the place of preparations for war ; and now we know that from that day the power of England, her influence, her peace-preserving power, have been multiplied to an extent no one could have thought to have been possible. We do not now rush into war to redress
378	Speech of Mr. Horsmart
grievances which are generally only aggravated by war ; but we have created, we have fostered, we have upheld, a public opinion in Europe which makes wars more difficult, which makes tyranny and injustice less profitable ; and it is the strength and position which we have exhibited to Europe which has made that change, and secured that England should still be the refuge of the unfortunate, the asylum of every political exile—that she should be at home the refuge of all who are fleeing from tyranny and injustice, while abroad she is the bold asserter of the principles of truth and freedom—tbe bold denunciator of that injustice and that aggression which were rampant in Europe many years ago, but which the moral influence of England, backed by her material strength, has made now as dangerous for despots as it used to be unfortunate for England. Well, gentlemen, that has been the result of the Volunteer movement, of which people are very apt to lose sight, but which we should all bear in mind, because I hold that the Volunteer movement has been the greatest instrument for the preservation of the peace of Europe. So far from being a warlike movement I hold it to have been a peaceful and a Christian movement ; and so far from the ministers of peace standing aloof from that movement I honour them when I see them coming forward on these occasions. And, gentlemen, well may we congratulate ourselves now that a new era has arisen. The old era has gone, but a new era has come in. We are standing to-night in a position of peace and prosperity, which, I think, we all of us feel to be perfectly unexampled. I remember no time, through a long public life, in which the commercial classes in England were so prosperous as now. I remember no time when our legislation was so sound, when our laws were better administered, when our people were more loyal, when our institutions were more popular, and when all classes in England, from the highest to the lowest, were more linked together in one great bond of brotherhood. And, gentlemen, I am happy to say that, as far as human foresight can tell, I see no reason to fear that these blessings may not be continued to us in the year to come. One domestic event has taken place on which much comment has been made. I have spoken just now of a domestic and private loss, but there has departed from amongst us an English Minister who had been Minister of England for a longer period than any other man—who for more than half a century had been mixed up with all the important changes that have taken place in Europe during that period, and who in one form or another had a greater share in European transactions for fifty-five years than ever before fell to the lot of an English statesman. He has bequeathed to us, after five years of such political
On our Domestic Policy.	379
peace and such national prosperity as was hardly interrupted by a single cloud—he has bequeathed to us that peace and prosperity which we now enjoy. There have been some people foolish enough to say, and others weak enough to believe, that with the departure of that Minister there might be a departure from that condition of peace and tranquillity and undisturbance which we have latterly enjoyed ; and there are some who have thought, and some who have believed, that in place of a policy of tranquillity we might now be suddenly embarked into an age of strife and agitation. Well, now, I do not believe anything of the kind is likely, and I will tell you the reason—because they who predicate such a change show that they have little studied either the history or the character of England. Lord Palmerston bas bequeathed to us the condition in which we now stand, but he has also bequeathed to us the secret of that condition. What was the secret of Lord Palmerston's popularity and power? It was that he studied the English character—that he saw, that he understood, and that he rightly read, English opinions and English desires—and reading and understanding them, he made it his first duty to give effect to them, and that, rely upon it, is the sole condition upon which any Minister in this country can ever hold power. The days are gone by when the death of one king and the succession of another could change the laws of the land. The days are gone by when the fall of one Minister and the elevation of another could change the policy of a nation. A Minister in these days can hold power on one condition only, and that is that he is the servant and not the master of the people. England now is a self-governing country ; and it is because England is a self-governing country, and moved by the opinions of the people, that we are peaceful, that we are prosperous, and that we are contented and loyal. Although at one period or another of our history accidental circumstances could raise to temporary importance some Minister, or party, or individual, still John Bull, who is a sleepy and good-natured man, and will take all very quietly as long as such a state of things is innocuous, yet, if ever the time should arrive again, as it did long ago, when the English Minister should be so blind as not to read any feelings of the people, or so imprudent as not to regard them, we may rely upon it that any such Minister would have much more to dread from the nation than the nation to dread from him. Therefore we may congratulate ourselves that we are entering upon a new year under the most favourable auspices ; and I trust that when we meet together at our next anniversary—and I hope we shall all be allowed to meet together again—we shall find that the promise which beams on
380	Speech of Mr. Horsmcun,.
us to-day, having brought forth the fruit which we hope and pray for, we shall still be able to feel gratitude for our blessings as a commercial nation, pride in its political position as the freest nation in Europe ; and appreciating and valuing our national institutions, and determined to uphold and perpetuate them, that we shall allow them to be approached only by a reverential hand, that we shall guard them from being defaced by the rusts of time or destroyed by the outbreaks of revolution.
DIVISION III.
SPEECHES DELIVERED AT THE BAR
IN THE YEAR 1865.
TO WHICH ARE ADDED THE SPEECHES DELIVERED AT THE BANQUET GIVEN
BY THE ENGLISH BAR TO M. BERRYER ON THE 8TH NOV. 1864.
SPEECH
OF
MR. JOHN DUKE COLERIDGE, Q.C.,
COUNSEL FOR THE DEFENDANT,
In a case for breach of promise of marriage, tried before Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, in the Court of Queen's Bench, Westminster, at the sittings after Hilary Term, 1865. The circumstances of the case will, we think, be sufficiently clear from the speech itself. We have, however, thought it advisable at so early a date after the trial not to obtrude unnecessarily on the public notice the names of the parties concerned, and have accordingly alluded to them throughout as plaintiff and defendant only. Damages to the amount of 2,0001. were awarded by the jury. Our report is taken from the shorthand notes of Messrs. J. and J. W. Cooke, of Bedford Row.
Ally it please your Lordship, and Gentlemen of the Jury,—The advocate of the defendant, in which character I appear before you to-day, has no doubt cast upon him a hard task. He has to defend a gentleman from the result of a breach of a contract which he, no doubt, deliberately entered into, and he has to do that after a very strong attack made upon his client by one of the ablest counsel* in Westminster Hall. I am only giving you credit for the ordinary feelings of our common humanity, in supposing that you will not consider that a trivial or commonplace consideration would justify the defendant as a man of sense and a man of honour, in not fulfilling his hasty and unnatural promise. These thoughts, no doubt, have already suggested themselves to your mind, if they have not been driven away by the somewhat vigorous vituperations to which my friend has subjected the defendant ; but I cannot help thinking that if you bring to the consideration of this case, as I am sure you will, a calm and impartial understanding, you will see that the damages are of a very trivial character—that they are even nominal in amount, and that a nominal sum, at the most, is all the defendant ought to pay for having unquestionably broken a promise which he unquestionably made. The facts of this case are singularly few, undisputed, and simple, and I will try to make my comments on them correspondingly brief. It is idle to put before you considerations in the soundness of which I do not believe, and the fallacy of which your understandings would immediately detect. I am not going to say for one moment that there has
* Mr. Bovill, Q.C., Counsel for the Plaintiff.
384	Speech of Mr. Coleridge
not been a most deliberate promise of marriage made by the defendant. I am not here to contend before you that the promise so deliberately made has not, with a full view of all the circumstances attendant on it, been resolutely and deliberately broken ; and therefore the question is, what damages, if any, the defendant has to pay for having brought himself within the perils of the law ? Gentlemen, the questions really to consider in this case are—What is the contract made ? Who were the parties to the contract ? How came it to be made ? and, Under what circum, stances was it departed from ? Those are the simple and plain issues in the case. First of all, to begin with, What was the contract ? The contract, as you will hear by and by, was a contract to assume the most solemn, the most touching, the most intimate relations in which one human being can possibly stand to another, so that they are " no more twain, but one flesh." Respect, esteem, and love on both sides, are its true foundation. And, gentlemen, you will give me leave to say that those disgrace themselves and profane the sacred ordinance of marriage who enter upon it from bad motives or in an unworthy temper ; and you will give me leave to say further, that those who seek to do so are not to be heard when they come into a court to claim damages which, from their own conduct, they are not entitled to. "Ex turpi causa non oritur actio," or, to use the beautiful paraphrase of Lord Mansfield, " Justice must be drawn from pure fountains." Who are the parties to the contract ? One of them is a colonel, not old in years, if you count by the calendar, but aged and enfeebled by a wasting disease—crippled from the middle downwards, one leg entirely and the other partially, so that he was like the king in the Arabian Nights, " half flesh and half marble "—heavily embarrassed in circumstances, but able to settle 5001. a year on his wife. If I am not entitled to say be was intemperate in habits, he had habits which one of the witnesses said " he had not been weaned from," and which it was desirable he should be weaned from. Weakened and afflicted by the cruel and repeated assaults of his disorder, he was a person who could have had, in the eyes of a lady like the plaintiff, one recommendation and one only, namely, the fact that he could charge his estates in her favour. Gentlemen, who is the other party to the contract ? A woman in mature life also, only recently brought into the close and intimate relation in which you have heard she stood to the defendant. She was fully aware of his infirmities, and was trading in them, taking advantage of his weakness and of his temporary removal from all those friends who had surrounded him except the friends of her own immediate connection—that she might drive
	In	the Queen's Bench.	385
with him her hard and disgusting bargain, and failing which she seeks to carry away the spolia opinza of the diamond ring and the 5,0001. damages. Not for her the pure sacred abandonment of self, which is the young virginity of affection. Not for her those loving and bright inspirations which lift us up above ourselves; which for a time hallow the worst of us, and elevate the most degraded. Not for her those visions of a happy home, enlivened with bright children, circled in with its own sacred fence of love and joy, which is alike the brightest prospect of the bride and the dearest consolation of the widow. She was prepared to go to God's altar with totally different feelings—to assume the defendant's name and position to the injury of his family. For this purpose she was willing to subject herself to his caresses, and to undergo his paralytic embraces, setting herself up for sale in market overt like any other piece of merchandise ; and for all these degrading compliances, money, and money only, was the miserable compensation. Gentlemen, in other countries, where men are despots because women are slaves, women are treated as brute beasts, sold in the market like any other animal or chattel ; and in such countries little is thought of the degradation, because it is the common lot. But in free and happy England, where a woman can marry for affection when she will—marry on equal terms, marry with Christian dignity—such a marriage contract as is sought to be here enforced is an indecency, an outrage, and a crime; and I trust you will not forget, when you look at the circumstances of this case, what was the contract the plaintiff strove to enter into with her intended husband. The defendant is a gentleman living in Wales, having a large place called Nant Eos, and also estates in other parts of the country. He had two other shooting boxes, which I suppose he reserved for his friends, as I presume he cannot himself shoot much out of his chair, in which it seems he is wheeled about. The defendant, early in this year, had a number of friends staying with him, among others the family of the plaintiff. A joke passed about leap-year, and the woman asking the man to marry her ; and she appears to have asked him. I suppose the defendant's position may have been one that some women would desire to share; for-it appears three women asked him, and amongst them was the plaintiff; and it appears that what passed at the time as a joke was considered as a serious matter in the mind of the
defendant. Certain it is that in the month of March the defendant came up to London, to St. George's Terrace,
	attended by Miss M	 L	, Mr. William B	
	, and Mrs. P	Captain and Mrs. P	had
cc
386	Speech of Mr. Coleridge
gone off to Leicester, some other lady had gone somewhere else, and the Colonel arrives in London with the plaintiff's sister, the plaintiff's sister's husband, the plaintiff herself, and a gentle-
man named H	. Who were Mr. and Mrs. William
P	? Why, Mr. P	 was a person living, as far
as appears, principally upon the Nant Eos property, and Mr.
William B	 P	 had lately married a Miss Annie
L—, to whom the defendant had been extremely kind ; they had been married from his house, and he had given them
some of the most valuable presents they received. Miss M	
L	 came up to London, but nothing is told us about
what passed during the two or three weeks when this ill-starred engagement is brought about. When my friend talks about " affection conceived " and a " tenderness springing up in the heart " of the plaintiff towards the defendant, I ask, Where is
the evidence of it	Where is there one single syllable in any
of the letters that have been put in ? Where is one word of viva voce evidence to show there was anything like affection or tenderness—anything like that growing affection you were told had existed, and which in this case is the creation solely of my friend's powerful imagination ? There is not a single syllable, until about the 7th of April, when the matter is announced, to show that there was any tenderness going on between
them. I asked Mr. William B	P	 if there was
any love-making going on, for there was no reason to keep it secret from him. I thought it took you completely by surprise.
asked, " Did you see anything going on between them ? " He said, " No, nothing at all."—" Was he wheeled from his room in his chair at that time ? "—" Yes."—" Was he a paralytic at that time ? "—" Yes."—" Was he an object for the conjugal tenderness of an affectionate bride ? Was he anything but the object of that compassionate and dutiful attention which old friends would have paid to him, and which the wife of his youth, if she had been living, would have paid to him ? Was there anything to attract the affection of the plaintiff, so as to lead her to wish to become his wife ? " There is not a shadow of pretence for saying so. Who are
these gentlemen ? My friend says that the L	s (on
whose family I make no imputations) are respectable people. That may be, but he cannot put them forward as people in the same station as the defendant. It appears that Mr.
L	 was the paid secretary of the defendant, living in his house, and the sisters were kindly treated as the defendant's friends ; but is it to be endured that these three persons, the
sister and the brother and Miss M	L —, are to get
In the Queen's Bench.	387
the poor defendant, the paralytic, up to London, in a house by himself, and then to get out of him this promise of marriage, and then to ask for large damages because his friends interfere to put an end to so unnatural a contract ? One matter my friend has made a little allusion to which was altogether unnecessary ; he has imputed and suggested to you that the whole of this matter was broken off by the intervention of Captain P-, and that he was an interested person in the transaction, that he had some sinister and malevolent motives of his own in preventing the marriage between the parties. I am not counsel for Captain P-, and I am not bound to go into his character, but I submit to you that there is not a tittle of evidence to show that he was acting otherwise than as a gentlemen should act, and from motives which every gentleman would respect. The defendant is the holder of large estates, he has a son who is 23 or
24 years old. It is not pretended that Captain P	 can
expect to receive a single sixpence by the defendant's life or death. Mrs. P- no doubt had passed a considerable
time at Nant Eos, as other people did. Captain P	 and
Mrs. P	, no doubt, were against the marriage, thinking
it an unnatural and indecent thing; and they would say so; no doubt, in plain terms, if they were asked. There is no imputation on any one for saying that. It is an unnatural and indecent thing for the plaintiff to have thought of; and if Captain
P	, as an intimate friend, thought .that the defendant
had been got away to London and surrounded by the L	s,
and entrapped into making a marriage contract, he ought not to remain silent ; and he did perfectly right to interfere, and say, " I have set myself against this, and remember, if you marry
Miss M- L	I shall go away, and there is an end
of our friendship. You shall not, with my consent, do anything of the kind." Is it not what any spirited, high-minded gentleman would have said, taking such a view of the connection and the manner in which it was brought about ? The friends of the defendant being surprised by the declaration that this contract of marriage was about to be carried into effect between the parties,
Captain P	 interferes, and, prior to that, Dr. King, the
professional and personal friend of the defendant, is consulted with reference to the safety to him of his being married. The man is a paralytic, at all events, and during his illness he is obliged to be assisted on all the most disgusting occasions of a man's life by other people. lie is in no condition for marriage, and lie is not in the condition iu which a modest and decent woman would think of marrying him. Ile goes to Dr. King, and tells him that lie is about to enter into this contract, and he
cc 2
388	Speech of Mr. Coleridge
asked him plainly whether he could safely enter a bed with a woman. Dr. King told him that he thought he might make a prudent marriage, the prudence of the marriage he explains to be that there must not be cohabitation, there must not be sexual connection, for anything like constant excitement would be exceedingly bad for him, and that this ought to be explained to the woman he was about to marry. The defendant said, " Do you
have the goodness to see Miss L	, and do you explain
this matter to her." This is the lady who comes before a jury of English gentlemen to ask for damages for the non-fulfilment of the marriage. Dr. King is here, and he tells us that he explained to her the circumstances. I suppose he thought, in order to make the marriage binding there must be consummation. He says, " I told her he was an invalid ; and I explained to her, in sufficiently precise words, that there must be separate beds. I did not say anything about occasional cohabitation, I merely explained that there must not be consummation. She seemed not to look for it ; she said she understood that, and said, at her time of life she did not look for it ; she knew she must be more of a nurse than a wife, and she was willing to take him upon those terms. The plaintiff continued expressing her unselfishness and disinterested affection." She was to be, she said, the nurse and the companion; and this is the touching, tender, and affectionate girl, in whose delicate breast had been gradually growing up the tender flower of love, which was by degrees unfolding its dainty bosom to the air, and getting into that most interesting state which Shakspeare has so exquisitely described in the famous passage which of course you know, but which I forget. Gentlemen, that is the plaintiff. My learned friend talks about my having a great secret which I was about to reveal. [Mr. BovILL, Q. C. : I beg your pardon.] I beg your pardon, but you did. When Dr. King is out of the box, and when my friend's powerful eloquence ceases to flow, I will tell you what it is. I said, and I still say, Dr. King is the intimate professional and personal friend of the defendant, and knows all about his physical condition ; if we have infirmities, we are obliged to reveal them to our doctors. He goes to him, not to reveal his physical infirmity—for he knew that for years he had been in this condition—but he goes to ask, " Do you think I can safely marry ? " He told him that he could, but he explained that it must be under certain conditions. Then the doctor has to see the woman, and explain those conditions to her ; and he did so. It appears that be wrote to the plaintiff to say that he should like to see her. There is nothing in that ; he sends a copy of the letter, which he addressed to the Colonel :—
In the Queen's Bench.	389
" I have seen Miss L	according to your request as her
medical adviser," &c.
[Here Mr. Coleridge read the letter alluded to.] That letter reveals that he had had a visit from her—that he had seen the plaintiff, and he had told her the condition under which she was to marry. Gentlemen, that does not explain what passed between the defendant and the doctor ; and how it got into my friend's brief, which is what I was complaining of, I cannot tell. Does this letter explain it ? This is all before the marriage, or just about the time when the marriage was being broken off. This letter is to the plaintiff, the 24th of May, a fortnight after the marriage was broken off:—
" Your brother arrived here this afternoon, and is kind enough to accept a bed. He inquired of me the charge made against you," &c.
It is in these words :—
" That you had left your home with an officer, and had lived with him ; and under those circumstances he could not marry you." (Signed) " RICIID. KING."
That does not explain what passed between the defendant and Dr. King, which is the question,—not what passed between the plaintiff and Dr. King. Of course, I know how the plaintiff knew that ; that is common knowledge to them both. What Dr. King and the plaintiff knew, they both knew ; she could communicate it to her attorney, and the attorney to my learned friend. It does not appear from the letter that all the different things that the defendant had said in the conversation which passed between him and Dr. King had been communicated to the plaintiff. [The LORD CHIEF JUSTICE : I understood distinctly from Dr. King that he went to her for the purpose of telling her what had passed between him and the defendant. He said," The defendant has been to consult me as to whether he could marry. I said, If it was a prudent marriage, by which I mean a marriage under certain conditions." It does come to her knowledge that the defendant has consulted Dr. King.] It may be so. [Mr. BOTILL, Q.C. : Here is the letter :—
" I have seen him (the defendant), and communicated the result of the conversation."]
Though it is true that he communicated to her that if she married it must be under certain conditions, there is nothing to show what passed between the defendant and Dr. King,—that it was ever desired to be communicated, or was ever communicated, to
390	Speech of Mr. Coleridge
the plaintiff. The subject of the letter was confidential to Dr. King, and which, I must say, I think a physician had better not repeat. Here a question arose affecting one of his own professional clients, whose state of health he knows only professionally from his having consulted him, and he makes certain statements to him. He knows a dispute has arisen between that gentleman and a lady to whom he was under an engagement to marry, and he was aware the brother of that lady had come to town and taken a bed in his house. I think that is rather strong. I take the liberty of repeating, without the indignation with which my friend spoke of it, that a gentleman, whatever else he felt on this subject, would have felt that his mouth was sealed as to what passed between the defendant—his old, intimate, and personal friend—and himself. What passed between him and his patient was not a thing to be mentioned under any circumstances, except by compulsion of law ; especially to the brother of a woman who he knew at that time was about to get up a case of breach of promise of marriage. You would be rightly surprised if any promise or any contract of yours was attempted to be enforced in a court of law, and you found part of the evidence against you was a conversation with respect to your personal affairs that had passed between your physician and yourself when he was at your bedside ministering to your wants. If that be the rule of the medical profession, the sooner it is understood the better ; and the sooner patients understand that what they say to their doctor will be volunteered to the prejudice of the patient who is consulting them, the better at least for the patients. That is a fair observation which I take the liberty of making. So the matter stood when the defendant came to his better mind, as I should call it, and determined on the whole that he would not fulfil his engagement ; and my friend said if the matter had stood there, probably the action would never have been brought, or if brought would speedily have been settled—which I suppose is meant as a concession that this was a case which no jury could bear to look at for five minutes. There is no doubt that the defendant both stated and put on the record a plea affecting the chastity of the plaintiff; and I am not going to stand here for a moment to vindicate the defendant for doing that, or to detract in the slightest degree from the character of the plaintiff. I state, with I hope not unbecoming pride, that if a gentleman appears by me, and withdraws an imputation, he withdraws it in the fullest sense, and suggests nothing whatever ; when I say, on the part of the defendant, there is no pretence for this plea and what it conveyed, it ought to be taken as an absolute withdrawal, and an expression of my sincere regret on the defendant's
In the Queen's Bench.	391
part that anything of the kind was said. I admit I cannot struggle against the fair observation that arises, that a gentleman ought not to make a statement of this kind until he is perfectly satisfied that he can prove it. At the same time, recollect who the defendant is, what the state of his mind and body has been proved to be. He is a man who has had nine or ten paralytic attacks, in London, since the last time lie contested the county, which was in 1859 ; and that was known to Dr. King. Now suppose for a moment he, having determined to break off this engagement, stated to a person perfectly unconnected with him, and perfectly trustworthy, the facts which he afterwards imported into the plea, and which he repeats. If it is a thing that can be proved, the way most people do is to state things when others have got to prove them,—they state them with a degree of confidence which, if they had to prove them themselves, and were responsible, they would not think of doing. Supposing a charge was made in the most perfect good faith, and the very nature of the charge would satisfy you that it was believed at the time, and under those circumstances the charge was first made, and afterwards persevered in, when it really comes to be looked into, it turns out there is not a pretence for it, and that it never should have been suggeSted ; what can a gentleman do more than what he has done—to write to the other attorney ; take out a summons, to strike off the plea, and pay the expenses attending it, and to desire me to express his regret that it ever was pleaded? Gentlemen, although I am the defendant's advocate, I can see two sides to this question. As far as the plaintiff is concerned, she was not injured by it, if she is the person I believe her to be, and which I now state on the part of the defendant he believed her to be ; stating such a charge as that and persevering in it might no doubt wound and distress some women, but, gentlemen, do forgive me for observing, we are not trying that ; the question here to-day is, whether the defendant broke his word, and if he broke it, what ought he to pay for having broken it ? If he pleaded a plea for which there was no foundation, and put the plaintiff for some weeks to anxiety and inconvenience, still that is a matter now removed from your consideration. We have done all we possibly can do, we have withdrawn the plea, apoleg:zed for the plea, and have said there was no foundation for the plea, and that we were extremely sorry that ever the plea had found its way into the record. What further can a man do beyond saying lie has made a mistake? A.s far as human language can go to rectify it, I express to you the most sincere regret that the mistake should have occurred. Any man may be subject to false information, and may make
392	Speech of Mr. Coleridge
statements which he meant to prove. If he finds he cannot prove them he ought to say so, and apologize, and make every reparation to the person whom he has unwittingly injured. Do not, when you come by and by to see what is the real issue in the case, and the real loss which the plaintiff has sustained, punish the defendant for a mistake which arose before the cause of action in this case of which she now complains, and for which the defendant has abundantly apologized. That seems to me nearly to exhaust the whole of the observations I have to make. You have got the case before you, and you have seen what the contract really was, the circumstances under which it was made, and ' how it was broken off. The question is, What are the real damages that the plaintiff has sustained in this case ? Has she lost a marriage ? It certainly can scarcely be called a marriage, to marry a man who could but be a husband in one sense. My friend does not suggest that there was anything like a shock or distress to her feelings on that account. He does not pretend that there was anything like affection, esteem, or love to the defendant, or that the plaintiff's heart was wounded, in respect of which she is entitled to compensation. It is said that this is a monetary action for a money loss, as she might have had a settlement upon her; for monetary loss she is entitled to ask the jury for compensation. Putting aside the accusation which has been atoned for, it is quite true this is a monetary action, but an action in which, most justly and rightly, the character of the parties is always taken into account; and there is no general rule by which damages in a matter of this kind can be estimated. There was a case before my Lord the other day when we were refreshed by hearing some of the tones of that great eloquence which used to ring high and clear not so very long ago from these same benches. In that case a girl had given her self up for life to be the affianced wife of a gentleman who had thrown her aside and discarded her, without reason and without redress. There the jury meted out damages with no niggard band. But this is not that case : the plaintiff in this case is not that sort of plaintiff; you cannot give her special damages in this case, without, to some extent, approving of the conduct she pursued, and encouraging women in a like situation to follow in her steps ; and, apart from idle declamation, and according to plain common sense, if you agree with me in the view of her conduct which I have endeavoured to put before you, it will follow that you will agree with me when I say that she has forgotten the dignity of her sex, and by her conduct lowered our ideas of that which we most esteem, reverence, and admire in the character of woman. I sincerely trust that you twelve English gentlemen will pause
In the Queen's Bench.	393
before you do anything that will give the faintest shadow of countenance to conduct such as the plaintiff has pursued ; and that, if you think a promise was made, and a promise broken, and that it must be followed by some damages, you will say they ought to be most trivial if not nominal in amount. And, gentlemen, I am very certain that in your hands she will receive as much as she deserves.
SPEECH OF MR. ISAAC BUTT, (H.,
IN DEFENCE OF THOMAS CLARKE LUBY,
TRIED FOR TREASON-FELONY.
[The following speech was delivered by Mr. Butt, Q.C., on the 30th of November, in defence of Mr. Luby, formerly editor of the Irish People newspaper, and one of the principal Fenian conspirators. Notwithstanding the eloquence exerted in his behalf, and after a most patient investigation, Luby was convicted and sentenced to 20 years' penal servitude. We may add that the trial took place before the special commission held at Dublin during the months of November and December, 1865, Mr. Justice Keogh and Mr. Justice Fitzgerald presiding on the occasion.]
111v Lords, and Gentlemen of the Jury,—It now becomes my duty to reply on behalf of the prisoner at the bar, and in doing so I have but one duty to discharge, and you have but one. You have to inquire whether, according to the principles of the British law, you can convict—I say can convict—the prisoner at the bar of the offence with which he is charged. And my duty is to submit to you any propositions that occur to me that ought to influence your judgment on that question. But, gentlemen, whatever temptation there may be in this case—a temptation not always possible to be resisted in these trials, termed State trials —to wander into discussions irrelevant to the matter, I will now, as far as I can, confine my observations to those matters which will fairly and properly influence your judgment in the case. I need hardly say to you that you must convict him on the specific evidence charged against him, or not at all. I care not what you may think of his politics. I know nothing of your politics. It may be that some of you consider that Ireland is one of the most prosperous and happy countries in the world, and is blessed with the easiest and most paternal Government. It may be that some of you think that there are grievances in Ireland which every Irishman feels, one way or another. We have nothing to do with this. This man holds his life and liberty by the law, and unless that law entitles you to find him guilty of the identical charge made against him, I care not what you think of him ; you are bound to give him an acquittal. You may believe him to be as great a rebel as ever stood in that dock since the days of Emmett to the present. You may believe he is as great a rebel as Emmett
Speech of Mr. Butt.	395
in his heart. That has nothing to do with the question. All you have to consider is, whether he committed this specific offence in this indictment. Now, gentlemen, to you I need not say that, whatever prejudices may have existed upon this case—prejudices and notions but too easily dispelled by the very form of the accusation preferred against him—whatever slanders and falsehoods, as I am now justified in calling them, have been circulated industriously through the medium of the press, I know you will wholly discard everything that has passed, every notion and every impression that may have been made on your minds before you came in here, and that you will decide on the evidence, and the evidence alone. I ought to make that observation. Everything tends to make us believe that there is something extraordinary and special in this trial. A great Roman advocate, whose name has become a very pattern for modern advocacy, once said, when called upon to plead the defence of a case, " What means all this unusual clamour of armed men around me ? " And I may ask why is it that in your streets military are surrounding this very tribunal ? and why is it that every passage and avenue to it, through which the populace were admitted in former times, is now closed against them by the police ? And why is the audience who listen to this trial, and who ought to be the tribunal before which we claim the privilege to be tried, composed in its larger proportion of constabulary ? All these considerations, gentlemen, you will be called upon to calmly weigh, and to approach this trial without any prejudice, alarm, or fear whatsoever, and say upon this accusation which is preferred against him, is he guilty ? Now, gentlemen, let me, before calling attention to the evidence or anything else, just tell you some of the principles upon which you must try this case. I need not say you must, in the first place, be morally satisfied of his guilt. But that is not enough. You must be satisfied, not morally merely, but you must have firmly impressed on your minds the conviction, that the evidence for the prosecution is such as will justify you in consigning him, not, indeed, to the fate of a traitor, but to leave this country for life. .N ow, gentlemen, let me make this distinction. There are many cases in which you might be thoroughly and perfectly satisfied of the guilt of a person, but in which the law will tell you you ought not to find him guilty. If the first man in the land came to that table and accused another of perjury, even though the accusation were against the vilest person in this community, and preferred by the first man in the land, and that perjury were the issue you were to try, I tell you that not one of you must entertain a shadow of doubt, even though that person were the Archbishop of Dublin, that he was telling the truth
396	Speech of Mr. Butt
when contradicting the prisoner. The law will tell you you cannot act upon that proof upon your moral convictions, if even the first man in the land be not verified in his charge against the vilest man in the community. So, in this indictment of high treason, the law will tell you that, although this crime were proved so as not to leave a shadow of doubt on your minds, yet, if there were not two witnesses, one to verify the oath of the other, you would be bound to acquit ; and in this case, gentlemen, the same principle is involved, because, although you have it proved on the uncorroborated testimony of one that he is guilty of the crime with which he is charged, yet the judges will advise you not to convict on uncorroborated testimony ; and therefore it is that I take this case as an illustration of the principle of the law, that, although you may have no moral doubt of the guilt of the prisoner, you must ask yourselves the question upon the evidence before you, and upon the proof before you, as conscientious men, Do you think you are justified, or are you satisfied, in finding him guilty ? With these observations I will ask your attention to what the charge is. It is founded upon an Act of Parliament passed in 1848. It is that, not regarding the duty of his allegiance to the Queen, he did feloniously, &c., " compass, imagine, invent, and intend to depose the Queen from the style, honour, and royal name of the imperial crown of Great Britain and Ireland, and said felonious conspiring, compassing, imagining, &c., he feloniously and wickedly did express, utter, and declare, by divers acts hereinafter mentioned." There are two other counts in the indictment : that he compassed the levying of war, with intent to compel the Queen to change her measures, and that he compassed to invite foreigners to invade the kingdom ; and these were expressed by certain overt acts. These words, " compassing, imagining," &c., come down to us from the time of Edward III., and the definition of the word " compassing" is to be found in Hale's " Policy of the Crown," where it is said to mean " deliberate design." The history of it is this :—In olden time a mere design to commit an offence constituted the offence. Lord Hale tells us that if you design to murder a man, and do any act showing it, though you did not carry it into execution, you are guilty of murder. Subsequently the law was modified in every case except that of the king. But as to the design to take away the life of the king, the strictness of the old law was preserved, and " compassing " constitutes the offence. Now, carry that in your mind. It is the compassing that is the offence—the design in the man's mind is the offence. So completely was that the case that, when once a king of England was actually put to death, and his executioner was brought to trial, he could not be
In Defence of Thomas Clarke Luby.	397
convicted of killing the king, but for compassing the death of the king. I want to show you that the offence is so entirely " compassing," that even the man who actually cut off the head of Charles 1. could not be by law convicted of killing him, but he was convicted of compassing his wicked intent by cutting off his Majesty's head. Under the statute of Edward III., the only treason was compassing the death of the king; but in the progress of time a treasonable conspiracy to depose the king was held to be an act to compass his death, for, they said, " There is but one step from the prison of the king to his grave." In 1796 there were the celebrated trials in which the jury refused-to act on it, and the result was that a statute was then passed exactly in the terms of the indictment—that any one who should compass to depose the king should thereby be guilty of treason. In the year 1848 the Act of 1796 was repealed, but repeating that " compassing to depose the king or queen should be not high treason, but treason-felony ;" so mitigating the offence from high treason to treason-felony, leaving the offence in terms the same exactly. You cannot now find him guilty of treason-felony unless before '48 you could convict him of high treason. I am not quite certain that such a change could be regarded as liberality to the subject, or that it added much to popular liberty, because, if a man were formerly indicted for high treason by the Act passed after the Revolution of 1688, the law surrounded him with securities against a charge made by the Crown. When a man was indicted for high treason, he obtained a copy of the indictment, and ten days to plead, with a list of the witnesses and the panel, and with this every overt act should be proved by two witnesses. Al] these safeguards have been swept away in a charge of treason-felony, and the punishment is made transportation for life. For what did Lord Somers and other great men frame that law of high treason ? It was because, as you have seen in the course of this trial, that, let men administer the powers of the Crown ever so honestly, there is tremendous power in the Crown in using false and fabricated evidence on the part of witnesses, which could not stand in a charge of high treason, against which the mind of every loyal man must revolt. I address myself wholly to these considerations. I may allude to some things, but these have not been introduced by me. You have only to determine whether you are satisfied that Thomas Clarke Luby is an innocent man ; not whether any one else did it for him,—not if any member of a confederation with his knowledge has done it. That is only evidence worth nothing in this case, unless it is proved to your mind that the prisoner at the bar had the design of deposing the Queen, and that the same was manifested by acts. That is the
398	Speech of Mr. Butt
question you will have to try. He cannot commit the act by deputy ; he must compass it himself. No man can do it for him. I do not say but such a design may have existed, but it is worth nothing unless it is proved that he entertained treasonable designs. I ask you to bear that point with me. The prisoner has nothing to do with the acts of Kickball], Stephens, and O'Mahony, with which they are charged in this indictment ; and no court, no jury, no judge, no earthly tribunal, can hold him accountable but for the acts he himself has committed. You are to consider if this man did feloniously conspire for the purposes mentioned. Now, this law of conspiracy is a very peculiar one,—I cannot say an oppressive one, although it may work oppressively upon individuals. It might be impossible to convict men of very grievous offences if you were not allowed to travel over things done by themselves and their associates. But the law intrusts to the consciences, and the intelligence, and the honour of the jury that they will weigh the whole of the evidence, and will sift that which ought in truth and conscience to bear against the prisoner from that which ought not, and will find him guilty only upon so much of it as they really think he ought in justice to be made answerable for. Well, now, that is just the duty you have to discharge. Let me say that I think there have been three classes of evidence offered in this case. You have had a great deal of documentary evidence—I will not say the case has been overladen with it. There is the oral evidence, which, with the exception of what one policeman said here to-day, is exclusively confined to informers. There is then the evidence of a number of documents connected with other individuals ; and, finally, there is the evidence of some letters written by Mr. Luby himself to bring him into direct contact, I might say, with those letters and the evidence to be supplied from the articles from the Irish People. Let us see how far in each of these classes there is evidence bearing upon the prisoner himself, upon which you ought to act. Now, I think, of evidence directly implicating him there is none that I at this moment remember, except the evidence of the informer Nagle, and, if you choose to attach any weight to it, the evidence the policeman gave to-day about the conversation with reference to invading Ireland,—I mean as to the oral evidence connecting him with any facts of the conspiracy. I have already said that an informer must be corroborated in any particular evidence that affects the prisoner that he gives. For instance, if an informer were to prove that there was a trunk overweight at the Great Southern and Western Railway, that might be true ; and yet the whole of a chain of evidence by which an informer might attempt to connect the fact with a prisoner might be utterly false. There-
In Defence of Thomas Clarke Luby.	399
fore it is that, as you must know, the judges have repeatedly advised juries—and so far this is not a principle of law : a jury would be perfectly justified in convicting on the unsupported evidence of an informer—that they ought to be satisfied that there is corroboration of the informer in some material fact affecting the prisoner. Now, gentlemen, I confess that I listened with some surprise to the evidence given by Nagle. Is it true ? The first thing that startles one is this—that he says, "I never was sworn ;" and yet he states that he was admitted into the most secret confidence of those parties without taking the oath. Is that likely ? Is it probable, if his story be true ? But I was more surprised, I confess it,—taken utterly by surprise,—when, in reply to a question of mine as to when he had first given the information, he answered that he had been in constant communication—I was about to say with the Government of Ireland, but some people tell us the police are the Government of Ireland—but, at all events, in constant communication with the detective police for eighteen months. Eighteen months ago the Government, that is now so ably represented by my learned friends the Attorney and Solicitor General, knew, if his story be true, that there was a treasonable conspiracy in Ireland, spreading itself, drawing into it the young blood of Ireland, drilling men within half a mile of the Castle of Dublin, for that is confirmed by policemen. And the Government looked on, and saw this Irish People newspaper, whoever were the writers of its articles, day after day, and week after week, publish the articles which they now say are to send that man to a felon's gaol, and there was no interference on their part. A file of policemen might have gone down to Ralston Street, and, under a stringent and arbitrary law existing in Ireland, have arrested those people for illegal drilling. An information by the Attorney-General might have stopped the Irish People, if their case be true, and convicted Luby of seditious publications. If their case be true, they might, upon the information of Nagle, have brought up the persons at Clonmel who were administering illegal oaths. But for eighteen long months those who were bound—I say if this case be true—to have interfered as the guardians of the law, slumbered and lay by. Have any of you ever heard the answer often pleaded in the courts in actions of trespass, and shortly expressed in the words " leave and license ? " If " leave and license " can be pleaded for high treason, there were leave and license here. Day by day the Irish People was published, every week getting its stamps from the Stamp Office, sending its stamped journals through the Post Office, and by Her Majesty's mails, to every place that the conductors chose to send them; and now, after a year and a half,
400	Speech of Mr. Butt
the articles that were so published then are brought forward to transport that man. There is no answering that, gentlemen. Are they treason ? Well, my learned friend says that he was not Attorney-General all that time ? But will he say that the Attorney-General, whose bounden duty it was to have looked to the safety, aye, of the Irish people, was not aware of those articles ? And now they talk about the mischief of leading people into this conspiracy. Did they stand by, seeing treason openly perpetrated, seeing men seduced, seeing the drilling going on that he now alleges was going on for illegal purposes, knowing that it was in connection with what was going on in America,—ior that is the case of the informer ;—was all that done by him, or by whoever filled the office of Attorney-General, neglecting his duty ? or is it that this case has now been got up by an informer, and that the case of the informer is not true ? Well, now, gentlemen, do you believe the informer ? Do you believe him ? Is he corroborated ? It is entirely for you. You are to weigh the evidence. The Constitution has given to you to-day the sole, the absolute, the uncontrolled right of deciding on the fate of that man. And when I say the uncontrolled right, I mean uncontrolled except by that which I hope and trust will ever control juries in that box—your conscience and truth. If, gentlemen of the jury, upon a review of this case, and after going through all the evidence—after selecting that which bears upon him, and which ought to bear upon him, you can put your hands upon your hearts, and say that you are satisfied, not upon any speculation, not from anything you heard outside this court, not from any prejudice that may have crossed your minds, but on what honestly and fairly should convince you, as Irishmen, you ought to do your duty, and pronounce a verdict of " Guilty," fearless of any consequences whatever. Well, now, that is the first observation I make. Do you think the Government—those representing the Government—believed that there existed for eighteen months in this country a treasonable conspiracy ? I leave you to judge of it. Now, all the papers in the Irish People office were seized, and all of them were carried off. For eighteen months, we are told, the Government had looked on, calmly and quietly, at the publication of that paper ; and suddenly the Government, upon the advice of Mr. Nagle, runs to action. Persons were sent down, exactly as might have happened to one of you—for, if the Government would do it in the Irish People office, they might do it in your house—and all the papers and documents belonging to Mr. Luby were carried off. Now, what was done with those documents—documents to be used afterwards here, observe, upon this charge ? I should have imagined
In Defence of Thomas Clarke Luby.	401
that those documents would, as I remember in former State trials—for, unfortunately, this is not the first time I have had to defend persons upon these charges—I should have imagined that those documents would have been carried off to the very highest authority, as was formerly done, and placed in the most secure custody, and examined by the highest officers of the State, and kept in custody by men whose character and position prevented the suspicion of tampering. But where were those documents kept ? After two or three days some of them were examined by those whose duty it was to examine them ; but the rest were returned to the custody of the detectives, kept by them under lock and key, and produced by them bit by bit, as the exigencies of the case seemed to require. I ask you, gentlemen, are you satisfied with that way of producing documents, so far as those documents affdet the prisoner ? And now I tell you, if you, as guardians of the public liberty,—if you, as administering the law which your own consciences lay down to you,—if you are satisfied that the documents were carried out of a man's house, and entrusted to a detective officer, when that very detective officer had been employing spies to track, aye, and to seduce those men,—if you believe in your consciences that that is not the way in which the liberties of Irishmen are to be taken 'away, you will be justified in disregarding those documents. And I ask you to do it. You are not to drive us to special plead, and no English jury ever did it—you are not to drive us to special plead, and say that the detectives tampered with these documents. But I say that when the power o't the Crown is brought to bear upon them, those documents ought not to have been left as they were. Documents involving the safety of the country,—documents, if you believe this charge now, connected with the American inva-sion—these documents are left in the custody of a common detective,—I hope I do not speak disrespectfully when I say a common detective,—without a single pledge to you that anv man of position in the State examined them ! And now let me ask you, Are you satisfied with this executive committee document ? Now, remember the detective tells you that he got this in an envelope directed to " Miss Fraser," sealed, which Luby told him belonged to his wife, or to some lady, and to give it to his wife. I could understand him if he said he gave it away. But he carries off that sealed document with him, and he does not open it for ten days. Luby was arrested on the 16th, but was not formally committed till the 2nd of the next mouth. Day after day adjournments are asked for to complete the case, and whey the case is trembling in the balance, this document is produced. Is it, like the documents that were found on Smith O'Brien,
DD
402	Speech of Mr. Butt
placed in the custody of the Under Secretary or the Chief Secretary ? No ; but it is kept by a detective, you are told. And what security have you that that detective may not have concocted this document ? And who proved the handwriting ? An informer, and nobody else. Not a human being is produced to swear to the handwriting except an informer ! Was there no one else to be got ? Are you satisfied that that document was really in that envelope when it was found by the police, or was it put into that afterwards by some person for the very purpose of strengthening a case that they knew to be weak ? Now, gentlemen, this is a matter that affects public liberty—affects you, and me, and every one of us ; because, as I say again, this is no common case. It is a case in which the whole power of the Crown is brought to bear ; and I say to you that, if detectives are to enter any man's house in Dublin, without a warrant, to do what they did in this case, and are to carry off all his papers, and not to give them into the custody of any Minister of State, but are to retain them in custody themselves, and, ten days afterwards, allege that they for the first time found a document like that in an envelope to which their attention was particularly directed,—I tell you no man's life, no man's liberty, is safe in this country. There may be nothing to affect him in all that, but I may comment on, and I can only submit to you, considerations which I think ought to influence your judgment. And I do ask you as men—there is no British jury would do it, and England's juries have made England the proud and loyal country she is—I ask you never to seek to find a man guilty upon a document so produced by a detective, resting upon evidence such as you have heard, upon the evidence of a detective who had been tracking these men, who had been hunting them down with the instinct of bloodhounds ; I ask you never to convict him on evidence like this. Well, now, gentlemen, what is there that really comes home to Luby ? There is no doubt that the conversation—[Here Mr. Sydney spoke in a low tone to the learned counsel.] My learned friend reminds me of what had escaped me. You will be able to know yourselves—as I am glad to see that you have watched the evidence carefully—as to the documents so found in Mrs. Luby's desk, of which she had the key,—you will be able to say for what, you think, this document would have been kept. Because it is supposed to have been a document by which Stephens, when he went to America, gave power to these people to go on with the Fenian Brotherhood in bis absence. He had come back, and they did not want it. But you will observe the peculiar part of the case. I can perfectly understand persons having documents of this kind being so secure from all danger as to take no precautions to conceal them. It would be
In Defence of Thomas Clarke Luby.	403
very easy to suppose that, when we know that men were drilled, and that treasonable articles were written without notice of the Government. But the document was enclosed in an envelope directed to Miss Fraser. For what purpose was it concealed ? I ask you to judge whether it was not as unlike the style of James Stephens' letters as anything could be? [Counsel here read the paper referred to, in which James Stephens appointed Thomas Clarke Luby, Charles James Kickham, and John O'Leary as the heads of the Fenian executive in his absence.] Now, supposing that this occurred—and I see nothing, I confess, improbable in the supposition—that in his conversation with Superin-tendant Ryan some informer had said,—for Government in this miserable country will never be without informers if they are asked for,—supposing some informer had said, "I know that Stephens had appointed these three persons in his absence," could not they have had this document fabricated to meet such a statement as that? Supposing that when that document was found, ten days after the arrest, in the possession of a detective —[Mr. Justice KEOGH : It was on the 10th of October the envelope was opened and the document found.] I am very much obliged for that correction, your lordship ; it serves my purpose better still. Here was this envelope, to which the attention of the detectives was called so far back as the 16th of September, remaining till the 10th of October. I am not here to find fault with the conduct of the Government. But I say that when the Government allowed the document to remain in the hands of the detective for three weeks, then, fairly, the jury may be allowed to draw an inference from it. It was on the 10th of October he went to look for this document. I could understand his carrying off wholesale all the correspondence in the Irish People office, and say that amongst them he had not found it. But there were only a few documents in Luby's own house ; and it was a suspicious thing that until eight days after Luby's committal it was not opened. How many informers bad been to the Castle in the mean time to tell their stories ? I should be sorry to say that Hughes, or any one else, did this ; but I say that this is displayed in it,—this is far more than displayed in it ; and it is a common rule in a court of justice, that if the parties give their own case and their evidence wrongly, they must suffer the consequences. It is a principle which ties our sovereign lady the Queen more strongly even than any of her subjects ; it is the principle by which the Executive stands between the Crown and her subjects. Now, gentlemen, are these observations fair ? But some articles have been read from the paper known as the Irish People. Will you
D D 2
404	Speech of Mr. Butt
expect the to go through all these articles ? I will take one of them, on which I was, I must confess, very much surprised at the comments of the Attorney-General. The article is a very mild attack on a body of men whom we now hear so much eulogized—the Roman Catholic clergy of Ireland. I have the most sincere respect for the Roman Catholic clergy, but it certainly is new to me—it is the first time in the history of British rule in Ireland, that trying to lessen the influence of that body is a crime. However, we have lived to see strange things, and nothing has more surprised me and more amused me than the acts of some persons who are patting the Roman Catholic clergy of Ireland. My right hon. friend said he could not read these articles without horror. The article began by impugning the statement of a great man—O'Connell—made at the latter days of his life, that no political advantage was worth a single drop of blood. O'Connell said that to get the clergy on his side. Strange to say, it was left for the great Liberator to sweep away the last vestige of the foundations of the British Constitution. The whole article is nothing more than simply showing that, though the Roman Catholic clergy adopted that motto, they yet, when the Pope wanted soldiers, allowed the Irish to go. But are we to understand that my right hon. friend does not repudiate the doctrine laid down by O'Connell? I repudiate that doctrine, and the Attorney-General is the Attorney-General of a Government that repudiated it when it countenanced the operations of Garibaldi. The doctrine that there are political advantages which are worth the shedding of blood, is one to which the Sovereign owes the crown which she bears. She owes it to the fact that Englishmen did think that political advan-tAtes were worth a drop of blood ; and it is to the blood which Russell and other brave men shed upon the scaffold that we owe, in a great measure, our present free Constitution. I repudiate that doctrine. Where are the great and true men who have not held this doctrine? Has not every nation in the world, from time to time, vindicated the doctrine that it was right to obtain a political advantage by the shedding of blood ? Why, it was for the repudiation of this doctrine that Sacheverel was impeached by the House of Commons, on the ground that it affected the foundation of the British Constitution. He was impeached by the Rouse of Commons; the House of Lords found him guilty ; he was stripped of all his preferments, and his book was taken and burned by the common hangman. If the Attorney-General were to go to London and repeat his repudiation of the doctrine, nothing but his character would save his speech from being burned by the common hangman. The
In Defence of Thomas Clarke Luby.	405
doctrine of the Revolution asserted that when the Sovereign failed in his duty to the people, the people had the right to resist him, and that, to enable them to enforce that right of resistance, every man had the right to bear arms. Perhaps these opinions may not be held in this country,—perhaps they are not suited to it ; but they are the doctrines on which the British Constitution is founded. It may not be necessary for the Sovereign either to repress or disarm the people, and his best safeguard is in the hearts of his people and the attachment of the nation. But need I tell you that, when it was necessary, the right of resistance was that which immortalized and made glorious the work of patriotism ? Mr. Luby does hold the doctrine that a political advantage is worth the shedding of a drop of blood. .Men loyal to the Queen hold that doctrine. It is the doctrine of the British Constitution and British law, that God has implanted in the heart of every man ; and, if that doctrine were not held, freedom would cease to exist in the world. I take that. just as an instance. Let no man misunderstand me. Let me say this here now as I have spoken it. The man who, under any circumstances, advises the people to rise in revolt, incurs the most fearful responsibility that man can take before his God. God forbid that any man should tell us that there are not occasions on which men may honestly rise against their Government, and vindicate, even against established usages, the immutable rights of man ! Now let me take the letter of O'Keeffe. No doubt it is one about which I have some difficulty in speaking, because I understand he may be put on his trial, and if he be indicted for a wicked and seditious libel, and that the publication be shown, I confess I think it will be very hard to defend him. But it appears to me to be the raving of a madman. But was it ever acted on ? Which of us is not open to these things ? When I filled a more public position than I do now I used to receive letters once a week from mad people. I once got a letter telling me that all Birmingham was to be blown up by "the saints of the Lord." If that letter were found with me, and never acted on, would you convict one of having laid a plot to burn Birmingham ? You now know that these men's steps were tracked and iflogged, that their secret meetings were watched by policemen, jotting down the whispered accents that were borne on the night breeze ; and I ask, Has there been anything oGred in evidence to justify these atrocious slanders which some nameless informer, who has not the courage now to come forward, has placed before the Irish people to disgrace our name and nation ? Where is the evidence of any conspiracy against the landlords to murder
406	Speech of Mr. Butt
them ? Gracious Heavens ! is that the evidence upon which such statements are to be cast through the length and breadth of the land, frightening our people, setting class against class, making each man distrust his neighbour ? You must consider these things before you pronounce your verdict which will consign my client to a felon's gaol. Shall I go through all these letters ? They are publications appearing in newspapers. The only evidence to connect Luby with these letters is the fact that he was the registered proprietor of the paper. You must infer from that whether you really believe that he published these articles with the treasonable design imputed. Throw over the evidence of the informer, and what is there beside ? After the letters which have been read I don't think I should say to you that there is not abundant evidence that in America, at least, there did exist a conspiracy, having for its object the independence of Ireland. But the question is not whether you suspect him of having sympathized with that conspiracy. There may be many a man in this country anxiously looking for the hour when he can take up arms to join that conspiracy. I will not say that that man is not criminal ; but he is not accountable to the law until he has done some overt act to carry out his desires. Now let me call your attention to the kind of evidence you are asked to convict the prisoner on. Because O'Connor sent a revolver to a correspondent in the country, you are asked to say that Luby designed to depose the Queen, and carried it out by acts and writing. I ask you to disregard, as far as Luby is concerned, the whole of the evidence of general designs. When I admit that there has been a conspiracy existing in America to separate Ireland by force from England, and that that conspiracy has had its agents in this country, all the evidence can prove nothing more than all the evidence about Stephens, John O'Ma-bony, and others. All the evidence can prove nothing more. But the real question remains. Is there sufficient evidence to connect Luby with the traitorous designs of the confederacy ? Did he harbour these designs in his heart ? Now, I repeat that, because of the designs said to be contained in the articles in this paper. Here there are articles set out, beginning so far back as the year 1863, and published week by week under the sanction of the -overnment, with their permission ; because we hold that the person who does not prevent, when he has the power, permits. I say that the mere fact of the Government allowing that to be published ought to make you reject such evidence. You should tell the Government—I say so for the safety of your homes—" We will never give you a verdict for what you sanctioned and allowed." I dispose of these articles
408	Speech of Mr. Butt.
arming of the people is a high crime, but it is not treason. It does not become treason until such a moment as that at which Smith O'Brien took the field at Ballingarry. That was treason. But these vague expectations of insurrection, although they are high crimes, and punishable in a proper way, are yet not treason. I ask you to find that merely to refute the doctrine of not shedding a drop of blood is not treason. Your ancestors would not have done so. There were days, glorious in the history of our country, when the Volunteers of Ireland thought a political advantage was worth the shedding of a great many drops of blood to achieve the independence of Ireland ; and Charlemont and Grattan were not traitors although they were at the head of those Volunteers. And let me say to you this : if Ireland is ever to be won from that disaffection which, I deeply regret to feel, does spread through our people, the way to win it is, as Erskine said in Hardy's case, by satisfying the people that juries impauelled in courts of justice will find for liberty wherever they can. Is Ireland for ever to remain iii the condition in which she is ? Is Ireland for ever to remain with a large mass of her people disaffected to the law ? The time that the Psalmist has given for the duration of man's life has nearly passed away since the last traitor stood in that dock—since Emmett there made that appeal to posterity which, condemned as he was as a traitor, has still made his name a household word, even among many who are loyal to the Queen. And are we for ever to have this miserable circle of breaking out into disaffection, of abortive insurrections, of men combining in those wild conspiracies ? Are we, I say, for ever to have this miserable circle of misgovernment and disaffection reproducing each other ; or are we ever to have a time when English law and the English Constitution in its full and its noble spirit of freedom will animate and pervade the Government of this disaffected country ? If ever we have that day, then it will not be by special commissions, and dungeons, and bailiffs*, and relegations to the felon-ship, that the spread of disaffection will be put down ; it will be by men, gentlemen, like you, impanelled in the jury-box, showing that you can imitate the spirit and maintain the freedom of English juries, and that any attempt to interfere with liberty here is just as strongly resented by the jury in that box as it would be in the free and happy sister kingdom of England.
SPEECHES
DELIVERED AT
THE DINNER GIVEN BY THE BAR OF ENGLAND
TO M. BERRYER,
IN THE HALL OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, NOVEMBER 8, 1864.
[The following speeches, though not delivered during the year 1865, and therefore not strictly coming within the scope of this volume, have nevertheless been added in this place as likely, from the authority of the speakers, as well as the occasion on which they were spoken, to be of very general and lasting interest. It is also thought that they are worthy of preservation in a more permanent form than that in which they first alipeared. We are indebted for our report of the proceedings at the banquet to a member of the Home Circuit, under whose supervision these speeches were first reprinted in a pamphlet.]
THE usual loyal toasts having been given—
The CHAIRMAN (Sir Roundell Palmer, the Attorney-General), said : My Lords and Gentlemen,—I have now to propose that we should show our respect for the great nation to which our distinguished guest belongs, and the value we attach to our friendly alliance with that nation, by drinking " The Health of the Emperor of the French."
This toast having been drunk—
The CHAIRMAN said : My Lords and Gentlemen,—I have now to ask you that you do yourselves the honour of drinking the health of the illustrious citizen, the distinguished statesman, the great orator, the unrivalled advocate, whom we have the honour of seeing among us this evening. I am sure he feels that the assembly which surrounds him is far more eloquent in his praise than any words that I or any one among us could utter. I venture to tell him that in this country—I should not be exaggerating if I said in the world—such an assembly has never yet been brought together on a similar occasion. Not only is this splendid and stately hall crowded by members of the Bar of England, who have been eager to obtain admission to this festivity, but we are surrounded by guests, whom we have been proud to ask to join us, in honour of him and his colleagues on this occasion—the flower of our bench of judges, and of those venerable and famous men who in former days have sat on that bench, whose names will be handed down to the end of time, but who, perhaps, will
410	Speeches at the Dinner
not think it otherwise than an addition to their honours to be associated with him at such a celebration. Gentlemen, it would be vain in me to attempt to do justice, either to the merits of M. Berryer or to the feelings and motives which prompted you to invite him among you to-night; but I feel, at least, that I express some part of the sentiments which animate your hearts, when I say that you have invited him here because you see in him one who, by extraordinary talents and virtues, and by a long and brilliant public career, has adorned, ennobled, and dignified the profession of which we are all members. And, gentlemen, while we are delighted to recognize in him conspicuous and singular individual and personal merit, we are also proud that merit so conspicuous justifies us in taking this opportunity of showing our sense of the universal brotherhood which ought to prevail, and which we believe does prevail, between the Bar of England and the Bar of France, and I trust of all the civilized world. We rejoice, gentlemen, in the science of a great and noble common calling—a calling which vulgar minds frequently misunderstand and under-estimate, but a calling upon which depend, in no small degree, the rights and liberties both of individuals and nations. To elicit truth by intellectual struggle and conflict, to supply just weights and balances to the scales. of justice by laying before justice all the considerations on every side of every question that ought to weigh ; to stand forward for the weak, the miserable, the degraded, and even the guilty ; and on great occasions, when public liberties are in question, to assert the same right, privilege, and duty of free, undaunted, open speaking of truth ;— that is the right, that is the duty, that is the privilege, of our profession. In this country it has been our inestimable benefit in times past, and we believe that, if need were, we should be able to discharge that duty again ; and we rejoice to see it discharged as it ought to be in other countries. There are three great and inestimable blessings, every one of which we enjoy, and we should be glad to see them all enjoyed by the rest of the world ; but I venture to say that wherever one of the three is found, there public liberty cannot be extinguished. What are those three things ? A free Press, a free Parliament, and a free Bar. I must say that in the world I believe there is no country the Bar of which has deserved greater honour than the Bar of France ; and I am sure I shall carry your assent with me when I add, that at no period of the brilliant history of that great nation, at no period when the most famous men adorned the Bar of France, has there been at the head of that Bar a more honest, a more virtuous, a more eloquent, or a more persevering advocate than M. Berryer. His name is connected in a way with the history
To M. Berryer.	411
of his country which time will never dissever. At a period when most of those I see around me were at an age when they were beginning their legal studies, this great man began a great public career, which to this day he continues to fulfil. By the side of his father—scarcely less distinguished than himself—he was the advocate of Marshal Ney, in the time of the ascendancy of those principles of which my illustrious friend has ever been the faithful advocate. But the ascendancy of those principles did not prevent him opposing, to the best of his power, the exorbitant and excessive use of the success which they secured. Not only on that great historical occasion, but in the defence of numbers of other distinguished men involved in like misfortune, did M. Berryer stand forward ; and I believe it is known to all of you that, while his own political principles were in the ascendant, his voice was ever raised for moderation and for justice for those whose fortunes were on the decline. Gentlemen, we have nothing to do with the various vicissitudes in the political fortunes of that great country, except on this occasion to admire the consistency and the nobility of the man who, under all circumstances, bore himself so well. When his principles were no longer in the ascendant, he did not retire calmly from the service of his country. His voice was still raised—but without any possibility of accusing him of being the advocate of disorder—on the side of liberty and against the prevailing powers ; and still when called upon at the Bar, he was found to be the equally dauntless and brilliant advocate of any unfortunate man in any station of life. Why, it is almost a volume of history itself to say that the distinguished man who is seated by my side was the advocate of Lamenais, Chateaubriand, and the present Emperor of the French. These men, and many more whom it would be tedious to name, whatever their opinions, when they needed a word to be spoken for them, to whom did they apply ? They went to M. Berryer. When the wheel of fortune turned round again, we find him still the same man—still not refusing his services to his country in any way he conceived they would be useful—still lifting up his voice as the advocate of freedom of writing and freedom of speech, as in the famous trial of Count de Montalembert ; and we find him still preserving, not only the dignity of his position, but the power, the influence, and the brilliancy of his younger days. But, gentlemen, I fear I have detained you too long from that which you much more desire to hear than his eulogium feebly expressed by me—the honour of drinking his health, of wishing him a cordial welcome, and then hearing from his own lips that unrivalled eloquence for which he has ever been distinguished.
412	Speeches at the Dinner
M. BERRYER, on rising, said : Monsieur l'Attorney-General, Messieurs,—Vous me croirez quand je vous dirai que je suis pro-fondement emu a l'aspect de cette imposante et fraternelle reunion. Je me vois accueilli au milieu de la grande et libre Angleterre ; vous ne vous etonnerez pas qu'il y ait du trouble dans ma maniere d'exprimer mes remerciements. Hier, M. l'Attor-ney-General, je vous felicitais et je felicitais ce grand et noble pays de voir l'Attorney-General (spectacle, helas ! et range pour nous) deployer un zele aussi eclaire que sage pour seconder les associations qui ont pour objet de perfectionner la loi. Aujourd'hui, comme avocat, je me sens emu de vous voir parler, comme chef du barreau, au nom des avocats. Grand et beau spectacle, qui me rappelle que telle etait la coutume de mon pays quand les procureurs-generaux et les avocats-generauK s'appe-laient eux-memes les generaux des avocats ! En me parlant au nom du barreau Anglais, vous daignez me complimenter sur les travaux de ma vie. J'avoue que je me sens humilie de ces compliments, quand je me rappelle ce que furent les avocats Anglais, ceux qui m'ont honore de leur amitie—ce que fut le savant Plunkett—ce que fut l'illustre Erskine—ce que fut Lord Lyndhurst, que nous pleurons tous—et cet autre grand homme qui a voulu m'initier a toutes les grandes choses de ce pays, ce noble propagateur de tous les progres, de toutes les institutions liberales merne dans cette libre Angleterre, ce grand homme que je salue, Lord Brougham ! Apres cinquante ans de travaux, j'ai recu de mes confreres de France un temoignage de fraternelle sympathie. Mais la j'etais au milieu des miens. J'etais soutenu par cinquante annees de relations amicales. Encore une fois, j'etais aupres des miens. Mais pres de vous je ne saurais dire ce que j'eprouve en co moment : it me semble que c'est la voix de la posterite que j'entends tomber de vos levres. Ii y a une pensee plus feconde pour l'avenir qu'un hommage rendu a un
seul homme	y a l'alliance des barreaux des deux nations les plus civilisees du monde. J'ai assiste a toutes les cours de justice de votre pays, a toutes les deliberations judiciaires ; j'ai ete frappe de la situation qu'on y fait au barreau. Rien ne pouvait plus me toucher que ces entretiens familiers entre le juge et l'avocat.. Cela prouve a ce dernier l'attention qui lui est accordee ; et j'y vois une garantie pour le sentiment d'independ-ance qui doit appartenir a cette noble profession. Je fais des vceux ardents pour que l'alliance des deux barreaux vienne a se cimenter. Nous ne pouvons, en France, avoir de ces reunions que la loi autorise dans ce pays ; mais nous pouvons nous mettre en communication les uns avec les autres, et de ces communications naitra, je l'espere, l'union des intelligences. Le barreau
To M. Berryer.	413
Francais n'a pas, comme le barreau Anglais, fourni des hommes a toutes les, situations de la vie politique. Au milieu de nos revolutions, les hommes qui se respectent n'ont pas voulu accepter d'emplois. Le barreau est reste l'asile de ceux qui, froisses dans leurs convictions, n'ont pas voulu flechir. On compte parmi eux les hommes les plus eminents. Nous possedons le libre echange, mais it ne faut pas qu'il se borne a l'echange de soieries et des cotonnades, it faut que ce soit le libre echange des idees. Vous pourrez trouver chez nous beaucoup de choses bonnes a prendre. Nous rencontrons chez vows des ecrivains instruits, eclaires ; une presse puissante, que nous ne connaissons pas. Je vote pour l'allia,nce des deux barreaux, et je prie mou confrere de s'associer a mon voeu.
The CHAIRMAN : I have now to propose the health of a gentleman who stands officially at the head of the Bar of France; a position to which he has been elected by the whole profession —M. Desmarest, the Batonnier of the French Bar. I will not enlarge upon the honour it is to have been selected to fill that distinguished office ; any one may well feel jealous of it, who lives in a country where no such honour is possible ; but all who are acquainted with M. Desmarest—and few who know anything of France are ignorant of him—will admit that this honour could not have been more worthily bestowed. This is not the first time that M. Desmarest has practically manifested his desire to improve his acquaintance with the Bar of England, and to offer them his co-operation in those movements by which the laws of all countries may be improved. He has taken a part in assemblies held in other countries as well as here, having for their object the amendment of the law ; and I believe there is not a more enlightened advocate of progress in the principles and science of law, or at the same time one who would more cordially promote a union of all branches of the profession, than the present Batonnier of the Bar of France. We are honoured by the presence of a young member of the French Bar, whom we are proud to see among us, and hope to see hereafter. I beg to give " The.Health of M. Desmarest and the Bar of France."
M. DESMAREST, in reply to the toast, said : Messieurs,—Je suis emu quand je me lave pour repondre au toast si bon et si affectueux porte au barreau de France. L'union entre les deux barreaux a etc le rave de mon intelligence. Quand on considere les choses du monde, meme apres un banquet aussi splendide, it est impossible de mCconnaitre qu'il y a au monde deux influences,
414	Speeches at the Dinner
la force et la justice. Je ne veux pas dire de mal de la force ; quant a la justice, c'est ici qu'il sied d'en dire du bien, devant votre gloire presente et devant votre gloire ancienne ; permettez-moi d'ajouter, en presence de ces deux porte-etendards du droit et de la justice, Lord Brougham et M. Berryer. 11 existe une grande similitude dans leurs caracteres. Tous deux, ont porte bien haut la gloire intellectuelle ; tous deux ont brills dans les assemblees publiques ; tous deux, enfin, sont membres de l'Institut de France. J'avoue que je serais trouble si je n'avais a apporter ici que le tribut de ma seule reconnaissance. Mais, aussitot que j'ai ete informs de votre gracieuse invitation, j'ai profits de ces reunions legales authorisees en France, pour dire a nos avocats l'honneur qui m'etait fait. Tous, jeunes et vieux, m'ont repondu : " Allez en Angleterre." Je n'ai pas eu le temps de consulter les membres de notre barreau de province, macs tons m'auraient tenu le meme langage, tous. Je vois la grande image du monde judiciaire de France donnant la main au monde judiciaire d'Angleterre, degre preliminaire pour amener entre nous une alliance plus intime, selon la belle idee de celui qui devrait 'etre notre batonnier perpetuel, et qui est toujours notre batonnier moral. Messieurs, permettez-moi de dire mes chers confreres, vous nous avez donne l'exemple ; soyez certain qu'il sera suivi. Un de vos hommes d'etat, l'illustre Chancelier de l'Echiquier, disait dans une circonstance recente, avec cette incomparable eloquence qui rappelle les beaux jours de l'anti-quite, que, dans le temps oil nous vivons, les progres de la civilisation doivent s'accomplir par des moyens plus doux que dans les temps passes. Ces paroles, qui concilient bien des difficultes, ont trouve de l'echo en France. Je signe avec vous un traits d'alliance qui servira a la conquete pacifique du progres.
M. GOURNOT, in reply to the toast, said : M. l'Attorney-General, Messieurs,—Je dois conserver comme un des plus chers souvenirs de ma vie quil m'ait ete donne d'accompagner a Londres M. Berryer et M. Desmarest, d'être avec eux l'hote de Lord Brougham, d'avoir ete invite, par M. l'Attorney-General, a une pareille assemblee, pour etre temoin des honneurs qui y sont rendus a mes maitres. Vous ajoutez, messieurs, en ce moment, un prix infini a ces souvenirs, en faisant a mon nom inconnu une place au milieu de toute cette gloire. Je m'effor-cerai de reporter a mes antis, a mes contemporaires du jeune barreau de France, les sentiments dont je suis rempli. J'oserai seulement ajouter en leur nom, qu'ils ont, pour leurs confreres d'Angleterre, des cceurs tout prets, et une admiration de longue
To M. Berryer.	415
dare ;	savent des longtemps ce qu'ils ont a y chercher: en
exemple, de science, d'eloquence, et de puissant amour de la justice et de la patrie.
The CHAIRMAN : My Lords and Gentlemen,—There are other distinguished—I may say illustrious, guests, who have honoured us to-day with their company, as well as those who
have come from abroad.	Those distinguished guests have
wished to join us in the honour they saw we desired to pay to M. Berryer and his eminent companions ; but it is impossible for us, members of the Bar of England, who are privileged to be hosts on this occasion, not to feel that we are greatly honoured and indebted by the presence of the numerous judges whom I see around me, and also of those distinguished persons who rank even senior to the judges, and all the rest of the guests who have attended here this evening. I might, perhaps, have been called upon to endeavour, in a few words, to express the feelings which all of us entertain towards the venerable Nestor of the English Bench—that man so remarkable for his various knowledge, for his wonderful eloquence, for his achievements in the legislature, for his indefatigable industry, for his promotion of the improvement of the law, and as well for his performances at the Bar as when he presided in the highest seat of justice ; but I feel that I have been anticipated in that which I wished to say, not by the familiarity which all of us happily have with his name, his person, and the obligations which the country owes him, but by the beautiful, touching, and graceful manner in which his praise has been already sounded by M. Berryer and M. Desmarest. I dare not venture to add anything to what they have so well said. I therefore simply ask you to drink " The Health of the Guests who have honoured us with their Company," coupling with the toast the name of Lord Brougham.
Lord BROUGHAM: Mr. Attorney-General, my Lords and Gentlemen,—You, Sir, have my hearty thanks for the great kindness with which you have proposed, and you, gentlemen, for the way in which you have received, my name. It is only the reception I never fail to experience among the members of that profession to which I have the honour of belonging. On all occasions I meet with the greatest respect, and, what is more valuable, the greatest affection, from that noble profession of which we are members. On the present occasion our attention is called to the French Bar, and more especially to that illustrious man who sits near me, M. Berryer. To whom should I compare this great advocate ? Not, certainly, to any of the advo-
416	Speeches at the Dinner
cates of ancient and classic times, but to one far superior to them all—to our own Erskine, the greatest advocate, perhaps, the world ever saw ; and I put M. Berryer on a level with him, I have paid attention to the career of both the one and the other, and I find that Lord Erskine and M. Berryer possessed that great faculty of conducting cases with perfect skill and matchless eloquence, and they had both in perfection, and in equal measure, the quality of indomitable courage. Lord Erskine, however hard pressed, was not the man to fear either the court or king or the king's judges, but he did his duty to his client in spite of all that power held out to intimidate or tempt him, and in spite of all opposition, even in those courts in which he practised and of which he was the ornament and the pride. The same great qualities I have constantly observed in M. Berryer—that which is first of all the quality of an advocate—to reckon everything subordinate to the interests of his client ; to have no purpose except to serve his cause effectively ; to make no deviation or digression to please either jury or judge, or the populace or the Crown ; but to do his duty, looking only to the success of his client. And they who have not the matchless eloquence of these great men may worthily perform the rest of that duty, and may do it to their own honour and infinitely to the advantage of their clients. In the administration of justice, the great advantage we have over all other nations is, that in this country its purity depends in the first place upon the purity of the judge, but in the next place upon the skill, the prudence, the discretion, and the courage of the advocate. I see no worse fate that can befall this country than its losing the purity of its administration of justice—losing its certainty, and those other qualities which are the admiration of the world. I can conceive nothing more fatal to it than an infringement of the independence of the Bar, or a want of courage on the part of an advocate. As one of the most distinguished orators of the French Senate, our esteemed guest, M. Berryer, has always set himself against any attempt to interfere with the rights of the people ; and it is his crowning glory that on every question the powers of his learning and eloquence have been fearlessly employed in defence of the liberties of his fellow citizens. I have detained you too long, but I could not, having been called upon, sit down without offering to you the expression of my sentiments.—[The noble and learned lord then resumed his seat, but immediately afterwards rose and said:] The Attorney-General, speaking of the place of great honour, that of Batonnier, which M. Desmarest holds at the French Bar, was understood to have stated that it was a thing we might envy in this country, having nothing of
To M. Berryer.	417
the kind. He meant, indeed, only in England and Ireland. In Scotland it is otherwise. We have there a Batonnier, the Dean of Faculty, but with this difference, that he is Batonnier during life, while of good behaviour. Sometimes the government have thought that his behaviour was less agreeable to them than it should be, and have used their influence with the Bar to deprive him of office ; but the legal principle in Scotland is that he holds the office for life, or until promotion to the Bench.
The CHAIRMAN : I will now invite you to drink another health, a toast which will be received with equal pleasure with those which have preceded it : I mean the health of the distinguished Judges who have this day honoured us with their company. It is unnecessary for me to say a word either of their merits, or of the sense we entertain of the honour they have done us by being present at this banquet. I will ask you simply to drink their healths, associating with the toast the health of their eminent chief, Lord Chief-Justice Cockburn.
Lord Chief-Justice COCKBURN, in responding, said :—Mr. Attorney-General, my Lords and Gentlemen, I beg on behalf of the Judges to return you our most cordial thanks for the honour you have just done to us. I am sure I express the common sentiment of all those who have been enabled to avail themselves of your gracious invitation, when I say that they have felt the highest gratification at having this opportunity, through your kindness, of testifying their admiration and respect for the Bar of France, and the illustrious guests by whom, on this occasion, it is so worthily represented. We, who have had to pursue the study of jurisprudence with a view to its administration, know how much that noble science is indebted to the great and illustrious jurists of France, whose labours have shed so much light and lustre on that great profession. We, who have watched with interest the celebrated trials which in our time have occupied the tribunals of France, have been enabled to observe and appreciate the brilliant eloquence, the vast attainments, the great reasoning powers, the knowledge, the learning, the erudition, the courage, the energy and the independence of the Bar of that great country. We are happy to have this opportunity of paying the tribute of our respect to a Bar which is so eminent, and we rejoice exceedingly to find that that opportunity is afforded us at this celebration in the person of the most valued member, as well as the most efficient representative, of the profession of which we are all members.
E E
418	Speeches at the Dinner
in a neighbouring country. And allow me to say that, of all those intellectual qualities and attainments which distinguish the eminent and illustrious man whom we have this day met to honour, there is, in my mind, one virtue and one quality essential as the crowning virtue of every advocate—that of having conducted the functions of his great profession with unsullied and untarnished honour. My noble and learned friend Lord Brougham, whose words are the words of wisdom, said that an advocate should be fearless in carrying out the interests of his client; but I couple that with this qualification and this restriction —that the arms which he wields are to be the arms of the warrior and not of the assassin. It is his duty to strive to accomplish the interests of his clients per fas, and not per nefas ; it is his duty, to the utmost of his power, to seek to reconcile the interests he is bound to maintain, and the duty it is incumbent upon him to discharge, with the eternal and immutable interests of truth and justice. In all the great causes he has been called upon to conduct, in all the great interests he has had to uphold, M. Berryer has never forgotten the gentleman and the man of honour ; and I respect him as much for that as for the great and illustrious talents which have reflected so much honour upon his name and upon the profession of which he is such a distinguished ornament. In my name, and in the name of my brethren, I beg to thank you, most cordially and sincerely, for the opportunity you have afforded us of doing that which has been so gratifying to our feelings, namely, doing honour to M. Berryer and his companions.
The CHAIRMAN : There is one more toast which the presence amongst us of other illustrious and eloquent guests on this occasion has rendered necessary. It is a toast which Englishmen are always glad to drink, I mean " The two Houses of Parliament," the Lords and Commons of England, with` which I beg to couple the name of one of our most honourable and learned judges, Lord Kingsdown, and one of our illustrious statesmen, whose presence on this occasion, I suppose, we owe to the happy accident of his also being constructively a judge, I mean Mr. Gladstone.
Lord KINGSDOWN, in acknowledging the toast on the part of the House of Lords, said :—I regret, Mr. Attorney-General, that no more distinguished member of the Upper House is present to do justice to the toast which has just been drunk ; but though I feel myself incompetent to respond to it worthily, I have the consolation of knowing that it is superfluous to speak of
To M. Berryer.	419
the merits of that body in an assembly of lawyers, by whom its constitutional value, both in its legislative and its judicial capacity, is so well known and so fully appreciated. The ranks of the House of Lords are recruited principally from the ranks of those whom I see before me, and all might and ought to make a seat in that great assembly the ultimate object of their ambition. The youngest of those whom I am addressing might entertain that hope, with as much prospect of seeing it realized as could have been entertained, at the same age, by the individual who has now the honour of acknowledging this toast on behalf of the House of Lords.
The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER said :—Sir Roundell Palmer, I have to thank you for having been kind enough to state to this great assembly the title under which it is my privilege to address you ; but I will venture to ask one favour of those to whom I am now called upon to speak, and it is that they will not exercise any portion of their legal ingenuity in the invidious endeavours to discover flaws in that title. For my own part, be it as judge, or be it as layman—and I am afraid the latter title is the title to which I have the better claim—I rejoice in having been permitted to share with you—almost, perhaps, alone to share with you—in rendering the tribute of British admiration to the guests whom you entertain to-day. Rare, indeed, are the occasions when it is in the power of an individual member of the House of Commons to make himself, without presumption, the organ of its sentiments ; but I am well assured that this is one of those few occasions, and that if the House of Commons had it in its power to speak by a single voice, that voice would be one of thorough and profound sympathy with the enthusiasm which pervades this assembly. My Lords and Gentlemen, I am not here to speak of the House of Commons itself. It is in England a household word. It is so inseparably associated with all our traditions, with all our feelings, and with all our hopes, that, if it were possible to tear away the House of Commons from the constitution of England, England would cease to be what she
is.	It has been well stated that a profound and lively sympathy
runs through the whole chain of free institutions, and those who pursue in this country the business of legislation for the complicated concerns of a great empire—those whose lot it is, however unworthy, to be charged with the special responsibilities of government—the longer they live and the larger their experience grows, the more deeply do they become convinced of the inestimable value and the indispensable necessity of a free and fearless Bar, in order to secure and sustain the liberties of the country.
EE 2
420	Speeches at the Dinner
We have been told to-night, and in terms of eloquence that cannot be matched, what have been the recent achievements of the members of your illustrious profession on behalf of liberty. Even under the mild and temperate sway of the House of Brunswick, the want of a Bar has been felt, and that want, whenever felt, has been supplied. We might go farther back—we might go to remoter, worse, and darker times—we might go to the reign of James II., and the trial of the seven bishops—we might go to the reign of Charles I., and the trial of Hampden, and we should find that, whenever it has been a question of examining, of searching, of vindicating, or of establishing the liberties of England. then the Bar of England has stood in the foremost ranks. Perhaps, Mr. Attorney-General, I may be permitted to record the impression upon an individual mind. I have known, as all in this country have known, that the Bar is inseparable from our national life and the security of our institutions, but never, as long as I looked at England alone, did I understand the true secret of its value. Tt was my fate some fifteen years ago to be the witness of cruel oppressions in a country in Southern Europe —in a country where the executive power did not merely break the law, but supplanted and set aside the law, and established in its stead a system of nothing less than arbitrary will. But, to my astonishment, I found that the audacity of tyranny itself, which put down chambers, put down municipalities, and extinguished the press, could not do one thing. and that was, it could not silence the Bar. I saw in courts of justice, under the bayonets of soldiers—for those courts bristled with the bayonets of soldiers —in the teeth of power, in contempt of corruption, in defiance of violence and arbitrary rule, lawyers rise in their place to defend the cause of the accused against the domineering power of the government, with a freedom, a force, and a fearless honesty of purpose, that could not be surpassed in free and happy England, and that could hardly be surpassed by M. Berryer himself. He knows well, and no man knows better, that we are not here to enter into and discuss the merits of particular schools of political opinion. We are here for more purposes than one, and one of those purposes, I confidently believe, is to render and add another to the many testimonies which recent history has afforded of the growth of a cordial union, in heart and sentiment, between the two great nations of England and France, and also to render more special homage to an object more narrowly defined. As there are ties which bind together classes of the same country, so there are electric currents which, passing over the boundaries of political distinction, establish sympathies which run throughout the world. Those sympathies beat in the hearts of our illustrious
To M. Berryer.	421
guest and his distinguished companions, and throb with equal power in the breast of every member of this great assembly. I am permitted, and a high privilege it is, to look upon you from without ; but I echo back at least the sounds of favour. confidence, and admiration which have been rendered to M. Berryer personally, for the great achievements of his life, but which, great as that life has been, have been rendered to that life, not only for what it has been and is, but to that life because it is the symbol of something greater still, namely, of the indestructible principles which are involved in the constitution of a free and independent Bar, bound, by the highest obligations, to speak with the voice of truth, under all circumstances, and through whatsoever difficulty and danger ; to have faith in that moral force which my eloquent friend near me has distinguished from the rival force of violence ; and in the belief that in the wise counsels of Providence, from day to day, as the world grows older, we may hope to have, if by slow, by certain degrees, the domination of that moral force progressively widened and enlarged, and to see the rival power of mere brute force gradually come to have less and less effectual action on the conduct of mankind.
The next toast was " The Committee."
Sir FITZROY KELLY, in reply, said :—Mr.Attorney- General, my Lords and Gentlemen, Now that the well-graced actors quit the scene, I shall not long delay the curtain's fall. I thank you, gentlemen, in the name of the committee for your kind recollection of our efforts to assist in preparing for M. Berryer a reception worthy of one who unites in himself' the highest and the greatest qualities which can confer distinction upon the public or the private character of a man. Yes, gentlemen, we do accept with gratification your acknowledgments that we have, borne our part in bringing into personal communication and union with the Bar of England the bright gem and ornament of the Bar of France, and one of the greatest among the great of the orators, the statesmen, the patriots which that country has produced. And I would add another tribute to the merits of M. Berryer, which will be well understood in this assembly, when I say he possesses all the qualities of a true English gentleman. He has come among us here, accompanied, perhaps I ought to say introduced, by another, whose eloquence, whose learning, whose patriotism, whose love of liberty, exalted him to the highest eminence of fame among his contemporaries, evcn when Canning and Romilly and Scarlett adorned the Senate and the Bar—one whose name is stamped upon the age in which he has lived, our most valued and revered friend and master—Lord Brougham. The lives of these two men
422	Speeches at the Dinner to M. Berryer.
may well be held up to the admiration, the study, and the imitation of every English barrister now in this spacious but well-filled, hall, and to all throughout the land who aspire to number themselves among the statesmen of England. Whenever any among you shall be called upon, as you may be, we know not how soon, whether in our courts of law or in either House of Parliament, to maintain the cause of the weak against the strong, or the poor against the rich, or, in times of change and public peril, to prove your loyalty to your sovereign, or to struggle against the hand of power in defence of the liberties of the people, then look to the career of a Brougham or a Berryer, and you will find it teeming with examples which you have but to follow to secure to yourselves the best reward which can be conferred upon you—the respect and confidence of your fellow men, and the approval of your consciences. Gentlemen, the committee are proud to acknowledge the compliment you have paid them; and they rejoice that they, with you, have been enabled, by the welcome we have given to our most honoured guest, to add one bright leaf to the laurel crown with which the applause of mankind has encircled the brow of the illustrious Berryer.
DIVISION IV.
AMERICAN AND FOREIGN SPEECHES
DELIVERED DURING THE YEAR 1865.
SPEECH
OF
THE EMPEROR OF THE FRENCH
ON
OPENING THE SESSION OF THE FRENCH CHAMBERS.
[The following speech, according to annual custom, was delivered by the Emperor of the French at the opening of the Session on the 15th of February.]
Messieurs les Se'nateurs, Messieurs les Deputes,—At the period of your last assembling I entertained the hope that the difficulties which threatened the peace of Europe would have been obviated by a Congress. This has not been the case. I regret it; for the sword often cuts questions without settling them ; and the only basis of a durable peace is the satisfaction given by the agreement of the Sovereigns to the true interests of nations. In presence of the conflict which has arisen on the shores of the Baltic, my Government, divided between its sympathies for Denmark and its goodwill towards Germany, has maintained the most strict neutrality. Called to a Conference to utter its opinion, it restricted itself to upholding the principle of nationalities and the right of the populations to be consulted as regards their fate. Our language, conformable to the reserved attitude which we meant to maintain, has been moderate and friendly towards both parties. In Central Europe the action of France had to be displayed with greater resolution. It was my wish to render possible the solution of a difficult problem. The Convention of the 15th ..of September, disentangled from passionate interpretations, consecrates two great principles—the firm establishment of the new kingdom of Italy, and the independence of the Holy See. The provisional and precarious state of affairs which excited so much alarm will soon terminate. It is no longer the scattered members of the Italian nation seeking to connect themselves by feeble links to a small state situated at the foot of the Alps ; it is a great country which rises above local prejudices, despising the ebullitions of unreflecting agitations—which boldly transfers its capital to the centre of the Peninsula, and places it in the midst of the Apennines, as in an impregnable citadel. By this act of patriotism Italy definitively
426	Speech of the Emperor of the French
constitutes herself, and at the same time reconciles herself with Catholicity. She engages to respect the independence of the Holy See—to protect the frontiers of the Roman States—and thus allows us to withdraw our troops. The Pontifical territory, safely guaranteed, finds itself placed under the protection of a treaty which solemnly binds the two Governments. The Convention, therefore, is not a weapon of war, but a work of peace and reconciliation. In Mexico the new throne is being firmly. established ; the country is becoming pacified ; its immense resources are being developed,—the happy result of the valour of our troops, of the common sense of the Mexican population, and of the intelligence and energy of the Sovereign. In Japan our fleet, acting in concert with those of England, of Holland, and of the United States, has given a new proof of what it can do. In Africa a sudden insurrection has disturbed the safety of our possessions, and shows how much certain tribes are still ignorant of our power and of our benevolent intentions. It is at the very moment when, by a spirit of generous justice, France assured the property of the soil to the Arab population —when by liberal measures we were endeavouring to make that misguided people understand that, far from oppressing it, we wished to call it to the blessings of civilization—it is at this moment, I say, that, led astray by religious fanaticism, the Arabs, neighbours of the desert, have raised the standard of revolt. Despite the difficulties of the ground and the inclemency of the season, our army, ably commanded, soon got the upper hand of the insurrection, and after the combat no sanguinary reprisals or needless severity have saddened the victory. The zeal of the experienced chief placed at the head of Algeria, the unity of command re-established, the belief in the generous intentions of France—all will, I trust, concur to prevent a recurrence of similar disorders. Thus, all our expeditions are nearly terminated. Our land troops have evacuated China ; the fleet suffices to maintain our establishments in Cochin-China ; our army in Africa is to be reduced; that of Mexico is already returning to France ; the garrison at Borne will soon be withdrawn ; and, closing the Temple of War, we may with pride inscribe upon a new triumphal arch these words :—" To the glory of the French armies, for the victories achieved in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in Spain, and in America." Let us give ourselves up without anxiety to the labours of peace. The interval between the Sessions is devoted to discover the means for increasing the moral and material welfare of the people, and every useful and true idea is sure to be welcomed by me and adopted by you. Let us, then, examine together the measures suited to increase
On Opening the Session of the French Chambers. 427
the prosperity of the Empire. Religion and public instruction are the constant objects of my thoughts. All confessions enjoy the same liberty. The Catholic clergy exercises, even beyond its ministry, a legitimate influence. By the laws on instruction it assists in the education of youth ; by the electoral law it may take part in the public councils; by the Constitution it sits in the Senate. But the more we surround it with respect and deference the more do we reckon that it will respect the fundamental laws of the State. It is my duty to maintain intact the rights of the civil power, which, since the days of St. Louis, no, Sovereign in France has ever abandoned. The development of public instruction deserves your attention. In a land of universal suffrage every citizen ought to know how to read and write. A project of law will be presented to you still more to promote primary instruction. I endeavour every year to diminish the obstacles which have so long opposed themselves in France to the free expansion of individual enterprise. By the law upon coalitions, voted last year, those who work, as well as those who employ, have learnt to settle their differences without reckoning upon the intervention of the Government, powerless to regulate the varying connection between supply and demand. At present fresh projects will have the object of leaving greater liberty to commercial associations, and freeing the Administration from a responsibility always illusory. I have it at heart to destroy all the obstacles which opposed the creation of societies destined to improve the condition of the working classes. In promising the establishment of these societies, without abandoning the guarantees for public security, we shall facilitate a useful experiment. The Council of State has studied with care a law tending to give greater powers to the Municipal Councils and Councils-General. The Communes and the Departments will thus be called upon to transact their own affairs, which, decided upon the spot, will be more promptly settled. This reform will complete the arrangements made to simplify or suppress minute regulations which unnecessarily complicated the wheels of the Administration. Free trade, inaugurated by the treaty with England, has been extended to our relations with Germany, Switzerland, and the united kingdom of Sweden and Norway. The same principles ought naturally to be applied to maritime commerce. A Bill is under preparation to establish on the seas a competition that will engender progress. Finally, the rapid completion of our railway system, of our canals, of our roads, is the obligatory complement of commercial improve. ments. We shall this year fulfil one portion of our task, by appealing to private enterprise or by employing on public works
428	Speech of the Emperor of the French.
the resources of the State, without compromising the healthy economy of our finances, and without having recourse to credit. The facility of communication at home as well as abroad gives impulse to trade, stimulates industry, and prevents too great scarcity or superabundance of produce, the effects of which are equally hurtful both to consumption and production. The greater development that is given to our merchant shipping, the greater will be the facility of transport, and the less reason will there be to complain of those sudden changes in the price of goods of first necessity. It is thus that we shall be able to meet the partial distress which affects agriculture. Some attribute their temporary suffering to the suppression of the sliding scale ; they forget that in 1851, when it was in existence, the depreciation in the price of cereals was far more considerable, and that this very year the export of wheat far exceeds the import. It is, on the contrary, due to a liberal legislation, to the impulse given to all the elements of national wealth, that our foreign commerce, which amounted in 1851 to 2 milliards 614 million francs, has now risen to the prodigious sum of upwards of 7 milliards. New Bills will be laid before you in another direction with the object of increasing the guarantees of individual liberty. The first authorizes provisional release, with or without bail, even in criminal cases ; the second suppresses personal arrest in civil and commercial matters—an innovation, however, which is nothing but the re-enactment of a very ancient principle. From the earliest ages of Rome it had been determined that the property and not the person of the debtor was responsible for a debt. Let us, therefore, continue to follow the course marked out. Let us live abroad in peace with the different Powers, and let us not cause the voice of France to be heard save for right and justice. At home let us protect religious ideas without ceding aught of the civil power ; let us spread education throughout all classes of society ; let us simplify, without destroying, our admirable administrative system ; let us give the Commune and the Department a more independent existence; let us arouse individual enterprise and the spirit of association lastly, let us elevate the soul and strengthen the body of the nation. But, while making ourselves the ardent promoters of useful reforms, let us firmly maintain the bases of the Constitution ; let us oppose the exaggerated tendencies of those who provoke changes with the sole object of sapping that which we have founded. An Utopia is to welfare what illusion is to truth, and progress is not the realization of a more or less ingenious theory, but the application of the results of experience hallowed by time and accepted by public opinion.
EULOGIUMS
DELIVERED BY
M. SCHNEIDER AND M, ROUHER
ON THE DUKE DE MORNY.
[The following speeches were delivered at Paris, on the 13th of March, at the grave of the Duke de Morny, President of the Corps LeE4islatif, the first being by M. Schneider, Vice-President of the Legislative Body, the second by M. Rouher, one of the Ministers of State. As specimens of funeral orations, a form of eloquence more common on the continent than in this country, they may perhaps be deemed appropriate to a volume which attempts to embrace all the most remarkable utterances of the year, whether at home or abroad.]
M. SCHNEIDER spoke as follows :—
Gentlemen,—No words can have the eloquence of the deep shock felt by the Legislative Body when death struck the Duke de Morny ; and yet, in the name of the Deputies of France, I must pay a tribute of respect. of affection, and of gratitude to the man who, placed at our head for more than ten years, has so nobly fulfilled his important mission,—to him whose memory will live in our hearts, as well as in the remembrance of the country and in the panes of history. When the presidency of the Legislative Body %las conferred upon the Duke de Morny the choice of the Emperor was hailed by all with sympathy and confidence, and by us with marked satisfaction. Since then we have beheld in him a statesman of the ideas of order and progress, firm in his principles, wise in his judgments, prompt in conception, skilful in execution ; finally, we have known him as one of the energetic supports of the Throne in which our political faith is embodied. Such he never ceased to be in the fulfilment of his high office ; such have we beheld him, rising daily in public esteem and in the affection of his colleagues. In the chair he asserted the authority of the President by the most eminent qualities—urbanity and impartiality, delicacy of mind in maintaining a correct view of a question. calmness and energy of character. He allowed everything to be discussed ; he caused men and institutions to be respected. In the private relations of life, courtesy and self-confidence, the impulses of a generous heart, spread around him an irresistible attraction, which made all of us his friends, who
430	Eulogium of M. Schneider
now share the grief of the unhappy duchess and her children. A courageous and devoted friend of the ruling Power in difficult times, the Duke de Morny understood that progress is a law which sways the world. He was always the counsellor of liberal ideas, of intelligent reforms, and of all improvements of a nature to develope the moral interests and welfare of a people. We have seen him rejoice with us at the noble initiative taken by the Emperor, extending the prerogatives of the Chambers, thereby proving his confidence in the wisdom of the nation. That confidence has been justified, gentlemen, and in placing upon this tomb the glorious palms which our country decrees to our illustrious and beloved President, in addressing our prayers for him to Divine Providence, I may say to the Emperor,—Sire, In the name of him for whom we weep, and who so well personified the harmony which exists between the Sovereign and the great bodies of the State, we promise you to remain united and firm in our devotion to strengthen the work which you have founded, and to assure the happiness of France under the shadow of your dynasty.
After these words, M. ROUHER advanced to the edge of the grave, and spoke as follows :—
Gentlemen,—I have been called upon to say a few words over the grave of the friend whom we deplore. It has been a difficult task for me to collect my remembrances and formulate my ideas. You will forgive me ; my heart continually rises, and I am overcome by the heartrending spectacle which I have witnessed during the last few hours—from the moment when science declared itself powerless until the fatal dissolution came. I have been the witness of those silent struggles, of those sombre and mute solemn moments which precede death. I beheld De Morny on his couch, calm, patient, resigned, stoical, without a murmur upon his lips against so cruel and premature an end, loosing one by one all the affections which bound him to this earth, as if to enter more freely into the bosom of his God. He addressed to the Emperor, who was much moved, the most touching farewell of a devoted friend ; with his hands he gave a blessing to that poor young woman who was in an agony of grief and tears, to those four little children, beloved angels whose tender age relieved them from the sorrows of separation. Successively he called to his bedside his devoted friends, to give them his last advice. He then asked the pious Archbishop of Paris to crown his life by a Christian's death, and for a time conquered the sufferings of agony to receive the sublime consolations administered by the priest in the name of the Divine principle of immortality. What passing fragility is there
On the Duke de Morny.	431
not in the laborious edifice of human life ! What vanity in our efforts and in our works, were it not for the sanction of that mysterious future which each of us looks forward to in his anxious and submissive soul, and which is in the hands of the supreme judgment of God ! God will have been clement, He will have judged with His infinite goodness this life, so short and yet so rich in services rendered to the head of the State and to the country. De Morny, scarcely 22 years of age, left the Staff College, went through the campaign of Constantine, risked his life, and by his bravery earned the highest grade in the Legion of Honour—that one which, perhaps, gave the greatest satisfaction to his heart. But military life was only an incident in his career. The predilections of his mind, the keen penetration of his intellect, that sound judgment which was never deterred either by the gravity or suddenness of events, led him naturally into the arena of political life. The chances of garrison life led him into Auvergne. He resolved to make that province the establishment of his political career. At first his friends looked upon his intention as chimerical, and had no faith in it ; but soon the irresistible charm of his person, his elegance without frivolity, those aristocratic manners which were only displayed to be effaced by his courteous affability, the attraction of his gifted mind, the wonderful tact which he displayed in furthering the general interests of that province, dissipated mistrust, obviated obstacles, procured him devoted friends, and in 1842 he was triumphantly elected as member. Since then he has been the benefactor of his adopted country, and Auvergne deplores his loss to-day as a mother weeps for her dearest child. History, to which his name belongs, will examine into all the phases of the political career of M. de Morny. It will be struck by the unity of the doctrines, by the solidity of the views, by the persistence of the convictions respecting the fundamental conditions of the government of men which animated that great mind, be it whether when still young he only exercised a secondary influence upon the affairs of his country, or when a consummate statesman he was enabled usefully to work in the application of his principles. In 1843 and in 1847, at the eve of the revolution of February, in his writings, in his first and happy attempts in the Tribune, as since 1854 in his speeches, imbued with striking originality, animated by that persuasive eloquence which emanates from the austere simplicity of language, from the enlightened justice of a clear appreciation, from the sincere expansion of ideas, M. de Morny always showed himself the resolute partisan of a serious authority, firm and not fictitious, the declared enemy of Oppositions which undermine and overthrow, but deeply convinced that the interests of power cannot without danger be sepa-
432	Eulogium of M. _Rouher
rated from those of liberty and of progress. In January, 1848, he writes—" Order is the only road which leads to lasting
liberty	 Moderate concessions, intelligent reforms, a conscientious study of financial and social questions, the pious zeal of the wealthy classes towards the poorer classes, at the same time an energetic resistance to factions, will prevent the evils which threaten us." Since the Empire he has said—" In France the struggle against the great public powers has produced revolutions, but they have not definitively turned to the advantage of a durable liberty. Liberty can only be established peacefully by a sincere accord between a liberal Sovereign and a moderate Assembly." Those ideas and those convictions explain and justify M. de Morny's participation in the coup d'etat of the 2nd of December, and his political conduct during his presidency of the Legislative Body. The present security and greatness of France have made many men forget those days of feverish anxiety. This nation undergoes at times the turbulent impatience of prosperity. Before the 2nd of December, divided by dissensions, anxious about the morrow, ruined, it felt nothing but lassitude and discouragement. and almost reproached the Prince Napoleon for not opening for it a path of safety. The chances of reconciliation had been exhausted in vain. The Emperor made up his mind. M. de Morny was charged with carrying his plan out. Fully aware of the importance of the social service in which he was aiding, he accepted that formidable responsibility with a sort of gaiety and courageous eagerness. We all know with what coolness and with what moderation, with what calm firmness. he fulfilled his memorable and dangerous mission. The same man who had to disperse an Asembly powerless for doing good, torn by opposing passions, worn out by sterile discussions, disinherited of the confidence of the country, became the President, the inspirer, the soul, the honour of that other Assembly which daily consolidates the work of the 2nd of December, and which has had constantly to oppose by the wisdom of its deliberations hasty or captious outbursts. M. de Morny has often alluded to the difficult duties of his Presidency. " As for me," he said to his colleagues, " I do not consider myself as the interpreter of the wishes of the Chamber. I hope it will appreciate the sentiments which actuated me. Since the day upon which I was called to the honours of the Presidency the constant object of my efforts has been to increase its interests and considerations by imposing upon myself as a rule the most conscientious justice and scrupulous impartiality." The anxiety, the consternation, the grief displayed by the Legislative Body estify well enough that he has nobly achieved the object of his
On the Duke de Morny.	433
efforts. The confidence placed in his high guidance, in his delicate tact, and in his political experience, has been unanimous and absolute. He did not like to exercise his authority, and he preferred stopping a mistake by a kind word or a gentle irony. His firmness could be tolerating, his impartiality reach the ex-tremest limit ; he had no difficult times to fear ; all were aware of his unshaken courage and indomitable energy. Alas ! at the moment his beloved voice was again to be heard it died out for ever. Let us bow in humility ! Let us weep all the tears of our heart ! Let us .pray to God even when His hand weighs heavily upon us ! But before we leave this spot of sorrow, let us bid a manly farewell to that noble spirit. Morny, our friend, if you have preceded us to the tomb, the void which your absence leaves in our ranks could not diminish our confidence, and has only given nerve to our courage. We are the jealous inheritors of your devotion, of your will, and your strength; resolute workmen under the authority of that Prince, the initiator of great things and of great ideas, we shall continue our daily labour. The edifice is founded, and despite lamentable passions it will remain the sacred depository of public liberty and of the dynasty dear to the country. The Emperor has displayed towards you the most tender affection. His son, that young Prince whom in the name of the Legislative Body you welcomed " as a pledge of security for the future." will be, on the throne, the protector and friend of your children.
MR. JEFFERSON DAVIS'S
MESSAGE TO THE CONFEDERATE SENATE.
[The following message was delivered to the Confederate Senate by the then President of the Confederate States of America, on the 13th of March. Though not strictly a specimen of oratory, this message will, we think, be of interest to the reader in connection with the American speeches included in this division.]
To the Senate and House of Representatives of the Confederate States of America.
WHEN informed on Thursday last that it was the intention of Congress to adjourn sine die on the ensuing Saturday, I deemed it my duty to request a postponement of the adjournment, in order that I might submit for your consideration certain matters of public interest which are now laid before you. When that request was made the most important measures that had occupied your attention during the Session had not been so far advanced as to be submitted for executive action, and the state of the country had been so materially affected by the events of the last four months as to evince the necessity of further and more energetic legislation than was contemplated in November last. Our country is now environed with perils which it is our duty calmly to contemplate. Thus alone can the measures necessary to avert threatened calamities be wisely devised and efficiently enforced. Recent military operations of the enemy have been successful in the capture of some of our seaports, and in devastating large districts of our country. These events have had the natural effect of encouraging our foes and dispiriting many of our people. The capital of the Confederate States is now threatened, and it is in greater danger than it has heretofore been during the war. The fact is stated without reserve or concealment, as due to the people, whose servants we are, and in whose courage and constancy entire trust is reposed; as due to you, in whose wisdom and resolute spirit the people have confided for the adoption of the measures required to guard them from threatened perils. While stating to you that our country is in danger, I also desire to state my deliberate conviction that it is within our power to avert the calamities which menace us, and to secure the triumph of the sacred cause for which so much sacrifice has been made, so much suffering
Message to the Confederate Senate.	435
endured, so many previous lives been lost. This result is to be obtained by fortitude, by courage, by constancy in enduring the sacrifices still needed ; in a word, by the prompt and resolute devotion of the whole resources of men and money in the Confederacy to the achievement of our liberties and independence. The measures now required, to be successful, should be prompt. Long deliberation and protracted debate over important measures are not only natural, but laudable, in representative assemblies under ordinary circumstances, but in moments of danger, when action becomes urgent, the delay thus caused is itself a new source of peril. Thus it has unfortunately happened that some of the measures passed by you in pursuance of the recommendations contained in my Message of November last have been so retarded as to lose much of their value, or have, for the same reason, been abandoned after being matured, because no longer applicable to our altered condition, and others have not been brought under examination. In making these remarks, it is far from my intention to attribute the loss of time to any other cause than those inherent in deliberative assemblies, but only urgently to recommend prompt action on the measures now submitted. We need, for carrying on the war successfully, men and supplies for the army. We have both within our country sufficient to attain success. To obtain the supplies it is necessary to protect productive districts, and guard our lines of communication by an increase in the number of our forces, and hence it results that, with large augmentations in the number of men in the army, the facility of supplying the troops would be greater than with our recent reduced strength. For the purchase of supplies now required, especially for the armies in Virginia and North Carolina, the Treasury must be provided with means, and a modification of the impressment law is required. It has been ascertained by examination that we have within our reach a sufficiency of what is most needed for the army, and without having recourse to the ample provision existing in those parts of the Confederacy with which our communication has been partially interrupted by hostile operations. But in some districts from which supplies are to be drawn, the inhabitants, being either within the enemy's lines or in very close proximity, are unable to make use of Confederate Treasury notes for the purchase of articles of prime necessity, and it is necessary that, to some extent, coin be paid in order to obtain supplies. I t is therefore recommended that Congress devise the means of making available the coin within the Confederacy for the purpose of supplying the army. The officers of the supply departments report that with 2,000,000 dollars in coin the armies in Virginia
FF 2
436	Mr. Jefferson Davis's
and North Carolina can be amply supplied for the remainder of the year, and the knowledge of this fact should suffice to insure the adoption of the measures necessary to obtain this moderate sum. The impressment law as it now exists prohibits the public officers from impressing supplies without making payment of the valuation at the time of impressment. The limit fixed for the issue of Treasury notes has been nearly reached, and the Treasury cannot always furnish the funds necessary for prompt payment, while the law for raising revenues, which would have afforded means for diminishing, if not removing this difficulty, was unfortunately delayed for several months, and has just been signed. In this condition of things it is impossible to supply the army, although ample stores may exist in the country. Whenever the owners refuse to give credit to the public officer, it is necessary that this restriction on the power of impressment be removed. The power is admitted to be objectionable, liable to abuse, and unequal in its operation on individuals ; yet all these objections must yield to absolute necessity. It is also suggested that the system of valuation now established ought.to be radically changed. The legislation requires in such cases of impressment that the market price be paid ; but there is no market price in many cases, and then valuation is made arbitrarily and in a depreciated currency. The result is that the most extravagant prices are fixed, such as no one ever expects to be paid in coin. None believe that the Government can ever redeem in coin the obligation to pay 50 dollars a bushel for corn, or 700 dollars a barrel for flour. It would seem to be more just and appropriate to estimate the supplies impressed at their value in coin, to give the obligation of the Government for the payment of the price in coin, with reasonable interest, or, at the option of the creditor, to return in kind the wheat or corn impressed, with a reasonable interest, also payable in kind, and to make the obligations thus issued receivable for all payments due in coin to the Government. Whatever be the value attached by Congress to these suggestions, it is hoped that there will be no hesitation in so changing the law as to render it possible to supply the army in case of necessity by the impressment of provisions for that purpose. The measure adopted to raise revenue, though liberal in its provisions, being clearly inadequate to meet the arrears of debt and the current expenditures, some degree of embarrassment in the management of the finances must continue to be felt. It is to be regretted, I think, that the recommendation of the Secretary of the Treasury of a tax on agricultural income equal to the augmented tax on other incomes, payable iji Treasury notes, was rejected by Congress. This tax
Message to the Confederate Senate.	437
would have contributed materially to facilitate the purchase of provisions and diminish the necessity now felt for a supply of coin. The measure passed by Congress during the Session for recruiting the army and supplying the additional force needed for the public defence, have been, in my judgment, insufficient, and I am impelled by a profound conviction of duty, and stimulated by a sense of the perils which surround our country, to urge upon you additional legislation on this subject. The Bill for employing negroes as soldiers has not yet reached me, though the printed journals of your proceedings inform me of its passage. Much benefit is anticipated from this measure, though far less than would have resulted from its adoption at an earlier date, so as to afford time for their organization and instruction during the winter months. The Bill for diminishing the number of exempts has just been made the subject of a special message, and its provisions are such as would add no strength to the army. The recommendation to abolish all class exemptions has not met your favour, although still deemed by me a valuable and important measure ; and the number of men exempted by a new clause in the Act just passed is believed to be quite equal to that of those whose exemption is revoked. A law of a few lines repealing all class exemptions would not only strengthen the force in the field, but be still more beneficial by abating the natural discontent and jealousy created in the army by the existence of classes privileged by law to remain in places of safety, while their fellow-citizens are exposed in the trenches and the field. The measures most needed, however, at the present time for affording an effective increase to our military strength is a general militia law, such as the Constitution authorizes Congress to pass, by granting to it power " to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the Confederate States," and the further power " to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Confederate States, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions." The necessity for the exercise of this power can never exist if not in the circumstances which now surround us. The security of the States against any encroachment by the Confederate Government is amply provided by the Constitution, by reserving to the States respectively the appointment of the officers and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress. A law is needed to prescribe not only how and of what persons the militia are to be organized, but to provide the mode of calling them out. If instances be required to show the necessity for such a general law, it is sufficient to mention that in
438	Mr. Jefferson Davis's
one case I have been informed by the Governor of a State that the law does not permit him to call out the militia from one county for service in another, so that a single brigade of the enemy could traverse the State and devastate each county in turn without any power on the part of the Executive to use the military for effective defence ; while in another State the Executive refused to allow the militia " to be employed in the service of the Confederate States " in the absence of a law for that purpose. I have heretofore, in a confidential message to the two Houses, stated the facts which induced me to consider it necessary that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus should be suspended. The conviction of the necessity of this measure has become deeper as the events of the struggle have been developed. Congress has not concurred with me in opinion. It is my duty to say that the time has arrived when the suspension of the writ is not simply advisable and expedient, but almost indispensable to the successful conduct of the war. On Congress must rest the responsibility of declining to exercise a power conferred by the Constitution as a means of public safety to be used in periods of national peril resulting from foreign invasion. If our present circumstances were not such as were contemplated when this power was conferred, I confess myself at a loss to imagine any coni ingency in which this clause of the Constitution will not remain a dead letter. With the prompt adoption of the measures above recommended, and the united and hearty co-operation of Congress and the people in the execution of the laws and the defence of the country, we may enter on the coming campaign with cheerful confidence in the result ; and who can doubt the continued existence of that spirit and fortitude of the people, and of that constancy under reverses, which alone are needed to render our triumph secure ? What other resourees remain available but the undyin', unconquerable resolve to be free ? It has become certain beyond all doubt or question that we must continue this struggle to a successful issue, or must make abject and unconditional submission to such terms as it shall please the conqueror to impose upon us after our surrender. If a possible doubt could exist after the conference between our commissioners and Mr. Lincoln, as recently reported to you, it would be dispelled by a recent occurrence, of which it is proper that you should be informed. Congress will remember that in the conference above referred to, our commissioners were informed that the Government of the United States would not enter into any agreement or treaty whatever with the Confederate States, nor with any single State, and the only possible mode of obtaining peace was by laying down our arms, disbanding our forces, and
Message to the Confederate Senate.	439
yielding unconditional obedience to the laws of the United States, including those passed for the confiscation of our property, and the constitutional amendment for the abolition of slavery. It will further be remembered that Mr. Lincoln declared that the only terms on which hostilities could cease were those stated in his message of December last, in which we were informed, that in the event of our penitent submission, he would temper justice with mercy ; and that the question whether we would be governed as dependent territories or permitted to have a representation in their Congress, was one on which he could promise nothing, but which would be decided by their Congress after our submission had been accepted. It has not, however, been hitherto stated to you that in the course of the conference at Fortress Monroe a suggestion was made by one of our commissioners, that the objection entertained by Mr. Lincoln to treating with the Government of the Confederacy, or with any separate State, might be avoided by substituting, for the usual mode of negotiating through commissioners or other diplomatic agents, the method sometimes employed of a military convention, to be entered into by the commanding generals of the two belligerents. This, he admitted, was a power possessed by him, though it was not thought commensurate with all the questions involved. As he did not accept the suggestion when made, he was afterwards requested to consider his conclusion upon the subject of the suspension of hostilities, which he agreed to do, but said that he had maturely considered the plan, and had determined that it could not be done. Subsequently, however, an interview with General Longstreet was asked for by General Ord, commanding the enemy's army of the James, during which General Longstreet was informed by him that there was a possibility of arriving at a satisfactory adjustment of the present unhappy difficulties by means of a military convention ; and that if General Lee desired an interview on the subject, it would not be declined, provided General Lee had authority to act. This communication was supposed to be the consequence of the suggestion above referred to ; and General Lee, according to instructions, wrote to General Grant on the 2nd of the month, proposing to meet him for conference on the subject, and stating that he was vested with the requisite authority. General Grant's reply stated that he had no authority to accede to the proposed conference ; that his powers extended only to making a convention on subjects purely of a military character, and that General Ord could only have meant that an interview would not be refused on any subject on which he (General Grant) had the right to act. It thus appears that neither with the Confederate authorities of
440	Mr. Jefferson Davis's Message.
any State, nor through the commanding Generals, will the Government of the United States treat or make any terms or agreement whatever for the cessation of hostilities. There remains, then, for us no choice but to continue this contest to a final issue ; for the people of the Confederacy can be but little known to him who supposes it possible they would ever consent to purchase, at the cost of degradation and slavery, permission to live in a country garrisoned by their own negroes, and governed by officers sent by the conqueror to rule them. Having thus fully placed before you the information requisite to enable you to judge of the state of the country, the dangers to which we are exposed, and the measures of legislation needed for averting them, it remains for me but to invoke your attention to the consideration of those means by which, above all others, we may hope to escape the calamities that would result from our failure. Prominent above all others is the necessity for earnest and cordial co-operation between all departments of Government, State and Confederate, and all eminent citizens throughout the Confederacy. To you especially, as senators and representatives, do the people look for encouragement and counsel. To your action—not only in legislative halls, but in your homes—will their eyes be turned for the example of what is befitting men who, by willing sacrifices on the altar of freedom, show that they are worthy to enjoy its blessings. I feel full confidence that you will concur with me in the conviction that your public duties will not be ended when you shall have closed the legislative labours of the Session, but that your voices will be heard cheering and encouraging the people to that persistent fortitude which they have hitherto displayed, and animating them by the manifestation of that serene confidence which, in moments of public danger, is the distinctive characteristic of the patriot, who derives courage from his devotion to his country's destiny, and is thus enabled to inspire the like courage in others. Thus united in a common and holy cause, rising above all selfish considerations, rendering all our means and faculties tributary to the country's welfare, let us bow submissively to the Divine will, and reverently invoke the blessing of our Heavenly Father, that as He protected and guided our sires while struggling in a similar cause, so He will enable us to guard safely our altars and our firesides, and maintain inviolate the political rights which we inherited.
INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
ON
TAKING OFFICE AS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE
SECOND TIME, ON HIS RE-ELECTION IN 1S65.
[This address, after the terrible fate which has since befallen the ex-President of the United States, will he read with a solemn interest quite independent of the occasion on which it was delivered. It has therefore been thought well to insert it in this volume as one of the later utterances of a great man.]
FELLOW COUNTRYMEN,—At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of the course to be pursued seemed very fitting and proper ; now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have constantly been called forth concerning every point and place of the great contest which still absorbs attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself. It is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With a high hope for the future, no prediction in that regard is ventured. On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it. All sought to avoid it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, the insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war,—seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide the effects by negotiating. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let it perish, and war came. One-eighth of the whole population were coloured slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but located in the Southern part. These slaves contributed a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew the *interest would somehow cause war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected the magnitude or duration which it has already attained ; neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease even before
442 Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln.
the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astonishing. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God. Each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any man should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing bread from the sweat of other men's faces ; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayer of both should not be answered ; that of neither has been answered fully, for the Almighty has His own purposes. " Woe unto the world because of offences, for it must needs be that offence come ; but woe unto that man by whom the offence cometh." If we shall suppose American slavery one of those offences which in the providence of God must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war, as was due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern that there is any departure from those Divine attributes which believers in the living God always ascribe to Him ? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away; yet if it be God's will that it continue until the wealth piled by bondsmen by 250 years' unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether, with malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right. As God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and orphans ; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
SPEECH OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN
UPON THE CONCLUSION OF THE WAR.
[The following speech was delivered at Washington on the evening of the 11th of April, by President Lincoln.]
WE meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hopes of a righteous peace, whose joyous expression cannot be restrained. In the midst of this, however, He from whom all blessings flow must not be forgotten. A call for a national thanksgiving is being prepared, and will be duly promulgated. Nor must those whose harder part gives us the cause of rejoicing be overlooked ; their honours must not be parcelled out with others. I myself was near the front, and had the high pleasure of transmitting much of the good news to you; but no part of the honour for the plan or execution is mine. To General Grant, his skilful officers and brave men, it all belongs. The gallant navy stood ready, but was not in reach to take active part. By these recent successes, the reinaugura-tion of the national authority, the reconstruction of which has had a large share of thought from the first, is pressed much more closely upon our attention. It is fraught with great difficulty. Unlike a case of war between independent nations, there is no authorized organ for us to treat with,—no one man has authority to give up the rebellion for any other man. We simply must begin with, and mould from, disorganized and discordant elements. Nor is it a small additional embarrassment that we, the loyal people, differ among ourselves as to the mode, manner, and measure of reconstruction. As a general rule, I abstain from reading the 'reports of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I cannot properly return an answer. In spite of this precaution, however, it comes to my knowledge that I am much censured for some supposed agency in setting up and seeking to sustain the new State Government of Louisiana. In this I have done just so much and no more than the public knows. In the annual Message of December, 1863, and accompanying proclamation, I presented a plan of reconstruction, as the phrase goes, which I promised, if adopted by any State,
444	Speech of President Lincoln
would be acceptable to, and sustained by, the Executive Government of the nation. I distinctly stated that this was not the only plan which might possibly be accepted, and I also distinctly protested that the Executive claimed no right to say when or whether members should be entitled to seats in Congress from such States. This plan was in advance submitted to the Cabinet, and approved by every member of it. One of them suggested that I should then, and in that connection, apply the emancipation proclamation to the excepted parts of Virginia and Louisiana, that I should drop the suggestion about apprenticeship for freed people, and that I should omit the protest against my own power in regard to the admission of members to Congress ; but even he approved every part and parcel of the plan which has since been employed or touched by the action of Louisiana. The new constitution of Louisiana declaring emancipation of the whole State practically applies the proclamation to the whole part previously excepted ; it does not adopt apprenticeship for freed people, and is silent, as it could not well be otherwise, about the admission of members to Congress. So that as it applied to Louisiana, every member of the Cabinet fully approved the plan. The Message went to Congress, and I received many commendations of the plan, written and verbal, and not a single objection to it from any professed Emancipationist came to my knowledge until after the news had reached Washington that the people of Louisiana had begun to move in accordance with it. From about July, 1862, I had corresponded with different persons supposed to be interested in the reconstruction of the State Government for Louisiana. When the Message of 1863, with the plan before mentioned, reached New Orleans, General Banks wrote me that he was confident the people, with his military co-operation, would reconstruct substantially on that plan, I wrote to him and some of them to try it. They tried it, and the result is known. Such has been my only agency in getting up the Louisiana Government. As to sustaining it, my promise is out, as before stated, but as bad promises are better broken than kept, I shall treat this as a bad promise, and break it whenever I shall be convinced that keeping it is adverse to the public interest; but I have not yet been so convinced. I have been shown a letter on this subject, supposed to be an able one, in which the writer expresses regret that my mind has not seemed to be definitely fixed on the question whether seceded States, so called, are in the Union or out of it. It would, perhaps, add astonishment to his regret were he to learn that since I have found professed Union men endeavouring to answer that question, I have purposely forborne any public expression upon it, as it appears to me that that question has not been, nor yet is, a prac-
Upon the Conclusion of the War.	445
tics .ty material one, and that any discussion of it while it thus remains practically immaterial could have no other effect than the mischievous one of dividing our friends. As yet, whatever it may become, that question is bad as a basis of controversy, and good for nothing at all. We all agree that the seceded States, so called, are out of their proper practical relation with the Union, and the sole object of the Government, civil and military, in regard to these States, is to again get them into that proper practical relation. I believe it is not only possible, but in fact easier, to do this without deciding, or even considering, whether those States have ever been out of the Union than with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether they had been abroad. Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to restore the proper practical relations between these States and the Union, and each for ever after innocently indulge his own opinion, whether in doing the acts he brought the States from without into the Union, or only gave them proper assistance, they never having been out of it. The amount of constituency, so to speak, on which the Louisiana Government rests would be more satisfactory to all if it contained 50,000 or 30,000, or even 20,000, instead of 12,000, as it does. It is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the coloured men. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers. Still, the question is not whether the Louisiana Government as it stands is quite all that is desirable. The question is, will it be wiser to take it as it is, and help to improve it, or to reject it ? Can Louisiana be brought into the proper practical relation with the Union sooner by sustaining or discarding her new State Government? Some 12,000 voters in the heretofore slave State of Louisiana have sworn allegiance to the Union, assumed to be the rightful political power of the State, held elections, organized a State Government, adopted a Free State constitution, giving the benefit of the public schools equally to white and black, and empowering the Legislature to confer the elective franchise upon the coloured man. This Legislature has already voted to ratify the constitutional amendment recently passed by Congress abolishing slavery throughout the nation. These 12,000 persons are thus fully committed to the Union, and to perpetuate freedom in the State,—committed to the very things, and nearly all the things, the nation wants ; and they ask the nation's recognition and its assistance to make good this committal. Now, if we reject and spurn them, we do our utmost to disorganize and disperse them. We, in fact, say to the white man, " You are worthless or worse. We will neither help you nor be helped by
446	Speech of President Lincoln.
you." To the blacks we say, " This cup of liberty which these your old masters hold to your lips we will dash from you, and
leave you to the _chances of gathering the spilled and scattered contents in some vague and undefined when, where, or how." If this course, discouraging and paralyzing both white and black, has any tendency to bring Louisiana into proper practical relations with the Union, I have so far been unable to perceive it. If, on the contrary, we recognize and sustain the new Government of Louisiana, the adverse of all this is true. We encourage the hearts and nerve the arms of 12,000 to adhere to their work, and argue for it, and proselyte for it, and fight for it, and feed it and grow it, and ripen it to a complete success. The coloured man, too, in seeing all united for him, is inspired with vigilance and energy and daring to the same end. Grant that he desires the elective franchise, will he not obtain it sooner by saving the already advanced steps toward it than by falling backwards over them ? Concede that the new Government of Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it. Again, if we reject Louisiana, we also reject our vote in favour of the proposed amendment to the national Constitution. To meet this proposition it has been argued that no more than three-fourths of those States which have not attempted secession are necessary to validly ratify the amendment. I do not commit myself against this further than to say that such a ratification would be questionable and sure to be persistently questioned, while its ratification of three-fourths of all States would be unquestioned and unquestionable. I repeat the question, Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relations with the Union sooner by sustaining or by discarding her new State Government ? What has been said of Louisiana will apply to other States. And yet so great peculiarities pertain to each State, and such important and sudden changes occur in the same State, and, withal, so new and unprecedented is the whole case, that no exclusive and inflexible plan can safely be prescribed as to details and collaterals. Such an exclusive and inflexible plan would surely become an entanglement. Important principles may and must be inflexible. In the present situation, as the phrase goes, it may be my duty to make some new announcement to the people of the South. I am considering, and shall not fail to act when satisfied that action will be proper.
ADDRESS OF THE REV, HENRY W. BEECHER
AT FORT SUMTER.
[The following address was, at the special request of the late President of the United States, delivered by Mr. Beecher, on the 14th of April, on the occasion of the flag of the Union being raised on Fort Sumter, from whence it had been taken down four years before.]
ON this solemn and joyful day we again lift to the breeze our fathers' flag, now again the banner of the United States, with the fervent prayer that God will crown it with honour, protect it from treason, and send it down to our children, with all the blessings of civilization, liberty, and religion. Terrible in battle, may it be beneficent in peace. Happily, no bird or beast of prey has been inscribed upon it. The stars that redeem the night from darkness, and the beams of red light that beautify the morning, have been united upon its folds. As long as the sun endures, or the stars, may it wave over a nation neither enslaved nor enslaving. Once, and but once, has treason dishonoured it. In that insane hour when the guiltiest and bloodiest rebellion of all time hurled their fires upon this fort, you, sir (turning to General Anderson), and a small heroic band, stood within these now crumbled walls, and did gallant and just battle for the honour and defence of the nation's banner. In that cope of fire, that glorious flag still peacefully waved to the breeze above your head, unconscious of harm as the stars and skies above it. Once it was shot down. A gallant hand, in whose care this day it has been, plucked it from the ground, and reared it again—" cast down, but not destroyed." After a vain resistance, with trembling hand and sad heart, you withdrew it from its height, closed its wings, and bore it far away, sternly to sleep amid the tumults of rebellion and the thunder of battle. The first act of war had begun. The long night of four years had set in. While the giddy traitors whirled in a maze of exhilaration, dim horrors were already advancing, that were ere long to fill the land with blood. To-day you are returned again. We devoutly join with you in thanksgiving to Almighty God, that He has spared your honoured life, and vouchsafed to you the glory of this day. The heavens over you are the same, the same shores are here, morning
448	Address of Mr. Beecher
comes, and evening, as they did. All else, how changed ! What grim batteries crowd the burdened shores ! What scenes have filled this air, and disturbed these waters ! These shattered heaps of shapeless stone are all that is left of Fort Sumter. Desolation broods in yonder city—solemn retribution hath avenged our dishonoured banner ! You have come back with honour, who departed hence four years ago, leaving the air sultry with fanaticism The surging crowds that rolled up their frenzied shouts as the flag came down, are dead, or scattered, or silent, and their habitations are desolate. Ruin sits in the cradle of treason. Rebellion has perished. But, there flies the same flag that was insulted. With starry eyes it looks over this bay for the banner that supplanted it, and sees it not. You that then, for the day, were humbled, are here again, to triumph once and for ever. In the storm of that assault this glorious ensign was often struck ; but, memorable fact, not one of its stars was torn out by shot or shell. It was a prophecy. It said: " Not a State shall be struck from this nation by treason ! " The fulfilment is at hand. Lifted to the air, to-day, it proclaims, that after four years of war, " Not a State is blotted out." Hail to the flag of our fathers, and our flag ! Glory to the banner that has gone through four years black with tempests of war, to pilot the nation back to peace without dismembership ! And glory be to God, who, above all hosts and banners, hath ordained victory, and shall ordain peace. Wherefore have we come hither, pilgrims from distant places ? Are we come to exult that Northern hands are stronger than Southern ? No ; but to rejoice that the hands of those who defend a just and beneficent Government are mightier than the hands that assaulted it. Do we exult over fallen cities ? We exult that a nation has not fallen. We sorrow with the sorrowful. We sympathize with the desolate. We look upon this shattered fort and yonder dilapidated city with sad eyes, grieved that men should have committed such treason, and glad that God hath set such a mark upon treason that all ages shall dread and abhor it. We exult, not for a passion gratified, but for a sentiment victorious ; not for temper, but for conscience ; not, as we devoutly believe, that our will is done, but that God's will hath -been done. We should be unworthy of that liberty entrusted to our care, if, on such a day as this, we sullied our hearts by feelings of aimless vengeance ; and equally unworthy if we did not devoutly thank Him who hath said, " Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord," that He hath set a mark upon arrogant rebellion, ineffaceable while time lasts. Since this flag went down on that dark day, who shall tell the mighty woes that have made this land a spectacle to angels and men ? The soil
At Fort Sumter.	449
has drunk blood and is glutted. Millions mourn for millions slain, or, envying the dead, pray for oblivion. Towns and villages have been razed. Fruitful fields have been turned back to wilderness. It came to pass, as the prophet said : " The sun was turned to darkness and the moon to blood." The course of law was ended. The sword sat chief magistrate in half the nation ; industry was paralyzed ; morals corrupted ; the public weal invaded by rapine and anarchy ; whole States ravaged by avengingarmies. The world was amazed. The earth reeled. When the flag sunk here, it was as if political night had come, and all beasts of prey had come forth to devour. That long night is ended. And for this returning day we have come from afar to rejoice and give thanks. No more war. No more accursed secession. No more slavery, that spawned them both. Let no man misread the meaning of this unfolding flag ! It says, " Government has returned hither." It proclaims, in the name of vindicated government, peace and protection to loyalty ; humiliation and pains to traitors. This is the flag of sovereignty. The nation, not the States, is sovereign. Restored to authority, this flag commands, not supplicates. There may be pardon, but no concession. There may be amnesty and oblivion, but no honeyed compromises. The nation to-day has peace for the peaceful, and war for the turbulent. The only condition to submission is to submit ! There is the Constitution, there are the laws, there is the Government. They rise up like mountains of strength that shall not be moved. They are the conditions of peace. One nation, under one Government, without slavery, has been ordained, and shall stand. There can be peace on no other basis. On this basis reconstruction is easy, and needs neither architect nor engineer. Without this basis no engineer or architect shall ever reconstruct these rebellious States. We do not want your cities or your fields. We do not envy you your prolific soil, nor heavens full of perpetual summer. Let agriculture revel here ; let manufactures make every stream twice musical ; build fleets in every port; inspire the arts of peace with genius second only to that of Athens, and we shall be glad in your gladness, and rich in your wealth. All that we ask is unswerving loyalty and universal liberty. And that, in the name of this high sovereignty of the United States of America, we demand ; and that, with the blessing of Almighty God, we will have ! We raise our fathers' banner that it may bring back better blessings than those of old; that it may cast out the devil of discord; that it may restore lawful government, and a prosperity purer and more enduring than that which it protected before ; that it , may win parted friends from their alienation ; that it may inspire hope, and inaugurate uni-
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versal liberty ; that it may say to the sword, " Return to thy sheath ;" and to the plough and sickle, " Go forth ;" that it may heal all jealousies, unite all policies, inspire a new national life, compact our strength, purify our principles, ennoble our national ambitions, and make this people great and strong,`not for aggression and quarrelsomeness, but for the peace of the world, giving to us the glorious prerogative of leading all nations to justex laws, to more humane policies, to sincerer friendship, to rational, instituted civil liberty, and to universal Christian brotherhood. Reverently, piously, in hopeful patriotism, we spread this banner on the sky, as of old the bow was planted on the cloud, and, with solemn fervour, beseech God to look upon it, and make it a memorial of an everlasting covenant and decree that never again on this fair land shall a deluge of blood prevail. Why need any eye turn from this spectacle ? Are there not associations which, overleaping the recent past, carry us back to times when, over North and South, this flag was honoured alike by all? In all our colonial days we were one ; in ,the long revolutionary struggle, and in the scores of prosperous years succeeding, we were united. When the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765 aroused the colonies, it was Gadsden, of South Carolina, that cried, with prescient enthusiasm, " We stand on the broad common ground of those natural rights that we all feel and know as men. There ought to be no New England man, no New Yorker, known on this continent, but all of us," said he, " Americans." That was the voice of South Carolina. That shall be the voice of South Carolina. Faint is the echo ; but it is coming. We now hear it sighing sadly through the pines ; but it shal yet break in thunder upon the shore. No North, no West, no South, but the United States of America. There is scarcely a man born in the South who has lifted his hand against this banner but had a father who would have died for it. Is memory dead ? Is there no historic pride ? Has a fatal fury struck blindness or hate into eyes that used to look kindly towards each other, that read the same Bible, that hung over the historic pages of our national glory, that studied the same Constitution ? Let this uplifting bring back all of the past that was good, but leave in darkness all that was bad. It was never before so wholly unspotted ; so clear of all wrong ; so purely and simply the sign of Justice and Liberty. Did I say that we brought back the same banner that you bore away, noble and, heroic sir? It is not the same. It is more and better than it was. The land is free from slavery since that banner fell. When God would prepare Moses for emancipation, He overthrew his first steps, and drove him for forty years to brood in the wilderness. When our
At Fort Sumter.	. 451
flag came down, four years it lay brooding in darkness. It cried to the Lord, " Wherefore am I deposed ? " Then arose before it a vision of its sin. It had strengthened the strong, and forgotten the weak. It proclaimed liberty, but trod upon slaves. In that seclusion it dedicated itself to liberty. Behold, to-day, it fulfils its vows When it went down four million people had no flag. To-day it rises, and four million people cry out, " Behold our flag ! " Hark ! they murmur. It is the Gospel that they recite in sacred words :—" It is a Gospel to the poor, it heals our broken hearts, it preaches deliverance to captives, it gives sight to the blind, it sets at liberty them that are bruised." Rise up then, glorious Gospel banner, and roll out these messages of God. Tell the air that not a spot now sullies thy whiteness. Thy red is not the blush of shame, but the flush of joy. Tell the dews that wash thee that thou art as pure as they. Say to the night that thy stars lead toward the morning ; and to the morning, that a brighter day arises with healing in its wings. And then, 0 glowing flag ! bid the sun pour light on all thy folds with double brightness while thou art bearing round and round the world the solemn joy—a race set free ! a nation redeemed ! The mighty hand of Government, made strong in war by the favour of the God of Battles, spreads wide to-day the banner of liberty that went down in darkness, that arose in light ; and there it streams, like the sun above it, neither parcelled out nor monopolized, but flooding the air with light for all mankind. Ye scattered and broken, ye wounded and dying, bitten by the fiery serpents of oppression, everywhere, in all the world, look upon this sign, lifted up, and live ! And ye homeless and houseless slaves, look, and ye are free ! At length you, too, have part and lot in this glorious ensign, that broods with impartial love over small and great, the poor and the strong, the bond and the free. In this solemn hour, let us pray for the quick coming of reconciliation and happiness under this common flag. But we must build again, from the foundations, in all these now free Southern States. No cheap exhortations " to forgetfulness of the past, to restore all things as they were," will do. God does not stretch out His hand, as He has for four dreadful years, that men may easily forget the might of His terrible acts. Restore things as they were ! What, the alienations and jealousies? the discords and contentions, and the causes of them P No. In that solemn sacrifice on which a nation has offered for its sins so many precious victims, loved and lamented, let our sins and mistakes be consumed utterly and for ever. No, never again shall things be restored as before the war. It is written in God's decree of events fulfilled, " Old things are passed away." That new earth, in which dwelleth righteous-
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ness, draws near. Things as they were ! Who has an omnipotent hand to restore a million dead, slain in battle or wasted by sickness, or dying of grief, broken-hearted ? Who has omnisicence to search for the scattered ones ? Who shall restore the lost to broken families ? Who shall bring back the squandered treasure, the years of industry wasted, and convince you that four years of guilty rebellion and cruel war are no more than dirt upon the hand, which a moment's washing removes, and leaves the hand clean as before ? Such a war reaches down to the very vitals of society. Emerging from such a prolonged rebellion, he is blind who tells you that the State, by a mere amnesty and benevolence of Government, can be put again, by a mere decree, in its old place. It would not be honest, it would not be kind or fraternal, for me to pretend that Southern revolution against the Union has not reacted, and wrought revolution in the Southern States themselves, and inaugurated a new dispensation. Society here is like a broken loom, and the piece which rebellion put in, and was weaving, has been cut, and every thread broken. You must put in new warp and new woof, and weaving anew, as the fabric slowly unwinds, we shall see in it no Gorgon figures, no hideous grotesques of the old barbarism, but the figures of liberty, vines and golden grains, framing in the heads of justice, love, and liberty. The august Convention of 1787 formed the Constitution with this memorable preamble :—" We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain this Constitution for the United States of America." Again, in the awful convention of war, the people of the United States, for the very ends just recited, have debated, settled, and ordained certain fundamental truths, which must henceforth be accepted and obeyed. Nor is any State or any individual wise who shall disregard them. They are to civil affairs what the natural laws are to health—indispensable conditions of peace and happiness. What are the ordinances given by the people, speaking out of fire and darkness of war, with authority inspired by that same God who gave the law from Sinai amid thunders and trumpet voices ? 1. That these United States shall be one and indivisible. 2. That States have not absolute sovereignty, and have no right to dismember the Republic. 3. That universal liberty is indespensable to Republican Government, and that slavery shall be utterly and for ever abolished. Such are the results of war ! These are the best fruits of the war. They are worth all they have cost. They are foundations of peace. They will secure benefits to all nations as
At Fort Sumter.	453
well as to ours. Our highest wisdom and duty is to accept the facts as the decrees of God. We are exhorted to forget all that has happened. Yes, the wrath, the conflict, the cruelty, but not those overruling decrees of God which this war has pronounced. As solemnly as on Mount Sinai, God says, " Remember ! remember ! " Hear it to-day. Under this sun, under that bright child of the sun, our banner, with the eyes of this nation and of the world upon us, we repeat the syllables of God's providence and recite the solemn decrees : No more Disunion ! No more Secession ! No more Slavery ! Why did this civil war begin ? We do not wonder that European statesmen failed to comprehend this conflict, and that foreign philanthropists were shocked at a murderous war that seemed to have no moral origin, but, like the brutal fights of beasts of prey, to have sprung from ferocious
animalism.	This great nation, filling all profitable latitudes,
cradled between two oceans, with inexhaustible resources, with riches increasing in an unparalleled ratio, by agriculture, by manufactures, by commerce, with schools and churches, with books and newspapers thick as leaves in our own forests, with institutions sprung from the people, and peculiarly adapted to their genius ; a nation not sluggish, but active, used to excitement, practised in political wisdom, and accustomed to self-government, and all its vast outlying parts held together by the Federal Government, mild in temper, gentle in administration, and beneficent in results, seemed to have been formed for peace. All at once, in this hemisphere of happiness and hope, there came trooping clouds with fiery bolts, full of death and desolation. At a cannon shot upon this fort, all the nation, as if it had been a trained army lying on its arms, awaiting a signal, rose up and began a war which, for awfulness, rises into the front rank of bad eminence. The front of the battle, going with the sun, was twelve hundred miles long ; and the depth, measured along a meridian, was a thousand miles. In this vast area more than two million men, first and last, for four years, have, in skirmish, fight, and battle, met in more than a thousand conflicts ; while a coast and river line, not less than four thousand miles in length, has swarmed with fleets freighted with artillery. The very industry of the country seemed to have been touched by some infernal wand, and, with sudden wheel, changed its front from peace to war. The anvils of the land beat like drums. As out of the ooze emerge monsters, so from our mines and foundries uprose new and strange machines of war, ironclad. And so, in a nation of peaceful habits, without external provocation, there arose such a storm of war as blackened the whole horizon and hemisphere. What wonder that foreign observers stood
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amazed at this fanatical fury, that seemed without Divine guidance, but inspired wholly with infernal frenzy. The explosion was sudden, but the train had long been laid. We must consider the condition of Southern society, if we would understand the mystery of this iniquity. Society in the South resolves itself into three divisions, more sharply distinguished than in any other part of the nation. At the base is the labouring class, made up of slaves. Next is the middle class, made up of traders, small farmers, and poor men. The lower edge of this class touches the slave, and the upper edge reaches up to the third and ruling class. This class was a small minority in numbers, but in practical ability they had centered in their hands the whole government of the South, and had mainly governed the country. Upon this polished, cultured, exceedingly capable and wholly unprincipled class, rests the whole burden of this war. Forced up by the bottom-heat. of slavery, the ruling class, in all the disloyal States, arrogated to themselves a superiority not compatible with republican equality, nor with just morals. They claimed a right of pre-eminence. An evil prophet arose who trained these wild and luxuriant shoots of ambition to the shapely form of a political philosophy. By its reagents they precipitated drudgery to the bottom of society, and left at the top what they thought to be a clarified fluid. In their political economy, labour was to be owned by capital ; in their theory of government, the few were to rule the many. They boldly avowed, not the fact alone, that, under all forms of government, the few rule the many, but their right and duty to do so. Set free from the necessity of labour, they conceived a contempt for those who felt its wholesome regimen. Believing themselves fore-ordained to supremacy, they regarded the popular vote, when it failed to register their wishes, as an intrusion and a nuisance. They were born in a garden, and popular liberty, like freshetS overswelling their banks, but covered their dainty walks and flowers with slime and mud—of democratic votes. When, with shrewd observation, they saw the growth of the popular element in the Northern States, they instinctively took in the inevitable events. It must be controlled or cut off from a nation governed by gentlemen ! Controlled, less and less, could it be in every decade; and they prepared secretly, earnestly, and with wide conference and mutual connivance, to separate the South from the North. We are to distinguish between the pretences and means, and the real causes of this war. To inflame and unite the great middle class of the South, who had no interest in separation and no business with war, they alleged grievances that never existed, and employed arguments which they, better than all other men, knew to be specious and false. Slavery itself
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was cared for only as an instrument of power or of excitement. They lied unalterably fixed their eye upon empire, and all was good which would secure that, and bad which hindered it. Thus, the ruling class of the South—an aristocracy as intense, proud and inflexible as ever existed—not limited either by customs or institutions, not recognized and adjusted in the regular order of society, playing a reciprocal part in its machinery, but secret, disowning its own existence, baptized with ostentatious names of democracy, obsequious to the people for the sake of governing them ; this nameless, lurking aristocracy, that ran in the blood of society like a rash not yet come to the skin ; this political tapeworm, that produced nothing, but lay coiled in the body, feeding on its nutriment, and holding the whole structure to be but a servant set up to nourish it—this aristocracy of the plantation, with firm and deliberate resolve, brought on the war, that they might cut the land in two, and clearing themselves from incorrigible free society, set up a sterner, statelier empire, where slaves worked that gentlemen might live at ease. Nor can there be any doubt that though, at first, they meant to erect the form of republican government, this was but a device, a step necessary to the securing of that power by which they should be able to change the whole economy of society. That they never dreamed of such a war, we may well believe. That they would have accepted it, though twice as bloody, if only thus they could rule, none can doubt that knows the temper of these worst men of modern society. But they miscalculated. They understood the people of the South ; but they were totally incapable:of understanding the character of the great working classes of the loyal States. That industry, which is the foundation of independence, and so of equity, they stigmatized as stupid drudgery, or as mean avarice. That general intelligence and independence of thought which schools for the common people and newspapers breed, they reviled as the incitement of unsettled zeal, running easily into fanaticism. They more thoroughly misunderstood the profound sentiment of loyalty, the deep love of country, which pervaded the common people. If those who knew them best had never suspected the depth and power of that love of country which threw it into an agony of grief when the flag was here humbled, how should they conceive of it who were wholly disjoined from them in sympathy ? The whole land rose up, you remember, when the flag came down, as if inspired unconsciously by the breath of the Almighty, and the power of omnipotence. It was as when one pierces the banks of the Mississippi for a rivulet, and the whole raging stream plunges through with headlong course. There they calculated, and miscalculated ! And more than all,
456	Speech, of Mr. Beecher
they miscalculated the bravery of men who have been trained under law, who are civilized and hate personal brawls, who are so protected by society as to have dismissed all thought of self-defence, the whole force of whuse life is turned to peaceful pursuits. These arrogant conspirators against Government, with Chinese vanity, believed that they could blow away these self-respecting citizens as chaff from the battle-field. Few of them are left alive to ponder their mistake ! Here, then, are the roots of this civil war. It was not a quarrel of wild beasts, it was an inflection of the strife of ages, between power and right, between ambition and equity. An armed band of pestilent conspirators sought the nation's life. Her children rose up and fought at every door, and room, and hall, to thrust out the murderers, and save the house and household. It was not legitimately a war between the common people of the North and South. The war was set on by the ruling class, the aristocratic conspirators of the South. They suborned the common people with lies, with sophistries, with cruel deceits and slanders, to fight for secret objects which they abhorred, and against interests as dear to them as their own lives. I charge the whole guilt of this war upon the ambitious, educated, plotting, political leaders of the South. They have shed this ocean of blood. They have desolated the South. They have poured poverty through all her towns and cities. They have bewildered the imagination of the people with phantasms, and led them to believe that they were fighting for their homes and liberty, whose homes were unthreatened, and whose liberty was in no jeopardy. These arrogant instigators of civil war have renewed the plagues of Egypt, not that the oppressed might go free, but that the free might be oppressed. A day will come when God will reveal judgment, and arraign at His bar these mighty miscreants ; and then, every orphan that their bloody game has made, and every widow that sits sorrowing, and every maimed and wounded sufferer, and every bereaved heart in all the wide regions of this land, will rise up and come before the Lord to lay upon these chief culprits of modern history their awful witness. And from a thousand battle-fields shall rise up armies of airy witnesses, who, with the memory of their awful sufferings, shall confront the miscreants with shrieks of fierce accusation ; and every pale and starved prisoner shall raise his skinny hand in judgment. Blood shall call out for vengeance, and tears shall plead for justice, and grief shall silently beckon, and love, heart-smitten, shall wail for justice. Good men and angels will cry out, " How long, 0 Lord, how long, wilt Thou not avenge ? " And then, these guiltiest and most remorseless traitors, these high and cultured men, with might and wisdom, used for the destruction of their country ; the most
At Fort Sumter.	457
accursed and detested of all criminals, that have drenched a continent in needless blood, and moved the foundations of their times with hideous crimes and cruelty, caught up in black clouds, full of voices of vengeance and lurid with punishment, shall be whirled aloft and plunged downwards for ever and for ever in an endless retribution ; while God shall say, " Thus shall it be to all who betray their country ; " and all in heaven and upon the earth will say " Amen ! " But for the people misled, for the multitudes drafted and driven into this civil war, let not a trace of animosity remain. The moment their willing hand drops the musket, and they return to their allegiance, then stretch out your own honest right hand to greet them. Recall to them the old days of kindness. Our hearts wait for their redemption. All the resources of a renovated nation shall be applied to rebuild their prosperity, and smooth down the furrows of war. Has this long and weary period of strife been an unmingled evil ? Has nothing been gained ? Yes, much. This nation has attained to its manhood. Among Indian customs is one which admits young men to the rank of warriors only after severe trials of hunger, fatigue, pain, endurance. They reach their station, not through years, but ordeals. Our nation has suffered, but now is strong. The sentiment of loyalty and patriotism, next in importance to religion, has been rooted and grounded. We have something to be proud of, and pride helps love. Never so much as now did we love our country. But four such years of education in ideas, in the knowledge of political truth, in the love of history, in the geography of our own country, almost every inch of which we have probed with the bayonet, have never passed before. There is half a hundred years' advance in four. We believed in our institutions and principles before ; but now we know their power. It is one thing to look upon artillery, and be sure that it is loaded ; it is another thing to prove its power in battle ! We believe in the hidden power stored in our institutions : we had never before seen this nation thundering like Mount Sinai at all those that worshipped the calf at the base of the mountain. A people educated and moral are competent to all the exigencies of national life. A vote can govern better than a crown. We have proved it. A people intelligent and religious are strong in all economic elements. They are fitted for peace and competent to war. They are not easily inflamed, and, when justly incensed, not easily extinguished. They are patient in adversity, endure cheerfully needful burdens, tax themselves to real wants more royally than any prince would dare to tax his people. They pour forth without stint relief for the sufferings of war, and raise charity out of the realm of a dole into a munificent duty of beneficence. The habit of industry
4;8	Speech, of Mr. Beecher
among free men prepares them to meet the exhaustion of war with increase of productiveness commensurate with the need that exists. Their habits of skill enable them at once to supply such armies as only freedom can muster, with arms and munitions such as only free industry can create. Free society is terrible in war, and afterwards repairs the mischief of war with celerity almost as great as that with which the ocean heals the seams gashed in it by the keel of ploughing ships. Free society is fruitful of military genius. It comes when called ; when no longer needed, it falls back as waves do to the level of the common sea, that no wave may be greater than the undivided water. With proof of strength so great, yet in its infancy, we stand up among the nations of the world, asking no privileges, asserting no rights, but quietly assuming our place, and determined to be second to none in the race of civilization and religion. Of all nations we are the most dangerous and the least to be feared. We need not expound the perils that wait upon enemies that assault us. They are sufficiently understood ! But we are not a dangerous people because we are warlike. All the arrogant attitudes of this nation, so offensive to foreign governments, were inspired by slavery, and under the administration of its minions. Our tastes, our habits, our interests, and our principles, incline us to the arts of peace. This nation was founded by the common people for the common people. We are seeking to embody in public economy more liberty, with higher justice and virtue, than have been organized before. By the necessity of our doctrines, we are put in sympathy with the masses of men in all nations. It is not our business to subdue nations, but to augment the powers of the common people. The vulgar ambition of mere domination, as it belongs to universal human nature, may tempt us ; but it is withstood by the whole force of our principles, our habits, our precedents, and our legends. We acknowledge the obligation which our better political principles lay upon us, to set an example more temperate, humane, and just, than monarchical Governments can. We will not suffer wrong, and still less will we inflict it upon other nations. Nor are we concerned that so many, ignorant of our conflict, for the present, misconceive the reasons of our invincible military zeal. " Why contend," say they, " for a little territory that you do not need ?" Because it is ours! Because it is the interest of every citizen to save it from becoming a fortress and refuge of iniquity. This nation is our house, and our fathers' house ; and accursed be the man who will not defend it to the uttermost. More territory than we need ! England, that is not large enough to be our pocket, may think that it is more than we need, because it is more than it needs ; but we are
At Fort Sumter.	459
better judges of what we need than others are. Shall a philanthropist say to a banker, who defends himself against a robber, " Why do you need so much money? " But we will not reason with such questions. When any foreign nation willingly will divide its territory and give it cheerfully away, we will answer the question why we are fighting for territory ! At present, for I pass to the consideration of benefits that accrue to the South in distinction from the rest of the nation—the South reaps only suffering ; but good seed lies buried under the furrows of war, that peace will bring to harvest. 1. Deadly -doctrines have
been purged away in blood.	The subtle poison of seces-
sion was a perpetual threat of revolution. The sword has ended that danger. That which reason had affirmed as a philosophy, that people have settled as a fact. Theory pronounces, " There can be no permanent government where each integral particle has liberty to fly off." Who would venture upon a voyage in.a ship each plank and timber of which might withdraw at its pleasure ? But the people have reasoned by the logic of the sword and of the ballot, and they have declared that States are inseparable parts of national government. They are not sovereign. 'State rights remain ; but sovereignty is a right higher than all others ; and that has been made into a common stock for the benefit of all. All further agitation is ended. This element must be cast out of political problems. Henceforth that poison will not rankle in the blood. 2. Another thing has been learned : the rights and duties of minorities. The people of the whole nation are of more authority than the people of any section. These United States are supreme over Northern, Western, and Southern States. It ought not to have required the awful chastisement of this war to teach that a minority must submit the control of the nation's government to a majority. The army and navy have been good political schoolmasters. The lesson is learned. Not for many generations will it require further illustration. 3. No other lesson will be more fruitful of peace than the dispersion of those conceits of vanity, which, on either side, have clouded the recognition of the manly courage of all Americans. If it be a sign of manhood to be able to fight, then Americans are men. The North certainly is in no doubt whatever of the soldierly qualities of southern men. Southern soldiers have learned that all latitudes breed courage on this continent. Courage is a passport to respect. The people of all the regions of this nation are likely hereafter to cherish a generous admiration of each other's prowess. The war has bred respect, and respect will breed affection, and affection peace and unity. 4. No other event of
460	Speech of Mr. Beecher
the war can fill an intelligent Southern man, of candid nature, with more surprise than the revelation of the capacity, moral and military, of the black race. It is a revelation indeed. No people were ever less understood by those most familiar with them. They were said to be lazy, lying, impudent, and cowardly wretches, driven by the whip alone to the tasks needful to their own support and the functions of civilization. They were said to be dangerous, bloodthirsty, liable to insurrection ; but four years of tumultuous distress and war have rolled across the area , inhabited by them, and I have yet to hear of one authentic instance of the misconduct of a coloured man. They have been patient, and gentle, and docile, and full of faith and hope and piety ; and, when summoned to freedom, they have emerged with all the signs and tokens that freedom will be to them what it was to us, the swaddling-band that shall bring them to manhood. And after the Government, honouring them as men, summoned them to the field, when once they were disciplined, and had learned the arts of war, they have proved themselves to be not second to their white brethren in arms. And when the roll of men that have shed their blood is called in the other land, many and many a dusky face will rise, dark no more when the light of eternal glory shall shine upon it from the throne of God ! 5. The industry of the Southern States is regenerated, and now rests upon a basis that never fails to bring prosperity. Just now industry is collapsed; but it is not dead ; it sleepeth. It is vital yet. It will spring like mown grass from the roots that need but showers, and heat, and time, to bring them forth. Though in many districts not a generation will see wanton wastes of self-invoked war repaired, and many portions may lapse again to wilderness, yet, in our lifetime, we shall see States, as a whole, raised to a prosperity, vital, wholesome, and immovable. 6. The destruction of class interests, working with a religion which tends toward true democracy, in proportion as it is pure and free, will create a new era of prosperity for the common labouring people of the South. Upon them have come the labour, the toil, and the loss of this war. They have fought blindfolded. They have fought for a class that sought their degradation, while they were made to believe that it was for their own homes and altars. Their leaders meant a supremacy which would not long have left them political liberty, save in name. But their leaders are swept away. The sword has been hungry for the ruling classes. It has sought them out with remorseless zeal. New men are to rise up ; new ideas are to bud and blossom ; and there will be men with different ambition and altered policy. 7. Meanwhile, the South, no longer a land
At Fort Sumter.	461
of plantations, but of farms ; no longer tilled by slaves, but by freedmen, will find no hindrance to the spread of education. Schools will multiply. Books and papers will spread. Churches will bless every hamlet. There is a good day coming for the South. Through darkness, and tears, and blood, she has sought it. It has been an unconscious via dolorosa. But in the end it will be worth all that it has cost. Her institutions before were deadly. She nourished death in her bosom. The greater her secular prosperity, the more sure was her ruin. Every year of delay but made the change more terrible. Now, by an earthquake, the evil is shaken down. And her own historians, in a better day, shall write, that from the day the sword cut off the cancer, she began to find her health. What, then, shall hinder the rebuilding of the Republic ? The evil spirit is cast out ? why should not this nation cease to wander among tombs, cutting itself ? Why should it not come, clothed and in its right mind, to " sit at the feet of Jesus ? " Is it feared that the Government will oppress the conquered States ? What possible motive has the Government to narrow the base of that pyramid on which its own permanence depends? Is it feared that the rights of the States will be withheld ? The South is not more jealous of State rights than the North. State rights from the earliest colonial days have been the peculiar pride and jealousy of New England. In every stage of national formation, it was peculiarly Northern, and not Southern, statesmen that guarded State rights as we were forming the Constitution. But once united, the loyal States gave up for ever that which had been delegated to the national Government. And now, in the hour of victory, the loyal States do not mean to trench upon Southern State rights. They will not do it, nor suffer it to be done. There is not to be one rule for high latitudes and another for low. We take nothing from the Southern States that has not already been taken from the Northern. The South shall have just those rights that every eastern, every middle, every western State has —no more, no less. We are not seeking our own aggrandizement by impoverishing the South. Its prosperity is an indispensable element of our own. We have shown, by all that we have suffered in war, how great is our estimate of the Southern States of this Union ; and we will measure that estimate, now, in peace, by still. greater exertions for their rebuilding. Will reflecting men not perceive, then, the wisdom of accepting established facts, and, with alacrity of enterprise, begin to retrieve the past ? Slavery cannot come back. It is the interest, therefore, of every man to hasten its end. Do you want more
462	Speech of Mr. Beecher at Fort Sumter.
war? Are you not yet weary of contest ? Will you gather up the unexploded fragments of this prodigious magazine of all mischief, and heap them up for continued explosions ? Does not the South need peace ? And, since free labour is inevitable, will you have it in its worst forms or in its best ? Shall it be ignorant, impertinent, indolent ? or shall it be educated, self-respecting, moral, and self-supporting ? Will you have men as drudges, or will you have them as citizens ? Since they have vindicated the Government, and cemented its foundation-stones with their blood, may they not offer the tribute of their support to maintain its laws and its
policy ?	It is better for religion ; it is better for political integrity ; it is better for industry ; it is better for money—if you will have that ground motive—that you should educate the black man, and, by education, make him a citizen. They who refuse education to the black man would turn the South into a vast poorhouse, and labour into a pendulum, incessantly vibrating between poverty and indolence. From this pulpit of broken stone we speak forth our earnest greeting to all our land. We offer,to the President of these United States our solemn congratulations that God has sustained his life and health under the unparalleled burdens and sufferings of four bloody years, and permitted him to behold this auspicious consummation of that national unity for which he has waited with so much patience and fortitude, and for which he has laboured with such disinterested wisdom. To the members of the Government associated with him in the adminstra-tion of perilous affairs in critical times ; to the senators and representatives of the United States, who have eagerly fashioned the instruments by which the popular will might express and enforce itself, we tender our grateful thanks. To the officers and men of the army and navy, who have so faithfully, skilfully, and gloriously upheld their country's authority, by suffering, labour, and sublime courage, we offer a heart-tribute beyond the compass of words. Upon those true and faithful citizens, men and women, who have borne up with unflinching hope in the darkest hour, and covered the land with their labour of love and charity, we invoke the divinest blessing of Him whom they have so truly imitated. But chiefly to Thee, God of our fathers ! we render thanksgiving and praise for that wondrous Providence that has brought forth from such a harvest of war the seed of so much liberty and peace ! We invoke peace upon the North. Peace be to the West. Peace be upon the South. In the name of God we lift up our banner, and dedicate it to peace, union, and liberty, now and for evermore. Amen.
MR. RALPH WALDO EMERSON'S ORATION
ON THE DEATH OF MR. LINCOLN.
[The following address was delivered by Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the orator, poet, and essayist, at Concord, Massachusetts, on occasion of the funeral services in honour of Mr. Lincoln.]
WE meet under the gloom of a calamity which darkens down over the minds of good men in all civilized society, as the fearful tidings travel over sea, over land, from country to country, like the shadow of an uncalculated eclipse over the planet. Old as history is, and manifold as are its tragedies, I doubt if any death has caused so much pain to mankind as this has caused, or will cause, on its announcement; and this not so much because nations are by modern arts brought so closely together, as because of the mysterious hopes and fears which, in the present day, are connected with the name and institutions of America. In this country, on Saturday, every one was struck dumb, and saw, at first, only deep below deep, as he meditated on the ghastly blow. And, perhaps, at this hour, when the coffin which contains the dust of the President sets forward on its long march through mourning States, on its way to his home in Illinois, we might well be silent, and suffer the awful voices of the time to thunder to us. Yes, but that first despair was brief ; the man was not so to be mourned. He was the most active and hopeful of men ; and his work had not perished ; but acclamations of praise for the task he had accomplished burst out into a song of triumph, which even tears for his death cannot keep down. The President stood before us a man of the people. He was thoroughly American, had never crossed the sea, had never been spoiled by English insularity or French dissipation ; a quiet, native, aboriginal man, as an acorn from the oak ; no aping of foreigners, no frivolous accomplishments ; Kentuckian born, working on a farm, a flatboatman, a captain in the Blackhawk war, a country lawyer, a representative in the rural legislature of Illinois—on such modest foundations the broad structure of his fame was laid. How slowly, and yet by happily prepared steps, he came to his place ! All of us remember—it is only a history of five or six years—the surprise and disappointment of the country at his first nomination
464	Oration of Mr. Emerson
at Chicago. Mr. Seward, then in the culmination of his good fame, was the favourite of the Eastern States. And when the new and comparatively unknown name of Lincoln was announced (notwithstanding the report of the acclamations of that convention) we heard the result coldly and sadly. It seemed too rash, on a purely local reputation, to build so grave a trust, in such anxious times ; and men naturally talked of the chances in politics as incalculable. But it turned out not to be chance. The profound good opinion which the people of Illinois and of the West had conceived of him, and which they had imparted to their colleagues, that they also might justify themselves to their constituents at home, was not rash, though they did not begin to know the richness of his worth. A plain man of the people, an extraordinary fortune attended him. Lord Bacon says, " Manifest virtues procure reputation ; occult ones, fortune." He offered no shining qualities at the first encounter ; he did not offend by superiority. He had a face and manner which disarmed suspicion, which inspired confidence, which confirmed goodwill. He was a man without vices. He had a strong sense of duty which it was very easy for him to obey. Then he had what farmers call a long head ; was excellent in working out the sum for himself, in arguing his case and convincing you fairly and firmly. Then it turned out that he was a great worker, and, prodigious faculty of performance, worked easily. A good worker is so rare ; everybody has some one disabling quality. But this man was found to the very core, cheerful, persistent, all right for labour, and liked nothing so well. Then he had a vast good nature, which made him tolerant and accessible to all ; fair-minded, leaning to the claim of the petitioner, affable, and not sensible to the affliction which the innumerable visits paid to him, when President, would have brought to any one else. And how this good nature became a noble humanity in many a tragic case which the events of the war brought to him everyone will remember, and with what increasing tenderness he dealt when a whole race was on his compassion. The poor negro said of him, on an impressive occasion, " Massa Linkum am eberywhere." Then his broad good humour, running easily into jocular talk, in which he delighted and in which he excelled, was a rich gift to this wise man. It enabled him to keep his secret, to meet every kind of man and every rank in society, to take off the edge of the severest decisions, to mask his own purpose and sound his companion, and to catch with true instinct the temper of each company he addressed. And, more than all, it is to a man of severe labour, in anxious and exhausting crises, the natural restorative, good as sleep, and is the protection of the overdriven brain against rancour and insanity. He is the author
On the Death of Mr. Lincoln.	465
of a multitude of good sayings, so disguised as pleasantries that it is certain that they had no reputation at first but as jests ; and only later, by the acceptance and adoption they find in the mouths of millions, turn out to be the wisdom of the hour. I am sure if this man had ruled in a period of less facility of printing, he would have become mythological in a few years, like sop or Pilpay, or one of the Seven Wise Masters, by his fables and proverbs. But the weight and penetration of many passages in his letters, messages, and speeches, hidden now by the very closeness of their application to the moment, are destined hereafter to wide fame. What pregnant definitions ; what unerring common sense ; what foresight ; and on great occasions, what lofty and more than natural, what humane tone ! His occupying the chair of State was a triumph of the good sense of mankind and of the public confidence. This middle-class country has got a middle-class President at last. Yes, in manners, sympathies, but not in powers for his powers were superior. His mind mastered the problem of the day ; and, as the problem grew, so did his comprehension of
it.	Rarely was man so fitted to the event. In the midst of fears
and jealousies, in the Babel of counsels and parties, this man wrought incessantly with all his might and all his honesty, labouring to find what the people wanted, and how to obtain that. It cannot be said there is any exaggeration of his worth. If ever a man was fairly tested he was. There was no lack of resistance, nor of slander, nor of ridicule. The times have allowed no State secrets ; the nation has been in such a ferment, such multitudes had to be trusted, that no secret could be kept. Every door was ajar, and we know all that befell. Then what an occasion was the whirlwind of the war ! Here was place for no holiday magistrate, no fair-weather sailor ; the new pilot was hurried to the helm in a tornado. In four years—the four years of battle-days—his endurance, his fertility of resources his magnanimity, were sorely tried and never found wanting. There, by his courage, his justice, his even temper, his fertile counsel, his humanity, he stood, an heroic figure in the centre of an heroic epoch. He is the true history of the American' people in his time. Step by step lie walked before them ; slow with their slowness, quickening his march by theirs ; the true representative of this continent; an entirely public man ; father of his country, the pulse of twenty millions throbbing in his heart, the thought of their minds articulated by his tongue. Adam Smith remarks that the axe which in Houbraken's portraits of British kings and worthies is engraved under those who have suffered at the block adds a certain lofty charm to the picture. And who does not see, even in this tragedy so recent, how fast
I1 11
466	Oration on the Death of Mr. Lincoln.
the terror and ruin of the massacre are already burning into glory around the victim ? Far happier this fate than to have lived to be wished away ; to have watched the decay of his own faculties ; to have seen—perhaps, even he—the proverbial ingratitude of statesmen ; to have seen mean men preferred. Had he not lived long enough to keep the greatest promise that ever man made to his fellow men—the practical abolition of slavery ? He had seen Tennessee, MisSouri, and Maryland emancipate their slaves. He had seen Savannah, Charleston, and Richmond surrendered; had seen the main army of the rebellion lay down its arms. He had conquered the public opinion of Canada, England, and France. Only Washington can compare with him in fortune. And what if it should turn out, in the unfolding of the web, that he had reached the term ; that this heroic deliverer could no longer serve us ; that the rebellion had touched its natural conclusion, and what remained to be done required new and uncommitted hands—a new spirit born out of the ashes of the war; and that Heaven, wishing to show the world a completed benefactor, shall make him serve his country even more by his death than his life. Nations, like kings, are not good by facility and complaisance. " The kindness of kings consists in justice and strength." Easy good nature has been the dangerous foible of the Republic, and it was necessary that its enemies should outrage it, and drive us to unwonted firmness, to secure the salvation of this country in the next ages.
SPEECH OF M. TRIERS
ON THE FRENCH BUDGET.
[The following is a complete translation of 11 niers' speech, delivered in the Legislative Assembly on the 2nd of June, during the adjourned discussion on the French Budget.]
GENTLEMEN,—When I last year had the honour of addressing you for the first time on the state of our finances, I endeavoured to give a retrospective view of them for the last 20 years, and to show from what causes our expenditure had risen in the last few years from about 1,500 millions to nearly 2,300 millions. To me the causes are evident enough ; and, had there been any doubt, the propositions now made to us would suffice to remove
it.	Within the last fortnight 360 millions have been demanded
for France in general, and 250 for Paris ; in all, 610 millions. It is said that a law is now under consideration in the Council of State demanding 100 or 200 millions more, making 700 or 800 millions in the space of a few weeks. I need not dwell on the causes of the increase of our Budgets ; I will only make a concise statement concerning them. I will afterwards show the financial situation which those causes have produced ; in short, I will attempt to present a balance-sheet of our finances. I believe you will agree with me in thinking that the causes are these :—Since our new institutions have diminished the share which our nation took in managing its own affairs, it was feared that the activity of mind with which I am reproached might be dangerous, unless means should be found to occupy the attention of the country. These means, sometimes dangerous, always odious, have been wars abroad, and enormous expenditure and great speculations at home. After great wars came small ones—small, if we consider the number of men engaged, but large if we consider their distance and the serious complications they may cause. The war in Mexico has already cost us more than the Italian war, to say nothing of the complications it may entail. The war expenditure has of course been met by loans, and time public debt has consequently been considerably increased. Next come our great public works, an excellent employment fur the
li H 2
468	Speech of 111. Thiers
country savings in time of peace, as every sensible man will acknowledge ; but we ought to proceed prudently. It is a mistake to suppose, as some do, that there need be no limit to the application of our savings to public works ; agriculture and manufactures ought to have their share, and if only a portion should be employed by the State in improving roads, canals, and other means of communication, still less should be devoted to the mere embellishment of towns. It is certainly necessary to widen the streets and improve the salubrity of cities, but there is no necessity for such vast changes as have been operated in Paris, where, as I think, all reasonable limits have been exceeded. The contagion of example is to be feared. The proverb says that lie who commits one folly is wise. If Paris only were to be rebuilt, I should not have much to say against it, but you know what La Fontaine wittily says :—
" Tout bourgeois veut batir comme le grand seigneur,
Tout petit prince a des ambassadeurs,
Tout marquis vent avoir des pages."
The glory of the Prefect of the Seine has troubled the repose of all the prefects. The Prefect of the Seine has rebuilt the Tuileries, and the Prefect of the Bouches-du-Rhone wants to have his Tuileries also. Last year the Minister of State answered me that only a trifling expenditure was intended, not more than 6 millions ; but it appears from the debates of the Council-General that the expense will be 12 or 14 millions, and some persons say as much as 20 millions. I know that the Prefect of the Bouches-du-RhOne is a senator ; but if it takes 12 millions to build him a residence, that is a large sum. All the other prefects will be eager to follow his example, as the Prefect of Lisle has already. The sub-prefects, also, will want new residences and new furniture. Where would all this lead to ? The Minister of Public Works, full of glory, must have more consideration for the cares of the Minister of Finance. But here we have a new Minister of Public Works with a new glory to make, and demands for millions multiply. The Minister of Finance defends himself as best he can, but appears to be conquered; he might resist by resigning, certainly ; but that is a means borrowed from past days. A compromise is at last effected. To spare the Treasury, 100 millions are to be obtained by selling part of the State forests. For this, however, your consent is necessary ; but the matter is settled in principle, and the public domain will supply the funds which the Treasury refuses. By whom is this torrent of expenditure to be arrested ? By yourselves, gentlemen ; your wisdom, patriotism, and courage can
On the French Budget.	469
alone achieve the task. Your responsibility is great, especially in financial matters ; in politics, your powers may be contested to a certain extent ; but in questions of finance they are undisputed. In finances, you, therefore, are responsible for everything. It is time to halt in this course of expenditure ; and not to imitate those sinners who are always talking of reforming and after all die in final impenitence. We are often told that financial science is obscure ; but the assertion is untrue. Sciences are never obscure, except through the dulness of those who expound them, or the charlatanism of those who astume a false air of profundity. I will take my examples from private life. Let us suppose two fathers, one methodical, strict, and somewhat morose ; the other easy and good-natured. The former will regulate his expenditure according to his income, and fix limits which he will not pass ; during the year this may cause some unpleasantness to himself and his family, but when settling day comes he has neither anxiety nor embarrassment. The latter takes no such precautions ; he passes quietly through the year, restricting neither his own expenditure nor that of his family ; but when he settles his accounts he finds that he has exceeded his income, and is obliged to encroach on his capital to pay his debts ; and thus goes on from year to year, with ever-increasing embarrassment till ruin stares him in the face. The stern father, meanwhile, has preserved or even increased his estate, and taught his children that which will be useful to them through life. As in private life, so it is in public affairs. Statesmen have the same passions as other men, and it is only by resisting these passions that they can save the State. I will now apply these reflections to our finances. What is the principle which governs their administration? You have five Budgets, and I will show the consequences of this multiplicity. First, there is the ordinary one, which ranges from 1,370 to 1,780 millions ; this year it is 1,700 millions. Then there is a special Budget for the departments and communes, varying from 230 to 240 millions. Next comes the extraordinary Budget, from 120 to 140
millions. But that is not all.	As the Budget is voted a
year beforehand, all expenses have not been foreseen, and at the end of the year a rectificative Budget of 100 millions is required : so that the total Budget exceeds 2,200 millions. Then, when the final settlement comes, it is found that certain expenses have exceeded the credits voted, while other credits have not been employed ; the latter are made set-offs against the former, but there is always a balance required of from 20 to 80 millions, which has to be voted by special laws. The Budget is thus raised to 2,200 millions or more ; in 1863 it
470	Speech of M. Thiers
was 2,292 millions. Such is the figure we reach with our five Budgets ; and then, like the father above-mentioned, we have to strike the final balance. This is done by the Court of Accounts, and when the result is submitted to the Chamber, if there be an excess of expenditure, the floating debt is increased by so much. Last year you made a loan of 360 millions, and it will be exhausted next year. This is how the Budget has risen to between 2,200 and 2,300 millions. Last year M. de Vuitry, President of the Council of State, told me that it would be a childish expedient to divide tilt Budgets for the purpose of deceiving the Chamber as to their total amount, seeing that the general situation might be ascertained by adding together a few figures. I replied that it took me two months to make those additions, and, if I mistake not, the reporter has found three months to be necessary this year, though he had numerous documents at his disposal, which those who are not members of the committee have never seen. Your reporter, indeed, has had confidential communications from the Ministry of Finance, which inform him of things he cannot repeat to us. We have not the information we ought to have, and yet the reporter required three months to work the little sum in addition, to which the President of the Council of State alluded. It has been said—" Calumniate ! Calumniate! some of your calumnies are sure to remain." We may say—" Dissimulate ! Dissimulate ! something is sure to remain ! " We will now see whether the plan of dividing the Budget is not a means of creating illusions as to the true amount of the expenditure. The Hon. M. Gouin yesterday said that the Budget was really 1,571 millions. When the law of accounts comes before us that Budget will be 2,300 millions. Were there any good reason for thus dividing the Budget I would not object to it. Why should there be one Budget for the State and another for the departments and communes, when all the expenditure is paid from the same Treasury and made under the same responsibility? Separate Budgets may be reasonable enough in Austria, which contains distinct kingdoms and provinces, but there is nothing to justify them in France. Then, there is another illusion, that of the ordinary and extraordinary Budgets. When thousands of millions were concerned, as in the first establishment of railways, there was some reason for an extraordinary Budget ; but when the expenditure is only for ameliorations which may be effected gradually it can only tend to dissimulate real expenses. The extraordinary Budget contains the expenditure for repairs, which must always be a permanent item ; why should it, then, not be put in the ordinary Budget ? I also see in it sums of 5 and 6 millions for the
On the French Budget.	471
Ministry of War, which ought certainly to be considered ordinary expenditure. In the extraordinary Budget of the Marine I see a sum of 121- millions for the arsenals, which ought certainly to be considered an ordinary item. But we are told that it was required for the transformation of our navy into ironclads. I have seen three of these transformations in the course of forty years, and therefore see no reason for calling it an extraordinary expenditure. In the Ministry of Public Works I find 5 millions for improving the high roads, but all such outlay has hitherto been considered ordinary expenditure. Then comes the large sum of 33 millions for payments to railways as guarantee of interest, but some parts of these payments will last eighty years, other parts twenty and forty years, and therefore ought to be in the ordinary Budget. The only use of the extraordinary Budget seems to be to make the ordinary Budget appear less, and give it a more favourable appearance when compared with the ordinary revenue. M. Gouin says that our ordinary Budget being 1,900 millions and our revenue of the same amount, there is an equilibrium. But even when viewed in that light there is still a deficit of 30 millions. The division into ordinary and extraordinary Budgets serves 'to put the real receipts in comparison with what are called ordinary expenses. As to the other expenses, they are met by instalments or other means. The rectificative Budget also serves to diminish the apparent amount of the ordinary Budget. The system of rectificative Budgets is justified by alleging the impossibility of providing for all necessary expenditure a year in advance. I admit the necessity of supplementary credits ; but even to justify them the expenditure to which they correspond ought to be really expenses in some degree expected. An eminent member of tha Old Chamber, M. Le Pelletier d'Aulnay, was a severe critic of supplementary credits. But I repeat that the grand principle of such credits is the unforeseen. We have the rectificative Budget of 1S65. Well, gentlemen, read it ; and see if it is composed of expenses impossible to foresee. Out of 80 millions there are 60 for the occupation of Rome, for Cochin-China, and for Mexico. Can it be said that last year nobody foresaw that we should have to pay all this in the present year ? And, doubtless, the Minister of Finance last year never anticipated that he should have to remove the Post-office to the Rue de Rivoli, for which he is now obliged to ask six millions. Was I not, therefore, right in calling the rectifi-cative Budget an extraordinary Budget deferred ? The expenses of this Budget are met by augmentations of receipts—sometimes hut not always realized ; by the Mexican securities, the great resource of the moment; and, lastly, by annulments. Then
472	Speech of iii. Thiers
comes the liquidation, when fresh expenses are discovered, ordinarily discharged by annulments, but these last are found to be exhausted. That is the way in which a Budget of 1X,00 millions is swelled to one of 2,200 or 2,300 millions. The form in which a Budget is presented is of great importance ; the present system enables people to say that we are nearly in equilibrium when we are very far removed from it. Let us take as an example the last three years. The Budget of 1862, voted in 1861, was composed of 1,777 millions for State expenses, and 125 millions for communal and departmental outlay-1,902 millions in all for the ordinary Budget ; the extraordinary was 67 millions—in all 1,970 millions. In 1862 there came the rectificative Budget, which added 193 millions, accounted for by the great cost of the Mexican expedition, and of the check at Puebla, so gloriously repaired. The liquidation arrived in 1863 ; and it was found necessary to add from 49 to 50 millions, carrying the whole expenditure to 2,212 millions. The Budget of 1863, voted in 1862, was composed of 1,721 millions for State expenses, and 217 millions for communal and departmental, besides 121 millions for the extraordinary Budget—total, 2,061 millions ; and the rectificative Budget and liquidation raised that amount to 2,292 millions—the highest figure we have yet known. The Budget of 1864 showed '2,105 millions as ordinary, and 135 as rectificative — total, 2,240 millions, swelled by the liquidation to 2,260 or 2,270 millions. The Budget for 1865 was last year voted at a figure of 2,100 millions; the rectificative Budget, which we are now discussing, has added 88 millions, thus raising the figure to 2,188 millions, and leading to the belief that the total will exceed 2,200 millions. The Budget of 1865 will be smaller than the preceding, for the reason that the Mexican expenses have diminished. I am aware that the Minister of Finance would gladly see a reduction in our expenditure, but the Minister of Public Works is fond of renown, and it is always difficult to find the Minister who pays and the one who spends in perfect accord. In the present case they seem to have arranged matters at the expense of a third party, purely passive—I mean the sinking fund. Allow me to say a few words on that topic. When the State borrows 100 millions there is an annual expense of five millions incurred to pay the interest, and one million more is added to redeem the whole debt. At this rate such a debt could only be extinguished in 100 years, and that would be bankruptcy. When I was studying finance under the auspices of that great financier, Baron Louis, I came to the conclusion that to defer for a period beyond thirty years the extinction of a debt was tantamount to
On, the French Budget.	473
deferring it indefinitely. But how can a debt be extinguished in a little over thirty years? By leaving in the possession of the sinking fund the million of redeemed Rentes : the next year it can redeem 1,050,000f. Rentes, and thus by force of compound interest the object may be attained in somewhat over thirty years. Our laws have made the extinction of the public debt by a sinking fund obligatory. The dotation for that purpose has become a sacred thing ; but not so the redeemed Rentes—they can be annulled. And as the spirit of the law implies redemption when the prices are high, it is scarcely just to the holder of Rentes purchased, perhaps, at 84, to reimburse him at
67.	But what is the Budget that has been made by annulling
the 65 millions of redeemed Rentes ? The advantage of the measure has not been complete ; for out of that sum it was necessary to allot six or seven millions to the sinking fund and seven to the ordinary Budget, so that 50 millions only remained to establish the Budget of 1,700 millions ; then there were 236 for departmental expenses—in all, 1,936 millions for the ordinary Budget. Then comes the extraordinary one. The Minister of Public Works is not content with the 119 millions which he got last year, but asks for 144, and the Committee makes it 152 ; but 1,936 millions for the ordinary Budget and 152 for the extraordinary make 2,086. Such is the Budget of 1866, without counting the rectificative Budget, which will infallibly come. Now, I will ask you, have you 2,086 millions of receipt in prospect? I maintain that you have not ; that there is a deficit of at least 200 millions. We are told, indeed, that the sum total of expenses can be reduced ; I only hope it may. I cannot, however, agree with M. Gamier Pages as to the facile suppression of a variety of taxes. There appear to me but four chapters in which savings can be realized,—M exico, if you evacuate it ; public works, if you restrict them within bounds ; the army, if it really can be reduced ; and the sinking fund, if the principle of it, as some say, is really an effete and antiquated theory. The evacuation of Mexico will perhaps wound the susceptibilities of the Government. But let me remind the Chamber of the admirable language held by M. de Caulaincourt, Duke of Vicence, to Napoleon I., at Dresden, in 1813. " Sire," said he, " conclude this peace ; your amour propre may suffer, but not your glory ; for your glory is that of France, and it is in no way tarnished by the proposals that have been made to you." I wish, then, to hold the same language to you. Let us imitate Spain in her conduct regarding San-Domingo, since her amour propre did not hinder her from desisting from a fault which would cost her blood and treasure without any chance
474	Speech of M. Thiers
of success. By evacuating Mexico you may save about 50 millions per annum. Again, by a judicious restriction of public works you may realize savings to an extent of 20, 30, and in time of 50 millions annually. But with respect to economizing in the army and in the sinking fund I feel considerable doubts. Can there be any notable reduction of our army expenditure? I think not. In 1830 my friends on the left of the Chamber demanded such a reduction, but without success, as the army was not diminished, but increased from 280,000 to 350,000 men. Personally, I share the opinion of Marshal Soult, who thought an effective force of from 360,000 to 380,000 men absolutely necessary. The figure was, indeed, reduced for a moment to 320,000, and what happened in 1840 ? That it was suddenly raised to 500,000 men, and at an enormous cost. The year 1848 arrived, and the effective was carried to 420,000, and continued so for two years. I come now to the Empire. Believe me, I am far from wishing to put the august Prince who now occupies the throne in contradiction with himself, but desire merely to cite facts. Prince Louis Napoleon had often in his works applauded the Prussian system, and affirmed that an army of 200,000 men with a strong reserve was quite sufficient for France. Since he has become Emperor we are every day told that France cannot do with less than 400,000 soldiers. Thus it is that every one talks of reductions in the army before attaining to power, but power once gained nobody carries them out. Gentlemen, I do not hold this language for the sake of making myself popular with the French people. The real fact is that promises are often made of which circumstances prevent the fulfilment. For the different foreign services you will always have 100,000 men out of the country, and if you then take the figure of the non-effectives at 50,000, out of the 400,000 you will have 250,000 for our immense territory at home. What is the state of neigbouring countries ? In Prussia'the Crown accepts a fearful conflict with the Parliament in order to maintain an effective of 200,000 men ; Austria has 400,000 ; Russia from 600,000 to 700,000. Those only who have not studied the subject are capable of calling for reduction. A soldier under arms costs about 430f. a year ; suppress 50,000 men, and what will be the economy realized ? About 21 millions. Such an economy is certainly not to be condemned ; but nothing on a large scale can be realized without inducing, by negotiation, all the great Powers to modify their military systems. Nor do I think there is any chance of success as long as Austria continues restless about Venetia, as long as Prussia aims at dominating all the small German States, and as long as Russia shall choose to retain Poland and foster her designs upon the East. I conclude, then, that any
On the French Budget.	475
serious reduction of the army is impossible. I must now say a few words on the sinking fund. There is a certain school which affirms that public debts are not disquieting, but even advantageous, and that England is happy in having so large a debt, as so many creditors are interested in her prosperity. Such may be the reasoning of merchants at Rotterdam or Marseilles at the sight of their quays covered with merchandize, " Oh, what splendid commerce ! " they might exclaim ; but if the bales contained goods which they could not pay for they would change their note. A good financial market ought to be filled with goods representing the debts of other people. It is good here to cite the example of the United States. They redeemed the whole of their debt ; and well it was for them, for they were thus enabled to find 20,000 million francs to pay for the re-establishment of the American Confederation. I do not, however, wish you to redeem all your debt, but to diminish it. Public debts are like the lakes at the foot of great mountains ; nature does not empty them ; but after the snows and rains of winter and spring, she diminishes gradually the mass of water by the dry heats of summer. Debts must be paid off in peace, so that we may be able to borrow when war comes. The Government ought to buy up a part of the debt, were it only to afford the State creditors a certainty of finding a market for their securities, which they cannot unless the State maintains its credit. The English Government, after long neglecting the sinking fund, has now decided to buy up every year 75 millions (of francs) of the public debt, but yet Mr. Gladstone tells the Parliament that he does not think that sum sufficient, and apologized for not having done more. But you, who have done nothing in that way for ten years, now tell us that you have fulfilled your duties. When we are told that the sinking fund, after being entered as expenditure, is then entered as receipts, the result is the same as if a private individual, after laying aside 1,000f. to pay his creditors, should spend them before the year was out. I have now gone through the several means of economy proposed; but, with regard to the sinking fund, I must say that not to have effected any reduction of the debt for ten years, and to continue fifteen years longer in the same course as proposed, is, if I may be allowed the expression, walking blindfold 'on to bankruptcy. I know you do not intend to do so ; but it would be prudent not to incur the risk. As to any great economy in the army, I do not see how it is to be accomplished. In fact, the only means of realizing any economy are, in my opinion, the evacuation of Mexico and the restriction of public works. Now, to draw out the balance, have you the 2,086 millions required for your three budgets ? If you have, go on ; if not, begin at once to
477 Speech of Al. Thiers on the French Budget.
economize. All your resources amount to only 1,904 millions, so that you still want 182 millions. Against that sum you set 127 millions from the sinking fund, 18 millions of supposed surplus on the Budget of 1865, in which the committee has no faith ; with 27,400,000f. from the Mexican indemnity, 7 or 8 millions from Cochin-China, and other receipts of small amount. This is all you have towards the 182 millions. But shall you get the 27,400,000f. from Mexico ? You inserted in the Budget of 1864 54 millions of Mexican securities, which were calculated at 63, but are now worth only 44. Will you sell them at that price ? This resource having failed in the Budget of 1864, how can you expect to be paid the 27 millions of 1865 ? The Minister of Finance has also taken 22 millions from the Army Dotation Fund, but that cannot be regarded as receipts. In fine, you have only 1,904 millions of receipts, and your expenditure amounts habitually to between 2,200 and 2,300 millions, and this deficit you only cover by means of the sinking fund and chimerical receipts. It will never do for the State thus to represent the finances to be flourishing when they are not, like the directors of certain joint-stock companies, who distribute dividends which the state of their affairs does not justify. Be sure of one thing; when you engage in unlimited expenditure, apparently unaware of the course you are taking, it is our duty to tell you that you are on the road to ruin. You will be obliged either to fail in the engagements you have contracted in the name of France, or to have recourse to excessive taxation. I ask your pardon for speaking so warmly, but it is impossible to treat a graver or more interesting subject. I repeat that you are running towards the double rock, either of failing in your engagements, or of rendering inevitable the imposition of onerous taxes which may give rise to deplorable divisions. I adjure you to reflect most seriously on this state of affairs. You are on the brink of a financial gulf if you persist in the present course. I ask pardon for distressing you, but it is my duty to tell you the truth, and I tell it, whatever the result may be.
SPEECH OF WILLIAM H. SEWARD
AT AUBURN.
[The following address was delivered by Mr. Secretary Seward, on the 20th of October, to his friends and neighbours at Auburn, in return for the public congratulations offered him on his escape from the assassination intended by the cowardly accomplice of Wilkes Booth.] Dr. Hawley having addressed Mr. Seward in behalf of the citizens of Auburn, the Secretary, in reply, said—
MY good Friends :—A meeting with you here from time to time, as opportunity serves and duty permits, is not merely a privilege, but even a blessing, Your greeting on this occasion comes in the season when fruits are clustered around us, although the leaves above our heads and the grass beneath our feet are yet fresh and green. The assemblage which has gathered to express to me its good wishes harmonizes with the season and the scene. However youthful a townsman of Auburn is, he is nevertheless habitually thoughtful ; however old, he is yet always cheerful and hopeful. This particular greeting calls up not mere fancies, but memories —some new and others old ; some pleasing, others mournful ; some private, others public ; with all of which, however, you all are intimately and generously associated ; and those memories have become so indelibly impressed upon me that they seem to me to constitute a part of my very being. We have met occasionally (luring the past five years, but always under circumstances that were painful, and which excited deep solicitude. You freely gave me your sympathies then, even when my visits were hurried ; when my appeals to you, and through you to more distant fellow citizens, to make new efforts and sacrifices for our suffering country, must have seemed querulous and exacting ; but when either public or private anxieties denied me the privilege of even temporary rest and calmness. Who that laboured under the weight of a disproportionate responsibility could have rested or been at ease, when the land which he ought to love with more than earthly affection was threatened every day with a violent dissolution of its political institutions, to be too quickly followed by domestic anarchy, and afterwards by imperial, and possibly foreign despotism ! Would to God that the patriots of Mexico had never, in the midst of her civil commotions, taken to them-
478	Speech of Mr. Seward
selves the comfort of indifference and repose ! But all is now changed. The civil war is ended. Death has removed his victims ; Liberty has crowned her heroes, and Humanity has canonized her martyrs ; the sick and the stricken are cured ; the surviving combatants are fraternizing ; and the country—the object of our just pride and lawful affection—once more stands collected and composed, firmer, stronger, and more majestic than ever before, without one cause of dangerous discontent at home, and without an enemy in the world. Why should we not felicitate each other on this change, and upon the new prospects which open before us? These prospects, however, cover a broad field. I could not rightly tax your kindness so much as to survey the whole of it ; and even if I were willing, you would kindly remember that at the present moment my power of speech is abridged. Only magnanimous themes are worthy of your intellectual understanding, or compatible with the feelings which have moved this interview. We have lost the great and good Abraham Lincoln. He had reached a stage of moral consideration when his name alone, if encircled with a martyr's wreath, would be more useful to humanity than his personal efforts could be beneficial to any one country as her chosen chief magistrate. He is now associated with Washington. The two American chiefs, though they are dead, still live, and they are leading the entire human race in a more spirited progress towards fields of broader liberty and higher civilization. In the place of Abraham Lincoln we have a new President. To most of you he is personally unknown. The people around me, with their customary thoughtfulness, are inquiring of those who are nearer to him than themselves what manner of man Andrew Johnson is, and what manner of President he may be expected to be. When, in 1861, treason, laying aside for the moment the already obnoxious mask of slavery, and investing itself with the always attractive and honoured robes of democratic freedom, flashed its lurid light through .the Senate chamber, and announced, as already completed, a dissolution of the Union, then a leader, who should be at first a senatorial and afterwards a popular leader, was required to awaken sleeping loyalty and patriotism throughout the land, to rouse its unconscious hosts, and to inspire them with the resolution needed to rescue the Constitution, suppress the rebellion, and preserve the integrity of the Republic. To me reason seemed to suggest, in this case, as a necessity resulting from circumstances, that that leader, while he should be a capable, inflexible, and devoted patriot, should also be a citizen of a hesitating Border State—a slaveholder in practice, though not in principle, and yet in principle and association a democrat. Andrew John-
At Auburn.	479
son, of TennesSee, completely filled these complex conditions, and with the consent of the whole American people he assumed the great responsibility. The insurrection soon became flagitious, insolent, defiant, and announced, to the astonishment of mankind, that the pretended free empire which it was building by usurpa- • tion within forbidden borders was founded upon the corner-stone of slavery ! The newly-inaugurated President, with decision not unaccompanied by characteristic prudence, announced that thenceforth slavery should be deemed and treated as a public enemy. Andrew Johnson accepted the new condition of his popular leadership which this announcement created, and thenceforward he openly, freely, and honestly declared, not only that the erection of the new edifice should be prevented, but the cornerstone of slavery itself, the rock of all our past as well as of all our then future dangers, should be uplifted and removed, and cast out from the Republic. Whatever may have been thought by you, or by me, or by others, at that time, it is now apparent that the attempted revolution culminated when the national banner was for the first time successfully replanted by our gallant army on the banks of the Cumberland, and when Tennessee, first among the Border States which had been reluctantly carried into rebellion, offered once more a foothold and a resting-place to the authorities of the Union. From that time, while it was yet necessary to prosecute the war with such energies as human nature had never before exerted, it was at the same time equally needful, with wisdom which had never been surpassed, to prosecute the beneficent work of restoring the Union, and harmonizing the great political family which, although it had been temporarily distracted, was destined, nevertheless, to live and grow for ever under that majestic protection. The abolition of slavery was thenceforth equally an element of persistent war and of returning peace. He neither reads history with care nor studies the ways of Providence with reverence, who does not see that, for the prosecution of these double, diverse, and yet equally important purposes of war and peace, Andrew Johnson was fitly appointed to be a Provisional Governor in Tennessee—the first of a series of Provisional Governors afterwards to be assigned to the insurrectionary States—and was subsequently elected Vice-President, and in the end constitutionally inaugurated President of the United States. We are continually hearing debates concerning the origin and authority of the plan of restoration. New converts, North and South, call it the President's plan. All speak of it as if it were a new and recent development. On the contrary, we now see that it is not specially Andrew Johnson's plan, nor even a new plan in any respect. It is the plan which abruptly yet
480	Speech of Mr. Seward
distinctly offered itself to the last Administration, at the moment I have before recalled, when the work of restoration was to begin ; at the moment when, although by the world unperceived, it did begin, and it is the only plan which thus seasonably presented itself, and therefore is the only possible plan which then or ever afterward could be adopted. This plan, although occasionally requiring variation of details, nevertheless admits of no substantial change or modification. It could neither be enlarged nor contracted. State conventions in loyal States, however favourable, in disloyal States, however hostile, could not lawfully or effectually disallow it; and even the people themselves, when amending the Constitution of the United States, are only giving to that plan its just and needful sovereign sanction. In the mean time, the executive and legislative authorities of Congress can do no more than discharge their proper functions of protecting the recently insurgent States from anarchy during the intervening period while the plan is being carried into execution. It is essential to this plan that the insurrectionary States shall, by themselves and for themselves, accept and adopt this plan, and thereby submit themselves to and recognize the national authority. This is what I meant when I said to Mr. Adams, in a passage which you may possibly recall, that in the sense in which the word subjugation was then used by the enemies of the United States, at home and abroad, it was not the expectation or purpose of this Government that the Southern States should be subjugated ; but that I thought that those States would be brought, by the judiciously mingled exercise of pressure and persuasion, to a condition in which they would voluntarily return to their allegiance. This was the explanation which Mr. Adams gave to Lord Palmerston, the prime minister of England, when that great, and, as I trust, not unfriendly statesman, said that he did not believe that the Federal Union could be restored, because he knew that while any man could lead a horse to the water, no man could make him drink. The plan, therefore, recognizes not the destruction, nor even the subversion of States, but their actual existence ; and it reasons from facts as they are, not from assumed or possible changes to be effected by continual war—much less does it reason from mere chimeras. This absolute existence of the States which constitute the Republic is the most palpable of all the facts with which the American statesman has to deal. If many have stumbled over it into treason and rebellion, the fact, for all legitimate deductions and purposes, nevertheless remains. In a practical sense, at least, the States were before the American Union was. Even while they were colonies of the British crown
At Auburn.	481
they still were embryo States—several, free, self-existing and indestructible. Our Federal Republic exists, and henceforth and for ever must exist, through, not the creation but the combination of these several free, self-existing, stubborn States. These States are not stakes driven into the ground by an imperial hand, nor are they posts hauled together, squared and hewed, and so erected loosely upon it ; but they are living, growing, majestic trees, whose roots are widely spread and interlaced within the soil, and whose shade covers the earth. If at any time any of these trees shall be blown down or upturned by violence, it must be lifted up again in its proper place, and sustained by kindly hands until it has renewed its natural stability and erectness ! If at any time the American Union is fractured through a lesion of one of its limbs, that limb must he restored to soundness before due constitutional health and vigour can be brought back to the whole system. If one of these limbs offend, we have indeed the power—and I will not cavil about the right—to cut it off and cast it away from us ; but when we should have done that, we should have done just what other nations less wise than ourselves have done, that have submitted unnecessarily to amputation, and given up a material portion of their strength, to save themselves from apprehended destruction. We know the inherent strength, vitality, and vigour of the whole American people. We neither passionately torment any offending limb, nor consent to its being cut off, because we know that all of our limbs are capable of being restored, and all are necessary to the prolongation of our national life. You will ask whether a reconciliation which follows so closely upon military coercion can be relied upon. Can it be sincere? Can it be permanent ? I answer : Do you admit separation to be in any case possible ? Does anybody now believe that it ever will hereafter become possible ? Will you yourselves now or ever consent to it ? You answer all these questions in the negative.. Is not reconciliation, then, not only desirable, but imperative ? Is any other reconciliation, under the circumstances, possible ? Certainly you must accept this proposed reconciliation, or you must purpose to delay and wait until you can procure a better one. Good surgery requires that even simple wounds, much more severe ones, shall be healed, if possible, at the first intention. Would not delay necessarily prolong anarchy ? Are you sure that you can procure a better reconciliation after prolonged anarchy, without employing force ? Who will advocate the employment of force merely to hinder and delay, through prolonged anarchy, a reconciliation which is feasible and perfectly consistent with the Constitution? In what part of the Constitution is written
I I
482	Speech of Mr. Seward
the power to continue civil war against succumbing States for ultimate political triumph ? What would this be but, in fact, to institute a new civil war, after one had ended with the complete attainment of the lawful objects for which it was waged ? Congress and the Administration have power to levy wars against foreign States for whatever cause they see fit. Congress and the President have a right to accept or even make war against any part of the people of the United States only under their limited power to suppress sedition and insurrection, and for that purpose only. What then ? Must we give up the hope of further elevation of classes in the several States without any new guaranties for individual liberty and progress ? By no means. Marching in this path of progress and elevation of masses is what we have been doing still more effectually in the prosecution of the war. It is a national march, as onward and irresistible as the late conflict between free and slave labour was vigorous and irrepressible. The plan of reconciliation we are pursuing has given us two great national advances in this progress of moral and political elevation, which are now to be made fast and firmly fixed. First, it secures a voluntary abolition of slavery by every State which has engaged in insurrection ; and secondly, it must secure and does secure an effectual adoption by the late slave States themselves of the amendment of the Federal Constitution, which declares that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except for crime, shall ever hereafter exist in any part of the United States. The people who have so steadily adhered to the true path of democratic progress and civilization through all the seductions of peace, and through so many difficulties and at such fearful cost in war, will now have new inducements and encouragements to persevere in that path until they shall have successfully reduced to a verity the sublime assertion of the political equality of all men, which the founders, in their immortal declaration, laid down as the true basis of American Union. It is certain that the plan of reconciliation which I have thus largely explained must and will be adopted. It may, however, be hindered or hastened. How can it be hindered ? You shew yourselves aware of the answer when you fasten upon any violent, factious, or seditious exhibition of passion or discontent in any of the lately rebellious States and argue from it the failure of the plan. You argue justly. Every turbulent and factious person in the lately insurrectionary States is resisting, hindering, and delaying the work of restoration to the extent of his ability. But the case is precisely the same with ourselves. Manifestations of doubt, distrust, crimivation, contempt. or defiance, in the loyal States, are
At Auburn.	483
equally injurious, and equally tend to delay the work of reconciliation. How, then, shall it be hastened? I reply, virtually in the language of the President--in the spirit of the Constitution, and in harmony not only with our politics but with our religion. " We must trust each other." Can we not trust each other ? Once we were friends. We have since been enemies. We are friends again. But, whether in friendship or in enmity, in peace or in war, we are and can be nothing else to each other than brethren. A few evenings ago, a hundred Southern men, who recently had been more or less influential and leading revolutionists, visited my house at Washington. They were frank, unreserved, and earnest in their assurances of acquiescence and reconciliation, as I also was in mine. Happily, a party of intelligent Englishmen were in my dwelling at the same time. I introduced the late rebels to the representatives of sympathizing England, and I said to the parties : " You lately each of you thought that the Southern men preferred British rule to citizenship in the United States." While the Englishmen individually disclaimed, both parties promptly answered, as they do now, that the idea was not merely a delusion, but an absurd mistake. They now knew that even during the excitement of the war, the American citizen, whether North or South, really preferred his own countrymen of every section to any other people in the world. Some of you fear that the President may be too lenient to those Southern leaders who plunged the country into the calamities of civil war. Except those of you who have been maimed or bereaved, have any of you suffered more of wrong, insult, and violence at the hands of those leaders than he has ? Can we not forget where he can forgive ? Are you aware that his terms of amnesty are far more rigorous than those which were offered by Abraham Lincoln ? Have you ever seen the majesty of law more firmly maintained than it has been by him in the exercise of discriminating clemency ? Some of you seem to have been slightly disturbed by professions or demonstrations of favour toward the President made by parties who have heretofore opposed his administration, as well as the administration of his predecessor. And you ask : May not the President yet prove unfaithful to us ? For myself, I laid aside partizanship, if I had any, in 1861, when the salvation of the country demanded that sacrifice. It is not, therefore, my purpose to descend to mere partizanship now. Andrew Johnson laid aside, I am sure, whatever of partizanship he had at the same time. That noble act did not allow, but on the other hand it forbade collusion by the friends of the Union with opponents of the policies of the war and of reconciliation which the Govern-
' " 2
434	Speech of Mr. Seward
ment has found it necessary to pursue. Duty requires absolute and uncompromising fidelity to the supporters of those policies, whosoever and of whatsoever party they may be. AndrewJohnson has practised that fidelity against the violence of enemies, to the sacrifice of his fortune, the hazard of his liberty, and even the peril of his life. The same fidelity is still identified with the success of those policies, and, of course, is necessary to the achievement of their magnificent ends. Why should he now abandon those policies, and desert time-honoured and favoured supporters, merely because the dawning success of our efforts has compelled former opponents to approve and accept them ? Patriotism and loyalty equally, however, require that fidelity in this case should be mutual. Be ye faithful, therefore, on your part, and although the security I offer is unnecessary and superfluous, yet I will guarantee fidelity on his part. Those who hitherto opposed the Pi esident, but now profess to support him, either are sincere or insincere. Time must prove which is the fact. If they are sincere, who that has a loyal heart must not. rejoice in their late, though not too long delayed conversion ? If they are insincere, are we either less sagacious, or have we less ability now than heretofore to counteract treachery to the national cause ? Perhaps you fear the integrity of the man. I confess, with a full sense of my accountability, that among all the public men whom I have met or with whom I have been associated or concerned, in this or any other country, no one has seemed to me to be more wholly free from personal caprice and self-ambition than Andrew Johnson ; none to be more purely and exclusively moved in public action by love of country and goodwill to mankind. I hope I have said enough of the President. Shall I now speak of his associates in administration—the heads of executive departments, as they are called ? I do it cheerfully, because now, for the first time, I am free to speak of them as I truly regard and esteem them. Heretofore I could not do so without inviting what might prove injurious debate — moreover, I could not do so without seeming to desire for myself some exemption from censure, some exercise of clemency, which self-respect forbade me personally to invoke. For the time, I said to myself:—
" My name is lost;
By treason's tooth bare gnawn and canker-bit.
Yet I am noble as the adversary
I come to cope -withal."
That time has passed away. The present and the last administrations are inseparably allied. Their work is now either completely done, or its end is near at hand. The heads of departments in these allied Administrations are now separable without
At Auburn.	485
injury to the national safety and welfare. Each is entitled to his proper merit, and each must be content to bear his distinct responsibility. We have had three Secretaries of the Treasury. I believe that the fiscal system under which the nation has been conducted through greater difficulties than any other nation ever encountered was not only wisely projected and efficiently organized by Mr. Chase, but was the only one which, under the then existing circumstances, could have been successful. There has since been no departure from that plan, nor any relaxation in pursuing it, by either his immediate successor, Mr. Fessenden, or by Mr. McCulloch, the present incumbent. Intricate financial questions must continue to present themselves from time to time, until we shall have turned the outgoing tide of debt, and begun to experience the incoming flow of surplus revenue. For myself, I can safely leave them to the care of the Secretary of the Treasury. We have had two Secretaries of War, Mr. Cameron and Mr. Stanton. The period of the first was short ; that of the last has been long. Of Mr. Cameron, I bear witness that he was in all things honest, earnest, zealous, and patriotic. Of Mr. Stanton I am to speak in even more exalted praise. My acquaintance. with him began amid the hours of deep and overwhelming solicitude which filled what may justly be called an interregnum, which occurred between the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency, in November, 1860, and his inauguration in March, 1801, and while Edwin M. Stanton was an acting member of the waning Administration of James Buchanan. From that time, through all the period which elapsed until April, 1865, when the siege of the capital was raised, and the fearful tragedy of the country was closed with the assassination of the Chief Magistrate who had saved it, I hourly saw and closely observed, by night and by day, the Secretary of War. I saw him organize arid conduct a war of pure repression, greater than any war which mankind has before experienced. In all that time I saw no great or serious error committed. I saw, as you have all seen, the greatest military results achieved—results which the whole world regarded as impossible. There is not one of those results that is not more or less directly due to the fertile invention, sagacious preparation, and indomitable perseverance and energy of the Secretary of War. I have never known him to express or even betray a thought in regard to our country which was not divine. What remains to be done, by exhibiting military force in bringing the insurrectionary States out from anarchy into a condition of internal peace and co-operation with the Government, may be safely trusted to him. I am equally satisfied with the naval administration of Mr. Welles ; and yet I am bound to acknowledge that, during the whole period of his service, the navy has
486	Speech of Mr. Seward
practically enjoyed the administration of two sagacious and effective chiefs. The Secretary of the Navy will himself, I am sure, approve and thank me for this tribute to his assistant, Captain Fox. The Department has achieved glory enough to divide between them. I do not apprehend now nor in any near future any danger of maritime collision or conflict ; but I think the maintenance of naval preparation equally advantageous, both at home' and abroad, with regard to questions which, without that precaution, might possibly arise. 1 am content to leave the responsibility of this case with Mr. Welles. We have had three Secretaries of the Interior, or Home Department—Mr. Smith, Mr. Usher, and Mr. Haxlan. Amid the tumults of war and the terror inspired by foreign conspiracies, the operations of the Home Department have all the while been carried on without arresting attention, or even obtaining observation. It might be sufficient praise to say of its chiefs that now, when the time for scrutiny has come, those unobserved operations are found to have been faultless. But this is not all. Five years hence, a thousand men will inquire when and by whom was projected and instituted the steam overland connection, which, during all the intervening period, will be seen to have indissolubly bound the distant coasts of the Pacific to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. The answer will be, it was projected and instituted by the Secretaries of the Interior during the administration of Abraham Lincoln. We have had two Postmaster-Generals. No more prudent or efficient one than Montgomery Blair has ever presided in that Department. In his successor, Mr. Dennison, we find a practised statesman, who, under the improved circumstances of our national condition, is giving us special and peculiar cause for satisfaction. He is promptly restoring the transportation of mails throughout the whole theatre of war, and in that way performing an eminent part in the reconciliation of the American people. Watchful of the interests of external as well as of internal commerce, he has brought into action a new and direct postal line with Brazil, and thus has introduced us to more intimate intercourse with the States of South America. A year hence we shall see him extending commercial, political, and friendly connection to the islands of the Pacific and the great continents that lie beyond it. I wish you all could understand Mr. Speed, the Attorney-General, as I do. I do not know whether he is to be admired more for varied and accurate learning, or for what seems to be an intuitive faculty of moral philosophy. Only the delicate nervous system, which we all enjoy, but so seldom appreciate, seems to me to furnish a parallel for his quick sensibilities in the discovery and appreciation of truth. Firmer than most men in his convictions, and braver in his hopes of
At Auburn.	487
the progress of humanity, he is nevertheless temperate, thoughtful, and wise in the conduct of administration. These are they who were or are the counsellors and agents of the President of the United States during the eventful period through which we have passed. That they have always agreed from the first in deciding the momentous questions with which they were engaged is not asserted. A Cabinet which should agree at once on every such question would be no better or safer than one counsellor. Our republican system, and the political system of every free country, requires, if not a " multitude of counsellors," at least an aggregation and diverseness of counsellors. But this I do maintain and confidently proclaim, that every important decision of the Administration has been wise. I maintain with equal firmness, and declare with still greater pleasure, the opinion that no council of government ever existed in a revolutionary period in any nation which was either more harmonious or more loyal to each other, to their chief, and to their country. Had this council been at any time less harmonious or less loyal, I should then have feared the downfall of the Republic. Happily, I need not enter the field to assign honours to our military and naval chiefs. Their achievements, while they have excited the admiration and won the affectionate gratitude of all our countrymen, have already become a grand theme of universal history. I omit to speak of foreign nations and of the proceedings of the Government in regard to them for two reasons : first., because the discussion of such questions is for a season necessarily conducted without immediate publicity ; the other is a reason I need not assign. Nevertheless, I may say in general terms this : We have claims upon foreign nations for injuries to the United States and their citizens, and other nations have presented claims against this Government for alleged injuries to them or their subjects. Although these claims are chiefly of a personal and pecuniary nature, yet the discussion of them involves principles essential to the independence of States and harmony among the nations. I believe that the President will conduct this part of our affairs in such a manner as to yield and recover indemnities justly due, without any compromise of the national dignity and honour. With whatever jealousy we may adhere to our inherited principle of avoiding entangling alliances with foreign nations, the United States must continue to exercise—as always before our civil war they did exercise—a just and beneficent influence in the international conduct of foreign States, particularly those which are near to us on this continent, and which are especially endeared to us by their adoption of republican institutions. That just
488	Speech of Mr. Seward at Auburn.
influence of ours was impaired, as might have been apprehended, by the American people, when they fell into the distractions of civil war. With the return of peace it is coming back to us again, in greater strength than ever. I am sure that this important interest has not been lost sight of by the President of the United States for a single moment, and I expect that we shall see republican institutions, wherever they have been heretofore established throughout the American continent, speedily vindicated, renewed, and reinvigorated. When I shall see this progress successfully worked out on the American continent, I shall then look for the signs of its successful working throughout the other continents It is thus that I think the administrations of Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson may be assumed as an epoch at which humanity will resume with new spirit and courage the career which, however slow, is nevertheless constantly directed toward the destruction of every form of human slavery, and the political equality of all men. And now, my dear friends and neighbours, after this pleasant interview, we part once more : you to continue, I hope, with unabated success and pleasure, your accustomed domestic and social pursuits ; I to return to the capital, there to watch and wait and work on a little longer. But we shall meet again. We came together to-day to celebrate the end of civil war. We will come together againounder next October's sun, to rejoice in the restoration of peace, harmony, and union throughout the •land. Until that time I refrain from what would be a pleasant task—the forecasting of the material progress of the country, the normal increase of population by birth and immigration, and its diffusion over,,the now obliterated line of Mason and Dixon, to the Gulf of Mexico, and over and across the Rocky Mountains along the border of Mexico to the Pacific Oecan. I say now only this : Go on, fellow citizens ! increase and multiply as you have heretofore done. Extend channels of internal commerce, as the development of agricultural, forest, and mineral resources requires. Improve your harbours, consolidate the Union now while you can, without unconstitutionally centralizing the Government, and henceforth you will enjoy, as a tribute of respect and confidence, that security at home and that consideration abroad which maritime powers of the world have of late, when their candour was specially needed, only reluctantly and partially conceded. May our Heavenly Father bless you and your families and friends, and have you all in His holy keeping until the rolling months shall bring around that happy meeting in 1866; and so, for the present, farewell.
INDEX TO SPEAKERS
REPRESENTED IN THE VOLUME. •
PAM:
AMBERLEY, VISCOUNT—
Speech at Leeds, 31st Jan.	257
BEECHER, H. W.—
Address on Raising the United States Flag at Fort Sumter, 14th April . 447
BERRYER, M.—
Speech at Banquet given by the English Bar	. 412
BRIGHT, JOHN—
Speech on the Defence of Canada	.
On the Death of Mr. Cobden .	107
Speech at Birmingham, 18th. Jan.	. 230
Speech at Blackburn, 30th Nov.	34r,
Speech at Birmingham, 13th Dec.	. 356
BROUGHAM, LORD—
Speech at Banquet given to M. Berryer by the English Bar	. 415
BUTT, ISAAC, Q. C —
Speech in Defence of T. C. Luby .	. 394
CARDWELL, Right Hon. E.—
On the Defence of Canada	.	42
COCKBERN, LORD C. J.—
Speech at the Berryer Banquet	. 417
COLERIDGE, J. D., Q.C.—
Speech in the Queen's Bench, Westminster	. 353
DAVIS, JEFFERSON—
Messag.e to the Senate of the Confederate States	. 434
DERBY, THE EARL OF—
On the Roman Catholic Oath Bill .	. 196
DF.SMAREST, E. M.—
Speech at the Berryer Banquet	. 413
DISRAELI, Right Hon. B.—
Speech on the Defence of Canada .	.	45
On the Death of Mr. Cobden .	.	.	. 106
On the As:•.,aisination of President Lincoln	. 147
On the Extension of the Borough Franchise	.	. 153
K K
490	Index.
EMERSON, R. W.—
On the Death of President Lincoln .	. 463
FITZGERALD, SEYMOUR —
Speech at Horsham, 15th Dec.	. 372
FORSTER, W. E.—
Speech at Bradford on Home and Foreign Politics .	. 217
On the Assassination of President Lincoln	.	. 266
FRENCH, EMPEROR OF THE—
On Opening the French Chambers .	. 425
G4nsroxE, Right Hon. W. E. (Chancellor of the Exchequer)--
Speech on the Irish Church .	.	79
On the Budget	.	.	. 109
Speech at Liverpool, 1Sth July	. 272
Speech at Glasgow, 1st Nov. .	. 329
Speech at the Berryer Banquet	. 419
GREY, Right Hon. Sir G.—
Speech on the Assassination of President Lincoln	. 144
HORSMAN, Right Hon. E.—
On the Extension of the Borough Franchise	. 169
Speech at Stroud, 2Sth Dec. .	.	. 377
LEATHAM E. A.—
Speech at Huddersfield to his Constituents, 20th Jan.	243
LOWE, '.17	Hon.
on -..lie Condition of Ireland .	.	27
On the Defence of Canada	.	.	. •	.	52
On the Extension of the Borough Franchise	. 149
LINCOLN, Abraham—
Inaugural Address on Re-election as President of United States	. 441
On the Conclusion of the Civil War in America	. . 443
OSBORNE, R. Bernal—
On Extension of the Borough Franchise .	. 164
OXFORD, Bishop of—
Speech on Missionary Enterprise .	.	. 294
On the Local Examinations at Manchester	. 314
PALMER, Sir Rounclell—
Speech at the Bernier Banquet	. 409
PHILLI3IORE, Sir R. J., Q.C.—
Address on Jurisprudence	. 300
PALMERSTON, Viscount—
On the Condition of Ireland .	.	36
On the Defence of Canada	.	.	74
On the Death of Mr. Cobden .	. 104
ROEBUCK, J. A. —
On the Condition of Ireland .	22
ROUHER, M. —
Funeral Oration on the Duo de 'Horny	. 430
SEWARD, W. . —
Speech at Auburn, United States, 20th Oct.	. 477
PAGE
Index.	491
PAGE
SCHNEIDER, M. —
Funeral Oration on the Due de Morny	. 429
STANLEY, Lord—
Speech on Workmen's Halls delivered at Birkenhead, 3rd Aug. .	. 284
On Physical Education, delivered at Liverpool, 6th Nov. .	. 340
STANLEY, The Very Rev. Dean—
Extract from Discourse on Lord Palmerston	. 324
STANSFELD, J.—
On the Assassination of President Lincoln	. 268
TRIERS, M. —
Speech on the French Budget .	. 467
WALPOLE, Right Hon. S. H.—
Speech on Missionary Enterprise, delivered at Salisbury, 18th August 290
WESTBURY, Lord—
Speech on Resigning the Office of Lord Chancellor .	. 211
WHITESIDE, Right Hon. J. —
Speech on the Belfast Commission of Inquiry .	.	3
Speech on the Irish Church .	.	92
Woodfall and Kinder, Printers, Milford Lane, Strand, London, W.C.
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