Lord Palmerston "Explains."

21

these perpetually recurring difficulties. Recollecting the war in Afghanistan, he intended to examine with the utmost care the papers relating to the dispute with Persia as soon as they should be presented, and he pointed out, that when the position of that country with regard to India and to our own great rival in the East was taken into consideration, it was obviously our duty to strengthen her by all possible means. The Chinese war he believed to be the result of certain instructions sent out from home some time before; and if that were so, it would be for the House to consider whether the power of the Minister so to compromise his country should not be controlled. After some reference to finance-to which Sir G. C. Lewis refused to reply until he brought forward the Budget-he concluded by giving notice of his intention to move for a committee of the whole House with the view of proposing certain resolutions.

Lord Palmerston replied to this speech pleasantly enough. Mr Disraeli, he said, in effect was a writer of fiction; this story of the Secret Treaty was only another of his romances, and that if there were such a Treaty it was so very "secret " that Ministers had never heard of it. Accordingly on the night of Tuesday 10th of February, the leader of the Opposition made a personal explanation, in which he re-affirmed that engagements had been entered into by France and Austria with the main object of guaranteeing the Austro-Italian dominions; that those negotiations were successful, and had taken a permanent shape in a Secret Treaty executed on the 22nd of September, 1854. As to the allegation that Her Majesty's Government knew nothing of them, he had evidence in his possession that the proposal had received Ministerial concurrence and approval, and

that the archives of the Foreign Office contained abundant evidence of the facts. Lord Palmerston denied that he had accused Mr. Disraeli of falsehood, assured him that he had thought him guilty of nothing worse than credulity, and wound up a lame defence by the assertion that the outcome of the negotiations had been merely a Convention which had never been signed. Two days later the noble Lord had to come down and to admit "that, on further inquiry, he found that in point of fact the Convention," which he chose to represent as 'more of a military than a political Convention," had been signed exactly as Mr. Disraeli had represented it. He added, however, that although signed the Convention had become a dead letter, and had never been acted upon or "had any application or effect whatever." This drew down from Mr. Disraeli a reply, in course of which he pointed out that the noble Lord had given him the lie direct though he was right from first to last, and that so far from the Convention never having been acted upon, it was in consequence of it that Austria had withdrawn her troops from Italy. It does not say much for the impartiality of history that, as it were by common consent, not one word of this episode appears in any of the Whig Memoirs of the period.

The foreign policy of the Government was, in spite of its costliness, exceedingly popular, and it served to carry down a Budget which would have been otherwise very unpalatable. Sir G. C. Lewis made his financial statement on the evening of the 13th of February. It was remarkable for only two things -first, the evidence which it afforded of the rapidly growing prosperity of the country; and next, the determination of Liberal financiers to rest ever more and more upon the Income

Tax. That impost it was proposed to continue at the rate of 7d. in the pound for three years. At the moment Mr. Disraeli made no sign, but on the 20th he brought forward a resolution "for adjusting the estimated income and expenditure in the manner best calculated to secure the country against the risk of a deficiency in the years 1858–9 and 1859–60, and to provide for such a balance of revenue and charge respectively in the year 1860 as might place it in the power of Parliament at that period, without embarrassment to the finances, to altogether remit the Income Tax." The debate was long, but on the part of the leader of the Opposition it mainly resolved itself into a demand for economy and for a return to the estimates of 1853. Strangely enough, for the first time for many years Mr. Disraeli found a supporter in Mr. Gladstone, who, as usual, turned upon his former colleagues with intense acrimony, and brought sundry charges against them, couched, as Sir Charles Wood remarked, "in terms hardly fit to be used by one gentleman to another." The end of the debate was that the principle of the Budget was affirmed by 286 to 206.

Nemesis-in the form of a defeat on the China war-was, however, on its way. On the 24th Lord Derby brought the matter forward in the Upper House in a speech in which he emphatically condemned the policy of Sir John Bowring and the support which had been given to it from home. He was strongly supported, but on a division his resolutions were lost by a majority of 36 votes-mainly proxies. In the Commons the result was different. The debate commenced on the 26th of February-the second night of the debate in the Lords-and lasted during four nights. The gravity of the situation was fully appreciated by both sides, and meetings were held under

the presidency of Lord Derby and of Lord Palmerston respectively, to decide on the course to be adopted. The debate itself was one of the most remarkable of the present century. Men of all shades of political opinion attacked the Government, and all upon pretty much the same ground. Mr. Cobden began and Mr. Milner Gibson seconded the motion. Sir Bulwer Lytton, in a speech of striking eloquence, warned the House that trade could not prosper if traders made themselves an object of detestation to those they traded with. Sir John Herbert strongly condemned the conduct of the Consuls and of Sir Michael Seymour. Mr. Warren thought that there were both blindness and obstinacy in the way in which the supporters of the Government refused to enter upon any question other than that of the honour of the British flag. Mr. Whiteside condemned the bombardment of Canton as an "onslaught upon old men, women and children, based upon a miserable, contemptible and cowardly quibble.” Lord Robert Cecil argued that honour, justice and truth, were likely to do more to induce the Chinese to open their ports than any force that we could send against them. Viscount Goderich thought what had been done inconsistent with the character and contrary to the interests of England. Sir James Graham considered the operations at Canton utterly indefensible from every point of view, and announced his intention of voting against the colleagues whom he had so recently quitted. Mr. Phillimore reviewed the circumstances of the war at some length, and finally pronounced it on every ground "unjust in its origin and unblest in its continuance." Sir John Pakington thought the war "disgraceful and disastrous." Sir Frederick Thesiger considered the papers before the House a lasting monument of

Debate on the China War.

25

the bad faith and cruelty of England. Mr. Sidney Herbert expressed the deepest sorrow at seeing "force exercised with so little mercy upon a pretext so transparent-he would not say so transparently fraudulent." Mr. Roundell Palmer denounced. the policy of the Government "as discreditable in itself and utterly unlikely to increase our commerce or our influence, or to exalt the reputation of this country amongst Western or Oriental nations." Mr. Henley announced that he supported Mr. Cobden's motion, because "he could not consent to share the responsibility of a downright public falsehood, or the unnecessary shedding of innocent blood." Mr. J. G. Phillimore would not be an accomplice in national dishonour, or support "the act of an upstart and arrogant Minister." Mr. Baillie Cochrane thought the conduct of the Government "consistent neither with truth nor with humanity." Mr. Roebuck put the case of a Chinese man-of-war bombarding Westminster because certain men in Downing Street did not do exactly as they desired, and declared that the action of the English in China, being parallel, "was indefensible, ungenerous, unchristian and deserving the reprobation of the House." Mr. Gladstone supported the resolution and made an earnest appeal to send out a message of mercy and peace, and also a message of British judgment and British wisdom, to the farthest corners of the world." The defenders of the Government were its official members, and perhaps half-a-dozen of the least influential of the Whig party, whose cue it was to represent the attack on the policy of the Chinese war as an unprincipled and factious combination to drive the Ministry out of office. To this taunt Mr. Disraeli replied in the speech with which he practically wound up the debate, by an assertion that of course