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show themselves to their readers, turn back once more to the Indian Journal which set this train of thought in motion; here is the true hunter's instinct, growing; still green, but with it grows a man's intelligence. The wild moor and the mother's fireside make the boys, the boys become mighty hunters and good soldiers, and yet they are able to see beauty and describe what they saw and felt. There is a love-story and a connected train of thought in the Old Forest Ranger, so the book ranks very high amongst Indian sportsmen; and it is read with keen interest by men and boys, women and girls at home, because the hunting instincts of all are roused and gratified.

It may send many to wander in search of adventure, it contains nothing to make a tiger, much to make a gallant gentleman of an English boy.

The Journal is like the sporting novel. It is true metal and rings true. There is none of the foppery of "the Honourable Crasher" and his fellows. Thin boots are unfit for jungle wahahs; but there is hard riding in Indian pig-sticking, and it is quite as well described as the Leicestershire lark of Mr. Sawyer: there is danger in facing a bison and a bullfinch, but there is no brag in the books which describe true sport. There is hardship in Indian travel and a little in English hunting, but small reference is made to hunger and sore bones, by the class of genuine sportsmen who are driven by the better half of their human nature to write books.

Instead of poaching amongst these pages, let this one quotation suffice:-

"Reader, you have probably spent many a happy hour among your brother-officers at the mess-table; you may have shared in the fun and frolic of a hunting-breakfast at Melton, or you have enjoyed the social glee and brotherly fellowship of a masonic supper. Perhaps, like myself, you have tried them all, and have enjoyed each in their turn: but, unless you have visited the Land of the Sun,' you may depend upon it you have yet much to learn. If you wish to see sociability, comfort, and brotherly feeling; if you want to learn what real good living is; and if you appreciate agreeable society, tempered by sobriety and seasoned by wit, you must to the 'green wood,' with a party of thoroughbred Indian sportsmen; for there will you find them combined and in perfection.

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"And here I must remark, that by thoroughbred,' I mean not only high-couraged and game to the backbone; but well-informed, gentlemanlike, and agreeable, as I am happy to say my present companions are."

The "old forest-ranger" and his Indian Journals are pleasant companions, and game to the backbone. Having thrust your weary feet into a pair of slippers, ensconce yourself in an arm-chair, cut up the book, and worry, worry, worry, tear him and eat him.

Our Foreign Policy.

ART. X.-Our Foreign Policy.

507

LORD RUSSELL'S reign at the Foreign Office has fallen on troublous times. During his tenure of power the position of affairs in Europe has been in the highest degree perplexing and alarming. The everlasting difficulty of Russia and the Poles has broken out as fresh as ever; Prussia has displayed a hardy disregard for truth, justice, and public opinion, which would have done credit to Frederic the Great, and a cynical cruelty of which Davoust would have been ashamed; Austria, as if on purpose to confound all calculation, forgetting the discontented elements which compose her motley empire, heads a crusade for "nationality," and in defiance of her traditionary policy and her disordered finance, plunges into a war which, whatever be its immediate result, will eventually do more to overturn the present bases of European politics than any event since the Treaty of Vienna; while France, mindful of past slights, not perhaps without an eye to future interests, adds to the embarrassments of the situation, by pretended indifference and strange inaction. Yet more serious and more puzzling have been the questions arising out of the war in America. England has not been used to be a neutral. Custom has not hardened her to the unjust demands, the passionate reproaches, the ever-imminent risk of insult which that position entails. And in the present instance all these evils have been aggravated by recent modifications of international law, by the changes in modes of warfare, and by the fierce tempers of the belligerents. The East has not failed to contribute its quota to these difficulties. The destiny of England, as it is the fashion to say, or, in humbler but truer phraseology, the example of the Americans, took us to Japan; and we confess to a strong wish that it had taken us anywhere else. Trade with. so great a population is doubtless a most desirable object. But we fear that many English ministers will yet be harassed, and much English blood shed, before we can induce the Japanese millions to honour us with their custom.

It was not to be expected that the Foreign Secretary during such times should escape calumny. The Opposition, eager for place, and finding little else with which to find fault, has assailed the conduct of foreign affairs by the Government keenly if not very consistently or very fairly. The public, rendered restless by its ignorant sympathies, and making little allowance for the difficulties of the situation, has thought lightly of a policy which it has only imperfectly comprehended. Nor need it be disputed that neither the style nor the object of that policy has been

VOL. XL.--NO. LXXX.

2 L

such as to attract a rapid or noisy popularity. It has steadily been directed to the preservation of peace; it has been carried on with unusual openness and simplicity. Even Lord Russell's style has the undiplomatic virtue of directness: his meaning is always expressed, as Biron vowed his "wooing mind" should for the future be expressed, " in russet yeas and honest kersey noes." Dislike to such an administration will not be uncommon; attack upon it is exceedingly easy. It is unpopular with all who have an undue respect for the tortuous devices of diplomacy, and by all who are unduly moved by anger or compassion. Those who are afraid to commit the country even by a word, and those who are not afraid to plunge the country into war, condemn it equally. And it is not difficult for this indignation to find words. Lord Russell's policy is easily assailed, because it has been a policy of moderation. To abuse such a policy, in times of great excitement, is to secure a ready and favourable audience. The vocabulary, too, is so simple and so telling. "Neither one thing nor another;" "blustering this minute, knocking under the next;" "no consistent plan;' "no conciliation;""no vigour;"-of these and such-like phrases we have lately had more than enough.

But from one quarter at least we are entitled to expect something beyond stereotyped expressions of reproach always vague, often meaningless. The present state of affairs is full of peril, and might be made fertile in instruction. Even should the immediate danger which now threatens us pass away, a study of the causes which gave rise to that danger of the new aspects which European politics are assuming, of the new influences growing into power, and of the position which this country has taken up with regard to these--could not fail to afford valuable lessons for the future. We look, therefore, to Her Majesty's Opposition for some assistance in this study. Their constitutional position is that of fault-finders; but in times like the present we may surely expect from them something better than censure.

Any such expectations, however, will be disappointed. In both Houses the Opposition have been lavish of blame; in neither have they announced any principles for the guidance of the opinions of the country, nor suffered any hint to escape them of the nature of the policy which they would recommend. In the debate on the address, nothing could exceed the felicity of Lord Derby's attack, except its vagueness. The Foreign Secretary was ridiculed and made game of with the utmost art of an accomplished and unscrupulous debater; but mere "chaff" will not long support an Opposition. Later in the session-indeed but the other day his Lordship spoke out in the steam-ram debate, to what effect we shall presently see. Save, however, on this

Attack on Lord Russell in the Quarterly Review.

509

single point, we have had, from the debates of the Upper House, no means of guessing what would have been the conduct of the Opposition. In the Lower House the darkness has been yet more plainly visible. There, besides hesitation as to what policy the Opposition should adopt, doubts have arisen as to who should give that policy expression. Achilles has remained mostly in his tent-sorrowing the loss of no Briseis, but touched by the ruder calamity of a mutiny in the camp. More than one Patroclus has essayed to wear his armour, but none of them has yet proved able to rule the battle.

Still more confidently might a worthy treatment of this subject have been expected from a great literary and political organ. Men cannot always be philosophers amid the excitement of party strife; but a writer, removed from the influences of such excitement, should approach this theme in a spirit of fair speculation and inquiry. On the contrary, however, the author of an article on "The Foreign Policy of England" in the last number of the Quarterly Review, seems to have set before himself as his sole aim the vituperation of Lord Russell: an aim doubtless laudable in its way, but even the perfect accomplishment of which would be no exhaustive or satisfactory treatment of his theme. To nothing beyond this does his ambition soar. Throughout his prolonged shriek of indignation, topics, however out of date, accusations, however exploded, if only they can be pressed into this service, are reproduced with admirable complacency. The Don Pacifico business is raked up with which Lord Russell was not at all concerned; our conduct in the lorcha "Arrow" affair is recalled-conduct which Lord Russell strongly opposed; the dismantling of the Ionian Islands swells the list of charges though wherein wrong was thereby done no effort is made to show; our dispute with Brazil, which, foregoing all advantages from our superior strength, we submitted to arbitration, is quoted as an example of our want of moderation; and, to crown all, the hoax of the bombardment of Kagosima is paraded before us, with a pompous pretence of shame, as an instance of our "inhumanity." Indeed, on the Japanese question, this writer's views are remarkable. We hardly know whether to admire most the accuracy of his reasoning, or the vigour of his imagination. To the former we are indebted for the acute analogical argument that England, in demanding satisfaction for the murder of Mr. Richardson, acted as absurdly as the French Government would act, were they to claim compensation from our Foreign Office in the event of a Frenchman having his throat cut in St. Giles; while the latter furnishes us with the surprising fact that we could "crush" Japan, "not only without danger, but without any appreciable addition to our estimates"! But to dwell on these old and exhausted

topics, treated in such a fashion, is not amusing, and far from profitable. We hasten on to themes of a very different importance and bearing.

Beyond doubt the Foreign Secretary has found in America his chief difficulty. The position of a neutral is always ticklish; and the position of a neutral in a war like this, possessing, too, powers for mischief of which both sides eagerly seek to avail themselves, has been peculiarly so. But although, perhaps because, it was his chief difficulty, he has overcome it best. In spite of the prejudices of some of the higher classes, in spite of the efforts of interested ship-builders, in spite of wide-spread sympathy with the gallant defence of the South, the great bulk of the people sees the propriety of a strict neutrality on our part, and appreciates the endeavours of the Government to maintain that neutrality. Such, however, is not the temper of the majority of the Opposition. Long ago, they would have forced the country into the uncalled for and utterly useless step of recognising the Southern Confederacy; long ago, had their ideas of law been acted upon, American commerce would have been utterly annihilated by cruisers sailing from British ports. On this single question Lord Derby has spoken out, and his views are the same as that of the Quarterly Review. The Tory peer and the Tory littérateur here concur. The latter, for instance, denounces Lord Russell as follows:

Something, too, might be said of the paper blockade set up in sheer defiance of the Protocol of Paris, and submitted to tamely by us, although it was reducing a large part of our population to the condition of paupers. The calmness with which our Government have permitted the Americans to seize English vessels on their passage to neutral or to English ports, under pretence that they were breaking the blockade; the repeated impunity with which they have been suffered to violate our territory by chasing vessels to within the boundary of British waters; the application of oppressive legal proceedings and strained prerogatives to British subjects, under menaces from Washington, would all furnish additional illustration of the violence of the chill which falls upon Lord Russell's enthusiastic temperament when the spectacle of a large army or a powerful fleet crosses his mental vision."

It seems to us that writing of this sort is in the highest degree ungenerous-nay, is deeply culpable.

This Journal cannot be accused of having shown undue favour to the Federals since the outbreak of this dismal war. On the contrary, we have not hesitated to speak of their faults and crimes freely and plainly. Yet, at the same time, should not we judge them gently? Can we not understand with what pangs a great nation must see its greatness-as it thinkspassing away? It may be that the dreams of empire had been vain and foolish, but is the waking on that account less

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