wholly justified. He presumed it would be admitted that they knew the object of the war as well as any other men in the house, and that entertaining as they did a very serious idea of the results of a prolonged war, they were at liberty to come to the conclusion that certain terms, to which they themselves were parties, were sufficient. If this was the conviction at which they had arrived, surely no member of the house would say that, because they had been members of a cabinet some time before, which went into the war, therefore they should be forbidden to endeavour to avert the incalculable calamities which threatened their country, but should be expected to maintain a show of consistency for which they must sacrifice everything that an honest man would hold dear. Had these men, he asked, gained anything in popularity with the country, or even with the members of that house, by the course they had taken? Hopeless as the prospects appeared to be of a change in the view of the government and the people of England, the advocates of a pacific policy were doubtless encouraged by the attitude of the so-called "Peelites," and they spoke with vigour and effect. It was in this debate that Mr. Cobden in reply to Sir W. Molesworth made a humorous allusion which for some years remained famous. Sir William opposed the conclusion, that in that stage of the war, the country was bound to accept the same terms which would have satisfied it before hostilities were proclaimed. In order to maintain peace and avert the calamities of war as long as possible, the allied governments in the first instance lowered their demands upon Russia, as long as they could do so with honour. But, having been once compelled to draw the sword, and having expended in this war a vast amount of treasure and sacrificed so many valuable lives, the chief reason for abating their demands as much as possible no longer existed, and they were now entitled to stand upon their rights, and to demand that these should be fully secured to them; they were even entitled, if they thought proper, to increase their demands in proportion to the continuance of the war and the success of their arms. He denounced the temptations which had been presented for the conclusion of a recreant peace, contending that the safety, as well as the glory, of the British Empire would be perilled by any signs of cowardice or surrender of the high principles which constituted the real bond of union among the scattered elements of our national grandeur. In the adjourned debate, Mr. Cobden referred to the slanderous charges against him and his friends, that they were Russian emissaries, and reminded the house that similar charges were thrown out against Burke and Fox. For himself, he had no object in view but the just interests of England. He characterized the speech of the right honourable baronet the member for Southwark as the most inconsistent with his former opinions that had ever been delivered in that house. "Does the right honourable gentleman remember a jeu d'esprit of the poet Moore, when dealing in 1833 with the Whig occupants of those benches, shortly after they had emerged from a long penance in the dreary wilderness of opposition, and when the Whigs showed themselves to be Tories when in office? Does he remember the jeu d'esprit? Why, I think he and I have laughed over it when we have been talking over the sudden conversions of right honourable gentlemen. The poet illustrated the matter by a story of an Irishman who went over to the West Indies, and before landing, heard some of the blacks speaking tolerably bad English, whereupon, mistaking them for his own countrymen, he exclaimed, 'What! black and curly already?' Now, we have all seen metamorphoses upon these benches-how colours have changed and features became deformed when men came under the influence of the treasury atmosphere; but I must say that never to my knowledge have I seen a change in which there has been so deep a black and so stiff a curl." This was received by the house with signs of great amusement, and the speech was regarded as having been peculiarly damaging to the gov ernment. The general transposition which had taken place among the men who had held a part in the first prosecution of the war made the GRAHAM AND RUSSELL-DEBATE ON THE NEGOTIATIONS. debate a very remarkable one. It was not forgotten that Mr. Disraeli had offered to serve in a Derby government, which, had it been formed, would have included Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Sidney Herbert, and that the men who were now strongly advocating the adoption of a basis of negotiation, which might, by conceding somewhat to the demand of Russia, put an end to the war, had retired from the existing ministry rather than submit to an inquiry as to the manner in which that war had been conducted. Nor was it forgotten that they had also formed part of the former government which had been accused of a lack of energy in prosecuting hostilities because of a dislike to oppose Russia. Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton had referred to the inconsistency of Mr. Gladstone, and had asked, "When Mr. Gladstone was dwelling, in a Christian spirit that moved them all, on the gallant blood that had been shed by England, by her allies, and by her foemen in that quarrel, did it never occur to him, that all the while he was speaking, this one question was forcing itself upon the minds of his English audience, And shall all this blood have been shed in vain?"" There were numerous attacks on the men who refused to concur in the abandonment of the negotiations on that disputed "third point" which was to limit the power of Russia in the Black Sea. Sir J. Graham pleaded for an indulgent hearing, on the ground that he formed one of a small minority. It was painful to him to be taunted as the friend of Russia; his only consolation was that wiser and better men than he, in similar circumstances, had been subjected to the same taunts. He still believed that the war at its commencement was just and necessary; the only question was, whether Russia had not since afforded the means of obtaining an honourable peace. It had been said, in the house, that his conduct in office, with his opinions as now expressed, was a sufficient explanation of our disasters. All he could say in reply was, that he exerted himself to the utmost to equip the fleet; and he believed his successor had not found those means inadequate. He wished to know from 173 the government what was the nature of the Austrian proposition which the allied powers had rejected; and next, whether the four points were still to be considered the basis of future negotiations, or whether they were now to be altogether discarded. This was the more important, as he had observed the remarkable disposition in the house to raise their terms of negotiation, till he had become altogether at a loss to understand what were the objects of the war. It was a popular thing to commence a war, but it was difficult to maintain it in its popularity. He did not mean to say they ought never to vary the terms of peace according to the fortunes of the war; but he did say that they ought not to extend their object. The question then was, Had not that object been gained? He proceeded, at great length, to state the original demands of Russia, and to contrast them with the terms which she was willing to accept at Vienna, contending that Russia had abated all her original demands, and had been sufficiently humbled both in arms and diplomacy. But the Vienna conferences were already at an end. Lord John Russell replied that they would never have been entered into but for the obligations imposed upon us by our treaty with Austria. He defended the limitations imposed upon the Danubian principalities, by the arrangement on the first proposition, as the best which could have been adopted under the very delicate circumstances of the case. The principalities could not be independent. If they were to have selfgovernment under the protection of the Porte, it was necessary to stipulate that they should not intrigue against the tranquillity of their neighbours. With regard to the third proposition, he thought the opposite party took advantage of the moderation of the Western powers, and argued, because we had conceded so much, therefore we ought to have conceded more and still more, till the negotiations became perfectly nugatory. It was impossible to see, in the Russian proposition, any difference between Russian preponderance before and after its acceptance. He believed that Russia refused the Western terms, not on the question of honour, but because she had not yet sustained reverses enough to induce her to abandon her aggressive intentions. The question then came to be, For what object was the war to be continued? His answer must be general, that it still continued to be the maintenance of the independence of Turkey, and consequently the security of Europe. He believed that was the general feeling of this country; and the only blame he apprehended was that the government had not insisted on stronger terms. But the negotiations were now over; and the events of war must determine what new terms they must insist on to attain the one object. In conclusion, he commented on the anomalous position of this debate, discussing the propriety of continuing negotiations which were now finally closed; and suggested that it would be much more regular now to wait till the closing papers of the Vienna conferences were produced, when the minister would propose an address to her majesty, which would then properly and regularly open up the whole question. The Nemesis for that speech was approaching. It was inevitable in such a division of parties that the minister who could make such a statement, and yet was believed to have gone very near pledging himself to the clause which would have given to Russia what he now denied, should be subjected to a sharp and searching attack, but that was deferred for the present. As to Mr. Gladstone, he was no more likely than Mr. Bright or Mr. Cobden to recede from a position which he had taken under a sense of duty, and the probable loss of popularity or the sarcasms of those who charged him with inconsistency failed to elicit any token of uncertainty in his determination. Prince Albert, like most of those who advocated the vigorous prosecution of the war as the best means of obtaining permanent and satisfactory terms of peace, was much concerned at the political situation. He wrote to the Earl of Aberdeen:-"The line which your former friends and colleagues, with the exception of the Duke of Newcastle, have taken about the war question has caused the queen and myself great anxiety, both on account of the position of public affairs and on their own account. "As to the first, any such declaration as Mr. Gladstone has made upon Mr. Disraeli's motion, must not only weaken us abroad in public estimation, and give a wrong opinion as to the determination of the nation to support the queen in the war in which she has been involved, but render all chance of obtaining an honourable peace without great fresh sacrifices of blood and treasure impossible, by giving new hopes and spirit to the enemy. 'As to the second, a proceeding which must appear to many as unpatriotic in any Englishman, but difficult to explain even by the most consummate oratory on the part of statesmen who have, up to a very recent period, shared the responsibility of all the measures of the war, and that have led to the war, must seriously damage them in public estimation. The more so, as having been publicly suspected and falsely accused by their opponents of having, by their secret hostility to the war, led to all the omissions, mistakes, and disasters, which have attended the last campaign, they now seem to exert themselves to prove the truth of these accusations, and (as Americans would say) to 'realize the whole capital' of the unpopularity attaching to the authors of our misfortunes, whom the public has for so long a time been vainly endeavouring to dis cover. "However much on private and personal grounds I grieve for this, I must do so still more on the queen's behalf, who cannot afford in these times of trial and difficulty to see the best men in the country damaging themselves in its opinion, to an extent that seriously impairs their usefulness for the service of the state." This was a pretty accurate representation of the general view of the course taken by the Peelites; but Mr. Gladstone held to his resolve, and in the course of the ensuing debates, argued with his usual power against the further strenuous prosecution of the war for the purpose of exacting unnecessarily stringent conditions. He did not occupy much time in defending his personal reputation, and he has, much more recently, been able dispassionately to explain the situation of affairs and the circumstances that con GLADSTONE ON THE POLITICAL SITUATION IN 1855. 175 trolled his actions and influenced opinions | tion of the country; and the prince consort, which he has never relinquished. In a review of the Life of the Prince Consort, Mr. Gladstone in 1877 gave an account of the political situation in 1855, and of the place necessarily occupied by the small section to which he belonged. In this lucid reference to the conditions of affairs we are reminded that the retirement of Lord Aberdeen was a subject of grief to the court and to his friends; but he was so far fortunate that, having been made the victim of a cry partly popular and partly due to political feeling, he was saved, as was the Duke of Newcastle, from the responsibility of an act of difficult and doubtful choice. Their friends, Sir James Graham, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Sidney Herbert, were less happy. It was their fate to join the cabinet of Lord Palmerston, formed at a critical juncture, after some delay and difficulty, and then to quit it within a fortnight or three weeks. The Aberdeen government had resisted unanimously and strongly the appointment of what was termed the Sebastopol Committee. The Palmerston government set out with the intention of continuing that resistance. Its head and the majority of its members arrived at the conclusion that the resistance would be ineffectual, and they determined to succumb. The Peelites adhered to their text; and, as the minority, they in form resigned, but in fact, and of necessity, they were driven from their offices. Into the rights of the question Mr. Gladstone does not enter, but he admits that undoubtedly they were condemned by the general opinion out of doors. Moreover, as in the letting out of water, the breach once made was soon and considerably widened. They had been parties in the cabinet, not only to the war, but to the extension, after the outbreak had taken place, of the conditions required from Russia. But when it appeared that those demands were to be still further extended, or were to be interpreted with an unexpected rigour, and that the practical object of the ministerial policy appeared to be a great military success in prosecuting the siege of Sebastopol to a triumphant issue, they declined to accompany the ministry in their course. Again they met with the condemna while expressing his high opinion of the men, recorded his adverse judgment. One admission may perhaps be made in their favour. "In the innumerable combinations of the political chessboard," says Mr. Gladstone, "there is none more difficult for an upright man, than to discern the exact path of duty, when he has shared in bringing his country into war, and when in the midst of that war he finds, or believes himself to find, that it is being waged for purposes in excess of those which he had approved." "The course of the Sebastopol inquiries likewise tended to show that the high constitutional doctrine which they had set up could not be infringed with impunity. They had held that the inquiry was an executive duty, and could only be conducted aright by a commission under the authority of the crown. The country felt, or thought, it had obtained a triumph by the appointment of a parliamentary committee, which was capped by a commission, this in its turn being traversed by a board of officers. The committee censured the ministers, though it was plain that, in the business of supply, they, and Mr. Sidney Herbert in particular, with an indefatigable diligence, had run far ahead of any demands received from the camp. The commission censured the executive departments of the army on the spot. The board of officers acquitted the military and censured the commissariat at home. No attempt was permitted to try the question to its core, as between these conflicting judgments Mr. Roebuck very properly made a motion to bring the report of his committee under the consideration of the house, when the other two competing verdicts would have been compared with it, and with one another. The Peelites supported his motion. But he was defeated by a large majority; so that the question which broke up one cabinet, and formidably rent another, which agitated England and sorely stained her military reputation in the eyes of Europe, remained then, and remains now, untried by any court of final appeal. Nor did this determined smothering of so great a matter cause public displeasure." Mr. Gladstone remarks that a survey of these years, conducted in a historic spirit, will leave on the mind, among other impressions, a sense of the great incidental evils which accompany the breaking up of those singularly but finely and strongly organized wholes, our known political parties. "Together with Sir Robert Peel, nearly the whole official corps of the Conservatives was discharged in 1846; and the discharge proved to be a final one. The Tories, when brought into office, had to supply the highest places with raw, that is to say, fresh, recruits. This could not be without some detriment to the public service; but justice requires the admission that the body of English gentry, trained in the English fashion, affords material of great aptitude for public life. There were evils on the other side much more serious than this. It took no less than thirteen years to effect the final incorporation of the Peelites into the Liberal party. When they took their places among its leaders the official staff on one side was doubled, as on the other side it was almost annihilated. It is possible that to this duplication ought greatly to be attributed those personal discontents and political cross-purposes for which the Liberal party has of late years been disastrously remarkable.1 Moreover, for eleven out of these thirteen years of disembodied existence the Peelites were independent members. They were like roving icebergs, on which men could not land with safety, but with which ships might come into perilous collision. Their weight was too great not to count, but it counted first this way and then that. It is not alleged against them that their conduct was dishonourable, but their political action was attended with much public inconvenience; and even those who think they were enlightened statesmen may feel that the existence of these sensibly large segments of a representative chamber, in a state of detachment from all the organization of party, acts upon the parliamentary vessel as a cargo of corn in bulk acts in foul weather on the trim of a ship at sea. Again, as a party, they had been, like their leader, pacific and 1 Mr. Gladstone wrote this at the end of 1876. economical. The effects of their separation from official Liberalism during the first government of Lord Palmerston were easily traceable in the policy of that government as to various matters of importance. From this time onwards Lord Aberdeen was in retirement, and Peelism ceased to be, as such, in contact with the court, at which it had certainly weighed as an important factor of political opinion." On the debate on Mr. Lowe's amendment being resumed, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, who had long been regarded as one of the most elegant, though he was by no means one of the most frequent speakers in the house, made another strong appeal for continuing the war with energy. "Let me suppose," he said, "that when the future philanthropist shall ask what service on the human race did we in our generation signally confer, some one trained perhaps in the schools of Oxford or the Institute of Manchester shall answer: 'A power that commanded myriads-as many as those that under Xerxes exhausted rivers in their march-embodied all the forces of barbarism on the outskirts of civilization; left these to develop its own natural resources; no state molested, though all apprehended its growth. But long pent by merciful nature in its own legitimate domains, this power schemed for the outlet to its instinctive ambition; to that outlet it crept by dissimulating guile by successive treaties that, promising peace, graduated spoliation to the opportunities of fraud. At length, under pretexts too gross to deceive the common sense of mankind, it proposed to seize that outlet, to storm the feeble gates between itself and the world beyond.' Then the historian shall say, that we in our generation, the united families of England and France, made ourselves the vanguard of alarmed and shrinking Europe, and did not sheathe the sword until we had redeemed the pledge to humanity, made on the faith of two Christian sovereigns, and ratified at those distant graves which liberty and justice shall revere for ever." This will be sufficient as an example of the style of the famous novelist when he made a special effort in parliament. |