II. FOREIGN POLICY

Mr. Gladstone discusses what he calls the "exploded doctrine of protection." He declares that the Conservative party used it as a campaign cry, and when they got into office they threw it to the winds. He then goes on to enunciate his principles of foreign policy.

Gentlemen, I will tell you what I think to be the right principles of foreign policy. The first thing is to foster the strength of the empire by just legislation and economy at home, thereby producing two of the great elements of national power-namely, wealth, which is a physical element, and union and contentment, which are moral elements, and to reserve the strength of the empire, to reserve the expenditure of that strength, for great and worthy occasions abroad. Here is my principle of foreign policy— good government at home.

My second principle of foreign policy is this: that its aim ought to be to preserve to the nations of the world and especially, were

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it but for shame, when we recollect the sacred name we bear as Christians, especially to the Christian nations of the world blessings of peace. That is my second principle.

My third principle is this: even, gentlemen, when you do a good thing, you may do it in so bad a way that you may entirely spoil the beneficial effect; and if we were to make ourselves the apostles of peace in the sense of conveying to the minds of other nations that we thought ourselves more entitled to an opinion on that subject than they are, or to deny their rights-well, very likely we should destroy the whole value of our doctrines. In my opinion the third sound principle is this: to strive to cultivate and maintain, aye, to the very uttermost, what is called the concert of Europe; to keep the powers of Europe in union together. And why? Because by keeping all in union together you neutralize, and fetter, and bind up the selfish aims of each. I am not here to flatter either England or any of them. They are selfish aims, as, unfortunately, we in late years have too sadly shown that we, too, have had selfish aims; but their common action is fatal to selfish aims. Common

action means common objetts; and the only objects for which you can unite together the powers of Europe are objects connected with the common good of them all. That, gentlemen, is my third principle of foreign policy.

My fourth principle is, that you should avoid needless and entangling engagements. You may boast about them, you may brag about them, you may say you are procuring consideration for the country. You may say that an Englishman can now hold up his head among the nations. You may say that he is now not in the hands of a Liberal ministry, who thought of nothing but pounds, shillings, and pence. But what does all this come to, gentlemen? It comes to this: that you are increasing your engagements without increasing your strength; and if you increase engagements without increasing strength, you diminish strength, you abolish strength; you really reduce the empire and do not increase it. You render it less capable of performing its duties; you render it an inheritance less precious to hand on to future generations.

My fifth principle is this, gentlemen: to acknowledge the equal rights of all nations. You may sympathize with one nation more than another. Nay, you must sympathize in certain circumstances with one nation more than another. You sympathize most with those nations, as a rule, with which you have the closest connection in language, in blood, and in religion, or whose circumstances at the time seem to give the strongest claim to sympathy. But in point of right all are equal and you have no right to set up a system under which one of them is to be placed under moral suspicion or espionage, or to be made the constant subject of invective. If you do that, but especially if you claim for yourself a superiority, a pharisaical superiority over the whole of them, then I say you may talk about your patriotism if you please, but you are a misjudging friend of your country, and in undermining the basis of the esteem and respect of other people for your country you are in reality inflicting the severest injury upon it. I have now given you, gentlemen, five principles of foreign policy. Let me give you a sixth, and then I have done.

And that sixth is, that in my opinion foreign policy is subject to all the limitations that I have described; the foreign policy of England should always be inspired by the love of freedom. There should be a sympathy with freedom, a desire to give it scope, founded not upon visionary ideas, but upon the long experience of many generations within the shores of this happy isle, thať in freedom you lay the firmest foundations both of loyalty and order; the firmest foundations for the development of individual character, and the best provision for the happiness of the nation at large. In the foreign policy of this country the name of Canning ever will be honored. The name of Russell ever will be honored. The name of Palmerston ever will be honored by those who recollect the erection of the kingdom of Belgium, and the union of the disjoined provinces of Italy. It is that sympathy, not a sympathy with disorder, but, on the contrary, founded upon the deepest and most profound love of order it is that sympathy which in my opinion ought to be the very atmosphere in which a foreign secretary of England ought to live and to move.

III. NATIONAL EQUALITY

Gladstone charges her Majesty's ministry with having estranged the feelings of Russia and at the same time with having aggrandized her power. He then proceeds to discuss his own policy and that of the Liberals toward foreign nations.

Gentlemen, the prime minister, speaking out, has made what I think one of the most unhappy and ominous allusions ever made by a minister of this country. He quoted certain words, easily rendered as "empire and liberty”—words of a Roman statesman, words descriptive of the state of Rome and he quoted them as words which were capable of legitimate application to the position and circumstances of England. I join the issue with the prime minister upon that subject, and I affirm that nothing can be more fundamentally unsound, more practically ruinous, than the establishment of Roman analogies for the guidance of British policy. What,

gentlemen, was Rome? Rome was indeed an imperial state, -a state having a mission to subdue the world, whose very basis it was to deny the equal rights, to prescribe the independent existence of other nations. That, gentlemen, was the Roman idea.

We are told to fall back upon this example. No doubt the word “empire” was qualified with the word "liberty." But what did the two words, "liberty" and "empire” mean in a Roman mouth? They meant simply this: "liberty for ourselves, empire over the rest of mankind."

I do not think, gentlemen, that this ministry, or any other ministry, is going to place us in the position of Rome. What I object to is the revival of the idea. I care not how feebly, I care not even how – from a philosophic or historical point of view how ridiculous the attempt at this revival may be. I say it indicates an intention - I say it indicates a frame of mind, and the frame of mind, unfortunately, I find, has been consistent with the policy of which I have given you some illustrations -the policy of denying to others the rights that we claim ourselves.

No doubt, gentlemen, Rome may have had its work to do, and Rome did its work. But modern times have brought a different state of things. Modern times have established a sisterhood of nations, equal, independent, each of them built up under that legitimate defense which public law affords to every nation, living within its own borders and seeking to perform its own affairs; but if one thing more than another has been detestable to Europe, it has been the appearance upon the stage from time to time of men who, even in the times of the Christian civilization, have been thought to aim at universal dominion. It was this aggressive disposition on the part of Louis XIV, king of France, that led your forefathers, gentlemen, freely to spend their blood and treasure in a cause not immediately their own, and to struggle against the method of policy which, having Paris for its center, seemed to aim at a universal monarchy.

It was the very same thing, a century and a half later, which was the charge launched, and justly launched, against Napoleon;

that under his dominion France was not content even with her extended limits, but Germany, and Italy and Spain, apparently without any limit to this pestilent and pernicious process, were to be brought under the dominion or influence of France, and national equality was to be trampled under foot and national rights denied. For that reason, England in the struggle almost exhausted herself, greatly impoverished her people, brought upon herself, and Scotland too, the consequences of a debt that nearly crushed their energies, and poured forth their best blood without limit, in order to resist and put down these intolerable pretensions.

Gentlemen, it is but in a pale and weak and almost despicable miniature that such ideas are now set up, but you will observe that the poison lies - that the poison and the mischief lie—in the principle and not the scale.

It is the opposite principle which, I say, has been compromised by the action of the ministry, and which I call upon you, and upon any who choose to hear my views, to vindicate when the day of our election comes; I mean the sound and the sacred principle that Christendom is formed of a band of nations who are united to one another in the bonds of right; that they are without distinction of great and small; there is an absolute equality between them — the same sacredness defends the narrow limits of Belgium as attaches to the extended frontiers of Russia, or Germany, or France. I hold that he who by act or word brings that principle into peril or disparagement, however honest his intentions may be, places himself in the position of one inflicting — I will not say intending to inflict I ascribe nothing of the sort - but inflicting injury upon his country, and endangering the peace and all the most fundamental interests of Christian society.

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