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VIEWS THE "PEACE PARTY."

which could scarcely be obtained outside the cabinet; he may entirely have mistaken the causes and the claims by which the attitude of England had been determined; but at least he had something to say worth listening to, and men had listened already. Far beyond the meeting of the Peace Society, at whose conference in Edinburgh he had spoken in October in the previous year, many of his words on the then impending struggle had been effectual in arousing serious attention to what war really meant for the people of a country. Perhaps nobody could venture to contradict that portion of his declarations; but his representations of the reasons for which wars were undertaken, and the principle on which they were maintained, at once challenged denial, and were of course utterly repudiated by his opponents.

"What is it," he asked, "that we really want here? We wish to protest against the maintenance of great armaments in times of peace; we wish to protest against the spirit which is not only willing for war but eager for war; and we wish to protest, with all the emphasis of which we are capable, against the mischievous policy pursued so long by this country, of interfering with the internal affairs of other countries, and thereby leading to disputes, and often to disastrous wars.

"I mentioned last night what it was we were annually spending on our armaments. Admiral Napier says that the hon. member for the West Riding, who can do everything, had persuaded a feeble government to reduce the armaments of this country to 'nothing.' What is 'nothing' in the admiral's estimation? Fifteen millions a year! Was all that money thrown away? We have it in the estimates, we pay it out of the taxes; it is appropriated by parliament, it sustains your dockyards, pays the wages of your men, and maintains your ships. Fifteen millions sterling paid in the very year when the admiral says that my honourable friend reduced the armaments of the country to nothing! But take the sums which we spent for the past year in warlike preparation-seventeen millions, and the interest on debt caused by war-twenty-eight millions sterling, and it amounts to £45,000,000.

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What are our whole exports? Even this year, far the largest year of exports we have ever known, they may amount to £80,000,000. Well, then, plant some one at the mouth of every harbour and port in the United Kingdom, and let him take every alternate ship that leaves your rivers and your harbours with all its valuable cargo on board, and let him carry it off as tribute, and it will not amount to the cost that you pay every year for a war, that fifty years ago was justified as much as it is attempted to justify this impending war, and for the preparations which you now make after a peace which has lasted for thirty-eight years.

"Every twenty years-in a nation's life nothing, in a person's life something-every twenty years a thousand millions sterling out of the industry of the hard-working people of this United Kingdom are extorted, appropriated, and expended to pay for that unnecessary and unjust war, and for the absurd and ruinous expenditure which you now incur. A thousand millions every twenty years! Apply a thousand millions, not every twenty years, but for one period of twenty years, to objects of good in this country, and it would be rendered more like a paradise than anything that history records of man's condition, and would make so great a change in these islands that a man having seen them as they are now, and seeing them as they might then be, would not recognize them as the same country, nor our population as the same people. But what do we expend all this for? Bear in mind that admirals, and generals, and statesmen defended that great war; and that your newspapers, with scarcely an exception, were in favour of it, and denounced and ostracised hundreds of good men who dared, as we dare now, to denounce the spirit which would again lead this country into war. We went to war that France should not choose its own government; the grand conclusion was that no Bonaparte should sit on the throne of France; yet France has all along been changing its government from that time to this, and now we find ourselves with a Bonaparte on the throne of France, and, for anything I know to the contrary, likely to

remain there a good while. So far, therefore, for the calculations of our forefathers, and for the results of that enormous expenditure which they have saddled upon us.

"We object to these great armaments as provoking a war spirit. I should like to ask what was the object of the Chobham Exhibition? There were special trains at the disposal of members of parliament, to go down to Chobham the one day, and to Spithead the other. What was the use of our pointing to the President of the French Republic two years ago, who is the emperor now, and saying that he was spending his time at playing at soldiers in his great camp at Satory, and in making great circuses for the amusement of his soldiers? We, too, are getting into the way of playing at soldiers, and camps, and fleets, and the object of this is to raise up in the spirit of the people a feeling antagonistic to peace, and to render the people the deluded, hard-working, toiling people satisfied with the extortion of £17,000,000 annually, when, upon the very principles of the men who take it, it might be demonstrated that one-half of the money would be amply sufficient for the purposes to which it is devoted.

What observation has been more common during the discussion upon Turkey than this 'Why are we to keep up these great fleets if we are not to use them? Why have we our Mediterranean fleet lying at Besika Bay, when it might be earning glory and adding to the warlike renown of the country?' This is just what comes from the maintenance of great fleets and armies. There grows up an esprit de corps-there grows a passion for these things, a powerful opinion in their favour, that smothers the immorality of the whole thing, and leads the people to tolerate, under those excited feelings, that which, under feelings of greater temperance and moderation, they would know was hostile to their country, as it is opposed to everything which we recognize as the spirit of the Christian religion.

"Then we are against intervention. Now this question of intervention is a most important one, for this reason, that it comes before us sometimes in a form so attractive that it

invites us to embrace it, and asks us by all our love of freedom, by all our respect for men struggling for their rights, to interfere in the affairs of some other country. And we find now in this country that a great number of those who are calling out loudest for interference are those who, being very liberal in their politics, are bitterly hostile to the despotism and exclusiveness of the Russian government. But I should like to ask this meeting what sort of intervention we are to have? There are three kinds-one for despotism, one for liberty; and you may have an intervention like that now proposed, from a vague sense of danger which cannot be accurately described.

"What have our interventions been up to this time? It is not long since we intervened in the case of Spain. The foreign enlistment laws were suspended; and English soldiers went to join the Spanish legion, and the government of Spain was fixed in the present queen of that country, and yet Spain has the most exclusive tariff against this country in the world, and a dead Englishman is there reckoned little better than a dead dog. Then take the case of Portugal. We interfered, and Admiral Napier was one of those employed in that interference to place the Queen of Portugal on the throne; and yet she has violated every clause of the charter which she had sworn to the people; and in 1849, under the government of Lord John Russell, and with Lord Palmerston in the foreign office, our fleet entered the Tagus and destroyed the Liberal party by allowing the queen to escape from their hands, when they would have driven her to give additional guarantees for liberty; and from that time to this she has still continued to violate every clause of the charter of the country. Now let us come to Syria; what, as Admiral Napier said, about the Syrian war? He told us that the English fleet was scattered all about the Mediterranean, and that if the French fleet had come to Cherbourg and had taken on board 50,000 men and landed them on our coasts, all sorts of things would have befallen us. But how happened it that Admiral Napier and his friends got up the quarrel with the French? Because we

MR. BRIGHT'S MANIFESTO.

interfered in the Syrian question when we had no business to interfere whatever. The Egyptian pasha, the vassal of the sultan, became more powerful than the sultan, and threatened to depose him and place himself as monarch upon the throne of Constantinople; and but for England he would assuredly have done it. Why did we interfere? What advantage was it to us to have a feeble monarch in Constantinople, when you might have an energetic and powerful one in Mehemet Ali? We interfered, however, and quarrelled with France, although she neither declared war nor landed men upon our coast. France is not a country of savages and banditti. The admiral's whole theory goes upon this, that there is a total want of public morality in France, and that something which no nation in Europe would dare to do or think of doing, which even Russia would scorn to do, would be done without any warning by the polished, civilized and intelligent nation across the Channel."

In reading this speech delivered six months before the Napier banquet, who can avoid the suspicion that Lord Palmerston had it in his memory when he eulogized the admiral, and that his resentment of Mr. Bright's remonstrances was sharpened by the recollection.

"But," Mr. Bright asked in continuation, "if they are the friends of freedom who think we ought to go to war with Russia because Russia is a despotic country, what do you say to the interference with the Roman Republic three or four years ago? What do you say to Lord John Russell's government, Lord Palmerston with his own hand writing the despatch, declaring that the government of her majesty the Queen of England entirely concurred with the government of the French Republic in believing that it was desirable and necessary to re-establish the pope upon his throne? The French army, with the full concurrence of the English government, crossed over to Italy, invaded Rome, destroyed the republic, banished its leading men, and restored the pope; and on that throne he sits still, maintained only by the army of France.

"My honourable friend has referred to the time when Russia crossed through the very principalities we hear so much about, and

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entered Hungary. I myself heard Lord Palmerston in the House of Commons go out of his way needlessly, but intentionally, to express a sort of approbation of the intervention of Russia in the case of Hungary. I heard him say in a most unnecessary parenthesis, that it was not contrary to international law or to the law of Europe for Russia to send an army into Hungary to assist Austria in putting down the Hungarian insurrection. I should like to know whether Hungary had not constitutional rights as sacred as ever any country had—as sacred, surely, as the sovereign of Turkey can have upon his throne. If it were not contrary to international law and to the law of Europe for a Russian army to invade Hungary, to suppress there a struggle which called for, and obtained too, the sympathy of every man in favour of freedom in every part of the world, I say, how can it be contrary to international law and the law of Europe for Russia to threaten the Sultan of Turkey, and to endeavour to annex Turkey to the Russian Empire?

"I want our policy to be consistent. Do not let us interfere now, or concur in or encourage the interference of anybody else, and then get up a hypocritical pretence on some other occasion that we are against interference. If you want war, let it be for something that has at least the features of grandeur and of nobility about it, but not for the miserable, decrepit, moribund government which is now enthroned, but which cannot last long, in the city of Constantinople.

"They tell us that if Russia gets to Constantinople Englishmen will not be able to get to India by the overland journey. Mehemet Ali, even when Admiral Napier was battering down his towns, did not interfere with the carriage of our mails through his territory. We bring our overland mails at present partly through Austria and partly through France, and the mails from Canada pass through the United States; and though I do not think there is the remotest possibility or probability of anything of the kind happening, yet I do not think that in the event of war with these countries we should have our mails stopped or our persons arrested in passing through these countries. At any rate it would be a much

more definite danger that would drive me to incur the ruin, guilt, and suffering of war.

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But they tell us further that the Emperor of Russia would get India. That is a still more remote contingency. If I were asked as to the probabilities of it, I should say that, judging from our past and present policy in Asia, we are more likely to invade Russia from India than Russia is to invade us in India. The policy we pursue in Asia is much more aggressive, aggrandizing, and warlike than any that Russia has pursued or threatened during our time. But it is just possible that Russia may be more powerful by acquiring Turkey. But I should like to ask whether, even if that be true, it is a sufficient reason for our going to war, and entering on what perhaps may be a long, ruinous, and sanguinary struggle with a powerful empire like Russia?

"What is war? I believe that half the people that talk about war have not the slightest idea of what it is. In a short sentence it may be summed up to be the combination and concentration of all the horrors, atrocities, crimes, and sufferings of which human nature on this globe is capable. But what is even a rumour of war? Is there anybody here who has anything in the funds, or who is the owner of any railway stock, or anybody who has a large stock of raw material or manufactured goods? The funds have recently gone down 10 per cent. I do not say that the fall is all on account of this danger of war, but a great proportion of it undoubtedly is. A fall of 10 per cent. in the funds is nearly £80,000,000 sterling of value, and railway stock having gone down 20 per cent. makes a difference of £60,000,000 in the value of the railway property of this country. Add the two- £140,000,000—and take the diminished prosperity and value of manufactures of all kinds during the last few months, and you will understate the actual loss to the country now if you put it down at £200,000,000 sterling. But that is merely a rumour of war. That is war a long way off-the small cloud no bigger than a man's hand; what will it be if it comes nearer and becomes a fact? And surely some men ought to consider whether the case is a good one, the ground fair, the necessity clear, before they drag a nation of

nearly 30,000,000 of people into a long and bloody struggle for a decrepit and tottering empire, which all the nations in Europe cannot long sustain. And mind, war now would take a different aspect from what it did formerly. It is not only that you send out men who submit to be slaughtered, and that you pay a large amount of taxes; the amount of taxes would be but a feeble indication of what you would suffer. Our trade is now much more extensive than it was, our commerce is more expanded, our undertakings are more vast, and war will find you all out at home by withering up the resources of the prosperity enjoyed by the middle and working classes of the country. You would find that war in 1853 would be infinitely more perilous and destructive to our country than it has ever yet been at any former period of our history. There is another question which comes home to my mind with a gravity and seriousness which I can scarcely hope to communicate to you. You who lived during the period of 1815 to 1822 may remember that this country was probably never in a more uneasy position. The sufferings of the working-classes were beyond description, and the difficulties, and struggles, and bankruptcies of the middle classes were such as few persons have a just idea of. There was scarcely a year in which there was not an incipient insurrection in some parts of the country, arising from the sufferings which the working-classes endured. You know very well that the government of the day employed spies to create plots, and to get ignorant men to combine to take unlawful oaths, and you know that in the town of Stirling two men, who but for this diabolical agency might have lived good and honest citizens, paid the penalty of their lives for their connection with unlawful combinations of this kind.

"Well, if you go into war now you will have more banners to decorate your cathedrals and churches. Englishmen will fight now as well as they ever did, and there is ample power to back them if the country can be but sufficiently excited and deluded. You may raise up great generals. You may have another Wellington and another Nelson too; for this

NAPIER'S QUARREL WITH THE ADMIRALTY.

country can grow men capable for every enterprise. Then there may be titles, and pensions, and marble monuments to eternize the men who have thus become great; but what becomes of you and your country and your children? For there is more than this in store. That seven years to which I have referred was a period dangerous to the existence of government in this country, for the whole substratum, the whole foundations of society were discontented, suffering intolerable evils, and hostile in the bitterest degree to the institutions and the government of the country."

It is scarcely necessary to point out how illustrative this speech is of the difference between the manner of Mr. Bright and that of Mr. Cobden. Nor can we omit to notice that want of discrimination in the application of the statements brought forward to illustrate his argument which laid the speaker open to more than adverse criticism, and excited a feeling stronger than mere contradiction.

It was unfortunate that the laudations bestowed on Sir Charles Napier and the intended operations of the first division of the Baltic fleet should have been so overdone. The spectacle of the departure of that fleet had aroused a large amount of public enthusiasm, for it was the most important naval force which had ever gone forth from the chief maritime station of the kingdom, and a vast multitude of people had left London and various large towns and assembled at Portsmouth for the purpose of witnessing the warlike show almost the last naval display before iron-clads and their successors, with rams and turrets, had superseded the old "wooden walls"-the first in which the principal vessels were propelled by steam-power. Three large ships remained behind to form the nucleus of a second division. The expectations of the nation ran high -so high that the admiral possibly foresaw the disappointment which must follow. If he did so, however, the address which he signalled to the fleet before commencing operations seems to have been rather impolitic:"Lads! war is declared. We are to meet a bold and numerous enemy; should they offer us battle, you know how to dispose of them.

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Should they remain in port, we must try to get at them. Success depends on the quickness and precision of your fire. Lads, sharpen your cutlasses and the day is your own." Now this was much in the vein of the oratory at the dinner at the Reform Club, and Sir James Graham began to fear that the ardour of the admiral might outrun his discretion, or that he might be tempted to make some sudden venture and endanger the fleet for the purpose of satisfying public expectation. He advised Sir Charles Napier in the first instance to feel his way and to make good his hold in the Gulf of Finland. "When I say this," he added, "I by no means contemplate an attack either on Sweaborg or on Cronstadt. I have a great respect for stone walls, and have no fancy for running even screw line-of-battle ships against them. Because the public here may be impatient, you must not be rash; because they, at a distance from danger, are foolhardy, you must not risk the loss of a fleet in an impossible enterprise." Sir James continued that he believed both Sweaborg and Cronstadt to be all but impregnable from the sea-Sweaborg more especially - and that none but a very large army could co-operate by land efficiently in the presence of such a force as Russia could readily concentrate for the immediate defence of the approaches to her capital. He advised the admiral, if he had none but naval means at his command, to pause long and consider well before he attempted any attack on the Russian squadrons in their strongholds, and he impressed these cautions upon him lest, "to satisfy the wild wishes of an impatient multitude," he should "yield to some rash impulse and fail in the discharge of one of the noblest duties, which is the moral courage to do what you know to be right at the risk of being accused of having done wrong."

There was much "mounting the high horse" in all this, and Sir James Graham either succeeded beyond his intention in impressing the ardent admiral with his own caution, or he was altogether mistaken in believing such solemn warnings to be necessary. The truth seems to have been, that Sir Charles Napier knew very well what he might be able to do

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