Speeches on Questions of Public Policy Part 8

At this very moment, then, there are millions in the United States who personally, or whose immediate parents, have at one time been citizens of this country. They found a home in the Far West; they subdued the wilderness; they met with plenty there, which was not afforded them in their native country; and they have become a great people. There may be persons in England who are jealous of those States. There may be men who dislike democracy, and who hate a republic; there may be even those whose sympathies warm towards the slave oligarchy of the South. But of this I am certain, that only misrepresentation the most gross or calumny the most wicked can sever the tie which unites the great ma.s.s of the people of this country with their friends and brethren beyond the Atlantic.

Now, whether the Union will be restored or not, or the South achieve an unhonoured independence or not, I know not, and I predict not. But this I think I know--that in a few years, a very few years, the twenty millions of freemen in the North will be thirty millions, or even fifty millions--a population equal to or exceeding that of this kingdom. When that time comes, I pray that it may not be said amongst them, that, in the darkest hour of their country's trials, England, the land of their fathers, looked on with icy coldness and saw unmoved the perils and calamities of their children. As for me, I have but this to say: I am but one in this audience, and but one in the citizens.h.i.+p of this country; but if all other tongues are silent mine shall speak for that policy which gives hope to the bondsmen of the South, and which tends to generous thoughts, and generous words, and generous deeds, between the two great nations who speak the English language, and from their origin are alike ent.i.tled to the English name.

AMERICA.

II.

THE WAR AND THE SUPPLY OF COTTON.

BIRMINGHAM, DECEMBER 18, 1862.

I am afraid there was a little excitement during a part of my honourable Colleague's speech, which was hardly favourable to that impartial consideration to which he appealed. He began by referring to a question-- or, I might say, to two questions, for it was one great question in two parts,--which at this moment occupies the mind, and, I think, must afflict the heart of every thoughtful man in this country--the calamity which has fallen upon the county from which I come, and the strife which is astonis.h.i.+ng the world on the other side of the Atlantic.

I shall not enter into details with regard to that calamity, because you have had already, I believe, meetings in this town, many details have been published, contributions of a generous character have been made, and you are doing--and especially, if I am rightly informed, are your artisans doing--their duty with regard to the unfortunate condition of the population amongst which I live. But this I may state in a sentence, that the greatest, probably the most prosperous, manufacturing industry that this country or the world has ever seen, has been suddenly and unexpectedly stricken down, but by a blow which had not been unforeseen or unforetold. Nearly five hundred thousand persons--men, women, and children--at this moment are saved from the utmost extremes of famine, not a few of them from death, by the contributions which they are receiving from all parts of the country. I will not attempt here an elaborate eulogy of the generosity of the givers, nor will I endeavour to paint the patience and the grat.i.tude of those who suffer and receive; but I believe the conduct of the country, with regard to this great misfortune, is an honour to all cla.s.ses and to every section of this people.

Some have remarked that there is perfect order where there has been so much anxiety and suffering. I believe there is scarcely a thoughtful man in Lancas.h.i.+re who will not admit that one great cause of the patience and good conduct of the people, besides the fact that they know so much is being done for them, is to be found in the extensive information they possess, and which of late years, and now more than ever, has been communicated to them through the instrumentality of an untaxed press.

n.o.ble Lords who have recently spoken, official men, and public men, have taken upon them to tell the people of Lancas.h.i.+re that n.o.body has done wrong, and that, in point of fact, if it had not been for a family quarrel in that dreadful Republic, everything would have gone on smoothly, and that n.o.body can be blamed for our present sufferings.

Now, if you will allow me, I should like to examine for a few minutes whether this be true. If you read the papers with regard to this question, you will find that, barring whatever chance there may be of our again soon receiving a supply of cotton from America, the hopes of the whole country are directed to India. Our Government of India is not one of to-day. It is a Government that has lasted as long as the Government of the United States, and it has had far more insurrections and secessions, not one of which, I suppose some in this meeting must regret, has been tolerated by our Government or recognised by France.

Our Government in India has existed for a hundred years in some portion of the country where cotton is a staple produce of the land. But we have had under the name of a Government what I have always described as a piratical joint-stock company, beginning with Lord Clive, and ending, as I now hope it has ended, with Lord Dalhousie. And under that Government I will undertake to say that it was not in nature that you could have such improvement as should ever give you a fair supply of cotton.

Up to the year 1814, the whole trade of India was a monopoly of the East India Company. They took everything there that went there; they brought everything back that came here; they did whatsoever they pleased in the territories under their rule. I have here an extract from a report of a Member of Council in India, Mr. Richards, published in the year 1813. He reports to the Court of Directors, that the whole cotton produce of the district was taken, without leaving any portion of the avowed share of the Ryots, that is, the cultivators, at their own free disposal; and he says that they are not suffered to know what they shall get for it until after it has been far removed from their reach and from the country by exportation coastwise to Bombay; and he says further, that the Company's servants fixed the prices from ten to thirty per cent, under the general market rate in the districts that were not under the Company's rule.

During the three years before the Company's monopoly was abolished, in 1814, the whole cotton that we received from India (I quote from the brokers' returns from Liverpool), was only 17,000 bales; in the three years afterwards, owing, no doubt, partly to the great increase in price, we received 551,000 bales, during which same three years the United States only sent us 611,000. Thus you see that in 1817, 1818, and 1819, more than forty years ago, the quant.i.ty we received from India was close upon, and in the year 1818 it actually exceeded, that which we received from the United States.

Well, now I come down to the year 1832, and I have then the report of another Member of Council, and beg every working man here, every man who is told that there is n.o.body to blame, to listen to one or two extracts from the report. Mr. Warden, Member of the Council, gave evidence in 1832 that the money-tax levied on Surat cotton was 56 rupees per candy, leaving the grower only 24 rupees, or rather less than 3/4_d_. per pound. In 1846 there was so great a decay of the cotton-trade of Western India, that a committee was appointed in Bombay, partly of Members of the Chamber of Commerce and partly of servants of the Government, and they made a report in which they stated that from every candy of cotton-- a candy is 7 cwt. or 784 lbs.--costing 80 rupees, which is 160 s.h.i.+llings in Bombay, the Government had taken 48 rupees as land-tax and sea-duty, leaving only 32 rupees, or less than 3/4_d_. per pound, to be divided among all parties, from the Bombay seller to the Surat grower.

In 1847 I was in the House of Commons, and I brought forward a proposition for a select committee to inquire into this whole question; for in that year Lancas.h.i.+re was on the verge of the calamity that has now overtaken it; cotton was very scarce, for hundreds of the mills were working short time, and many were closed altogether. That committee reported that, in all the districts of Bombay and Madras where cotton was cultivated, and generally over those agricultural regions, the people were in a condition of the most abject and degraded pauperism; and I will ask you whether it is possible for a people in that condition to produce anything great, or anything good, or anything constant, which the world requires?

It is not to be wondered at that the quality of the cotton should be bad--so bad that it is ill.u.s.trated by an anecdote which a very excellent man of the Methodist body told me the other day. He said that at a prayer-meeting, not more than a dozen miles from where I live, one of the ministers was earnest in supplication to the Supreme; he detailed, no doubt, a great many things which he thought they were in want of, and amongst the rest, a supply of cotton for the famis.h.i.+ng people in that district. When he prayed for cotton, some man with a keen sense of what he had suffered, in response exclaimed, 'O Lord! but not Surat.'

Now, my argument is this, and my a.s.sertion is this, that the growth of cotton in India,--the growth of an article which was native and common in India before America was discovered by Europeans,--that the growth of that article has been systematically injured, strangled, and destroyed by the stupid and wicked policy of the Indian Government.

I saw, the other day, a letter from a gentleman as well acquainted with Indian affairs, perhaps, as any man in India,--a letter written to a member of the Madras Government,--in which he stated his firm opinion that, if it had not been for the Bombay Committee in 1846, and for my Committee in 1848, there would not have been any cotton sent from India at this moment to be worked up in Lancas.h.i.+re. Now, in 1846, the quant.i.ty of cotton coming from India had fallen to 94,000 bales. How has it increased since then? In 1859 it had reached 509,000 bales; in 1860, 562,000 bales; and last year, owing to the extraordinarily high price, it had reached 986,000 bales, and I suppose this year will be about the same as last year.

I think, in justification of myself and of some of those with whom I have acted, I am ent.i.tled to ask your time for a few moments, to show you what has been not so much done as attempted to be done to improve this state of things; and what has been the systematic opposition that we have had to contend with. In the year 1847, I moved for that Committee, in a speech from which I shall read one short extract. I said that, 'We ought not to forget that the whole of the cotton grown in America is produced by slave labour, and this, I think, all will admit,-- that, no matter as to the period in which slavery may have existed, abolished it will ultimately be, either by peaceable means or by violent means. Whether it comes to an end by peaceable means or otherwise, there will in all probability be an interruption to the production of cotton, and the calamity which must in consequence fall upon a part of the American Union will be felt throughout the manufacturing districts of this country.'

The committee was not refused;--Governments do not always refuse committees; they do not much fear them on matters of this kind; they put as many men on as the mover of the committee does, and sometimes more, and they often consider a committee, as my honourable Colleague will tell you, rather a convenient way of burying an unpleasant question, at least for another session. The committee sat during the session of 1848, and it made a report, from which I shall quote, not an extract, but the sense of an extract. The evidence was very extensive, very complete, and entirely condemnatory of the whole system of the Indian Government with regard to the land and agricultural produce, and one might have hoped that something would have arisen from it, and probably something has arisen from it, but so slowly that you have no fruit,--nothing on which you can calculate, even up to this hour.

Well, in 1850, as nothing more was done, I thought it time to take another step, and I gave notice of a motion for the appointment of a Royal Commission to go to India for the express purpose of ascertaining the truth of this matter, I moved, 'That a Royal Commission proceed to India to inquire into the obstacles which prevent the increased growth of cotton in India, and to report upon any circ.u.mstance which may injuriously affect the economical and industrial condition of the native population, being cultivators of the soil, within the Presidencies of Madras and Bombay.'

Now I shall read you one extract from my speech on that occasion, which refers to this question of peril in America. I said, 'But there is another point, that, whilst the production of cotton in the United States results from slave labour, whether we approve of any particular mode of abolis.h.i.+ng slavery in any country or not, we are all convinced that it will be impossible in any country, and most of all in America, to keep between two and three millions of the population permanently in a state of bondage. By whatever means that system is to be abolished, whether by insurrection,--which I should deplore,--or by some great measure of justice from the Government,--one thing is certain, that the production of cotton must be interfered with for a considerable time after such an event has taken place; and it may happen that the greatest measure of freedom that has ever been conceded may be a measure the consequence of which will inflict mischief upon the greatest industrial pursuit that engages the labour of the operative population of this country.'

Now, it was not likely the Government could pay much attention to this, for at that precise moment the Foreign Office--then presided over by Lord Palmerston--was engaged with an English fleet in the waters of Greece, in collecting a bad debt for one Don Pacifico, a Jew, who made a fraudulent demand on the Greek Government for injuries said to have been committed upon him in Greece. Notwithstanding this, I called upon Lord John Russell, who was then the Prime Minister, and asked him whether he would grant the Commission I was going to move for. I will say this for him, he appeared to agree with me that it was a reasonable thing. I believe he saw the peril, and that my proposition was a proper one, but he said he wished he could communicate with Lord Dalhousie. But it was in the month of June, and he could not do that, and hear from him again before the close of the session. He told me that Sir John Hobhouse, then President of the India Board, was very much against it; and I answered, 'Doubtless he is, because he speaks as the mouthpiece of the East India Company, against whom I am bringing this inquiry.'

Well, my proposition came before the House, and, as some of you may recollect, it was opposed by the President of the India Board, and the Commission was consequently not granted. I had seen Sir Robert Peel,-- this was only ten days before his death,--I had seen Sir Robert Peel, acquainted as he was with Lancas.h.i.+re interests, and had endeavoured to enlist him in my support. He cordially and entirely approved of my motion, and he remained in the House during the whole of the time I was speaking; but when Sir John Hobhouse rose to resist the motion, and he found the Government would not consent to it, he then left his seat, and left the House. The night after, or two nights after, he met me in the lobby; and he said he thought it was but right he should explain why he left the House after the conversation he had held with me on this question before. He said he had hoped the Government would agree to the motion, but when he found they would not, his position was so delicate with regard to them and his own old party, that he was most anxious that nothing should induce him, unless under the pressure of some great extremity, to appear even to oppose them on any matter before the House.

Therefore, from a very delicate sense of honour, he did not say what I am sure he would have been glad to have said, and the proposition did not receive from him that help which, if it had received it, would have surmounted all obstacles.

To show the sort of men who are made ministers--Sir John Hobhouse had on these occasions always a speech of the same sort. He said this: 'With respect to the peculiar urgency of the time, he could not say the honourable Gentleman had made out his case; for he found that the importation of cotton from all countries showed an immense increase during the last three years.' We know that the importation of cotton has shown an 'immense increase' almost every three years for the last fifty years. But it was because that increase was entirely, or nearly so, from one source, and that source one of extreme peril, that I asked for the inquiry for which I moved. He said he had a letter in his hand--and he shook it at me--from the Secretary of the Commercial a.s.sociation of Manchester, in which the directors of that body declared by special resolution that my proposition was not necessary, that an inquiry might do harm, and that they were abundantly satisfied with everything that these lords of Leadenhall-street were doing. He said, 'Such was the letter of the Secretary of the a.s.sociation, and it was a complete answer to the hon. Gentleman who had brought forward this motion.'

At this moment one of these gentlemen to whom I have referred, then President of the Board of Control, Governor of India, author, as he told a committee on which I sat, of the Affghan war, is now decorated with a Norman t.i.tle--for our masters even after a lapse of eight hundred years ape the Norman style--sits in the House of Peers, and legislates for you, having neglected in regard to India every great duty which appertained to his high office; and to show that it is not only cabinets and monarchs who thus distribute honours and rewards, the President of that Commercial a.s.sociation through whose instigation that letter was written is now one of the representatives of Manchester, the great centre of that manufacture whose very foundation is now crumbling into ruin.

But I was not, although discouraged, baffled. I went down to the Chamber of Commerce in Manchester, and along with Mr. Bazley, then the President of the Chamber, I believe, and Mr. Henry Ashworth, who is now the President of that Chamber, and many others, we determined to have a Commission of Inquiry of our own. We raised a subscription of more than 2,000_l_.; we selected a gentleman--Mr. Alexander Mackay, the author of one of the very best books ever written by an Englishman upon America, _The Western World_--and we invited him to become our Commissioner, and, unfortunately for him, he accepted the office. He went to India, he made many inquiries, he wrote many interesting reports; but, like many others who go to India, his health declined; he returned from Bombay, but he did not live to reach home.

We were greatly disappointed at this on public grounds, besides our regret for the loss of one of so much private worth. Some of us, Mr.

Bazley particularly, undertook the charge of publis.h.i.+ng these reports, and a friend of Mr. Mackay's, now no longer living, undertook the editors.h.i.+p of them, and they were published in a volume called _Western India_; and that volume received such circulation as a work of that nature is likely to have.

In the year 1853 there came the proposition for the renewal of the East India Company's charter. I opposed that to the utmost of my power in the House of Commons, and some of you will recollect I came down here with Mr. Danby Seymour, the Member for Poole, a gentleman well acquainted with Indian affairs, and attended a meeting in this very hall, to denounce the policy of conferring the government of that great country for another twenty years upon a Company which had so entirely neglected every duty belonging to it except one--the duty of collecting taxes. In 1854, Colonel Cotton--now Sir Arthur Cotton, one of the most distinguished engineers in India--came down to Manchester. We had a meeting at the Town Hall, and he gave an address on the subject of opening the G.o.davery River, in order that it might form a mode of transit, cheap and expeditious, from the cotton districts to the north of that river; and it was proposed to form a joint-stock company to do it, but unfortunately the Russian war came on and disturbed all commercial projects, and made it impossible to raise money for any--as some might call it--speculative purpose, like that of opening an Indian river.

Well, in 1857 there came the mutiny. What did our rulers do then? Sir Charles Wood, in 1538, had made a speech five hours long, most of it in praise of the government of the East India Company. In 1858--at the opening of the session in 1858, I think--the Government brought in a Bill to abolish that Company, and to establish a new form of government for India. That was exactly what we asked them to do in 1853; but, as in everything else, nothing is done until there comes an overwhelming calamity, when the most obtuse and perverse is driven from his position.

In 1858 that Bill pa.s.sed, under the auspices of Lord Stanley. It was not a Bill such as I think Lord Stanley approved when he was not a Minister; it was not a Bill such as I believe he would have brought in if he had been permitted by the House and the Cabinet to have brought in a better Bill. It abolished the East India Company, established a new Council, and left things to a great extent much in the same state as they were.

During the discussion of that Bill, I made a speech on Indian affairs, which I believe goes to the root of the matter. I protested then as now against the notion of governing one hundred and fifty millions of people--twenty different nations, with twenty different languages--from a little coterie of rulers in the city of Calcutta. I proposed that the country should be divided into five or six separate, and, as regards each other, independent Presidencies of equal rank, with a governor and council in each, and each government corresponding with, and dependent upon, and responsible to, a Secretary of State in this country. I am of opinion that if such a Government were established, one in each Presidency, and if there was a first-cla.s.s engineer, with an efficient staff, whose business should be to determine what public works should be carried on, some by the Government and some by private companies--I believe that ten years of such judicious labours would work an entire revolution in the condition of India; and if it had been done when I first began to move in this question, I have not the smallest doubt we might have had at this moment any quant.i.ty of cotton whatever that the mills of Lancas.h.i.+re require.

Well, after this, I am afraid some of my friends may feel, and my opponents will say, that it is very egotistical in me to have entered into these details. But I think, after this recapitulation, I am at liberty to say I am guiltless of that calamity which has fallen upon us.

And I may mention that some friends of mine--Mr. John d.i.c.kinson, now Chairman of the Indian Reform a.s.sociation, Mr. Bazley, one of the members for Manchester, Mr. Ashworth, the President of the Chamber of Commerce of Manchester, and Mr. John Benjamin Smith, the Member for Stockport--present themselves at this moment to my eyes as those who have been largely instrumental in calling the attention of Parliament and of the country to this great question of the reform of our Government in India.

But I have been asked twenty, fifty times during the last twelve months, 'Why do you not come out and say something? Why can you not tell us something in this time of our great need?' Well, I reply, 'I told you something when speaking was of use; all I can say now is this, or nearly all, that a hundred years of crime against the negro in America, and a hundred years of crime against the docile natives of our Indian empire, are not to be washed away by the penitence and the suffering of an hour.'

But what is our position? for you who are subscribing your money here have a right to know. I believe the quant.i.ty of cotton in the United States is at this moment much less than many people here believe, and that it is in no condition to be forwarded and exported. And I suspect that it is far more probable than otherwise, notwithstanding some of the strange theories of my honourable Colleague, that there never will again be in America a crop of cotton grown by slave labour. You will understand--I hope so, at least--that I am not undertaking the office of prophet, I am not predicting; I know that everything which is not absolutely impossible may happen, and therefore things may happen wholly different to the course which appears to me to be likely. But I say, taking the facts as they are before us--with that most limited vision which is given to mortals--the high probability is that there will never be another considerable crop, or one available for our manufactories, from slave labour in the United States.

We read the American papers, or the quotations from them in our own papers, but I believe we can form no adequate conception of the disorganization and chaos that now prevail throughout a great portion of the Southern States. It is natural to a state of war under the circ.u.mstances of society in that region. But then we may be asked, What are our sources of supply, putting aside India? There is the colony of Queensland, where enthusiastic persons tell you cotton can be grown worth 3_s_. a pound. True enough; but when labour is probably worth 10_s_. a-day, I am not sure you are likely to get any large supply of that material we so much want, at a rate so cheap that we shall be likely to use it. Africa is pointed to by a very zealous friend of mine; but Africa is a land of savages, and with its climate so much against European const.i.tutions, I should not entertain the hope that any great relief at any early period can be had from that continent. Egypt will send us 30,000 or 40,000 bales more than last year; in all probability Syria and Brazil, with these high prices, will increase their production to some considerable extent; but I believe there is no country at present from which you can derive any very large supply, except you can get it from your own dependencies in India. Now if there be no more cotton to be grown for two, or three, or four years in America, for our supply, we shall require, considering the smallness of the bales and the loss in working up the cotton--we shall require nearly 6,000,000 of additional bales to be supplied from some source.

I want to put to you one question. It has taken the United States twenty years, from 1840 up to 1860, to increase their growth of cotton from 2,000,000 bales to 4,000,000. How long will it take any other country, with comparatively little capital, with a thousand disadvantages which America did not suffer from--how long will it take any other country, or all other countries, to give us 5,000,000 or 6,000,000 additional bales of cotton? There is one stimulus--the only one that I know of; and although I have not recommended it to the Government, and I know not precisely what sacrifice it would entail, yet I shall mention it, and I do it on the authority of a gentleman to whom I have before referred, who is thoroughly acquainted with Indian agriculture, and whose family have been landowners and cultivators in India for sixty years. He says there is only one mode by which you can rapidly stimulate the growth of cotton in India, except that stimulus coming from the high prices for the time being,--he says that, if the Government would make a public declaration that for five years they would exempt from land-tax all land which during that time shall grow cotton, there would be the most extraordinary increase in the growth of that article which has ever been seen in regard to any branch of agriculture in the world.

I do not know how far that would act, but I believe the stimulus would be enormous,--the loss to the Government in revenue would be something, but the deliverance to the industry of Lancas.h.i.+re, if it succeeded, as my friend thinks, would of course be speedy, and perhaps complete. Short of this, I look upon the restoration of the prosperity of Lancas.h.i.+re as distant. I believe this misfortune may entail ruin upon the whole working population, and that it may gradually engulf the smaller traders and those possessing the least capital. I do not say it will, because, as I have said, what is not impossible may happen,--but it may for years make the whole factory property of Lancas.h.i.+re almost entirely worthless.

Well, this is a very dismal look-out for a great many persons in this country; but it comes, as I have said,--it comes from that utter neglect of their opportunities and their duties which has distinguished the Government of India.

Now, Sir, before I sit down I shall ask you to listen to me for a few moments on the other branch of this great question, which refers to that sad tragedy which is pa.s.sing before our eyes in the United States of America. I shall not, in consequence of anything you have heard from my hon. Friend, conceal from you any of the opinions which I hold, and which I proposed to lay before you if he had not spoken. Having given to him, notwithstanding some diversity of opinion, a fair and candid hearing, I presume that I shall receive the same favour from those who may differ from me. If I had known that my hon. Friend was going to make an elaborate speech on this occasion, one of two things I should have done: I should either have prepared myself entirely to answer him, or I should have decided not to attend a meeting where there could by any possibility of chance have been anything like discord between so many-- his friends and my friends--in this room.

Since I have been Member for Birmingham, Mr. Scholefield has treated me with the kindness of a brother. Nothing could possibly be more generous and more disinterested in every way than his conduct towards me during these several years, and therefore I would much rather--far rather--that I lost any opportunity like this of speaking on this question, than I would have come here and appeared to be at variance with him. But I am happy to say that this great question does not depend upon the opinion of any man in Birmingham, or in England, or anywhere else. And therefore I could--anxious always, unless imperative duty requires, to avoid even a semblance of difference--I could with a clear conscience have abstained from coming to and speaking at this meeting.

But I observe that my hon. Friend endeavoured to avoid committing himself to what is called sympathy with the South. He takes a political view of this great question,--is disposed to deal with the matter as he would have dealt with the case of a colony of Spain or Portugal revolting in South America, or of Greece revolting from Turkey. I should like to state here what I once said to an eminent American. He asked me if I could give him an idea of the course of public opinion in this country from the moment we heard of the secession of the Cotton States; and I endeavoured to trace it in this way,--and I ask you to say whether it is a fair and full description.

I said--and my hon. Friend has admitted this--that when the revolt or secession was first announced, people here were generally against the South. n.o.body thought then that the South had any cause for breaking up the integrity of that great nation. Their opinion was, and what people said, according to their different politics in this country was, 'They have a Government which is mild, and not in any degree oppressive; they have not what some people love very much, and what some people dislike,-- they have not a costly monarchy, and an aristocracy, creating and living on patronage. They have not an expensive foreign policy; a great army; a great navy; and they have no suffering millions discontented and endeavouring to overthrow their Government;--all which things have been said against Governments in this country and in Europe a hundred times within our own hearing,'--and therefore, they said, 'Why should these men revolt?'

But for a moment the Was.h.i.+ngton Government appeared paralyzed. It had no army and no navy; everybody was traitor to it. It was paralyzed and apparently helpless; and in the hour when the government was transferred from President Buchanan to President Lincoln, many people--such was the unprepared state of the North, such was the apparent paralysis of everything there--thought there would be no war; and men shook hands with each other pleasantly, and congratulated themselves that the disaster of a great strife, and the mischief to our own trade, might be avoided. That was the opinion at that moment, so far as I can recollect, and could gather at the time, with my opportunities of gathering such opinion. They thought the North would acquiesce in the rending of the Republic, and that there would be no war.

Well, but there was another reason. They were told by certain public writers in this country that the contest was entirely hopeless, as they have been told lately by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I am very happy that, though the Chancellor of the Exchequer is able to decide to a penny what shall be the amount of taxes to meet public expenditure in England, he cannot decide what shall be the fate of a whole continent.

It was said that the contest was hopeless, and why should the North continue a contest at so much loss of blood and treasure, and at so great a loss to the commerce of the whole world? If a man thought--if a man believed in his heart that the contest was absolutely hopeless--no man in this country had probably any right to form a positive opinion one way or the other--but if he had formed that opinion, he might think, 'Well, the North can never be successful; it would be much better that they should not carry on the war at all; and therefore I am rather glad that the South should have success, for by that the war will be the sooner put an end to.' I think this was a feeling that was abroad.

Now I am of opinion that, if we judge a foreign nation in the circ.u.mstances in which we find America, we ought to apply to it our own principles. My hon. Friend has referred to the question of the Trent. I was not here last year, but I heard of a meeting--I read in the papers of a meeting held in reference to that affair in this very hall, and that there was a great diversity of opinion. But the majority were supposed to indorse the policy of the Government in making a great demonstration of force. And I think I read that at least one minister of religion took that view from this platform. I am not complaining of it.

But I say that if you thought when the American captain, even if he had acted under the commands of his Government, which he had not, had taken two men most injurious and hostile to his country from the deck of an English s.h.i.+p--if you thought that on that ground you were justified in going to war with the Republic of North America, then I say you ought not to be very nice in judging what America should do in circ.u.mstances much more onerous than those in which you were placed.

Now, take as an ill.u.s.tration the Rock of Gibraltar. Many of you have been there, I dare say. I have; and among the things that interested me were the monkeys on the top of it, and a good many people at the bottom, who were living on English taxes. Well, the Rock of Gibraltar was taken and retained by this country when we were not at war with Spain, and it was retained contrary to every law of morality and honour. [A Voice: 'No! No!'] No doubt the Gentleman below is much better acquainted with the history of it than I am, but I may suggest to him that very likely we have read two different histories. But I will let this pa.s.s, and I will a.s.sume that it came into the possession of England in the most honourable way, which is, I suppose, by regular and acknowledged national warfare.

Suppose, at this moment, you heard, or the English Government heard, that Spain was equipping expeditions, by land and sea, for the purpose of retaking that fortress and rock. Now, although it is not of the slightest advantage to any Englishman living, excepting to those who have pensions and occupations upon it; although every Government knows it, and although more than one Government has been anxious to give it up, and I hope this Government will send my friend, Mr. Cobden, to Madrid, with an offer that Gibraltar shall be ceded to Spain, as being of no use to this country, and only embittering, as statesmen have admitted, the relations between Spain and England,--and if he were to go to Madrid with an offer of the Rock of Gibraltar, I believe he might obtain a commercial treaty with Spain, that would admit every English manufacture and every article of English produce into that country at a duty of not more than ten per cent.;--I say, do you not think that, if you heard that Spain was about to retake that useless rock, mustering her legions and her fleets, the English Government would combine all the power of this country to resist it?