The Press. — London, England, 1857-07-18 00:00:00

THE MILITIA. Lord PALMERSTON, in reply to Mr. Disraeli, said, unless the Government saw reaon to change their minds from considerations arising out of the state of things in India, thoy did not think it desirable to call out the militia. TIIC PERSIAN WAR. Mr. ROEBUCK rose to move the following resolu tions : That the war with Persia was declared, prosecuted, and concluded without information of such transactions being communicated to Parliament; while expensive armaments were equipped without the sanction of a vote of this house. _ _ . . . That it is the opinion of this house that such conduct tends to weaken its just authority, and to dispense with its constitutional control over the finances of the country ; and renders it requisite for this house to express its strong reprobation of such a course of proceeding. Mr. Roelm:,k, alluding to the Persian blue-book, said the papers began as early as the year 1851, when the British Government supposed that the Persian Government had designs upon Herat which were inimical to English interests. From 1851 to 1857 negotiations were carried on with the Persian Govern ment, and not until December, 1850, did the English Government think it. requisite to take such steps with regard to the Government of Persia as should lead to war. In December, 1850, the Governor-General of India issued a proclamation equivalent to a decia• ration of war No means were taken to call this house together, and things went on. War was declared against Persia, and then began a system which has led, as I believe, to the disasters we are now suffering in India. Our forces were taken from India and directed against Persia. lam told— ] do not know how correctly—that the Government was warned on that occasion that denuding India of the forces of England would endanger the very existence of our Indian empire. I must call to the recollection of the house and of the noble lord the prophecies—if I may so call them—of Sir Charles Napier many years ago upon this matter. He pointed out to the Government of India, and through the Government of India to the Government of England, that there were causes which should alarm all foreseeing Ministers with regard to the army of India, and he took steps which he thought precautionary to prevent mischief arising on that occasion. Those steps incurred the displeasure of the then Governor General, Lord Dal honsie. Sir C. Napier resigned, but his warning remained. Lord Dalhousie returned home, and Lord Canning went to India lam told—l do not know how correctly—that the demands made on him for forces to be directed towards Persia raised in Lord Canning's mind such alarm that he communicated that alarm to the Government of this country, and not only did he do so, but I am told that the commander-in-chief did the same, and that the Government of this country was fully aware of the danger likely to arise if India were denuded of roops. The safety of our Indian empire was the safety of England, and therefore the proceedings entered upon were of the gravest nature, yet the war was undertaken, carried on, and concluded without leave of Parliament, the first intimation that Parliament received of the circumstance being the demand to pay the bill. Had anything of the kind ever taken place belore ? The house had been entirely passed over in this affair, and he maintained that it had a right to inquire into the principles upon which the expedition had been undertaken, for which the expenses it was to be called upon to vote had been incurred. Ho affirmed that a more contemp. • thous mode of proceeding had never been adopted by the Minister since the house had been a House of Commons, and he asked whether the house was prepared to undergo such an insult. The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER replied that the war had been undertaken upon the occupation of Herat by Persia. Now, it was a cardinal point in our policy that Herat should not be permitted to fall into the hands of Persia, for Persia was a weak cluntry, and in point of fact " a vassal kingdom of Russia ;" and as England and Russia had rival interests in Central Asia, the independence of that portion of territory intervening between Persia and our Indian frontier was indispensable. Hence the necessity and the policy of the late Persian expedi tion. In reply to Mr. Roebuck's objection, that no special communication had been made to Parliament upon the subject of the ivar, he observed that none had been made on the former expedition in 1838 to Karrak and linshire, there being no doubt of the prerogative of the Crown to declare war, and of the right of the Governor General of India to commence hostilities in the East. He was at a loss, therefore, lie said, to know how Mr. Roebuck could maintain that there had been any irregularity committed, or the smallest disrespect offered to Parliament. Ile denied that the events in India could be connected, as Mr. Roebuck had attempted to do, with the with drawal of troops from India to the Persian Gulf : Tiler* is nothing better established in the accounts which have reached us than that the mutinous spirit has been confined to the Bengal army, and that whatever the causes—at present imperfectly explained—they appear to be peculiar to the army of Bengal and the north western provinces. That bad spirit seems to spring from some THE PRESS, JULY 18,1857. sudden impulse affecting the feelings and sentiments of the native soldiery ; but whatever the causes may be, they do not appear to be ccmmon to the troops of the presi• dencies of Bombay and Madras. Mr. BarrllE assumed as a fact that money had been expended in the Persian war without the con sent of Parliament. He then considered what was the real object of the war, which he contended was the dismissal of the Sadr Azim, the Persian Minister, all other demands having been conceded at Con stantinople by Farouk Khan, and this object had not been attained. Mr. DANDY SEYMOUR and Mr. WILLOUORDY sup ported the Government. Sir W. WILLIAMS said, on the authority of his Eastern experience, the Asiatic everywhere weighed the military power of Russia with the naval power of Eng!and, and talked almost continually of the possibility of Russia invading India : That idea was also inculcated on the minds of the people by every Russian agent who visited their territory, and it was said by those emissaries that Russia wonld establish herself in India step by step, and that one of those steps would be the capture of Herat. From these premises the gallant general came rapidly to the conclusion that the best way to check Russia was to attack the only intervening power be tween her and our frontier. Lord JOHN RUSSELL declared that ho never before heard of so short a cut in logic as this. lie should rather believe that under such circumstances it was our interest to support and strengthen Persia than to weaken her. The questions raised by Mr. Roebuck were two—first, as to the control of the house over grants of money; and, secondly, the policy of the Persian war. With regard to the first, the house having been in a great measure a consenting party, and although ho did not think the Government altogether without blame, it did not amount to so grave a charge as to render it necessary for the house to come to so strong a resolution. As to the second question, he believed that as good a conven tion might have been had as we had got without a war, upon the basis of the concessions made by Farouk Khan at Constantinople, or by the means of temperate diplomatic discussions. Mr. WALPOLE said it was clear from the papers that the Government had actually incurred expenses on account of this war long before any announce ment was made to Parliament, which ought to have been called together as soon as any expenditure had been resolved upon. This was a constitutional question of the greatest magnitude, and the house bad a right to ask from the Government some more satisfactory information than it had hitherto received : The only justification of the conduct of the Govern ment which I have heard consisted of a statement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to the effect that in former Indian wars no announcement was made to Parliament, and that in the late war with Persia the Government lid lowed these precedents. But i defy the Chancellor of the Exchequer or any other member of the Government to point out to me a time when that course was adopted in the case of a war which was not, in fact, an Indian war, for which the instructions proceeded from the Home Go vernment, and of which the proclamation, when made by the Governor General in Calcutta, was expressly stated to be midi pursuant to directions from EnOand. Why, the very agreement which you said had been violated was not entered into by the Indian Government with Persia, but by an accredited agent of the mother country ; and it may be asserted, indeed, that every circumstance connected with the late war takes it out of that class of cases in which Indian wars have been undertaken for Indian put , poses, by Indian authorities, and at Indian expense. Mr. V. &Arm insisted upon the right of the Crown to declare war without informing Parliamentjustified the necessity of the late war and the policy of the Government towards Persia, and denied that the persistence of the Government in demanding of Fetouk Khan, when at Constantinople, the dismissal by the Shah of his Prime Minister, Sadr A zim, was the proximate cause of the war. Ferouk Khan was not then in possession of fnll powers to treat. Mr. GLADSTONE, who was received with loud cheers, protested against the extravagant language used by the members of the Government as regarded the intentions of ltussia It is not wise, I say, to proclaim that the object of Russia is the destruction of our Indian empire by encroach• ment through Atfghanistan. If I have the least under standing of right government, I think that the power of England is so great. and it is so firmly based, that we have nothing to fear so long as we exercise that power with moderation and justice. But if, on the other hand, we encourage extravagant theories—if we raise imaginary dangers, those dangers, from being imaginary, may become real, and may assume gigantic dimensions; and then, indeed, the difficulties and dangers so created may be such es may exhaust the almost inexhaustible resources of this ,untry. Arriving, at the question of the policy of the Persian war, the right lion. gentleman distinctly proved by extracts from the blue-book that in Dec., 1856, not only was the dismissal of Sadr Azim included in the British ultimatum, but that on the 16th Decem ber, 1856, Lord Clarendon wrote to Lord Stratford directing him to " insist " upon the dismissal of Sadr A zim, and that the negotiations then pending were admittedly broken off by Lord Stratford, who wrote, saying that his functions were virtually brought to a close by the receipt of the instructions of the 10th of December, and continued : This conclusion was the more evident, as the latest newspapers received from India had published the Go vernor-General's formal declaratlon of hostilities against Persia, issued on the Ist of November, under instructions from her Majesty's Government. As to the constitutional question of the case, the authority of Parliament would be greatly curtailed if whatever could be done by a Minister by means of an Indian army and an Indian Executive might be begun, continued, and ended, without the assent of Parliament; and he denied that the Persian war ought to be exempt from the control of Parliament, because the war was not in any sense an Indian war. No man could deny but that it was one of that group of questions surrounding the position of Russia in the East. Adverting, however, to the fact that the circumstances referred to in the first resolution occurred prior to the dissolution, he was willing to waive pressing home that resolution provided he had a security that the liberties and privileges of that house were guaranteed against the formidable dangers involved in the precedent. Lord PAIMERSTON declared that the Constitution vested in the Crown the prerogative and discretion of war and peace, with this reserve, that when the advisers of the Crown felt it to be their duty to counsel war or peace they were bound to take the earliest opportunity of communicating the fact to Parliament; and this had been done in the present case. With regard to the present case the noble lord said, " I freely admit that it does involve a ques tion which Parliament is well entitled to have ex plained to them, and which, if left open to any interpretation that might be put upon it, would perhaps be turned into a precedent which might be attended with injurious consequences in future," and confessed that the only llche of the Govern ment, "if ladle it was," consisted in their not summoning Parliament sometime between the middle of January, after the Christmas holidays, and the :3rd of February, the day on which the house met. The noble lord then ridiculed the indignation of Mr. Roebuck, who appeared to have brooded over the matter from February to July, and concluded by a justification of our Persian policy in every respect. Mr. DisnAELI said we hail at least derived one advantage from the discussion, in receiving the mature and solemn opinion of the Government on the cause of the present condition of our Indian empire:— The Chancellor of the Exchequer has informed us that India at the present moment is suffering only from a momentary and unexpected impulse arising from supersti tious causes. This insurrection, which extends from the Punjaub to Calcutta, is, according to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the creation of merely a sudden impulse. I can hardly believe that such a grave consequence has arisen from so accidental a cause. I should hardly believe that that is the cause, especially in respect to our Indian army, which by its education and interests, and by every motive which can influence the loyalty of men, ow , lit to be moat devoted to our Government. I cannot believe that it should be suddenly found in a state of insurrection on account of the cause alleged by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I must be permitted to say that I believe the cause of the present state of I ndia is much graver and deeper than appears to he conceived by her Majesty's Ministers. I believe the present state of India has been occasioned by long years of misgovernment ; and if it be the opinion of her Majesty's Ministers that the condition of India is attribut able to such temporary and unexpected causes as were alleged by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I should have much less confidence than I would willingly entertain with regard to the remedial measures they have proposed, and the further measures which I trust they are prepared to submit to Parliament. (Hear, hear.) 'fhe right hon. gentleman then, referring to the resolutions before the house, maintained that, though expressed in strong language, they embodied a con stitutional principle. Yet Mr. Roebuck had been vituperated and charged with taking an un-English course : The first Lord of the Treasury, speaking of the Shall of Persia, said he had a habit of boasting in his Durbar. Well, there are other great men who boast in places which we were once fain to hope were almost as august as the Durbar cf a I'ersian king of kings--(laugliter)—bitt if the policy the noble lord recommends were pursued I think the influence of Par liament would be so much diminished that we might, per haps, have to veil our glories before the superior authority of a Persian sovereign. The noble lord, having been cc cased of being a most popular Minister, yields to the soft im. peachment, and in the Persian style says, " True it is, I am niost popular ( laughter, followed by cheers from the Ministerial side) ; true it is that I possess the confidence of the country, but what is the cause? (Cheers from the Ministerial side.) I know why I possess the confi dence of the country. It is," said the noble lord to the hon. and learned member for Sheffield, "in consequence of • 696