The Press. — London, England, 1854-12-23 00:00:00

1214 present need, while the new recruits raised at home were becoming seasoned and trained into fitness for service. Of the allegation that the country or the army would be de graded by the co-operation of a foreign legion, he made small account. In former wars foreigners had been em bodied with our own troops, and shared their glory, without disparagement CO either party. France also gave us an example, holding in her pay, and employing in the present contest, a legion consisting entirely of strangers. In other armies, and especially in the Turkish and Rus sian military system, aliens entered as a very considerable element, multitudes even among the officers of high rank not being natives of the country where they had taken service. During a conflict so serious as we had now under taken aid from every quarter was valuable; and he sub mitted that no valid reason had been shown for refusing it from the sources opened by the bill now before the house. Mr. Herbert concluded by assuring the house that if the measure were thus rejected, Ministers, after this sign that they had forfeited the confidence of Parliament, could not consent to retain the responsi bility of conducting the war. Lord STANLEY adverted to the suspicious mystery and haste with which the measure had been intro • duced and urged upon the Legislature : What were the circumstances under which this bill was brought forward ? Not the slightest intimation was given of any such bill in the Royal Speech, and that speech cer tainly was not overburdened with a multiplicity of matters. (Hear, hear, hear.) Considering that this measure was one which the people of this country did not think unim• portant, the manner in which it had been introduced was calculated to excite a suspicion that th s was an at tempt to smuggle it through Parliament before the country at large had time to consider it—teheera)—and to extort by a rote of that house, in a time of panic and emergency, a parliamentary sanction to that which the deliberate judg ment of the nation would reject. (Hear, hear.) Remarking upon the unquestionable " originality" of . . the proposition now made, he proceeded to inquire into its necessity. Such a course, he admitted, might be necessary it' war had broken out suddenly, in the midst of a profound peace. But had Ministers no warning? For more than eighteen months before hostilities broke out it was obvious to every man in the country that British troops would probably be required abroad. Nor could it be said that there was any want of public spirit in the country. No man could say that who knew, as be knew, the readiness with which labouring men subscribed to the Patriotic Fund, or the ardour with which they enlisted. Still less could it be pretended that our home resources were not ample for all demands. It was ridiculous to argue that a population of twenty-six millions could be exhausted in furnishing an army of two hundred thousand men. Referring to Mr. Herbert's statement that the British recruit was too young, he declared that the Germans would be too old, having passed the age of service in their own armies, and almost attained that at which the British soldier generally obtained his discharge. If the addition of 10,000 men to the force in the Crimea was really found to be of such consequence, he suggested that they should be subsidised from our French ally as a far preferable alternative to hiring unattached mercenaries. The moral effect of the measure, he thought, would be disastrous. It would be said abroad that the war was unpopular—that English men would not fight—and that we were driven to our last resource of hiring the service of foreigners. The policy of hiring foreigners at all was doubtful ; it could only be justified by necessity, and the neces sity had not been proved in the present instance. In conclusion, the noble lc.rd questioned the patriotism of the Ministers who, after all they had permitted and ordered, could now threaten to resign if not allowed to hire a few thousand foreign mercenaries : The house need not look back beyond the experience of the last session to find that Ministerial defeats upon im portant measures did not necessarily imply Ministerial resignation. ( Opposition cheers.) The Government could give up reform, they could give up education, they could give up every measure which they had promised in the Queen's Speech, and for which they had claimed an antici patory triumph; all that was nothing; but if 10,000 Ger man mercenaries were refused, it was a reason for resig• nation. (Renewed chee►inng.) He had no wish to embarrass the Government by any vote which he should give. They had taken in hand the conduct of this war. The plans of the war were theirs ; and it was infinitely better on all accounts that there should not be a divided responsibility, and that they should carry it on ; but when the right him. gentleman the Secretary•at-War said, " I claim the right to resign if I am beaten,' he (Lord Stanley) had a word to say. He did not doubt the right of any man to consult his own honour if he thought it offended, but he did say that, whether that right existed or not, it was not a patriotic course—it was not a public-spirited course for a Minister to say, " If you assert that I have made a mistake—if you don't admit me infallible in every respect—l shall resign." (Cheers.) He thought he recollected something of the circumstances under which the political party now at the head of affairs received power. One distinguishing prin ciple which the party to which the Secretary-at-War belongs laid down with great eloquence, and by their enunciation of which they gained no small share of public respect, was—that at a moment of nationaldifiiculty, or when there were important public measures to be carried at any sacri fice on the part of individuals, any sacrifice—he would not say of political character, but a sacrifice verging very nearly upon that—was not only lawful but necessary in considers. THE PitESS. tion of the national interests. (Cheers.) He would not go into the question how far such a doctrine was admissible, but what he would say was, " If you are sincere, if you are in earnest in your principles, now is the time to show them. You have made mistakes ; your own organs in the press say so; your friends have been saying so in private for several months. It is not matter of dispute. Perse vere, and you will, I believe, raise a feeling ultimately fatal to your own tenure of power, and at this moment most dangerous to the community. But retract, admit for once that you are wrong, in the frankness and honesty of atone ment—and we can forget the folly of the design." (Cheers.) After a few words from Sir J. FITZGERALD in sup port of the bill, Lord PALMERSTON declared that he found it impos sible to reconcile the professions of anxiety to prose cute the war with vigour, lavished by the Opposition, with their present antagonism to the very first mea sure which the Government bad introduced for that purpose. Antiquated and obsolete arguments had been furbished up against a proposition which after all presented merely a copy of numerous precedents established in former conflicts. Other nations em. ployed foreign soldiers, and England might with the greater justice follow their example, inasmuch as she did not, like them, maintain a large standing army in time of peace, nor employ the compulsory agency of the conscription to recruit her military force. Our voluntary system doubtless produced in the end better soldiers, but the production required time, and the Government, having to compete with all other industrial employment when bidding for labour, found every augmentation of the army a slow and gradual process. The measure he contended had been misrepresented as being simply a mechanism for adding 10,000 men to the Crimean army. But in reality the only limit to the number would be the money voted for their maintenance by Parliament. To the accusation that the Government wrapped themselves in mystery and would not tell where they designed to obtain foreign levies, he replied, that any negotiations for enlisting recruits abroad, entered into without the sanction of Parliament, would really have been, what the measure itself had been untruly termed, altogether unconstitutional. By their memo rable gallantry the army before Sebastopol had deserved every mark of honour and regard ; and, as a part of what was due to them, they should receive support from every quarter whence we could find the possibility of obtaining it. Any neglect on this point would prove an unworthy abandonment of their duty by the Government or the Legislature : We had engaged in a great war, with a great power, for great objects—(cheers)—and it is not becoming this country—it is not suited either to the interests of this country or to the honour of this country, that we should end that war by a small and insignificant result. (Cheers.) To obtain the result that would be adequate to the im portance and attitude of the contest—to obtain a result that would be in conformity with the interests and feelings of the country requires a great force. (Cheers.) Do not let the house deceive itself in that respect. It is not by small detachments and insignificant forces. (Loud cheers from the Opposition.) I hope that cheer will be followed by a vote, and that it will be a vote in conformity with that cheer. (Loud cheers on the Ministerial benches.) I say, then, that the results which alone will be befitting the cir cumstances in which this country is placed require great and continued efforts. (Hear, hear.) We are making these efforts at home ; we have sent out to our brave army in the East every reinforcement which the national reserve affords. (Hear, hear.) The nation is our reserve, and we shall send out every reinforcement which that noble reserve, the British nation, may afford us—(cheers ) in sufficient numbers and sufficient condition to be useful and effectual in the field. But in a case of this sort every method is necessary to increase our force, and every addi tion that can be made to it will be valuable. Then it is the duty of the Government to ask of Parliament if they will at once give to them the power of making that in crease ; and I should be sorry indeed, in the condition in which the country stands, and the circumstances in which we are now placed, if the Government had shrunk from asking from Parliament, on their responsibility, such means as they think would enable them to add additional vigour and effect to the operations of the war ; and sorry as I should be to belong to the Government who had ab stained from doing that, I confess I should be still more sorry to find myself one of a majority of Parliament who had refused, under those circumstances, to carry out the very principles which they advocate. (Loud cheers from the Ministerial benches.) Mr. DISRAEIA vindicated the party with whom he acted from the charge of inconsistency. They fully concurred in the desire to prosecute the war effec tually, but opposed the present measure because they believed it in no way calculated to advance that ob jeut. On the other hand, he found the conduct of the Government inconsistent, in that they pleaded urgency and the gravity of the contest in defence of their bill, while they made no proportionate exer tions to develop our home res3urces in order to meet the exigency. On all previous occasions, he re marked, our foreign recruits had been raised among allied nations or in countries which we were actually defending at the time against a common enemy, and in no sense deserved the name of mercenaries:— The whole argument of the noble lord (J. Russell) to night has been founded upon this fallacy—that we were objecting to the measure before the house because we had a prejudice against Englishmen fighting by the side of foreigners. But that fallacy of the noble lord is very trilling when compared with the gross, and I may say dangerous, error which pervaded the rest of his argument. He imputes to us that we object to our soldiers fighting by the side of foreigners; our objection is simply to see them fighting by the side of foreigners who are condottieri and mercenaries, but we have no objection to their fighting by the side of foreigners who are allies. We admire the con. queror of Blenheim and Ramillies just as much as if the whole of his troops had been English. (Hear.) But throughout the whole of his speech the noble lord argued just as if there was no such nation as the French nation-- ( Hear, hear.)—just as if there was no such army as the French army—( cheers )—and as if that intimate alliance between the English and French troops, and that cordial friendship between the generals, to which he adverted so gracefully but a few evenings ago, were, in fact, dreams which he had forgotten immediately after the night on which he proposed the thanks of this house to the French and English armies. (Hear, hear.) If it be true, as the noble lord says, that there is on the part of a large portion of this house—that is, of gentlemen who sit on this side of the house—and in the country generally, a great prejudice against Englishmen fighting by the side of foreigners, how can the noble lord account for the not merely cordial sympathy and appreciation, but the absolute enthusiasm with which the English and French alliance is now viewed, not only iu this house, but in the country ? The noble lord says that hon. gentlemen must not think because we have despatched 04,000 men already to the seat of war that that force is sufficient to resist the power of this great Emperor of Russia. lam glad to hear that we have been able in the first year of the war to send out so many men, but I must remind the house that we did not send out these 54,000 men to carry on a single-handed contest with the Emperor of Russia. We sent them out to be companions in arms and comrades in glory of our great and gallant ally—(cheer.)—who was, we were always told, and whom we always believed to be, a first-rate military power. (Hear.) Surely the noble lord when be was calculating our resources to resist the Emperor of Russia—to use a word not very classical or elegant, but very commonly used of late—ignored the existence of the French nation and army, and he somewhat forgot that we possessed a most powerful military ally. (Hear.) 1 main tain that the noble lord, in taking that view of the case, misrepresented the spirit of this measure, and conveyed to the house and the country a totally false and fallacious view of the position which we occupy with regard to the resources at our disposal fur carrying on this war. (Hear.) Mr. Disraeli went on to remark that the single parallel to the present proposition to be discovered in English history was traced in that disgraceful chapter which related how the subjects of the Elector of Hesse were bought and sold for service in North America. Adverting to the precedents cited so copiously from the records of former wars, he contended that experience showed the almost utter uselessness of mercenary troops in the field, and read extracts from despatches proving how the Duke of Wellington objected to increase his army by the addition of men who had no attachment to the cause for which they were fighting except the pay : The Home Secretary has stated that the greatest com manders, the Emperor Napoleon amongst others, had had recourse to this method of sustaining their military strength, and had always approved of the expedient. Now, I will quote on this subject the opinion of a leader not second even to the first Napoleon—that of the Duke of Wellington. (Cheers.) Here is a passage from a letter of the Duke of Wellington to the Earl of Liverpool, dated January 19th, 1811, which shows the value of those troops who do not join our standard from sympathy of political character or political conviction. The Duke of Welling ton says : I am sorry to give you bad accounts of the Brunswick Legion. They continue to desert in large numbers, and on the night before last fourteen deserted to go to the enemy. Eleven were caught, one shot whilst making the attempt, and only two got off. (Hear, hear.) Again, on the 2.3 rd of April of the same year, the duke writes to General Graham, afterwards Lord Lynedoch : I attribute the disposition of all foreign troops to desert from our armies to the regularity of system and the strictness of discipline which characterises it, and which must be upheld in order to keep a British army in the field in a state of efficiency, and their desertion is frequently very Inconvenient as affording to the enemy the only information which he can acquire. Under these circuinstani.es 1 am not desirous of increasing the num ber of torcign troops serving with thisarmy. (Hear, hear.) In June of the same year I find the duke writing to Lord Liverpool Since the commencement of the siege of Badaj oz, fifty-two men of the Chasseurs Britanniques have deserted, though we had with the army only a selection of that corps tee, who are suspec ted, being left at Lisbon. (" Hear, hear," and laughter.) 1 am sure the house will excuse me fur reading these powerful passages from a work as to which, upon a subject like this, every one wishes his memory to be refreshed ; it is equivalent to having the advantage of the advice and counsel of the Duke of Wellington in the present debate, and therefore perhaps the house will allow me to read another letter of the duke to General Craufurd, in the year 1812 : In regard to General Ross's complaints of the inclination of Wetter)lle's regiment to desert, all general officers who have foreign troops under their command have the same cause to com plain. In the part of the arm under my command called British, there are between 13,M y ) and 7,000 of them who desert whenever they can get an opportunity. (Hear, hear.) Observe, these are the free lances who were spoken of. As regards the German Legion, 1 can only say I wish to speak of it with all that honour it deserves, and which it has earned in so many passages of our history. I will say nothing of all those brethren in arms who served us really because the interests of their country were bound up with