The Press.
London, England, 1855-03-17 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

been contradictory, and his actions more
opposite still. When Canning made his stand
against any intervention in Spain, Lord
Palmerston declared decisively against inter-
ference :
If Spain is divided, our interference is on principle
questionable; if she is united, our interference is un•

necessary.
Yet in the internal affairs of both Spain
and Portugal Lord Palmerston has been an
incessant meddler. In 1828 he drew what he
evidently intended as a broad line of dis-
tinction between interference with the pen
and the sword:—
One nation has no right to control by force of arms the
will of another nation in the choice of its government or
ruler lf by " interference" is meant inter-
ference by force of arms, such interference, the Govern-
ment are right in saying, " general principles and our own
practice forbade us to exert." But if by " interference' is
meant intermediling, and intermeddling in every way,
and to every extent short of actual military force, then I
must affirm, that there is nothing in such interference
which the law of nations may not in certain cases permit.
Of this distinction he seems to have been
not a little proud, as he repeated it in
1842 :
Interference is of two kinds, by friendly counsel and
advice, or by force of arms. It is no principle of the
present Government, nor ought it ever to be that of
any Government of this country, to interfere by force
of arms in the internal affeirs of other nations ; but i can-
not conceive it possible for any Government to profess
the principle of never interfering by friendly counsel and

advice.
The armed interference of England in Por-
tugal and Spain, two years later, and the
invasion of Affghanistan are the commentary
furnished by Lord Palmerston's conduct on
these opinions. When the civil wars in those
countries commenced, the author of " Foreign
Policy" states :
The English Government gave every encouragement to
the restless multitude who were so eager to fight the
battles of the Queens on the Peninsula.
The Quadruple Treaty followed :
By this treaty we engaged to assist the two regents of
Spain and Portugal with a naval force to establish the
power of their Governments throughout the Peninsula.
France agreed to do whatever might be thought necessary
to aid in this good work. Nothing was said about con•
stitutions in the treaty, though it was understood that
it was a constitutional alliance of the Four Courts.—Fureigoi
Policy, 184.
The British Legion in Spain, at a later date,
was another comment on Lord Palmerston's
doctrine of non-interference by force of arms.
The defence made for Lord Palmerston in this
volume is remarkable. It is said that had we
interfered in the affairs of Spain in 1822, when
France invaded that kingdom with an army
of two hundred thousand men (?), " we must
" have gone to war with both France and
" Spain," while in 1834 " there were no large
" armies to contend against, nor was it neces-
" sary for England to go to war." That is to
say, that principles are to be observed when it
would be dangerous to invade them, and
broken when they can be violated with safety.
Unwittingly the author of " Foreign Policy"
has here indicated the key to Lord Palmers-
ton's policy. He has intcrferred as much as
he could without incurring the hazard of
serious resistance, and while he has on the
most trivial occasions assumed a dictatorial
tone towards the weaker States of Europe, he
has sacrificed the rights of solemn treaties to
the greater powers, and suffered them to
assume an attitude irreconcileable with the
peace and security of the world. When he
has opposed their policy, it has been done by
stealth, as when, for instance, he sent guns
with the Tower brand upon them to the
Sicilian insurgents in 1848, and then endea-
voured to escape the consequences of his act
by disavowing it. The "judicious bottle-
" holding " of which he boasted to the Fins-
: bury deputation is perhaps the phrase which
most happily describes his foreign policy.
In his speech on the Hungarian war in
1849, while professing sympathy with the
Hungarian cause, and his desire to mediate
between the contending parties, he said
At the same time I am quite ready to admit that inter-
Nrence ought not to be carried to the extent of endanger-
ing our relations with other countries We are
not entitled to interfere in any manner that will commit
this country to embark in these hostilities.
His interference with other nations has, in
fact, been always regulated by the amount of
resistance he was likely to inset with,