The Press.
London, England, 1857-03-14 00:00:00

LORD DERBY'S SPEECH.

of many of that party to a creed which, with all respect
to its many amiable and virtuous professors, I cannot
as a Protestant and a member of the Church of
England but regard as religiously corrupt and
politically dangerous. (Hear.) I have therefore no
sympathy with the Tractarian party, and I conceive
that nothing would be more dangerous, nothing
more detrimental to the interests of the Church of
England than the preponderance of that party in the
Church. But because I entertain these opinions I
am not necessarily therefore to throw myself into
the other extreme ; I am not necessarily to associate
all my sympathies and all my feelings with those
who profess a degree of latitudinarianism and pseudo-
liberalism which leads them to fritter away, for the
purpose of establishing a wider basis and including
a larger number of persons within the folds of the
Church, those doctrines which the Reformed Church
of England has held to be essential and vital. (Hear,
hear.) I have the greatest respect for the labours
and the energies and the piety of many of the
Dissenters of this country. There is room enough,
God knows, for them and for the Church of
England, in the common combat agfinst vice, and
irreligion, and immorality—(Hear, hear)—and with
regard to them I say, with all my heart,
" they that are not against its are on our side," and
God speed them in the good work we are carrying on
together. But, I confess it, my sympathies, my
feelings, my affections are with that body of the Es-
tablished Church—and thank God, they are both
numerous and of weight and influence !—who, pre-
ferring the religion of the closet to the excitemelt of
the platform, with their Bible for their guide, with
the ancient Fathers of the Church and with the
modern lights of the Reformed Church as their com-
mentators and assistants, are more ready to inculcate
upon their hearers the practical precepts than the
abstruse doctrines of religion ; but who, nevertheless,
maintaining the bond of unity in the Church, and
maintaining it in the spirit of peace, are not precared
for the sake of a false peace and of a false union to
compliment away any of those which the Church up-
holds as its fundamental and essential doctrines.
(Cheers.) My lords, it is because those are my
opinions, and because they are the opinions I be-
lieve of a very large number of the well-thinking and
sound-thinking men of this country, that I regret
that her Majesty's Government should have thrown,
or should have appeared to throw (for I will not say
that they have thrown), or should be applauded for
having appeared to throw, the whole weight of their
influence and authority into one end of that scale
within which the wise latitude of the Church of
England allows a diversity of opinion. (Hear, hear.)
I am quite aware that these are topics which I
ought to apologise for introducing to your lordships,
and yet in this house I know that they will be ap •
proached with respect, with reverence, with candour,
and with fairness. But if I feel that these are topics
which ought hardly to be dealt with here, I ask, how
much less should they be made the subject of bitter
political contest in the crowded arena of the hustings,
in the exciting atmosphere of political strife, and
amid all the ribald jesting and cries which often dis-
tinguish these election saturnalia? My lords, I can-
not but say that for the sake of the Church, of the
Government, and of the country, it is most unfortu •
nate (if it be the fact) that the Government should
go to the country and appeal to the constituencies
upon such a question as that of the leaning of the
Ministry to one or the other of the different sections
into which, as I have said, the Church of England is
at present divided. I cannot conceive a more un-
happy subject of contest; I cannot conceive one
from the discussion of which more unmitigated evil
must follow. (Hear, hear.)

But, my lords, I go to topics which are less
foreign to the ordinary business of your lordships'
house. The question before the country is this :
" Has the noble viscount at the head of the Govern•
merit a claim to the confidence of the country?"
Before I answer that question I must look, as far as
I am able to judge, to what has been and whet is the
suppozed policy of the noble viscount.

With regard to his foreign policy, I am afraid I
shall be repeating what I have so often said before to
your lordships in expressing my want of confidence
in the discretion and the prudence with which the
foreign affairs of this country have been conducted
by the noble viscount. Ido not forget the events of
1848—(Hear, (hear)--I cannot forget the events of
1850, and the miserable affair to which I have lately
referred ; but passing by these, I look to the present
moment, and I see that the noble viscount continues,
not in the most dignified manner, all that mischie-
vous interference with the affairs of foreign countries
which I have so constantly deprecated here.
( Hear.) I do the noble viscount all justice. I
give him full credit for the manliness and the
courage with which in 1855 (certainly with the popu-
lar voice and approval in his favour) he accepted the
conduct of affairs and stepped forward as the adviser
of the Sovereign ; and I give him credit, together
with his colleagues, for bringing to an issue more or
less successful the war in which we were then en-
gaged. But, at the conclusion of that war, I must
say I cannot extend an unqualified approval either
to the terms upon which peace was concluded, or,
still less, to certain transactions which accompanied
the signature of that peace. (Hear, hear.) I think
that in the Conferences of Paris the noble viscount
and those who acted with him fell into a most grie-
vous error, and inflicted a serious injury upon the
maritime power of this country. (Hear, hear.) I
refer to that most ill-judged concession by whisk
they sacrificed what bad been maintained for ages
as the maritime rights of Great Britain—rights which,
in my conscience, believe to be essential to the
maintenance of your maritime power, and without
your maritime power I need hardly say that you are
nothing. I think that that was a most unfortunate
concession, and I think it the more unfortunate
because it appears to me to have been wholly gra-
tuitous and unnecessary. (Hear, hear.)

I come now to an act I have before adverted to in
this house, and which I really think is as mischie-
vous and as unjustifiable as any I ever heard of—l
mean the interference with the affairs of Naples.
We have undoubtedly had papers laid before us pro-
fessing to explain the circumstances under which
this interference took place; but so meagre a collec-
tion of documents—one throwing ao little light, or

rather such studious darkness, upon any question,
it never happened to me to deal with. (Hear, hear.)
Throughout the whole forty-five pages contained in
the blue-book, there are only three documents which
bear in the slightest degree upon what we wanted to
know. The remainder consists entirely of reports of
trials, memoranda (for the most part anonymous)
referring to the affairs of Naples, but not bearing in
the slightest degree upon the main question—
namely, our right of interference in the affairs of an
independent State. Now, I am not the apologist of
the King of Naples ; but you had not, upon the
showing of these papers, the slightest pretext for
supposing that any European interests were in
danger, that any British subjects bad suffered, or
that you had anything to complain of which would
justify you in going to the King of Naples with a
recommendation from the Governments of England
and France advising his Majesty to enter upon a new
course of internal policy. That claim of the right of
interfering was undoubtedly rejected by the King of
Naples, as it would have been by any Sovereign who
had the slightest sense of his own dignity and inde-
pendence. (Hear.) Yon recommended his Majesty
to grant a general amnesty. Now, what had you to
do with a general amnesty in Naples ? Were the
Neapolitans your subjects' What mattered it to
you how the course of justice ran in Naples, provided
British subjects did not suffer ? Suppose, now, that
some years before her Majesty had been advised to
grant to Mr. Smith O'Brien that free pardon to which
his subsequent conduct has proved he was very well en-
titled, the Minister of some other country bad come to
you and had represented toyon officially that it would
be a great gratification to the people of Ireland if her
Majesty would be pleased to extend a free pardon to
Mr. Smith O'Brien and his colleagues (I won't use an

offensive word), and that he earnestly desired her
Majesty, for her own sake, to grant an amnesty to
these gentlemen ; what would have been the answer ?
The answer would unquestionably have been a much
less civil one than that given by the King of Naples ;
you would very shortly have requested that Minister
to take back again the official document in which he
had given this advice, as one not to be received or
listened to; and probably the next request made
by the Foreign Minister would have been that the
reprebentative of that Government should walk out
of the house and not come into it again. (" Hear,"
and a laugh.) Now what did the King of Naples do ?
He writes you a letter firmly declining to listen to
your recommendations, at the same time intimatiug
his sense of the feeling manifested towards him and
his country, but declaring that the adoption of such
recommendations was incompatible with his rights as
an independent Sovereign. There is no answer to
that in these papers; but about two months after--
wards the King appears to have been informed that
the tone of his letter was not sufficiently courteous,
upon which he writes again, expressing his anxiety
to continue on the best possible terms with England,
to give every possible protection to British subjects,
and his regret that a sense of what was due to his
own independence and that of his country did not
permit him to receive advice offered, no doubt in the
most friendly spirit, by the Governments of England

and France. What was the answer to that? The
only answer was, the recall of your Minister. I do
not know, my lords, upon what pretext our Minister
was withdrawn from Naples, or what had taken place
to justify the suspension of diplomatic correspondence
with a Sovereign who professed the most anxious
desire to remain on friendly terms with England.
What was the consequence ? It was this—that the
retirement of your Minister was treated as a
matter utterly unimportant ; iu the face of all Europe
the representative of her Mikjesty was allowed to
leave Naples in contemptuous silence, and with an
assurance on the part of the Neapolitan Government
that there need not be the slightest apprehension for
the safety of English and French subjects in their
persons or property. (Hear, hear.) I ask you, my
lords, do you think that England stands in a dignified
position ? (Hear, hear.) if the noble viscount had
come to the determination to enforce a certain

scheme of policy upon Naples, I could understand
tl» course he pursued; but to utter menaces—to
tender advice under the threat of withdrawing your
speak of the presence of hostile fleets—
iragement to persons who might have
been induced by your promises of assistance to rise
in insurrection against their Sovereign, and who, in
that event, would have been subjected to all the
severities to which those who have taken part in a
suppressed insurrection are liable—was a line of

to give

conduct altogether unworthy of England. (Cheers.)
If such an insurrection as I have supposed had taken
place, who among your lordships can believe that the
parties rising in that insurrection—prompted to it
by the incitements of the British Government, and
therefore exposed to the full displeasure of the
Government of Naples—would have received from
England either support, commiseration, or sympathy,

or would not have been left to surer the whole
penalty attached to that crime into which they bad
been led by France and England' (Hear, hear.)
With respect, then, to the foreign policy of the noble
viscount, I cannot say that I entertain any feeling
which would justify me in granting him my confi
dence.

I sin still more doubtful with regard to his do-
mestic policy; for, strange to say, notwithstanding
the long period during which both the noble viscount
and myself have been in public life, I am utterly at
a loss to know upon all the leading questions of the
day what is the policy of the noble viscount. (A
laugh.) At all events, before lie calls upon us for
our support, let us ascertain the grounds upon which
he demands our confidence. Shakespeare says that
"one man in his time plays many parts;' but the
noble viscount is at the present moment playing
half a dozen parts at the same time. (A laugh).

LORD DERBY'S SPEECH.

He is not content with being the Janus Biceps, he is
a Janus Centiceps—a political chameleon which
offers a different hue and colour to the spectator
according to the side from which he gazes. (Cheers
and laughter.) I defy any man, even the most
ardent of his supporters, to say, when be professe 8
confidence in the noble viscount, what, upon an y
great domestin question of the day, is the policy to
which he pledges himself. Some cries have been
raised within the last few days which I think must
astonish the noble viscount when he reads them.
Thus we hear, " Palmerston and Liberalism I" " Pal-
merston and Protestantism!" " Palmerston and
down with Maynooth !" "Palmerston, the only
Christian Premier !" " Palmerston, the true Protes-
tant Minister !" and blasphemously, or at least irre-
verently, " Palmerston, the man of God !" The last
cry appears in a clerical newspaper, where the noble
viscount is announced as " the man of God."
(A laugh.) Many of your lordships will recollect a
caricature of 1832, in which the late King William
IV. was represented as staring at an inscription in
large letters on a wall, forming the title of the
Reform Bill. The words put into the mouth of his
Majesty were, "Can that mean me: Or your lord-
ships may, perhaps, remember a story of still older
date, in which a little elderly lady, suddenly aroused
from a long sleep, finds her dress somewhat strangely
disordered, and " Sure," says the little woman,
" this is none of I!" (A laugh.) I think the noble
viscount, when he sees the various cries with which
his name is connected, must doubt his own identity,
and say with the old gentlewoman of the anecdote ,
" Sure, this is none of I!" (Cheers and laughter.)
It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the number
and variety of the war-cries which have been attached
to the name of the noble viscount, there are three
with which I have never heard him associated, and
yet they are both important in themselves, and have
been the watchwords in past times of a great Liberal
party. I have never heard " Palmerston and Peace !"
" Palmerston and Retrenchment !" " Palmerston and
Reform !" (Cheers.) It is possible, even probable,
that the noble viscount, having supported the Reform
Bill of 18:32, may think that in the path of organic
change and parliamentary reform we have gone far
enough; but " peace " and "retrenchment " are sub-
jects not of temporary but of general application, and I
am afraid their absence from the Government pro-
gramme may be accounted for by the consideration
that without peace we can have no " retrenchment "
and that with Palmerston we can have no peace.
(Hear, hear.)

I saw the other day in a newspaper which warmly
supports the noble viscount and asserts his claim to
the confidence of the country a statement of the
opinions to which every man professing to be a
Liberal ought to adhere. No man," to use the
words of the newspaper in question, " deserving the
name of Liberal, ought to wince while catechised
upon each of tucse subjects :—the ballot, extension
of the franchise, especially Locke King's motion ;
the Back monopoly, church rates, abolition of pur-
chase in the army, and promotion by merit ; a gra-
duated income tax." The writer of the article ob-
jects, he says, upon principle to exacting pledges
from candidates upon the hustings but these are
the A B C of Liberalism, and no man ought to
hesitate for a single moment while being catechised
upon them. I should like to see, for the amusement
cf the thing, the noble visceunt, as the head of a
Liberal Government, going through his catechism
upon these points. (A laugh.)
Take the ballot. There is not a man in England
who has pronounced himself so strongly against
the ballot as the noble viscount. I need say nothing
about Mr. Locke King's motion, because of it we
have had recent experience. The Government of
the noble viscount have sent the subject of the Bank
charter to a select committee, but with a very dis-
tinct intimation that the changes they contemplate,
it' any, are of the slightest and most trivial kind,
certainly, not amounting to an interference with what
is called the "Bank monopoly." The noble viscount
has expressed himself quite as strongly with respect

to church rates. lam not sure that he has pledged
his Government upon the system of purchase in the
army, while I should certainly be surprised to hear
it announced that a Government measure will be
proposed in the new Parliament to abolish that sys-
tem. It is certain that the noble viscount, as well
as every important member of his Administration,
has protested against the possibility of introducing
anything like a differential—which I suppose is what
is meant by a graduated—income tax. I will not
say that the Government may not contemplate the
introduction of measures upon some of these ques-
tions , but I am quite sure that in the sense in which
they are regarded by the newspaper to which I have
referred—as tests of Liberalism—one and all will
meet with the determined opposition of the Govern-
ment so far as they act upon their own views and
principles. (Hear, hear.) I may even venture to
say that, should any one of these questions be
brought forward in the new Parliament by some
more ardent Liberal then is to be found on the
Treasury benches, the noble viscount, in order to
defeat it, will no t hesitate to seek the assistance of
that very Conservative party which he now accuses
of entering into an "unprincipled combination" to
upset his Government. (Hear, hear.)
Here it may be said, " If that is your opinion, why
do you withhold from Lord Palmerston as a Conser-
vative that support which, upon your own showing,
he cannot receive from any consistent, well-judging
Liberal?: My answer is an easy one—because, in
the first place, I do not know what the principles of
the noble viscount at this present moment are; be-
cause, in the next place, if they are such as I sup-
p ose them to be, then the noble viscount is in a
false position at the head of a Government profess-
ing Liberalism, and a large number of whose sup-
porters are avowedly of extreme Itadical opinions ;
and because, in the third and last place, I have not
that confidence in the steadiness and firmness of
the noble viscount which would induce me to believe
that in a moment of difficulty and pressure he would
stand up in vindication and support of his own
principles, whatever they may happen to be.
(Cheers.) I give him credit for many good qualities.
Nobody can be insensible to the charms of his
manner and conversation, and his perfect good
humour, an d everyone must admit the great adroit-
ness with which he manages and steers his course
a popular assembly ; but if I am asked whether
1 ha ve that confidence in the noble viscount which
consists in the firm conviction that, under all cirlum-
stances, he will maintain and act upon certain fixed
political principles—that from what he did yesterday
one might f uretel what he will do to-morrow—that
he has those higher qualities which are essential to
the character of a British Minister—l must reply in
the negative.

What has happened in the course of the present
session ? When the Chancellor of the Exchequer
made his financial statement we were told that it
was absolutely necessary for the sake of revenue to
raise the to a duty to Is. 7d. Opposition was
threatened. Mr. Gladstone proposed that the duty-
should be fixed at Is. 3d., and Lord John Russell
suggested is. 4d. Well, my lords, in the face of
their own declaration made shortly before, that Is. 7d.
was absolutely necessary for revenue, the Govern-
ment reduced the duty to is. sd.
But there is yet a much stronger case in point. It
there is any one thing upon which it is the bounden
duty of the Prime Minister to preserve inviolate the
prerogative of the Crown, it is that which concerns
the advice that be shall give to her Majesty as to the
distribution of honours, irrespective of parliamentary
influence and parliamentary support. (Hear, hear.)
I will not express any opinion on the merits of the
particular case to which I am about to refer, but it
is notorious to all men that, with the sanction of the
noble viscount, the noble baron opposite addressed
CO Sir J. M'Neill and Colonel Tulloch a ietter offer-
ing them pecuniary remuneration for their services.
and indicating that as the amount and the form in
which the Government thought their labours could
most properly be requited. Well, the noble viscount