The Press.
London, England, 1857-03-21 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

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 hut 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 ♦ital. (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 against vice, and
irreligion, and immorality—(Hear, hear)—and with
regard to them I say, with all my heart,
" they that are not against us are on our aide," 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 excitemeat 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 prepared
for the sake of a false peacA 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 wall-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. Bat if I feel that these are topics
which ought hardly to he dealt with here, I ask, bow
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.
went 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 what is the
supposed policy of the noble viscount.

293

With regard to his foreign policy, I am afraid
shall be repeating what I have so often said before to
ycur 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)—l 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.
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 which
they sacrificed what had been maintained for ages
as the maritime rights of Great Britain--rights which,
in my conscience, I 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 so little light, or
rather such studious darkness, upon any question,
it never happened to me to deal with. (Rear, 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 sin 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 had suffered, or
that yon 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.) You 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 had come to
you and had represented Loyola 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
representative 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 intimating

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 tont, 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 ; in the face of all Europe
the representative of her Majesty 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 Fren ch 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
oome to the determination to enforce a certain
scheme of policy upon Naples, I could understand
the course he pursued; but to utter menaces—to
tender advice under the threat of withdrawing your
Minister—to speak of the presence of hostile fleets—
to give encouragement 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
conduct altogether unworthy of England. (Choers.)
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 suffer the whole
penalty attached to that crime into which they had
been led by France and England ? (Hear, hear.)
With respect, then, to the foreign policy of the noble
♦iscount, 1 cannot say that I entertain any feeling
which would justify me in granting him my confi
deuce.

lam 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 he 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).