The Express.
London, England, 1848-02-24 00:00:00

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.

HOUSE OF COIIMONS.—WEDNESDAT, FEB. 23.1
The Semtiea took the chair at 12 o'clock.
PUBLIC 11C3INE&I.
PETMONS.—By the Earl of Amt mom and SCISMIT, 44 Pe2lSMag• I
—Mr. Cauca, from Ronan catholic. of Lanceater ; Mr. Hovivuou,
from Roman catholic. of Clveretone ; Mr. gang, several, bee" Plisses'
not Ward ; Mr 0. GIST, from Roman catholic. of • plate in Nor-
thumberland ; Mr. Mosoas, from a place not heard ; Capt. Pwaxi.L,
from Itoman catholic, of Brighton ; Mr. Sraurr, from Roman
atthollea of Norwich, against the human Catholic Charitable Trusts
Bill.—The Earl of Aarithat. and &agar, 3 petitions; Mr. %%Louie,
several, in favour of the Roman Catholic Relief BilL—Mr. W. Par-
rm., one petition &gonad that measure.—Mr. Cowart', from a plain
to NOS thamptonabira ; Mr. HARUCA•Ti ea from • ptlee not Want and
Mr. Cowls, from Edinburgh, in favour of the Jewish Oisabilities
Bill-31r. W. Pares., from attorneys of Warrington: and Mr. Vit-
oria, from attorneys of Wolverhampton, against the certiticate duty.
—Mr. HAMILTON, from Exeter, againat the Irish Repeal .assocuition.
—Mr A. Earns, from Glasgow, far repeal of the huts scts of 1844
and 1843. —Mr. J. Creme, from Kettering, against the present estem
of rating for relief of the poor.
SECOND RE.ADlNG.—Consolidated Fund l 8,000,000) BilL
NOTICE OF MO flON.—ammor Searle, lflowv.--03/uncl
rimer, on a future dor, to call the attention of the house to the es-
peoditure, under the bead of secret services.
ROMAN CATHOLIC CHARITABLE TRUSTS BILL.
The second reaiiue of this bill was postponed until Wed-
nesday, the 15th of March.
FOREIGN POLICY OF LORD PALMERSTON.
Mr. ANSTEY then proceeded with his motion for so
address for papers connected with the foreign policy of this
country since the accession to office of Viscount Palmerston.
He commenced by expressing au opinion that the honour
and peace of this country at home Lied abroad were to be
maintained, not by additional defences, but by a wise and
honest administration of the natioitil affairs. Be charged
the existence or our present exposed condition, and the
slight respect in which we were held, wholly to the conduct
of the noble viscount. He condemned the noble lord for I
having permitted our natural enemy, the Co .r of Russia, to
raise a large fleet in the 11 esic in 1835,—a fleet
which had coetinued in effecese existence ever since.
He maid he would not tow recapitulate the pre-
liminary details riven by him on a farmer occasion,
but address himself as SUC:ine....y Is possible to the subject
matte! of his ii.o* ion. His elan hail been called a mon-
ster motion, but he would rather call the neglect of former
parliaments to undertake the detect; which hail rendered the
motion necessary a monitor neglect. The votes by which
parliament had sanctioned ti.c various measures of the noble
viscount might perhaps be a Iduccd as relieving the noble
lord from resromibility; but he regarded those eons as no
bar to the accusetion of the noble-lord, since they had all
been obtained by practices of the most nefarious deception
on the part of the noble secretary, who to attain his code
bad suppressed, altered, or mutilated public papers and
despatches, and had acted upon a continuous system of per-
version of truth and autotitution of falsehood. The lion.
gentleman then cave at considerable length his account of
the manner in which l'oland, by the connivance of the
noble viscount, had been Landed over to her ruthless op-
pressor, the Cear of Russia, and stated that
at the first miaihstatiou of Russian aggression
towards that imhaepy country, France, faithful to
her word, had called upon England to take what steps,
even the most dr cieive, should be necessary to defeat the aims
of Russia; but the noble viscount bed eifectually checked
the generous impulses of the French government, as, with
the some object of serving Russia, he -lied procured toe dia.
armament of the Seedish fleet, a .semtded to vindicate the
cause of Poland, and of the Po 'whin army collected for the
same purpose. However jocularly the noble lord might
attest to treat het assailants the tact was nevertheless unde-
niable that grave charges had been brought against him by
the public press, in works of estebFitied reputation, and by
men who, whatever h:s (Lord Palmerston'') ostensible
opinion might be, were deemed by the nob la lord's col-
leagues, to be worthy of the highest respect nod credit.
The hen. mernb• r then proceeded to enter lots tl c details
of one charge brought modest Lord Palmerston, of having
entered into a a cret arra, gement with Russia, by which the
Czar was to do what he pleased with l'oland provided he
abstained from offering nay orposition to the oiews of Lord
Palmerston in Belgium. The hon. member cited a despatch
addressed by tee Foreign Secretary (Lend Palineraton) to
Prince Talieeranil, which established in his opiuion the
charge ho had brought. Ile then entered into the subject of
Austria and Italy, and founded another charge on the
Foreign Score ary's policy in the affairs of the Lombardo-
Venetian poswmions of Austria. 1-he criminal activity en
the one hand of the noble lord, and his equally deplorable
apathy on the other, bad forced Austria at the epoch of the
downed f War ae- into an alliance with Russia, and, cense-
gut ntly, had pieced Austria in a pesitiou of hostility towards
England in so f'r as the treaty of Vienna was concerned,
and from that period the Emperor of Austria had been
compelled by .I.e acts r f the noble lord to abandon
the cause of Poland ar.d to cease from all co-operation
with France and England in the affairs of that dismem-
bered kingdom. Ti.e time, however, at length upproached
when the attention of parliament was directed to the subject
of Poland, and in April, 1931, that staunch and able friend
of the Pales, the late Mr. Cutler Ferguson, one of the col.
leaeues of the noble lord, brought the question of l'eland
before the house. The noble lord defeated the motion by
the simple process of tbowitir ts himself from the debate; but
he had provided himself with what he (Mr. Anstey) might
term a tame elephant, in the person of Lard Althorp, who
snared: the home on that eecareen that no intelligence what-
ever of any interferer.eo in Poland had taken place. If Mr.'
Cutler Fere aeon had, however, succeedsd in his motion fur
the producion of papees it would have been proved, then,
that Poland was entirely destroyed as a kingdom. The next
motion on the subject that was brought forward elicited
from tee noble lord a dotter dion that he was doing
his best to render all things as right as possible in Poland,
but at length Sir Stretferd Canning, wearied :by the delays
of the noble lord in briefing leeward the subject, made a
speech, wherein he I roeght the violation or the treaty of
Vienna by the exertion of Cracow under the notice of
parliament. The noble lord thee. assured the house that he
had received no ollkial accounts of the violation of the treaty
of Vienna. The subject, however, had so far attracted
public attentioe at this time, that the late Mr. P. Stuart
brought a motion forward respecting Poland, which he was
induced to abandon in consequence of the noble lord's pro-
mise that be would appoint a consul et Cracow. This pro-
mise was given in April, 1536. But up to the present hour
no consul teal been sent on the pin of England to that cite,
and the noble ford had thus broken his promise. He Orr.
Anstey), however, had the ratit facticn of not being able to I
charge himself u h the responsdelity of having sat iu that
house in any parliament previous to the present,
or the noble Mid wiufd Lave heard before of his
conduct in !these matters. The has. member then
pursued the vu' ject of Cracow down to its annexation
by Austria. With respect to 1.41 y, he begged to ask the
noble lord whether he was not cognisant of the fact that the
object of the s'cret societies and,Cerbonari there was to unite
the whole of the petty kinedoms there into one central king-
dom under the Czar's stn-in-law the Duke of Leuchtenherg,
end to place that newly formed state under the protection of
Russia ? With respect to Russia and Turkey, the treaty of
Adrianople wan protested. against by the Duke of Wel-
lingten's goverment, for a nespotch of Lord Aberdeen to
Lord Heytesbury had quoted by the noble member for
Hertford to prove the tact. All the noble lord had to do
when he came into office was to MI stain that protest, and
thus to prevent Russia from deriving any advantage from
her aggressive policy towards Turkey. But the fir-t act of
the noble lord was to accept the treaty, by allowing of the
pretensions of Russia to hews regulations of qua-
rantine to be enforetol en the COM' of Cireassis,
which was an independent state. Those sanitary
regulations had b en aeopted by the noble lord, and pub-
lished to all English merchants trading to the coast of
Cirtasaia, whereby the right of Russia to make them was
acknowledged. it was the duty of the noble lord to have
refused to give an official notification to these regulations ;
but, having once done so, he had irrevocably sanctioned the
treaty of Adrianople, und:r which they had been issued by
Russia. The position of affairs in Egypt, when the noble
lord came into office, was somewhat similar to that which he
had just referred to. Mehemet Ali was the vassal and ser-
vant of the Porte. The noble lord t sok upon himself to erect
the Viceroyeof Egypt into an independent sovereign, by ac-
crediting consuls snddiplomatic agents to bins directly, with-
out the medium of thepultan; and the noble lord she entered
into direct ommereed relations with Mehemet Ali. By
these means Ibrahim l'acha was encouraged to march against
Turkey, and the Sulutmeindiorehimselfcripphd by the succes-
sive reverses of Adrianople and Nayarino, applied to England
for intervention and succour, which were refused. gusset
then offered her aid to the L',.rte, by whom it was reused ;
and a joint application from Russia and Turkey was made to
the noble lord for the intervention of England, hut which
was again refused. Under these circumstance, it was that a
Russian fleet appeared in the Bosphorus, where troops were
landed fsr the protection of the Sultan, and the withdrawal
of this protection was purchased at the price of the treaty of
Unkiar Skelessi, which was' concocted at St. Petersburg,
and brought to the B .sphorus by a Russian courier. Subse-
quently to these events Runde claimed for her subjects the
benefits theretofore exclusively enjoyed by England, in re
spect to freedom from duties_ in the export or import of
commodities and merchandise. This claim was made
under the treaty of Adriauople, and it was at once:accorded.
The consequence was that the Greek subjects of the Porte
declared themselves to be Russians, and they were
allowed to avail themselves of the privileges which they
claimed. But, as great discontent ensued amongst the
farmers of the Turkish revenue in consequence of the
ruinous effects of these concessions upon the finances of that
state ; and in order to get out of the difficulty thus created,
a regulation was made by the Porte whereby the right of
purchasing certain articles of produce, oil, corm &c, was
reserved to persons who provided themselves with a certia-
cate granted by the Turkish government for that purpose,
and which could only be obtained by paling a large sum of
money. The Greek subjects of Russia protested against
this regulation as being a breach of the treaty of Adrianople,
but the Russian ambassador at the Porte was instructed
by the cabinet, ofi St. Petersburg, not to offer any objections,
and he consequently declined all interference in the mattes,
An objection might be taken that the things he complained
of had been done with the connivance of Sir H. Taylor, the
late King's private secretary, and that the noble lord wits
not responsible. He barged to state that he took no dis-
tinction between the office of secretary' of state and that of
private secretary. lihe secretary of state was only the
King's clerk, and could not make a distinction between him-
self and another person holding a similar office. But the
noble lord had closed his mouth on this subject by accepting
the services of Sir Herbert Taylor. The noble lord's policy
had delivered Turkey entirely over to the power of amnia.
A trade had been growing up in the former country In
barley, oil, and hemp, exported to England ; but Russia.
finding it to interfere with her commerce, obtained its entire
prohibition. We were now paying to Russia five millions
annually for those articles which, but for the noble lord's
_diplomacy, might bore been obtained froze Ter's e ea ex-
eshe3e for ourpieir.cls.. Ills huts. irktui tke mealier tor
cad welt ,wpioyed to mgotiate a treaty with the
Stall4r.