The Sun.
London, England, 1852-05-04 00:00:00

and especial suspicion of the present ruler of' tha,
I Now, he did not believe that ; but, for the sake
ment he weuld admit that the supporters
i Bill did believe it. Well, where were the
for it? It should be remembered that t'
always a party in this country in favour of a p;
' sort of a panic—and that a cry of suspicion agaius,
and for consequent military expenditure, was alway
Thee should remember that Sir T. Hastings, a distinguished
military officer, insisted in his evidence before the Com-
mittee that the French had a burning desire to come to this
country to revenge Waterloo, and he quoted as one of his
authorities the Bishop of Madagascar.—(Hear, hear, and
a laugh.) But had the people of France shown a single
symptom that they were anxious to pick a quarrel with this
' 1 country? Neither in the time of Louis Philippe, nor under
Ithe Provisional Government of Lamarrine, nor under the
Republic and National Assembly, ner under the President,
I had the people of France exhibited the slightest hostility to
England. If such a feeling had existed, however, surely
1 under all those changes it would have been manifested.—
! (Hear, hear.) It had not been manifested, and he con-
! tended, therefore, that as tar as the people of France were
e,3nccrned, there was not one saadow cf ground for this
(:ill.—(Hear, hear.) Look at the conduct of our press. tie
I eel not wish the Engli:;h press to shut its mouth when any-
! thing was eitacted in foreign nations which it believed to
b 3 contrary to freed...on ; but our press had for two months
maintained an incessant daily lire of accusations against the
r,',e,., ,imt too often aga!n,t the peop!e ce. Frail e. The
I.:curb press during a:1 that time, though under the control
of the Presider.;, had never retaliated, or attempted to
create in the minds ca' the French people a feeling ants-
; palistic to the pecple of this country. He would admit, for
' the sake of argument; that tne French President had shown
greed of power, that he was cool, reserved, calculating, and
unscrupulous; but it must be remembered that he was ap-
proved by the majority of the French population ; and, if
1 there were ow, reason more than another why he was so, it
' was because he had not plunged them into war. He ad-
mitted that they did not like the theory of his government,
but if the French people, disagreeing in that, yet supported
him because he had given
_them a permanent or temporary
repose, the House might depend upon it that they would not
rest a single instant if he should manifest the slightest inten-
tion of sending a piratical or marauding expedition against
this country. There were no preparations made in France. No-
body had shown that any more ships had been added to the
French navy or troops to the French army since December last.
He was surprised that among the extraordinary fallacies
his t
which had been stated in the House upon this question, no
one had ventured to state that Louis Napoleon had done
what
renownedo invade u nic,:luegwl
sansdr
v saidi z t.
,o
that
te
he
eone
had p
whenut
up
proposed
the CThhaenu ess. y t
A o
story L on d o no, f"
finger-posts upon all the roads converging towards Boulogne
marked "
wthiitsh
kind
dhanwdoupold inting
across have
created a panic much more successfully than some things
which had been stated with that object. He recommended
Hon. and Gallant Members to try it the ntime
neat they
wished to create a panic.—(L h aug ter.) There were two
suppositions on which the House was
that
invited to proceed
with this measure. The first was there would be a de-
claration of war and then • •
an invasion • and the second was
that there would be a piratical and n;
undertaken in the night. Now, if therea
rawuedsinf expedition
of war nobody bad attempted to deny that, according
ottire
usages of civilized nations—if nations that went to fear de-
served to be called civilized—( Hear, hear)—there must he
negotiation and delay to such an extent as to allow time
for some of that immeasurable force which the Hon. Mem-
ber for Tyrone (Mr. Corry) had spoken of being brought
into the Channel to defend our shores.—(Hear, hear.) The
Noble Lord the Member for Tiverton had spoken of 50,000
men landing in one night. [An Hon. Member--60,000.]
Well, 60,000; the Noble Lord was not particular to a 10,000 ;
but he (Mr. Bright) believed that 60,000 were just as likely
as 50,000, and 70,000 just as likely as 60,000. But what
would Louis Napoleon gain by adopting that course ?—for
men did not act without motives. He would ask the soldiers
in that House to say whether they thought that the French
army were likely to see any glory—he was not saying in a
war with England, but in a piratical expedition against this
country ? Did they believe that Louis Napoleon would be
safe in the French Government one single month after he
took the step which some Members of that House assumed
that he was likely to take? Did they not think that Russia,
Austria, Prussia, would league themselves against such an
attempt on the part of the Government of France ?—for,
was it not worth more to the settled Governments of Europe
that the ancient and venerable monarchy and the settled in-
stitutions of England should be maintained, rather than that
a firebrand, such as Honourable Members wished to make
out the President to be, should rule over the French
nation ?—(Hear, hear.) If, then, there was no other motive
the motive of self-preservation alone would prevent Louis
Napoleon from taking such a step against the people and
Government of this country. But, to return to the state-
ment of the Noble Lord the Member for Tiverton, with re-
spect to the probability of 60,000 men landing in one night,
he begged to say that it was an incredible statement for a
statesman of his experience to make. But, assuming that
this invading force were to escape our fleet, and that our
troops were dispersed and unable to meet them, how did the
R'ght Hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home
Department expect to be able to get the militia to meet
them? Why, with the help of the electric telegraph he
would be able to get the dispersed soldiers to the coast before
those agricultural labourers, weavers, and mechanics had
got on their clothes.--(Laughter.) In his opinion, no case
whatever had been made nut in favour of the present Bill.
Ile protested against the inconsistency of the House. In
his boyhood he remembered that the cry was for reliance upon
" the wooden wails of England," and poets made songs and
odes of all kinds on the subject, such as—
" Britannia needs no bulwarks,
No towers along the steep ;
Her march is o'er mountain wave,
Her home is on the deep."
But now the wooden walls as well as the military ser-
vice were forgotten for the moment for the blundering, miser-
able, undisciplined horde which was proposed to be brought
together by this Id ilitia Bill.—(hear.) The Hon. and Gal-
lant Member for Chippenharn had stated that the army had
been reduced since I e4B. Well, that very fact ought to be
a warning both to that lien. Gentleman and the Govern-
ment, because the military expenditure at that time was
such—amounting as it did to 17,000,0001., 18,000,0001., or
19,000,000/. a year, that the people were positively alarmed
and horrified at the course which the Government were pur-
suing, and insisted it; on a reduction; and he warned the
present G ivernnient that if they either passed the present
Militia Bill, or added to the army without making out a
better case than they lead yet been able to do, they too
would ere long be obliged to yield to the popular demand
for military retrenchment.--( (fear, hear.) His opinion was,
that if there was anything like a real, thorough, imminent
danger in the case, there was not a soldier, or a policeman,
or a man in any way connected with . the military service in
the kingdom who mig be made available for the ht not .
such A
pur-
poses of defence, for he was sure that in, t e event any
county, city, borough; parish, cr lam:decokewouldto
its
own peace, and leave the militaryf
the Preneral def P ence.—
at the hands of Government or 6
) But the fact WAS that the pr, s e ent was no-
(Hear, hear.
thing more nor less there
Ithan a mere panic, than which
was nothing, in his opine,' .
n more adverse to genuine
statesmanship.pa-
triotism Sometimes a political
panic was got up for
and truethe
purpose of trading upon it. Last
year the bishops got up an
ecclesiastical panic and traded
upon it, and this year the military service, which wad
• s to increase the military expenditure, were
always anxious
panic.—(Hear,hear.) o long
S
trading upon a military p
into neglect, and
had been said that in the
ago as the time of Tacitus it
and the military pro-
ace military science
course of a long peace
and to fall
fession were apt to be forgotten a disturbance and alarm
t this that all this
it was to prevent
had been created, and in order that more and more moue
y
might be voted for military e
xPenditure.—(Hear, hear.)
He (Mr. Bright) would take upon himself to say that
the Noble Lord the Member .
ber for Tiverton was the father
-
e Lord was in favour of a Militia
of this Bill. The Noble
In it
158.--(Hear,hear.)truth, Was that
Bill in and the Noble Lord did
Noble Lord's hobby,
it. II presumed that in the exercise of his great influence
e ble Lord the Member
over the No
.had dragged
that Noble Lord into his views of for London he
the question _
; but what
was the Noble Lord afraid of ? He could hardly be serious
in anticipating an invasion of 50,000 men from a raler whose
extraordinary conduct in December last he had thought it
right to applaud. He (Mr. Bright) was not sure that in his
dispatch the .Noble Lord did not say that he thought the
peace of Europe would be made safer by the coarse Louis
Napoleon took upon this occasion.—(l.leir,
,hear.) But he
would say at once that the Noble Lord was no authority
with him on questions of this nature.— A
not pretend to set his opinion against h( laugh.) He did
t
House probably thought the Noblee Noble Lord's. The
authority that he (Mr. Bright) Lord a much better
Ministerial benches.) The views of the Noble Lord with re-
gard to a militia w
political schemes. T,re perfectly consistent with his
The 'establishment of a militia
would liberate so many
soldiers from foreign service.
The creed of the Noble Lord, so far as he (Mr. Bright)
had observed, had always been in favour of uni-
versal rdiplomac y and incessant interference with other
countries. lie wished h always to have the power, as e
always seemed to have the disposition, of cajoling or bully-
ing somebody or some foreign • (Laughter.) The
Hon. and Learned GentleaiatlelnltermYb—er for Sheffield, who
was his great champion two
years ago, on one occasion
called the Noble Lord "a Lucifer ago, on
(Mae
Bright)
presumed that this great military
force was required
as an extinguisher in case of any case of incendiarism break-
ing out.—( Renewed laughter.) But be thought the country
had already paid enough for some of the projects of the
Noble Lord with regard to Africa, Brazil, and elsewhere.—
(Cries of " Divide.") The efforts of the Noble Lord to do so
much for freedom abroad, while he did SD little for it at
home, reminded hint of one of the characters in the new
work of Mr. Dickens, so much so, that he felt disposed to
call him the Mrs. Jellaby of statesmen.—(Laughter.) He
opposed the Bill, because no case of urgent necessity had
been made out, and no proof had been adduced that the
fleets and troops of this country were insufficient. Military
men differed in everything with respect to this Bill except
that the Government plan would be useless for defence. He
wished the House to bear in mind that every argument
which had been used in favour of the present Bill, or for sa
increase of our forces, would be just as powerful next session
in favour of an additional increase, for what they were dis-
cussing was not so much a question of fact as of impression
and sentiment.—(Cries of "Divide!") He should not
trouble the House by entering into the details of the Go-
vernment Bill—( Hear, hear)—because he objected not only
to the present Bill, but to any increase of force in subtild:
tion of ,that proposed, there being no case of ,eces,.SZ
made out. There was one thing he would tell the D
th .7
t , o$
Secretary, for it was an argument he could apprecaaaa the
there was scarcely any one who had been connect wit°,oh I")
militia 50 y ears ago but was ruined in character.--(h had ex_
H e was stating the experience of the very
mellold enough to
plained the matter to him, for he
wasnot
that SO far as their
remember it himself, but he (believed
the
men connected
industrious avocations were concerneds
were injured in
with the militia, on retiring from the service,
ts._
re...._
it (Oh, oh,
character, morals, and in their prospsec lu
a addressing Christian
and cries of " No.") When
hotiown on a subject of this Da-
representatives of a Christian n
' I'l3o' to show that further ex-
lure—when he was endea voitlitroineni 5
was unnecessary, he
penditure for
thatwarlikerr:i
his arguments would he fairly
shonld, at least, expect
) The Honourable and Learned
considered.—(Bear. hear.
eel on a former occasion took on
Member for
Slienit Pe called the peace party--(Hear
him to sneer at whsved,
es lie appeared to court,ashe
hear)—and herec7
the'Hou„. But the ers from
opposite side o • peace party could
the oPP°-1 • thepeace party would d those seem , ,
stand
party—and if they endeavoured to introduce
the war
hip and into legislati
into statesmanship ,
..
on some principles of
morality--(Laughter)—they could afford to be sneered at. It
was a lamentable thing that, though 3,000 years had
passed since those sculptured marbles were first worked
which so many had seen
in the British Museum, yet at
that very moment, after 1,800 years of Christianity, they,
were that night engaged, and of
not reluctantly on the part
many, in precisely the same sort of proceedings described on
those marbles, where were pictured armed men, horses,
chariots, processions, battles, and captains—(Laughter).
and no doubt there were priests too now, as there were
then, who blessed the arms of the Assyrians, and oflere d
thanksgivings to the gods for slaughter. He believed the
Bill not to be one yf 11101 gentlemen connected with the k'•

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