The Sun.
London, England, 1863-04-02 00:00:00

have themselves been engaged in the transactions of public
life, who know by their own experience what are the diffi-
culties, unknown to the world and the public at large, which
have to be overcome by those who are serving their country.
(Cheers.) No man had a more difficult task than my noble

friend Lord Dalhousie—he had to conduct the affairs of the

army during the Crimean war, to carry on operations thou
sands of miles away, with every difficulty of transport and

local supplies. He did it with an energy which reflected
the highest honour upon him, and was attended by results
most honourable and advantageous to the country. (Cheers.)
The Lord Provost has been pleased to say the policy which
the Government of which I have had the honour of being a

member pursued hasbeen a policy of peace when peacecould
be maintained with honour—(chaers)—but a policy of self-

respect where self-respect may have been called into action,
As my noble friend Lord Elcho has well told you, there is no
better security for the maintenance of peace than that the
world should know that, although unwilling to provoke ag-

gresbion, and determined to deal with others as you wish
others should deal with you, nevertheless you are prepared, if

you should be compelled to do so, to resist aggression, to repel
insult, to maintaiu your rights, and assert your dignity at
whatever cost that may be done. (Cheers.) To the honour
of this country be it said that, although we are usefully
divided, I will say, into political parties, although in Eng-
land, as in every free country, there must be great divisions
of opinion, there must be classes of men who honestly and
conscientiously advocate certain principles and aim at cer-
tain ends, while others, with equal honour and integrity and
sincerity, direct their aim to other and opposite objects—to
the honour of the nation be it said that when national inte-

rests are at stake, that when the national security is in

question, either with regard to preparations of foresight or
in regard to actual exertions of strength, party differences
vanish at the instant, and nothing is seen but a unanimous
and combined desire to assist the Government, doing what
may be necessary for maintaining the interests and honour
of the country, and therefore the task of a Government,

which under other circumstances, and in a different consti-

tution, would, in a moment of emergency, be attended with
great and almost insuperable difficulty, that task which, by

a Government cf an unfree country, would be most difficuit
to perform, is for a Government of a great aad free nation
like this most easy, because in performing that task they

are sure of the cordial support and co-operation of the na-
'ion, the Parliament, the press, and all those influences

that direct the opinions and feelings of the country. For-
tunately, at the present moment, we have made great pro-
gress in those quiet and peaceful preparations which render
a country able to look without anxiety or apprehension to a
different condition of things. Our army and navy are in a
state of efficiency which, considering their numbers,
necessarily upon a peace establishment, never, I believe,
before was equalled. There is in our army a degree of
intelligence, of education, of arrangement, of equipment,
of regard for the comforts of the men, as well as for the
comforts of the officers, and a general combination of
foresight and detail which have placed it in a better
position both as regards its efficiency as a military body,
and as to the condition of the soldier, than it ever was at

any previous period in the history of our country. Our
navy is now undergoing, in the ships at least, transition ;
with regard to the officers and men it is in the most admir-

able order, and you have got an amount of ieaval reserve
which you never had before, which gives you a fund from
which to draw, if any emergency should render such a re-

source necessary. We are changing the construction of our
fleet. To what amount and degree that construction shall
be altered is yet a matter on which difference of opinion
exists, to be settled only by experience ; but, at all events,
you gentlemen in Scotland have no right to complain of the
changes, because if iron ships are to be substituted for
yesterdaynh
aswvheeit 1r tso
adf
,Oleyekthea
that
Cog lbryeeda
bet
u,
fiwul
built.
dereota (Cheers
ng ar
tee:, tontndani
lua
ums
security
irto.
y)f
wooden ones, we know well, and I know pretty well, who
rßhuo ts e i r
eo
w
which my noble friend (Lord Elcho) has so eloquently exp -
tinted upon—that noble army of volunteers—(cheers)—noble
more peculiarly from the circumstances which led to its
creation. In a former period, when there was a hostile
army collected upon the opposite shores of the Straits, when
every week might have brought you an invasion of 200,000
men, it was not wonderful that the nation should rise in
arms, and that you should have hundreds and thousands of
volunteers ready to stand forth to defend their country and
their homes ; but these volunteers have not been called out
by any such imminent emergency. They armed themselves
upon a quiet and calm calculation; they saw—and when I
say they, I say the nation—the people of the United King-
dom saw that, consistent with those burdens which could
alone be supported in peace, we could not maintain that
amount of army which might be sufficient on the sudden
outbreak of war to perform the duties at home and abroad
which it would be required to discharge. Well, then, the
public spirit of the nation induced the youth of the na •
tion voluntarily to take up arms, to prepare and discipline
themselves for military service— not to meet an enemy
that was coming to-day or to-morrow, not to repel a
sudden and expected invasion, but calmly and quietly
to lay in a store of national defence which might
appease all future alarm on the part of the people of this
country, and m.ght teach other nations, if any other nations
did want to be so taught—(a laugh)—that it was a better
and a more advantageous thing to be at peace with Eng-
land, to trade with England, and to carry on good fellow-
ship with England, than to put England to the test to show
how it could defend itself. (Loud cheers.) Well, gentlemen,
our policy has been a policy, no doubt, of peace, because,
with one single interruption, we have, for a great number
o f years, maintained peace with the whole of Europe. That
interruption was the Crimean war; but the nation judged
the conduct of its Government, and deemed that that war
was justly and necessarily undertaken. (Cheers.) No doubt
all war is an evil, but it is an evil which sometimes leads to
good, and the result of that war, without going into detail,
must be admitted to have been politically advantageous to
the interests for which it was undertaken. There was one
circumstance in that war which distinguished it favourably
from other wars of much longer duration in which this nation
has been engaged. In former times we, with our troops and
officers, our soldiers and sailors, met the troops, the offi-
cers, the soldiers and sailors of our neighbour on the other
side of the Channel in hostile conflict, man opposed to man,
bayonet to bayonet,
broadside to broadside ; but in that
Crimean war we marched
together like good fellows and
friends. The only contest was a contest of emulation as to
which of the two should
best perform the duties whica de-
volved upon them. We began the war as allies, and we ended
it as friends. (Cheers.) Then, I say, there was a double
triumph, There was the
triumph achieved over the my
against whom we contended, and we gained also a glorious
enemy
against
national antipathies and old stand -
victory over ancient and
ing rivalries. (Cheers.) I say that our policy has been a
policy of peace. You,
my Lord Provost, have stated that,
with due regard to the maintenance of peace, we have
in Europein assisting other
exerted a moral influence
nations who were struggling for institutions simi-
lar to our own and endeavouring to obtain
that freedom which they sought and valued.
Gentlemen, that is true, and looking back to the history of
past years I think the country has no reason to repine
at the result of the
policy which its Government, backed by
the feeling of the nation, has pursued. (Cheers.) Time was
when England stood out, like the rock of Dumbarton, alone
—" a single eminence, with black grounds around it ;" the
only country that
possessed the inestimable blessings of a
free and representative constitution. Matters are now en
tirely changed. There is hardly a single country in Europe
that has not in some shape
or other, with some modification
or other, institutions formed after the pattern, or at least
upon the principles, of her constitution; and we are proud
to say that some of those nations are greatly indebted for
the benefits they enjoy to the assistance and countenance
which they received from the Government of England.
Greece owes its separation and independence to a former
Government—that of Mr. Canning—but still that was to
British influence co-operative with Russia and France.
Belgium, Portugal, and Spain are also greatly indebted t o
the diplomatic and other assistance of England for the free
constitutions, the Parliamentary Governments which those
three countries now so happily possess and enjoy. If it be
honourable to a nation to contribute to the happiness of
mankind—if glory consists not so much in forcing nations
by blood and plunder to submit to a yoke they detest as in
diffusing happiness and prosperity—then I say that we,
the British nation, need not look with regret upon the
efforts and influences which we have used in assisting
those nations who are exerting themselves to obtain
the blessings of free and Parliamentary institutions. We
have recently given our moral influence to the Italians,
who are struggling for freedom. (Cheers.) There unfor-
tunately still weighs on a part of that beautiful and noble
land an incubus in what ought to be the capital of the
kingdom. I can never believe that error and wrong can
be everlasting. I cannot but believe that truth and
justice must in the end prevail, and therefore, much as I
lament the shorn position of the Italian kingdom, I
cannot but believe that a brighter period is in store
for it, and that a time will come when all those who are
concerned in regulating its destinies will feel that it is for
their advantage, as well as for the advantage of the Italians,
that Italy should be in full possession of its capital. (Loud
cheers.) There is, gentlemen, another part of Europe
which deeply engages the feelings and sympathies of these
islands—l need not say that I mean Poland. (Cheers.)
Would that it rested with the English Government to de-
cide the destiny of that noble people I If wishes, if diplo-
matic interposition, can have any effect, those wishes and
that diplomatic and friendly interposition certainly will not
be, and have not been, wanting. (Renewed cheers.) But
I presume that even the most enthusiastic admirers of that
noble Polish nation would hardly, under the circumstances
of the times, expect or ask that any forcible intervention
should by this country be undertaken. (Hear, hear.) We
cannot but hope that the united opinion of all the Powers
of Europe may have an influence on the mints of those
with whom it rests to determine the fate of Poland, and
that benefit will still arise out of the calamities by which
that country is fur the moment oppressed. (cheers.) I wish
I could tell you that we anticipate any very early termina •
tion of that most lamentable struggle which is going on
among our kindred upon the other side of the Atlantic. We
must all deplore that unhappy war. The most unhappy of
all wars is a civil war, but any interference on the part of the
nations of Europe, so far from extinguishing the flame,
would, in all human prolability, have only made it burn
fiercer and with greater heat. When the passions of men
are deeply enlisted in the contest in which they are engaged