The Sun.
London, England, 1838-03-03 00:00:00

should have put my case in great peril. Therefore
it is, my Lords, that I take the earliest opportunity
of repelling—and I think I shall expose—the groundless
charge which has so thoughtlessly been made. Political ani-
mosity has laid asleep all sense of justice, and I may add
also of common sense. In one of the newspapers of this day a
Gallant Officer is represented to have said in reference to
a speech of mine in this House on the 21st of February, on
the subject of head-money—and tchave said so in the hearing
of the House, and even of the Chair :—" How did the,
Noble and Learned Lord dare to utter such falsehoods?"
My Lords, I read this in the newspapers—l represented it to
the Speaker who heard it.
Lord LYNDHURST—Had the Noble and Learned Lord
any right to write to the Speaker ?
Lord BROUGHAM, with great animation—My Lords,
Have Ito be asked, in this day, whether I have any right to
write to the Speaker because the charge was made in the
other House of Parliament? Have I no right to write a
letter to a private gentleman ? That, at least, is new in these
days. Have Ino right to write a letter ? Had they a right,
the one combining with the other, to charge me with an in-
famous offence ? I say the one combining with the other—
for he whose duty it was to stop such a charge upon the spot
remained silent and quiescent. Have I, being so charged, no
right to write a letter, because they belong to one House and
Ito another? I think, my Lords, I shall no longer hear that
said, either in this House or elsewhere. I wrote to the
Speaker of the House of Commons—most respectfully !wrote
to him—stating what it was that I understood had been
uttered, namely, the words I have recited to your Lordships,
and which I saw not only in the corner of the debate—not only
in the columns of the newspaper which are devoted to the
report of the debate, and in which I have no doubt they
were set down word for word as they were uttered—but in
other parts of the newspaper, where it was ostentatiously
put forward that such a one had charged such a one with
misrepresentation, and had employed towards him the two ,
offensive words " dare" and " falsehood," which I have
already recited to your Lordships in the passage of which I
complain. Now the charge was—and upon this depends the
accusation of falsehood which is brought against me—that I
was said to have charged the navy with partaking of blood-
money,according as blood-money is known to operate, and
with having neglected and betrayed their duty as professional
men, for the purpose of increasing their professional wages.
What! if I never said anything of the kind? What !if all I
said amounted to nothing even approaching it? What I if
all I said was not only not like it—not even approaching to it
—hut had not one atom, one iota, one tittle of the charge
which lam falsely represented as having made ? What !if I
said directly the reverse? What 1 if, for the very purpose of
preventing such foul misrepresentations, I took the pains of
stopping and twice over stating, in terms that I did not accuse
those honourable and gallant men of anything of the kind ?
What ! if I said that it was the tendency alone of this head-
money that I charged with being bad; stopping there, and
distinctly and explicitly stating that I did not believe its evil
tendency had operated upon the lion. and gallant men who were
engaged to prevent the slave-trade? But I do not stop here.
What I if I took the pairs to publish all this? What ! if for the
first time in my life my name is appended to that publication upon
the slave trade? What ! if I stated in the dedication of that pub-
lication to the Marquis Wellesley, that I then, for the first
time, notwithstanding all the volumes I had written upon the
subject of slavery and the slave trade, put my name to my
work, and that I did do, in order the better to authenticate
the words I used? What ! if I did not stop there? What I if
the Noble Lord at the head of the Admiralty having said, in
the course of the debate, that I had charged the officers of
the navy with the offence, I immediately got up and said,
" Not so ; I do not charge them with it ; I expressly and in
terms said that did not charge them, and that it was the ten-
dency only of the head-money, and not the effect of it, of
which I complained as being most prejudicial to the interests
of the cause I had at heart ?" Perhaps those of your Lord-
ships who have been into the country, or who have been pre-
vented by indisposition from attending the proceedings of
this House—perhaps, for instance, the Noble and Learned
Lord ( Plunket) near me, my much beloved and highly-re-
spected friend, who has but very recently come over from the
discharge of his duties at the head of the law in Ireland—per-
haps he, not having been present to observe what has been
passing here, may say, as he might very naturally say, " Oh
the whole matter is only of such recent occurrence that these
parties, swift to condemn, but slow to inquire and unwilling to
hear, have had no opportunity of reading the authenticated state-
ment ; the speech was made some time in February, and very
probably it has only been published a few days, so that these
persons have not had time to read it." What l if it has been
published a month or more? The speech was made on the
29th of January. The whole month of February has elapsed,
and I hold in my hand a copy of the speech, of which, I be-
lieve, hundreds of thousands have been circulated in various
forms over the whole country, and which, being delivered on
the 29th of January, was printed and published on the 2d of
February. Then, upon the Ist of March, one calendar month
afterwards, came the charge of my having said that of which I
said the very reverse, and of which a month before I had taken
the unusual pains of myself causing to be printed an exact,
accurate statement of the words I used. Does that printed
speech contain anything offensive to the navy ? I am not
aware that I could speak more tenderly or more honourably of
any class of men than I did in that speech of the officers of
her Majesty's navy. I should have imagined that this must
base been obvious to them all -, to such of them at least as are
by nature endowed with even the most moderate share of clear
understanding—who have not a head bewildered and puzzled
by the want of that common temper by which ordinary minds
even approach the discussion of questions of no extraordinary
difficulty or complication. Except to such understandings as
this it is difficult for me to conceive anything less offensive,
anything less obnoxious than that which I am about to read,
and which was taken as the ground of the charge of which I
complain :—" I will not say that the cruisers having visited and
inspected her would suffer her to pass onward. I will not
impute,to gallant and honourable men a breach of duty, by as-
serting that, knowing a ship to have a guilty purpose, and
aware that they Ind the power of proving this, they would vo-
luntarily permit her to aeccmplish it." Is there anything in
this language to justify the charge which is brought against
passage.
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affirm, without any fear of being contradicted, that the policy"
—the policy—that was my argument, the tendency of the
policy, not the effect of it—" that the policy which holds out
a reward, not to the cruiser who stops such a ship and inter-
rupts her on her way to the scene of her crimes, but to the
cruiser who seizes her on her way back when full of slaves,
gives and professes to give the cruiser an interest in letting her
reach Africa, take in her cargo of slaves, and sail for Ameri-
ca." I did not say that the officers engaged in the service
yielded to the temptation thus held out to them—l merely ob-
served that it gave them an interest in allowing the vessels em-
ployed in the slave trade to complete their cargoes before they
were attacked and captured, and it was the giving of that interest
that I condemned. How did I proceed ?—" Moreover I may
also affirm with perfect safety, that this policy is grounded
upon the assumption that the cruiser will be influenced by
the hope of the reward"—surely, a very rational argument---
" in performing the service, else of what earthly use can it be
to other it? and, consequently, lam entitled to conclude that
the offering this reward assumes"—assumes l by whom ? not
by me, but by those who offer the reward—" that the cruiser
cares for the reward, and will let the slaver pass on unless she
is laden with slaves. If this does not always happen, it is very
certainly no fault of the policy which is framed upon such pre-
posterous principle. But I am not about to argue that any
such consequences actually take place." I cannot conceive
any thing more plain than that. Is there any ambiguity, any
uncertainty in the terms in which that last eentenee is ex-
pressed? I confess it appears to me be perfectly plain,
perfectly intelligible. lam not about to argue that any
such consequences actually took place. It may or may not
be so in the result ; but the " tendency"—your Lordships will
perceive that I limited myself entirely to the " tendency," and
made no reference to the "effect"—" but the tendency of the sys-
tem is plain." I then went on to speak of the analogy that in
say mind existed between head-money and blood-money. The
evil of blood-money is this—an evil which I particularly
pointed as making it incomparably more odious—that it has
a tendency to make innocent persons forfeit their lives by
the act of those who want to get the blood-money. Speak-
ing now in your Lordships' presence, who may have some re-
collection of what fell from me when I made the speech
from which I am now quoting, it is hardly necessary for me
to say that I made no attempt whatever to attribute the de-
sire for this odious blood-money to the officers of the British
navy. Your Lordships may remember that I did the very
contrary. In order to go on the outside of safety, and to
prevent the possibility of any invidious remark being made
upon me on the occasion, I wont on to say, " That head-
money produces all the effect of blood-money I certainly am
not prepared to affirm ; for the giving a reward to informers
on capital conviction had the effect of engendering conspi-
racies to prosecute innocent men, a 3 well as to prevent the
guilty from being stopped in their career until their crimes
had ripened into capital offences ; and I have no coeception
that any attempt can be made to capture vessels not engaged
in the trade; nor indeed could the head-money, from the na-
ture of the thing, be obtained by any such means." I also
upon that occasion declared to your Lordships the authority
upon which I founded my statement, and said that it was
Mr. Laird's excellent work upon Africa that had originated
my statement, that had caused me to bring it before your
Lordships, and which would induce me to abide steadfastly
by it until I had obtained full and complete relief for Africa
and the suffering
nowuffer universallyingnegroanddeparneeuattteedr eaxutdinectuinodneomfutehdattreaxdee:
crable an
which none but men of confused understanding and perverted
judgment would seek to perpetuate in any degree of its ori-
ginal enormity. lam very far from holding that the men
who have made these charges against me have the slightest
fellow-feeling in the world with those who would for ever put
down the African slave trade. It is for the sake of defending
the cruisers that they have come forward on this occasion ; and
for the sake of defending the Government who resisted my
motion. But it does not always happen that the persons for
whom a voluntary defence is made by others are in the end in-
debted in any very great amount of gratitude to the volun-
teers by whom their cause has been supported ; and when the
cause of these honourable and gallant men, the officers of the
Queen's cruisers, has been taken up by volunteers of great
judgment and remaikable for no great skill in the conduct
of affairs, it may happen to them to say, " Spare us from our
friends—spare us your defence—leave us rather to the mercy
of a fair and candid accuser." I own if I were an officer in
the navy I should not feel myself bowed down to the very
earth by the depth of my gratitude towards those who had
volunteered such a defence for me. I should not feel the
lead of gratitude was supportable ; in fact, I should not much
thank them for forcing their defence upon me. I should
rather think that they_ had placed themselves upon the