The Sun.
London, England, 1849-02-03 00:00:00

a way of calling anything they did not like " unconstitu-
tional"—(Hear, hear)—and the word, when applied to the
present agitation, seemed only to imply that the people were
taking a deep interest in the question. Let the people of
England understand that order was the cheapest possible
thing, and let them confine themselves to that kind of as-
semblages and discussions which were so denounced, and no
evil consequences were to be apprehended. Those leagues
were a safety valve, by means of which revolutions were
avoided; and so long as the public feeling was expressed
through such channels, this country would continue to enjoy
the benefit of the Constitution, living under a blameless So-
vereign, an unoppressive Church, and a Parliament ready, in
the main, to meet the wishes of the people.—( Hear.)
Lord MANDEVILLE supported the amendment. Our
interference in Sicily might have been warranted by our
connexion with that country, particularly in 1812, but he
could not but agree in the condemnation which had been
pronounced by the Hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, on
the conduct pursued by the British Government with re-
ference to Austria and the States of Lombardy. The most
important of the many omissions in the Speech—not one of
which had been satisfactorily explained by the Noble Lord
—was that it did not contain one word as to the condition
of the agricultural interest in this country.—(Hear.) Next
to that was the absence of any allusion to tne state of the
colonie.. He thought that our colonial interests, having no
representatives in that House, were more especially entitled
to their care, and demanded every possible support, for they
were as much the offspring of the State as any other part of
the empire. Instead of having protected, this country had
injured, her colonies by legislation.—(Hear, hear.) There
was nothing heard but complaints from every colonial pos-
session. and every account that reached this country con-
veyed some fresh intelligence of distress and suffering, of
estates abandoned and lying waste, of buildings out of repair,
of labourers flocking into the towns fur work and food, and
of destitution so great that in some cases the people had
made .houses of packing .cases.—(l laugh.) These were
subjects on which he thought the Government owed some
explanation of their views to the House. •
Mr. HORSMA.N said, he was unwilling to give a gene-
ral vote on the amendment without drawing a distinction
between those portions of the address which he could cordi-
ally support and those which he thought objectionable. The
Hon. Member for Buckinghamshire in his review of the
effects of the free-trade policy of this country seemed
to assert that the result of those measures had veri-
fied the predictions he had made respecting them on former
occasions. He (Mr. Disraeli) having stated that, and having
gone into a great number of statistical details, and of finan-
cial and commercial questions, to prove to the satisfaction of
his party that his predictions were fully carried out, very
consistently concluded his speech by moving an amendment,
the last paragraph of which declared that " a large portion
of the agricultural and colonial interests of the empire are
labouring under a state of progressive depression, calculated
to excite serious apprehensions and anxiety." Now, he
was sure the honourable Member did not mean to disguise

his opinion that, if this depression existed, it was directly
connected with those free-trade measures from which he
had predicted unfavourable results in 1846.—(Hear, hear.)
If, therefore, he (Mr. Horsman) voted for that paragraph of
the amendment, he must be supposed to approve of the
principles laid down by the Hon. }Member (Mr. Disraeli),
and to recant the opinions he had expressed, and to retract
the course he had taken, with respect to free-trade in 1846.
( sear, hear.) That was a step he was not prepared to
take.—(Hear, hear.) The occurrences of subsequent years,
and more particularly of the year just passed by, had per-
fectly satisfied him that the measure of 1846 had saved
this country, politically speaking, from most appalling
perils, and commercially aui financially he expected that
in years to come the empire would derive great advan-
tage from the adoption of a free-trade policy.—(Hear, hear.) i
The other paragraph of the amendment declared that the
state of our relations with foreign powers was not such
as to jastify the House in addressing her Majesty in the
language of congratulation. Bat, as the Noble Lord
at the head of the Government justly observed, the
speech did not call upon the House to indulge in the lan-
guage of congratulation at all. The object of the amend-
ment, however, must be best explained by the speech in
which it was introduced, and in that speech he observed the
Hon. Member stated that he viewed with serious apprehen-
sion the proposal for retrenchment which the Ministry had
indicated, and that, going back to the history of past re-
trenchments, he had endeavoured to show they had been
rashly undertaken, and had been followed by the most un-
happy results. The Hon. Member, too, had condemned
strongly the system of "unwise economy" to which the
Government, not from statesman-like motives, but from less
creditable influences, were about to become subservient.
If, then, he (Mr. Horsman) were to concur in that portion
of the amendment, he must be supposed to assent to those
doctrines, and to express his disapproval of the dimi-
nished estimates and reduced expenditure promised in
the Speech from the throne.—(Hear, hear.) However
the amendment might be in accordance with the
views of the Hon. Member's party, it was one which
he (sr. Horsman) could not consistently support.—(Hear.)
le could not vote-for any proposition which would carry with
it the conclusion that he was adverse to reduced expenditure ;
for he hailed with satisfaction any promise of it, and certainly
he must say there was nothing in the announcement of the
expected retrenchment calculated to excite any very serious
apprehensions among the opponents of financial reform. Let
the principles be once introduced, however, and it must be
carried out still further. The aspect of foreign affairs was
such as to fully justify the reduction of our establishment.
Last year France had been the volcano from which the erup-
tion might be expected that was to lay Europe in ashes, but
now there was but one political object in that country.
From the President down to the lowest candidate for popular

favour, every man who addressed a public assembly there
talked of peace and of retrenchment. Already there was a
popular movement in favour of those objects, which was fast
swelling into a general agitation, and even the Marshal of
France who commanded her armies had consentedto a reduc-
tion of from one-third to:a fourth of her whole force.—(Hear.)
The Noble Lord who moved the Address had taken great
credit to foreign Governments for having controlled the na-
tional will ana kept the people from war, but events had
proved that the statesmen he praised had followed, not
guided, the national sentiment. There were, he must say,
two extraordinary omissions in the Speech. He could not
but concur in much that had fallen from the Hon. Member
for Buckinghamshire with respect to our foreign relations,
Many of the facts he had stated could not be denied, nor
could he (M. floriman) conceive there was one man in the
House who could assert that the state of those relations was
such as was satistactory to the Parliament or creditable to
the coantry ; but at the same time hes could not lay all the
blame of this on the Minister; a great deal was attributable
to Parliament itself.—(Hear hear.) The manner in which
our foreign affairs was allowed to be conducted was
a disgrace and a reproach to the country, There was a
secrecy and a responsibility in the transactions of them which
shut the doors of the Foreign-Office against all inquiry. If
a question was asked with reference to any subject, the
House was told that "the public interests required the public
to be kept in ignorance of it."—( sear, hear.) If such an
explosion took place as that in Spain, where, as the Hon.
gentleman observed, the British Minister was kicked out of
Madrid, so that the public could not be kept in complete ig-
norance, they discovered that there were two sets of dis-
patches in the Foreign-office—ene for the guidance of the
Minister abroad and the other to amuse the Parliament at
home.—(Hear.) They were told, moreover, that the English
people took no great interest in foreign aflairs. It was a fal-
lacy to say so. No man could take interest in a subject on
which he was kept in the completest ignorance. But the
people of this country must take an interest in every ques-
tion which affected their pockets. It had been laid down as
a constitutional maxim by the English people that publicity
was the best, if not the only guarantee for good government.
If that held good in domestic, it equally held good in foreign
affairs. Nations now-a-days had no secrets from each other.
They knew the precise resources, power, and even the inten-
tions of their neighbours. They valued at a lower rate than
in times gone by the arts of political rivalry. They knew
the danger, as they had paid the cost of diplomatic rivals.—
( Hear, hear.) Had the system of secrecy worked well ? No.
The country had all the semblance of peace, without the eco-
nomy—they had all the cost of war, without any prospect of
termination. —(Hear, hear.) The change which had taken
place in royal speeches lately as to the state of foreign affairs
was remarkable. First, the House was told the Crown " had
received assurances of friendship frotn foreign powers ;" next
they were told the Crown " looked with confidence" to the
continuance of good relations, Then came no confidence,
but "a hope" that. peace would be preserved. and now, in-
stead of " confidence or " hope," there was nothing but "a
desire" that a good understanding should continue between
us and other countries.—( Hear, hear.) That paragraph of
the Speech must have been prepared with peculiar care;
but, unless the phrase was accidental, it must create con-
siderable uneasiness. In what Court of Europe were they on
cordial terms with the Sovereign ?—(Hear, hear.) In some
the terms of diplomatic civility, if not broken up, were with
difficulty sustained.—( Hear, hear.) He could not but ask
by what fatal ingenuity it was that, after thirty-four years
of peace, the Queen of England should be compelled to de-
part from the language of her predecessors, and to imply that
she did not meet those royal courtesies to which she had a
just right ?—(Hear.) Of late years, so far from having fol-
lowed our old rule of non-intervention, we had made it the
exception.—(Hear.) Interference with foreign States had
become the rule, but we had not followed it so that it could
be traced to any distinct principle. One week we interfered
on behalf of the Crown, and upheld its influence, the next we
gave aid to the revolted subjects, and prevented the Crown
from reducing them to submission. Next week we disap-
pointed both parties, and gained the hostility of both.
One censured England for goieg too far—another for not
going far . enough. They had meddled everywhere, and
wherever they had meddled most, there they were most dis-
liked. It was announced in the Royal Speech, that as soon
as the interests of the public service would permit, the papers
relative to foreign transactions should be laid before Parlia-
ment; which meant, when all interest in the subject should
be lost; and when the public would not take the trouble to
ascertain whether the documents presented to it were perfect
or not. It was the duty of Parliament to take care that the
public mind was not kept in a state of ignorance respecting
foreign affairs. If Ministers were pursuing a correct course,
nothing could strengthen more than the backing of public
opinion ; if, on the contrary, it should appear that they were
prosecuting an erroneous policy, the national interests
would be vindicated by the restraints of public opinion.—
( Hear, hear.) The vices of this system of secrecy were not
confined to one department of the Government; they were,
if possible, ,even more injuriously developed in the Colonial-
office.—(Hear, hear.) if the mal-administration of foreign
affairs was annoying to our continental neighbours, the mis-
government of the colonies harassed our own subjects. In
the one case we risked our foreign relations, in the other we
hazarded the allegiance whilst we sacrificed the interests of
our own subjects.—(Hear, hear.) If anything could sur-
prise in the omissions of the Royal Speech, it was certainly
the absence, of all allusion to the COlollie3.—(Hear, hear.)
To read the Speech, one would suppose that we had no co-
lonial possessions, or that they were in such a state of
blessed prosperity as did not call for even a passing remark.
Yet, it was doubtful whether, at any previous time, our
colonial possessiona were in a more unsatisfactory, and, in
some respects, in a more perilous state.—(Hear, hear.) Many
of our colonies were labouring under extreme distress,
which had produced in some a feeling of discontent, and
in others something worse than discontent. Under these
nedteiaretsetli,
esnugccroesestgaonlaergine
distresses and anitadmi
circumstances it was most extraordinary that in a Royal
wS pneioecnh
000ploenniianlg
share of the attention of the Legislature, not the slightest
allusion should have been made to the sabject.—(Hear,
hear.) The omission was the more remarkable,' because
there was hardly a paragraph in the Speech from the Throne
but must have reminded its framers of the colonies. One
paragraph speaks of "progressive improvement;" was that
remark applicable to the colonies?—(Hear, hear.) In
another paragraph reference was made to the revival of com-
merce;
was that, again, applicable to our colonial posses-
sions? Another paragraph congratulated Parliament on the
fact, that while troubles existed in other countries, tranquil.
lity prevailed in her Majesty's dominions; was, that appli-
cable to the British colonies? Retrenchment and economy
were promised—but those again were limited to her Majestys
own territories. From beginning to end the Royal Speech
vaunted of prosperous prospects, but the boastful announce-
ment was so belied by the condition of the colonies that
their introduction into the Speech could only be accounted
for on the supposition that Ministers no longer reckoned our
colonial possessions a part of
.her Majesty's dominions. At
what time did this surprising omission occur? Not only at