The Sun.
London, England, 1856-05-23 00:00:00

precedeuted ; he knew that it was only a convertible
term for ministerial power. He sincerely regretted, both
in its substance and in its manner, the change which
had been effected ; he was not hopeful of our obtaining
any reciprocal advantage ; he believed the sympathy of
neutrals was not to be purchased by concessions or signs
of weakness, but by fair dealing, vigour, firmness, and
earnestness of purpose. (Cheers.)
The Earl of HARROWBY observed that it was not
correct to say that this was a right given up by our Go-
vernment without any csmpensating advantage. There
was the abolition of privateering, from which in former
wars we had suffered eren more than we had inflicted.
It should be remarked that although England had agreed
to abandon henceforth the right of seizing enemy's goods
in neutral bottoms, there was no admission that the
right did not exist involved in this abandonment •f it.
He thought we had an undoubted right to persist in that
practice, but we had now thought it better to agree in
an arrangement that it should be abandoned. This was
not so much, as has been represented, a change of policy,
but it was embodying in a general document what had
been the subject of several special engagements during
more than a century past. It had been said that the
Americans would not be willing to give up privateering,
but if they did not do so their neutral bottoms would not
be protected, for they could not take the benefit of one
part of the agreement without adopting the other part.
It was prudent and wise on the part of our Government,
at a time when we were not subjected to any circum-
stances of pressure, with no motive but a wish to pro-
mote the harmony of nations, to make the arrangement
with the world in general, which we had successively
made, by separate treaties, with most of the maritime
powers. It was was one of the series of those measures
which would tend to mitigate the atrocities of war, with
the progressive civilisation of mankind. The Government
had no reason to doubt that it would have the approval of
Parliament, since in all the successive treaties by which
the saute arrangement was made in different states Par-
liament had acquiesced. After citing a treatise on the
subject, written by Mr. Ward about the beginning of
this century, the noble earl said that although the right
of seizing enemy's goods on board neutral ships was atb•
stractedly just, it was one which could not be carried
into practice in this age of increasing intercourse between
nations without the greatest inconvenience. For Eng-
land to stand alone, insensible to the general current of
opinion in Europe and the civilised world, was to be in a
most dangerous positiore and to be considered as a selfish
asserter of the extreme claims which her widely-extended
power enabled her to enforce. Tee real strength of Eng-
land consisted not in exercising an extreme right in the
face of the disapprobation of the world, but in her cha-
racter as much as in her power ; and the step which had
been taken by her government was one which deserved
commendation instead of censure. (Cheers.)
The Earl of HARDWICKE said he would direct his
speech to the inquiry what would be the result, in the event
of any future war, of carrying out the principles which had
now been enunciated by the Government, and made, as he
understood, the law of Europe. He should be sorry to see
this country involved again in a war with France, if such
were to be the maritime law. His conviction was, that
the maritime power of England had been completely struck
down by this concession, and that, in any future war, it
would be found to have rendered our maritime force com-
paratively useless. The effect would be to reduce the con-
te is of nations to a military duel, in which the armies and
fleets of one nation were to meet those of the other, and
settle the quarrel, ship to ship, and man to man, by a di-
rect contest of arms. He should like to know how soon a
war would be terminated on that principle ? Why, it
would be offering a premium to the other nations of the
world to feed and foment the quarrel, by which they 1.1
a gain'ul carrying trade so long as the war lasted. He
asked what had been the result of our trying this
system in the late war with Rusia ? The effect of it
was, that we had paid into Russian coffers, as nearly
as he could calculate, no less than seventeen millions
sterling, during those two years of our being at war. Our
merchants, at the commencement of the war, believing
that the maritime rights of England would be maintained,
had made arrangements for a trade in hemp and other pro-
duce from distant countries ; but oar right of intercepting
Russian produce inneutral hands was relinquished, and our
merchants suffered in consequence of those arrangements ;
the trade with Russia flourished during the war ; Russia
was enabled to get rid of her raw produce to any amount,
and we paid her 17 millions of our gold. In that instance,
the principle which was now laid down had not been very
successful ; and he believed the war would have been ended
sooner than it was if we had not thus allowed our enemy
to receive supplies. If the war had continued, there were
some who would have contemplated—though he did not
say that the Cabinet had discussed it—a blockade of the
Prussia,' ports, to put a stop to that process. He observed
that France, in this war, had withdrawn all the seamen
from her merchant ships to man her navy ; and that her
trade was carried on meantime under foreign flans. Now,
if ever—which he trusted would not be—a war broke out
again between England and France, by the principle now
agreed to we should enable her to do the same, and to hays
her necessary trade carried on by neutrals, whilst all her
seamen would be employed against us in manning her fleet.
Such a state of things, instead of preventing war, would
oblige us to declare war against the carriersofour enemy's
tree*. The seamen of England were not more mercenary
than those of other nations, but in all previous wars England
when she required to raise large bodies of men held out
the prospect of reward in the shape of prizemioney ; and
in any future war with France where would there be any
inducement to sailors to join the service in the shape of
prize money, when all trade could be carried on by neutrals.
Again, what if there was to be a war with America? He
had heard from the two noble earls opposite (Clarendon and
Harrowby) two distinct statements with reference to the
position in which we should be placed with America. His
noble friend (Lord Clarendon) said that America, with her
five million tuns of shipping, would not permit our retain-
ing a law which had a tendency to interfere so much with
their rights, but his other noble friend (Lord Harrowby)
said that if America would not agree to this particular
clause of the convention, she would not be admitted to the
benefit of the other regulations, and that she must take all
or none. He (Lord Hardwicke) was certain that America
could not put down privateering, for she hod no large
standing navy, and the course now taken on this question
was au offence to one of the greatest commercial nations in
the world, and would cause her to dissent in toto to the
whole proceeding, and to resist this new law whenever she
had an opportunity. There was another part of the sub-
ject with which he felt great diiliculty in dealing, and with
regard to which he could not venture to speak, lest he
should use language which would not be parliamentary;
fur he felt that a step hail been taken by a Minister of the
Crown sitting in a foreign city in a congress which would
be felt in this country, if not now at some period or other,
as an act which was not justifiable, although it might b•
strictly legal. The power of the Crown no doubt did extend
to such au act, but the subversion. of a great national law
on which the maritime power of a country depended, by a
minister, at the suggestion of a French minister, was so
offensive to him (Lord Hardwicke), that whatever might
be sail about ameliorating the horrors of war and such
rubbish, that he thought so serious an act ought not to be
passed over without the strongest cemment. The power ass
seined byMinisters to deal with a question likethis without
notice to thepeupleoftliis c 'entry was the strongest exer-
cise of the prerogative of the Crown in his time. It was his
(Lord Haritwieke's) conviction that the Queen, did she uns
d ,rstand the whole scope of this question, it would not be is
her nature or her teleper to give up any of the rights of
this country. He thought that in such a case a minister
took onhimself a resp,msibility which must rest on his own
shoulders. (Hear.) He was not satisfied that the First
Minister was the man that could be trusted as having eon•
stilted the Crown on all occasions, or that he always cons
suited the Queen in cases of great importance. He was
entitled to say that, and ho would not use such language if
it hail not a foundation for doubting that the Crown was
always consulted on occasions of importance. He (Lord
Hardwicke) did not think this question had been treated in
a constitutional manner. He was not one of those who
thought the Queen a nullity, and he should like to have
an assurance that its this case the Queen had been dealt
with by the First Minister, in a different manner to that in
which ho sometimes treated her. Their lordships might
remember a certain letter which was read to the House of
Commons, and he would read a passage from it :—" The
Queen requires, first, that Lord Palmerston will distinctly
state what he proposes in a given case, in order that the
Queen may know as distinctly to whatgsihenihe
is giving
sanctioniviugher
royal sanction. Secondly, having once given
to a measure, that it be not arbitrarily altered or modified
by the minister. Such an act she must consider as failing
in sincerity towards the Crown, and justly to be visited by
the exercise of her constitutional right of dismissing that
minister. She expects to be kept informed of what passes
between him ant the foreign ministers before important
decisions are taken, based upon that intercourse." He
would not read further. He wished, however, to keow
whether when a question like this was passed at a con-
ference inquest of a Frenchman, however able
and
d
a man he might be and what he
excaetlle thte
(Lord Hardwicke), as an Englishman, and
to be so des
"atcountry, with a ministry such as was
nogwi°nrY to hiepower, theconstitutional rights of the Sovereign
were not abused. In his opinion, his noble friend (Lord
Clarendon) was to be admired for the talent, ability, and
honest English feeling he had always displayed, and he
(Lord Hardwicke) had some difficulty to reconcile the
course his noble friend had taken with his general conduct.
His noble friend was always such a friend to the preserva-
tion of the maritime strength of the eouetry that he was
astonished that his noble friend should have been the in-
strument for taking such a stop. He should have thought