The Sun.
London, England, 1866-07-12 00:00:00

opponents—and I am happy to say that is a combi-
nation not very rare in England—l have heard that
here, as elsewhere, a motion which was made by me
in Parliament some six or seven weeks ago has been
the subject of some misunderstanding and some
misrepresentation, and therefore I think it due to
you and to myself to state simply how the facts
stand. (Hear, hear.) I have been myself charged
by a portion of the Liberal press, and the charge
has been copied into the journals that circulate here
with having tried to carry an amendment by a sur-
prise, by a trick, by taking the opposite party un-
prepared. Now, I meet that charge very simply. I
give it a distinct denial. (Hear, hear.) It would
have been an unfair thing to do; and whatever may
have been the defects of my political life I do not
think that any one has ever charged me with having
been led into extreme courses by an exaggerated
feeling of partisanship. (Cheers.) It would have
been not only unfair but silly and unmeaning, be-
cause a majority obtained by surprise could carry
with it no moral weight, and a decision so obtained
would have been liable to be reversed by a more
deliberate vote. (Hear, hear.) The simple fact of
the case is, that when I made that motion I made it
in :the full belief that the late Government knew
as well as I did what we were about to propose, and
I do not know that I was ever more astonished than
when I was informed by the Government that they
considered that sufficent notice had not been
given. As to the amendment itself—as to the
part I took on the motion of Lord Grosvenor at an
early period of the session, and generally as to the
course I have followed in the reform debates—l am
perfectly ready to answer any questions that may
be put and to give any explanation that may be de-
sired ; but as I have several other things to say you
will perhaps kindly allow those answers and that
explanation to remain till the questions have been
put. Well, now comes the question, why have the
Cabinet of Lord Derby accepted office without pos-
sessing an assured majority of the House of Com-
mons? To that my answer is twofold. In the first
place, it is very hard to say, in the actual state of
things, that any interest or any Government pos-
sesses any assured majority in the present House of
Commons. (Hear.) In the next place, we thought
that, in honour and in duty, no other course was
open to us than that which we took. If we had
shrunk from the task, if we had allowed the late
Cabinet to come back to the positions which they
have just vacated, they would have come back, as
lit seemed to us, with a moral right to call upon the
house to reverse its deliberate decision. They would
have said—" We come back as the only possible
Ministry. If you take us you must take us on our
own terms ; you must take our bill with us; you
must surrender your right of criticism, because if
you don't take that bill as it stands, we shall resign,
and the whole business of the country will be at a
standstill." We thought that was not a position in
which the house ought to be placed. (Hear.) We
have not desired to form our Administration on any
purely party basis. There are many of the Whig
party whose sympathies are well known to be
with us, whose support in debates and in divisions
we have no doubt of receiving, and whose official
co-operation, when asked, has been withheld, not
on account of any real or wide difference of political
opinion, but rather from that natural and honour-
able scruple which makes men shrink from an ap-
pearance of changing their party, or " walking," as
the phrase is, " across the floor of the house" under
circumstances where they may appear to be gainers
by the change. As to the future, he would be a bold
man who would undertake to prophesy. Next year is a
long way off—(hear, hear, and a laugh)—and for
the rest of the session I do not think you will hear
of any exciting debates. For myself, I think the
in-coming Government will not be able to do more
than wind up the course of routine. If any mem-
ber of the House of Commons thinks we are where
we ought not to be, there is a simple mode of bring-
ing on the issue. Let him move a want of confi-
dence. That is a fair and constitutional proceeding.
Whether it succeeds or whether it fails we shall
equally know where we stand. And if no such vote
is moved we have a fair right to assume that a ma-
jority of the House of Commons, although they
may not be absolutely pledged to support either the
Ministry or the measures which we bring forward,
are nevertheless satisfied that ours is the Govern-
ment which ought at the present time to be in
power. (Hear, hear.) Now, gentlemen, Ido not
know that I should have troubled you further, if it
had not been for that old charge alluded to two days
ago by Lord Derby in the House of Lords—a charge
utterly abandoned but perpetually reproduced—
that a Conservative Government is disposed to in-
volve England in war. I have never understood on
what historical basis the assertion rests—(a cry of
" America"). Very well ; we will come to America
presently. Only one European war has taken place
in the last 50 years in which England has taken an
part. That is the war against Russia; and that war
was made and carried on, not by a Conservative
Ministry, but by two successive Liberal Administra-
tions. It is going back a very long way to refer to the
wars of Pitt in 1792. (Loud laughter.) I have heard
it said that if Lord Derby had continued in power in
1859, at the time the Italian war broke out, you
would have been involved in a war with France. I
was a member of the Government of Lord Derby,
and I can say with perfect confidence that the very
last idea that entered into the mind of the cabinet was
the idea of a quarrel or misunderstanding with France.
(Hear, hear.) Again, I have heard it said by im-
patient friends down there—(laughter)—that the
Conservatives dislike the United States, that they
dislike republican institutions, that they sympathised
with the Confederates against the Northern States,
and that if they had been in power during the Ame-
rican civil war they would have recognised the
South and encouraged them entirely in their quarrel.
I do not stand here to deny that a great many very
foolish things have been said in the house and out
of the house relative to that civil war —but un-
luckily, as many of these foolish remarks have been
made by distinguished Liberals as by their oppo-
nents. When Lord Russell, at the time Foreign
Secretary, told the country that the North were
fighting for empire and the South for independence;
and when Mr. Gladstone, then the leader of the
House of Commons, used the celebrated phrase
about the Southern President having not only
created an army and a navy, but created a nation ;
when, on the other hand, you recollect that neither
the leader of the Conservative party in the House
of Commons nor I myself have ever used one phrase
showing a feeling in favour of either side in that
quarrel over the other, because we thought it incon-
sistent with our duty so to do—l say, when you
bear those facts in mind, it seems to me a little cool,
to use no stronger term, to assume that Liberals
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rent and less prudent course would have been taken
by the Conservative party had they been in power.
In point of fact, I have no doubt whatever that if
any proposal for the recognition of the South in the
quarrel had been made in Parliament that proposal
would have been rejected, not merely by an immense
majority of the House of Commons but by a largo
majority of the Conservative party itself. (Cheers.)
Indeed, if the matter required serious argument one
might ask, what can the landed and wealthy classes
of this country to gain by a war? (Hear.) Is it
their interest that the national debt should be in-
creased? (Hear.) Is it theirinterest that the taxes
should be heavier ? (Hear.) Is it their interest that
the demands of war should increase, and that labour
should become dearer? (Hear, hear.) War has
its chances, its failures, as well as its successes ; and
failure abroad almost inevitably involves political
discontent, if not political disturbance, at home.
(Rear, hear.) If at any time we are to be involved
in the risk of war I am convinced that the risk
would arise more from the prevalence of democratic
and revolutionary_
sympathy than from Conserva-
tive prejudice. uI
ifo n
present danger, o p
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which all parties are agreedkeeping out of these continental
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deny that there are within the range of possibility
exceptional cases, where the solemn faith of the
country has been pledged to a particular course of
action, but those cases are few and well defined
they are beforehand--and the improbability of their
arising is so extreme that I should not have referred