justified out of these documents; and that impartial history will teach this to posterity, if we do not comprehend it now.

I am not, nor did I ever pretend to be, a statesman; but that character is so tainted and so equivocal in our day, that I am not sure that a pure and honourable ambition would aspire to it. I have not enjoyed for thirty years, like these noble lords, the honours and emoluments of office. I have not set my sails to every passing breeze. I am a plain and simple citizen, sent here by one of the foremost constituencies of the Empire, representing feebly, perhaps, but honestly, I dare aver, the opinions

of very many, and the true interests of all those who have sent me here. Let it not be said that I am alone in my condemnation of this war, and of this incapable and guilty Administration. And, even if I were alone, if mine were a solitary voice raised amid the 100 din of arms and the clamours of a venal Press, I should have the consolation I have to-night -and which I trust will be mine to the last moment of my existence-the priceless conIsolation that no word of mine has tended to promote the squandering of my country's treasure or the spilling of one single drop of my country's blood.

SIR,-There is one subject upon which I should like to put a question to the noble lord* at the head of the Government. I shall not say one word here about the state of the army in the Crimea, or one word about its numbers or its condition Every member of this House, every inhabitant of this country, has been sufficiently harrowed with details regarding it. To my solemn belief, thousands-nay, scores of thousands of persons-have retired to rest night after night, whose slumbers have been disturbed or whose dreams have been based upon the sufferings and agonies of our soldiers in the Crimea. I should like to ask the noble lord at the head of the Government—although I am not sure if he will feel that he can or ought to answer the question-whether the noble lord the member for London † has power, after discussions have commenced, and as soon as there shall be established good grounds for believing that the negotiations for peace will prove successful, to enter into any armistice? ['No, no!']

I know not, Sir, who it is that says 'No, no,' but I should like to see any man get up and say that the destruction of 200,000 human lives lost on all sides during the course of this unhappy conflict is not a sufficient sacrifice. You are not pretending to conquer territory— you are not pretending to hold fortified or unfortified towns; you have offered terms of peace which, as I understand them, I do not say are not moderate; and breathes there a man in this House or in this country whose appetite for blood is so insatiable that, even when terms of peace have been offered and accepted, he pines for that assault in which, of

Russian, Turk, French, and English, as sure as one man dies, 20,000 corpses will strew the streets of Sebastopol? [I say I should like to ask the noble lord-and I am sure that he will feel, and that this House will feel, that I am speaking in no unfriendly manner towards the Government of which he is at the headI should like to know, and I venture to hope that it is so, if the noble lord ‡ the member for London has power, at the earliest stage of these proceedings at Vienna, at which it can properly be done-and I should think that it might properly be done at a very early stageto adopt a course by which all further waste of human life may be put an end to, and further animosity between three great nations be, as far as possible, prevented.]

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I appeal to the noble lord at the head of the Government and to this House; I am not now complaining of the war-I am not now complaining of the terms of peace, nor, indeed, of anything that has been done but I wish to suggest to this House what, I believe, thousands and tens of thousands of the most educated and of the most Christian portion of the people of this country are feeling upon this subject, although, indeed, in the midst of a certain clamour in the country, they do not give public expression to their feelings. Your country is not in an advantageous state at this moment; from one end of the kingdom to the other there is a general collapse of industry. Those members of this House not intimately 70 acquainted with the trade and commerce of the country do not fully comprehend our position as to the diminution of employment and the lessening of wages. An increase in Lord John Russell.

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the cost of living is finding its way to the homes and hearts of a vast number of the labouring population.

[At the same time there is growing upand, notwithstanding what some honourable members of this House may think of me, no man regrets it more than I do-a bitter and angry feeling against that class which has for a long period conducted the public affairs of this country. I like political changes when such changes are made as the result, not of passion, but of deliberation and reason. Changes so made are safe; but changes made under the influence of violent exaggeration, or of the violent passions of public meetings, are not 90 changes usually approved by this House, or advantageous to the country.] Sir, I cannot but notice, in speaking to gentlemen who sit on either side of this House, or in speaking to any one I meet I cannot, I say, but notice that an uneasy feeling exists as to the news which may arrive by the very next mail from the East. I do not suppose that your troops are to be beaten in actual conflict with the foe, or that they will be driven into the sea; but I am certain that many homes in England in which there now exists a fond hope that the distant one may return-many such homes may be rendered desolate when the next mail shall arrive. The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the very beating of his wings. There is no one to sprinkle with blood the lintel and the sideposts of our doors, that he may spare and pass on; but he calls at the 110 castle of the noble, the mansion of the wealthy,

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equally as at the cottage of the humble; and it is on behalf of all these classes that I make this solemn appeal.

The

[I tell the noble lord, that if he be ready honestly and frankly to endeavour, if possible, by the negotiations to be opened at Vienna, to put an end to this war, no word of mine, no vote of mine, will be given to shake his power for one single moment, or to change his position in this House. I am sure that the noble 120 lord is not inaccessible to appeals made to him from honest motives and with the deferential feeling that he has been for more than forty years a member of this House. noble lord, before I was born, sat upon the Treasury bench, and he has devoted his life to the service of his country. He is no longer young, and his life has extended almost to the term allotted to man. I would ask, I would entreat the noble lord to take a course which, when 130 he looks back upon his whole political career -whatever he may find therein to be pleased with, whatever to regret-cannot but be a source of gratification. By adopting that course he would have the satisfaction of reflecting that, having obtained the laudable object of his ambition-having become the foremost subject of the Crown, the dispenser of, it may be, the destinies of his country, and the presiding genius in her councils-he had 140 achieved a still higher and nobler ambition: that he had returned the sword to the scabbard -that at his word torrents of blood had ceased to flow-that he had restored tranquillity to Europe, and saved this country from the indescribable calamities of war.]

ΤΟ

MR SPEAKER-Sir, I am terrified for the future of India when I hear of the indiscriminate slaughter which is now going on there. I have seen a letter, written, I believe, by a missionary, lately inserted in a most respectable weekly newspaper published in London, in which the writer estimates that 10,000 men have been put to death by hanging alone. I ask you, whether you approve of having in India such expressions as these, which I have taken this day from a Calcutta newspaper, and which undoubtedly you will be held to approve if you do anything that can be charged with a confirmation of the tenor of this Proclamation. Here is an extract from The Englishman, which, speaking of the men of the disarmed regiments, who amount to

some 20,000 or 30,000, or even 40,000 men, says:

'There is no necessity to bring every Sepoy to a court-martial, and convict him of mutinous intentions before putting him down as guilty. We do not advocate extreme or harsh measures, nor are we of those who would drench the land with blood; but we have no hesitation in saying, that, were the Government to order the execution of all these Sepoys, they would be legally and morally justified in doing so. There would be no injustice done.'

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No injustice would be done! I ask the House to consider that these men have committed no 30 offence; their military functions were suspended because it was thought they were likely to be tempted to commit an offence, and therefore their arms were taken from them; and now an

Englishman-one of your own countrymenwriting in a newspaper published in Calcutta, utters sentiments so atrocious as those which I have just read to the House. I believe the whole of India is now trembling under the action of volcanic fires; and we shall be guilty of the greatest recklessness, and I will say of great crime against the Monarchy of England, if we do anything by which we shall own this Proclamation. I am asked on this question to overturn Her Majesty's Government. The policy adopted by the Government on this subject is the policy that was cheered by honourable members on this side when it was first announced. It is a policy of mercy and conciliation. False-may I not say?-or blundering leaders of this party would induce us, contrary to all our associations and all our principles, to support an opposite policy. I am willing to avow that I am in favour of justice and conciliation-of the law of justice and of kindness. Justice and mercy are the

supreme attributes of the perfection which we call Deity, but all men everywhere comprehend them; there is no speech nor language in which their voice is not heard, and they could not have been vainly exercised with regard to the docile and intelligent millions of India. You had the choice. You have tried the sword. It has broken; it now rests broken in your grasp; and you stand humbled and rebuked. You stand humbled and rebuked before the eyes of civilised Europe. You may have another chance. You may, by possibility, have another chance of governing India. If you have, I beseech you to make the best use of it. Do not let us pursue such a policy as many men in India, and some in England, have advocated, but which hereafter you will have to regret, which can end only, as I believe, in something approaching to the ruin of this country, and which must, if it be persisted in, involve our name and nation in everlasting disgrace.

I SHALL not discuss the question whether the north is making war for the Constitution, or making war for the abolition of slavery.

If you come to a matter of sympathy with the South, or recognition of the South, or mediation or intervention for the benefit of the South, you should consider what are the ends of the South.

Is there a man here that doubts for a moment that the object of the war on the part of the South-they began the war-that the object of the war on the part of the South is to maintain in bondage four millions of human beings? That is only a small part of it. The further object is to perpetuate for ever the bondage of all the posterity of those four millions of slaves.

The object is, that a handful of white men on that continent shall lord it over many millions of blacks, made black by the very Hand that made us white. The object is, that they should have the power to breed negroes, to work negroes, to lash negroes, to chain negroes, to buy and sell negroes, to deny them the commonest ties of family, or to break their hearts by rending them at their pleasure, to close their mental eye to but a glimpse even of that knowledge which separates us from the brute-for in their laws it is criminal and penal to teach the negro to

read to seal from their hearts the Book of our religion, and to make chattels and things of men and women and children.

Now I want to ask whether this is to be the foundation, as it is proposed, of a new slave empire, and whether it is intended that on this audacious and infernal basis England's new ally is to be built up. [It has been said that Greece was recognised, and that other countries had been recognised. But Greece was not recognised till after she had fought Turkey for six years, and the republics of South America, some of them, not till they had fought the mother country for a score of years. France did not recognise the United States of America till some, I think, six years, five certainly, after the beginning of the War of Independence, and even then it was received as a declaration of war by the English Government. I want to know who they are who speak eagerly in favour of England becoming the ally and friend of this great conspiracy against human nature.]

Now I should have no kind of objection to recognise a country because it was a country that held slaves -to recognise the United States, or to be in amity with it. question of slavery there, and in Cuba and in Brazil, is, as far as respects the present generation, an accident, and it would be un

[The

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reasonable that we should object to trade with and have political relations with a country, merely because it happened to have within its borders the institution of slavery, hateful as that institution is.] But in this case it is a new state intending to set itself up on the sole basis of slavery. Slavery is blasphemously declared to be its chief corner-stone.

I have heard that there are, in this country, ministers of state who are in favour of the South; that there are members of the aristocracy who are terrified at the shadow of the great republic; that there are rich men on our commercial exchanges, depraved, it may be, by their riches, and thriving unwholesomely within the atmosphere of a privileged class; that there are conductors of the public press who would barter the rights of millions of their fellow-creatures that they might bask in the smiles of the great.

But I know that there are ministers of state who do not wish that this insurrection should break up the American nation; that there are members of our aristocracy who are not afraid of the shadow of the republic; that there are rich men, many, who are not depraved by their riches; and that there are public writers of eminence and honour who will not barter human rights for the patronage of the great. But most of all, and before all, I believe,-I am sure it is true in Lancashire, where the working men have seen themselves coming down from prosperity to ruin, from independence to a subsistence on charity, -I say that I believe that the unenfranchised but not hopeless millions of this country will never sympathise with a revolt which is intended to destroy the liberty of a continent, and to build on its ruins a mighty fabric of human 100 bondage.

But now I shall ask you one other question before I sit down,-How comes it that on the Continent there is not a liberal newspaper, nor a liberal politician, that has said, or has thought of saying, a word in favour of this portentous and monstrous Shape which now asks to be received into the family of nations? Take the great Italian minister, Count Cavour. You read some time ago in the papers part of a despatch which he wrote on the question of America-he had no difficulty in deciding. Ask Garibaldi. Is there in Europe a more disinterested and generous friend of freedom than Garibaldi? Ask that illustrious Hungarian whose marvellous eloquence you once listened to in this hall. Will he tell you that slavery has nothing to do with it, and that the slaveholders of the South will liberate the negroes sooner than the North through the instrumen120 tality of the war? Ask Victor Hugo, the poet

of freedom,the exponent, may I not call him, of the yearnings of all mankind for a better

time? Ask any man in Europe who opens his lips for freedom,-who dips his pen in ink that he may indite a sentence for freedom,-whoever has a sympathy for freedom warm in his own heart,-ask him; he will have no difficulty in telling you on which side your sympathies should lie.

[Only a few days ago a German merchant 130 in Manchester was speaking to a friend of mine, and said he had recently travelled all through Germany. He said, I am so surprised, I don't find one man in favour of the South. That is not true of Germany only; it is true of all the world except this island, famed for freedom, in which we dwell. I will tell you what is the reason. Our London press is mainly in the hands of certain ruling West End classes; it acts and writes in 140 favour of those classes. I will tell you what they mean. One of the most eminent statesmen in this country,-one who has rendered the greatest services to the country, though, I must say, not in an official capacity, in which men very seldom confer such great advantages upon the country,-he told me twice, at an interval of several months, 'I had no idea how much influence the example of that republic was having upon opinion here, until I 150 discovered the universal congratulation that the republic was likely to be broken up.'

My

But, Sir, the Free States are the home of the working man. Now, I speak to working men particularly at this moment. . . . countrymen who work for your living, remember this: there will be one wild shriek of freedom to startle all mankind if that American Republic should be overthrown.]

[Now for one moment let us lift ourselves, 160 if we can, above the narrow circle in which we are all too apt to live and think; let us put ourselves on an historical eminence, and judge this matter fairly. Slavery has been, as we all know, the huge, foul blot upon the fame of the American Republic; it is a hideous outrage against human right and against divine law; but the pride, the passion of man, will not permit its peaceable extinction. The slaveowners of our colonies, if they had been strong 170 enough, would have revolted too. I believe there was no mode short of a miracle more stupendous than any recorded in Holy Writ that could in our time, or in a century, or in any time, have brought about the abolition of slavery in America, but the suicide which the South has committed and the war which it has begun.]

Sir, it is a measureless calamity,-this war. I said the Russian war was a measureless 180 calamity, and yet many of your leaders and friends told you that it was a just war to maintain the integrity of Turkey, some thousands of miles off. Surely the integrity of your own country at your own doors must

be worth as much as the integrity of Turkey. Is not this war the penalty which inexorable justice exacts from America, North and South, for the enormous gilt of cherishing that frightful iniquity of slavery for the last eighty years? I do not blame any man here who thinks the cause of the North hopeless and the restoration of the Union impossible. It may be hopeless; the restoration may be impossible. You have the authority of the Chancellor of the Exchequer* on that point. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, as a speaker, is not surpassed by any man in England, and he is a great statesman; he believes the cause of the North to be hopeless; that their enterprise cannot succeed.

Well, he is quite welcome to that opinion, and so is anybody else. I do not hold the opinion; but the facts are before us all, and, as far as we can discard passion and sympathy, we are all equally at liberty to form our own opinion. But what I do blame is this. I blame men who are eager to admit into the family of nations a state which offers itself to us, based upon a principle, I will undertake to say, more odious and more blasphemous than

* Mr Gladstone.

was ever heretofore dreamed of in Christian or pagan, in civilised or in savage times. The leaders of this revolt propose this monstrous thing that over a territory forty times as large as England, the blight and curse of slavery shall be for ever perpetuated.

I cannot believe, for my part, that such a fate will befall that fair land, stricken though it now is with the ravages of war. I cannot believe that civilisation, in its journey with the sun, will sink into endless night in order to gratify the ambition of the leaders of this revolt, who seek to

Wade through slaughter to a throne,

And shut the gates of mercy on mankind.

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I have another and a far brighter vision before my gaze. It may be but a vision, but I will cherish it. I see one vast confederation stretching from the frozen North in unbroken 230 line to the glowing South, and from the wild billows of the Atlantic westward to the calmer waters of the Pacific main,-and I see one people, and one language, and one law, and one faith, and, over all that wide continent, the home of freedom, and a refuge for the oppressed of every race and of every clime.

LAW REFORM

VOL. II. p. 484

VOL. II. p. 628.

IRELAND

VOL. IV. p 45.