The Times Great Victorian Lives. Ian Brunskill

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СКАЧАТЬ was so unsatisfactory that he deemed it better to maintain his independence. It was in this independent character that he made two very able speeches – the first (June 1, 1829) on our foreign relations generally, the second (March 10, 1830), on the affairs of Portugal in particular – which at once marked him out as the exponent of a Liberal foreign policy. Before the year in which the latter speech was delivered had expired, the Whigs, with Lord Grey at their head, found themselves unexpectedly in power, – and to whom should the seals of the Foreign-office be intrusted but to Lord Palmerston? He stepped into the post as unquestionably the right man in the right place, and during that 10 years’ run of power which the Reform Bill gave to the Whigs he stood forth as the most brilliant member of the Cabinet, the man of men, the Minister of Ministers, the type and the glory of England. No English Minister ever attained to more world-wide fame than he acquired in these and subsequent years of office. All over the globe his name was invoked as the symbol of English generosity and English omnipotence. The Bedouin of the Desert recognised in Palmerston Pasha a being whom Allah had endowed with more than mortal power. The negro on the Guinea Coast knew that Palmerston was his friend, and worked day and night against slavery. Brown in the back-woods of America, or in the gardens of Siam, felt that he had an infallible safeguard if he had Palmerston’s passport to show. Palmerston, it was imagined, would move the whole force of the British empire in order that this Brown – Civis Romanus – might not be defrauded of his Worcester sauce amid the ice of Siberia, or of his pale ale on the Mountains of the Moon. He could do anything, and he would do everything. Nothing great was accomplished without being attributed to him. He was supposed to have his pocket full of constitutions, to have a voice in half the Cabinets of Europe, to have monarchs past reckoning under his thumb. He humbled the Shah, he patronized the Sultan, he abolished the Mogul, he conquered the Brother of the Sun, he opened to the world the empire which had been walled round for centuries by impregnable barriers, he defied the Czar, and the Emperor of the French felt safe when he received the assurances of the brilliant Foreign Secretary.

      The foreign policy of Lord Palmerston has given rise to much controversy. Many a fierce debate has it kindled in both Houses of Parliament. Its author was said to be the firebrand of Europe, the destroyer of peace, a luckless lucifer match, the plague of the world, the Jonah of England, which was always in a storm when he was in the Cabinet. The question has been so stirred by political passions, and has been whipt into such a froth by the eloquence of interminable discussions, that there are very few of us indeed who know what is the real point at issue. And the perplexity is heightened by the fact that, after 20 years of opposition to his policy, Lord Aberdeen, his great rival, coalesced with him in 1853, and defended the coalition with the memorable statement ‘that, though there may have been differences in the execution, according to the different hands intrusted with the direction of affairs, the principles of the foreign policy of the country have for the last 30 years been the same.’ The cardinal doctrine of our foreign policy in those years was, as it is now, the principle of non-interference. There was not one of our statesmen who did not give his adhesion to this principle; and where, then, it may be asked, was the ground of dispute ? In order to understand this fully from Lord Palmerston’s point of view we must grasp his ruling idea in politics. If anybody will take the trouble to read his speeches from beginning to end he will be struck with the prevalence of one great idea running through them all like a thread of gold, and serving as a clue to every inconsistency. He saw in Public Opinion a force and a meaning which no statesman before him had realized, and which Peel only of his contemporaries acknowledged with anything like the same clearness. On two great occasions Peel sacrificed to Public Opinion. But all through his political life Lord Palmerston bowed to this deity, recognized its power, and used it as he could. He saw that opinion often creates a right where no right previously existed, – that it not seldom makes good evil and evil good. It has this peculiarity, too, that, exerting an enormous power it acts informally, beyond control and beyond rebuke. All the armies in the world cannot put down an opinion, which is a silent influence that remains even when the holder of the opinion is down in the dust. We may compel our neighbours to change their tactics, but we cannot compel them to alter their estimate of us; we cannot even quarrel with them for thinking as they do. We must submit to opinion, and though there are men who do not care for what other people say, yet those in whom the social instinct is strong are powerfully moved by it. The sociable nature of Lord Palmerston felt this deeply. The force of Public Opinion was a great fact, and he raised it into a great doctrine. Opinions in his view were more than opinions – they were deeds – they were title-deeds. All through his speeches we find him insisting on opinion as the source of political power, a moral influence which survives every physical force, and which, although more formidable than armies, we can bring into action without danger of hostilities. People said, – ‘What is the use of his expressing sympathy for oppressed nationalities when he declines to fight for his opinions? He is a sham; he has only words to offer; he says one thing and does another; his talk is in favour of liberty, but his inaction is in favour of tyranny.’ Lord Palmerston, in effect, said, – ‘No, our principle is non-interference with foreign Governments; we have no right to appeal to the arbitrament of the sword; it is no business of ours to dictate to others. But we cannot help having our opinions; I express mine frankly; let it go for what it is worth; I believe that the opinion of an English Minister is worth something – is more than words, and, giving my voice to the side of freedom and justice, I leave the despots to their own intelligence, to conscience, and to God.’

      And while thus, on the one hand, he was attacked by those who saw an inconsistency between his words and his work, and who wished him not only to sympathize with freedom but also to undertake a crusade in behalf of it, he was attacked, on the other hand, by those who, like Lord Aberdeen and Sir Robert Peel, agreed in the policy of non-interference, but thought that he was not consistent, that he was not honest in carrying out that policy, since he did not abstain from the expression of opinion as well as from the declaration of war. The expression of opinion, the offer of advice, they said, is in effect dictation and interference. There is no middle course. We have no right to interfere with the domestic affairs of other countries unless some clear and undeniable necessity arises from circumstances affecting the interests of our own country, and the attitude of non-interference is that of interested, it may be, but silent spectators. ‘It is my firm belief,’ said Peel, in the last speech which he delivered, ‘that you will not advance the cause of Constitutional Government by attempting to dictate to other nations. If you do, your intentions will be mistaken, you will rouse feelings upon which you do not calculate, you will invite opposition to Government; and beware that the time does not arrive when, frightened by your own interference, you withdraw your countenance from those whom you have excited, and leave upon their minds the bitter recollection that you have betrayed them. If you succeed, I doubt whether or no the institutions that take root under your patronage will be lasting. Constitutional liberty will be best worked out by those who aspire to freedom by their efforts. You will only overload it by your help.’ It was in this speech, delivered the day before he fell from his horse, that Sir Robert Peel, in spite of so emphatic a condemnation of Lord Palmerston’s policy, passed upon him, or rather upon the speech in which Lord Palmerston defended his policy, the cordial eulogium – ‘We are all proud of the man who delivered it.’ The House of Commons, by a majority of 46, pronounced against Sir Robert Peel, and in favour of the foreign policy which he condemned.

      Lord Palmerston insisted upon it that there is a middle course between interference and absolute silence. We are not stocks and stones – our non-interference is not that of lifeless blocks. Let the foreign States have the liberty of acting, but we surely have the liberty of thinking. If it is criminal to have our opinions, it is the crime of possessing intelligence; if it is criminal to express our opinions, it is the crime of possessing freedom. We cannot help having our opinions, and we should despise ourselves were we to conceal them. An English Minister has no right to dictate to foreign States, but it is very hard, indeed, if he alone is to be tongue-tied – if he alone is to see no difference between right and wrong, if he alone is to express no sympathy with suffering and no dissatisfaction with wrong. Besides which, it may well be asked whether non-interference, in the extreme sense of the word, be a possible thing. We know that silence may be eloquent, and that, as the world is constituted a sympathetic world, to hold our peace and to restrain our sympathies may, to all appearance, be the СКАЧАТЬ