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should not be seized, but should be demanded from the Consul. Technically, Sir John was in error. The Arrow was not a British ship, its license had expired; but Sir John Bowring sent word that unless the whole of the men were restored in eight-and-forty hours, with apologies for the past and pledges for the future, the English men-of-war would begin operations. The men were returned; yet, on the following day, naval and military operations were begun : a great number of junks were destroyed, the suburbs of Canton were burnt and battered down, the town was shelled, and this iniquitous devastation was the beginning of a long and costly war.'1

Lord John thoroughly disliked these high-handed proceedings. He thought that Sir John Bowring ought never to have resorted to warlike measures without instructions from home; and that the Government, however difficult its situation, ought to have adopted some means of showing that it disapproved its agent's measures. He declined to admit that the character or the interests of this country required that it should support its representatives when they were undoubtedly in the wrong. As he himself said finely—

We have heard much of late—a great deal too much, I think— of the prestige of England. We used to hear of the character, of the reputation, of the honour of England. I trust, sir, that the character, the reputation, and the honour of this country are dear to us all; but if the prestige of England is to be separate from those qualities . . . then I, for one, have no wish to maintain it. To those who argue, as I have heard some argue, 'It is true we have a bad case; it is true we were in the wrong; it is true that we have committed injustice; but we must persevere in that wrong; we must continue to act unjustly, or the Chinese will think that we are afraid,' I say, as has been said before, 'Be just, and fear not.'

Two such

The effect of this speech was extraordinary. different authorities as Mr. Greville and Mr. Gladstone admitted that, if the House had immediately divided, the Government would have been defeated by an overwhelming

1 I have taken this account from Mr. Morley's Life of Cobden, ii. 188, using, though slightly rearranging, his words to fit them to my own text.

majority. Mr. Greville, indeed, while admitting that Lord John's speech was 'powerful, one of his very best efforts, and extremely successful with the House,' went on to declare that it was 'exceedingly bitter,' and 'did all the mischief he wished to do.' Mr. Greville, however, in 1857, saw most things through Lord Clarendon's spectacles; and Lord Clarendon was well aware that Lord John did not thoroughly approve his foreign policy. Those who read Lord John's speech to-day will be puzzled to find in it the bitterness which Mr. Greville detected, and will probably agree with Mr. Morley that Lord John, in supporting Mr. Cobden, 'obeyed an honest instinct for justice.'

Almost immediately after his speech, Lord Aberdeen told Lord John that, if the Ministers were beaten, or had only a small majority in their favour, they would probably desire to dissolve; that the Queen was opposed to dissolution; and that, in the event of her refusing it, and asking his advice, he should recommend her to send for Lord John, whom it was his wish to see at the head of a Ministry which should include Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Sidney Herbert, and Lord Aberdeen's other friends. Lord John replied that, in his judgment, his right position was one of independence; and after two days' reflection, during which he had the opportunity of consulting Sir Francis Baring, he called on Lord Aberdeen, repeated the opinion, and announced that he did not mean to abandon the independence which he had gained.2

A few hours after Lord John expressed this determination to Lord Aberdeen, the debate on Mr. Cobden's resolution terminated, and Lord Palmerston was defeated by a majority of sixteen. On March 5 the Minister announced in the House the intention of dissolving Parliament so soon as a Mutiny Act could be passed and the necessary financial 1 Greville, Memoirs, 2nd series, ii. 92; Morley's Life of Cobden, ii. 191.

2 It is right to add that at this interview Lord Aberdeen told Lord John that 'what he had said of the Queen was only conjecture, as he had not seen her since the summer.' He added that when he called on Lord John 'it was not as messenger from his friends or as having any regular proposal to make, but that he wished to express his own opinion.'

arrangements made. In making the announcement, however, he omitted with characteristic indifference-to say one word on the policy which he would pursue in China. Silence he was not suffered to preserve. Mr. Cobden at once rose to demand an explanation on the subject; while later in the evening Lord John supported Mr. Cobden's demand. The House, so he argued, was about to undergo what Mr. Fox used to call a penal dissolution.

After a debate of four days we came to the conclusion that the policy which the Government had deemed worthy of approval was, on the contrary, deserving of our censure. Are we then to remain entirely mute without asking what is to happen during the interval of three months?

Unable to resist the pressure, which was thus put upon him, Lord Palmerston confessed that he proposed to send a special Plenipotentiary to China; and Lord John, though he thought this concession further weakened the Government, was satisfied with the assurance.

While, in Parliament, the opponents of Ministers were rejoicing at their victory, the feeling out of doors was rising steadily in Lord Palmerston's favour. Nothing, in truth, is so popular with the mob as what, for want of a better name, may be called the Civis Romanus policy; and Lord Palmerston, with much adroitness, availed himself of this feeling, declaring, in his address to his constituents, that

An insolent barbarian, wielding authority at Canton, had violated the British flag, broken the engagements of treaties, offered rewards for the heads of British subjects in that part of China, and planned their destruction by murder, assassinations, and poisons.

The issue, so the electors seemed to think, was between the insolent barbarian on the one side, and Lord Palmerston on the other. In a storm of passion they swept away many of the politicians who had voted with Mr. Cobden. Some of the greatest men in England-Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright in particular-were defeated at the polls; and a Parliament was returned pledged to support Lord Palmerston's policy.

It seemed at one time absolutely certain that Lord John would share the fate of Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, and be defeated in the City. His chief supporter, Mr. John Abel Smith, met him on March 6, and told him he had no chance whatever. Doubting-so Lady John wrote

whether he had made much impression, he called on me the next day to ask whether John had determined what to do. I said I thought he meant to fight the battle. He looked most woeful, and

said, ‘As sure as I stand here he will not be member for the City.' I told him I believed he thought it best at all events to stand. 'Ah, that's all very well if he had even a chance of a tolerable minority, but if he has only two or three votes !' He added that John had as much chance of being Pope of Rome as of being member for the City.

Lady John, of course, reported this conversation to her husband, who made up his mind to bow to the inevitable; and accordingly wrote to Mr. Smith, enclosing a letter to Mr. Dillon, a leading Liberal, and announced his intention of withdrawing from the representation. But a night's rest placed him in better heart; and on the following day, a Sunday, March 8, he wrote a second letter to Mr. Dillon to say that, as the dissolution could not take place for three weeks, he wished to postpone his own determination for some days. As a matter of fact, Mr. Dillon received and read the letter of the 8th a few minutes before Mr. Abel Smith handed him the letter of the 7th. He replied to both letters on the 9th, stating with regret that, if Lord John were a candidate, he could not vote for him. A few hours showed that Mr. Dillon was not singular in his opinions. The Liberal Registration Association met the next day. Rumours reached the meeting of Lord John's intention to resign; and the members, without waiting to test their truth, proceeded to choose four candidates, substituting Mr. Raikes Currie, who in the previous Parliament had represented Northampton, for Lord John. Any man, in such circumstances, might have withdrawn from a contest which seemed to offer no chance of victory. Lord John, however, was never so great as when

he was confronted by difficulties before which other men would have quailed. Even Mr. Greville, who so strangely misunderstood him at the time, said, 'He is a gallant little fellow, likes to face danger, and comes out well in time of difficulty;' and on this occasion Lord John certainly proved the truth of Mr. Greville's opinion. Instead of shrinking from a contest which his best friends told him was hopeless, he asked the electors to meet him at the London Tavern on March 19. He told them at this meeting that he called them together to appeal against a decision of the Liberal Registration Committee; he complained of the unfair treatment which he was himself experiencing after sixteen years' service to the City:

If a gentleman were disposed to part with his butler, his coachman, or his gamekeeper, or if a merchant were disposed to part with an old servant, a warehouseman, a clerk, or even a porter, he would say to him, 'John [the audience of course began to laugh], I think your faculties are somewhat decayed, you are growing old, you have made several mistakes; and I think of putting a young man from Northampton [his auditors laughed still more] in your place.' I think a gentleman would behave in that way to his servant, and thereby give John an opportunity of answering. That opportunity was not given to me. The question was decided in my absence; and I come now to ask you, and the citizens of London, to reverse that decision.

And he sat down amidst a roar of honest enthusiasm, which left him in no doubt of the feelings of those whom he was addressing.

The results of the meeting were soon plain outside the London Tavern. On the following day the Registration Committee passed a resolution in support of the four other candidates; but they only succeeded in carrying it by a small majority. Four days later, Lord John's friends actually ventured on invading a meeting, summoned in his opponent's interests, and succeeded in carrying a show of hands in his favour. Three days later still, Lord John's speech at the nomination was enthusiastically received; and the crowd refused even to listen to the young man from Northampton,

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