Sir, I apprehend that no hon. Gentleman who has addressed himself to the consideration of this question can undervalue the importance of the discussion, or underrate the momentous character of the vote that he is about to give. In my mind this is not a discussion to be conducted on petty details. The question is not one to be discussed by means of elaborate and ingenious selections from a blue book by a discontented lawyer. It is not a question which we are to look at merely with regard to the elaborate demands of M. Pacifico, the inadequate recompense of Mr. Finlay, or the tortures of Stellio Stumachi. These may be fit subjects for merriment and special pleading in another place, but I take it that the House of Commons has a different task to perform. The point, as it occurs to me, for our consideration is how far the international principles of our foreign policy are to be regulated according to the established mode of nations, and how far British commerce and British subjects are to be protected by the Government of this country. The real question at issue is not whether we shall express our approval of every act of the Foreign Minister, or whether we have any particular confidence in Her Majesty's present advisers. Sir, there is a higher and greater question for this House to decide. It is, whether our foreign policy is henceforth to be regulated according to the ideas of the Minister of a foreign State. We have to consider, Sir, whether the Foreign Secretary of this country is to merge into a placid and compliant tool—a mere automaton, whose hand is directed, and whose moves are made, by the wily and unseen, influence of a foreign prompter. We are not merely called upon to give a vote of confidence in Her Majesty's Ministers; we are called upon to maintain the honour and independence, and, I will add, the glory of Great Britain. And, Sir, before I advert to other subjects in debate, I must take the liberty of expressing my surprise that this question has been allowed to be brought forward in its present shape by an independent Member of Parliament, who, so far from having any substantial claims upon the Government, as has been insinuated by an hon. Gentleman of his own profession, has always acted an independent, and, as I think, a meritorious part in this House. Why, I ask, has it been left in the hands of that hon. and learned Gentleman to bring forward this Motion of confidence, as it has been called? I had anticipated, when that vote was come to, that decisive vote, as I will call it, in another place, that same hon. Gentlemen connected with the party who for years have been sedulously reviling and calumniating the noble Lord the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, with all the ingenuity of cunning sharpened by all the pertinacity of revenge—I did expect that those hon. Gen- tlemen would not have been content with the embarrassing of the Government by a simple vote of censure in another place. I did not expect that that party would have paused upon the threshold of this House, and, like well-bred spaniels—

"civilly delight

In barking at the game they dare not bite."

I did expect that some one among that party would have come forward boldly before this House, prepared with a vote of censure on the noble Lord; that they would have arraigned him in the House of Commons, and in the presence of his colleagues, and heard what defence the noble Lord had to offer on the occasion. Sir, we have been doomed to be disappointed in this respect. Certain hon. Gentlemen have, like the knight in the play, deemed "discretion" to be "the better part of valour." They have been "willing to wound," but "afraid to strike;" and it has been left to the independent exertions of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sheffield to test the opinions of this House, not with reference to Her Majesty's Ministers alone, but with regard to the foreign policy of the noble Lord. Sir, I listened with amazement to the sentiments uttered by an hon. and learned Gentleman, whom I suppose I shall live to see a Judge in this land; I refer to the hon. and learned Member for Abingdon. What did that hon. and learned Member tell this House? He said that for years he had disliked the foreign policy of the Government, and that he thought it not only calculated to embroil us with foreign nations, but to imperil the peace of the world. He told us this last night; but what has been the conduct of the hon. and learned Gentleman? For four years he has been content to sit upon those benches without ever raising his voice against the foreign policy of the Government; and we saw last night that he is a Gentleman who has fed upon blue books till they have become a part of his system. He, at least, has no excuse for not knowing what these voluminous despatches contain. But, Sir, what are we to think of the hon. and learned Gentleman—a candidate for the bench—who comes forward at the eleventh hour, when he thinks the Ministry is expiring, and kicks up his heels in the face of the noble Lord the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs? But, Sir, there is another Member of this House, for whom personally I entertain great feelings of regard, and, in his private capacity, a feeling of respect. But these are times when matters must not be blinked; these are times when men must speak out and express their opinion on the conduct of public characters; these are times when a Ministry is in its throes, and when we know not what or who is to follow. Sir, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ripon presented himself to our notice last night, as he told us, with great reluctance; but I must own that I could not discover either from the manner or the matter of his speech that he possessed any reluctance. I think I am justified in saying that that speech was characterised by a quality which is ascribed to Lady Sneerwell in The School for Scandal, by that "delicacy of tint and mellowness of sneer" which is the distinguishing mark of the political scandal of the right hon. Gentleman. And, Sir, I could not help being reminded when he preluded his speech with compliments, and with the expression of his feelings of friendship for the noble Lord, I could not help being reminded of some of those enormous and mighty animals of the deserts of South America, those large serpents which are said to embroider their victims with their saliva before they make a meal upon their bodies. The right hon. Baronet talked of his friendship for the noble Lord; but I own it struck me, and it occurred to many people besides me, that he was exemplifying the truth of the remark of Rouchefoucalt, "There is something agreeable to us, or not disagreeable, in the misfortunes of our best friends." I had always been in the habit of supposing that the right hon. Baronet, perched on the third bench opposite, was looked upon as a sort of guardian angel of Her Majesty's Minister; that he was, in fact—

"The sweet little cherub that sits up aloft

To take care of the life of poor Jack."

But, Sir, what has been the conduct of the right hon. Baronet? Not content with criticising the Greek affair, it appears that he has always dissented from the policy of the noble Lord the Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Well, if so, he has pursued rather an extraordinary course in this House. It cannot have been for want of opportunity. The right hon. Gentleman is always on his perch; he was in the House even when an hon. Gentleman, to whom, though I do not agree with him, I give the fullest credit for honesty, candour, and openness—I mean the hon. Member for Stafford—moved his monster impeachment. The right hon. Gentleman has taken a great part of his speech from that of the hon. Member; the mantle of the hon. Member for Stafford has fallen on the right hon. Member for Ripon; but on that occasion he was sneeringly silent. But, Sir, he dissents from the Spanish policy of the noble Lord. His conduct in reference to that question has been equally extraordinary. In June, 1848, the hon. Member for Dorsetshire, who is an open and candid foe, and does not support people for four years to kick them in the fifth, brought forward a Motion in this House deprecating the whole course of our policy in Spain, especially as regarded the interference which was alluded to by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ripon. What was the course of the right hon. Baronet on that occasion? Why, though another right hon. Baronet, whose politics have always been, I think, at best of a see-saw description—I refer to the right hon. Baronet the Member for Tamworth—though that right hon. Baronet "damned with faint praise" on that occasion, and said that he would pass to the resolution before the House, that excellent supporter of Her Majesty's Government, the right hon. Baronet the Member for Ripon, was silently content. But I will go further. The right hon. Baronet, while passing in review the foreign policy which has been pursued all over the world, said, "See what you have done by your foreign policy in Portugal; Costa Cabral is enshrined in authority at Lisbon." Why did not the right hon. Baronet see that in the year 1848? On the 11th of June, 1848, the hon. Member for Montrose brought forward a distinct Motion deprecating our interference in Portugal. I supported that Motion; but am I, because I supported that Motion two years ago, to come down to the House now, and, raking up the past, to tell the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary that I have always been his supporter, and that now I will damn him for his virtues, which the right hon. Gentleman refused to do for his vices? I am no slavish admirer of the noble Lord; there are several points in his policy of which I diapprove; but, on the whole, I think he is a great and noble Foreign Minister, and one who, under all circumstances, is an honour to England. But what was the course pursued on the occasion in question by the right hon. Baronet the Member for Ripon; for I will not run away from that question. On that occasion, I well remember, there were three nights' debate in this House on the expedition to Portugal. Hon. Gentlemen opposite were, as they have always been, direct and open foes of the Government; they are honourable opponents, and as such I respect them. But what did the right hon. Baronet do? There were, as I said, three nights' debate. By some misfortune Dr. Bowring, of whom I would speak with great respect, happened to address the House. The night was hot; the papers which Dr. Bowring brought with him were voluminous; Dr. Bowring spoke in the style in which the hon. and learned Member for Abingdon addressed the House last night; and the House was counted out. But a most remarkable debate ensued. The right hon. Member for Ripon was accused of having connived at the counting out. Well, Sir, he defended himself in terms very similar to those which I have just used; but he added—and this was remarkable—as if by way of giving a finishing stroke to the discussion, "As regards the Portuguese question, I conscientiously, thoroughly, and entirely approve of the policy of Her Majesty's Government, and had I been present in my place I should have given my honest vote in support of Her Majesty's Ministers." And yet, Sir, we find the right hon. Gentleman, two years after, coming down to the House, of course with great reluctance—these things are always done with great reluctance against our particular friends—and I must say the right hon. Gentleman has had both a great many friends and a great many colleagues—we now find him, I say, coming down to the House, and saying at the eleventh hour, "I think you, Lord Palmerston, an excellent man and a kind friend, and a good Christian, but you are a dangerous Foreign Minister, and must be got rid of." Well, Sir, I say nothing with regard to the candour of the right hon. Baronet in pursuing such a course. I leave that to a discriminating public. This will probably be thought, after the long experience of the right hon. Baronet, pure Parliamentary tactics; possibly it may thought a good party move; but I do say that the public out of doors, who love fair play rather than faction, and who are indifferent to the intrigues of particular persons, will consider the treatment of the noble Lord on this occasion as savouring rather of the Jesuitical evasions of Muscovite chicanery. ["Oh, oh!"] I repeat it, there must be speaking out on this question, and, if you can deny it, do so. I repeat, that the public will see in this the Jesuitical evasions of Muscovite chicanery, rather than open, honest, candid conflict in English political warfare. Now, the right hon. Baronet went into various points; and, considering his great reluctance, I am surprised that he should have quoted the pamphlet that he did. I should have thought that his particular friendship for the noble Lord would have led him to inquire whether the alleged facts were true before quoting them. He quoted a pamphlet of the Duke of Broglie's son-in-law with regard to the Swiss intervention. Well, now, we all know that that pamphlet contains not only one untruth, but many untruths. He also referred to other subjects—to the stress of weather under which the fleet in the Dardanelles was compelled to go into Besica Bay—and he adverted to a despatch of Prince Metternich. I am content to leave these two facts to be answered by the noble Lord the Secretary of Foreign Affairs; and if he do not dispose of them as easily as I think the conduct of the right hon. Member for Ripon is to be disposed of, I should almost be content, in this division, to go into the same lobby with the right hon. Baronet. But this I do say, in the present state of parties in England, that if the liberal party are caught by stray waifs thrown out—at one time about the Irish Church, at another, hints of founding the electoral franchise on the broadest possible basis; while, on another night, they contentedly listen to such despotic sentiments as the "imperative necessity of Russian interference" in Hungary, and are patient, while the tyrannical act of the Northern Despot, in sending his aid-de-camp to demand a few wretched Hungarians from Turkey, is gently salved over as "rather a harsh proceeding," I say, that if they are caught by such baits into acquiescence in such sentiments, they are no longer fit to be called the liberal party of this country. But I go further, and say, that if this country is to permit a man to remain silent for four years, and then to come down in the eleventh hour and denounce the Minister whom he had been all that time supporting, there is no man more fitted to be at the head of its affairs than the right hon. Member for Ripon. I have said thus much, because it is rumoured abroad that, like Cœlebs, the right hon. Baronet is at this moment in search of a party. If the right hon. Baronet could be candid—if he could know his own mind—I see many things about him to admire. His talents for business, his administrative capacity, are first rate; but there is a screw loose somewhere, and assuredly a great party is not to be conciliated by such conduct—conduct which, I think, has not elevated the right hon. Baronet either in public opinion, or in the opinion of this House. It is not my intention to roam over the whole state of our foreign affairs. I do not pretend to such knowledge as would take me from Siberia to Afghanistan. I have been—unlike the right hon. Baronet—content with the two volumes recently produced, and which are in themselves, I can assure the House, sufficiently heavy work in this hot weather. I am not about to disinter a whole host of blue books, going over the last four years; but I must say, with regard to this contemptible discussion with the pinchbeck Monarchy of Greece, that, in my opinion, the original sin lay in ever setting up such a Monarchy. I entirely dissent from that act—it was not the act of the noble Lord—from the policy of setting up a Russian puppet in the Levant. I do so on other grounds than its being merely a puppet of Russia. I look upon that act as a breach of our absolute engagements with Turkey; because it ought to be recollected, that at the Congress of Verona they not only refused to receive the Greek Deputies, but Lord Strangford, our Ambassador at Constantinople, was deputed to make the following communication to the Turkish Government; and this is important and worthy the attention of the House, because I believe in such a thing as retributive justice. Lord Strangford said—

"The Congress of Verona recognises the Greek question as one belonging to the internal affairs of the Porte, in which no foreign Power ought to intermeddle."

What did the foreign Powers do after? They directly violated the assurance given at congress, and hastened to indulge in a Quixotic attempt to improvise a free constitution in a country which was totally unfit either to work or appreciate it. On this point the evidence of Count Bulgaris is conclusive. He says—

"Greece does not contain among its most influential class either the virtues or knowledge upon which well-organised societies generally depend. As long as liberal institutions are neither consecrated by the moral habits of the people, nor by time, it must be confessed that the allied courts would destroy with one hand the work they have founded with the other if they attempted to establish in Greece an order of things the danger and absurdity of which are demonstrated by the immorality and ignorance of the higher orders of this country."

Now, that evidence was laid before Parliament in 1830. But he was not alone in his opinion. The French Admiral, De Rigny, spoke to nearly the same effect. He said—

"One is often lost in the labyrinth of Grecian pretensions and bad faith. It is impossible to have an idea of what these Greeks are. One must serve them in spite of themselves. It is necessary to leave some of them whose lives depend upon plunder some corner to carry it on in, without obliging us to go there to set it right."

This is the account of the French Admiral, and it is confirmed by what was said by the French Consul relative to the outrage on the six Ionians. His observations were:—

"It is useless to attempt to disguise the fact: there no longer exists in these parts even the slightest security for life or property, and, unless some very vigorous measures are speedily adopted by the Government, we shall most certainly see much worse happen than anything which has hitherto been reported."

Such are the descriptions given by competent authorities of the amiable race to whom we have given a Monarch, in our fancy for setting up constitutional governments in the Levant. What has been the consequence? We are now obliged to correct the spoiled child of our adoption; and what has happened? We gave the character of injured innocence to this contemptible Sovereignty of Greece. We have actually given a character to her rulers, to that Minister who almost realises the description of Juvenal—

"Ingenium velox, audacia perdita, sermo

Promptus"—

to those Ministers whose whole principle and motto seem to be—

"Base is the State that pays."

Surely there is no gain to civilisation in such a state of things. Now, I am very far from attempting to deny, in contemplating the transactions which have given rise to this Motion, that it was Mr. Finlay's own fault that he settled in the Piræus, or that Sumachi was tortured with a refinement of cruelty which the noble Lord the Secretary for Foreign Affairs had properly characterised; but that does not alter the argument. It is in vain to quote Vattel, or to cite imaginary cases. I want to know what the House would recommend a Foreign Minister to do, when British subjects are plundered, imprisoned, and tortured, when redress is first postponed, then refused, and at last put off to that imaginary period the Greek Kalends. It is very well for a noble Lord in another place to raise a paltry laugh at the inventory of the plundered man's effects. But how would the noble Lord himself like, if his own house had been ransacked, to have the inventory of his daughter's wardrobe shown up before the public to raise a laugh at his expense? It is true that the noble Lord voted against the Jews' Bill, and M. Pacifico is a Jew; but although he is a Jew, I am not aware that there is any law shutting him out from protection for his person and property. What is the real fact about M. Pacifico? It is carefully kept out of the blue books; but the truth is, that M. Pacifico had sold land to King Otho, for which he only received at first part payment. His having pressed for the remainder was the great ground of offence. M. Pacifico is a poor man, and must suffer. I do not know that Otho is a rich man; but he is a king, and there are great allowances made, especially in another place, for great men. But it has been endeavoured to prove, in connexion with this case, that M. Pacifico had no house at all, but a mud cabin; and several ingenious arguments have been founded on the structure of his house, as if the outrageous violation of a man's house was to be palliated by the craziness of its structure. Such, however, is not the fact as regards M. Pacifico's house. The house which has been represented as a mud cabin was a good three-story house. [Mr. B. COCHRANE: NO, no!] The hon. Member will excuse me, he has been in Greece, and is aware that it is built in Constantinople style, and that it is the house in which the chief of the Councils of Regency, Count Armansperg, lived; and moreover that King Otho, when he came first to Greece, did not think it beneath his dignity to perform in it the part for which he is best qualified, by dancing in it at a fête given by Count Armansperg. It has also been said, why did not Mr. Finlay apply to the Greek courts; and the hon. and learned Member for Abingdon shook his head, and that other right hon. Member, the great reformer of the day, the right hon. Member for the University of Oxford, also shook his head, as if Mr. Finlay had committed a fatal error by not applying to the Greek courts. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware what these Greek courts are?—is he aware that the judges are removable at the King's caprice? Is he aware that the President of the Areopagus, the highest court in that miserable kingdom, was dismissed by the King in 1847, and that the gentleman so dismissed was a man distinguished for his ability and unblemished honour? Talk of going to Greek courts for redress! The right hon. Gentleman must have forgotten his Greek—he must be totally ignorant of the constitution and practices of the so-called Greek Government. I am not going to drag the House through a waste of blue books with regard to Mr. Finlay's case, or to treat it as a case at nisi prius, a danger which I think the right hon. Baronet the Member for Ripon did not altogether avoid. But I think I may apply to it the words of a great authority, that no subject, however humble, can receive an insult in this country without the State itself feeling insulted. We do not stop to analyse the character or religion of the injured person. It is sufficient for us to know that he has been robbed and plundered, and that as an Englishman he is entitled to the protection of his flag. The right hon. Baronet the Member for Ripon did not think fit to allude to the cases quoted by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sheffield, although the latter clearly demonstrated that the French have, in many instances, protected their subjects with a much higher hand in various quarters of the globe. In Portugal, in 1831, they required not only that the magistrates should be dismissed, but that all the French subjects engaged in the political troubles should be indemnified. My hon. and learned Friend cited many cases, but there was one occurring so late as 1848, when, during the insurrection in Naples, certain French subjects suffered. The French Government made a demand, and the persons interested were fully indemnified. If it had been refused, the French would have taken a different course from ours; but because we have in this country a strong aristocratic party, who are always afraid of any liberal man being in office, both the energies of the country and the liberal tendencies of the noble Lord are crippled by the dead weight of that party. I wish the House to know, and fairly to ask itself, why and wherefore this inveterate and envenomed hostility to the noble Lord the Secretary for Foreign Affairs? Have they not a shade of suspicion that it is because he is identified on the continent of Europe with responsible government and the advance of liberal opinions? I would take upon myself to say, that had the noble Lord interfered in favour of despotism—had he been praised by Metternich, or by the Russian Minister—had he intercepted the letters of their subjects—had he given up certain of their ill-advised subjects to an ignominious death through the agency of their letters opened in this country—had he done all this, the acts which are now so maligned, would have been the theme of praise from the whole band of his calumniators. The noble Lord has not done so, but the noble Lord has been guilty of a great crime. There are many counts in the indictment against the noble Member for Tiverton, and I'll tell the noble Lord and the House what they are. The noble Lord always advocated and supported constitutional government in Spain. The noble Lord was guilty of sympathising with Italian liberty. The noble Lord dissented from Russian "indispensable" interference in Hungary. The noble Lord recognised the Republic of France. These are grave charges in the eyes of those who would make Haynau a hero, and Nicholas a demigod. The mere question of Greece is a paltry pretence. It is in Greece that the Northern Archimedes wishes to rest his lever, by means of which he hopes to push back prosperity and liberty in the western world. To this end the noble Lord is to be sacrificed; but if he is to be sacrificed, I believe that you will light a flame in this country which will take all the plausibility of the right hon. Member for Tamworth, with the able assistance of the right hon. Member for Ripon, to prevent its having dangerous effects. I have said that Greece is a pretext, and I solemnly believe that a wide-spread conspiracy has been organised to ruin the noble Lord—a conspiracy in which ex-Kings and ex-Ministers, Kings without crowns, and Ministers without places, have joined with Ministers with places, but, I had almost said, without characters. This conspiracy has its ramifications in various quarters, not only in the saloons of Paris, but in the boudoirs of London. It would seem as if the days of the Fronde were about to be revived, for there are ladies in it who, emulating the Duchess de Longueville, have acquired a violent taste for politics as well as fashion, and are all things to all men. These parties intrigue against the noble Lord as if he were another Mazarin, and hate him because he is the representative, in the eyes of Europe, of liberal opinions. Nor is what is technically called another place quite free from these influences. Of what use is it to make a separate gallery for foreign diplomatists when their sentiments are expounded under English exteriors? When we hear men who have been Ministers, and expect to be so again, explain the rights of Englishmen as they have done, of what use setting a gallery apart for foreign diplomatists? Why, they are on the floor of that House, where they—

"Explain their country's dear-bought rights away, And plead for pirates in the face of day."

I ask you, will you permit the noble Lord to be put down by such means, by letters from "our own correspondent," who, in company with Russian and French agents, has been decorated—I should have said degraded—with the Greek order of our Saviour for his services in writing letters to the Times? ["Order!"] He has been so decorated, but I am delighted to hear that old General Church has declared that he never will wear his decoration again in consequence of such degradation. I suppose he considers now that, instead of the order of our Saviour, it should be called the order of Judas Iscariot. I think that any man who has put his hand to such letters, betraying the interests of his own country, and humbling England in the sight of the world, is unworthy of either respect or honour. But I would have the House to reflect on the consequence of the vote they are about to give. Before the consequence of that vote, the Greek question sinks into utter insignificance. It is not that we are about to vote confidence in the Ministry, or in the character of our Minister for Foreign Affairs; in my opinion we have far greater subjects to consider. We have heard nothing of the commerce of the country. I say nothing about what may be deemed a mere rhetorical claptrap, the honour of our flag; but I would have hon. Gentlemen to reflect before they vote a reversal of our foreign policy. We who have ships in every sea, and merchants at every port, what will be their situation, if you vote a reversal of that policy which has hitherto upheld them? Reverse the foreign policy of this country, and your commerce is crippled, and, as I conscientiously believe, the progress of civilisation retarded. There is not a petty despot who will not peep from his hole and rejoice, not in the humiliation of the noble Lord, but in the humiliation of Great Britain. And I would address hon. Gentlemen who represent one real party in this country, and warn them of the consequences of their vote. Of course they will vote against the noble Lord, but let them contemplate the consequences of their vote. Have they forgotten how they were treated before? Are they desirous that—

"For Banquo's issue have I filed my mind—

For them the gracious Duncan have I murdered."

They may rest satisfied that the country is not yet ripe for them. But I say, for one, that I would sooner see that party in power than that of the right hon. Baronet. I know what their measures are, but I cannot trust or confide in the party headed by the right hon. Member for Tamworth. I can trust to no party who, having supported the Government four years, turn round upon them in the fifth, when they think that Government is in the agonies of death, in the hope of mounting to fame, perchance to place, on their dead bodies. But I hear, Sir, there are men on this side of the House who scruple to support this Motion. I can scarcely understand how that is possible. I cannot understand men who call themselves liberal, who take the map of Europe in their hands, and consider the nature of our relations with every country, having any scruple about the vote they shall give on this question. I can understand that men who look mainly at the interest of some particular town or locality, and no farther, may entertain doubts; but how the representative of great interests can have any doubt as to the vote he should give on this occasion, I cannot conceive. I think war may be a great calamity; but there are greater calamities than even war; and one greater calamity would be to see this country truckle to the schemes of Austrian absolutism, or the genius of Cossack domination. And sure I am that any man on this side of the House voting against the hon. and learned Member for Sheffield, will do much to advance Cossack domination. For my own part I have criticised, at the proper period, the policy of the noble Lord the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. With regard to Portugal in 1847, I thought the noble Lord wrong in that policy at the time, and think so still; but I will give no half-pace fellowship to this Motion. I cannot stop to criticise an unguarded or imprudent word here or there, when I see the interest of England at stake; and, Sir, I shall therefore support the Motion of the hon. and learned Member for Sheffield with pride and with pleasure.

thanked the hon. and gallant Gentlemen for the disinterested advice which he had addressed to the party with which he (Lord J. Manners) had the honour to be connected; but he feared the hon. and gallant Member would not have the gratification of finding it followed. He and his Friends found it impossible to share in the apprehension of Cossack domination, which seemed so much to disturb the hon. and gallant Member's mind. If, however, Cossack domination were likely to prevail, it would arise from the English Government continuing to pursue that line of policy which the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary had chalked out—a line of policy which he was convinced did not tend to maintain the glory of this country, or to promote the peace of the world, and one against which he was therefore prepared most conscientiously to register his vote. The House had been invited by the Mover of the Motion before them to declare that the foreign policy of the Government was calculated to secure the honour and dignity of the Crown, and would conduce to the maintenance of general peace. He was prepared to deny both of these propositions. He could not think that the true way to maintain untarnished the honour and dignity of the Crown was, first to refuse the mediation of a powerful State, and then to submit to all which that State demanded. Nor did he believe that it was conducive in any respect to the promotion of our national interests, to follow at the same time the dictates of absolute Russia and Republican France. They had heard a great deal about the duty and the determination of the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary to protect all British subjects against the insults and the aggressions of all foreign nations. Did the noble Lord put these principles into action for the protection of a British subject, when a poor negro sailor was subjected to the most atrocious tyranny at the hands of the officials of the United States of America? He wondered that, when the hon. and learned Member for Sheffield referred to America, that the word did not blister his tongue. Why, it was not two months ago when the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary declared in this House that he could not, nor would not, protect the subjects of England against the tyranny of an American State. Here was the case of a man who contemplated no crime, was charged with no crime, and yet was seized out of a vessel sailing under the glorious badge of England. He was treated as a common malefactor, and thrown into the common gaol of a seaport town in America. And this, too, was it pretended to be an unprecedented and solitary event, which never occurred before, and never might occur again? Not at all. The truth was, that the reverse was the case; but the noble Lord stated that, inasmuch as that English subject had suffered only from the municipal law of one particular State, all English subjects of the description in question must henceforth continue to be, as they had hitherto remained, liable to unjust and cruel imprisonment. But was it only from republican America that the noble Lord was content to put up with such indignities? They had been told that part of the odium which the noble Lord had incurred was to be attributed to his ready acceptance of the French Republic. Why, no sooner had that republic been established, than a quiet and industrious body of English subjects resident there had been despoiled of their goods, forcibly expelled from their homes, and forced penniless and friendless to this country, to solicit, and to solicit in vain, for justice at the hands of this Government, against the French Republic. Did the noble Lord, on that occasion, make use of his power—of his fleets? No, there was a subscription—the sufferers were sent to the Antipodes; and yet, in the face of such instances as these, they were told that the policy of the noble Lord was, to secure universally the rights of the English people in foreign countries, and to maintain untarnished the honour of the British flag. But the vote to which the hon. and learned Member for Sheffield wished the House to come, was based upon the assumption that it would reply to the vote on the other side, already pronounced in another place. He would be allowed to ask, whether, narrowed to this simple point, they could say that the policy of Government, so far as Greece was concerned, was conducive to the maintenance of peace, or to the preservation untarnished of the honour and dignity of the Crown? He denied both propositions. He did not think that the result of the Greek business was such as to enable the House to congratulate themselves upon it; and he did not think that the method taken to obtain justice for English subjects was the course calculated to raise England in the eyes of the world. But they were told that the quarrel with France originated in accidental circumstances. What were these? They would be found to be two: first, the delay which characterised the proceedings of the noble Lord at a critical point; and, secondly, the somewhat incomprehensible perversity with which Mr. Wyse declined to accept the original proposition of the French Envoy at Athens. It was a curious coincidence, that a delay of ten days should twice prove so fatal to the policy of the noble Lord. In 1847, the French Government, for the purpose of preventing an unfortunate civil war in Switzerland, proposed, on the 6th of November, to have recourse to the mediation of the noble Lord. Of that proposal no notice was taken for ten clear days—that delay causing the fall of Lucerne, and all the proscriptions and atrocities which followed it. The same thing was, as he hinted, repeated in 1850. In April last, the noble Lord again suffered ten days to elapse between the receipt of the proposition made by the French Ambassador and the answer given to it; and the result was, the ultimate rejection of the friendly offices of France, the outrages committed in Greece, the disturbances of our relations with the Great Powers of Eastern Europe, and the quarrel with the French Republic. He had stated that the second accidental cause of the present state of things was the incomprehensible pertinacity with which Mr. Wyse declined to accede to the proposal of the French Minister at Athens. He had carefully examined the despatches upon this part of the subject, and he thought that he had discovered a clue to Mr. Wyse's conduct. All through the negotiations Mr. Wyse appeared to be averse or afraid to allow the matter to be transferred for settlement from Athens to Paris or London. He believed that this feeling was at the root of Mr. Wyse's unwillingness to receive Baron Gros' propositions; and the policy which caused this feeling was crowned with success—for French mediation was thereby frustrated. No reference was made to London or Paris, and Mr. Wyse had the honour of terminating the affair himself—the outrage upon Greece was committed, and the noble Lord at the head of the Government had an opportunity of declaring that his Colleague was not the Minister of France. Well, he admitted that the noble Lord was not the Minister of France; but if he were, he could have done nothing more calculated to extend French influence in the Mediterranean than that which he had performed; while as to Russia—he put it to any Gentleman on either side of the House, whether any line of policy could be better suited to promote the extension of Russian influence in the East, than that course which the noble Lord had actually adopted? But was it only those who ordinarily dissented from the policy of the noble Lord who took this view of the present case? There was a remarkable passage in one of Mr. Wyse's despatches, which ought to teach Gentlemen opposite that Cossack domination was far from being opposed by the behaviour of the noble Lord. Mr. Wyse, writing to the noble Lord, said—

"Greece must seek another support more conformable to her real objects and interests than England. The time is fast approaching when Greece must look towards Constantinople, and the natural leader to such an object is Russia, and not England."

That was the natural view to adopt, and he could not doubt but that the most sedulous efforts would be made to spread and foster that opinion in the minds of the people of Greece. After what had been said of the cruelties perpetrated upon two Ionians, the House would hardly be prepared to learn that the claims for reparation and compensation for these alleged cruelties, formed no portion of the demand against Greece. But the fact was that these Ionian tradesmen, with their wrongs, had been introduced simply in order to excite a sympathy and prepare the way for monstrous and exaggerated claims which were really put in. There was one point connected with this Greek business, however, which he did not think had been sufficiently touched upon; but when they were told that the policy of the noble Lord tended to promote the peace of the world, they ought not to pass over without mature examination that conduct in relation to the seizure of the islands of Cervi and Sapienza. What were the facts relating to our claims upon these islands? For several years no mention of our alleged rights had been made. The Greek authority had been established in both islands. In September, 1849, however, Admiral Parker was ordered to proceed thither at once, to dispossess the Greek officials, and to take possession. in Her Majesty's name, of the islands in question, no intimation of this order having been conveyed to either of the two protesting Powers, France or Russia. The fleet accordingly sailed, but that magnificent demonstration against Cossack domination failed, in consequence either of Admiral Parker not having time to perform, or in consequence of his forgetting, at the last moment, the orders of the noble Lord. The fact was, that Admiral Parker and Mr. Wyse had the wisdom and the prudence to determine upon suspending these orders, which, had they been acted upon, would, in all probability, have led to a European war. In the meantime, angry despatches were sent from St. Petersburgh. They produced their due effect upon the noble Lord; and after their receipt, nothing could be more conciliatory than the representations which our Minister in Russia was charged to make to the Sovereign to whom he was accredited. Lord Bloomfield was told to assure Count Nesselrode that Her Majesty's Government was ready to listen to any arguments by which it could be shown that these islands belonged to Greece before any steps were taken to seize them. But if it was right in Her Majesty's Government to listen attentively to any argument which the Greek Government might allege in favour of their claim to these islands, let him ask how was it that the same attentive consideration was not given to these arguments before orders to seize these islands were sent out, and before the note of Count Nesselrode, couched in such vehement language, was received? Mr. Wyse, carrying out the now pacific policy of the noble Lord, assured M. Persiany, the Russian Minister at Athens, that Russian rights would be respected, and that no decision would be taken on the subject of this territorial question till she was made acquainted with it. But this declaration—this assurance to M. Persiany—was given to that diplomatist six months after positive orders had been issued to Admiral Parker to take possession of these islands. After what passed last night on the subject of Switzerland, it was with great difficulty that he ventured to say anything on that subject. Awaiting the explanation which the noble Lord would no doubt give, he would say nothing more on the subject to which these explanations would have immediate reference, than to point out, by way of illustration of the manner in which the Greek business was conducted, the unfortunate and unhappy delay which the noble Lord was the occasion of in 1847, when France offered her mediation, together with England, Austria, and Prussia, to prevent the civil war that was then on the eve of breaking out in Switzerland. The House would remember that ten days elapsed before the noble Lord would acknowledge the receipt of that offer of mediation; and when he did acknowledge it, ten days more were consumed in starting difficulties and in suggesting alterations in the terms. At last the noble Lord signed the note, and sent it to Mr. Peel, to be presented to the Diet at Lucerne. Now, upon this subject the hon. and gallant Member for Middlesex told them that the publication of M. d'Hausonville contained many untruths. That might be so, or it might not. He wished that the hon. and gallant Member had given instances, or had given the authorities on which he spoke. But, in addition to the remarkable passage which the right hon. Baronet the Member for Ripon quoted last night, they learned from M. Bois le Compte, that he had a communication with Mr. Peel on the subject of the note, and that Mr. Peel told him if he could show him the despatch of Lord Palmerston he would think, like him, that he had no choice—that he could not consent to show the note he had received—that he would rather resign than do so. Pending the explanation which he expected the noble Lord to give of these extraordinary statements, he would say nothing more on that subject; but giving the noble Lord credit for the purest intentions to preserve the peace of Switzerland, and in preventing a dominant and a tyrant majority from overbearing and violating the rights of a noble minority—giving the noble Lord credit for all this, still he would say that, finding in two remarkable instances the delay of the noble Lord had operated with so much ill—so much injustice—and, in the case of Switzerland, with so much cruelty and oppression—he did not think that our foreign policy, conducted in such a manner, was a policy conducive to the honour and dignity of England, or calculated to promote the peace of the world. Let it never be forgotten that in Switzerland occurred the first blaze, which soon afterwards spread over the whole of Europe. Let it never be forgotten that the French Government appealed to the noble Lord long before he so tardily accepted their proposals of mediation; and when Berlin and Vienna lost no time in acceding to the proposals of France, it was the noble Lord who caused the delay which ended so disastrously for Switzerland. He knew some persons persons said that the majority in Switzerland was a liberal majority, and he supposed the hon. and gallant Member for Middlesex would defend the actions of that liberal majority. If it were true that the great object of an English Foreign Minister was to set up liberal institutions abroad, and to promote the spread of free institutions, let him ask had the result in Switzerland—had the result in Italy—had the result anywhere been such as to cause the hon. and gallant Member to rejoice in the policy he had espoused? In Switzerland the first acts of this triumphant and tyrannical majority were of so atrocious a nature as to call for the decided remonstrances of that able, experienced, and veteran diplomatist who was sent out by the noble Lord to succeed Mr. Peel—he meant Sir Stratford Canning—and to induce him to say, in writing to the noble Lord, that he found his advice disregarded and his position untenable; that some Members of the Government perhaps meant well, but that the others were entirely under the domination of the clubs. Proscription followed proscription. The Sisters of Charity, whose lives were devoted to the benefit and the consolation of their fellow-creatures, were brutally and ignominously turned out of their homes. The independent rights of sovereign cantons, which the noble Lord was the first to vindicate in 1832, were violated and set at nought. The monks of St. Bernard, against whom no man had written a word of complaint—men who had devoted their lives to save the lives of their fellow-creatures—these men were persecuted and driven from their country; and that was the manner in which liberal principles were promoted, in which free institutions were established, in which the right of private judgment was encouraged by this triumphant liberal tyranny. But the noble Lord in declining in the first instance the friendly offers of France for a mediation for the purpose of preventing a civil war in Switzerland, alluded to the great difficulty which the English Court invariably found when it endeavoured to interfere in the affairs of foreign countries. He knew not how far that might be the case in Switzerland; but he did think if hon. Gentlemen turned their eyes across the Alps, they would discover that the noble Lord had experienced no great or insurmountable difficulty in interfering in the affairs of the countries there. Whatever the House might think of the noble Lord's partial and most uncalled-for interference in the affairs of Austria and Naples, he would do the noble Lord the justice to say that he was zealously and ably backed up by his agents in Turin and elsewhere. Throughout the voluminous blue books which had been published on the Sardinian affairs, hon. Gentlemen would hardly be able to lay their hands on one despatch of Mr. Abercromby, in which they would not find the tone of a keen and determined partisan—of a man anxious and willing to do everything in his power to secure a triumph to the cause of an unjust invasion of a neighbouring territory by Charles Albert of Sardinia. The noble Lord at first declared, indeed, that he wished to act the part of a calm spectator; and when Lord Ponsonby wrote to him from Vienna, stating that the affairs of Austria were involved in great, and he feared insurmountable, difficulties, and suggesting that English mediation might be successful in saving the Austrian empire, and in preserving the peace of Europe, the noble Lord said that till he was called on by both the contending parties, England would maintain a strict and rigid neutrality. But when they turned to the despatches of Mr. Abercromby, did they find anything like strict impartiality preserved in them? They were told by the noble Lord that he did not wish to separate Austria from her Lombardian territories; but they found Mr. Abercromby sitting peaceably at Turin, whilst the Sardinian Chamber was discussing the annexation—yes, annexation was the phrase—of Lombardy to Sardinia; and he found that Mr. Abercromby did nothing whatever in the way of remonstrance. Oh, but then they were told that Mr. Abercromby was ordered to remonstrate against the proposed invasion of Austrian Lombardy by Sardinia—and that Lord Minto was told to warn the King of Sardinia that England would highly disapprove of his conduct. But he found Mr. Abercromby, long after the invasion took place, with his eyes shut to the rights of Austrians, so long as their opponents seemed on the eve of triumphing—he found Mr. Abercomby writing in the coolest manner, and giving the most minute detail of the debates in the Chamber at Turin respecting the annexation of Lombardy, and writing to the noble Lord that he was happy to inform him that, after an animated debate, the question of annexation was finally settled by an affirmative vote of 127 to 7. Where was his remonstrance against the unheard-of injustice of this proceeding? Was Mr. Abercromby ordered to leave Turin within 24 hours? Was the English fleet ordered to blockade Genoa, in order to secure a diversion in favour of our ancient ally? No such thing. Throughout the debate the same language was preserved; and when they found the reverses of the invader occurred, they found Mr. Ahercromby writing—not that he was happy to say that the cause of our ally was triumphant, and that the invaders had met with a merited chastisement, but that it was with regret he had to announce that the Sardinian troops were compelled to retreat to the banks of the Oglio. And when the noble Lord received that intelligence, he directed Mr. Abercromby to proceed to Alessandria to comfort, he presumed, the defeated monarch, and to offer to Charles Albert the good offices of England. Nay, he found further that when Mr. Abercromby proceeded on his task, he told the King of Sardinia that the sentiments of Her Majesty's Ministers, and of the people of Great Britain, were in sympathy with his own. What Mr. Abercromby might be justified in saying, on the part of the noble Lord and the Government, he could not presume to assert; but, when Mr. Abercromby stated that the sympathies of the honest and justice-loving people of England went along with Charles Albert, then he (Lord J. Manners) did say that Mr. Abercromby had calumniated the people of England. Doubtless it would be a great consolation to Charles Albert that in the hour of his distress he should receive the sympathies of Her Majesty's Government; but he strongly suspected that it was something more substantial than these sympathies that he relied on when he commenced his ill-starred expedition. The fate of that unfortunate monarch might almost be seen to have been predicted in the lines of our great moralist:—

"The bold Sardinian, in a luckless hour,

Tries the dread summits of Cæsarian power,

With unexpected legions bursts away,

And sees defenceless realms receive his sway;

Short sway! fair Austria spreads her mournful charms,

The queen, the beauty, sets the world in arms;

From hill to hill the beacons rousing blaze

Spreads wide the hope of plunder and of praise;

The fierce Croatian, and the wild Hussar,

With all the sons of ravage crowd the war;

The baffled prince in honour's flatt'ring bloom

Of hasty greatness finds the fatal doom,

His foes' derision, and his subjects' blame,

And steals to death from anguish and from shame."

When Charles Albert went to seek his grave in a foreign land, he believed that His Majesty's death-bed was not much consoled by the reflection that he had with him the sincere sympathy of the noble Lord, and the alleged sympathy of the English people. They were always told that in all their endeavours to excite the people against their governors, it was the cause of the people that was advocated, and that liberal institutions might be established, and the blessings of freedom diffused, throughout the land. But it was a remarkable circumstance, so far as the Austrians in Italy were concerned, that the feelings of the people were in favour of their legitimate Sovereign—that their sympathies were not with Charles Albert, the invader, but with the Emperor of Austria. Mr. Abercromby admitted this in a letter to the noble Lord, when he said—"And you must remember that the provinces have shown very little enthusiasm, and no public spirit whatever in the cause." And Lord Ponsonby told the noble Lord that all his information led him to believe that when the Austrian army entered Milan they were received as the vindicators of right, as the promoters of peace, as the maintainers of the happiness of the people, and not as the oppressors. And Lord Ponsonby again, in another remarkable letter, stated that "the peasantry and farmers of the Milanese district had received with delight the Austrian army; that they rejoiced to see them as their friends and protectors again." When Charles Albert was successful there was no disposition for mediation; but when unsuccessful, the noble Lord took upon himself the part of a mediator, and the noble Viscount sought then to secure for Charles Albert by diplomacy that which His Majesty had failed to gain for himself in the field; and after Austria had accepted his mediation the noble Lord grudged no time, grudged no ingenuity, in endeavouring to persuade Austria that she never could retain the Italian provinces. But the part of a prophet was no better played by the noble Lord than the part of an abettor of insurrection, or the part of a mediator. There was not a despatch from the noble Lord or from Mr. Abereromby which was not filled with predictions that it would be impossible for Austria to rule again over Italy, and that, for the sake of Austria herself, she ought to be too glad to yield up the Lombard provinces to her neighbours; and even when the valour, the loyalty, and the discipline of the Austrian general and the Austrian troops had rolled back the invasion, the noble Lord wrote to Lord Ponsonby, that Austria must not be so blind and infatuated as to think that the military occupation of Lombardy was synonymous with Austrian rule in these provinces. That was the invariable language of the noble Lord and his agents throughout the whole attempt at mediation. Well, but what had been the result? Austria was not to be so scared out of her prey; and when they were told that this policy was calculated to maintain the glory of England, he could only say that he quoted with more approbation the answer that was given by the Austrian Minister to language of this kind. Prince Schwarzenberg, on being appealed to, returned this gallant and noble answer:—

"That it would be better for Austria to perish with arms in her hands, than to admit such propositions, and that if Austria were attacked in Lombardy by the neighbouring Powers, they would meet with resistance the most determined."

And thus ended the attempt to wrest, by diplomatic threats and menaces, the possession of Lombardy from Austria. What has been the result? Were there interminable disputes or implicable hostilities? Had they heard of any menaces of civil war throughout Lombardy? It was true they were told that the King of Sardinia found himself in an uncomfortable position, and that a Peer of England, one of those who by his vote, it was said, had contributed to tarnish the honour of his country, had preserved the second city of that Monarch's dominions from being destroyed by the violence of an infuriated mob; but did they hear that Austria was likely again to be disturbed in Italy? They were not told that the feelings of the people of Lombardy were such as to threaten another insurrection. The people were satisfied under the sway of the wise and paternal Government of Austria. [ Cries of "Oh, oh!"] He would tell those hon. Gentlemen who cried "Oh, oh," that he would venture to make this prophecy—that whenever it might please the new King of Sardinia, or any other King, Power, or potentate, to invade the Italian dominions of Austria, they would find neither encouragement nor support from the Lombard population of the provinces. The hon. and gallant Member who spoke last told them that the House should show that it was not indifferent to the claims of the commerce of England. He agreed with him. It was most important that this House, representing the great industrial people of England, should not be indifferent to the foreign policy of the Government, which might seriously affect the commerce of the coun- try. But when he appealed to hon. Gentlemen who sat near him, and who represented in an especial manner the manufacturing districts of the country, let him ask what had been the results, in a commercial point of view, of our fomenting insurrection on the Continent? What had been the practical commercial result of the invasion of the Italian Peninsula? Here, again, he would quote from no partial authority—he would not quote from Gentlemen sitting on his right hand—but he would appeal to that organ which was understood to represent the wishes, and he feared he must say sometimes the prejudices, of hon. Gentlemen opposite:—

"The tariff of Lucca, through which Parma and Modena used to be supplied with English goods, was 10 per cent ad valorem for cottons and linens previous to the liberal attempt of Charles Albert, 12 per cent for woollens, and for cotton twist about 7½ per cwt. In Tuscany, the fiscal dues were little more than nominal. But now the Austrian tariffs were substituted for the Italian tariffs, so that cotton paid 2 s. 4 d., and cotton twist 1 l. 10 s. per cwt., and so on in proportion."

He thought, therefore, that English commerce could hardly be said to have gained much by the Italian policy of the noble Lord. A newspaper writer, summing up the results of this wonderful policy, said—

"The result would be that Piedmont herself would be forced into the Austrian Zollverein, which would thus be extended from the furthest cape in Sicily to the confines of Saxony."

He wished the representatives of the manufacturing districts joy of these magnificent results, which, under the guidance of the noble Lord, they had achieved; and after the appeal that had been made to them, on competent authority he had no doubt, by a writer in the Daily News, he trusted they would be found to record their votes in favour of a policy which, commencing in injustice, ended by stretching the restrictive tariff of Austria from the furthest cape in Sicily to the confines of Saxony. He had thus endeavoured, he trusted with no acerbity of tone, to express the opinion which he honestly and conscientiously entertained on some of those great questions which had been submitted to their notice. He would forbear to touch on the question of Portugal, in which by the way he found that he was at the time a zealous follower of the hon. and gallant Gentleman who had now become such a fervid eulogist of the noble Lord. Neither would he touch upon the Spanish Marriage question, though the noble Lord would hardly appeal to either in proof of the success of his foreign policy. He put these considerations before the House as reasons which induced him to take an opposite view from the hon. and gallant Member for Middlesex, and because he believed that neither the honour nor the dignity of the Crown of England could be maintained by a policy of this nature, nor could the peace of the world be long maintained if it were continued to be pursued. He had no confidence in that policy which now bullied a weak State or now submitted to a powerful State—which at one moment declined all mediation and interference when its good offices were required, and at another moment inflicted those good offices upon a reluctant Government—which at one moment made an extravagant and exorbitant claim for compensation upon a defenceless State, and at another moment declined to apply for redress to a powerful State. Such a policy seemed in his view to be neither consistent with the honour nor the dignity of the country, nor would it tend to secure for England that position among the nations of the world which it had hitherto so proudly maintained. He did not think that by exciting against England the indignation of civilised Europe they would promote the honour of the country, or conduce to the peace of the world.

said, that in the difficulty in which he must confess he found himself placed in respect of the vote he should give on the Motion before the House, it was at all events some consolation to him to know that that difficulty was shared by other hon. Members. It was not that he was apprehensive of the consequences of a vote. In making up his mind as to what vote he should give on any question in that House, such a thing as apprehension for the consequences of his vote was the last consideration that had ever occurred to him; but it was that the terms in which the resolution of his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sheffield was clothed were so general—so susceptible of a variety of conflicting interpretations—that he confessed he was, when he considered the terms of this Motion, met by the preliminary difficulty of scarcely being able to understand it. But they were, however, called upon to give their approbation to the foreign policy of Her Majesty's Government, because the principles on which that policy had hitherto been conducted were such as had tended to insure the honour of the Crown and the peace of the world. No Ministry in particular was named—no definite period was referred to; and, to increase the difficulty, in the speech itself of his hon. and learned Friend—able, as he admitted it to have been, and in which, to a great extent, he himself concurred—they were invited to go back to the year 1830 for evidence and arguments in favour of this policy. But they well knew, at the same time, that the object and aim of this resolution was, to neutralise the effects produced on the minds of the people and of the Governments of foreign States, by the unjust and un-English vote of the House of Lords. They knew that there was strong reason to believe that the ground on which the Ministry had been attacked in another place, though professedly relating to their measures with regard to Greece, was one derived from the whole course and current of their policy in the Levant since February 24, 1848. He, therefore, complained of being called upon to give a vote on the resolution now before the House, when he knew that that vote—if there was any force in words, or any strength in language—must be meaningless. They were not asked to affirm this—that since the period when the late troubles of Europe began, in 1848, the conduct of the Government had been, on the whole, just and honourable. They were invited to go back into the undefined past, and to affirm that the policy of the English Government, in whatever hands placed, had been wise, honourable, and English. He could not say that; — neither could he, as to every particular, assert the contrary. At present, therefore, he found it very difficult to give any vote at all on this question; and he regretted this, because wishing to deal in a spirit of fair play with a Minister whose foreign policy, inherited from the Minister that had preceded him, he (Mr. Anstey) had had occasion to condemn, and which policy he did still unfeignedly condemn—and not wishing, in the language of Strafford, to "bring up their good deeds" against the Government, and to "punish them even for those"—he should have desired to have been enabled to give an honest vote in favour of their post-revolutionary policy. It was not that he had anything to retract. On the contrary, he took the present opportunity to remind the House that he had in his place on a former occasion passed in review the acts and deeds of the Government of this country towards Poland, Turkey, Persia, China, Central Asia; and, in fine, the whole course of their foreign policy from 1830 to 1848, and condemned it; and he begged to be understood now to reiterate that condemnation. But it was that that policy was now changed. He was bound to state that—on what inspiration he knew not, nor did he seek to be informed—the foreign policy of this Government had, since the time of difficulty began—namely, since February, 1848—been such as the resolution of his hon. and learned Friend described it; and if that were the necessary meaning of this resolution, he should at once be prepared to test the sincerity of his conviction by the publicity of his vote, and that vote he should give upon it. But in no case could he vote against it. He knew what men a hostile vote on this resolution would result in placing in power, and, knowing this, he must say that in the interest of those foreign countries whose claims he had so often, however humbly, defended, and though he could not affirm positively that he had confidence in the foreign policy of the present Government—he could at least thus far say, that he was most essentially and determinedly opposed to the policy of those probable successors of the present Ministers—politicians who had, both there and elsewhere, advocated the extradition of honourable and patriotic men—to foreign despots, and the first act of whose administration would very probably be the betrayal of the brave Hungarian refugees who had sought shelter at Constantinople to the barbarous vengeance of the Czar of Muscovy. He had no sympathy with a policy that would stifle the cry of liberty in the Italian Peninsula, or attempt to check the Hungarians and Poles in their glorious efforts to raise the standard of independence in the land of their birth. But he had yet another motive. It was in the spirit of fair play to the Foreign Minister—to the noble Lord—and not because he had confidence in his policy, that he now came forward to render him the testimony of an independent Member of Parliament, that, on one and all of the recent passages of his policy, and as to which he had of late been made the subject of much obloquy, his opinion was that he had sinned more on the side of moderation than of excess. And therefore he appealed with confidence to the justice and generosity of every Member of that House not to misconstrue his motives and his speech. His noble Friend who had just sat down had opened new ground that night. He had asked them to come to a decision—for his speech was equivalent to such a challenge—he had asked them to come to a decision to the effect that the measures of the Foreign Minister—not in Greece but in Italy—had been such as were inconsistent with the honour of the Crown, and calculated to endanger, rather than to preserve, the peace of the world. Now, he would say that the noble Lord the Member for Colchester had opened this as new ground that night; because he could not think that the right hon. Baronet the Member for Ripon had done more than merely point the way to that discussion which the noble Lord had entered into. They had heard much from the noble Lord on the subject to which he referred. They had had passages from blue books that had been on their table for the last two years, but which had never yet been the subject of controversy within those walls, though they well knew the nature of their contents, on the question of Italy and her troubles. But to what did all that amount? Why, when a slight deficiency in the statement of the noble Lord the Member for Colchester and of the right hon. Baronet the Member for Ripon had been supplied, it would come to this—that our so much condemned diplomatic interposition in the affairs of Italy had been made inevitable by the course of events which had resulted in a war, and a war that threatened to be a general and a lasting one; and that our Minister, not having the spirit of prophecy, and not being able to see that that war would be so soon put an end to, did give to all parties those counsels that did at that time appear most calculated to contribute to a speedy and honourable peace. But the noble Lord's statement presented a deficiency, and he begged to supply it. The noble Lord had omitted the Prince of Denmark from the tragedy of Hamlet —the part of the Pope in the great drama of Italy. The present Pope, notwithstanding his recent departure from the enlightened policy with which he had commenced his reign, was one of the most liberal, able, disinterested, and patriotic sovereigns in Europe. On his accession to power—which took place in the shortest conclave and in the purest election that marked an elevation to the pontifical chair since the days of St. Peter—he found his dominions—he found the patrimony of St. Peter—on the eve of destruction, thanks to the principles of constitutional law which, under Austrian influence, had been given to the people by the Pontiff who had sat in the pontifical chair since 1815. The present Pope at once sought the assistance of those about him to put an end to the nuisance of foreign influence, and to remove abuses, in doing which he did not shrink from parting with some portions of his temporal prerogatives. He proclaimed an amnesty, he excluded from office persons known to be the profligate and traitorous slaves of foreign influence, he sent Cardinal della Genga to the Castle of St. Angelo, and took the preliminary steps to form a constitution. Ferrara, a city on the frontier of the Papal States, it would be recollected, was seized by the Austrians, and great was the excitement thereby produced throughout all Italy. In this state of things our Government found itself obliged, by a sense of duty—he would not say to the cause of freedom in Italy—even to our national honour, as one of the guaranteeing Powers of the Treaty of Vienna, to protest against these scandalous aggressions; and they all knew what was the answer of Austria. It was by threatening further encroachments in another quarter. Charles Albert, as the Duke of Savoy, had shown a disposition to imitate the Pope, and even to go further and grant that constitution which in the Pontifical States was only under discussion. Charles Albert, therefore, had long been regarded by Austria with the same jealousy as that with which they regarded the Pope; and Prince Metternich had even attempted to compel his imbecile parent, Charles Felix, to alter the succession, and declare the Duchess of Modena heir to the throne, to the exclusion of his own son. Charles Felix, however, refused to do so unjust an act, and Austria was obliged to acknowledge a prince imbued though he was so deeply with constitutional principles. The Austrian Government, however, intimated that they "acquiesced in his accession on condition that he did not depart from the policy of Charles Felix." That was surely a cool and arrogant assumption, considering that the kingdom of Charles Albert was an independent State; and it was not submitted to. Charles Albert on his accession lost not an hour in creating and disciplining that army which, in these recent days, despite its latest disasters, had achieved so many laurels in well-foughten fields. The events that took place in Italy were often said to have been copied second-hand from those of France. Gentlemen pretend that they were the mere fruits of the seed sown on the 24th of February in the blood-stained streets of Paris. But that was not the fact. The movement was begun in the Pontificate, in the heart of Italy, in the city of Rome, and had spread to the north of Italy, before a shot was fired on the 24th of February in the streets of Paris. The charter of the constitution was granted by Charles Albert on the 10th February, weeks before there had been a thought of revolution in France. In this state of affairs our Foreign Secretary was called upon to interfere; but against whom?—against what constitutional monarch? Was it against the maintenance of order? On the contrary, it was against the interference of Austria in Italy, by which disorder had been everywhere established, and against Austria crossing her southern boundary and taking possession of an Italian city. But what was the nature of the interference? The noble Lord the Foreign Secretary limited his protest to the intimation that, "if Austria ventured to interfere to check the progress of reform in Italy—a State which did not belong to her—such a course would not be regarded by England with indifference." No Gentleman in that House would, he thought, venture to say that the noble Lord's duty would have been discharged had he said less. If the noble Lord had gone beyond that, and had intimated to Charles Albert that he might rely on the aid of an English fleet or an English army, he would only have done that duty more effectually, and in a manner more becoming the Minister of a great and first-rate Power. The noble Lord is not, however, censured for that, but for going even so far as he did. That was to say, that if the Earl of Aberdeen and Lord Stanley had been in power, our interference would have taken place to put down the constitution of February, granted by the King to Sardinia, and with it all hopes of constitutional government in every State in Italy. When the revolution of March broke out, and the Austrians were driven out of Lombardy—when a Provisional Government was created there by the act of the people—Charles Albert was invited by that Government to recognise its independence. Mindful of the past, solicitous for the future, fearing that, if the invitation were refused by him, it would be made to France, and that then a French army would soon be seen at the summit of the Alps, Charles Albert had to con- sider whether he should treat with this Provisional Government as an independent State. Vattel and all the jurists laid it down, that when a Government was in abeyance, a foreign Power might treat with either of the contending parties as representing the State; and, under the circumstances of the case, Charles Albert did no more than he had a right to do by every acknowledged principle of international law; and his only motive was the honourable one of wishing to assist his countrymen in putting down that domination to which his and their weakness had compelled them for so many years to submit, and regaining that for which their ancestors had struggled for so many centuries, and which God and nature had destined for them—namely, that Italy, their common country, should be a free, united, and independent State. Charles Albert failed, and, though overwhelmed with disasters, certainly not with dishonour, and now, at this time of day, the memory of this unfortunate king, a martyr to his struggles to free his country from a foreign yoke, was exposed to ridicule in the British House of Commons, and the Minister of England who dared to sympathise with him in the day of his misfortune, and to communicate to him that sympathy, was now stigmatised and taunted with having thereby derogated from our national honour. The right hon. Baronet the Member for Ripon in like manner had called on the House to refuse this vote of confidence on account of the best passage in the policy of the Foreign Office since 1848—namely, in respect to what took place in the waters of the Dardanelles. The right hon. Baronet, instead of attributing the results of our interference there to its right cause, attributed it rather to the clemency of the Czar of Russia, and, with a perseverance most unaccountable, would insist upon it that our flag was dishonoured by the mean acknowledgment of the officer commanding our fleet that he had entered the Dardanelles for shelter against the weather—a pretence wholly set aside by the evidence of a noble Lord who commanded one of the ships. The facts of the case were these: When the Czar of Russia sent an aide-de-camp, as from a superior to his dependant, to address the Sultan, with his head covered, the very enlightened gentleman who represented Turkey at this Court, and whom he was proud to call his friend, was charged to request the support of the noble Lord to the deter- mination of the Turkish Government not to do violence to the laws of hospitality—the constitutional laws of their country—and to give up the Hungarian refugees to the merciless will of the despot who demanded them. The noble Lord would have been wanting in his duty if he had not interfered immediately, and accordingly he at once sent out his approval of Sir Stratford Canning's conduct in assuring the Porte of British countenance, and, what was more significant—not forgetting that post hoc was not the same as propter hoc —he sent a fleet also. The result was that a change took place in the Russian policy, and the insolent demands made with such want of ceremony by an aide-de-camp were withdrawn. The right hon. Baronet the Member for Ripon said, that was the result of the clemency of the Czar; but the Turks themselves attributed it to a far different cause. It had been said that the ships had entered the Dardanelles in violation of treaties. It was the treaty of June, 1841, by which the Dardanelles were closed to a British fleet, and not the treaty of Castelcicala, as the right hon. Baronet had stated. But, far from blaming the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary, it was because he was mindful of treaties, of right, of justice, and most jealous of the direct infringement even of such bad treaties as that of 1841, that he rejoiced in the construction put upon that wretched treaty. He was not quite certain whether the honour of the construction belonged to the noble Lord or to the Turkish Ambassador, but the construction was that the French and English fleet, being at the mouth of the Dardanelles, the state of the weather, or apprehensions of a change of weather, which might make a change of anchorage expedient, gave them a right to enter the Dardanelles and proceed to a certain anchorage which was protected from the wind, and there lie until the necessity for such a course had passed away. That solution of the difficulty was adopted at once by the French, English, and Turkish Governments, and eventually it received the indirect and reluctant assent of Russia and Austria. After that the wretched treaty of 1841 must, he was happy to say, be considered null and void. But the noble Lord, in another place, who moved that un-English vote which we were now endeavouring to spunge out, and who looked to come into office in the event of the vote of confidence now before the House being rejected, laughed at the solution thus arrived at, as it had been laughed at by the right hon. Member for Ripon, who had told them last night, with such glee, of the disgrace that had fallen on the British flag by the falsehood which he affirmed had been brought home to the officer commanding the fleet. He (Mr. Anstey) did not think the people of England would join those who were now standing open-mouthed for office in their unseasonable mirth. Again, with regard to Hungary, he could not blame the intervention of our Government, because, according to the terms of the treaty subsisting between the Crown of Hungary and this Crown, it was their duty to secure to Hungary, by force of arms, if necessary, the enjoyment of those constitutional rights which were hers by the laws of the country, and upon the faith of which she became subject to the house of Lorraine-Hapsburgh. We had guaranteed the Pragmatic Sanction; and we had given subsidies of money and succours of troops to the Sovereigns reigning in Hungary, for the purpose of enabling them to maintain themselves there; and in return we had a right to insist upon the maintenance of the old constitutional freedom of that country. At all events, and without giving to Hungary all that she had lost, or even preserving to her the little she had left, we surely ought to prevent her absorption with the Austrian empire by the revolutionary Government which now existed. Even Prince Metternich himself would never have gone the lengths with Hungary to which the revolutionary Government had gone. Even under Metternich, Hungary was always treated as a separate kingdom, and never denied at least the forms of a constitution—she was not denied the enjoyment of her own laws, and she was protected against the invasion of Austrian troops and placemen and judicatures. But in 1848 all was changed. Hungary found that the commencement of the revolution at Vienna was the signal for the destruction of her independence; and therefore he need not remind hon. Gentlemen who understood what patriotism really was, that it became not a question of absolute or constitutional government—not a question of having a constitution more or less democratic, but of having a country at all. He would rather have a country, although it were governed by the most despotic Government in the world, than be without a country, and possess a cosmopolitic citizenship in all the free coun- tries in the world. The course taken towards the Hungarians was to deprive them of their nationality altogether, and make their ancient and free kingdom one part only of the empire of Austria. The Emperor himself at first pretended to be embarked with them in resisting this tyranny, and while they shed their blood in his cause, gave them hopes that they would secure a better constitution than that they had, but certainly such as should secure at least their independence. But when the Emperor regained his capital, he conferred a free pardon upon the military oligarchy reigning at Vienna, bestowed honours upon those against whom he had arrayed the Hungarians, and carried on all their measures for extinguishing the Hungarian name. Under all these circumstances, it was no wonder that the Hungarians should come to the unanimous decision that the house of Lorraine-Hapsburgh had by its treachery and breach of oath forfeited the crown of Hungary. This was the state of things when the noble Lord was called upon to interfere and try to preserve to Hungary the poor remnant of nationality left it; and who would say that that was an interference in favour of the disturbers of public peace or of democratic institutions? These were the great passages in the late policy of the noble Lord on which the House was invited to form an opinion. For himself, with regard to Italy and Hungary, he wished well to them, and trusted they would recover their freedom, and that the military occupation which now weighed them down and destroyed their energies would have a brief and violent duration. The cause of Turkey was the cause of the world; and the last hour of the independence of every great nation of Europe would be knelled when Russia found herself in possession of that object which had been the end and aim of Russian intrigue and desire since the days of Peter the Great—namely, the possession of Constantinople. He wished to frustrate those aims and desires; he wished to avert that knell; and he was, therefore, not anxious to see the Foreign Office in the possession of any Minister who avowedly would make a Russian alliance the keystone of his policy. After the lengthy debate of last night, he felt scarcely called upon to notice the comparatively contemptible question which formed the chief grounds of censure by a noble Lord in another place, and which was urged as the foundation of the absurd, impolitic, and un-English resolution which had been carried in that place. Yet on a few points he would make some observations. The noble Lord the Member for Colchester had said that one important point had been designedly kept out of sight in the discussion of this question, namely, the transactions which had taken place in reference to the islands of Cervi and Sapienza, alleged to be formerly in the occupation of Greece, and secured to her by the treaty by which her territory was guaranteed by England, France, and Russia, and that, therefore, England ought to have consulted those two Powers before seizing the islands. He denied that conclusion. These two islands were not affected by that treaty at all. Instead of England interfering with Greece to take away two islands from Greece, it was Greece interfering with England to take two islands from England. England held those islands under other treaties, and he was glad to hear the statement of the hon. and gallant Member for Portarlington, a few nights ago, who had said that he was one of the commissioners for marking out the boundary of the new Greek kingdom, and that these islands were no part of that kingdom; and had added the conclusive fact that when a strict quarantine was enforced on the coast of Greece, he, being in quarantine and unable to land on any Grecian territory, was yet at perfect liberty frequently to land on the island of Cervi to shoot game there. It was not, however, a point left to conjecture. When they were first taken possession of, being islands of no extent or value, a simple protest against their occupation was all that was thought necessary. But Sir E. Lyons, who made that protest, also corresponded on the subject with his Government; and when the noble Lord received a despatch in November, 1839, on the subject, he did nothing without consulting the Secretary for the Colonies, all communications with the Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands passing through that department. It was an error to suppose that the reclamation against the occupation by the Greek Government of the two islands in question originated with the noble Lord now at the head of the Foreign Department. The following letter from Mr. Addington to Mr. (now Sir James) Stephen, bearing date so far back as the 26th November, 1841, showed that even at that comparatively remote period the subject had engaged the attention of the Foreign Office:—

"Mr. Addington to Mr. Stephen.

"Foreign Office, Nov. 26, 1841.

"Sir—With reference to Mr. Backhouse's letter of the 18th of January, 1840, respecting the claims of the Ionian States to the possession of the islands of Cervi and Sphacteria, I am directed by the Earl of Aberdeen to transmit to you, for the information of Lord Stanley, copies of a despatch and its enclosures from Her Majesty's Minister at Athens, relative to certain proceedings taken by the authorities in Greece with regard to the island of Cervi, which would seem to indicate a disposition on the part of the Greek Government to assume the right of occupation of that island.—I am, &c.

(Signed) "H. U. ADDINGTON."

The Earl of Aberdeen was of opinion that the occupation of these islands by the Greek Government was a grievance which called for the interference of this country. The mode in which the attention of the noble Lord the present Secretary for Foreign Affairs was called to the subject was this. In the month of March, 1849, a ship carrying convicts from the Ionian Islands, having been wrecked on the coast of Cervi, which was then in the occupation of the Greeks, the convicts, with the crew and constables, reached the shore in safety. Certain persons assuming authority in the islet as officers of the Greek Government, asked the convicts whether they would prefer remaining in the island under the protection of that Government, or being again surrendered to the charge of the constables; and on their replying that they would prefer remaining in the island, the prisoners were at once removed from the custody of the officers of the Ionian police. This, of course, brought the question again on the tapis, and Sir E. Lyons was again called upon by the Ionian Government to remonstrate against the occupation by the Government of Greece of the islands in question. Sir E. Lyons renewed his remonstrance over and over again; but in a despatch to the noble Lord, bearing date the 8th of March, 1849, he complained that the Greek Government had not condescended to take the least notice of any of the many letters which he had addressed to them on the subject. Surely it will not be contended that the noble Lord could, consistently with his duty, have permitted conduct so outrageous to pass unnoticed. As to the measures adopted by Admiral Parker for obtaining possession of the islands, he would take leave to say that there appeared to exist, both in that House and in another place, a wonderful amount of ignorance on the subject. It was alleged against the noble Lord that the orders which he gave upon the subject were lightly issued, and as lightly abandoned, as soon as the letter of Count Nesselrode was received; but for this charge there was not the slightest foundation in truth. The whole correspondence upon this subject, as given in the blue book, established the fact beyond all controversy that the noble Lord had acted with extreme forbearance throughout, and that it was not until he found that the remonstrances of our Minister at Athens were repeatedly and systematically disregarded, that he resolved upon taking a severe course. The following letters which passed between Mr. Wyse and the noble Lord, in the month of September, 1849, were conclusive on the point that it was not until after all remonstrances had proved to be unavailing, that recourse was had to coercive measures:—

"Mr. Wyse to Viscount Palmerston.

"Athens, Sept. 8, 1849.

"My Lord—I have the honour, in obedience to the instruction contained in your Lordship's despatch of the 15th ultimo, to report to your Lordship that I have not received any answer whatever to the note which I addressed to the Greek Government on the 19th of July last, requiring them to immediately evacuate the Ionian islets of Cervi and Sapienza, and to let me know when that had been done.—I have, &c.

(Signed) "THOS. WYSE."

What course did the noble Lord pursue? He caused the following letter to be addressed by Mr. Merivale to Mr. Addington:—

"Mr. Merivale to Mr. Addington.

"Colonial Office, Aug. 31, 1849.

"Sir—I have received and laid before Earl Grey your letter of the 15th instant, forwarding the copy of a correspondence with Her Majesty's Minister in Greece respecting the occupation of the islands of Cervi and Sapienza by the Greek Government; and expressing the opinion of Viscount Palmerston that coercive measures should be resorted to for taking forcible possession of these islands, if Her Majesty's Government do not receive a satisfactory reply to the application which has been made for the immediate withdrawal of the Greek officers from the islands in question; and I am to acquaint you that Lord Grey, concurring in the opinion of Lord Palmerston, will instruct the Lord High Commissioner to pursue the course which Ms Lordship has recommended.—I am, &c.

(Signed) "HERMAN MERIVALE."

The Greek Government had broken the solemn engagements into which they had entered, and had treated with the most contemptuous disregard all the remonstrances and protestations which were ad- dressed to them on the part of the British Government; but so strong an aversion had Admiral Parker to proceed to extremities, unless under the presence of an inexorable necessity, that, notwithstanding that he had received his instructions, he undertook upon his own responsibility to suspend coercive measures until he could have an opportunity of communicating with the Government at home, for the purpose of ascertaining whether a satisfactory answer to the repeated remonstrances which had been addressed to them had been received, even at the eleventh hour, from the representatives of the Greek Government. In so doing, he undoubtedly pursued a judicious and humane course, and one which was deserving of all commendation. Were it not that political passion and prejudice were, unfortunately, sufficient to explain any absurdity, however egregious, it would be difficult to understand the conduct of noble Lords in another place, and of certain hon. Members of that House, in raising on such a foundation as this such a superstructure of accusation and reproach against the noble Lord and his subordinates in office. It was worthy of remark, that all these transactions which had excited such a storm of indignation against the noble Lord, and which had given rise to so vehement an outcry for his ejection from office, were not the exclusive acts of that noble Lord. They were the acts of the entire Government, and not merely of the noble Lord. He had consulted his colleagues at every important crisis that had arisen; and the noble Lord at the head of the Government had given the House to understand, in express terms, that there was not a step that the Foreign Secretary had taken which the Government were not prepared to adopt as their own, and with which they did not cordially identify themselves. It was most unfair, therefore, and most irrational to throw all the responsibility or these proceedings on the noble Lord at the head of the Foreign Department, and to exempt from censure all the other Members of the Cabinet, who were supposed to be less open than the noble Lord to the imputation lately cast upon him of being a lucifer match. He (Mr. Anstey) was no blind supporter of the Grecian policy of the Government in all its details, but he would not hesitate to admit that he cordially approved of the general principle on which it had been, in the present instance, based. He had already that Ses- sion protected himself against misconception and misrepresentation in this matter; for it would be in the recollection of the House that, some time ago, he had taken occasion to complain of a certain informality in the proceedings of the Government with respect to Greece. But he then stated that informality did not involve any infraction of international law. It was a matter in respect of which he thought then, and he was still of the same opinion, that constitutionalists and lovers of freedom here at home might have a right to complain, inasmuch as we might think that it was giving too much power to a Secretary of State to allow him to issue orders, which of right ought only to be issued by the Sovereign in Council; but that objection did not involve any question of foreign policy or of international policy. It was nothing more nor less than a constitutional question affecting ourselves, and ourselves alone. Moreover, he had then stated, the noble Lord at the head of the Foreign Department was not the only British Minister who was obnoxious to the charge of informality. The Earl of Aberdeen was guilty of precisely the same thing; only that in his case the offence was accompanied by international injustice, when he perpetrated the celebrated enterprise of the waters of the Parana. In fact, there was not a modern Minister of them all—Tory or Whig—who was not occasionally guilty of some such invasion of the constitution. There was not one amongst them who might not now and then adapt to his own case the words which Shakspere had put into the mouth of a great and guilty Minister of other times, the Earl of Suffolk:—

"Faith I have been a truant in the law,

And never yet could frame my will to it,

And therefore frame the law unto my will."

Viewing the conduct of the noble Lord on this Greek question as a whole, he would not hesitate to express his conviction, that if the noble Lord had adopted any other course of policy from that which he had pursued, he would have left himself open to the grave accusation of having neglected the solemn duty which he owed to his country; for, as representative before Europe of this great empire, it was his duty to take care that the dignity and honour of the British name should not be outraged with impunity, even in the person of the meanest and most insignificant British subject. An accurate perusal of the discussion in the other House of Parliament had led him to the conclusion that, except the leaders of the debate, there was no one of all those who supported the resolution who had read the papers on the table, or had taken the least pains to inform himself on the true merits of the case. Nor did he believe that any hon. Member of that House, who had heretofore spoken in favour of the course adopted by their Lordships, knew anything more of the then state of the facts than was to be derived from a rapid and very cursory perusal of the report of the Lords' debate, as published in the morning papers. The absurd errors into which the assailants of the noble Lord in both Houses were continually betrayed, proved how inadequate and how inaccurate was their information. For instance, they had repeatedly alleged that the claim on account of the Fantome being found untenable, had been abandoned; but the statement was utterly devoid of truth. In the letter bearing date the 6th of December, 1848, would be found a passage, in which the claim on account of the Fantome was urged with as much perspicuity and force as it was possible for language to convey. But the speeches which had been made against the policy of the Government were remarkable for nothing so much as for perversion of facts, incoherency of arguments, and mis-statements of law. The hon. and learned Member for Abingdon had had the courage to assert that it was not conformable with the law of nations, or with the law of England, that a State should be held responsible for damage done to the subject of another nation by an armed mob; but this was a doctrine to which he (Mr. Anstey) could not assent. The hon. and learned Gentleman had put this case—

"Suppose that, in 1780, some of the mob of rioters whose proceedings disgraced that period, had broken into the house of some foreigner—a Roman Catholic—and plundered his property; would such an event have furnished a case for the interference of the Government of that foreigner, and for an interference, moreover, to be enforced by hostile aggression?"

To that question he (Mr. Anstey) was prepared to answer in the affirmative. It was true that, generally speaking, reprisals could not be had for private wrongs unless recourse was first had to the ordinary tribunals; but it was not true that it was a sine quâ non that such an appeal should be made. On the contrary, the very opposite doctrine had been laid down by the most eminent writers, who concurred in declaring that, if the courts of law of the aggressive party should decide against the law of the country, or if, from the constitution of the tribunals, or from external influence, or from any other cause whatsoever, it should seem to be useless to have recourse to them, the aggrieved party was to be exempted from the obligation of appealing to the courts at all, and was to be at liberty to claim redress through his Sovereign for the injury inflicted on him. He knew and respected the repugnance which the House always showed to dry quotations out of law books; but he would take leave to read one extract from one eminent writer on maritime law, which would settle this question. According to Molloy ( De Jure Maritimo, b. i. ch. ii. s. 15), "persons murdered, spoiled, or otherwise damnified in hostile manner in the territories or places belonging to that king to whom letters of request are issued forth; if no satisfaction be returned, letters of reprisal may issue forth; and the parties petitioners are not in such cases compelled to resort to the ordinary prosecutions, but the prince of that country against whom the same are awarded, must repair the damage out of his or that estate who committed the injuries; and if that proves deficient, it must then fall as a common debt on his country;" and of such reprisals Molloy then proceeds to give many instances out of the maritime annals of this country. The case of M. Pacifico was expressly one of that character. But he was doubly armed, for any one who knew anything of the facts of the case was aware that that gentleman had made repeated application to the courts, and that all his efforts to obtain redress in that quarter had proved utterly unavailing. It was difficult to imagine anything more puerile or absurd than the charge which was brought against the Government on account of the magnitude of the force which was committed to the command of Admiral Parker. It being admitted that, viewed in all its bearings, the case was one which admitted of reprisals, he could not understand why an objection should be made because of the efficiency of the force by which those reprisals were to be carried into effect. When, in the year 1804, reprisals were made upon Spain, and the object was to intercept the Spanish vessels which were returning laden with treasure from South America, the indignation both of Parliament and of the public was excessive, and the outcry against the Government of the day was most vehement, because a larger number of English ships was not despatched upon the enterprise. The number of English ships only equalled that of the Spanish vessels with which they had to contend, and the consequence was that the sacrifice of human life was enormous, for the Spanish Commodore, finding himself pitted against an enemy not superior to himself in numbers, had nothing for it but to fight to the death. The assailants of the Government at that time maintained that, if an English force twice as large had been sent out, there would have been no effusion of blood, for that the Spanish Commodore, finding it impossible to combat with an antagonist so much more powerful than himself, would have seen that it was compatible with his honour to have struck his flag at once. He confessed that, for his own part, he thought there was much sound reason in this argument, and however anomalous the sentiment might appear to obtuse or narrow minds, he concurred in the opinion expressed by a noble Lord in another place, that the despatching of so formidable a force into the Bay of Salamis ought under the circumstances to have been regarded rather as a compliment than an indignity by the Government of Greece. It was his present intention to refrain from voting on either side of the question, unless some explanation were given so as to justify him in voting for the resolution. The resolution having been so worded as to convey an expression of unqualified approval of the foreign policy of the Government, ab initio, and as a whole, he could not conscientiously vote in the affirmative, because it was well known that in several particulars he disapproved of some of the more early proceedings of the noble Lord. But neither could he vote in the negative, because he confessed that he cordially approved of the policy that had been pursued by the noble Lord since February, 1848, and because he feared that a vote in the negative might be construed into the expression of a very different judgment. He could wish that the result of the discussion might be such as to relieve him of this difficulty—a very painful one he admitted it to be—and to set him free to record his vote in condemnation of the deplorable and unpatriotic proceedings of the Lords, and in vindication of that better system of foreign policy, which, he rejoiced to say, had been followed by the present Government, from the commencement of the late revolutions of Europe.

said, the House must be grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman who had just sat down for his disinterested conduct, in explaining to it, for two hours and a half, such a multiplicity of subjects—the Eastern question, the Greek question, the question of the Spanish succession, and many others—ending with a declaration that he did not mean to vote on this important question. He (Mr. B. Cochrane) had so often had the opportunity of listening to that hon. and learned Member, that he could not help being surprised at the great change which had taken place in the views he now expressed. He had sat in that House for five mortal hours, while for five mortal hours the hon. and learned Member poured forth invectives against the noble Viscount—invectives of no ordinary description, going to the extent, he believed, that the noble Viscount had been bought by Russia. In rising to address himself to the noble Viscount, he should not indulge in any invectives; and he wished it to be understood that he in no way desired to reflect, in the least degree, on those who, like Lord Napier, obeyed the orders of the noble Lord. An abler, a more admirable Chargé d'Affaires could not have been found. He was the victim, and not the suggester, of the noble Lord's policy; and the same observation would apply to Mr. Peel, and others. He rose impressed with a very deep conviction—the only thing that induced him to rise at all in so important a debate. He owed it to himself to do so, having, on a recent occasion, in an unusual mode, under most unusual circumstances, risen to express the strongest feelings against the policy of the noble Viscount, and having made statements for which, if he could not now support them, he should have merited deep blame. He had charged the noble Viscount then with having supported revolutionary doctrines throughout Italy, and he charged him now with having done so. But he did not rise against the noble Lord simply for having supported revolutionary doctrines in every country, and for having tampered with the interests of every country; he rose with a more solemn accusation still, an accusation striking at the very root of the declaration of the Premier the other night, that this policy of the noble Viscount was English policy. God forbid it should be English policy! for he was there prepared to prove that the policy of the noble Viscount was based on bad faith with every country with which we were connected. That was the important point of all. He would not touch upon the question whether it was right to support revolutionary doctrines, republican opinions, but he would apply himself to the deeplyessential matter he had more immediately indicated. He had, on a former occasion, given notice to the noble Lord of his intention to put to him a question with reference to the despatches of Count d'Haussonville, and he deeply regretted now that he had not put the question, because the noble Viscount would then have had an opportunity of stating before what he stated last night, that these despatches were not founded on fact. When he considered the great names implicated in these despatches—the Duke de Broglie, Ambassador to England; his son-in-law, Count d'Haussonville, filling formerly a high office in the Foreign Department of France—when he considered these names, when he read the book in his hand, and found there the charges made against the noble Viscount, not in equivocal language, not in doubtful terms, but distinct and unhesitating, he had felt that the case was one which there could be no flinching from. The thing must be met. The charge was true, or it was false. The noble Viscount had said it was false; and he should be glad to hear the noble Viscount disprove charges which had made so much noise throughout France. There was one question which the right hon. Baronet the Member for Ripon did not touch upon in his allusion to the state of the Swiss question. It was stated by the Duke de Broglie, in his account of his interview with the noble Viscount on the 4th of July, 1847, that he asked the noble Viscount to join in a mediation upon the affairs of Switzerland. The noble Viscount refused to do so on that occasion, because he did not believe it to be right to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. He wished the noble Viscount had carried out that principle upon other occasions. Two or three days subsequently, the Duke de Broglie saw the noble Viscount again, and he had then reason to believe that the two Governments of France and Great Britain were in perfect accord, and that instructions would be sent in opposition to the ultra-republican party in Switzerland. But, to the perfect astonishment of the French Minister, on the 14th of August, it appeared that Mr. Peel, our Charge d'Affaires in Switzerland, was writing to the Foreign Office to give an account of his conversation with M. Ochsenbein to the following effect:—

"Conformably with my instructions, I seized the opportunity to express to his Excellency M. Ochsenbein the favourable opinion which the English Government had personally formed of him, both from his high position and known character, and from his manifest resolution to maintain, as far as lay in his power, the interior tranquillity of Switzerland. The President was delighted with the sentiments expressed in your Excellency's despatches, which I took care to communicate as literally as possible, and he asked me to leave him a copy; a request which I did not feel myself authorised to comply with, except expressly authorised to do so by your Excellency."

Thus it appeared that while the noble Viscount was giving the Duke de Broglie reason to believe that his policy would be in accord with the instructions of the French Minister, he was instructing Mr. Peel to go to M. Ochsenbein to express his admiration of his policy and conduct. On the 30th of October M. Bois le Comte had an interview with Mr. Peel, which, in a despatch to M. Guizot, he thus describes:—

"After the idea which I have endeavoured to impress upon your Excellency of the open and frank character of Mr. Peel, you will not be astounded at the following details. Mr. Peel called upon me yesterday. 'All my opinions are changed,' said he, 'the conduct of the Radicals in the attempts at conciliation which have been lately made is disgraceful; they were sincere in nothing, and false in everything. But what will France do? Do you really think that we shall allow all these fine fellows to be destroyed? You see they are about to throw 80,000 men upon their backs; shall they be massacred before our eye?'—and then Mr. Peel used the expression which I have previously quoted, 'that the conduct of M. de Kaisenfeld would produce as disastrous effects as the previous measures of England had done;' and as, partly from astonishment, and partly from embarrassment, I preserved silence, Mr. Peel added, 'But will you then do nothing? One word from you would suffice; they have a terrible fear of you; they are all cowards, complete cowards, I assure you.' 'I am sorry to give you pain, my dear Peel, but if we permit these fine fellows to be destroyed, the crime must chiefly be laid at the door of your Government. In this kind of transactions opinion is everything, and the power of employing ourselves usefully in support of the Conservative party has been defeated by the attitude assumed by the English Cabinet.' 'But, after all,' said Mr. Peel, 'cannot we combine? I assure you, that I am convinced our views are quite the same, and I have always to thank you for the friendly relations you have ever preserved towards me, even when our opinions differed.' I answered, that it was not too late to establish a unity of sentiment between our Governments; and we separated, excellent friends, but both much depressed."

On the 4th of November the noble Viscount had entirely changed his opinion; he thought something ought to be done, and he was willing to enter into mediation with the four Powers. The Duke de Broglie was taken by surprise; but he was of course delighted, and on the 6th of November a note was communicated by the Duke de Broglie to the noble Viscount, which remained with his Lordship until the 16th, and which was finally signed on the 26th. But on the 24th the battle of Lucerne had been fought, and the object proposed by the mediation was at an end. Lucerne was taken, and then commenced that chain of disasters which followed these events. He begged the attention of the House while he read an extract from a despatch written by M. Bois le Comte to M. Guizot, and dated December 2, 1847. The writer said—

"Attaching a just importance to the power of laying before your Excellency the conduct and intentions of the English Cabinet in the late transactions here, I charged M. de Massignac to endeavour to prove, by valid testimony, what as yet was only a suspicion on our part, namely, the double game of Lord Palmerston, in pressing the operations of the army here, while he threw difficulties and caused delays in the negociations in London, thus rendering the latter nugatory by the operation of the former. I instructed M. de Massignac to endeavour to draw this confession from the mouth of Mr. Peel himself. The following is his letter from Berne:—'The mystery of the mission of the chaplain to the English mission is unravelled. This morning (29th of November, 1847), I called upon the Spanish Minister; after conversing with him on the subject of the letter which I addressed to you this morning, in the correctness of which he fully concurred, 'I should like to know,' said he, 'if Temperley really went to Lucerne to hurry General Dufour's attack on that city?' 'Who doubts it?' said he; 'as for me, I am sure of it, and would put my hand into the fire upon it; I have it from the best authority.' 'I believe you,' said I, 'and I should like much to get Peel to own it before some one besides myself—you, for example.' This very morning the opportunity offered itself. We were discussing Swiss affairs with Layas and Peel. 'No Cabinet in Europe,' observed Peel, 'has comprehended Swiss tactics except the English, and Lord Palmerston ceased to do so when he signed the joint note.' 'Own, at least,' said I, 'that he has made a fine finish, and that you have played us a pretty trick in hastening the march of events.' He was silent. I added, 'Why this mystery? After the game is decided one may confess the part one has played.' 'It is true,' said he, 'I warned General Dufour to finish quickly.'"

He was delighted that the noble Viscount had an opportunity of replying to this charge, which ought to be denied if untrue, because it affected the character of this country. The noble Viscount, with that happy felicity which he possessed of evading a question or creating a cheer, made a reply to him (Mr. B. Cochrane) on a recent occasion in which he insinuated that he had not read the blue books on this subject. Now, he had read the blue books, and it was by them he judged the noble Viscount, taking them in connexion with the dates of events, and with occurrences not in the blue books which had come to his knowledge. He now begged permission to follow the noble Viscount into his policy in Italy. It was said that the Earl of Minto was invited, by a special letter written by the Pope's own hand, to go to Rome. In October, 1847, Lord Ponsonby wrote to the noble Viscount to tell him that the Pope was in great danger from a political movement in Rome, which made his position very difficult. The Earl of Minto knew this, and he knew also that the reforms that had been made by the Pope had turned against him. He arrived in Rome in November, 1847. Would it be believed that the Earl of Minto, sent to Italy, in the language of the noble Viscount at the head of the Government, to assist in the pacification of Italy, went to the Hotel de l'Europe, where, being received with loud acclamations by a set of scoundrels—for he could call them nothing else—the noble Lord came out and cheered in favour of Italian independence? "Viva Vindependénza d'Italia" was the cry of the noble Lord, and it was also the cry of the Republicans in Rome. [Viscount PALMEHSTON intimated his dissent.] The noble Viscount shook his head, but he asserted that this was the republican cry. A month after his arrival the Earl of Minto publicly received, in his box at the theatre, one of the lowest of the rabble in Rome—one of those men in great cities who only come out in times of revolution. He alluded to Ciceroacchio, who, as he stated, entered the Earl of Minto's box, and was received by him in the presence of the people. It had been the custom for the Pope to make a progress through the city on the 1st of January, but the Pope had abandoned the design in consequence of his alarm. However, an immense mob of the lowest ruffians, headed by Sterbini and others, as a deputation, marched up to the Quirinal, and insisted upon the Pope's making his progress through the city, which he accordingly did. He remembered nothing like this progress, except the return from Versailles, in 1799. While the Pope's carriage was going down the Corso, Ciceroacchio jumped up behind the Papal carriage and waved a flag, and the whole demon- stration appeared so dangerous that the Pope fainted. [ A laugh. ] Now, if such matters were to be treated as a joke by hon. Gentlemen opposite—if they arrogated such contempt and indifference, it was of very little use to enter at all upon the discussion of the noble Viscount's foreign policy. It was clear that the Earl of Minto had justly laid himself open to the charge of aiding and abetting rebellion in those countries to which he had been accredited. Shortly afterwards the Earl of Minto visited Naples, and the noble Viscount, in answer to a question put by the hon. Member for Montrose, who expressed very different opinions then from those which he now professed, stated that the Earl of Minto had been invited by the King of Naples to bring about an arrangement between Naples and Sicily. It appeared that the noble Viscount was informed by a private source that the Sicilians were anxious to have the Duke of Genoa as King, and on the 8th of May he wrote to say that the English Government would not oppose any such arrangement. This declaration was communicated to Lord Napier, and early in June the noble Lord wrote to Mr. Consul Goodwin to say that the time had come when a communication might be made to the President of the Sicilian Chambers of the feeling of the noble Viscount the Foreign Secretary. Mr. Goodwin shortly afterwards wrote to Lord Napier to say that he had made this communication to the President, and that he (Mr. Consul Goodwin) had taken it upon himself to tell the President that he might communicate it to the Chambers, by whom it was received with great enthusiasm. This was in June, and on the 5th of July Lord Napier had an interview with the King, in which, according to the words now before him, he told the King that "he had endeavoured to work in His Majesty's interest." Work in His Majesty's interest by corresponding with Consul Goodwin, and promoting the suggestion which had been made for carrying out the views entertained with reference to the Duke of Genoa! Then, on the 11th of July, six days afterwards, a communication was conveyed to the Duke of Genoa through the medium of one of the British vessels; and on this point they were told that, though at first sight it might perhaps appear singular that the Sicilian Commissioners should have been conveyed on board of one of Her Majesty's ships, yet the excuse was to be found in the circum- stance that no other means of conveyance was at hand. It was impossible that any one could look at the whole of these transactions without a feeling of indignation, and that indignation must be increased by the fact that Lord Napier, writing to Consul Goodwin on the subject of the Calabrian movement, used words to the effect that in a military point of view it would be dangerous for the insurgents to attempt a landing in Calabria, without having the means of keeping up a communication by sea. Did they find him stigmatising the idea of landing at all? or did he believe the monstrous acts of which those insurgents were guilty? The very contrary of all this. Now, these were grave charges against the Government; and they were based on authority which the noble Viscount himself would not attempt to controvert. And it was not these instances alone that could be brought forward. Throughout every part of Italy there was but one feeling, unfounded, some Gentlemen would say, but still universal, that all the misery experienced in that country had been brought about by English interference. In Piedmont the public debt had been augmented 30,000,000 l. by the policy of the noble Viscount, and every other part of Italy had equally its complaint to make. He would not trouble the House further. He could assure them, however, that he did not stop from want of material, for he had no lack of testimony to prove the charges that he had formerly and now made against the noble Viscount. He would not touch upon Greece, but would merely say to the noble Viscount, that whatever he might choose to call his policy, it was anything but what true English policy ought to be. It was not English policy, because it degraded the great science of international affairs to a petty contest of egotism and selfishness. It was not English policy, because it betrayed the influence of other countries and the honour of our own. It was not English policy, because it was based on coercion of the weak, and concession to the strong. He was happy to have had an opportunity of telling the noble Viscount some of the matters which he had that night brought forward, and he could assure him that none would be happier than himself if he was able to disprove the charges which had been made; but he thought it would be very difficult for either the noble Viscount or the noble Lord at the head of the Government to get the House of Commons to consider that their foreign policy was English in its spirit. If, however, the vote of that House was in favour of the Government, he had no hesitation in saying that it would be based upon other motives and considerations than an approval of the foreign policy of the noble Viscount.

When I say that this is an important question, I say it in the fullest expression of the term. It is a matter which concerns not merely the tenure of office by one individual, or even by a Government; it is a question that involves principles of national policy, and the deepest interests as well as the honour and dignity of England. I cannot think that the course which has been pursued, and by which this question has assumed its present shape, is becoming those, by whose act it has been brought under the discussion of Parliament, or such as fitting the gravity and the importance of the matters which they have thus led this House and the other House of Parliament to discuss. For if that party in this country imagine that they are strong enough to carry the Government by storm, and to take possession of the citadel of office; or, if without intending to measure their strength with that of their opponents, they conceive that there are matters of such gravity connected with the conduct of the Government, that it becomes their duty to call upon Parliament solemnly to record its disapprobation of what has passed, I think that either in the one case or in the other, that party ought not to have been contented with obtaining the expression of the opinion of the House of Lords, but they ought to have sent down their resolution for the consent and concurrence of this House; or, at least, those who act with them in political co-operation here, should themselves have proposed to this House to come to a similar resolution. But, be the road what it may, we have come to the same end; and the House is substantially considering whether they will adopt the resolution of the House of Lords, or the resolution which has been submitted to them by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sheffield.

Now, the resolution of the House of Lords involves the future as well as the past. It lays down for the future a principle of national policy, which I consider totally incompatible with the interests, with the rights, with the honour, and with the dignity of the country; and at variance with the practice, not only of this, but of all other civilised countries in the world. Even the person who moved it was obliged essentially to modify it in his speech. But none of the modifications contained in the speech were introduced into the resolution adopted by the other House. The country is told that British subjects in foreign lands are entitled—for that is the meaning of the resolution—to nothing but the protection of the laws and the tribunals of the land in which they happen to reside. The country is told that British subjects abroad must not look to their own country for protection, but must trust to that indifferent justice which they may happen to receive at the hands of the Government and tribunals of the country in which they may be.

The House of Lords has not said that this proposition is limited to constitutional countries. The House of Lords has not said that the proposition is inapplicable, not only to arbitrary and despotic countries, but even to constitutional countries where the courts of justice are not free; although these limitations were stated in the speech. The country is simply informed by the resolution, as it was adopted, that, so far as foreign nations are concerned, the future rule of the Government of England is to be, that, in all cases, and under all circumstances, British subjects are to have that protection only, which the law and the tribunals of the land in which they happen to be, may give them.

Now, I deny that proposition; and I say it is a doctrine on which no British Minister ever yet has acted, and on which the people of England never will suffer any British Minister to act. Do I mean to say that British subjects abroad are to be above the law, or are to be taken out of the scope of the laws of the land in which they live? I mean no such thing; I contend for no such principle. Undoubtedly, in the first instance, British subjects are bound to have recourse for redress to the means which the law of the land affords them, when that law is available for such purpose. That is the opinion which the legal advisers of the Crown have given in numerous cases; and it is the opinion on which we have founded our replies to many applications for our interposition in favour of British subjects abroad. And allow me, at the first moment when I have occasion to mention the legal advisers of the Crown, to say, that I heard with pain aspersions cast from a quarter from which they ought not to have come, upon the person who is the legal adviser of the office which I have the honour to hold. I should have thought that a person who by his own experience must have known, not only the learning, but the independence of mind, and the sense of justice that characterise the distinguished individual who holds the office of Queen's Advocate, would have abstained from those aspersions which have been cast upon that meritorious officer.

Perhaps I may have deviated from the strict orders of the House in what I have said; but I felt it due to an honourable-minded man to give my testimony on the earliest occasion that presented itself, to the independence and integrity of his character.

I say then, that if our subjects abroad have complaints against individuals, or against the Government of a foreign country, if the courts of law of that country can afford them redress, then, no doubt, to those courts of justice the British subject ought in the first instance to apply; and it is only on a denial of justice, or upon decisions manifestly unjust, that the British Government should be called upon to interfere. But there may be cases in which no confidence can be placed in the tribunals, those tribunals being, from their composition and nature, not of a character to inspire any hope of obtaining justice from them. It has been said, "We do not apply this rule to countries whose Governments are arbitrary or despotic, because there the tribunals are under the control of the Government, and justice cannot he had; and, moreover, it is not meant to be applied to nominally constitutional Governments, where the tribunals are corrupt." But who is to be the judge in such a case, whether the tribunals are corrupt or not? The British Government, or the Government of the State from which you demand justice?

I will take a transaction that occurred not long ago, as an instance of a case in which, I say, the people of England would not permit a British subject to be simply amenable to the laws of the foreign country in which he happened to be. I am not going to talk of the power of sending a man arbitrarily to Siberia; nor of a country, the constitution of which vests despotic power in the hands of the Sovereign. I will take a case which happened in Sicily, where not long ago a decree was passed, that any man who was found with concealed arms in his possession should be brought before a court-martial, and, if found guilty, should be shot. Now, this happened. An innkeeper of Catania was brought before a court-martial, accused under this law by some police officers, who stated that they had discovered in an open bin, in an open stable in his inn-yard, a knife, which they denounced as a concealed weapon. Witnesses having been examined, the counsel for the prosecution stated that he gave up the case, as it was evident there was no proof that the knife belonged to the man, or that he was aware it was in the place where it was found. The counsel for the defendant said, that such being the opinion of the counsel for the prosecution, it was unnecessary for him to go into the defence, and he left his client in the hands of the court. The court, however, nevertheless pronounced the man guilty of the charge brought against him, and the next morning the man was shot.

Now, what would the English people have said if this had been done to a British subject? and yet everything done was the result of a law, and the man was found guilty of an offence by a tribunal of the country.

I say, then, that our doctrine is, that, in the first instance, redress should be sought from the law courts of the country; but that in cases where redress cannot be so had—and those cases are many—to confine a British subject to that remedy only, would be to deprive him of the protection which he is entitled to receive.

Then the question arises, how does this rule apply to the demands we have made upon Greece? And here I must shortly remind the House of the origin of our relations with Greece, and of the condition of Greece; because those circumstances are elements that must enter into the consideration of the course we have pursued.

It is well known that Greece revolted from Turkey in 1820. In 1827, England, France, and Russia determined upon interposing, and ultimately, in 1828, they resolved to employ forcible means in order to bring Turkey to acknowledge the independence of Greece. Greece, by protocol in 1830, and by treaty in 1832, was erected into a separate and independent State. And whereas nearly from the year 1820 up to the time of that treaty of 1832, when its independence was finally acknowledged, Greece had been under a republican form of government, with an Assembly and a President, the three Powers determined that Greece should thenceforth be a monarchy. But while England assented to that arrangement, and considered that it was better that Greece should assume a monarchical form of government, yet we attached to that assent an indispensable condition, that Greece should be a constitutional monarchy. The British Government could not consent to place the people of Greece, in their independent political existence, under as arbitrary a government as that from which they had revolted. Consequently, when the three Powers, in the exercise of that function which had been devolved upon them by the authority of the General Assembly of Greece, chose a Sovereign for Greece (for that choice was made in consequence of, and by virtue of the authority given to them by the General Assembly of Greece), and when Prince Otho of Bavaria, then a minor, was chosen; the three Powers, on announcing the choice they had made, at the same time declared that King Otho would, in concert with his people, give to Greece constitutional institutions.

The choice and that announcement were ratified by the King of Bavaria in the name, and on the behalf, of his son. It was however understood, that during the minority of King Otho, the establishment of the constitution should be suspended; but that when he came of age, he should enter into communication with his people, and, together with them, arrange the form of constitution to be adopted. King Otho came of age, but no constitution was given. There was a disinclination on the part of his advisers to counsel him to fulfil that engagement. The Government of England expressed an opinion, through various channels, that that engagement ought to be fulfilled. But opinions of a different kind reached the Royal ear from other quarters. Other Governments, naturally—I say it without implying any imputation—are attached to their own forms. Each Government thinks its own form and nature the best, and wishes to see that form, if possible, extended elsewhere. Therefore, I do not mention this with any intention of casting the least reproach upon Russia, or Prussia, or Austria. Those three Governments at that time were despotic. Their advice was given, and their influence was exerted to prevent the King of Greece from granting a constitution to his people. We thought, however, that in France we might find sympathy with our political opinions, and support in the advice which we wished to give. But we were unfortunate. The then Government of France, not at all undervaluing constitutional institutions, thought that the time was not yet come when Greece could be ripe for representative government. The King of Bavaria leaned also to the same side. Therefore, from the time when the King came of age, and for several years afterwards, the English Government stood in this position in Greece with regard to its Government—that we alone were anxious for the fulfilment of the engagement of the King, while all the other Powers who were represented at Athens, were averse to its being made good, or at least were not equally desirous of urging it upon the King of Greece. This necessarily placed us in a situation, to say the least of it, of disfavour on the part of the agents of those Powers, and on the part of the Government of Greece. I was sorry for it; at the same time, I don't think the people of this country will be of opinion that we ought, for the sake of obtaining the mere good-will of the Greek Government, to have departed from the principle which we had laid down from the beginning. But it was so; and when people talk of the antagonistic influences which were in conflict at the Greek Court; and when people say, as I have heard it said, that our Ministers, and the Ministers of foreign Governments, were disputing about the appointment of mirarchs and nomarchs, and God knows what petty officers of the State, I say that, as far as our Minister was concerned, that is a statement entirely at variance with the fact. Our Minister, Sir Edmund Lyons, never, during the whole time he was in Greece, asked any favour of any sort or kind, for himself, or for any friend. No conduct of that mean, and low, and petty description was carried on by any person connected with the English Government. It was known that we wish- ed the Greek nation should have representative institutions, while, on the other hand, other influences were exerted the other way; and that, and that only, was the ground of the differences which existed.

One of the evils of the absence of constitutional institutions was, that the whole system of government grew to be full of every kind of abuse. Justice could not be expected where the judges of the tribunals were at the mercy of the advisers of the Crown. The finances could not be in any order where there was no public responsibility on the part of those who were to collect or to spend the revenue. Every sort of abuse was practised.

In all times, in Greece, as is well known, there has prevailed, from the daring habits of the people, a system of compulsory appropriation—forcible appropriation by one man of that which belonged to another; which, of course, is very disagreeable to those who are the victims of the system, and exceedingly injurious to the social condition, improvement, and prosperity of the country. In short, what foreigners call brigandage, which prevailed under the Turkish rule, has not, I am sorry to say, diminished under the Greek Sovereignty. Moreover, the police of the Greek Government have practised abuses of the grossest description; and if I wanted evidence on that subject, I could appeal to the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, who, in a pamphlet, which all must have read, or ought to read, has detailed instances of barbarity of the most revolting kind practised by the police. I have here depositions of persons who have been subjected to the most abominable tortures which human ingenuity could devise—tortures inflicted upon both sexes most revolting and disgusting. One of the officers, a man of the name of Tzino, at the head of the police, was himself in the habit of inflicting the most diabolical tortures upon Greeks and upon foreigners, Turks, and others. This man Tzino, instead of being punished as he ought to have been, and as he deserved to be, not only by the laws of nature, but by the laws of Greece—this person, I am sorry to say, is held in great favour in quarters where he ought to have received nothing but marks of indignation.

Well, this being the state of things in Greece, there have always been in every town in Greece a great number of persons whom we are bound to protect—Mal- tese, Ionians, and a certain number of British subjects. It became the practice of this Greek police to make no distinction between the Maltese and Ionians, and their own fellow-subjects. We shall be told, perhaps, as we have already been told, that if the people of the country are liable to have heavy stones placed upon their breasts, and police officers to dance upon them; if they are liable to have their heads tied to their knees, and to be left for hours in that state; or to be swung like a pendulum, and to be bastinadoed as they swing, foreigners have no right to be better treated than the natives, and have no business to complain if the same things are practised upon them. We may be told this, but that is not my opinion, nor do I believe it is the opinion of any reasonable man. Then, I say, that in considering the cases of the Ionians, for whom we demanded reparation, the House must look at and consider what was the state of things in this respect in Greece; they must consider the practices that were going on, and the necessity of putting a stop to the extension of these abuses to British and Ionian subjects by demanding compensation, scarcely indeed more than nominal in some cases, but the granting of which would be an acknowledgment that such things should not be done towards us in future.

In discussing these cases, I am concerned to have to say that they appear to me to have been dealt with elsewhere, in a spirit, and in a tone, which I think was neither befitting the persons concerning whom, nor the persons by whom, nor the persons before whom, the discussion took place. It is often more convenient to treat matters with ridicule, than with grave argument; and we have had serious things treated jocosely; and grave men kept in a roar of laughter, for an hour together, at the poverty of one sufferer, or at the miserable habitation of another; at the nationality of one injured man, or the religion of another; as if because a man was poor he might be bastinadoed and tortured with impunity; as if a man who was born in Scotland might be robbed without redress; or, because a man is of the Jewish persuasion, he is fair game for any outrage. It is a true saying, and has often been repeated, that a very moderate share of human wisdom is sufficient for the guidance of human affairs. But there is another truth, equally indisputable, which is, that a man who aspires to govern mankind, ought to bring to the task, generous senti- ments, compassionate sympathies, and noble and elevated thoughts.

Now, Sir, with regard to these cases, I would take first, that which I think would first present itself to the mind of an Englishman—I mean the insult offered by the arrest of the boat's crew of Her Majesty's ship Fantome. The time has been, when a man aspiring to a public situation, would have thought it his duty to vindicate the honour of the British Navy. Times are changed. It is said that in this case there were only a few sailors taken out of a boat by some armed men—that they were carried to the guard-house, but were soon set at liberty again—and why should we trouble our heads about so small a matter? But did we ask anything extraordinary or unreasonable on account of this insult? What we asked was an apology. I really did not expect to live to see the day, when public men in England could think that in requiring an apology for the arbitrary and unjustifiable arrest of a British officer and British seamen in the performance of their duty, we were making a demand "doubtful in its nature, and exaggerated in its amount." Now, what is the history of this case? for circumstances have been referred to, in connexion with it, which do not appear from the statement of the case itself. The son of the Vice-consul, who had dined on board the Fantome, was taken ashore in the evening by the coxswain and a boat's crew, and landed on the beach. The coxswain accompanied the young gentleman to his father's house, and on returning to the boat, was taken prisoner by the Greek guard. The guard went down to the boat, and, finding the seamen in it were without arms, began thumping them with the butt-ends of their muskets, and wounded one man in the hand by a thrust with a bayonet. The guard then took the seamen prisoners, and carried them to the guard-house where after a certain time they were released through the interposition of the Vice-consul, and they returned to their ship. Excuses were given for this proceeding, and the gist of them was this—that the guard thought the boat belonged to the Spitfire, and that it had been seen landing rebels, one of whom had escaped; I this supposed rebel being a boy of fourteen years old, who had returned quietly to his father's house.

The matter to which these excuses related, occurred a little while before, in consequence of the disorganised state of Greece—a disorganisation, by the by, which arises entirely from the acts of the Government; because it has been, and still is, the practice of the Government, instead of punishing brigands, to amnesty and pardon them; and indeed it is even supposed that the officers of police sometimes go shares in the plunder. That, however, is a matter of opinion; but it is a fact that the robbers are almost always pardoned; and such is the encouragement thereby given to the system of plunder, that the robbers go about armed in bands, and sometimes actually attack and occupy towns.

An instance of this kind happened at Patras. Merenditi, the leader of a band of robbers, attacked Patras; the governor had an armed force under his orders; but, either from a determination to follow the example set by the Government of showing deference to the robbers, or because he thought that discretion is the better part of valour, he fled, and left the town to the mercy of the banditti. The inhabitants, finding themselves deserted by their natural defenders, threw themselves on the protection of the foreign consular body; and begged and entreated that the Consuls would intercede for them, and make some arrangement with the robbers. Our Consul accordingly, at the intercession and with the authority of the principal inhabitants of Patras, entered into an arrangement with the leader of the robbers, by which that leader consented to forego the plunder of the town, on condition that he should receive a certain sum of money, and be conveyed away from the town in safety by one of the British ships of war. The people of Patras were thankful. The money required by the robbers, which was reduced by negotiation to one-half of their original demand, was collected and deposited in the hands of the Vice-consul. Merenditi marched down to the quay to embark; when the governor, who had run away from danger, now advanced boldly with his men, and endeavoured to attack the robbers' rear-guard, and to take some of them prisoners before they could embark. Our officers, however, said, "No. There is not only honour amongst thieves, but honour to be observed towards thieves. We were asked to make an arrangement, and to give our guarantee—we will abide by that guarantee, and protect this man and his band." Accordingly he was protected, and went off with the ransom paid by the inhabitants of the town. This was the matter which was alluded to, when the Greek authorities said, that the guard sup- posed the boats' crew, whom they made prisoners, had been landing rebels from the Spitfire —they pretended to suppose that the boat had landed some of Merenditi's band. Surely no defence is necessary for having demanded an apology for an insult offered to the British Navy. I am induced to believe that the Governments of other countries would have taken more severe measures under similar circumstances.

I now come to the case of the Ionians, who were plundered in the custom-house at Salcina. These men were passing by in their boats; they were summoned to go in by the officer in command, and when in, they were robbed. The men who robbed them were dressed like soldiers, but were said to be banditti. The customs officer alleged that he was beaten by the robbers, and compelled by them to order the Ionians to enter the custom-house. It must be remembered, however, that a Greek vessel lying in the custom-house was not plundered; while the Ionians were plundered, stripped of their clothes, and severely beaten. It is absurd to compare a case of this kind with that of travellers attacked by robbers in passing through a country.

If the Government officer was not acting in connivance with the robbers, still, when foreigners were decoyed into a Greek custom-house by one of its officers, and were there beaten and plundered, the Greek Government must be held responsible for what was done. This, however, is said to be a case in which the unhappy Ionian boatmen ought to have gone to law. I should like to know whom they could have prosecuted? In this instance, our demand was moderate; we asked nothing for the indignity and injury the men had suffered, but simply the amount of which they had been robbed.

I next come to the case of the two Ionians, who, very innocently, as they imagined, on a national festival, according to the custom of their own country, ornamented their little booths, in which they sold trifling articles, with flags. The police interfered, and took down the flags. Some discussion arose about indignity offered to the British flag. The matter was not satisfactorily explained, but we let it drop. We did not insist on that; and, if that had been all, nothing further would have been said. But the Ionians were arrested, manacled, and thumbscrewed; and in that state paraded through the town, and put in prison. It was said, "How could they go to prison except through the streets?" True; but there was no necessity for taking them through streets which did not lie in their way. They were paraded, by way of insult, through the streets of Patras, and dismissed next day, because no charge could be maintained against them. Then it was said that the application of the thumbscrew had not maimed them for life. Had that indeed been the case, the men would have been entitled to compensation; but for a very little thumbscrewing, applied only during an evening walk, no compensation ought to have been required. I am of a different opinion. Thumbscrews are not as easy to wear as gloves, which can be put on and pulled off at pleasure. We therefore felt it necessary to require, in this case, the moderate compensation of 20 l. each, for the men who had been ill-treated; and the more so, because of the habitual infliction of torture by the police.

Then came the case of two men, whose houses being infested by disagreeable insects, thought proper in hot weather to sleep in the streets. They were taken up by the police, carried before an officer, and severely flogged with a whip, in the sight of persons who deposed to the fact. What right had the Greek authorities to flog these men? They had committed no offence; there had been no trial, no condemnation, no sentence. In this case, also, compensation was demanded, as a token that persons under British protection cannot be ill-treated with impunity.

Then I come to the case of Mr. Finlay. It is said that he is "a cannie Scot;" that he speculated in land, buying in the cheapest, and wishing to sell in the dearest market. His land was taken by the King of Greece, for purposes of private enjoyment. Nobody will deny that it is fitting the Sovereign of Greece should have a palace; and, if it was necessary to take Mr. Finlay's ground for its site, or for the garden attached to it, Mr. Finlay himself made no objection to that. All that Mr. Finlay wanted, was to be paid for his land. It is said that Mr. Finlay bought his land at a very cheap rate. That was a matter with which the Greek Government had nothing to do; they had only to pay Mr. Finlay what was the value of the land at the time when they took it from him.

The conduct of the Greek Government in Mr. Finlay's case was very different from that of Frederick the Great in a similar case towards one of his subjects, a man of humble rank. This man refused to sell to his sovereign a little bit of ground on which a windmill stood, the ground being necessary for the completion of a magnificent plan of a residence for the monarch. The conduct of the King of Prussia was very different from that of the King of Greece. The King of Prussia, though a conqueror in the field, and the absolute monarch of a great country, respected the rights of a subject however humble; and not only left the monument of the independence of his subject, standing in the midst of his ornamented grounds; but used to point to it with pride; feeling that it was a proof, that though he was great and powerful, he knew how to respect the rights of the meanest. For fourteen long years Mr. Finlay was driven from pillar to post, put off with every sort of shuffling and evasive excuse, and deprived of compensation for his land, unless he would take what was wholly indequate.

In 1843 came a revolution. Till 1843 the Greek Government had continued arbitrary; the King declining, under the circumstances I have mentioned, to grant a constitution. In 1843 the patience of the Greeks was exhausted. They rose in Athens, and extorted by force that which had been refused to reason. When the constitution was granted, courts of justice were established, which were not indeed independent, because the judges were liable, not only to be removed from one court to another, but to be entirely dismissed at the will of the Sovereign; still in 1843 there were courts to which Mr. Finlay might, as it has been stated, have applied. But they had no competence with respect to events which had happened before their creation. Mr. Finlay, therefore, had no remedy. But I have heard it most triumphantly, distinctly, positively asserted, that this case exhibits the bad faith of the English Government; for that at the time when Mr. Wyse made his demands on the Greek Government, we and he knew that the case of Mr. Finlay was absolutely, finally, and conclusively settled. No such thing. That is an assertion absolutely, finally, and conclusively at variance with the truth.

There had been an agreement made for arbitration in this case; and a most curious sample it affords of the manner in which things are carried on in Greece. Mr. Finlay said, "I will submit my claim to arbitration." "By all means," was the reply of the Greek Government; "you shall name one arbiter and we another." But Mr. Finlay has been described as "a cannie Scot," and looking far into the future, he foresaw a possibility, which might have struck a man even not so far north, that the two arbiters might differ; and he suggested that an umpire should be appointed. The Greek Government said, "You are quite right. We see how it is, and we will appoint one." But Mr. Finlay, being a sensible man, did not like to submit his case to a tribunal where there would be two to one against him, and so he declined that arbitration. The Greek Government then gave up this unreasonable proposal, which they had made just as if it had been quite a matter of course, and a commission of arbitration was agreed upon, consisting of two respectable people, and an umpire properly appointed. If that arbitration had gone on, and the money awarded by it had been paid, Mr. Finlay's case would have been absolutely, finally, and conclusively settled. But by the law of Greece, arbiters so appointed must pronounce an award within three months, or, if they don't, then the arbitration falls, and drops to the ground. The commissioners could not make their award without certain documents, which could only be furnished by an officer of the Greek Government. This officer, by some unfortunate accident, did not furnish them, and the arbitration fell to the ground by efflux of time.

Therefore, when Baron Gros came to inquire into the matter, he found this case just as it had been, when Mr. Finlay first made his complaint. Baron Gros said to Mr. Finlay, "Why, your claim is settled." "Settled? No," said Mr. Finlay. "Why, have you not received your money?" "Not a farthing; and I don't know what amount I am to receive." In short, his case was exactly in the same state in which it was before the arbitration had been agreed to.

That was a case in which we made no specific demand. The only specific demand was, that Mr. Finlay should receive whatever the value of his land should be found to be. We fixed no sum; we were unable to fix any; and the sum he received afterwards was the amount which the two arbiters, one named by Mr. Finlay, the other by the Greek Government, were prepared to award, splitting the difference between their respective estimates. I don't think that in that case, the claim was either doubtful in justice, or exaggerated in amount.

Then we come to the claim of M. Pacifico—a claim which has been the subject of much unworthy comment. Stories have been told, involving imputations on the character of M. Pacifico; I know nothing of the truth or falsehood of these stories. All I know is, that M. Pacifico, after the time to which those stories relate, was appointed Portuguese consul, first to Morocco and afterwards at Athens. It is not likely that the Portuguese Government would select for appointments of that kind, a person whose character they did not believe to be above reproach. But I say, with those who have before had occasion to advert to the subject, that I don't care what M. Pacifico's character is. I do not, and cannot admit, that because a man may have acted amiss on some other occasion, and in some other matter, he is to be wronged with impunity by others.

The rights of a man depend on the merits of the particular case; and it is an abuse of argument to say, that you are not to give redress to a man, because in some former transaction he may have done something which is questionable. Punish him if you will—punish him if he is guilty, but don't pursue him as a Pariah through life.

What happened in this case? In the middle of the town of Athens, in a house which I must be allowed to say is not a wretched hovel, as some people have described it; but it does not matter what it is, for whether a man's home be a palace or a cabin, the owner has a right to be there safe from injury—well, in a house which is not a wretched hovel, but which in the early days of King Otho was, I am told, the residence of the Count Armansperg, the Chief of the Regency—a house as good as the generality of those which existed in Athens before the Sovereign ascended the throne—M. Pacifico, living in this house, within forty yards of the great street, within a few minutes' walk of a guardhouse, where soldiers were stationed, was attacked by a mob. Fearing injury, when the mob began to assemble, he sent an intimation to the British Minister, who immediately informed the authorities. Application was made to the Greek Government for protection. No protection was afforded. The mob, in which were soldiers and gens-d'armes, who, even if officers were not with them, ought, from a sense of duty, to have interfered and to have prevented plunder—that mob, headed by the sons of the Minister of War, not children of eight or ten years old, but older—that mob, for nearly two hours, employed themselves in gutting the house of an unoffending man, carrying away or destroying every single thing the house contained, and left it a perfect wreck.

Is not that a case in which a man is entitled to redress from somebody? I venture to think it is. I think that there is no civilised country where a man subjected to such grievous wrong, not to speak of insults and injuries to the members of his family, would not justly expect redress from some quarter or other. Where was he to apply for redress at Athens? The Greek Government neglected its duty, and did not pursue judicial inquiries, or institute legal prosecutions as it might have done for the purpose of finding out and punishing some of the culprits. The sons of the Minister of War were pointed out to the Government as actors in the outrage. The Greek Government were told to "search a particular house; and that some part of M. Pacifico's jewels would be found there." They declined to prosecute the Minister's sons, or to search the house. But, it is said, M. Pacifico should have applied to a court of law for redress. What was he to do? Was he to prosecute a mob of five hundred persons? Was he to prosecute them criminally, or in order to make them pay the value of his loss? Where was he to find his witnesses? Why, he and his family were hiding or flying, during the pillage, to avoid the personal outrages with which they were threatened. He states, that his own life was saved by the help of an English friend. It was impossible, if he could have identified the leaders, to have prosecuted them with success.

But what satisfaction would it have been to M. Pacifico to have succeeded in a criminal prosecution against the ringleaders of that assault? Would that have restored to him his property? He wanted redress, not revenge. A criminal prosecution was out of the question, to say nothing of the chances, if not the certainty, of failure in a country where the tribunals are at the mercy of the advisers of the crown, the judges being liable to be removed, and being often actually removed upon grounds of private interest and personal feeling. Was he to prosecute for damages? His action would have lain against individuals, and not, as in this country, against the hundred. Suppose he had been able to prove that one particular man had carried off one particular thing, or destroyed one particular article of furniture; what redress could he anticipate by a lawsuit, which, as his legal advisers told him, it would be vain for him to undertake? M. Pacifico truly said, "If the man I prosecute is rich, he is sure to be acquitted; if he is poor, he has nothing out of which to afford me compensation if he is condemned."

The Greek Government having neglected to give the protection they were bound to extend, and having abstained from taking means to afford redress, this was a case in which we were justified in calling on the Greek Government for compensation for the losses, whatever they might be, which M. Pacifico had suffered. I think that claim was founded in justice. The amount we did not pretend to fix. If the Greek Government had admitted the principle of the claim, and had objected to the account sent in by M. Pacifico—if they had said, "This is too much, and we think a less sum sufficient," that would have been a question open to discussion, and which our Ministers, Sir E. Lyons at first, or Mr. Wyse afterwards, would have been ready to have gone into, and no doubt some satisfactory arrangement might thus have been effected with the Greek Government. But the Greek Government denied altogether the principle of the claim. Therefore, when Mr. Wyse came to make the claim, he could not but demand that the claim should be settled, or be placed in train of settlement, and that within a definite period, as he fixed it, of twenty-four hours.

Whether M. Pacifico's statement of his claim was exaggerated or not, the demand was not for any particular amount of money. The demand was, that the claim should be settled. An investigation might have been instituted, which those who acted for us were prepared to enter into, fairly, dispassionately, and justly.

M. Pacifico having, from year to year, been treated either with answers wholly unsatisfactory, or with a positive refusal, or with pertinacious silence, it came at last to this, either that his demand was to be abandoned altogether, or that, in pursuance of the notice we had given the Greek Government a year or two before, we were to proceed to use our own means of enforcing the claim. "Oh! but," it is said, "what an ungenerous proceeding to employ so large a force against so small a Power!" Does the smallness of a country justify the magnitude of its evil acts? Is it to be held that if your subjects suffer violence, outrage, plunder in a country which is small and weak, you are to tell them when they apply for redress, that the country is so weak and so small that we cannot ask it for compensation? Their answer would be, that the weakness and smallness of the country make it so much the more easy to obtain redress. "No," it is said, "generosity is to be the rule." We are to be generous to those who have been ungenerous to you; and we cannot give you redress because we have such ample and easy means of procuring it.

Well, then, was there anything so un-courteous in sending, to back our demands, a force which should make it manifest to all the world that resistance was out of the question? Why, it seems to me, on the contrary, that it was more consistent with the honour and dignity of the Government on whom we made those demands, that there should be placed before their eyes a force, which it would be vain to resist, and before which it would be no indignity to yield. If we had sent merely a frigate and a sloop of war, or any force with which it was possible their forces might have matched, we should have placed them in a more undignified position by asking them to yield to so small a demonstration. Therefore, so far from thinking that the amount of the force which happened to be on the spot was any aggravation of what is called the indignity of our demand, it seems to me that the Greek Government, on the contrary, ought rather to have considered it as diminishing the humiliation, whatever it might be, of being obliged to give at last to compulsion, that which had been so long refused to entreaty.

Well, then, however, did we, in the application of that force, either depart from established usage, or do anything that was unnecessarily pressing on the innocent and unoffending population of Greece? I say the innocent and unoffending population, because it was against the Government, and not against the nation, that our claim for redress was directed. The courses that may be pursued in cases where wrong is done by one Government towards the subjects of another, are various. One is, what is commonly called "reprisals;" that is, the seizing something of value, and holding it in deposit until your demands are complied with; or, if you fail in that, and don't choose to resort to other methods, applying that which you have seized, as a compensation for the wrong sustained. That is one method. Another is the modified application of war—such as a blockade—a measure frequently adopted by the Governments of maritime States when they demand redress for injuries. Last come actual hostilities. Many instances of such measures have been quoted in this debate as having been adopted by the Governments of other countries, especially by the French Government, when they have had a demand to make for injuries sustained by their subjects; and, by the by, when people complain of the peremptory manner in which our demand was made, and the shortness of the time allowed for consideration, I wish to call to the recollection of hon. Gentlemen what was done by the French squadron no longer ago than 1848.

There was an insurrection at Naples, in May, 1848. The great street of the town was filled with barricades, and the troops had to force those barricades. To do that, they were obliged to occupy the houses right and left, in order to turn those defences; and as they forced one house after another, and passed on from house to house, they neglected to leave any guards behind them. They were followed by the Lazzaroni, and the houses were plundered. Some French people whose shops were thus rifled, complained to the French Minister, and to the French Admiral—there being then a French squadron before the port of Naples. The French Admiral, Admiral Baudin, quite cut out Sir W. Parker, and, being applied to by those French citizens, he sails up the bay, lays his ships broadside to, in front of the palace, and writes a note to the Government to say, that he has been called on by his countrymen to protect them; and he adds—that letter being dated half-past one on the 17th of May—that unless by three o'clock of that very day he obtains a satisfactory assurance—a satisfactory assurance that his countrymen shall be efficiently protected, reserving, he says, for future discussion their claims for compensation—but— avoid all unnecessary interruption to the commerce of other countries. But he made reprisals in a way which I believe has not often been adopted. The Government was the offending party, and he took possession of vessels belonging to the Government. Now, that is not the usual plan, and for very good reasons.

Vessels belonging to Governments are armed. They may feel it to be their duty to defend themselves. To seize armed vessels would therefore probably lead to bloodshed; and reprisals are generally effected by seizing merchant vessels belonging to the country on whom the demand is made. But, the disparity of force being so great on this occasion, Sir W. Parker began by seizing the few armed vessels belonging to the State. He then gave the Government time to reflect upon that demonstration. It was not attended to. Even then he did not immediately proceed to make reprisals upon merchant vessels. He first laid an embargo upon them. He gave notice that he had placed a lien upon them, and that they must not quit their ports. That failed; then he took merchant vessels, but only a limited number, and placed them under the custody of his fleet, avoiding to subject commerce in general to any greater degree of restraint than was unadvoidably necessary for the execution of his instructions. It has been said, that we seized upon fishing-boats, and interrupted the coasting trade. I don't believe that. On the contrary, I believe that the embargo did not extend to fishing-boats, or to vessels of small tonnage employed in the coasting trade of the country.

Well, Sir, in that state of things, the French Government offered us their good offices and mediation. We readily and cheerfully accepted their good offices. We accepted them by a note of the 12th of February, which has been laid on the table, and in which we distinctly stated the grounds and conditions on which, and the extent to which, those good offices were accepted.

There could be no mistake between the English and French Governments upon that point. We took as our precedent the course that was pursued in the sulphur questions at Naples, when M. Thiers was Minister. In that case, we stated, that reprisals would be suspended the moment any French Minister on the spot declared himself authorised to negotiate. In the present case we went further, and said, that the moment the good offices of France were officially offered and officially accepted, we would send out instructions that the further making of reprisals should be suspended. In both cases we said we could not release the ships that had been detained, because by so doing we should give up the security which we held in our hands against the offending Government.

It has been stated that a misunderstanding arose between the Governments of France and England, in the course of the mediation, good offices, or whatever it may be called. I cannot say that there was any misunderstanding between M. Drouyn de Lhuys and myself, because it will be seen from his own despatches laid before the French Chamber, that he clearly understood the conditions on which the good offices of France were accepted. He repeatedly states that England gives up none of her demands—that is to say, that she gives up none of the principles of her demands; and that the only questions which the French negotiator is competent to discuss, are those which do not involve the negation of the principles of our demands. Well, what were those questions? They were only the amount of money to be given to Mr. Finlay and to M. Pacifico, but not the question whether those gentlemen were to receive anything or nothing.

Then the question arose between us, what were the circumstances under which the good offices were to cease, and coercive measures were to be resumed; and it was distinctly understood on my part, as well as on that of M. Drouyn de Lhuys, that Mr. Wyse was not to take upon himself to determine when Baron Gros' mission had failed; and that it was only when Baron Gros' should have announced that his mission had ceased, that Mr. Wyse was to resume coercive measures. It was further agreed between us, and especially on the 9th of April, that if a difference of opinion arose between Baron Gros and Mr Wyse, on those points which Baron Gros was competent to discuss, Mr. Wyse was not to stand out absolutely on his difference, and that if he did not find it possible to give way, he was, instead of saying, "Now, Baron Gros, your mission is at end," to refer home for further instructions. It is said that it was wrong of me not to have sent out to Mr. Wyse information of that understanding come to on the 9th of April with M. Drouyn de Lhuys. Well, but in the first place I had already sent to Mr. Wyse, on the 25th of March, instructions which, if acted on in the spirit in which they were written, would render such a reference home altogether unnecessary. And they did render such reference home altogether unnecessary; because at last, when Baron Gros and Mr. Wyse came to the point of difference as to the amount of money to be paid, and Baron Gros said, "I would counsel the Government of Greece to pay 150,000 drachmas," while Mr. Wyse said, he was ready to accept 180,000 drachmas, Mr. Wyse at last, much more prudently than if he had referred this difference home, and had exposed Greek commerce to the restraint to which a continuance of the status quo would have subjected it for a whole month, said, "I will, if other things are agreed to, come down to your amount—I will waive my own opinion, and accept the sum you are willing to recommend the Greek Government to give." Therefore practically, I say, and in the result, the case did not arise to which those instructions could have applied.

Those instructions, if they had reached Mr. Wyse, would not have applied to the difference which did arise between him and Baron Gros; for that difference was this—it turned upon the claims of M. Pacifico. Baron Gros, on the 16th of April, was willing to recommend to the Greek Government to take an engagement to investigate the claims of M. Pacifico, in regard to the destruction of his Portuguese documents; and to pay him whatever might be the amount which, upon investigation, he might prove to be entitled to on that account; and to make a deposit of 150,000 drachmas as a pledge for the good faith with which they would execute that engagement. The only difference between Baron Gros and Mr. Wyse upon that occasion was, that Baron Gros proposed that the deposit, which they had both agreed should consist of shares of the Bank of Athens, should be left in the Bank of Athens; whereas Mr. Wyse required that it should be deposited either in the Bank of England, or, if the Greek Government preferred it, in the Bank of France. That seemed to be a difference that might be easily settled. But, on the 22nd of April, Baron Gros altered his opinion. He retracted his opinion upon that point, and stated that later information from Portugal had convinced him, that M. Pacifico's claim, in reference to the destruction of his Portuguese documents, was wholly unfounded. Baron Gros said he would no longer consent to recommend the Greek Government to enter into any engagement to pay any- thing to M. Pacifico on that account. He would agree to an investigation, but only provided that Portugal, and not the Greek Government, should pay what might turn out to be due. But this was a point which. Baron Gros was not competent to discuss. This new view of his, would have been a negation of the principle upon which one of our claims rested; and, there being a difference of that kind between Mr. Wyse and Baron Gros, Mr. Wyse had no occasion to refer for fresh instructions—for he had received detailed instructions from me in a despatch, dated the 25th of March, sufficient to guide his conduct upon that point.

Baron Gros then withdrew from the negotiation, and that withdrawal was officially communicated, not only to Mr. Wyse, but to the Greek Government also. On the 24th, however, he received a despatch from General Lahitte, giving an account of the conversation which had passed between me and M. Drouyn de Lhuys on the 9th; an account, by the way, which was not quite accurate, because it made me say that, if any difference arose between Baron Gros and Mr. Wyse, Mr. Wyse should refer home for instructions; whereas all that I agreed to was, that such reference should be made in the case of irreconcileable difference between them, as to the amount of money to be paid by the Greek Government for those claims, in regard to which we had not specified fixed sums; that is to say, for Mr. Finlay's land and for M. Pacifico's losses of furniture and goods at Athens. Baron Gros then proposed to withdraw the note, by which he had announced officially the cessation of his functions, and he asked that his draft of arrangement, together with Mr. Wyse's draft, should be referred to London for decision.

An impression has gone abroad that on that occasion (the 24th) Baron Gros received, and communicated to Mr. Wyse, not merely an account of the conversation between me and M. Drouyn de Lhuys on the 9th of April, but an account of the essential bases and an announcement of the expected arrival of the draft of convention which had been proposed to me by M. Drouyn de Lhuys for the first time on the 15th, discussed on the 16th, agreed to on the 18th, and sent off on the 19th; and Mr. Wyse is greatly blamed by many persons, both here and in France, upon the assumption, that, whereas Baron Gros had informed him, on the 24th of April, that the English and French Governments had come to an agreement as to the essential bases of the convention to be signed between England and Greece, and had moreover told him that the convention itself would shortly be received at Athens—yet, nevertheless, with this knowledge of the facts, he renewed coercive measures, and compelled the Greek Government to yield to his own demands. This assertion, so far as Mr. Wyse is concerned, is positively untrue. It is totally and wholly untrue. He received no communication from Baron Gros on the 24th, and none earlier than the 2nd of May, relative to the draft of the convention agreed upon in London. Whether Baron Gros received the information or not on the 24th by the Vauban, I leave to be settled between him and his Government. The explanations of General Lahitte would indeed lead to the inference that he did not.

The statement to which I refer was made by "our own correspondent" of the Times. I may say, in passing, that one person who has spoken on this subject elsewhere, has had the substance of his speech claimed publicly by the Morning Herald as a compilation from its leading articles; and another has obviously been more indebted to the Times than to the blue books for the statements on which he has founded his assertions. But the correspondent of the Times stated distinctly, and upon that statement public opinion in this country has been formed, that Baron Gros did inform Mr. Wise on the 24th, that he had received by the Vauban a statement announcing the London convention, and that, in spite of that information, Mr Wyse resumed coercive measures. I understand that the French Government say that this is an entire mistake; that no information respecting the convention could have been communicated to Mr. Wyse on the 24th, because Baron Gros did not receive any by the Vauban, which arrived on that day. The complaint, therefore, against Mr. Wyse, come from what quarter it may, and I have no doubt it was sincerely believed at the moment it was made, that complaint can no longer be maintained, and is withdrawn.

With respect to the other complaint, that I did not write to Mr. Wyse an account of what had passed on the 9th of April, the simple reason why I did not, was, that he was already in possession of instructions which were sufficient; that I could not have written till the 17th, and that on the 15th another arrangement was proposed, which provided an immediate settlement on the spot, and which therefore rendered any further reference to me by him, out of the question. But it was said that if the French Government could have sent information to Baron Gros by the Vauban, why could not we have sent at the same time similar information to Mr. Wyse? Why, solely because we were in London, and the French Government was in Paris, and that if a steamer had been despatched by us from Portsmouth, it could not have got round to Athens so soon as a steamer despatched by the French Government from Marseilles or Toulon. But, as I have said, the convention of the 15th having been agreed to, all further reference to me by Mr. Wyse was rendered unnecessary, because that convention was to be presented as an ultimatum to the Greek Government, by the British and French diplomatic agents.

And when it is said that those demands of ours on the Greek Government were so much repudiated by the Governments of Russia and of France; and that by putting forward those claims, we ran the risk of involving this country in a war with those Powers, I must be permitted to say, that, with respect to Russia, the despatch of Count Nesselrode to Baron Brunow, of the 19th of February, totally negatives that assertion. In that despatch, Count Nesselrode admits that he was aware, as long ago as 1847, that our patience might be exhausted, and that we might have recourse to coercive measures against Greece to enforce our claims; and he says, moreover, that if lately, when we determined to enforce our claims, we had asked Russia to give us her assistance, she would have endeavoured to persuade the Greek Government to come to an amicable settlement with us; and if the efforts of Russia to that effect had been unsuccessful, Russia could not then have expected that we should indefinitely postpone coercive measures out of deference to her.

With respect to France, the much-talked-of convention of the 19th of April was to be recommended by France to Greece in a way which made its acceptance pretty certain; and in that convention there was at once a full acknowledgment of the principle of all our demands, and of the amount which we thought it just and right to require. I am sorry that the convention did not arrive before the other settlement took place, but that was not the fault of our negotiator. It was not he who put an end to Baron Gros' functions, but Baron Gros himself. Baron Gros formally and officially withdrew from the negotiation, and that by a written communication, not addressed to Mr. Wyse alone, but to the Greek Government also.

But it is said he was willing to retract it, and that on the 24th of April he wrote to Mr. Wyse to say—"Send me back my note, and I will give you back yours." Now, to this Mr. Wyse said— status quo ? No.

Now, was Mr. Wyse in a hurry to resume coercive measures? Did he catch at the first moment at which he might have been authorised to resume hostilities? Far from it. He waited from the 22nd to the 24th, and from the 24th till five o'clock on the afternoon of the 25th, and it was not till after that hour had passed, at which Baron Gros had led him to expect that he would receive from the Greek Government an acceptance of his conciliatory proposal; it was not till that hour had passed without any communication arriving, that he announced, through the British Consul, that the embargo would again be established. It is plain, therefore, that Mr. Wyse did not put an end to Baron Gros' functions, or show any impatience to renew coercive measures. Baron Gros himself put an end to his own functions, in spite of Mr. Wyse's repeated entreaties that he would not do so; and when Baron Gros had formally withdrawn, Mr. Wyse, instead of at once resuming coercive measures, made another and a very conciliatory proposal; but Baron Gros' answer to this was, a renewed declaration that he had withdrawn from the negotiation, and that his official functions had ceased.

Since then, negotiations have taken place between the Governments of England and France, which, I am happy to say, have been brought at last to a satisfactory conclusion. We are ready to accept such parts of the proposed convention as are still applicable to what remains to be done. Having received and distributed to the claimants the 180,000 drachmas, we don't insist upon the difference between that sum and the sum that was to be required by the convention. The apology written by M. Londos is retained, and cannot be returned to him, in order that instead of it, he may send us the one proposed by M. Drouyn de Lhuys. The only thing, therefore, that remains to be settled, is the investigation of the claims of M. Pacifico on account of the loss of his Portuguese documents. With regard to these claims, by the arrangement of the 27th of April, a material security was given in the shape of a pecuniary deposit. The convention, of which I had drawn up the details, contained on that point a diplomatic guarantee, instead of a substantial guarantee; for it was a convention to be ratified by the two Sovereigns, providing that a commission of arbitration should be named by the three Governments to investigate that claim, while by Mr. Wyse's arrangement this investigation was to be made not by a commission, but by the British and Greek Governments jointly. We are perfectly ready to substitute the one arrangement for the other, if the Greek Government choose to adopt it; but we do not intend to urge it upon them, if they do not. If they prefer the arrangement of the convention, we are prepared to conclude a convention to that effect, superseding the corresponding part of the arrangement which was concluded at Athens.

There is, however, one point in Mr. Wyse's arrangement, which was not included in the draft of the convention, because it applies to circumstances of which we were not aware at the time when the convention of London was framed. Mr. Wyse exacted an engagement on the part of the Government of Greece that they should not put forward, nor support, if put forward by others, any claims for compensation arising from losses or injuries consequent upon the coercive measures to which we had recourse. The motive of Mr. Wyse for requiring that engagement was, that he understood the Government of Greece had been collecting and beating up for claims of that kind, which they meant to put forward to a very large amount. We attach no value to that engagement as bearing in any manner whatever upon the validity of any such claims. Such claims can have no just foundation whatever; and if they were put forward by the Greek Government, or by other persons supported by the Greek Government, our answer could only be—"These claims have no foundation in right or reason, and we utterly and entirely reject them." But the value of that arrangement was, that by shutting the door against such claims, it prevented the Greek Government from raising discussions which might interrupt the good understanding and friendly relations between the two countries. The British Government are willing, instead of that engagement, to accept the good offices of the French Government, whose good offices with the Government of Greece under existing circumstances have some value, and who will advise the King of Greece not to put forward any such unfounded claims. France, therefore, will advise the King of Greece not to bring forward or to support any such claims, and with that advice we shall be content.

Thus terminates all difference between the Governments of England and France in regard to these matters; and I believe that if it had not been for discussions which are now taking place in the French Assembly, the distinguished individual who represents the French Government at this Court, might have been present to hear the debate of to-night. So much, then, with regard to the affairs of Greece, and the course which we have pursued in regard to them; but there still remains the question of the far-famed islands of Sapienza and Cervi.

Now, with respect to these islands, my opinion is clear and decided. That opinion, as has been already stated this evening, is supported by the opinion of my predecessor in office, the Earl of Aberdeen, as appears by a despatch from him to Sir E. Lyons, which has been laid on the table. The case is simply this: There are certain islands on the coast of Greece, which originally belonged to Venice, and which, by the treaty of 1800, between Russia and the Porte, were erected into a separate State. The seven great islands, and all the other islands, great and small, inhabited and uninhabited, on the coast of Albania and of the Morea, were placed under feudal relations to Turkey; and were secured by the guarantee of Russia; and it was declared that the constitution which that State might give to itself should be communicated to, and be sanctioned by, the two protecting Powers. At that time the Morea and the other parts of Greece belonged to Turkey. In 1803 these islands made their constitution, which, I presume, was communicated to, and sanctioned by, the two protecting Powers; and in 1804, in execution of that constitution, they made a municipal distribution of the smaller islands, allotting them respectively to the seven larger islands; and in a public decree, which I cannot doubt must have been made known both to Turkey and Russia, Sapienza was aggregated to Zante, and Cervi to Cerigo.

Now, can any man suppose that, if Cervi and Sapienza had been part of the Turkish territory at that time, the Sultan would have allowed his vassals of the Ionian State to appropriate to themselves what belonged to him? or that Russia, who was still more vigilant, and was under engagement, by guarantee, to defend and maintain the territory of this Ionian State, would have permitted a proceeding, which on such a supposition, would have thrown on her the duty of defending for the Ionian State islands which belonged of right to Turkey? But these islands have always been considered by the British Government, ever since the Septinsular Republic was placed under the protection of England, as belonging to the Ionian State; and it is well known that officers quartered at Cerigo have been in the habit of going to Cervi for purposes of amusement, and that that island has always been held to be part of the Ionian territory.

The boundaries of Greece were settled by the Protocol of February, 1830, with the exception of an improvement in the northern frontier, which was afterwards arranged between the Three Powers and the Porte, and in the settlement of which we were much assisted by an hon. and gallant Friend of mine, the Member for Portarlington, who was employed in surveying that improved line. A map was attached to the Protocol of February, 1830, and a red line, of which we have heard much, was drawn upon that map to mark part of the boundary which was established by the Protocol; but that red line was mentioned in the Protocol, only as marking the northern boundary of Greece, east and west from sea to sea, and it did not apply to the islands. The islands which were to form part of the Greek State, were enumerated by name in the Protocol, and neither Cervi nor Sapienza were included in that enumeration.

It is, therefore, impossible to contend that the public acts which constituted the Kingdom of Greece included either of these islands within its territory. If, then, the Greek Government has taken possession of either of these two islands, it is the Greek Government that has intruded upon the territory of the Ionian State; and the British Government has not, by demanding the evacuation of those islands, wanted to intrude upon the territory of the Kingdom of Greece. But this question did not form part of the demands made by Mr. Wyse on the 15th of January. It is a separate question, and remains open for fair discussion between the Governments of Greece and England, and of England, France, and Russia.

Our applications about these islands had remained unnoticed by the Greek Government for ten years. It may be asked, then, why did we renew them at this particular time? Because the Greek Government committed last year an act of aggression on the island of Cervi, which they had never committed before. A boat going between Cerigo and Zante with convicts, was driven by stress of weather upon Cervi, when the convicts were liberated, and other acts were committed as if the island had been Greek territory. It became necessary, therefore, to call for an answer to our application, and if no answer was given, to take possession of the islands—an operation which could be performed by a boat's crew, without involving any greater employment of force. But, as has already been stated, the Greek Government hearing that these islands were to be taken possession of, at last broke their ten years' silence, and made a reply; and a discussion being thus opened, the forcible occupation was suspended. With respect to the Government of Russia, that Government was made aware so long ago as the beginning of last October, of the instructions we had given for the occupation of those islands.

Having disposed of the matter of Greece, I now come to the wider range which was taken last night by the right hon. Baronet the Member for Ripon. That right hon. Baronet took, I think, a proper view of the question before the House, becsuse the resolution which has been proposed is not confined to one particular act of Her Majesty's Government with regard to foreign, affairs, but does fairly involve and open the consideration of all the topics to which the right hon. Gentleman adverted. I agree, however, with those hon. Gentlemen who have contended that the resolution does not imply an absolute and entire approval of every act that has been done by the Government; and, indeed, it would be unreasonable to propose such a vote to the House; because it could hardly be expected that so large a number of men, possessing different degrees of information, holding different views, and not knowing exactly in all cases what have been the grounds upon which the Government have acted, though they may approve of the general principles which have guided the conduct of the Government, should implicitly approve of everything we may have done.

The right hon. Baronet was justified in taking that larger range into which he expatiated last night; but I must be allowed to set him right as to the first point upon which he touched. He stated what was quite true, that when he was a Member of Earl Grey's Administration, he concurred with me in many acts of foreign policy of which I was the organ, which involved very active interposition in the affairs of other countries. He instanced the negotiations in regard to Belgium, and its separation from Holland. He has done justice to the views which guided the Government of that day, in their opinion that the independence of Belgium would be a measure advantageous to the peace, present and future, of Europe. But, then, he says, that case was different from the acts of the present Government, because every step in that affair was taken with the concurrence of all the five Powers who were parties to the negotiation. The right hon. Baronet said that there were, to be sure, some things which went beyond mere negotiation: there was the siege of Antwerp, and the embargo laid by us upon Dutch ships. He had concurred, he said, in both those measures; but were those measures, steps taken with the full consent of all the five Powers? Were those acts measures of such a description that they rendered it quite impossible that the friendly relations of this country with other Powers could be disturbed thereby? The right hon. Baronet must, I am sure, recollect that Austria, Russia, and Prussia dissented from those measures; that they protested against those measures; that in consequence thereof they withdrew for a time from the conference, and that a Prussian army was collected near the banks of the Meuse, the presence of which rendered it necessary for the French to send a very large force to Antwerp, much more than was required for the mere siege of the citadel, and also to have a reserve ready in case of need. I know very well that when people are out of office their memory is not so quick and retentive as to things which happened while they were in power as it would have been if they had remained in; but on this point the right hon. Baronet made an important mistake, especially as bearing upon the particular question now before the House.

I agree with the right hon. Baronet that, in regard to the affairs of Belgium, the Government of England came to a wise determination. I think that the arrangement which in 1815 had been thought conducive to the peace of Europe, and by which, through the union of Belgium with Holland, a Power of some consideration was to be formed in that particular part of Europe, interposed between Germany on one side and France on the other—I think that that arrangement, which originally, by those who framed it, was, and not without reason, expected to prove advantageous to the peace of Europe, had, by the course of events, turned out to have a contrary tendency. The people of Belgium and of Holland evidently could not coalesce; and if certain Powers of Europe had combined at that moment to compel a reunion between these separated portions of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, I doubt whether that reunion could have been effected without the immediate explosion of a war in Europe of the greatest magnitude; and I am quite sure that if it had been effected, it could not have lasted, and the foundation must have been laid thereby of future and inevitable disturbance. We carried out our opinion upon that point to a practical result.

It is not to be disguised at this time of day, that our opinion on that matter was not shared by Austria, Russia, and Prussia. They would much rather have seen the two countries reunited; and if that reunion was at that time impossible, they would have been glad of any arrangement which might have tended to render a reunion thereafter more easy. This was no breach of faith on their part; they acted, I am bound to say, with great good faith and honour in the whole transaction; but they had that opinion which differed from the opinion of England and France. Nevertheless our arrangements prevailed; and was that, now, an instance of a policy which deserves the censure and condemnation of Parliament and of the country?

I remember being taunted in this House by being told of my "little experimental Belgian monarchy." It was predicted that the experiment would not succeed; it was said that there was no national feeling among the Belgians; that they would, on the first opportunity, throw themselves into the arms of their nearest neighbour; that we were only laying the foundation of another change; and that our arrangement was only "a transition state." Why, if ever there was an experiment—call it so if you will—that fully and completely succeeded, the erection of Belgium into an independent State was that experiment. In times when almost all the other countries in Europe have been convulsed from top to bottom, Belgium has remained undisturbed. The people have shown the most admirable devotion and attachment to their Sovereign; the Sovereign the greatest confidence in, and love for, his people; the nation has made rapid advances in industry and in the arts, in everything which distinguishes a civilised State; all this reflects the greatest honour upon the Belgian people; and they have, moreover, acquired a spirit and sentiment of nationality which entitles them to the respect of every other country in the world. I say, then, that so far as we were con- cerned in effecting that arrangement, I think that is a case to which we can refer with pride and satisfaction, and in regard to which we can justly claim the approbation of Parliament and of the country. But it was not altogether without encountering difficulty, not only in other countries, but at home, that we were able to bring that long negotiation to a successful issue.

Then the right hon. Baronet says, that he was also a party to another operation which differed in some degree from pure and mere diplomatic intervention—the interference of this country in the affairs of Portugal by the Quadruple Treaty of 1834. I think the right hon. Baronet was in office when the Quadruple Treaty, in regard to Portugal, was concluded. [Sir J. GRAHAM: I was.] What was that treaty? We have been accused—I, especially, have been accused—of "running a muck" through Europe, interfering here and there in the internal affairs of every other country; and, I presume, from the general tenor of the speech of the right hon. Baronet, that it is upon that tendency to interference in the affairs of other countries, among other things, that he founds his disapprobation of the conduct of foreign affairs under my management as the organ of the Government.

Now, a question arose in Portugal between the claims of Donna Maria, represented by her father, Don Pedro, and those of Don Miguel, her uncle. Did it very much signify to England, in the abstract, whether this young queen was to be Sovereign of Portugal, or whether Don Miguel, who was actually in possession, should remain upon the throne? Not much certainly; but we looked upon the question, not as a simple choice between one sovereign and the other, but—what it was in reality—as a question between absolute government on the one hand, and constitutional government on the other. But what interest, you will say, had we in that? Why, we might have had a selfish interest in favour of despotism; because it is manifest that if you want to exercise influence over a country, you are more likely to have it where the Government rests in a Court and a Cabinet, than where it rests in an assembly representing the nation. But we scorned that sort of influence in Portugal. We knew, in espousing the cause of a constitution, that that particular kind of influence on our part would cease; but we felt that we should reap other advantages, which would more than counterbalance any disadvantage arising from that source. We knew that the prosperity of Portugal was concerned in the issue—that the best chance for the cessation of the manifold abuses, administrative and others, which had so long prevailed to keep down Portugal in the scale of nations—that the best chance of applying a remedy to those evils, and of giving full development to the natural resources of Portugal, would consist in securing to it the inestimable advantages of a free constitution; and, therefore, thinking as we did, that right was on the side of that party with whom waved the constitutional banner, we, and the right hon. Baronet with us, espoused that cause; and we concluded a treaty between England, France, Spain, and Portugal, by means of which, through the exertion of force, Donna Maria was seated upon the throne of Portugal. I think that course was wise—was perfectly defensible; and I think the right hon. Baronet is entitled to share with me in the merit of having been above all narrow-minded prejudices, and having concurred in that act of forcible interference, for the purpose of giving to Portugal the blessings of representative government.

But I shall be told that as late as 1847 there was another insurrection in Portugal, and another interference. Now, no man of common sense can suppose, that when you plant free institutions in a soil, in which none have hitherto grown, they are at once to attain their full maturity, and to bear their utmost fruit. It takes time to educate men for the well administration of representative government; it takes time to reconcile the governors to submitting themselves to the control of representative institutions; and in the early stages of constitutional experience you find, on the one hand, that the representatives of the people do not bring sufficient moderation and sense, and judgment, to the exercise of their functions; and, on the other, that the Members of the Government are too jealous of the restraints imposed upon them, and are constantly striving either to elude those restraints, or to break through them. The history of all constitutional countries, and especially of our own, will furnish abundant instances to exemplify this truth. But has Portugal derived no benefit from her constitution? Let any man compare her present condition with what she was under arbitrary government. There may now be abuses and misgovern- ment requiring correction; but the condition of Portugal is no more to be compared with what it formerly was, than is light with darkness.

Now, what did we do in 1847? Our conduct in 1847 was again approved by the right hon. Baronet, and disapproved of by the hon. and gallant Member for Middlesex, who has notwithstanding given us his support to-night. Portugal was then in a state of revolution; the Throne was in the utmost and imminent danger; the Government applied to this conntry for aid under the engagements of that Quadruple Treaty to which the right hon. Baronet was a party—and also applied to France and to Spain, the other parties to that treaty. We did not acknowledge that that treaty was in force or applicable to the then existing state of things; but we had to consider the case upon its own merits, without reference to the Quadruple Treaty, but with reference to the general obligations, the standing and permanent treaty obligations of this country towards Portugal. I know that many of my hon. Friends on my right thought that it would have been more prudent and more consistent with the principles which ought to govern the conduct of England, to have let the contest go on, between the Liberal party and the other party; but I thought then, and I think now, that our determination was right. I am convinced that though for the moment we put down, or at least disarmed, the Liberal party, we saved that party, both individually and collectively, from great dangers and from serious evils.

My conviction is, that if we had declined, the other Powers, Spain especially, would have interfered; unless we had taken ground which would have involved England in war—unless we had said, "If you interfere, you are at war with England;" and if we had said that, who will tell me what those other Powers in Europe, who sympathised with Spain might have said; and what support Spain would have received in such a war, from countries with which it would not have been the policy of England to engage in hostilities. My conviction is, that if we had not adopted the course we did, and by which the civil war was put an end to at once, without further effusion of blood, that civil war would have been put down by foreign interference, but not with the conditions which we attached to the termination of the contest.

The conditions we exacted were—ample and complete amnesty for all engaged in that civil war; a revocation of all illegal edicts which had been issued by the Government at variance with the constitution; the convocation of the Parliament as soon as the elections, which should immediately take place, were concluded; and the formation in the mean time of a Government consisting neither of members of the party of Cabral—the party then representing the arbitrary principle, the high Tory principle—nor of members of the Junta of Oporto. These terms were accepted; there was no further effusion of blood; the constitution continued in full force; and Portugal is now in the enjoyment of that constitution; and practically, it is working as well as under all circumstances, and considering how recently it has been established, could perhaps have been expected. "Oh, but," said the right hon. Baronet, "you have Costa Cabral as Minister, and your object was to get rid of him." Now, the fault I find with those who are so fond of attacking me either here or elsewhere, in this country or in others, is, that they try to bring down every question to a personal bearing. If they want to oppose the policy of England, they say, "Let us get rid of the man who happens to be the organ of that policy." Why it is like shooting a policeman. As long as England is England, as long as the English people are animated by the feelings and spirit and opinions which they possess, you may knock down twenty Foreign Ministers one after another, but depend upon it no one will keep his place, who does not act upon the same principles. When it falls to my duty, in pursuance of my functions, to oppose the policy of any Government, the immediate cry is, "Oh, it's all spite against this man, or that man, Count This, or Prince That, that makes you do this." So the right hon. Baronet says, our object in 1847 was merely to get rid of Costa Cabral; and, he adds, Costa Cabral being now in office, our purpose has been defeated. Now, as regards mere personal considerations, we did not care who was Minister of Portugal; but we felt that there was in that country much popular excitement, that party was arrayed against party, class against class, that there were bitter animosities ready to break out, and, we knew perfectly well, that if a member of the Cabral faction was, at that particular time, made Minister, there would be a renewal of civil war; we accordingly excluded, not for ever, but merely for a time, and until the Cortes should decide who was to have their confidence, and who should be Minister, all men of the extreme parties, whether of the Cabral faction or of the Junta faction. I therefore cannot admit the triumph which the right hon. Baronet thinks he has obtained at my expense, by the fact that Costa Cabral, in spite of our proceedings in 1847, is now, in 1850, Minister of Portugal.

Now come we to Spain. It is perfectly true that the right hon. Baronet was not in office when the additional Articles of 1835—additional to the Treaty of 1834—were concluded. But what was the Treaty of 1834—the Quadruple Treaty? It was a treaty to expel from the Peninsula not Don Miguel only, but Don Carlos also, who was then at the head of troops in Portugal; and, therefore, so far as the spirit and provisions of that treaty of 1834 went, the right hon. Baronet cannot ride off by saying, that it confined itself entirely to Portugal, and did not extend to interference with Spain. Don Carlos was at the time in Portugal, at the head of troops, with the purpose of getting back into Spain; and, had Don Miguel been successful in Portugal, there is no doubt that Don Carlos would have availed himself of the circumstance to enforce his claims upon Spain. Don Carlos having been expelled from the Peninsula under the treaty of 1834, came to London for a time, and then returned to Spain. Hostilities were resumed in Spain; and the Additional Articles of 1835 were then concluded, for the purpose of giving to the Queen of Spain assistance, to enable her to retain the Crown, and to expel Don Carlos from Spain.

This was a case exactly similar to that of Portugal in the preceding year. We had no particular interest, in the abstract, in determining whether the Sovereign of Spain should be an infant Princess, as Isabella then was, or a full grown Prince; the mere abstract question between Isabella and Carlos was one in regard to which we had nothing at stake, and which the then Government of England would probably not have thought it proper or useful to interfere with. Questions of succession to a Crown have, indeed, at all times been matters with which foreign Powers have concerned themselves; but it has only been when some distinct interest has made it worth their while to do so. But in Spain, as in Portugal, the question was between arbitrary rule and constitutional and parliamentary government, and in relation to Spain, as well as to Portugal, we thought that the interests of England in every point of view, commercial and political, would be benefited by the establishment of constitutional government.

If England has any interest more than another with reference to Spain, it is that Spain should be independent, that Spain should be Spanish. Spain for the Spaniards, is the maxim upon which we proceed in our policy with regard to Spain. Much evil must ever come to this country from the fact of Spain being under the dictation of other Powers. It is eminently for our interest that when we have the misfortune to be in dispute or at war with any other Power, we should not, merely on that account, and without any offence to or from Spain herself, be at war with Spain also. It is to our advantage that so long as we have given no offence to Spain, and she none to us, differences with other Powers should not involve us in war with her; and we considered that the independence of Spain was more likely to be secured by a Government controlled by a representative and national Assembly, than by a Government purely arbitrary, and consisting merely of the Members who might form the Administration. Therefore, on grounds of strict policy, independently of the general sympathy which animated the people as well as the Government of this country towards Spain at that time, we thought it our interest to take part with Isabella, and against the pretensions of Don Carlos. That policy was successful—the Carlist cause failed; the cause of the constitution prevailed. But it is said by the right hon. Baronet, that General Narvaez is Minister of Spain—I cannot see in that, any defeat of the policy of England; General Narvaez, indeed, is Minister of Spain, but the constitution is in force, and that constitution has of late been more strictly observed, than it was at the period to which the right hon. Baronet referred.

The right hon. Baronet finds fault with a certain despatch which in July, 1846, after the change of Ministry in this country, I wrote to Sir Henry, then Mr., Bulwer at Madrid; and the right hon. Baronet says, "Here is an instance, not only of the interference of the noble Viscount, but of the manner and tone he uses." Now, as to manner and tone, there have been certain communications made to other British Ministers by persons in whom the right hon. Baronet has confidence, which are certainly couched in terms which may possibly admit of the application of some of those phrases which the right hon. Baronet has applied to me. There was a certain despatch, for example, addressed by the Earl of Aberdeen to Sir Edmund Lyons, our Minister at Athens, which has already been read elsewhere, and which I have got a copy of here, and which I think is a very curious specimen of the manner in which the most mild and uninterfering of Foreign Ministers can, when he so likes, deal with the internal arrangements of other Governments.

Everybody knows who Sir Richard Church is; a most distinguished soldier, who fought nobly in the cause of Greek independence, and for a long time was properly respected and honoured by the Greek Government. But in 1843 he was supposed to sympathise with the party who extorted the constitution from the King. I believe that what he then did, was a great service to the King; and that he was very instrumental in saving King Otho from dangers to which he would otherwise have been exposed; but, however, in 1844 he incurred the displeasure of the King, and he was removed from the appointment of Inspector General of the Greek forces, which he had held; and he was succeeded by General Grivas, a person whose conduct, as it appears from the despatch in question, had not been altogether free from imputations of disloyalty. Well, here are the instructions given on the subject to Sir Edmund Lyons, by the Minister who never interfered with the internal affairs of other countries, and especially with their purely domestic matters:—

But it is said, nevertheless, to me—

However, Sir, the right hon. Baronet the Member for Ripon says that these affairs of Spain were of long duration, and produced disastrous consequences, because they were followed by events of the greatest importance, as regards another country, namely, France. He says, that out of those Spanish quarrels and Spanish marriages, there arose differences between England and France, which led to no slighter catastrophe than the overthrow of the French monarchy. This is another instance of the fondness for narrowing down a great and national question, to the smallness of personal difference. It was my dislike to M. Guizot, forsooth, arising out of these Spanish marriages, which overthrew his Administration, and with it the throne of France! Why, Sir, what will the French nation say when they hear this? They are a highminded and highspirited nation, full of a sense of their own dignity and honour—what will they say, when they hear it stated that it was in the power of a British Minister to overthrow their Government and their monarchy? Why, Sir, it is a calumny on the French nation to suppose that the personal hatred of any foreigner to their Minister could have this effect. They are a brave, a generous, and a noble-minded people; and if they had thought that a foreign conspiracy had been formed against one of their Ministers—I say, that if the French people had thought that a knot of foreign conspirators were caballing against one of their Ministers, and caballing for no other reason than that he had upheld, as he conceived, the dignity and interests of his own country; and if they had thought that such a knot of foreign conspirators had coadjutors in their own land, why, I say that the French people, that brave, noble, and spirited nation, would have scorned the intrigues of such a cabal; and would have clung the closer to, and have supported the more, the man against whom such a plot had been made. If, then, the French people had thought that I, or any other Foreign Minister, was seeking to overthrow M. Guizot, their knowledge of such a design, so far from assisting the purpose, would have rendered him stronger than ever, in the post which he occupied. No, Sir, the French Minister and the French Monarchy were overthrown by far different causes. And many a man, both in this country and elsewhere, would have done well to have read a better lesson, from the events which then took place.

We had, indeed, a difference with the Government of France relative to the Spanish marriages. I do not wish to open again questions that are gone by, or to remind the House or the country of the grounds of complaint which we had then, as I think, justly, against those who are now no longer in power. But, since I am pressed upon this matter, and as it is one count of the long indictment preferred against me, I must say, in my own defence, that the dissatisfaction which we felt was not groundless. I must say, too, that I formed my judgment from communications made to me by the noble Lord (the Earl of Aberdeen) whom I succeeded in the office I hold—from statements from his own mouth, made to me in that interview which always takes place between the Foreign Minister who goes out, and the Minister who comes in. I learned from that source, that promises had been made in regard to these marriages—not only by a Minister to a Minister, but between far higher personages—promises, the like of which, so far as I am aware of, have never before in the history of Europe been broken; and yet those promises were deliberately broken. If we felt dissatisfaction then at those marriages, that dissatisfaction was just and well-founded; and upon every ground of national interest and honour, we were entitled, nay, bound, to express it.

Before I quit this subject, I must say that in my opinion the policy which we have pursued in regard to France has been consistent with the interests of this country, and has been characterised by an observance of the principles which the hon. and learned Gentleman, whose resolution we are discussing, thinks ought to govern our foreign policy, and which are calculated to preserve, as they have preserved, the peace of Europe. Our prompt acknowledgment in 1848 of the Government established in France, and the kindly relations which we have maintained with the successive chiefs of Administration in that country, sufficiently show that we have been animated by a kindly feeling towards the French nation; and that in our opinion the maintenance of friendly relations with that country is not only consistent with our interests and our dignity, but also forms a firm foundation for the peace of Europe.

The right hon. Baronet the Member for Ripon has insinuated that the Marquess of Normandy, in the period immediately preceding the events of February, 1848, had been in too intimate connexion with some of the persons whom he describes as the parties who overthrew the throne of France. I know not whom he means, but this I know, that the person with whom the Marquess of Normandy was perhaps in the most frequent communication, because he was an old and intimate friend, was Count Molé; and I have yet to learn that he is a man who was likely to do anything to overthrow, either intentionally or unintentionally, the monarchy of France. But, if that insinuation was meant to convey an imputation that the Marquess of Normandy had done anything, or had held any intercourse, inconsistent with his position as the Ambassador of a friendly Power, then I say that imputation is totally and entirely unfounded.

Well, Sir, I leave the sunny plains of Castile and the gay vineyards of France, and now I am taken to the mountains of Switzerland, as the place where I am to render a stricter account.

The charge against me in regard to Switzerland is founded upon a book of Count D'Haussonville's, which relates a private conversation said to have taken place between individuals, who were little supposing that what they were saying or replying to, would figure in an octavo volume; and still less that it would become a ground of serious accusations against any one in Parliament. Now, as far as I can collect the charge from the speech of the hon. Member for Bridport, who entered into the subject more in detail than the right hon. Baronet the Member for Ripon, the charge is, that in July, 1847, I declined to accede to a proposal of the Duc de Broglie to mediate between the two parties in Switzerland—that I changed my opinion in November, and agreed to mediate; and that I then purposely delayed the mediation, in order to defeat it; and that while I was sending despatches to Switzerland for the purpose of offering a mediation, I was privately directing Mr. Peel to urge on the events of war, so that the mediation might come too late.

Now, as to the first charge, I plead entirely guilty; that is to say, when the mediation was first proposed, it did not seem to me to be a case in which this country ought to interfere. The House will remember that a dispute arose between different portions of the Swiss cantons. The seven peculiarly Catholic cantons formed a Sonderbund, or separate league, and the other cantons arrayed themselves in an opposing aggregation. The cause of the quarrel was, that the majority of the cantons required the minority, that is to say, the seven cantons of the Sonderbund, to expel the Jesuits, and this the minority refused to do. There were other points in dispute between them, but those were minor questions. It was likely that this quarrel would lead to an appeal to arms. The majority contended that the separate league of the Sonderbund was inconsistent with the act of confederation, and they accordingly intended to put it down by force of arms. Well, on the 29th of October I wrote a despatch to Mr. Peel, our Chargé d'Affaires in Switzerland, and I will read that despatch, in order to show what were the opinions of the British Government in regard to the civil war then on the point of breaking out; and be it observed this despatch was actually written a very few days before the civil war actually began. I will read this in order to show how inconsistent with the opinions thus expressed by me to Mr. Peel, and which he was instructed to make known to M. Ochsenbein, is the report of Count D'Haussonville as to the opinions which he understood Mr. Peel to say, he was instructed to express to the Diet on our part:—

I have been blamed for not accepting this proposal, and for delaying to give an answer to it till the 16th. It has been said that any verbal alterations which I had to propose, might easily and quickly have been settled, and that a delay of so many days could not be required. Now, what was the proposal which the French Government made? They proposed that the five great Powers, England, France, Austria, Russia, and Prussia, should make collectively a declaration, which should contain, first a statement that they would recommend and support the arbitration of the Pope in regard to the religious question pending in Switzerland. Now that religious question was, whether the Jesuits should be withdrawn or not. The Sonderbund of course would have been glad to accept the arbitration of the Pope, which they would naturally have expected to be given in their favour; but the cantons who wished to get rid of the Jesuits would not have done so. Secondly, it was proposed that we should offer to the States of the Confederation the mediation of the five Powers, for the settlement of all political questions. It was further proposed that a conference should be assembled for this purpose, at some place in the neighbourhood of Switzerland; and that the twenty-two cantons should be invited to send each a deputy for the purpose of examining and determining, in conjunction with the five Powers, two things—first, the means of conciliation between the contending parties; and, secondly, the modifications that should be made in the federal compact. Then it was proposed that the two parties should be required immediately to put an end to the civil war; and that they should be given to understand, that if they refused our propositions, and should proceed with the war, the five Powers would consider the Confederation as no longer existing, and deem all their engagements towards it rescinded; and that in such case the five Powers "aviseraient," a diplomatic expression understood as conveying a menace.

Now, in the first place, we felt that the proposed arbitration of the Pope was certain to be rejected by the majority of the cantons; and that the proposition that the twenty-two cantons should send representatives to confer with the five Powers as to the alterations to be made in the federal compact, would not be accepted. Then besides, we could not agree to declare, that if the Swiss refused our proposal, we should consider the confederation as no longer existing—that confederation having been established by the Treaty of Vienna. Much less could we consent to declare that we should consider the engagements contracted towards that confederation as ceasing to exist; for the main engagements taken by the great Powers towards the Swiss confederation by the treaty of Vienna, are, that they will respect the neutrality of Switzerland, and the integrity of its territory. In fact, the proposition of the French Government amounted in other words to this, that if the Swiss refused our conditions, we would compel them by force of arms to adopt our views. That was a proposal we could not possibly agree to, and it required some consideration to determine what we should propose instead.

On the 16th, in a despatch to the Marquess of Normanby, we made our proposal, which was, to offer the mediation of the five Powers, unaccompanied by any threat, direct or indirect, as a consequence of refusal; leaving the Swiss to accept or reject our mediation as they pleased. The basis of the arrangement which we offered to propose was, that the Jesuits should be withdrawn, either by an act of the Sonderbund cantons themselves, or by a consent to be obtained from the Pope; that the Diet should then declare formally, that it had no aggressive intention against the Sonderbund; and that the Sonderbund, upon receiving this assurance, should dissolve their separate league, which was at variance with the federal compact; that both parties should then disarm, and that peace should thus be permanently restored.

Now, I think that was a just and fair proposal, and it was one entirely in accordance with those principles which we think should regulate the foreign policy of this country. Some communications took place between us and the French Government on the subject of this proposal, and with regard to the wording of a note, which each of the Powers should present to the contending parties in Switzerland. That note was agreed to between me and the Duc de Broglie on the 26th of November; but, on the 16th of November, I had received from the Consul General of Switzerland here, a note, founded on a decision come to by the Swiss themselves, which gave us small hopes of success in the proposal we had agreed to make, though we still persevered in making it. It was a formal declaration on the part of the Diet, that they would admit of no foreign interference in their dispute with the Seven Cantons. The note to which I have just referred as agreed upon between me and the Duc de Broglie, was sent, not to Mr. Peel, but to Sir Stratford Canning, who was going to Switzerland; but he had to go through Paris on his way, in order to communicate with the French Government.

I should state that he was told, that if, on his arrival in Switzerland he found the civil war at an end, there would be no use in presenting the note, and he was to abstain from doing so. Now, in the mean time, while these communications were going on between the French and British Governments, the French Government had communicated their first proposed draft of note to Russia, Austria, and Prussia; and when we came to an agreement with France for the adoption of our draft of note, the question arose, whether the representatives of those three Powers, in Switzerland, would be authorised to present our note instead of the original French one; and Sir Stratford Canning wrote from Paris on the 3rd of December, that he believed that the representatives of some of those Powers had not at that time authority to present our note.

Now, I am at a loss to divine how it is possible that Mr. Peel could have said, as it is alleged he did, that he would rather resign than present our note; and that to do so would be at variance with all his former instructions. Was not our offered mediation to be accepted or rejected, as the two parties might choose? Did it imply any alternative of force? And did it not go on the basis of a settlement of the Jesuit question according to the wishes of the majority? Did it not provide security for the Sonderbund against hostile aggression by the other cantons? And did it not thus re-establish peace, and put an end to the disputes that threatened civil war? Now, how it was possible that Mr. Peel could say, that such a note was at variance with the despatch of the 29th of October, and with his previous instructions, passes my comprehension to understand. I therefore wholly disbelieve that statement. The only explanation I can possibly give of it is this, that the note of which Mr. Peel and M. Blois le Comte were then talking, must have been the original French note; that they must have been talking of the original French note that M. Bois le Comte had seen; and if that was the note they were talking of, then Mr. Peel was right in saying, that such a note would have been at variance with his former instructions, and that he would not present it.

Now, as to the assertion that Mr. Peel sent word to General Dufour, who was in command of the army, to make haste to finish the war, before mediation could come, I must say that I wholly disbelieve that statement. All I can say is, that I never wrote a single syllable, private or public, that would justify such a message; and I have never had any intimation, written or verbal, that Mr. Peel ever did anything of the kind. I have been told by Sir Edmund Lyons, that he had a conversation on this matter with Mr. Timperley, the chaplain, who is said by M. Bois le Comte to have been the bearer of this message; and that Mr. Timperley told him that he had been sent by Mr. Peel to General Dufour's headquarters to obtain information, but that he neither took nor delivered any such message from Mr. Peel, as that which has been asserted. I must say, that the manner in which this supposed admission is said to have been extracted from Mr. Peel, does not entitle the story to any great confidence. I confess I would rather be the object, than the worker of a manœuvre such as that.

Here were two Ministers, representing two great Powers—France and Spain, taking advantage of the intimacy of private intercourse between them and a diplomatic agent of another Power, and, by a preconcerted scheme, endeavouring to extract from him indirectly and by stratagem, an admission of something which they thought he had privately done. But, after all, even supposing he did speak the words attributed to him, still, for aught I know, he may only have been giving them as good as they brought, and may have been mystifying them, just as they sought to entrap him. He might have replied to them, jokingly, "Yes, Gentlemen, we were quite as sharp as you were." I can only say that Mr. Peel had no authority whatever from me to take any such step. I do not believe that he did take that step; I have no ground for believing so. As far as the evidence of Sir Edmund Lyons and Mr. Timperley goes, it directly negatives the assertion. We should have been glad if the proposed mediation had succeeded, because it would have restored peace to Switzerland, and would have left the minority in a better position with relation to the majority. But circumstances rendered it impossible, not from any studied delays on our part, but simply by reason of the time requisite for coming to an understanding with the French Government, upon the arrangements which the Five Powers were to propose.

It is said that Switzerland is an instance of the bad effects of our interference. But Switzerland may be quoted as an instance of a country, where the principles we have advocated have led to a good result; for while almost all the surrounding nations of Europe have been more or less convulsed, the people of Switzerland have quietly effected changes which I believe to be improvements in their internal organization; and those persons who were at one time looked upon as being what the hon. Member for Bridport calls "Red Republicans"—M. Ochsenbein and others—are now acknowledged to be, as in truth they always have been, lovers and maintainers of good order; and, far from being revolutionists and disturbers of the public peace, they have proved themselves not only sincere supporters of good order in their own country, but also discouragers of disorder in others; for they have gone great lengths in expelling from Switzerland persons who were justly supposed to have resorted there, for the purpose of disturbing the peace of neighbouring countries.

Now, travelling from the rugged Alps into the smiling plains of Lombardy, I find I have been accused of great injustice to the Austrian Government by withholding a certain despatch written by Prince Metternich to Count Dietrichstein. The simple facts of the case are these: The Austrian Government sent to their Ambassador here a despatch, which was to be communicated to us, inviting our opinion on certain questions connected with affairs in Italy. We answered that despatch, and we afterwards laid before Parliament the despatch and answer, in order to give Parliament a view of our opinions and intentions in regard to those important matters. Well, another despatch was received afterwards from Prince Metternich, and it is said that it contained such a denial of the imputation cast upon Austria of an intended interference in the affairs of the independent States of Italy, that we ought to have laid that also on the table of the House. It was, to a certain degree, a denial; but there were things going on, which came to our knowledge, which led us not to attach to that denial all the value it might have been perhaps entitled to. There was the occupation of Ferrara; and communications were made to Tuscany, that changes in the organization of the Government, and even the establishment of a national guard, would lead to the military occupation of the Tuscan territory by Austria. Indeed, many things were going on in Italy which led us not to attach any vast value to the communications made to us. But if the withholding of that despatch had been considered by the Austrian Government to be such an injury to them as it is now stated to have been, let me ask what was Count Dietrichstein doing between February and August? It was in February that the first despatches were laid before Parliament; and it was in August that the other was moved for, in the House of Lords. But if Count Dietrichstein was asleep upon his post, Prince Metternich surely had his eyes open. The despatches which we laid before Parliament in February were well known. But there was the Austrian Ambassador in this country, he, the views of whose Government it is said were misrepresented by the absence of the second despatch; what prevented him from coming to me of his own accord, or by order of his Government, any day in any week, or any week in any month, or any month in that half year, and saying, "You are acting unjustly by us—there is another despatch in your possession, which you have not produced, and I call upon you, as an act of justice to my Government, to lay that despatch also before the two Houses of Parliament?" This course was open to him, but no such course was adopted.

With regard to our policy with respect to Italy, I utterly deny the charges that have been brought against us, of having been the advocates, supporters, and encouragers of revolution. It has always been the fate of advocates of temperate reform and of constitutional improvement to be run at as the fomentors of revolution. It is the easiest mode of putting them down; it is the received formula. It is the established practice of those who are the advocates of arbitrary government to say, "Never mind real revolutionists; we know how to deal with them; your dangerous man is the moderate reformer; he is such a plausible man; the only way of getting rid of him, is to set the world at him, by calling him a revolutionist."

Now, there are revolutionists of two kinds in this world. In the first place, there are those violent, hotheaded, and unthinking men, who fly to arms, who overthrow established Governments; and who recklessly, without regard to consequences, and without measuring difficulties and comparing strength, deluge their country with blood, and draw down the greatest calamities on their fellow-countrymen. These are the revolutionists of one class. But there are revolutionists of another kind; blind-minded men, who, animated by antiquated prejudices, and daunted by ignorant apprehensions, dam up the current of human improvement; until the irresistible pressure of accumulated discontent breaks down the opposing barriers, and overthrows and levels to the earth, those very institutions which a timely application of renovating means would have rendered strong and lasting. Such revolutionists as these are the men who call us revolutionists. It was not to make revolutions that the Earl of Minto went to Italy, or that we, at the request of the Governments of Austria and Naples, offered our mediation between contending parties.

Then, with respect to the war in Lombardy, it is said that we ought to have prevented Sardinia from making an attack on Lombardy. A perusal of the blue books will show, that we did apply those arguments which we thought most likely to have force with the Sardinian Government, to induce it not to take up arms against Austria; and it was not until after the revolution had broken out in Milan, and when the Austrians were for a time defeated, and expelled from the greater part of Lombardy, in a manner which can only be accounted for as being the result of a panic, it was not until after those events that the King of Sardinia, being invited by the people of Lombardy, moved and went to their assistance. I do not mean to say that there is in all this any justification—if you look to treaties or to international rights—for the invasion of the territory of a neighbouring Sovereign. As regards right, the King of Sardinia was entirely wrong, and there is nothing to be said for him on that score. But, at the same time, there are feelings and considerations which may at least explain conduct, which one cannot justify, and which one must condemn. He was appealed to by his Italian neighbours; the spirit of his own country was up; and he said, and not without some foundation, that if he had resisted the impulse which urged him on, that impulse might have been sufficient to overthrow his own throne. That was not a consideration which ought to weigh against the reasons and motives which should prevent the invasion of the territory of a neighbour. Nevertheless, man is man, and we ought not altogether to throw out of the account, circumstances of this kind.

Well, the Austrian Government sent a special envoy to London to ask our mediation between them and the people of Lombardy; and, in the course of the communications, we were told that Austria would consent to an arrangement, the basis of which should be, that Austria should relinquish all right and title to Lombardy. Now, if Austria contemplated that result, are we to be run down for thinking that such an arrangement would have been conducive to the well-understood interest of all parties concerned? We, however, thought at that time, judging from the prevailing feeling in Italy, that this arrangement would not be accepted, unless it were to include also the relinquishment of some portion of the Venetian territory. Our opinion was borne out by what afterwards happened: for when we declined to undertake the negotiation, because the larger basis was not agreed to, the Austrian Government sent agents to Milan to offer such an arrangement, confined only to Lombardy, and the proposition was rejected as too narrow by the people of Milan, who then thought their chance better than it turned out to be. So much for the outrage we are said to have committed on our old and faithful ally by a scheme, which was a proposal emanating from Austria herself.

Now, with regard to the mission of the Earl of Minto, the hon. Gentleman who spoke last, the Member for Bridport, acknowledged that during his late visit to Rome he had found that the Earl of Minto had been invited thither by the Pope himself. It is perfectly true that the Earl of Minto went to Italy in consequence of a wish on the part of the Pope, conveyed to Her Majesty's Government through the Nuncio at Paris, and through other but unofficial channels. It was not a little curious that the wish expressed by the Pope seemed to point precisely to the Earl of Minto, as the person to be sent to Rome. We were told that the Pope was desirous of improving the administrative institutions of his Government; but that he was thwarted in his plans by great difficulties from within and from without; and that he would be glad to have the assist- ance of some person who might aid him by advice, and at the same time, as representing England, afford him moral support. We were told that if, as was then the case, the state of our law did not admit of our sending a regularly accredited Minister to Rome, the Pope would be glad if we would send thither unofficially some confidential agent. That what was wished was, that this person should be entirely in the confidence of Her Majesty's Government; that he should be conversant with the institutions of this country; that he should be a man of rank; and, if possible, a person who could combine with these qualifications, diplomatic experience. If a form of words had been to be devised, which should exactly describe the Earl of Minto, it could not have been done more correctly.

Accordingly the Earl of Minto, who was going abroad for a short time for health and recreation, was requested by Her Majesty's Government to proceed to Rome; and to Rome he went, taking Turin and Florence in his way; with instructions to give both at Turin and Florence, if consulted by the Governments, and asked to do so, such advice in regard to internal improvements and reforms, as his judgment and experience might suggest.

But neither at Turin, nor at Florence, nor at Rome, did the Earl of Minto advise the immediate establishment of representative and parliamentary government. He well knew that the foundations must be well laid, before you can raise the superstructure; and that good municipal institutions, and the reform of many practical abuses, and especially a sound administration of justice, were necessary as preliminary measures. His advice, as far as it was adopted, bore good fruit; and if it had been more fully acted upon, and if no unexpected events had happened elsewhere, his visit to Italy would have been attended with still greater advantage to that country.

When the Earl of Minto was at Rome, a civil war had broken out between Sicily and the King of Naples. Both parties had applied to Lord Napier, then our Chargé d'Affaires at Naples, to mediate between them. The Sicilians founded their application upon the former connexion between England and Sicily, and upon the share which the British Government had had, in the remodelling of the Sicilian constitution in 1812. The Neapolitan Government founded their application upon the well-known interest which has always been taken by the British Government, in the welfare of the kingdom of Naples. Lord Napier, however, did not undertake the office. He said to the Neapolitan Ministers, that he would willingly go to Palermo, and endeavour to bring about a reconciliation between the Sicilians and the Neapolitan Government, if he could be authorised to propose to the Sicilians such conditions of arrangement as he thought they would be likely to accept. The Neapolitan Government was not willing at that time to authorise such proposals, and Lord Napier did not go to Palermo. But afterwards the King of Naples, hearing that the Earl of Minto was at Rome, expressed a wish that he should come to Naples. Her Majesty's Government had not originally intended, that the Earl of Minto should go further than Rome; but in consequence of a conversation which I had in December, 1847, with Prince Castelcicola, I had sent the Earl of Minto instructions to go on to Naples, if he should receive through Lord Napier an intimation that the Neapolitan Government wished him to do so. He did receive such an intimation, first through Lord Napier, and afterwards by a messenger who was specially sent to him by the Neapolitan Government, and who met him on the road between Rome and Naples.

The object he had in view, and the mission which, when he arrived, he was requested to undertake, was to employ his good offices to effect a reconciliation between the Sicilians and the Neapolitan Government.

The reply which he gave to those who asked him to undertake the task, was, that he would go to Palermo with plea sure, if he had a fair prospect of being able to do good; but he said he knew something of Sicily; and he forewarned the Neapolitan Government, that unless he was authorised to offer certain conditions to the Sicilians, his going to Palermo would be of no use whatever. He did all that man could do, to induce the Neapolitan Government to accede to those terms. He was engaged on one occasion from five o'clock in the afternoon till one in the morning, in deliberation with the King and the Ministers, discussing the arrangements to be proposed to the Sicilians; and then, forsooth, we are accused, of uncalled-for interference in the affairs of Sicily. The result was, that he was authorised to propose an arrangement which the Sicilians might reasonably have been urged to accept; and to Palermo, with that arrangement he went.

Oh, but it has been said, the Earl of Minto went to Palermo, not to do a service to the King of Naples, but to inflict a treacherous wrong, by secretly encouraging the Sicilians to separate Sicily from the Crown of Naples. Well, what happened? He knew that the conditions of which he was the bearer, fell short of the demands of the extreme party in Sicily; those terms were a compromise, and involved concessions to be made by both sides. He had represented that it was of great importance that these proposals should not be known in Sicily till he should arrive there, and be able to explain to the leaders the reasons which would make it wise to accept them. On his arrival in Sicily he found that the Neapolitan Government had already made these conditions known in Palermo; and that those conditions had already been canvassed, discussed, run down, and condemned by both parties at Palermo. Still, however, if nothing else had happened, he might perhaps have succeeded in the object of his mission. But just at this moment arrived the news of the French Revolution. This was a spark that set fire to all the combustible matter throughout Italy. No wonder that the news turned the heads of the Sicilians, and made them suddenly determine no longer to acknowledge the King of Naples as their sovereign.

The Earl of Minto on reaching Palermo, was told of this new determination, and was at the same time informed that it was the intention of the Sicilians to receive him with great honour, as the representative of a Power, that was going to support them in their independence. The Earl of Minto, however, said, that he came on the part of the King of Naples and of Sicily, and unless he were received by the Sicilians as subjects of that sovereign, he would go back to Naples. In deference to his wishes, the Sicilians consented to discuss an arrangement based on the principle of security for their liberties, combined with allegiance to the King of Naples. Was that a revolutionary proceeding? Negotiations followed, but the Sicilians unfortunately would not accept the terms, and they were certainly good ones, offered them by the King of Naples. Upon this statement of facts, was not Lord Napier justified in saying, in July following, that the English Government had been acting a friendly part towards the King of Naples?

Then it has been made a matter of complaint that the English Government made known to the King of Sardinia, that if the Duke of Genoa were chosen King of Sicily, and were in actual possession of the Crown—not if it were merely accepted by him as has been represented—he would be acknowledged by England. It was at that time the opinion, not of England alone, but of the Neapolitan Government itself, that the King of Naples had no chance of recovering possession of Sicily. The Neapolitan Minister in this country was instructed to express, on the part of his Government, a hope that the English Government would not prematurely acknowledge the independence and separation of Sicily; but would wait till the whole of the island had declared itself for separation. Now, would it have been wise and right on our part to acknowledge the Duke of Genoa as King of Sicily? On that point I expect to have the approval of hon. Gentlemen opposite. Events indeed have shown that the opinion then entertained as to the probable result of the war in Sicily was incorrect; but it was then generally thought that the King of Naples had no chance of re-establishing his authority in that island. The choice then lay between a monarchical and a republican form of government for Sicily as a separate State. Looking merely to the interest of the King of Naples, independently of other reasons, it was desirable that there should not be a republic established in the immediate neighbourhood of the kingdom of Naples; and the King of Naples himself was not insensible to that consideration. The offer, however, made by the Sicilians to the Sardinian Government, that the Duke of Genoa should become King of Sicily, led no result.

Under these circumstances, I am justified in denying that the policy which we pursued in Italy was that of exciting revolutions, and then abandoning the victims we had deluded. On the contrary, I maintain that we gave advice calculated to prevent revolutions, by reconciling opposite parties, and conflicting views. Ours was a policy of improvement and of peace; and therefore the Government deserves not condemnation, but praise.

We have been told, however, that if it had not been for the war in Lombardy, the indispensable interference of Russia in Hungary would not have taken place. What might have happened, if that which did happen, had not happened, I cannot undertake to say. But when I look at the deep-seated causes of contention between Hungary and the Austrian Government; when I look to the comparative resources and power of the conflicting parties; I cannot persuade myself that even if a part of Radetzki's army had been available for the war in Hungary, and the whole of it could not have been sent thither, the aid, the indispensable aid, as it has been termed, of Russia, would not still have been required. I, therefore, do not feel that the English Government is chargeable with any of the bloodshed which resulted from that Hungarian contest.

With respect to the questions which arose last autumn about Turkey, no blame has been imputed to Her Majesty's Government for the course which we pursued on that occasion, in answer to the appeal mady by Turkey to this country and to France, for moral and material assistance. On that point all parties are agreed. It is a proud and honourable recollection which Englishmen may treasure up, that on an occasion like that, all party differences were merged in high and generous national feeling; and that men of all sides concurred in thinking, that the Government of the Queen would not have been justified in rejecting an appeal so made, on such a subject.

But it has been said that we ought to have confined our interference, at first, to sending a despatch, and that we should not have sent our fleet until we knew whether our despatches would produce the desired effect. That would have been a very imprudent and unwise course of proceeding. The agents of the two imperial Governments at Constantinople had used most menacing language to the Porte; had demanded the surrender of the refugees in the most peremptory manner; and had said, that if they did not receive a categorical answer within a limited time, they would suspend diplomatic relations. In short, they intimated that a refusal of their demands might lead to war. We had no means at the time of knowing whether this violent and peremptory language was or was not authorised by the Courts of Russia and of Austria; and whether those Governments were prepared to enforce by actual hostilities the threat so held out. It was impossible to say what might occur in the interval between the 6th and the 26th of October; between the day when the despatches of the British Government were sent off to St. Petersburgh and Vienna, and the day when, if it were necessary on the receipt of the answers to send a fleet, that fleet, sent only after the answers were received, could reach the place where its services might be required. The Government did, what men of prudence would do, who mean to do that which they profess.

But it has been said that the sending of this fleet was a threat against Russia and Austria. I utterly deny that the sending of the fleet was a threat against either the one or the other. A fleet at the Dardanelles was not a threat against Austria. If it had been in the Adriatic, it might have been so regarded. A fleet in the Mediterranean was not a threat against Russia. Had it forced its way through the Dardanelles and Bosphorus, and had gone up to the Black Sea, and had anchored off Sebastopol, it might have been so considered. But a fleet at the mouth of the Dardanelles could be a threat against nobody; it must be manifest to the world that it could only be a symbol and source of support to the Sultan. It was a measure purely of defence, and not a measure of offence.

But then we are told that our fleet, by anchoring within the outer and inner castles of the Dardanelles, violated, not the Treaty of Unkiar 'Skelessi, as was said by mistake, but the Treaty of London, concluded in July, 1841, between the Five Powers and Turkey, with respect to the passage of the Dardanelles and Bosphorus. The British Government are accused of violating that treaty by ordering Sir W. Parker to enter the Dardanelles.

Now, by the treaty of 1809, between England and Turkey, England bound herself to respect the rule of the Turkish empire, by which, while Turkey is at peace, the Straits of the Dardanelles and of the Bosphorus are closed against the ships of war of foreign Powers. But it was not till the treaty of 1841, that the same engagement was also taken by all the other four Powers. I concur entirely with the right hon. Baronet the Member for Ripon in thinking that this was a wise and politic arrangement, eminently advantageous to Turkey, and conducive to the peace of Europe. Because when it is considered how easy it would be, if these narrow straits were open to the armed ships of other countries in times of peace, for any maritime Power, when she had a discus- sion of any kind with the Turkish Government, to support the friendly representations of her Minister at Constantinople by the, of course, accidental visit of a large fleet off the Seraglio point—whether the fleet came from the Black Sea or the Mediterranean, it appears essential for the maintenance of the independence of the Porte, that no armed vessels of other Powers should, when the Porte is at peace, be allowed to enter either of those straits.

By the Treaty of July, 1841, Austria, France, Great Britain, Russia, and Prussia, all bound themselves to respect that regulation of the Porte. It so happens, however, that that treaty did not specify precisely what those Straits are, whether they comprise the whole distance between the Mediterranean and the Sea of Marmora, and the whole distance between the Sea of Marmora and the Black Sea, or whether they consist only of such portion of those channels as are technically called the Straits of the Bosphorus and of the Dardanelles. At the entrance of the Dardanelles from the Mediterranean, there is a broad bay between the outer and the inner castles, and it is from the inner castles to the Sea of Marmora that the channel continues narrow. At the inner castles reside the Consuls; and it is there that tolls are taken from vessels passing; and there the firmans are delivered to allow vessels to pass up. In regulations established by the Porte in 1843, it was stated in general terms, that foreign ships of war and merchantmen should be admitted to this bay between the outer and inner castles for safe anchorage, and to wait there to know whether they would be allowed to go further. When the fleet under Sir W. Parker arrived at Besica Bay, which is on the coast of Asia Minor, the Turkish Government, who expressed great gratitude to Sir Stratford Canning for the arrival of our fleet, stated an apprehension that the anchorage in Besica Bay, in certain states of wind and weather was not safe for large ships; and they offered to send an authority to admit the fleet under Sir W. Parker, and not only it, but the French fleet also, into the outer anchorage of the Dardanelles, at times when it would be dangerous for them to remain at Besica Bay. That was communicated to the British Consul at the Dardanelles, and to the Turkish Pasha in command there.

A week or ten days after Sir W. Parker had arrived at Besica Bay, the wind coming on to blow from the quarter from which it made that open anchorage insecure, Sir W. Parker went with his squadron to Barber's Bay, the outer anchorage of the Dardanelles. But I had written to Sir Stratford Canning specially to desire that in order to avoid all cavil and discussions, the fleet should not enter into the Dardanelles, unless wanted at Constantinople for the purposes for which it was sent. Sir Stratford Canning accordingly communicated with Sir W. Parker, and after the squadron had remained a week or ten days in Barber's Bay to refit, it left that anchorage and returned to Besica Bay, with the understanding that if stress of weather should again drive it thence, it should not return to Barber's Bay, but should seek shelter elsewhere.

The Russian and Austrian Governments afterwards made representations both to the Porte and to Her Majesty's Government on this matter; stating that they considered the entrance of the British fleet into Barber's Bay as a contravention of the Treaty of July, 1841. It might have been contended that the presence of the British fleet in the outer bay was not a violation of what was intended by the treaty; because the treaty bound the Five Powers to conform to the regulations of the Porte in regard to the two Straits of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles; and the standing regulations of the Porte admitted ships of war, as well as merchantmen, to enter into and remain in Barber's Bay, and to wait there for a decision whether they could be allowed to go farther up or not. But the Government did not think it wise, right, or proper to take their stand on so narrow a ground. Having desired that the treaty of July, 1841, should be concluded, they thought it better to adopt the strictest interpretation of that treaty, the interpretation put upon it by Russia, that the Straits of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles should be held to mean the whole distance between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmora on the one side, and between the Mediterranean and the Sea of Marmora on the other; so that if British ships of war should not enter the bay between the inner and outer castles of the Dardanelles on the one side, Russian ships of war should not, on the other hand, be allowed to anchor at Buyukdere in the Bosphorus, where merchant ships from the Black Sea are in the custom of stopping. It is needless to mention that this prohibition does not apply to light ships, such as corvettes and steamers, employed for the missions at Constan- tinople; the firman of the Porte being first obtained for their passing.

I believe I have now gone through all the heads of the charges which have been brought against me in this debate. I think I have shown that the foreign policy of the Government, in all the transactions with respect to which its conduct has been impugned, has throughout been guided by those principles which, according to the resolution of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Sheffield, ought to regulate the conduct of the Government of England in the management of our foreign affairs. I believe that the principles on which we have acted are those which are held by the great mass of the people of this country. I am convinced these principles are calculated, so far as the influence of England may properly be exercised with respect to the destinies of other countries, to conduce to the maintenance of peace, to the advancement of civilization, to the welfare and happiness of mankind.

I do not complain of the conduct of those who have made these matters the means of attack upon Her Majesty's Ministers. The government of a great country like this, is undoubtedly an object of fair and legitimate ambition to men of all shades of opinion. It is a noble thing to be allowed to guide the policy and to influence the destinies of such a country; and, if ever it was an object of honourable ambition, more than ever must it be so at the moment at which I am speaking. For while we have seen, as stated by the right Baronet the Member for Ripon, the political earthquake rocking Europe from side to side — while we have seen thrones shaken, shattered, levelled; institutions overthrown and destroyed—while in almost every country of Europe the conflict of civil war has deluged the land with blood, from the Atlantic to the Black Sea, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean; this country has presented a spectacle honourable to the people of England, and worthy of the admiration of mankind.

We have shown that liberty is compatible with order; that individual freedom is reconcilable with obedience to the law. We have shown the example of a nation, in which every class of society accepts with cheerfulness the lot which Providence has assigned to it; while at the same time every individual of each class is constantly striving to raise himself in the social scale—not by injustice and wrong, not by violence and illegality—but by persevering good conduct, and by the steady and energetic exertion of the moral and intellectual faculties with which his Creator has endowed him. To govern such a people as this, is indeed an object worthy of the ambition of the noblest man who lives in the land; and therefore I find no fault with those who may think any opportunity a fair one, for endeavouring to place themselves in so distinguished and honourable a position. But I contend that we have not in our foreign policy done anything to forfeit the confidence of the country. We may not, perhaps, in this matter or in that, have acted precisely up to the opinions of one person or of another—and hard indeed it is, as we all know by our individual and private experience, to find any number of men agreeing entirely in any matter, on which they may not be equally possessed of the details of the facts, and circumstances, and reasons, and conditions which led to action. But, making allowance for those differences of opinion which may fairly and honourably arise among those who concur in general views, I maintain that the principles which can be traced through all our foreign transactions, as the guiding rule and directing spirit of our proceedings, are such as deserve approbation. I therefore fearlessly challenge the verdict which this House, as representing a political, a commercial, a constitutional country, is to give on the question now brought before it; whether the principles on which the foreign policy of Her Majesty's Government has been conducted, and the sense of duty which has led us to think ourselves bound to afford protection to our fellow subjects abroad, are proper and fitting guides for those who are charged with the Government of England; and whether, as the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity, when he could say Civis Romanus sum; so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England, will protect him against injustice and wrong.

Debate further adjourned till Thursday.