The Liberal Tradition

5. FOREIGN POLICY

46. RICHARD COBDEN: Speech in the House of Commons, 12 June 1849

[Cobden’s motion ran: ‘That an humble address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that she will be graciously pleased to direct her Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to enter into communications with Foreign Powers, inviting them to concur in Treaties, binding the respective parties, in the event of any future misunderstanding, which cannot be arranged by amicable negotiation, to refer the matter in dispute to the decision of arbitrators.’]

It is not necessary that anyone in this House, or out of it, who accedes to this motion, should be of opinion that we are not justified, under any circumstances, in resorting to war, even in self-defence. It is only necessary that you should be agreed that war is a great calamity, which it is desirable we should avoid if possible. . . .

I assume that every one in this House would only sanction war, in case it was imperatively demanded on our part, in defence of our honour, or our just interests. . . .

My object is to see if we cannot devise some better method than war for attaining those ends; and my plan is, simply and solely, that we should resort to that mode of settling disputes in communities, which individuals resort to in private life. I only want you to go one step farther, to carry out in another instance the principle which you recognise in other cases—that the intercourse between communities is nothing more than the intercourse of individuals in the aggregate. I want to know why there may not be an agreement between this country and France, or between this country and America, by which the nations should respectively bind themselves, in case of any misunderstanding arising which could not be settled by mutual representation or diplomacy, to refer the dispute to the decision of arbitrators. . . . I do not confine myself to the plan of referring disputes to neutral Powers. I see the difficulty of two independent states, like England and France, doing so, as one might prefer a republic for the arbitrator, and the other a monarchy. I should prefer to see these disputes referred to individuals, whether designated commissioners, or plenipotentiaries, or arbitrators, appointed from one country to meet men appointed from another country to inquire into the matter and decide upon it; or, if they cannot do so, to have the power of calling in an umpire, as is done in all arbitrations. I propose that these individuals should have absolute power to dispose of the question submitted to them.

We are now spending every year on our armaments more than we spent annually, on the seven years’ war, in the middle of the last century. . . . I wish to know where this system is to end. I have sat on the army, navy, and ordnance committees, and I see no limit to the increase of our armaments under the existing system. Unless you can adopt some such plan as I propose, unless you can approach foreign countries in a conciliatory spirit, and offer to them some kind of assurance that you do not wish to attack them, and receive the assurance that you are not going to be assailed by them, I see no necessary or logical end to the increase of our establishments. . . .

Will any one, for a moment, tell me that the disputes about the boundary between Maine and New Brunswick, and the misunderstanding respecting Oregon, might not have been settled by arbitration? . . . Supposing the case to have been left to the decision of such an umpire as Baron Humboldt, for example; would he not have decided far more correctly than any war would be likely to do? I know that the Oregon question caused the liveliest apprehensions to those who were engaged on both sides, in this dispute, in 1846. . . . The great difficulty was lest party spirit and popular excitement should arise on either side of the water, to hinder and perplex the efforts of those who were interested in its settlement. It is to remove that difficulty in future—to prevent the interposition of bad passions and popular prejudices in these disputes—that I desire to have provision made, beforehand, for the settlement of any quarrel that may arise by arbitration. . . .

Now, I would ask, in the face of these facts, where is the argument you can use against the reasonable proposition which I now put forward? I may be told that, even if you make treaties of .this kind, you cannot enforce the award. I admit it. . . .

I do not, myself, advocate an appeal to arms; but that which follows the violation of a treaty, under the present system, may follow the violation of a treaty of arbitration, if adopted. What I say, however, is, if you make a treaty with another country, binding it to refer any dispute to arbitration, and if that country violates that treaty, when the dispute arises, then you will place it in a worse position before the world—you will place it in so infamous a position, that I doubt if any country would enter into war on such bad grounds as that country must occupy. . . .

I shall be quite satisfied, as a beginning, if I see the noble Lord, or any one filling his place, trying to negotiate an arbitration treaty with the United States, or with France. But I should like to bind ourselves to the same principle with the weakest and smallest States. I should be as willing to see it done with Tuscany, Belgium, or Holland, as with France or America, because I am anxious to prove to the world that we are prepared to submit our misunderstandings, in all cases, to a pure and more just arbitrament than that of brute force. Whilst I do not agree with those who are in favour of a Congress of nations, I do think that if the larger and more civilised Powers were to enter into treaties of this kind, their decisions would become precedents and you would in this way, in the course of time, establish a kind of common law amongst nations, which would save the time and trouble of arbitration in each individual case.

I do not anticipate any sudden or great change in the character of mankind, nor do I expect a complete extinction of those passions which form part of our nature. But I do not think there is anything very irrationalin expecting that nations may see that the present system of settling disputes is barbarous, demoralising, and unjust; that it wars against the best interests of society, and that it ought to give place to a mode more consonant with the dictates of reason and humanity.

Speeches by Richard Cobden, M.P. (1870), vol. ii, pp. 159-67.

47. VISCOUNT PALMERSTON: Speech at Tiverton, 31 July 1847

. . . We took part with the people of Spain—with those who wanted constitutional liberty, equal laws, a Parliament, justice, no Inquisition—against those who were for having no Parliament, no justice, but much Inquisition. We succeeded; and by means of very trifling assistance, which could not possibly have determined events, if the Spanish people had not been on that side, we enabled them to work out their liberties with smaller sacrifices than they must otherwise have submitted to, and with less suffering than they must otherwise have encountered. . . . There was a struggle in Portugal very similar to that which I have mentioned as taking place in Spain. . . . Did we set up Dom Miguel? No; we put him down. We threw our influence into the scale of liberty, freedom, and constitutional rights; and, by our. assistance, that cause conquered, and the Portuguese nation became possessed of a Parliament, and of all those rights which are essential for securing the liberties of a nation.

H. W. V. Temperley and L. M. Penson, Foundations of British Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 106-7.

48. RICHARD COBDEN: Speech in the House of Commons, 28 June 1850

[Cobden was speaking in the debate on Don Pacifico.]

I never in public advocated interference with the Government of foreign countries, even in cases where my feelings were most strongly interested in anything relating to their domestic affairs or concerns. When I see that principle violated by others, as in the case of the Russian invasion of Hungary, and when I see a portion of the press of this civilised nation hounding on that semi-barbarous empire, then, believing that this is almost the only country where there is a free platform, and where it cannot be corrupted, as a portion of the press may have been, I shall denounce it, as I denounced the Government of Russia, and, as I stated at the same time, I was ready to denounce our own Government also. But it is a matter of very small importance what my individual opinion may be, when you come to the question, whether the Government of this country shall become the propagandist of their opinions in foreign countries. I maintain this Government has no right to communicate except through the Government of other countries; and that, whether it be a republic, a despotism, or a monarchy, I hold it has no right to interfere with any other form of Government. Mark the effect of your own principle, if you take the opposite ground. If you recognise the principle of intervention in your Government, you must tolerate it in other nations also. With what face could you get up and denounce the Emperor of Russia for invading Hungary, after the doctrine advocated by the hon. and learned Member (Mr. Cockburn) to-night had been adopted by this country? I say, if you want to benefit nations who are struggling for their freedom, establish as one of the maxims of international law the principle of non-intervention. If you want to give a guarantee for peace, and as I believe, the surest guarantee for progress and freedom, lay down this principle, and act on it, that no foreign State has a right by force to interfere with the domestic concerns of another State, even to confer a benefit on it, without its own consent.

Do you want to benefit the Hungarians and Italians? I think I know more of them than most people in this country. I sympathised with them during their manly struggle for freedom, and I have admired and respected them not less in their hour of adversity. I will tell you the sentiments of the leading men of the Hungarians. . . .

These men say,—‘We don’t ask you to help us, or to come to our assistance. Establish such a principle as shall provide we shall not be interfered with by others.’ And what do the Italians say? They don’t want the English to interfere with them, or to help them. ‘Leave us to ourselves,’ they say. ‘Establish the principle that we shall not be interfered with by foreigners.’

I will answer the hon. and learned Gentleman’s cheer. He seems to ask, How will you keep out Austria from Italy, and Russia from Hungary? I will give him an illustration of what I mean. Does he remember when Kossuth took refuge in Turkey, and that Austria and the Emperor of Russia demanded him back? I beg him to understand that this illustrious refugee was not saved by any intervention of the Foreign Secretary. Has it not been admitted that the Emperor of Russia gave up his claim before the courier arrived from England? What was it, then, that liberated them? It was the universal outbreak of public opinion and public indignation in Western Europe. And why had public opinion this power? Because this demand for the extradition of political offenders was a violation of the law of nations, which declares that persons who have committed political offences on one state shall find a sanctuary in another, and ought not to be delivered up. If our Government were always to act upon this principle of non-intervention, we should see the law of nations declaring itself as clearly against the invasion of a foreign country as it has spoken out against the extradition of political refugees. Let us begin, and set the example to other nations of this non-intervention. . . .

I believe the progress of freedom depends more upon the maintenance of peace, the spread of commerce, and the diffusion of education, than upon the labours of Cabinets or Foreign-offices. And if you can prevent those perturbations which have recently taken place abroad in consequence of your foreign policy, and if you will leave other nations in greater tranquillity, those ideas of freedom will continue to progress, and you need not trouble yourselves about them.

Speeches by Richard Cobden, M.P. (1870), vol. ii, pp. 225-7.

49. JOHN BRIGHT: Letter to Absalom Watkin on the Crimean War, 29 October 1854

At this moment England is engaged in a murderous warfare with Russia, although the Russian Government accepted her own terms of peace, and has been willing to accept them in the sense of England’s own interpretation of them ever since they were offered; and at the same time England is allied with Turkey, whose Government rejected the award of England, and who entered into the war in opposition to the advice of England. Surely, when the Vienna note was accepted by Russia, the Turks should have been prevented from going to war, or should have been allowed to go to war at their own risk.

I have said nothing here that all these troubles have sprung out of the demands made by France upon the Turkish Government, and urged in language more insulting than any which has been shown to have been used by Prince Menchikoff. I have said nothing of the diplomatic war which has been raging for many years past in Constantinople, and in which England has been behind no other Power in attempting to subject the Porte to foreign influences. I have said nothing of the abundant evidence there is that we are not only at war with Russia, but with all the Christian population of the Turkish Empire, and that we are building up our Eastern policy on a false foundation—namely, on the perpetual maintenance of the most immoral and filthy of all despotisms over one of the fairest portions of the earth which it has desolated, and over a population it has degraded but has not been able to destroy. I have said nothing of the wretched delusion that we are fighting for civilization in supporting the Turk against the Russian and against the subject Christian population of Turkey. I have said nothing about our pretended sacrifices for freedom in this war, in which our great and now dominant ally is a monarch who, last in Europe, struck down a free constitution, and dispersed by military violence a national Representative Assembly.

My doctrine would have been non-intervention in this case. The danger of the Russian power was a phantom; the necessity of permanently upholding the Mahometan rule in Europe is an absurdity. Our love for civilization, when we subject the Greeks and Christians to the Turks, is a sham; and our sacrifices for freedom, when working out the behests of the Emperor of the French and coaxing Austria to help us, is a pitiful imposture. The evils of non-intervention were remote and vague, and could neither be weighed nor described in any accurate terms. The good we can judge something of already, by estimating the cost of a contrary policy. And what is that cost? War in the north and south of Europe, threatening to involve every country of Europe. Many, perhaps fifty millions sterling, in the course of expenditure by this country alone, to be raised from the taxes of a people whose extrication from ignorance and poverty can only be hoped for from the continuance of peace. The disturbance of trade throughout the world, the derangement of monetary affairs, and difficulties and ruin to thousands of families. Another year of high prices of food, notwithstanding a full harvest in England, chiefly because war interferes with imports, and we have declared our principal foreign food-growers to be our enemies. The loss of human life to an enormous extent. Many thousands of our own countrymen have already perished of pestilence and in the field; and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of English families will be plunged into sorrow, as a part of the penalty to be paid for the folly of the nation and its rulers.

When the time comes for the ‘inquisition for blood’, who shall answer for these things? You have read the tidings from the Crimea; you have, perhaps, shuddered at the slaughter; you remember the terrific picture—I speak not of the battle, and the charge, and the tumultuous excitement of the conflict, but of the field after the battle—Russians, in their frenzy or their terror, shooting Englishmen who would have offered them water to quench their agony of thirst; Englishmen, in crowds, rifling the pockets of the men they had slain or wounded, taking their few shillings or roubles, and discovering among the plunder of the stiffening corpses images of the ‘Virgin and the Child.’ You have read this, and your imagination has followed the fearful details. This is war,—every crime which human nature can commit or imagine, every horror it can perpetrate or suffer; and this it is which our Christian Government recklessly plunges into, and which so many of our countrymen at this moment think it patriotic to applaud! You must excuse me if I cannot go with you. I will have no part in this terrible crime. My hands shall be unstained with the blood which is being shed. The necessity of maintaining themselves in office may influence an administration; delusions may mislead a people; Vattel may afford you a law and a defence; but no respect for men who form a Government, no regard I have for ‘going with the stream’, and no fear of being deemed wanting in patriotism, shall influence me in favour of a policy which, in my conscience, I believe to be as criminal before God as it is destructive of the true interest of my country.

Speechs by John Bright, M.P., ed. by J. H. T. Rogers (1868), vol. i, pp. 529-35.

50. WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE: Speech in the House of Commons, 3 March 1857

[This speech was subsequently reprinted as a pamphlet, War in China,]

My right honourable friend the member for Carlisle was forbidden to appeal to the principles of Christianity. . . . As it seems to give offence, I will make no appeal to those principles; but I will appeal to that which is older than Christianity, because it was in the world before it—to that which is broader than Christianity, because it extends in the world beyond it—and to that which underlies Christianity, for Christianity itself appeals to it—I appeal to that justice which binds man to man. . . . We have spoken of the treaty obligations of China towards ourselves; but let not our treaty obligations to China be forgotten.

[Mr. Gladstone, referring to Article 12 of the Treaty ceding Hong Kong to Great Britain, continued:]

By that article you have contracted, under the most solemn obligations, to put down smuggling to the very best of your power. Is there anything peculiar in your smuggling on the coast of China to give special stringency to this obligation? It comprises the worst, the most pernicious, the most demoralizing and destructive of all the contraband trades that are carried on upon the surface of the globe. . . .

Your greatest and most valuable trade with China is this trade with opium. It is a smuggling trade. You promised to put it down. You received Hong-Kong for the purpose of careening and refitting your vessels, and instead of that you have drawn together those 60,000 Chinese within it, and from them you find the materials for manning, sustaining and organizing a fleet of coasters whose business is to enlarge, who have enlarged and who are enlarging, that smuggling traffic that you are bound by treaty to put down. So stands the case so far as the treaty is concerned. And now, having taken Hong-Kong for purposes that you have not fulfilled, having applied it to different purposes, having failed entirely, or rather not having endeavoured to put down this smuggling trade, having organised this coasting trade for purposes which included an enlargement of that smuggling trade, you accumulate all these acts of injustice by trumping up a claim built upon the most pitiable technicalities to cover this coasting fleet with the British flag; and when we are told that such proceedings ought not to be endured, then you reproach us with indifference to the honour of the ensign of our country. . . .

My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Colonies said there is no war in China. I agree with him. No, Sir, there is not war in China, but what is there? There is hostility. There is bloodshed. There is a trampling down of the weak by the strong. There is the terrible and abominable retaliation of the weak upon the strong. You are now occupied in this House by revolting and harrowing details about a Chinese baker who poisoned bread—about proclamations for the capture of British heads,—about the waylaying of a postal steamer, and the murder of those on board. And these things you think strengthen your case. Why, they deepen your guilt. . . .You go to China and make war upon those who stand before you as women or as children. They try to resist you; they call together their troops; they load their guns; they kill one or wound perhaps two in action, while you perhaps slay thousands. They are unable to meet you in the field. You have no equality of ground on which to meet them. You can earn no glory in such warfare, and it is those who put the British flag to such uses who stain it. . . .

But we are told to beware of an adverse vote of the House of Commons. We are told to consider the effect of such a vote upon the Chinese. We are told to consider the ruinous consequences to our trade. We are asked if we wish to extend the ruinous conflagration which has broken out, and to injure those interests of humanity which it is our duty to assert. . . . But of all the cases in which warlike operations were ever begun, I do not know of any in which the political problem to be solved was so simple. The Chinese are not making war upon us. If, when the vote of this Parliament goes to China they should be making war on us, that would be a very different matter. The defence of the lives and properties of the subjects of the Queen would be, under all circumstances, an imperative obligation. But there is nothing so improbable as that they should make war on us. They have never shown any skill or daring in the nature of aggressive operations. We are making war upon them. . . .

I find an appeal has been made to this House which appears to me to be a false and illegitimate appeal. It is an appeal to fear, which is seldom a rightful and noble sentiment, and it is to that fear which is the basest and worst kind of fear—the fear of being thought afraid. The Government are afraid of the mischievous impression that will be produced upon the Chinese if the acts of our officials are disavowed. . . . Presently we shall be told by the noble lord (Palmerston) of the wise caution that we ought to display, of the solemn predicament in which we are placed, of the political mischief which may ensue. Shadowy pictures will be drawn of the dangers, the confusion, the weakness, and the paralysis of British power in the East. . . .

The confessions and avowals of the supporters of the Government have been, it appears to me, perfectly fatal either to the continuance of that power, or else to the character and fame of England. They talk of the consequences, they admit in full the injustice; and then they say that we must go on with that injustice. There is a general admission, either express or tacit, that the conduct of the British authorities cannot be defended on its merits. Few have justified the proceedings that have taken place. Many of those who intend to support the Government have openly condemned them. . . . I will ask what the effect will be throughout the world, if it goes forth that in the debates held in the two Houses of Parliament the majority, nay almost the whole of the speakers condemned the proceedings, and that even among those who sustained the Government with their vote there was a large number who condemned and scarcely any that ventured to uphold them. Why, Sir, the opinion will be that England is a power which, while it is higher and more daring in its pretensions to Christianity than any other power on the face of the globe, yet in a case when her own interests have been concerned, and when she has been acting in the remote and distant East, when fairly put to it and asked whether she would do right or wrong, she was ready to adopt for fear of political inconvenience the principle—‘I will make the law of wrong the law of my Eastern policy, and will lay the foundation of that Empire which is my proudest boast in nothing more nor less than gross injustice.’ Sir, this is not my opinion. . . . I will not believe that England will lay the foundation of its Eastern Empire in sin and in shame like this. I believe, on the contrary, that if you have the courage to assert your prerogatives as the British House of Commons, you will pursue a course which is more consistent with sound policy as well as with the eternal principles of justice. . . .

It does not rest with subordinate functionaries abroad—it does not rest with the Executive Government—it does not rest with the House of Lords, finally, and in the last resort, to say what shall be the policy of England and to what purpose her power shall be directed. Sir, that function lies within these walls. . . . England is not yet committed. With everyone of us it rests to take his part in showing that this House, which is the first, the most ancient, and the noblest temple of freedom in the world, is also the temple of that everlasting justice without which freedom itself would be only a name or only a curse to mankind.

War in China, A Speech by W. E. Gladstone (1857).

51. JOHN BRIGHT: Speech at Birmingham, 29 October 1858

I believe that I understate the sum when I say that, in pursuit of this Will-o’-the-wisp, (the liberties of Europe and the balance of power,) there has been extracted from the industry of the people of this small island no less an amount than 2,000,000,000 1. sterling. I cannot imagine how much 2,000,000,000 1. is, and therefore I shall not attempt to make you comprehend it. I presume it is something like those vast and incomprehensible astronomical distances with which we have been lately made familiar, we feel that we do not know one bit more about them than we did before. When I try to think of that sum of 2,000,000,000 1., there is a sort of vision passes before my mind’s eye. I see your peasant labourer delve and plough, sow and reap, sweat beneath the summer’s sun, or grow prematurely old before the Winter’s blast. I see your noble mechanic, with his manly countenance and his matchless skill, toiling at his bench or his forge. I see one of the workers in our factories in the north, a woman—a girl, it may be—gentle and good, as many of them are, as your sisters and daughters are—I see her intent upon the spindle, whose revolutions are so rapid that the eye fails altogether to detect them, or watching the alternating flight of the unresting shuttle. I turn again to another portion of your population, which, ‘plunged in mines, forgets a sun was made,’ and I see the man who brings up from the secret chambers of the earth the elements of the riches and greatness of his country. When I see all this, I have before me a mass of produce and of wealth which I am no more able to comprehend than I am that 2,000,000,000 1. of which I have spoken, but I behold in its full proportions the hideous error of your Government, whose fatal policy consumes in some cases a half, never less than a third, of all the results of that industry which God intended should fertilize and bless every home in England, but the fruits of which are squandered in every part of the surface of the globe, without producing the smallest good to the people of England.

How, indeed, can I, any more than any of you, be un-English and anti-national? Was I not born upon the same soil? Do I not come of the same English stock? Are not my family committed irrevocably to the fortunes of this country? Is not whatever property I may have depending as much as yours is depending upon the good government of our common fatherland? Then how shall any man dare to say to any one of his countrymen, because he happens to hold a different opinion on questions of great public policy, that therefore he is un-English, and is to be condemned as anti-national?

We have been at war since that time, I believe, with, for, and against every considerable nation in Europe. . . . We have been all round Europe, and across it over and over again, and after a policy so distinguished, so pre-eminent, so long-continued, and so costly, I think we have a fair right—I have, at least—to ask those who are in favour of it to show us its visible result. Europe is not at this moment, so far as I know, speaking of it broadly, and making allowance for certain improvements in its general civilisation, more free politically than it was before. The balance of power is like perpetual motion, or any of those impossible things which some men are always racking their brains and spending their time and money to accomplish. . . .

The more you examine this matter the more you will come to the conclusion which I have arrived at, that this foreign policy, this regard for ‘the liberties of Europe’ this care at one time for ‘the Protestant interests,’ this excessive love for the ‘balance of power,’ is neither more nor less than a gigantic system of out-door relief for the aristocracy of Great Britain. . . .

Perhaps there are in this room, I am sure there are in the country, many persons who hold a superstitious traditionary belief that, somehow or other, our vast trade is to be attributed to what we have done in this way, that it is thus that we have opened markets and advanced commerce, that English greatness depends upon the extent of English conquests and English military renown. But I am inclined to think that, with the exception of Australia, there is not a single dependency of the Crown which, if we come to reckon what it has cost in war and protection, would not be found to be a positive loss to the people of this country. . . . Wherever you turn, you will find that the opening of markets, developing of new countries, introducing cotton cloth with cannon balls, are vain, foolish, and wretched excuses for wars.

What are we to say of a nation which lives under a perpetual delusion that it is about to be attacked—a nation which is the most combined on the face of the earth, with little less than 30,000,000 of people all united under a Government which, though we intend to reform it, we do not the less respect it, and which has mechanical power and wealth to which no other country offers any parallel? There is no causeway to Britain; the free waves of the sea flow day and night for ever round her shores, and yet there are people going about with whom the hallucination is so strong that they do not merely discover it quietly to their friends, but they write it down in double-leaded columns, in leading articles,—nay, some of them actually get up on platforms and proclaim it to hundreds and thousands of their fellow-countrymen. I should like to ask you whether these delusions are to last for ever, whether this policy is to be the perpetual policy of England, whether these results are to go on gathering and gathering until there come, as come there must inevitably, some dreadful catastrophe on our country.

I should like to-night, if I could, to inaugurate one of the best and holiest revolutions that ever took place in this country. We have had a dozen revolutions since some of us were children. . . .

It is not from statesmen that these things come. It is not from them that have proceeded these great revolutions of opinion on the questions of Reform, Protection, Colonial Government and Criminal Law—it was from public meetings such as this, from the intelligence and conscience of the great body of the people who have no interest in wrong, and who never go from the right but by temporary error and under momentary passion.

It is for you to decide whether our greatness shall be only temporary or whether it shall be enduring. When I am told that the greatness of our country is shown by the 100,000,000 l. of revenue produced, may I not also ask how it is that we have 1,100,000 paupers in this kingdom, and why it is that 7,000,000 l. should be taken from the industry chiefly of the labouring classes to support a small nation, as it were, of paupers? . . .

While these things continue, I say that we have no reason to be self-satisfied and contented with our position; but that we who are in Parliament and are more directly responsible for affairs, and you who are also responsible, though in a lower degree, are bound by the sacred duty which we owe our country to examine why it is that with all this trade, all this industry, and all this personal freedom, there is still so much that is unsound at the base of our social fabric?

I believe there is no permanent greatness to a nation except it be based upon morality. I do not care for military greatness or military renown. I care for the condition of the people among whom I live. There is no man in England who is less likely to speak irreverently of the Crown and Monarchy of England than I am; but crowns, coronets, mitres, military display, the pomp of war, wide colonies, and a huge empire, are, in my view, all trifles light as air, and not worth considering, unless with them you can have a fair share of comfort, contentment, and happiness among the great body of the people. Palaces, baronial castles, great halls, stately mansions, do not make a nation. The nation in every country dwells in the cottage; and unless the light of your Constitution can shine there, unless the beauty of your legislation and the excellence of your statesmanship are impressed there on the feelings and condition of the people, rely upon it you have yet to learn the duties of government.

I have not, as you have observed, pleaded that this country should remain without adequate and scientific means of defence. I acknowledge it to be the duty of your statesmen, acting upon the known opinions and principles of ninety-nine out of every hundred persons in the country, at all times, with all possible moderation, but with all possible efficiency, to take steps which shall preserve order within and on the confines of your kingdom. But I shall repudiate and denounce the expenditure of every shilling, the engagement of every man, the employment of every ship, which has no object but intermeddling in the affairs of other countries, and endeavouring to extend the boundaries of an Empire which is already large enough to satisfy the greatest ambition, and I fear is much too large for the highest statesmanship to which any man has yet attained.

The most ancient of profane historians has told us that the Scythians of his time were a very warlike people, and that they elevated an old cimeter upon a platform as a symbol of Mars, for to Mars alone, I believe, they built altars and offered sacrifices. To this cimeter they offered sacrifices of horses and cattle, the main wealth of the country, and more costly sacrifices than to all the rest of their gods. I often ask myself whether we are at all advanced in one respect beyond those Scythians. What are our contributions to charity, to education, to morality, to religion, to justice and to civil government, when compared with the wealth we expend in sacrifices to the old cimeter?

May I ask you, then, to believe, as I do most devoutly believe, that the moral law was not written for men alone in their individual character, but that it was written as well for nations, and for nations great as this of which we are citizens. If nations reject and deride that moral law, there is a penalty which will inevitably follow. It may not come at once, it may not come in our lifetime; but, rely upon it, the great Italian is not a poet only, but a prophet, when he says,—

‘The sword of heaven is not in haste to smite,
Nor yet doth linger.’

We have experience, we have beacons, we have landmarks enough. We know what the past has cost us, we know how much and how far we have wandered, but we are not left without a guide. It is true we have not, as an ancient people had, Urim and Thummim—those oraculous gems on Aaron’s breast—from which to take counsel, but we have the unchangeable and eternal principles of the moral law to guide us, and only so far as we walk by that guidance can we be permanently a great nation, or our people a happy people.

Speeches by John Bright, M.P., ed. by J. H. T. Rogers (1868), vol. ii, pp. 373-99.

52. JOHN BRIGHT: Speech at Glasgow, 21 December 1858

I am not about for a moment to discuss the question, whether our foreign policy has been, or is now, good, bad, or indifferent, because that does not very much affect the question to which I wish to call your attention. In our home affairs we have a very open system of government. If the Home Office is about to do anything, somebody hears of it, and somebody approves of it, or somebody objects to it. In all matters connected with our personal freedom, with the administration of justice, in all things which may be called internal, we have the freest opportunity of obtaining information, expressing our opinion, and enforcing our views on the Government.

But when you come to our foreign policy, you are no longer Englishmen; you are no longer free; you are recommended not to inquire. If you do, you are told you cannot understand it; you are snubbed, you are hustled aside. We are told that the matter is too deep for common understandings like ours—that there is great mystery about it. We have what is called diplomacy. We have a great many lords engaged in what they call diplomacy. We have a lord in Paris, we have another in Madrid, another in Berlin, another (at least we had until very lately) in Vienna, and another lord in Constantinople; and we have another at Washington; in fact, almost all over the world; particularly where the society is most pleasant, and the climate most agreeable, there is almost certain to be an English nobleman to represent the English Foreign Office, but you never know what he is doing. You have three or four columns every other day in most of the leading London papers—not a little of which is copied into the provincial journals—all about our foreign affairs, and yet, notwithstanding this, you are not a bit better acquainted with the matter when you read it, if you do read it at all, than you were before. Yet you have the great fact, that you have paid 28,000,000 1. a-year for more than forty years, and, since the year 1815, more than 1,000,000,000 1. out of the industry of the population. And out of all this comes the supposed necessity of armaments twice as large as were necessary twenty-five years ago; and yet you have no control over, and know nothing of the matter.

Lately, our Minister for Foreign Affairs was candid enough to tell you that Government drifted into war, and you know what is meant when a ship drifts. And other Foreign Ministers have drifted us into a great many wars; and I expect, if some change be not made with regard to this question, that they will either find it convenient, or that they cannot avoid it, from some cause or other, to allow us to drift into a war at some future period. I will not talk of what war is—we have had a specimen of it. Be it necessary or be it unnecessary—be the quarrel just or be it unjust—be it for the rights of the nation or to gratify the stupidity of a monarch or the intrigues of a minister—war, nevertheless, is one of the greatest calamities that can afflict any kingdom of the human race; and you, the people, are ignorant of the steps by which you are drawn into war.

It is a curious thing to observe the evils which nations live under, and the submissive spirit with which they yield to them. I have often compared, in my own mind, the people of England with the people of ancient Egypt, and the Foreign Office of this country with the temples of the Egyptians. We are told by those who pass up and down the Nile, that on its banks are grand temples with stately statues and massive and lofty columns—statues each one of which would have appeared almost to have exhausted a quarry in its production. You have, further, vast chambers, and gloomy passages; and some innermost recess, some holy of holies, in which, when you arrive at it, you find some loathsome reptile which a nation reverenced and revered, and bowed itself down to worship. In our Foreign Office we have no massive columns; we have no statues; but we have a mystery as profound; and in the innermost recesses of it we find some miserable intrigue, in defence of which your fleets are traversing every ocean, your armies are perishing in every clime, and the precious blood of our country’s children is squandered as though it had no price. I hope that an improved representation will change all this; that the great portion of our expenditure which is incurred in carrying out the secret and irresponsible doings of our Foreign Office will be placed directly under the free control of a Parliament elected by the great body of the people of the United Kingdom.

Ibid. pp. 73-8.