4.
I now propose to you the health of “Her Majesty’s Ministers.”
If there ever was a time when the Queen’s Government, by whomsoever conducted, required the support—ay, not the support alone, but the confidence, goodwill, and sympathy of their fellow-countrymen, it is the present. It is not the way to success in war to support it, however ardently and energetically, and to run down and weaken those who have to conduct it. We are engaged with a mighty adversary, who uses against us all those wonderful powers which have sprung up under the generating influence of our liberty and our civilization, and employs them with all the force which unity of purpose and action, impenetrable secresy, and uncontrolled despotic power give him; whilst we have to meet him under a state of things intended for peace and the promotion of that very civilization—a civilization the offspring of public discussion, the friction of parties, and popular control over the government of the State. The Queen has no power to levy troops, and none at her command, except such as voluntarily offer their services. Her Government can entertain no measures for the prosecution of the war without having to explain them publicly in Parliament; her armies and fleets can make no movement, nor even prepare for any, without its being proclaimed by the press; and no mistake, however trifling, can occur, no weakness exist, which it may be of the utmost importance to conceal from the world, without its being publicly denounced, and even frequently exaggerated, with a morbid satisfaction. The Queen’s ambassadors can carry on no negociation which has not to be publicly defended by entering into all the arguments which a negotiator, to have success, must be able to shut up in the innermost recesses of his heart—nay, at the most critical moment, when the complication of military measures and diplomatic negociations may be at their height, an adverse vote in Parliament may of a sudden deprive her of all her confidential servants.
Gentlemen! Constitutional Government is under a heavy trial, and can only pass triumphantly through it, if the country will grant its confidence—a patriotic, indulgent, and self-denying confidence—to Her Majesty’s Government. Without this, all their labours must be in vain.
I hope you will drink with me “The Health of Viscount Palmerston and Her Majesty’s Ministers.”