What is being argued against is not the enactment of a law to exclude foreign paupers, but of one to exclude foreign workers. But even if the former were to be proposed, it would have to be narrowly watched, lest it should be so drafted as to deprive England by a sidewind of the title of an asylum for the oppressed which she has so long and proudly worn. For it is at the right of asylum that some of the advocates of exclusion wish to strike. In the United States there is being formed a party to strengthen the “Contract to Labour” Law, which avowedly wishes “to stop the import of lawless elements”—an elastic phrase which might cover any body of persons who wished for reform. And in England, Mr. Vincent, the proposer of the Protectionist resolution adopted by the Tory conference at Oxford in 1887, stated that “the indiscriminate asylum afforded here has long been regarded by continental Governments as an outrage on good order and civilization.” He may rely upon it, however, that the English love for the right of asylum is not to be destroyed by the wish or the opinion of any despotic Government on earth, and that a right which shook down the strong Administration of Lord Palmerston, when in an evil hour he menaced it at the bidding of Louis Napoleon 30 years since, will withstand the threatenings even of a conclave of chosen Conservatives.
Many things are possible to a Tory Government, and it may be that, in the endeavour to secure some puff of a popular breeze to fill its sails, it will pander to the section which demands the exclusion of foreigners. But how could such a measure be proposed by a Ministry which has among its members the Duke of Portland, whose family name, Bentinck, proclaims his Dutch descent; Mr. Goschen and Baron Henry de Worms, whose names no less emphatically announce them to have sprung from German Jews; and Mr. Bartlett, who, though he tells the world by means of reference-books that he was born at Plymouth, forgets to add that this is not the town in England but one in the United States?
But it is not to be believed that England will in this matter forget her traditions. We, who are descended from Briton and Saxon, from Norman and Dane, have had reason to be proud of our faculty of absorbing all the foreign elements that have reached these shores, and turning them to good account. When our Puritan fathers were hunted down in England, it was in a foreign clime they made their home; when other Englishmen have lacked employment, it is to foreign lands they have gone; and the hospitality extended to them by the foreigner we have returned. Go into Canterbury Cathedral to-day, and there see the chapel set apart for the French refugees, driven from their country for conscience’ sake; remember how, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the unhappy Huguenots fled to England to do good service to their adopted country by establishing here the manufacture of silk. Never forget how advantageous it has been for Englishmen to have the whole world open to their endeavours; and hesitate long before attempting to deny to others that right of free movement in labour which has been and is of such immense advantage to ourselves.
XXVIII.—HOW SHOULD WE GUIDE OUR FOREIGN POLICY?
By a natural process of thought, the consideration of the proposed exclusion of foreign labour leads to that of foreign policy generally; and although the vast questions involved in our external relations are not to be solved in a few lines, an attempt to lay down some general principles upon the matter can hardly be wasted, for of all things connected with public affairs, foreign policy is that of which the average voter knows the least, and for which he pays the most. The yearly twenty-seven millions as interest on the National Debt is a perpetual legacy from the foreign policy of the past; while an equally turbulent one in the present would increase the already heavy expenditure on the navy and army to an alarming extent. But as all questions covered by the phrase cannot be put in the simple form “Shall we go to war?” there is a necessity for the leading principles which should govern them to be considered.
A good guide to the future is experience of the past, and our English history will have taught us little if it has not shown that many a war has been waged which patience and wisdom might have avoided. And although we have never avowedly gone to war “for an idea,” as Louis Napoleon said that France did concerning the expedition in which he stole two Italian provinces, it has been because of the devotion of our statesmen to certain pet theories that much shedding of blood is due.
One of these theories is that some nation or other is “our natural enemy.” France for several centuries held that position, and it was as obvious to one generation that the word “Frenchman” was synonymous with “fiend” as it was for another to link “Spaniard” with “devil” and for a nearer still to consider that the Emperor Nicholas of Russia and “Old Nick” were one and the same. Just now the “natural enemy” idea is happily dormant, if not dead; but its evil effect upon our foreign policy has been all too plainly marked in many a page of history.
Another theory, and one which has had a more far-reaching extent, is that it is incumbent upon the nations of Europe to maintain “the balance of power.” This, again, is a phrase which has lost much of its old force; but a Continental struggle might cause it to bloom once more with all its baleful effects. Speaking about a quarter of a century ago, Mr. Bright, considering the theory to be “pretty nearly dead and buried,” observed of it to his constituents: “You cannot comprehend at a thought what is meant by that balance of power. If the record could be brought before you—but it is not possible to the eye of humanity to scan the scroll upon which are recorded the sufferings which the theory of the balance of power has entailed upon this country. It rises up before me, when I think of it, as a ghastly phantom which during 170 years, whilst it has been worshipped in this country, has loaded the nation with debt and with taxes, has sacrificed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Englishmen, has desolated the homes of millions of families, and has left us, as the great result of the profligate expenditure which it has caused, a doubled peerage at one end of the social scale and far more than a doubled pauperism at the other. I am very glad to be here to-night, amongst other things, to be able to say that we may rejoice that this foul idol—fouler than any heathen tribe ever worshipped—has at last been thrown down, and that there is one superstition less which has its hold upon the minds of English statesmen and of the English people.”