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A Free Press in Malta deprecated.
Now, in regard to this matter of a free press in Malta, I crave your lordships' attention to the facts of the case for a moment, and I beg the house to bear them in mind. What is Malta? It is a fortress and a seaport—it is a great naval and military arsenal for our shipping and forces in the Mediterranean. We hold it by conquest. We hold it as an important post, as a great military and naval arsenal, and as nothing more. My lords, if these are the facts, we might as well think of planting a free press on the fore deck of the admiral's flag-ship in the Mediterranean, or on the caverns of the batteries of Gibraltar, or in the camp of Sir John Colborne in Canada, as of establishing it in Malta. A free press in Malta in the Italian language is an absurdity. Of the hundred thousand individuals who compose the population of Malta, three-fourths at least speak nothing but the Maltese dialect, and do not understand the Italian language. Of the one hundred thousand inhabitants of the island, at least three-fourths can neither read nor write. What advantages, then, can accrue to the people of Malta from the establishment of a free press? We do not want to teach our English sailors and soldiers to understand Italian. A free press will find no readers among them either. Who, then, is it for? These gentlemen say, that, unless the government support a free press in Malta, it cannot exist of itself, and they suggest an expense of £800 a year in its favour. They have done nothing more than this that I am aware of since their appointment, and it is plain, that the savings spoken of by the noble baron as having been effected by their recommendation are completely swallowed up by the project of a free press. My lords, I cannot help thinking that it is wholly unnecessary and greatly unbecoming of the government to form such an establishment, of such a description, in such a place as Malta; and the more particularly, as the object for which it is made, must be both of a dangerous tendency to this country, and fraught with evil to others. The free press which they propose, is to be conducted, not by foreign Italians, but by Maltese, subjects of her majesty, enjoying the same privileges as we do. Now, what does this mean? It means that the licence to do wrong is unlimited. If it were conducted by foreign Italians, you could have a check upon them if they acted in such a manner as would tend to compromise us with our neighbours—you could send them out of the island—you could prevent their doing injury in that manner by various ways. But here you have no such check—you have no check at all—your free press in that respect is uncontrollable. If the free press chooses to preach up insurrection in Italy from its den in Malta, you have no power of preventing it. Were the conductors foreign Italians you could lay your hand on them at once, and dispose of them as aliens; but you cannot do that with the Maltese subjects, enjoying the same right and possessing the same freedom as ourselves. I did hope, that we should have been cured by this time of our experiments on exciting insurrection in the other countries of Europe—in the dominions of neighbouring princes—in the territories of our allies. I did think that we had received a sufficient lesson in these matters to last us a long time, even for ever, in the results which have taken place through such interference in Portugal, Spain, Italy—ay, and in Canada too—and that they had put an end to our dangerous mania for exciting insurrection in foreign countries. Such, my lords, I assert is the object of a free press in Malta—to excite insurrection in the dominions of our neighbour and ally, the King of the Two Sicilies, and in the dominions of the King of Sardinia—and I confess that I am ashamed of the government, considering the results that have taken place, from the doctrines promulgated by it, that they have not done everything in their power to suppress instead of encouraging and supporting it; and that they had not sent out their commissions with full power to do so, rather than instructed them to call for its establishment.
May 3, 1838.
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State of Poverty in Ireland.
Of all the countries in Europe, Ireland is the one in which it has appeared to me to be least possible to establish anything in the nature of the English poor-laws. The opinion delivered by others has been, that there are no materials to be found in Ireland proper for forming, or if formed for administering with salutary effect, any system of poor-laws such as exists in this country; and I, my lords, believe that there is no doubt whatever of the justice and truth of that opinion, considering the English poor-laws, as they formerly existed, and as they were carried into execution up to the year 1834, when the noble lords opposite introduced the measure which amended them. While, however, I say this, I am bound at the same time to express my entire concurrence in the opinion declared by the noble viscount, that there never was a country in which poverty existed to such a degree as it exists in that part of the United Kingdom. My lords, I was in office in that country—I held a high situation in the administration of the government of Ireland thirty years ago—and I must say, that from that time to this there has scarcely elapsed a single year in which the government has not at certain periods of it entertained the most serious apprehensions of actual famine. My lords, I am firmly convinced that from the year 1806 down to the present time, a year has not passed in which the government have not been called on to give assistance to relieve the poverty and distress which prevailed in Ireland, and owing to circumstances over which no human power could have any control. One of the circumstances which has most frequently led to this lamentable state of things, has been the failure or delay of the potato crops, and there have been known times when two, three, and even as many as four months have intervened before these crops, which are used as a subsistence by the people, could be brought into the market; and such are the social relations in that country, that the people have no means of coming to market to purchase like the people of England. My lords, this is a fact that is undoubted, and one that I believe never existed in any country in the world except Ireland.
May 21, 1838.
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The Numbers of a Meeting may render it Illegal.