Am I, then, talking of trifles? Am I talking to sane men, that it is necessary to bring forward facts like these? I am amazed, when the newspaper press, when public speakers, when Gentlemen on both sides of this House are so ready to listen and to speak upon questions relating to Turkey, to Servia, or to Schamyl, that I cannot get the House of Commons to consider a question so great as the expenditure of 420,000,000_l_., and when we have to consider if we shall trust that vast issue in the hands of the noble Lords and right hon. Gentlemen on the Treasury bench.
I have stated that I have no confidence in the Government, and I will now tell the House another reason for that want of confidence. My hon. Friend the Member for the West Riding, on a previous occasion, treated the right hon. President of the Board of Works very summarily; but I wish to call the attention of the House to what was said by the right hon. Gentleman in 1850, in the debate which then took place upon the foreign policy of the noble Lord now his chief. On that occasion the right hon. Gentleman told the House that the foreign policy of the noble Lord now at the head of the Government had made us hated by every party in every nation in Europe; he said that the noble Lord had excited the disaffected to revolt, and, having brought upon them the vengeance of the Governments under which they lived, had then betrayed them. I do not say that this is true, but I state it upon the authority of a Minister now in the Cabinet of the noble Lord; but, whether true or not, I cannot have confidence in the right hon. Gentleman when sitting in a Cabinet to carry out the foreign policy of the noble Lord.
I will take the case of another Minister, and I do not think that when he speaks he will call my observations undeserved. A most distinguished Member of the Government—the Chancellor of the Exchequer—has been twice elected within a very short period, once before and once since his acceptance of office,—I must say that I do not like to see these changes, when a man one night sits on one bench and another night on another,—on the 8th of February, 1855, the right hon. Gentleman, addressing his constituents at Radnor, said:—
'I am not prepared to give my vote in favour of any change in our policy which would attempt to make England a first-rate military Power. It seems to me that it would be little short of madness to attempt any such gigantic undertaking. It is our true wisdom to limit ourselves to that amount of military force which shall enable us to defend our own shores, and to protect our great dependencies abroad. If we can completely defend our own coasts, it appears to me that the objects of our national policy have been fulfilled.'
And then, as if he had in view the language of the noble Lord at the head of the Government and that of his colleague the Member for London, he proceeded to say,—
'I wish to see a cessation of that inordinate and senseless desire which has been sometimes expressed of late, almost usurping the functions of Providence, that we should go to almost all parts of the world to redress wrong and to see that right is done.'
I say that the right hon. Gentleman had the language of his colleagues in view, and when he speaks he will no doubt admit that such was the case. For what did the noble Lord the Secretary for the Colonies say when he addressed the baillies and the enthusiastic citizens of Greenock? He said,—
'It is likewise to be considered, and I trust we shall none of us forget it, that this country holds an important position among the nations of the world—that not once, but many times, she has stood forward to resist oppression, to maintain the independence of weaker nations, to preserve to the general family of nations that freedom, that power of governing themselves, of which others have sought to deprive them. I trust that character will not be forgotten, will not be abandoned by a people which is now stronger in means, which is more populous and more wealthy than it ever has been at any former period. This then, you will agree with me, is not the period to abandon any of those duties towards the world, towards the whole of mankind, which Great Britain has hitherto performed.'
Now let us see what the right hon. Gentleman said, after having accepted the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer. The right hon. Gentleman made a speech, and it was just after the death of the late Emperor of Russia, and, in referring to the new Emperor, he said,—
'If, however, it should please this mighty Potentate to continue in the course of aggression upon which his father had entered, and if our reasonable hopes of a more pacific policy should be disappointed, then let him know that in England he will find a country prepared to maintain its own rights and the rights of other nations.'