"When Britain first at Heaven's command,"
was superseded by the rant of the Tory street-walker,—
"We don't want to fight;
But, by jingo, if we do,
We've got the ships, we've got the men,
We've got the money, too."
And the manner in which the government used the ships, the men, and the money, proved that there was one thing needful which the Jingoes had not got; and that is manhood.
To this Jingo ministry it was, then, that Sir William V. Whiteway had to apply for the imperial sanction to the railway; and sanction was refused. For what reason? The pretended reason was that the western terminus of the line at Bay St. George would be on that part of the coast affected by the French treaty rights. It may be open to doubt whether the French claims which interfered with the establishment of a railroad terminus at Bay St. George were just or not; but there is not the slightest doubt that Lord Palmerston, in his note of July 10, 1838, to Count Sebastiani, had maintained that they were not justified, and that the Tories were and are of the same opinion.
But when a whole colony of Englishmen were wronged according to the statements both of Palmerston and Salisbury, the Beaconsfield-Salisbury administration dare not maintain the rights of these Englishmen against the French. That is the courage and the bravery of British Jingoism, which bullies weak China and little Greece in support of a Sir John Bowring or Don Pacifico, but dares not maintain an Englishman's rights against the French republic.
The question might easily have been settled without offending France by making Port aux Basques, which is less than eighty miles south-west of Bay St. George and beyond the French treaty limits, the terminus of the line.
There must, then, have been some concealed reason behind the pretended one. It is absolutely certain that there were two influences at work in London which were directly antagonistic to the true interest both of Great Britain and Newfoundland. One was that of the Canadian party, who are determined to boycott every scheme that would make any Newfoundland port a rival of Halifax. The other is the British, or mercantile, party, who for two hundred years past have consistently and successfully opposed the introduction of any industry into the island that would enable the fishermen to escape from their present bondage.
If either Beaconsfield or Salisbury had really cared for England's interests, they must have foreseen that, even if they were willing to sacrifice Newfoundland, the position they took in this matter must in the highest degree be damaging to the European prestige of Great Britain. When republican France was threatened by all the tyrants of Europe, the terrible Danton said, "Il nous faut de l'audace, et encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace." To-day the Frenchman requires no Danton to teach him the lesson; for the extraordinary confession of weakness made by the Jingo government of 1878 in refusing to sanction a line that could have been built without touching the French shore question at all was a direct encouragement to the French to persevere in that policy which they have since so successfully pursued in Madagascar, in Siam, in Africa, and in Newfoundland.
No matter whether the French claims in Newfoundland be right or wrong, the Beaconsfield-Salisbury government have practically surrendered the matter; and the only thing left for the British government is to compensate Newfoundland for its loss, as America was compensated for the "Alabama" damages. But they will not do it.