OPPOSITION TO MR. ROEBUCK’S MOTION (1863).
Source.—Annual Register, 1863; English History, pp. 130, 131.
Mr. Bright animadverted severely upon the speech of Mr. Roebuck....
Mr. Roebuck, he said, would help to break up a friendly nation, and create an everlasting breach between the two nations, because he deemed it for the interest of England. The whole case rested upon either a miserable jealousy or a base fear. He looked upon the interest of England from a different point of view. He believed the war was more likely than anything else to abolish slavery. The supply of cotton under slavery must always be insecure. It was the interest of England that the supply of cotton should be by free labour rather than by that of slaves. As to the political aspect of the question, the more he considered this war, the more improbable he thought it that the United States would be broken into separate Republics. The conclusion to which he had come was that if there should be a separation, the interests, the sympathies and the necessities, perhaps the ambition, of the whole Continent were such that it would be reunited under a Central Government. And this Government might be in the hands of the South. Having dwelt at considerable length upon the hideous features of Southern slavery, and eulogised the Northern institutions, it was against such a Government, he observed, in such a contest with such a foe, that Mr. Roebuck asked the House to throw into the scale the weight of the hostility of England.
A POLICY OF MEDDLE AND MUDDLE (1864).
Source.—Annual Register, vol. 106; English History, p. 7.
Attack on Earl Russell’s Foreign Policy by Lord Derby (February 4).
He then called the attention of the House to the portion of the Queen’s speech relating to foreign affairs. Her Majesty’s Government had for two or three years past mainly rested their claim to public confidence on their foreign policy. They had abandoned the question of Parliamentary Reform the moment it had served the purpose of putting them in office. The fulfilment of the promises they had made was defeated by Lord Russell, and when he was transferred to the more serene atmosphere of the House of Lords, he pronounced the funeral oration of Reform. He had told them ... “to rest and be thankful,” and from that time their foreign policy had been the groundwork of the claim of Her Majesty’s Government to public confidence. I think, proceeded Lord Derby, that at the commencement the foreign policy of the noble Earl opposite might be summed up in the affirmation of the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other countries, the extension of Liberal principles by the exercise of our moral interference, and, above all, the maintenance of uninterrupted and cordial relations with the Emperor of the French. We were told more than once that the present Government was the only one to maintain a good understanding with the Emperor of the French, or, at least, that its predecessor could not possibly have done so, and that, if the country desired to preserve cordial relations between itself and France, Her Majesty’s present advisers, and especially the noble Earl opposite, were the only persons qualified to secure that most desirable object.
Now, my lords, as to non-intervention in the internal affairs of other countries, when I look around me I fail to see what country there is, in the internal affairs of which the noble Earl has not interfered.