The noble Lord opposite (Lord Minto) went from Rome to Naples, and if he had been alone there I should have had greater confidence in the proceedings of the Government, for I have had long experience of his good sense, and sound judgement. But the noble Earl had a very active and zealous man under him; and while wading through this volume I have often had occasion to reflect upon the wise opinion of Prince Talleyrand, who used to reckon in diplomacy that zeal in young men is the next thing to treachery, and that sometimes it is just as bad as treachery, for the zealous are clothed with the garb of merit, and you have little hold over them. Well, the zeal, the honest zeal, no doubt, of Lord Napier, moved my noble kinsman from Rome to Naples. The noble Earl (Earl Minto) on the 2nd of February, 1848, wrote to the Foreign Office, that he had been so urged by Lord Napier to go to Naples that he had resolved to set off. But Lord Napier also tells us that on the 3rd of February he had an interview with the King of the Two Sicilies, and that he got the King, out of his zeal and his address working with it, to ask Lord Minto to go to Naples. Well, my noble friend and Lord Napier, representing the British Government, were decidedly for the Sicilians and against the Neapolitans. There was no attempt to hold the balance even between the two parties, but every expression was used, every proposal made, every captious objection taken in favour of the Sicilians under pretence of holding even the balance. In that country my noble kinsman and Lord Napier are what we term in the language of this country 'Repealers'. They are all for what they call a native and independent parliament in Sicily, just as the Repealers are for a native and independent Parliament in College Green. The noble Lord (Lord Minto) says, in a very vehement manner, that the sufferings of the people of Sicily under their thirty years' tyranny were so intolerable that the Sicilians had a much better ground for their rebellion than we had against James II in 1688. A consul, writing on the 24th of April, having given most flourishing accounts of the universal insurrection of the Sicilians (accounts which differ entirely from those I received from travellers in that country, as well as from public functionaries), informed Lord Napier that the Sicilians were going to choose the Grand Duke of Genoa as King of Sicily. This intelligence was received in London about the 4th or 5th of May. There was not a moment's delay in acting upon the notification, though it was only a prediction. If we were so very fond of our Neapolitan allies, if we lamented that we could not draw more closely the bonds of friendship between the two countries, protesting all the while our desire to keep the two crowns on the head of Ferdinand, it is very odd that our Minister should, on the very instant it was known that the Grand Duke of Genoa was likely to be chosen, and that the Sicilians intended to dethrone King Ferdinand namely, on the 8th of May, proceed to give these instructions to my friend, Mr. Abercrombie:
'Her Majesty's Consul at Palermo having reported that it is understood that the crown of Sicily is to be offered to the Duke of Genoa, I have to instruct you that if it should come to your knowledge that such an offer has been made, you will state to the Sardinian Government that it is of course for the Duke of Genoa to determine whether it will or will not suit him to accept this flattering offer, but that it might be satisfactory to him to know that if he should do so he would at the proper time, and when he was in possession of the Sicilian throne, be acknowledged by Her Majesty.'
Let it be known, said the noble Lord at the head of Foreign Affairs, that if the Duke of Genoa accepts the offer of the Sicilians, we shall lose no time in recognizing him, the Grand Duke of Genoa, under the Treaty of Vienna, as the King of Sicily, and in accepting the dethronement of our own ancient ally with whom we lament there is no possibility of 'drawing closer the bonds of our ancient friendship'. Oh, how easily snapped are the bonds that knit prince to prince, and State to State! Oh, how feeble the most ancient ties of the firmest political friendship! When the ink was hardly dry with which the profession was made of this earnest desire to draw more closely, if it were but possible, the bonds which united us to the King of the Two Sicilies, that Her Majesty's Government should, behind his back, and without a word of notice, avow their intention deliberately, but instantly, to acknowledge the usurper upon whose head his insurgent subjects were about to place the crown they had wrested from the brow of their lawful King! But my noble friend (Lord Minto) is strongly impressed with the advantages of a free constitution—not, however, more strongly than I am. Above all the free constitutions of the world, it is natural that the Sicilians should admire that admirable form of the purest of all governments, which, uniting the stability of order with the freedom of a popular constitution, which we happily enjoy, and upon the possession of which we have reason to pride ourselves beyond all the other bounties which a gracious Providence has showered down upon this favoured isle. No wonder the Sicilians should be prepared to admire and regard with reverence a constitution which unites in itself the advantages of all other forms of government, the freedom of democracy, the vigour of monarchy, and the stability with the peacefulness of aristocracy. If I were to say that I am niggardly enough to keep this blessing at all hazards to ourselves, not to desire the extension to others of this happy form of government, I should do injustice to my own feelings; but if I were to say I am slow to believe that the British Constitution is of a nature to be easily exported, and transplanted in other countries, I should only give vent to the opinions which the wisest have held, and which every day's experience of foreign affairs tends more deeply to root in all reflecting minds. The British Constitution is the work of ages, the slow growth of many centuries, and if it could be transplanted to countries so totally unprepared for its reception, and there made to take root, it would be as great a miracle as if we were to take a mature plant and set it to grow on a stone pavement, or a great wooden stick, and plant it in a fertile soil, there to bear fruit. The plant and the soil must be of congenial natures; the constitution must fit the nation it is to govern. The people must be prepared by their previous experience, their habits, their second nature, their political nature, to receive such institutions. I know not that I can ever sufficiently express the affection I bore to my late noble friend (Lord W. Bentinck) who, in 1812, instituted in Sicily the experiment of transplanting thither the British Constitution. But your Lordships now know from his experience what was the consequence of attempting to establish our own constitution in another country. A traveller happened to be in Sicily at the time, and I will read the account he gave of the solemnity which he witnessed. He is speaking of the most important of all proceedings under that transplanted system; he is describing the conduct of the people's chosen representatives; he is painting the scene of their legislative labours, in the temple of freedom; he is admitting us to the grand, the noble spectacle of the most dignified of human assemblies, the popular body making laws for the nation in the sanctuary of its rights. See, then, this august picture of a transplanted Parliament. Mr. Hughes says:
'As soon as the President had proposed the subject for debate, and restored some degree of order from that confusion of tongues which followed the announcement of the question, a system of crimination and recrimination was invariably commenced by the several speakers, accompanied with such hideous contortions, such bitter taunts, and such personal invectives, that blows generally followed, until the Assembly was in an uproar. The President's voice was unheeded and unheard; the whole House arose; patriots and antagonists mingled in the fray, and the ground was covered with the combatants, kicking, biting, striking, and scratching each other in a true Pancratic fray.'
It is to restore this grand political blessing of the 1812 Parliament that all our late efforts have been pointed. The great object of our negotiations has been the establishment of such a precious representative assembly; but the result is, that those efforts have been all thrown away. The King of Naples was said at that time to have agreed to certain concessions; he offered the people such terms as our negotiators thought they ought to have accepted; and, up to that time, indeed up to this hour, Ferdinand has behaved most fairly. He did not scruple to make such proposals for conciliation as our own negotiators thought the insurgents ought to have accepted. But all ended in their refusal. War broke out. Neapolitan troops were sent over. Messina was attacked, bombarded, and, after some four or five days, was taken.
Now, to show your Lordships the tendency there was in these negotiations to take advantage of every circumstance, accidental or otherwise, for the purpose of blackening the conduct of the Neapolitan Court, I will only state one particular, and that is with respect to the continuance of the bombardment. A most indignant denial has been given to this charge by the general officers and others engaged; and it turned out that our consuls and vice-consuls, all animated by the same spirit, all in favour of rebellion and against the lawful sovereignty, all agreed in one fact as the ground of the charge,—they all said that eight hours after the resistance had ceased the bombardment was continued. It might naturally be supposed that, with this continued bombardment, much blood would be spilt; and when all our agents are dwelling on this continuance as a cruelty, every reader must conclude that needless carnage was perpetrated, and much blood shed. But no such thing; not one drop could be spilt, and why? Because every creature had left the town before the eight hours had commenced to run! But the bombardment was continued for two reasons. In the first place, every house, as in Paris, was a fort; and, secondly, the Neapolitan commander could not possibly trust the white flag immediately after he had lost a whole battalion by a false flag being hoisted to decoy them into ambush, where the ground was mined. But no single fact of needless cruelty has been proved against the King of Naples, though I know, from a person attached to our Navy, and in those seas at that time, whose account I have read, as also from that of a traveller accidentally on board of one of the Queen's ships at the time, that there were cruelties of the most disgusting and revolting description committed by the Sicilians, and not one word of reference to which can be found in all the curiously selected papers that load your table. In the mass things are to be found, indeed, much against the wishes of the selectors, and also of their agents in Sicily and Naples. This is owing to their clumsy design of telling what they think will exalt the rebel and damage the loyal party, without always perceiving that these statements cut more ways than one. Thus, a number of consuls sign a statement that all the inhabitants had left Messina. This is contrived to show that resistance had ceased; but it also proves that no cruelty could be committed by the bombardment. Again, we are told that 1,500, by one zealous agent's account, had been slain of the King's troops: but Lord Napier's hotter zeal is not satisfied with this number, and he makes it 3,000. The object of putting forward this statement is to exalt the rebel valour, and give a more formidable aspect to the revolt. But the zeal in one direction forgets that the same parade of numbers also shows how necessary severe measures had become on the King's part, and how little blame could attach to the gallant troops who, thus assailed, had imposed on them, by the duty of self-defence, the necessity of quelling so bloody an insurrection.
I have given one sample of the not very even-handed justice which pervaded the correspondence. But I will proceed further. After the battle of Messina 700 or 800 rebels escaped towards the Ionian Islands. They were taken, and it was said by a stratagem: that by hoisting the English flag a Neapolitan cruiser was enabled to near them and take them. It was further alleged—and much of the correspondence is addressed to this point—that they were taken, contrary to the law of nations, within three miles or cannon-shot of the Ionian Islands, and therefore within the British waters. Very elaborate arguments are given in the correspondence to prove that position, and a great deal of indignation is expressed; and satisfaction was also demanded on account of the abuse of the English flag. An elaborate argument is prepared and sent by the Foreign Secretary to show that because the ships were first seen twenty miles off, and in half an hour more they were more clearly perceived, therefore at some unknown and unspecified time after the half hour, they must have been close in with the shore. I suppose on the principle that a sailing vessel going without steam, moves at the rate of twenty or thirty miles in the hour. However, such is this zealous argument to prove the favourite point that the rebels are always right and the Government always wrong. Alas! that so much good information and subtlety of argument should be thrown away. This able and argumentative paper crossed on its way out another from our own Admiral on its way homeward, in which he said he had inquired from the Governor of the Ionian Islands, and had ascertained that the ship was at least eight miles from the shore—so there was an end of the argument upon distance; and that of the insult to our flag was as shortly disposed of by a letter from our own Admiralty, stating that it was only a stratagem which our own Navy constantly employed, freely using the flags of other nations for its own purposes.
I rejoice to say, and your Lordships must he rejoiced to hear it, that I am approaching the end of this subject, but I cannot abstain from observing, to show how completely we took part with the one side against the other, that we treated the Sicilian prisoners as if they had been our allies, our own subjects. They were taken in rebellion, with arms in their hands, against their lawful Sovereign. But Lord Napier complains to Prince Cariati of his treatment of the prisoners, and says it would be observed upon in England, would raise a strong feeling on its exposure and publication, and that the feeling would be such that Her Majesty's Government could scarcely fail to take notice of it. But how? For those prisoners were guilty of municipal offence against the municipal law of their own country. Suppose, contrary to all probability and possibility, hostilities had ensued upon the late attempt at rebellion in Ireland, and some of the prisoners having been taken and sent to Bermuda or Australia, that the Ministers of France, Holland, Belgium, or any other country had taken it into their heads to object to our treatment of those prisoners and to say, 'Don't treat them in that way. Give them their native Parliament on College Green—you are acting cruelly in sending them to Bermuda or Australia. I shall write home to France, I shall write home to Holland, I shall write home to Belgium; and depend upon it your conduct will raise such a ferment of execration and hatred against you, that the President of the Republic, the King of Holland, and the King of Belgium will be absolutely obliged to take notice of it.' How should we have received that intimation? I think with a horse-laugh, and there was no reason why the Neapolitan King should not receive that dispatch of Lord Napier's in the same way, except that he, no doubt, gave it good-naturedly a more polite and courteous reception. Now we thus presume to interfere with the domestic affairs of Naples as neither France nor Holland would dare interfere with ours, and as we never durst interfere with theirs. True, we never should dream of urging the great Republic to treat its rebellious subjects, when charged with treason, otherwise than as its Government pleased! True, Naples is a feebler Power than France! But is that all the ground for the proceeding? Is that all the warrant for reading lectures such as those we have read, for doing the things we have done, threatening the things we have threatened, claiming the right we have asserted of protecting criminals imprisoned for rebellion from the justice of their lawful Sovereign? I say that to a generous nation, to a manly feeling heart, to a person of true British honour and true British gallantry, it is the very reverse of a reason, and makes our conduct the less excusable as it ought to be the more hateful.
But far from words being all we used, far from interfering by requisition and remonstrance being all we did, the British diplomacy and the British Navy were actually compelled to force an armistice upon the Neapolitan Government on behalf of its revolted subjects, and when their revolt was nearly quelled! After Messina had been completely subdued, its forces routed, its walls crumbled, its strongest place captured, our Admiral, having a fleet in those waters, was resolved it should not be there for nothing. Hitherto he and his captains had only expressed sympathy with the insurgents, and hatred or contempt of their lawful Sovereign. Now that the rebellion was on the point of being put down, by the capture of Catania and Palermo, which, but for us, must both have immediately fallen, now that the last hope of subverting the Throne of Sicily and installing a usurper on its ruins was about to vanish from the eyes of the British seamen, our Admiral, acting in concert no doubt with the British envoy, and inspired with the feelings of our Foreign Office, required a respite to be allowed the insurgents, and determined to back his requisition with his ships. But he was not, we must admit, the principal in this offence against the rights of an independent and friendly State. He has not the blame to bear, or, if you will, he has not the praise to receive, of having decided upon this intervention between the King and his insurgent subjects. The French Admiral was the contriver of the scheme. Admiral Baudin formed his own determination, doubtless in order to gratify the mob of Paris, as well as the rebels of Palermo; and our commander, afraid of being outstripped in his favourite course, at once yielded to the Frenchman's request, the one looking to the Boulevards of Paris for approval, the other to the Foreign Office of London. Orders were issued to all our fleet, that they should use every means to prevent the Neapolitans from following up their victory at Messina; and sealed instructions were sent to direct their proceedings should these peaceable efforts fail. Why not make the instructions public? Why not give notice openly of our intentions? It might have prevented the necessity of using force. However, the orders were sealed, and they directed that first the guns should be fired without shot; next, that they should be shotted, but not fired so as to injure the crews of our ally's ships; and, finally, that they should be used as hostilely and destructively as was necessary to accomplish the purpose of forcing Naples to let the Sicilian rebels alone. But then it is said, and it is the pitiful pretext of equal treatment to both parties, that the orders were alike to prevent action of the King's troops and the revolters. Was ever there a more wretched shift, a more hollow pretence, than this? Keep the Sicilians from breaking an armistice enforced to save them from utter and final destruction! Keep the beaten Sicilian rebel from overpowering his victorious masters! Keep the felon convicted from rushing to the gallows in spite of the respite granted him! Can human wit imagine a more ridiculous pretext than this, of affecting to hold the balance even, when you are preventing the conqueror from improving his victory, and only preventing the vanquished from attempting what without a miracle he cannot do, cannot, even with all your assistance, venture to try? But such was our just conduct in an interference which we had not the shadow of a right to take upon ourselves. We showed our friendly feelings towards an ancient ally by forcibly screening his revolted subjects, and compelling him to delay for nearly seven months the total defeat of those rebels and the complete restoration of tranquillity. From the 10th of September, when Messina fell, to the 30th of March, when we were kindly pleased to let the armistice expire, the English fleet persevered in reducing the King to inaction, and saving his rebellious subjects from the operation of his armies. But for our own fleet, there is not a doubt that Catania and Palermo must have fallen in a fortnight, but we nursed, and fostered, and prolonged the insurrection for above half a year. Talk of your humanity! Boast of your Admiral and his French associate interposing to save bloodshed! Whose fault was it that Catania, having profited by the respite you forced the King to grant, still held out, instead of opening her gates as soon as Messina had fallen, when the insurrection must have been crushed in its cradle? Who but your commanders and envoys are to blame for the necessity under which they placed the King's troops of fighting a battle on the 6th of April? That engagement no doubt put down the insurrection; but many lives were lost in it. Five-and-twenty officers were killed and wounded on the King's side, and some hundreds of men must likewise have expiated their loyalty with their lives, to say nothing of the insurgent loss. Palermo fell without a struggle, after all the boastings of your envoys and captains, and consuls and vice-consuls. Would she have resisted more fiercely in September? The insurgent chiefs fled, and got on board the Vectis, one of the two vessels of war which you suffered the Sicilian rebels to fit out in your ports, when you refused all help to your ancient friend's ambassador in checking this outrage on the law of nations, and when by a celebrated 'inadvertence' you suffered those rebels to obtain from the Tower a supply of arms, wherewith to fight your ally's armies.
My Lords, I cannot trust myself with the expression of the feelings which are roused by the whole of the papers, to which I have only referred occasionally; they are the feelings with which all men of sound principles and calm judgement will read them all over Europe. I will refer to them no further than to read the indignant denial which the veteran General Filangieri, Prince of Satriano, gives to the charge of cruelty brought against his gallant and loyal army by our envoys and our consuls, and, I grieve to add, our naval commanders. (Lord Brougham here read the vehement, and even impassioned, terms in which the General refutes these foul calumnies, charging him, an officer of above half a century's service, with suffering his troops to commit enormities which no military man, of however little experience in his profession, could have permitted.)