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DISSENTERS' CHAPELS BILL. (JUNE 6, 1844) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 6TH OF JUNE 1844.

An attempt having been made to deprive certain dissenting congregations of property which they had long enjoyed, on the ground that they did not hold the same religious opinions that had been held by the purchasers from whom they derived their title to that property, the Government of Sir Robert Peel brought in a bill fixing a time of limitation in such cases. The time fixed was twenty-five years.

The bill, having passed the Lords, came down to the House of Commons. On the sixth of June 1844, the second reading was moved by the Attorney General, Sir William Follett. Sir Robert Inglis, Member for the University of Oxford, moved that the bill should be read a second time that day six months: and the amendment was seconded by Mr Plumptre, Member for Kent. Early in the debate the following Speech was made.

The second reading was carried by 307 votes to 117.

If, Sir, I should unhappily fail in preserving that tone in which the question before us ought to be debated, it will assuredly not be for want either of an example or of a warning. The honourable and learned Member who moved the second reading has furnished me with a model which I cannot too closely imitate; and from the honourable Member for Kent, if I can learn nothing else, I may at least learn what temper and what style I ought most carefully to avoid.

I was very desirous, Sir, to catch your eye, not because I was so presumptuous as to hope that I should be able to add much to the powerful and luminous argument of the honourable and learned gentleman who has, to our great joy, again appeared among us to-night; but because I thought it desirable that, at an early period in the debate, some person whose seat is on this side of the House, some person strongly opposed to the policy of the present Government, should say, what I now say with all my heart, that this is a bill highly honourable to the Government, a bill framed on the soundest principles, and evidently introduced from the best and purest motives. This praise is a tribute due to Her Majesty's Ministers; and I have great pleasure in paying it.

I have great pleasure also in bearing my testimony to the humanity, the moderation, and the decorum with which my honourable friend the Member for the University of Oxford has expressed his sentiments. I must particularly applaud the resolution which he announced, and to which he strictly adhered, of treating this question as a question of meum and tuum, and not as a question of orthodoxy and heterodoxy. With him it is possible to reason. But how am I to reason with the honourable Member for Kent, who has made a speech without one fact, one argument, one shadow of an argument, a speech made up of nothing but vituperation? I grieve to say that the same bitterness of theological animosity which characterised that speech may be discerned in too many of the petitions with which, as he boasts, our table has been heaped day after day. The honourable Member complains that those petitions have not been treated with proper respect. Sir, they have been treated with much more respect than they deserved. He asks why we are to suppose that the petitioners are not competent to form a judgment on this question? My answer is, that they have certified their incompetence under their own hands. They have, with scarcely one exception, treated this question as a question of divinity, though it is purely a question of property: and when I see men treat a question of property as if it were a question of divinity, I am certain that, however numerous they may be, their opinion is entitled to no consideration. If the persons whom this bill is meant to relieve are orthodox, that is no reason for our plundering anybody else in order to enrich them. If they are heretics, that is no reason for our plundering them in order to enrich others. I should not think myself justified in supporting this bill, if I could not with truth declare that, whatever sect had been in possession of these chapels, my conduct would have been precisely the same. I have no peculiar sympathy with Unitarians. If these people, instead of being Unitarians, had been Roman Catholics, or Wesleyan Methodists, or General Baptists, or Particular Baptists, or members of the Old Secession Church of Scotland, or members of the Free Church of Scotland, I should speak as I now speak, and vote as I now mean to vote.

Sir, the whole dispute is about the second clause of this bill. I can hardly conceive that any gentleman will vote against the bill on account of the error in the marginal note on the third clause. To the first clause my honourable friend the Member for the University of Oxford said, if I understood him rightly, that he had no objection; and indeed a man of his integrity and benevolence could hardly say less after listening to the lucid and powerful argument of the Attorney General. It is therefore on the second clause that the whole question turns.

The second clause, Sir, rests on a principle simple, well-known, and most important to the welfare of all classes of the community. That principle is this, that prescription is a good title to property, that there ought to be a time of limitation, after which a possessor, in whatever way his possession may have originated, must not be dispossessed. Till very lately, Sir, I could not have imagined that, in any assembly of reasonable, civilised, of educated men, it could be necessary for me to stand up in defence of that principle. I should have thought it as much a waste of the public time to make a speech on such a subject as to make a speech against burning witches, against trying writs of right by wager of battle, or against requiring a culprit to prove his innocence by walking over red-hot ploughshares. But I find that I was in error. Certain sages, lately assembled in conclave at Exeter Hall, have done me the honour to communicate to me the fruits of their profound meditations on the science of legislation. They have, it seems, passed a resolution declaring that the principle, which I had supposed that no man out of Bedlam would ever question, is an untenable principle, and altogether unworthy of a British Parliament. They have been pleased to add, that the present Government cannot, without gross inconsistency, call on Parliament to pass a statute of limitation. And why? Will the House believe it? Because the present Government has appointed two new Vice Chancellors.

Really, Sir, I do not know whether the opponents of this bill shine more as logicians or as jurists. Standing here as the advocate of prescription, I ought not to forget that prescriptive right of talking nonsense which gentlemen who stand on the platform of Exeter Hall are undoubtedly entitled to claim. But, though I recognise the right, I cannot but think that it may be abused, and that it has been abused on the present occasion. One thing at least is clear, that, if Exeter Hall be in the right, all the masters of political philosophy, all the great legislators, all the systems of law by which men are and have been governed in all civilised countries, from the earliest times, must be in the wrong. How indeed can any society prosper, or even exist, without the aid of this untenable principle, this principle unworthy of a British legislature? This principle was found in the Athenian law. This principle was found in the Roman law. This principle was found in the laws of all those nations of which the jurisprudence was derived from Rome. This principle was found in the law administered by the Parliament of Paris; and, when that Parliament and the law which it administered had been swept away by the revolution, this principle reappeared in the Code Napoleon. Go westward, and you find this principle recognised beyond the Mississippi. Go eastward, and you find it recognised beyond the Indus, in countries which never heard the name of Justinian, in countries to which no translation of the Pandects ever found its way. Look into our own laws, and you will see that the principle, which is now designated as unworthy of Parliament, has guided Parliament ever since Parliament existed. Our first statute of limitation was enacted at Merton, by men some of whom had borne a part in extorting the Great Charter and the Forest Charter from King John. From that time to this it has been the study of a succession of great lawyers and statesmen to make the limitation more and more stringent. The Crown and the Church indeed were long exempted from the general rule. But experience fully proved that every such exemption was an evil; and a remedy was at last applied. Sir George Savile, the model of English country gentlemen, was the author of the Act which barred the claims of the Crown. That eminent magistrate, the late Lord Tenterden, was the author of the Act which barred the claims of the Church. Now, Sir, how is it possible to believe that the Barons, whose seals are upon our Great Charter, would have perfectly agreed with the great jurists who framed the Code of Justinian, with the great jurists who framed the Code of Napoleon, with the most learned English lawyers of the nineteenth century, and with the Pundits of Benares, unless there had been some strong and clear reason which necessarily led men of sense in every age and country to the same conclusion? Nor is it difficult to see what the reason was. For it is evident that the principle which silly and ignorant fanatics have called untenable is essential to the institution of property, and that, if you take away that principle, you will produce evils resembling those which would be produced by a general confiscation. Imagine what would follow if the maxims of Exeter Hall were introduced into Westminster Hall. Imagine a state of things in which one of us should be liable to be sued on a bill of exchange indorsed by his grandfather in 1760. Imagine a man possessed of an estate and manor house which had descended to him through ten or twelve generations of ancestors, and yet liable to be ejected because some flaw had been detected in a deed executed three hundred years ago, in the reign of Henry the Eighth. Why, Sir, should we not all cry out that it would be better to live under the rule of a Turkish Pasha than under such a system. Is it not plain that the enforcing of an obsolete right is the inflicting of a wrong? Is it not plain that, but for our statutes of limitation, a lawsuit would be merely a grave, methodical robbery? I am ashamed to argue a point so clear.

And if this be the general rule, why should the case which we are now considering be an exception to that rule? I have done my best to understand why. I have read much bad oratory, and many foolish petitions. I have heard with attention the reasons of my honourable friend the Member for the University of Oxford; and I should have heard the reasons of the honourable Member for Kent, if there had been any to hear. Every argument by which my honourable friend the Member for the University of Oxford tried to convince us that this case is an exception to the general rule, will be found on examination to be an argument against the general rule itself. He says that the possession which we propose to sanction was originally a wrongful possession. Why, Sir, all the statutes of limitation that ever were made sanction possession which was originally wrongful. It is for the protection of possessors who are not in condition to prove that their possession was originally rightful that statutes of limitation are passed. Then my honourable friend says that this is an ex post facto law. Why, Sir, so are all our great statutes of limitation. Look at the Statute of Merton, passed in 1235; at the Statute of Westminster, passed in 1275; at the Statute of James the First, passed in 1623; at Sir George Savile's Act, passed in the last century; at Lord Tenterden's Act, passed in our own time. Every one of those Acts was retrospective. Every one of them barred claims arising out of past transactions. Nor was any objection ever raised to what was so evidently just and wise, till bigotry and chicanery formed that disgraceful league against which we are now contending. But, it is said, it is unreasonable to grant a boon to men because they have been many years doing wrong. The length of the time during which they have enjoyed property not rightfully their own, is an aggravation of the injury which they have committed, and is so far from being a reason for letting them enjoy that property for ever, that it is rather a reason for compelling them to make prompt restitution. With this childish sophistry the petitions on our table are filled. Is it possible that any man can be so dull as not to perceive that, if this be a reason, it is a reason against all our statutes of limitation? I do a greater wrong to my tailor if I withhold payment of his bill during six years than if I withhold payment only during two years. Yet the law says that at the end of two years he may bring an action and force me to pay him with interest, but that after the lapse of six years he cannot force me to pay him at all. It is much harder that a family should be kept out of its hereditary estate during five generations than during five days. But if you are kept out of your estate five days you have your action of ejectment; and, after the lapse of five generations, you have no remedy. I say, therefore, with confidence, that every argument which has been urged against this bill is an argument against the great principle of prescription. I go further, and I say that, if there be any case which, in an especial manner, calls for the application of the principle of prescription, this is that case. For the Unitarian congregations have laid out so much on these little spots of ground that it is impossible to take the soil from them without taking from them property which is of much greater value than the mere soil, and which is indisputably their own. This is not the case of a possessor who has been during many years, receiving great emoluments from land to which he had not a good title. It is the case of a possessor who has, from resources which were undoubtedly his own, expended on the land much more than it was originally worth. Even in the former case, it has been the policy of all wise lawgivers to fix a time of limitation. A fortiori, therefore, there ought to be a time of limitation in the latter case.

And here, Sir, I cannot help asking gentlemen to compare the petitions for this bill with the petitions against it. Never was there such a contrast. The petitions against the bill are filled with cant, rant, scolding, scraps of bad sermons. The petitions in favour of the bill set forth in the simplest manner great practical grievances. Take, for instance, the case of Cirencester. The meeting house there was built in 1730. It is certain that the Unitarian doctrines were taught there as early as 1742. That was only twelve years after the chapel had been founded. Many of the original subscribers must have been living. Many of the present congregation are lineal descendants of the original subscribers. Large sums have from time to time been laid out in repairing, enlarging, and embellishing the edifice; and yet there are people who think it just and reasonable that this congregation should, after the lapse of more than a century, be turned out. At Norwich, again, a great dissenting meeting house was opened in 1688. It is not easy to say how soon Anti-Trinitarian doctrines were taught there. The change of sentiment in the congregation seems to have been gradual: but it is quite certain that, in 1754, ninety years ago, both pastor and flock were decidedly Unitarian. Round the chapel is a cemetery filled with the monuments of eminent Unitarians. Attached to the chapel are a schoolhouse and a library, built and fitted up by Unitarians. And now the occupants find that their title is disputed. They cannot venture to build; they cannot venture to repair; and they are anxiously awaiting our decision. I do not know that I have cited the strongest cases. I am giving you the ordinary history of these edifices. Go to Manchester. Unitarianism has been taught there at least seventy years in a chapel on which the Unitarians have expended large sums. Go to Leeds. Four thousand pounds have been subscribed for the repairing of the Unitarian chapel there, the chapel where, near eighty years ago, Priestly, the great Doctor of the sect, officiated. But these four thousand pounds are lying idle. Not a pew can be repaired till it is known whether this bill will become law. Go to Maidstone. There Unitarian doctrines have been taught during at least seventy years; and seven hundred pounds have recently been laid out by the congregation in repairing the chapel. Go to Exeter. It matters not where you go. But go to Exeter. There Unitarian doctrines have been preached more than eighty years; and two thousand pounds have been laid out on the chapel. It is the same at Coventry, at Bath, at Yarmouth, everywhere. And will a British Parliament rob the possessors of these buildings? I can use no other word. How should we feel if it were proposed to deprive any other class of men of land held during so long a time, and improved at so large a cost? And, if this property should be transferred to those who covet it, what would they gain in comparison with what the present occupants would lose? The pulpit of Priestley, the pulpit of Lardner, are objects of reverence to congregations which hold the tenets of Priestley and Lardner. To the intruders those pulpits will be nothing; nay, worse than nothing; memorials of heresiarchs. Within these chapels and all around them are the tablets which the pious affection of four generations has placed over the remains of dear mothers and sisters, wives and daughters, of eloquent preachers, of learned theological writers. To the Unitarian, the building which contains these memorials is a hallowed building. To the intruder it is of no more value than any other room in which he can find a bench to sit on and a roof to cover him. If, therefore, we throw out this bill, we do not merely rob one set of people in order to make a present to another set. That would be bad enough. But we rob the Unitarians of that which they regard as a most precious treasure; of that which is endeared to them by the strongest religious and the strongest domestic associations; of that which cannot be wrenched from them without inflicting on them the bitterest pain and humiliation. To the Trinitarians we give that which can to them be of little or no value except as a trophy of a most inglorious victory won in a most unjust war.

But, Sir, an imputation of fraud has been thrown on the Unitarians; not, indeed, here, but in many other places, and in one place of which I would always wish to speak with respect. The Unitarians, it has been said, knew that the original founders of these chapels were Trinitarians; and to use, for the purpose of propagating Unitarian doctrine, a building erected for the purpose of propagating Trinitarian doctrine was grossly dishonest. One very eminent person (The Bishop of London.) has gone so far as to maintain that the Unitarians cannot pretend to any prescription of more than sixty-three years; and he proves his point thus:—Till the year 1779, he says, no dissenting teacher was within the protection of the Toleration Act unless he subscribed those articles of the Church of England which affirm the Athanasian doctrine. It is evident that no honest Unitarian can subscribe those articles. The inference is, that the persons who preached in these chapels down to the year 1779 must have been either Trinitarians or rogues. Now, Sir, I believe that they were neither Trinitarians nor rogues; and I cannot help suspecting that the great prelate who brought this charge against them is not so well read in the history of the nonconformist sects as in the history of that Church of which he is an ornament. The truth is that, long before the year 1779, the clause of the Toleration Act which required dissenting ministers to subscribe thirty-five or thirty-six of our thirty-nine articles had almost become obsolete. Indeed, that clause had never been rigidly enforced. From the very first there were some dissenting ministers who refused to subscribe, and yet continued to preach. Calany was one; and he was not molested. And if this could be done in the year in which the Toleration Act passed, we may easily believe that, at a later period, the law would not have been very strictly observed. New brooms, as the vulgar proverb tells us, sweep clean; and no statute is so rigidly enforced as a statute just made. But, Sir, so long ago as the year 1711, the provisions of the Toleration Act on this subject were modified. In that year the Whigs, in order to humour Lord Nottingham, with whom they had coalesced against Lord Oxford, consented to let the Occasional Conformity Bill pass; but they insisted on inserting in the bill a clause which was meant to propitiate the dissenters. By this clause it was enacted that, if an information were laid against a dissenting minister for having omitted to subscribe the articles, the defendant might, by subscribing at any stage of the proceedings anterior to the judgment, defeat the information, and throw all the costs on the informer. The House will easily believe that, when such was the state of the law, informers were not numerous. Indeed, during the discussions of 1773, it was distinctly affirmed, both in Parliament and in manifestoes put forth by the dissenting body, that the majority of nonconformist ministers then living had never subscribed. All arguments, therefore, grounded on the insincerity which has been rashly imputed to the Unitarians of former generations, fall at once to the ground.

But, it is said, the persons who, in the reigns of James the Second, of William the Third, and of Anne, first established these chapels, held the doctrine of the Trinity; and therefore, when, at a later period, the preachers and congregations departed from the doctrine of the Trinity, they ought to have departed from the chapels too. The honourable and learned gentleman, the Attorney General, has refuted this argument so ably that he has scarcely left anything for me to say about it. It is well-known that the change which, soon after the Revolution, began to take place in the opinions of a section of the old Puritan body, was a gradual, an almost imperceptible change. The principle of the English Presbyterians was to have no confession of faith and no form of prayer. Their trust deeds contained no accurate theological definitions. Nonsubscription was in truth the very bond which held them together. What, then, could be more natural than that, Sunday by Sunday, the sermons should have become less and less like those of the old Calvinistic divines, that the doctrine of the Trinity should have been less and less frequently mentioned, that at last it should have ceased to be mentioned, and that thus, in the course of years, preachers and hearers should, by insensible degrees, have become first Arians, then, perhaps, Socinians. I know that this explanation has been treated with disdain by people profoundly ignorant of the history of English nonconformity. I see that my right honourable friend near me (Mr Fox Maule.) does not assent to it. Will he permit me to refer him to an analogous case with which he cannot but be well acquainted? No person in the House is more versed than he in the ecclesiastical history of Scotland; and he will, I am sure, admit that some of the doctrines now professed by the Scotch sects which sprang from the secessions of 1733 and 1760 are such as the seceders of 1733 and the seceders of 1760 would have regarded with horror. I have talked with some of the ablest, most learned, and most pious of the Scotch dissenters of our time; and they all fully admitted that they held more than one opinion which their predecessors would have considered as impious. Take the question of the connection between Church and State. The seceders of 1733 thought that the connection ought to be much closer than it is. They blamed the legislature for tolerating heresy. They maintained that the Solemn league and covenant was still binding on the kingdom. They considered it as a national sin that the validity of the Solemn League and Covenant was not recognised at the time of the Revolution. When George Whitfield went to Scotland, though they approved of his Calvinistic opinions, and though they justly admired that natural eloquence which he possessed in so wonderful a degree, they would hold no communion with him because he would not subscribe the Solemn League and Covenant. Is that the doctrine of their successors? Are the Scotch dissenters now averse to toleration? Are they not zealous for the voluntary system? Is it not their constant cry that it is not the business of the civil magistrate to encourage any religion, false or true? Does any Bishop now abhor the Solemn League and Covenant more than they? Here is an instance in which numerous congregations have, retaining their identity, passed gradually from one opinion to another opinion. And would it be just, would it be decent in me, to impute dishonesty to them on that account? My right honourable friend may be of opinion that the question touching the connection between the Church and State is not a vital question. But was that the opinion of the divines who drew up the Secession Testimony? He well knows that in their view a man who denied that it was the duty of the government to defend religious truth with the civil sword was as much a heretic as a man who denied the doctrine of the Trinity.

Again, Sir, take the case of the Wesleyan Methodists. They are zealous against this bill. They think it monstrous that a chapel originally built for people holding one set of doctrines should be occupied by people holding a different set of doctrines. I would advise them to consider whether they cannot find in the history of their own body reasons for being a little more indulgent. What were the opinions of that great and good man, their founder, on the question whether men not episcopally ordained could lawfully administer the Eucharist? He told his followers that lay administration was a sin which he never could tolerate. Those were the very words which he used; and I believe that, during his lifetime, the Eucharist never was administered by laymen in any place of worship which was under his control. After his death, however, the feeling in favour of lay administration became strong and general among his disciples. The Conference yielded to that feeling. The consequence is that now, in every chapel which belonged to Wesley, those who glory in the name of Wesleyans commit, every Sacrament Sunday, what Wesley declared to be a sin which he would never tolerate. And yet these very persons are not ashamed to tell us in loud and angry tones that it is fraud, downright fraud, in a congregation which has departed from its original doctrines to retain its original endowments. I believe, Sir, that, if you refuse to pass this bill, the Courts of Law will soon have to decide some knotty questions which, as yet, the Methodists little dream of.

It has, I own, given me great pain to observe the unfair and acrimonious manner in which too many of the Protestant nonconformists have opposed this bill. The opposition of the Established Church has been comparatively mild and moderate; and yet from the Established Church we had less right to expect mildness and moderation. It is certainly not right, but it is very natural, that a church, ancient and richly endowed, closely connected with the Crown and the aristocracy, powerful in parliament, dominant in the universities, should sometimes forget what is due to poorer and humbler Christian societies. But when I hear a cry for what is nothing less than persecution set up by men who have been, over and over again within my own memory, forced to invoke in their own defence the principles of toleration, I cannot but feel astonishment mingled with indignation. And what above all excites both my astonishment and my indignation is this, that the most noisy among the noisy opponents of the bill which we are considering are some sectaries who are at this very moment calling on us to pass another bill of just the same kind for their own benefit. I speak of those Irish Presbyterians who are asking for an ex post facto law to confirm their marriages. See how exact the parallel is between the case of those marriages and the case of these chapels. The Irish Presbyterians have gone on marrying according to their own forms during a long course of years. The Unitarians have gone on occupying, improving, embellishing certain property during a long course of years. In neither case did any doubt as to the right arise in the most honest, in the most scrupulous mind. At length, about the same time, both the validity of the Presbyterian marriages and the validity of the title by which the Unitarians held their chapels were disputed. The two questions came before the tribunals. The tribunals, with great reluctance, with great pain, pronounced that, neither in the case of the marriages nor in the case of the chapels, can prescription be set up against the letter of the law. In both cases there is a just claim to relief such as the legislature alone can afford. In both the legislature is willing to grant that relief. But this will not satisfy the orthodox Presbyterian. He demands with equal vehemence two things, that he shall be relieved, and that nobody else shall be relieved. In the same breath he tells us that it would be most iniquitous not to pass a retrospective law for his benefit, and that it would be most iniquitous to pass a retrospective law for the benefit of his fellow sufferers. I never was more amused than by reading, the other day, a speech made by a person of great note among the Irish Presbyterians on the subject of these marriages. "Is it to be endured," he says, "that the mummies of old and forgotten laws are to be dug up and unswathed for the annoyance of dissenters?" And yet a few hours later, this eloquent orator is himself hard at work in digging up and unswathing another set of mummies for the annoyance of another set of dissenters. I should like to know how he and such as he would look if we Churchmen were to assume the same tone towards them which they think it becoming to assume towards the Unitarian body; if we were to say, "You and those whom you would oppress are alike out of our pale. If they are heretics in your opinion, you are schismatics in ours. Since you insist on the letter of the law against them, we will insist on the letter of the law against you. You object to ex post facto statutes; and you shall have none. You think it reasonable that men should, in spite of a prescription of eighty or ninety years, be turned out of a chapel built with their own money, and a cemetery where their own kindred lie, because the original title was not strictly legal. We think it equally reasonable that those contracts which you have imagined to be marriages, but which are now adjudged not to be legal marriages, should be treated as nullities." I wish from my soul that some of these orthodox dissenters would recollect that the doctrine which they defend with so much zeal against the Unitarians is not the whole sum and substance of Christianity, and that there is a text about doing unto others as you would that they should do unto you.

To any intelligent man who has no object except to do justice, the Trinitarian dissenter and the Unitarian dissenter who are now asking us for relief will appear to have exactly the same right to it. There is, however, I must own, one distinction between the two cases. The Trinitarian dissenters are a strong body, and especially strong among the electors of towns. They are of great weight in the State. Some of us may probably, by voting to-night against their wishes, endanger our seats in this House. The Unitarians, on the other hand, are few in number. Their creed is unpopular. Their friendship is likely to injure a public man more than their enmity. If therefore there be among us any person of a nature at once tyrannical and cowardly, any person who delights in persecution, but is restrained by fear from persecuting powerful sects, now is his time. He never can have a better opportunity of gratifying his malevolence without risk of retribution. But, for my part, I long ago espoused the cause of religious liberty, not because that cause was popular, but because it was just; and I am not disposed to abandon the principles to which I have been true through my whole life in deference to a passing clamour. The day may come, and may come soon, when those who are now loudest in raising that clamour may again be, as they have formerly been, suppliants for justice. When that day comes I will try to prevent others from oppressing them, as I now try to prevent them from oppressing others. In the meantime I shall contend against their intolerance with the same spirit with which I may hereafter have to contend for their rights.

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THE SUGAR DUTIES. (FEBRUARY 26, 1845) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 26TH OF FEBRUARY, 1845.

On the twenty-sixth of February, 1845, on the question that the order of the day for going into Committee of Ways and Means should be read, Lord John Russell moved the following amendment:—"That it is the opinion of this House that the plan proposed by Her Majesty's Government, in reference to the Sugar Duties, professes to keep up a distinction between foreign free labour sugar and foreign slave labour sugar, which is impracticable and illusory; and, without adequate benefit to the consumer, tends so greatly to impair the revenue as to render the removal of the Income and Property Tax at the end of three years extremely uncertain and improbable." The amendment was rejected by 236 votes to 142. In the debate the following Speech was made.

Sir, if the question now at issue were merely a financial or a commercial question, I should be unwilling to offer myself to your notice: for I am well aware that there are, both on your right and on your left hand, many gentlemen far more deeply versed in financial and commercial science than myself; and I should think that I discharged my duty better by listening to them than by assuming the office of a teacher. But, Sir, the question on which we are at issue with Her Majesty's Ministers is neither a financial nor a commercial question. I do not understand it to be disputed that, if we were to pronounce our decision with reference merely to fiscal and mercantile considerations, we should at once adopt the plan recommended by my noble friend. Indeed the right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board of Trade (Mr Gladstone.), has distinctly admitted this. He says that the Ministers of the Crown call upon us to sacrifice great pecuniary advantages and great commercial facilities, for the purpose of maintaining a moral principle. Neither in any former debate nor in the debate of this night has any person ventured to deny that, both as respects the public purse and as respects the interests of trade, the course recommended by my noble friend is preferable to the course recommended by the Government.

The objections to my noble friend's amendment, then, are purely moral objections. We lie, it seems, under a moral obligation to make a distinction between the produce of free labour and the produce of slave labour. Now I should be very unwilling to incur the imputation of being indifferent to moral obligations. I do, however, think that it is in my power to show strong reasons for believing that the moral obligation pleaded by the Ministers has no existence. If there be no such moral obligation, then, as it is conceded on the other side that all fiscal and commercial arguments are on the side of my noble friend, it follows that we ought to adopt his amendment.

The right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board of Trade, has said that the Government does not pretend to act with perfect consistency as to this distinction between free labour and slave labour. It was, indeed, necessary that he should say this; for the policy of the Government is obviously most inconsistent. Perfect consistency, I admit, we are not to expect in human affairs. But, surely, there is a decent consistency which ought to be observed; and of this the right honourable gentleman himself seems to be sensible; for he asks how, if we admit sugar grown by Brazilian slaves, we can with decency continue to stop Brazilian vessels engaged in the slave trade. This argument, whatever be its value, proceeds on the very correct supposition that the test of sincerity in individuals, in parties, and in governments, is consistency. The right honourable gentleman feels, as we must all feel, that it is impossible to give credit for good faith to a man who on one occasion pleads a scruple of conscience as an excuse for not doing a certain thing, and who on other occasions, where there is no essential difference of circumstances, does that very thing without any scruple at all. I do not wish to use such a word as hypocrisy, or to impute that odious vice to any gentleman on either side of the House. But whoever declares one moment that he feels himself bound by a certain moral rule, and the next moment, in a case strictly similar, acts in direct defiance of that rule, must submit to have, if not his honesty, yet at least his power of discriminating right from wrong very gravely questioned.

Now, Sir, I deny the existence of the moral obligation pleaded by the Government. I deny that we are under any moral obligation to turn our fiscal code into a penal code, for the purpose of correcting vices in the institutions of independent states. I say that, if you suppose such a moral obligation to be in force, the supposition leads to consequences from which every one of us would recoil, to consequences which would throw the whole commercial and political system of the world into confusion. I say that, if such a moral obligation exists, our financial legislation is one mass of injustice and inhumanity. And I say more especially that, if such a moral obligation exists, the right honourable Baronet's Budget is one mass of injustice and inhumanity.

Observe, I am not disputing the paramount authority of moral obligation. I am not setting up pecuniary considerations against moral considerations. I know that it would be not only a wicked but a shortsighted policy, to aim at making a nation like this great and prosperous by violating the laws of justice. To those laws, enjoin what they may, I am prepared to submit. But I will not palter with them: I will not cite them to-day in order to serve one turn, and quibble them away to-morrow in order to serve another. I will not have two standards of right; one to be applied when I wish to protect a favourite interest at the public cost; and another to be applied when I wish to replenish the Exchequer, and to give an impulse to trade. I will not have two weights or two measures. I will not blow hot and cold, play fast and loose, strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Can the Government say as much? Are gentlemen opposite prepared to act in conformity with their own principle? They need not look long for opportunities. The Statute Book swarms with enactments directly opposed to the rule which they profess to respect. I will take a single instance from our existing laws, and propound it to the gentlemen opposite as a test, if I must not say of their sincerity, yet of their power of moral discrimination. Take the article of tobacco. Not only do you admit the tobacco of the United States which is grown by slaves; not only do you admit the tobacco of Cuba which is grown by slaves, and by slaves, as you tell us, recently imported from Africa; but you actually interdict the free labourer of the United Kingdom from growing tobacco. You have long had in your Statute Book laws prohibiting the cultivation of tobacco in England, and authorising the Government to destroy all tobacco plantations except a few square yards, which are suffered to exist unmolested in botanical gardens, for purposes of science. These laws did not extend to Ireland. The free peasantry of Ireland began to grow tobacco. The cultivation spread fast. Down came your legislation upon it; and now, if the Irish freeman dares to engage in competition with the slaves of Virginia and Havannah, you exchequer him; you ruin him; you grub up his plantation. Here, then, we have a test by which we may try the consistency of the gentlemen opposite. I ask you, are you prepared, I do not say to exclude the slave grown tobacco, but to take away from slave grown tobacco the monopoly which you now give to it, and to permit the free labourer of the United Kingdom to enter into competition on equal terms, on any terms, with the negro who works under the lash? I am confident that the three right honourable gentleman opposite, the First Lord of the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the late President of the Board of Trade, will all with one voice answer "No." And why not? "Because," say they, "it will injure the revenue. True it is," they will say, "that the tobacco imported from abroad is grown by slaves, and by slaves many of whom have been recently carried across the Atlantic in defiance, not only of justice and humanity, but of law and treaty. True it is that the cultivators of the United Kingdom are freemen. But then on the imported tobacco we are able to raise at the Custom House a duty of six hundred per cent., sometimes indeed of twelve hundred per cent.: and, if tobacco were grown here, it would be difficult to get an excise duty of even a hundred per cent. We cannot submit to this loss of revenue; and therefore we must give a monopoly to the slaveholder, and make it penal in the freeman to evade that monopoly." You may be right; but, in the name of common sense, be consistent. If this moral obligation of which you talk so much be one which may with propriety yield to fiscal considerations, let us have Brazilian sugars. If it be paramount to all fiscal considerations, let us at least have British snuff and cigars.

The present Ministers may indeed plead that they are not the authors of the laws which prohibit the cultivation of tobacco in Great Britain and Ireland. That is true. The present Government found those laws in existence: and no doubt there is good sense in the Conservative doctrine that many things which ought not to have been set up ought not, when they have been set up, to be hastily and rudely pulled down. But what will the right honourable Baronet urge in vindication of his own new budget? He is not content with maintaining laws which he finds already existing in favour of produce grown by slaves. He introduces a crowd of new laws to the same effect. He comes down to the House with a proposition for entirely taking away the duties on the importation of raw cotton. He glories in this scheme. He tells us that it is in strict accordance with the soundest principles of legislation. He tells us that it will be a blessing to the country. I agree with him, and I intend to vote with him. But how is all this cotton grown? Is it not grown by slaves? Again I say, you may be right; but, in the name of common sense, be consistent. I saw, with no small amusement, a few days ago, a paragraph by one of the right honourable Baronet's eulogists, which was to the following effect:—"Thus has this eminent statesman given to the English labourer a large supply of a most important raw material, and has manfully withstood those ravenous Whigs who wished to inundate our country with sugar dyed in negro blood." With what I should like to know, is the right honourable Baronet's cotton dyed?

Formerly, indeed, an attempt was made to distinguish between the cultivation of cotton and the cultivation of sugar. The cultivation of sugar, it was said, was peculiarly fatal to the health and life of the slave. But that plea, whatever it may have been worth, must now be abandoned; for the right honourable Baronet now proposes to reduce, to a very great extent, the duty on slave grown sugar imported from the United States.

Then a new distinction is set up. The United States, it is said, have slavery; but they have no slave trade. I deny that assertion. I say that the sugar and cotton of the United States are the fruits, not only of slavery, but of the slave trade. And I say further that, if there be on the surface of this earth a country which, before God and man, is more accountable than any other for the misery and degradation of the African race, that country is not Brazil, the produce of which the right honourable Baronet excludes, but the United States, the produce of which he proposes to admit on more favourable terms than ever. I have no pleasure in going into an argument of this nature. I do not conceive that it is the duty of a member of the English Parliament to discuss abuses which exist in other societies. Such discussion seldom tends to produce any reform of such abuses, and has a direct tendency to wound national pride, and to inflame national animosities. I would willingly avoid this subject; but the right honourable Baronet leaves me no choice. He turns this House into a Court of Judicature for the purpose of criticising and comparing the institutions of independent States. He tells us that our Tariff is to be made an instrument for rewarding the justice and humanity of some Foreign Governments, and for punishing the barbarity of others. He binds up the dearest interests of my constituents with questions with which otherwise I should, as a Member of Parliament, have nothing to do. I would gladly keep silence on such questions. But it cannot be. The tradesmen and the professional men whom I represent say to me, "Why are we to be loaded, certainly for some years, probably for ever, with a tax, admitted by those who impose it to be grievous, unequal, inquisitorial? Why are we to be loaded in time of peace with burdens heretofore reserved for the exigencies of war?" The paper manufacturer, the soap manufacturer, say, "Why, if the Income Tax is to be continued, are our important and suffering branches of industry to have no relief?" And the answer is, "Because Brazil does not behave so well as the United States towards the negro race." Can I then avoid instituting a comparison? Am I not bound to bring to the test the truth of an assertion pregnant with consequences so momentous to those who have sent me hither? I must speak out; and, if what I say gives offence and produces inconvenience, for that offence and for that inconvenience the Government is responsible.

I affirm, then, that there exists in the United States a slave trade, not less odious or demoralising, nay, I do in my conscience believe, more odious and more demoralising than that which is carried on between Africa and Brazil. North Carolina and Virginia are to Louisiana and Alabama what Congo is to Rio Janeiro. The slave States of the Union are divided into two classes, the breeding States, where the human beasts of burden increase and multiply and become strong for labour, and the sugar and cotton States to which those beasts of burden are sent to be worked to death. To what an extent the traffic in man is carried on we may learn by comparing the census of 1830 with the census of 1840. North Carolina and Virginia are, as I have said, great breeding States. During the ten years from 1830 to 1840 the slave population of North Carolina was almost stationary. The slave population of Virginia positively decreased. Yet, both in North Carolina and Virginia propagation was, during those ten years, going on fast. The number of births among the slaves in those States exceeded by hundreds of thousands the number of the deaths. What then became of the surplus? Look to the returns from the Southern States, from the States whose produce the right honourable Baronet proposes to admit with reduced duty or with no duty at all; and you will see. You will find that the increase in the breeding States was barely sufficient to meet the demand of the consuming States. In Louisiana, for example, where we know that the negro population is worn down by cruel toil, and would not, if left to itself, keep up its numbers, there were, in 1830, one hundred and seven thousand slaves; in 1840, one hundred and seventy thousand. In Alabama, the slave population during those ten years much more than doubled; it rose from one hundred and seventeen thousand to two hundred and fifty-three thousand. In Mississippi it actually tripled. It rose from sixty-five thousand to one hundred and ninety-five thousand. So much for the extent of this slave trade. And as to its nature, ask any Englishman who has ever travelled in the Southern States. Jobbers go about from plantation to plantation looking out for proprietors who are not easy in their circumstances, and who are likely to sell cheap. A black boy is picked up here; a black girl there. The dearest ties of nature and of marriage are torn asunder as rudely as they were ever torn asunder by any slave captain on the coast of Guinea. A gang of three or four hundred negroes is made up; and then these wretches, handcuffed, fettered, guarded by armed men, are driven southward, as you would drive,—or rather as you would not drive,—a herd of oxen to Smithfield, that they may undergo the deadly labour of the sugar mill near the mouth of the Mississippi. A very few years of that labour in that climate suffice to send the stoutest African to his grave. But he can well be spared. While he is fast sinking into premature old age, negro boys in Virginia are growing up as fast into vigorous manhood to supply the void which cruelty is making in Louisiana. God forbid that I should extenuate the horrors of the slave trade in any form! But I do think this its worst form. Bad enough is it that civilised men should sail to an uncivilised quarter of the world where slavery exists, should there buy wretched barbarians, and should carry them away to labour in a distant land: bad enough! But that a civilised man, a baptized man, a man proud of being a citizen of a free state, a man frequenting a Christian church, should breed slaves for exportation, and, if the whole horrible truth must be told, should even beget slaves for exportation, should see children, sometimes his own children, gambolling around him from infancy, should watch their growth, should become familiar with their faces, and should then sell them for four or five hundred dollars a head, and send them to lead in a remote country a life which is a lingering death, a life about which the best thing that can be said is that it is sure to be short; this does, I own, excite a horror exceeding even the horror excited by that slave trade which is the curse of the African coast. And mark: I am not speaking of any rare case, of any instance of eccentric depravity. I am speaking of a trade as regular as the trade in pigs between Dublin and Liverpool, or as the trade in coals between the Tyne and the Thames.

There is another point to which I must advert. I have no wish to apologise for slavery as it exists in Brazil; but this I say, that slavery, as it exists in Brazil, though a fearful evil, seems to me a much less hopeless evil than slavery as it exists in the United States. In estimating the character of negro slavery we must never forget one most important ingredient; an ingredient which was wanting to slavery as it was known to the Greeks and Romans; an ingredient which was wanting to slavery as it appeared in Europe during the middle ages; I mean the antipathy of colour. Where this antipathy exists in a high degree, it is difficult to conceive how the white masters and the black labourers can ever be mingled together, as the lords and villeins in many parts of the Old World have been, in one free community. Now this antipathy is notoriously much stronger in the United States than in the Brazils. In the Brazils the free people of colour are numerous. They are not excluded from honourable callings. You may find among them merchants, physicians, lawyers: many of them bear arms; some have been admitted to holy orders. Whoever knows what dignity, what sanctity, the Church of Rome ascribes to the person of a priest, will at once perceive the important consequences which follow from this last circumstance. It is by no means unusual to see a white penitent kneeling before the spiritual tribunal of a negro, confessing his sins to a negro, receiving absolution from a negro. It is by no means unusual to see a negro dispensing the Eucharist to a circle of whites. I need not tell the House what emotions of amazement and of rage such a spectacle would excite in Georgia or South Carolina. Fully admitting, therefore, as I do, that Brazilian slavery is a horrible evil, I yet must say that, if I were called upon to declare whether I think the chances of the African race on the whole better in Brazil or in the United States, I should at once answer that they are better in Brazil. I think it not improbable that in eighty or a hundred years the black population of Brazil may be free and happy. I see no reasonable prospect of such a change in the United States.

The right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board of Trade, has said much about that system of maritime police by which we have attempted to sweep slave trading vessels from the great highway of nations. Now what has been the conduct of Brazil, and what has been the conduct of the United States, as respects that system of police? Brazil has come into the system; the United States have thrown every impediment in the way of the system. What opinion Her Majesty's Ministers entertain respecting the Right of Search we know from a letter of my Lord Aberdeen which has, within a few days, been laid on our table. I believe that I state correctly the sense of that letter when I say that the noble Earl regards the Right of Search as an efficacious means, and as the only efficacious means, of preventing the maritime slave trade. He expresses most serious doubts whether any substitute can be devised. I think that this check would be a most valuable one, if all nations would submit to it; and I applaud the humanity which has induced successive British administrations to exert themselves for the purpose of obtaining the concurrence of foreign Powers in so excellent a plan. Brazil consented to admit the Right of Search; the United States refused, and by refusing deprived the Right of Search of half its value. Not content with refusing to admit the Right of Search, they even disputed the right of visit, a right which no impartial publicist in Europe will deny to be in strict conformity with the Law of Nations. Nor was this all. In every part of the Continent of Europe the diplomatic agents of the Cabinet of Washington have toiled to induce other nations to imitate the example of the United States. You cannot have forgotten General Cass's letter. You cannot have forgotten the terms in which his Government communicated to him its approbation of his conduct. You know as well as I do that, if the United States had submitted to the Right of Search, there would have been no outcry against that right in France. Nor do I much blame the French. It is but natural that, when one maritime Power makes it a point of honour to refuse us this right, other maritime Powers should think that they cannot, without degradation, take a different course. It is but natural that a Frenchman, proud of his country, should ask why the tricolor is to be less respected then the stars and stripes. The right honourable gentleman says that, if we assent to my noble friend's amendment, we shall no longer be able to maintain the Right of Search. Sir, he need not trouble himself about that right. It is already gone. We have agreed to negotiate on the subject with France. Everybody knows how that negotiation will end. The French flag will be exempted from search: Spain will instantly demand, if she has not already demanded, similar exemption; and you may as well let her have it with a good grace, and without wrangling. For a Right of Search, from which the flags of France and America are exempted, is not worth a dispute. The only system, therefore, which, in the opinion of Her Majesty's Ministers, has yet been found efficacious for the prevention of the maritime slave trade, is in fact abandoned. And who is answerable for this? The United States of America. The chief guilt even of the slave trade between Africa and Brazil lies, not with the Government of Brazil, but with that of the United States. And yet the right honourable Baronet proposes to punish Brazil for the slave trade, and in the same breath proposes to show favour to the United States, because the United States are pure from the crime of slave trading. I thank the right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board of Trade, for reminding me of Mr Calhoun's letter. I could not have wished for a better illustration of my argument. Let anybody who has read that letter say what is the country which, if we take on ourselves to avenge the wrongs of Africa, ought to be the first object of our indignation. The Government of the United States has placed itself on a bad eminence to which Brazil never aspired, and which Brazil, even if aspiring to it, never could attain. The Government of the United States has formally declared itself the patron, the champion of negro slavery all over the world, the evil genius, the Arimanes of the African race, and seems to take pride in this shameful and odious distinction. I well understand that an American statesman may say, "Slavery is a horrible evil; but we were born to it, we see no way at present to rid ourselves of it: and we must endure it as we best may." Good and enlightened men may hold such language; but such is not the language of the American Cabinet. That Cabinet is actuated by a propagandist spirit, and labours to spread servitude and barbarism with an ardour such as no other Government ever showed in the cause of freedom and civilisation. Nay more; the doctrine held at Washington is that this holy cause sanctifies the most unholy means. These zealots of slavery think themselves justified in snatching away provinces on the right hand and on the left, in defiance of public faith and international law, from neighbouring countries which have free institutions, and this avowedly for the purpose of diffusing over a wider space the greatest curse that afflicts humanity. They put themselves at the head of the slavedriving interest throughout the world, just as Elizabeth put herself at the head of the Protestant interest; and wherever their favourite institution is in danger, are ready to stand by it as Elizabeth stood by the Dutch. This, then, I hold to be demonstrated, that of all societies now existing, the Republic of the United States is by far the most culpable as respects slavery and the slave trade.

Now then I come to the right honourable Baronet's Budget. He tells us, that he will not admit Brazilian sugar, because the Brazilian Government tolerates slavery and connives at the slave trade; and he tells us at the same time, that he will admit the slave grown cotton and the slave grown sugar of the United States. I am utterly at a loss to understand how he can vindicate his consistency. He tells us that if we adopt my noble friend's proposition, we shall give a stimulus to the slave trade between Africa and Brazil. Be it so. But is it not equally clear that, if we adopt the right honourable Baronet's own propositions, we shall give a stimulus to the slave trade between Virginia and Louisiana? I have not the least doubt that, as soon as the contents of his Budget are known on the other side of the Atlantic, the slave trade will become more active than it is at this moment; that the jobbers in human flesh and blood will be more busy than ever; that the droves of manacled negroes, moving southward to their doom, will be more numerous on every road. These will be the fruits of the right honourable Baronet's measure. Yet he tells us that this part of his Budget is framed on sound principles and will greatly benefit the country; and he tells us truth. I mean to vote with him; and I can perfectly, on my own principles, reconcile to my conscience the vote which I shall give. How the right honourable Baronet can reconcile the course which he takes to his conscience, I am at a loss to conceive, and am not a little curious to know. No man is more capable than he of doing justice to any cause which he undertakes; and it would be most presumptuous in me to anticipate the defence which he means to set up. But I hope that the House will suffer me, as one who feels deeply on this subject, now to explain the reasons which convince me that I ought to vote for the right honourable Baronet's propositions respecting the produce of the United States. In explaining those reasons, I at the same time explain the reasons which induce me to vote with my noble friend to-night.

I say then, Sir, that I fully admit the paramount authority of moral obligations. But it is important that we should accurately understand the nature and extent of those obligations. We are clearly bound to wrong no man. Nay, more, we are bound to regard all men with benevolence. But to every individual, and to every society, Providence has assigned a sphere within which benevolence ought to be peculiarly active; and if an individual or a society neglects what lies within that sphere in order to attend to what lies without, the result is likely to be harm and not good.

It is thus in private life. We should not be justified in injuring a stranger in order to benefit ourselves or those who are dearest to us. Every stranger is entitled, by the laws of humanity, to claim from us certain reasonable good offices. But it is not true that we are bound to exert ourselves to serve a mere stranger as we are bound to exert ourselves to serve our own relations. A man would not be justified in subjecting his wife and children to disagreeable privations, in order to save even from utter ruin some foreigner whom he never saw. And if a man were so absurd and perverse as to starve his own family in order to relieve people with whom he had no acquaintance, there can be little doubt that his crazy charity would produce much more misery than happiness.

It is the same with nations. No statesmen ought to injure other countries in order to benefit his own country. No statesman ought to lose any fair opportunity of rendering to foreign nations such good offices as he can render without a breach of the duty which he owes to the society of which he is a member. But, after all, our country is our country, and has the first claim on our attention. There is nothing, I conceive, of narrow-mindedness in this patriotism. I do not say that we ought to prefer the happiness of one particular society to the happiness of mankind; but I say that, by exerting ourselves to promote the happiness of the society with which we are most nearly connected, and with which we are best acquainted, we shall do more to promote the happiness of mankind than by busying ourselves about matters which we do not fully understand, and cannot efficiently control.

There are great evils connected with the factory system in this country. Some of those evils might, I am inclined to think, be removed or mitigated by legislation. On that point many of my friends differ from me; but we all agree in thinking that it is the duty of a British Legislator to consider the subject attentively, and with a serious sense of responsibility. There are also great social evils in Russia. The peasants of that empire are in a state of servitude. The sovereign of Russia is bound by the most solemn obligations to consider whether he can do anything to improve the condition of that large portion of his subjects. If we watch over our factory children, and he watches over his peasants, much good may be done. But would any good be done if the Emperor of Russia and the British Parliament were to interchange functions; if he were to take under his patronage the weavers of Lancashire, if we were to take under our patronage the peasants of the Volga; if he were to say, "You shall send no cotton to Russia till you pass a ten Hours' Bill;" if we were to say, "You shall send no hemp or tallow to England till you emancipate your serfs?"

On these principles, Sir, which seem to me to be the principles of plain common sense, I can, without resorting to any casuistical subtilties, vindicate to my own conscience, and, I hope, to my country, the whole course which I have pursued with respect to slavery. When I first came into Parliament, slavery still existed in the British dominions. I had, as it was natural that I should have, a strong feeling on the subject. I exerted myself, according to my station and to the measure of my abilities, on the side of the oppressed. I shrank from no personal sacrifice in that cause. I do not mention this as matter of boast. It was no more than my duty. The right honourable gentleman, the Secretary of State for the Home Department, knows that, in 1833, I disapproved of one part of the measure which Lord Grey's Government proposed on the subject of slavery. I was in office; and office was then as important to me as it could be to any man. I put my resignation into the hands of Lord Spencer, and both spoke and voted against the Administration. To my surprise, Lord Grey and Lord Spencer refused to accept my resignation, and I remained in office; but during some days I considered myself as out of the service of the Crown. I at the same time heartily joined in laying a heavy burden on the country for the purpose of compensating the planters. I acted thus, because, being a British Legislator, I thought myself bound, at any cost to myself and to my constituents, to remove a foul stain from the British laws, and to redress the wrongs endured by persons who, as British subjects, were placed under my guardianship. But my especial obligations in respect of negro slavery ceased when slavery itself ceased in that part of the world for the welfare of which I, as a member of this House, was accountable. As for the blacks in the United States, I feel for them, God knows. But I am not their keeper. I do not stand in the same relation to the slaves of Louisiana and Alabama in which I formerly stood to the slaves of Demerara and Jamaica. I am bound, on the other hand, by the most solemn obligations, to promote the interests of millions of my own countrymen, who are indeed by no means in a state so miserable and degraded as that of the slaves in the United States, but who are toiling hard from sunrise to sunset in order to obtain a scanty subsistence; who are often scarcely able to procure the necessaries of life; and whose lot would be alleviated if I could open new markets to them, and free them from taxes which now press heavily on their industry. I see clearly that, by excluding the produce of slave labour from our ports, I should inflict great evil on my fellow-subjects and constituents. But the good which, by taking such a course, I should do to the negroes in the United States seems to me very problematical. That by admitting slave grown cotton and slave grown sugar we do, in some sense, encourage slavery and the Slave Trade, may be true. But I doubt whether, by turning our fiscal code into a penal code for restraining the cruelty of the American planters, we should not, on the whole, injure the negroes rather than benefit them. No independent nation will endure to be told by another nation, "We are more virtuous than you; we have sate in judgment on your institutions; we find them to be bad; and, as a punishment for your offences, we condemn you to pay higher duties at our Custom House than we demand from the rest of the world." Such language naturally excites the resentment of foreigners. I can make allowance for their susceptibility. For I myself sympathise with them, I know that Ireland has been misgoverned; and I have done, and purpose to do, my best to redress her grievances. But when I take up a New York journal, and read there the rants of President Tyler's son, I feel so much disgusted by such insolent absurdity that I am for a moment inclined to deny that Ireland has any reason whatever to complain. It seems to me that if ever slavery is peaceably extinguished in the United States, that great and happy change must be brought about by the efforts of those enlightened and respectable American citizens who hate slavery as much as we hate it. Now I cannot help fearing that, if the British Parliament were to proclaim itself the protector and avenger of the American slave, the pride of those excellent persons would take the alarm. It might become a point of national honour with them to stand by an institution which they have hitherto regarded as a national disgrace. We should thus confer no benefit on the negro; and we should at the same time inflict cruel suffering on our own countrymen.

On these grounds, Sir, I can, with a clear conscience, vote for the right honourable Baronet's propositions respecting the cotton and sugar of the United States. But on exactly the same grounds I can, with a clear conscience, vote for the amendment of my noble friend. And I confess that I shall be much surprised if the right honourable Baronet shall be able to point out any distinction between the cases.

I have detained you too long, Sir; yet there is one point to which I must refer; I mean the refining. Was such a distinction ever heard of? Is there anything like it in all Pascal's Dialogues with the old Jesuit? Not for the world are we to eat one ounce of Brazilian sugar. But we import the accursed thing; we bond it; we employ our skill and machinery to render it more alluring to the eye and to the palate; we export it to Leghorn and Hamburg; we send it to all the coffee houses of Italy and Germany: we pocket a profit on all this; and then we put on a Pharisaical air, and thank God that we are not like those wicked Italians and Germans who have no scruple about swallowing slave grown sugar. Surely this sophistry is worthy only of the worst class of false witnesses. "I perjure myself! Not for the world. I only kissed my thumb; I did not put my lips to the calf-skin." I remember something very like the right honourable Baronet's morality in a Spanish novel which I read long ago. I beg pardon of the House for detaining them with such a trifle; but the story is much to the purpose. A wandering lad, a sort of Gil Blas, is taken into the service of a rich old silversmith, a most pious man, who is always telling his beads, who hears mass daily, and observes the feasts and fasts of the church with the utmost scrupulosity. The silversmith is always preaching honesty and piety. "Never," he constantly repeats to his young assistant, "never touch what is not your own; never take liberties with sacred things." Sacrilege, as uniting theft with profaneness, is the sin of which he has the deepest horror. One day, while he is lecturing after his usual fashion, an ill-looking fellow comes into the shop with a sack under his arm. "Will you buy these?" says the visitor, and produces from the sack some church plate and a rich silver crucifix. "Buy them!" cries the pious man. "No, nor touch them; not for the world. I know where you got them. Wretch that you are, have you no care for your soul?" "Well then," says the thief, "if you will not buy them, will you melt them down for me?" "Melt them down!" answers the silver smith, "that is quite another matter." He takes the chalices and the crucifix with a pair of tongs; the silver, thus in bond, is dropped into the crucible, melted, and delivered to the thief, who lays down five pistoles and decamps with his booty. The young servant stares at this strange scene. But the master very gravely resumes his lecture. "My son," he says, "take warning by that sacrilegious knave, and take example by me. Think what a load of guilt lies on his conscience. You will see him hanged before long. But as to me, you saw that I would not touch the stolen property. I keep these tongs for such occasions. And thus I thrive in the fear of God, and manage to turn an honest penny." You talk of morality. What can be more immoral than to bring ridicule on the very name of morality, by drawing distinctions where there are no differences? Is it not enough that this dishonest casuistry has already poisoned our theology? Is it not enough that a set of quibbles has been devised, under cover of which a divine may hold the worst doctrines of the Church of Rome, and may hold with them the best benefice of the Church of England? Let us at least keep the debates of this House free from the sophistry of Tract Number Ninety.

And then the right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board of Trade, wonders that other nations consider our abhorrence of slavery and the Slave Trade as sheer hypocrisy. Why, Sir, how should it be otherwise? And, if the imputation annoys us, whom have we to thank for it? Numerous and malevolent as our detractors are, none of them was ever so absurd as to charge us with hypocrisy because we took slave grown tobacco and slave grown cotton, till the Government began to affect scruples about admitting slave grown sugar. Of course, as soon as our Ministers ostentatiously announced to all the world that our fiscal system was framed on a new and sublime moral principle, everybody began to inquire whether we consistently adhered to that principle. It required much less acuteness and much less malevolence than that of our neighbours to discover that this hatred of slave grown produce was mere grimace. They see that we not only take tobacco produced by means of slavery and of the Slave Trade, but that we positively interdict freemen in this country from growing tobacco. They see that we not only take cotton produced by means of slavery and of the Slave Trade, but that we are about to exempt this cotton from all duty. They see that we are at this moment reducing the duty on the slave grown sugar of Louisiana. How can we expect them to believe that it is from a sense of justice and humanity that we lay a prohibitory duty on the sugar of Brazil? I care little for the abuse which any foreign press or any foreign tribune may throw on the Machiavelian policy of perfidious Albion. What gives me pain is, not that the charge of hypocrisy is made, but that I am unable to see how it is to be refuted.

Yet one word more. The right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board of Trade, has quoted the opinions of two persons, highly distinguished by the exertions which they made for the abolition of slavery, my lamented friend, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, and Sir Stephen Lushington. It is most true that those eminent persons did approve of the principle laid down by the right honourable Baronet opposite in 1841. I think that they were in error; but in their error I am sure that they were sincere, and I firmly believe that they would have been consistent. They would have objected, no doubt, to my noble friend's amendment; but they would have objected equally to the right honourable Baronet's budget. It was not prudent, I think, in gentlemen opposite to allude to those respectable names. The mention of those names irresistibly carries the mind back to the days of the great struggle for negro freedom. And it is but natural that we should ask where, during that struggle, were those who now profess such loathing for slave grown sugar? The three persons who are chiefly responsible for the financial and commercial policy of the present Government I take to be the right honourable Baronet at the head of the Treasury, the right honourable gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the right honourable gentleman the late President of the Board of Trade. Is there anything in the past conduct of any one of the three which can lead me to believe that his sensibility to the evils of slavery is greater than mine? I am sure that the right honourable Baronet the first Lord of the Treasury would think that I was speaking ironically if I were to compliment him on his zeal for the liberty of the negro race. Never once, during the whole of the long and obstinate conflict which ended in the abolition of slavery in our colonies, did he give one word, one sign of encouragement to those who suffered and laboured for the good cause. The whole weight of his great abilities and influence was in the other scale. I well remember that, so late as 1833, he declared in this House that he could give his assent neither to the plan of immediate emancipation proposed by my noble friend who now represents Sunderland (Lord Howick.), nor to the plan of gradual emancipation proposed by Lord Grey's government. I well remember that he said, "I shall claim no credit hereafter on account of this bill; all that I desire is to be absolved from the responsibility." As to the other two right honourable gentlemen whom I have mentioned, they are West Indians; and their conduct was that of West Indians. I do not wish to give them pain, or to throw any disgraceful imputation on them. Personally I regard them with feelings of goodwill and respect. I do not question their sincerity; but I know that the most honest men are but too prone to deceive themselves into the belief that the path towards which they are impelled by their own interests and passions is the path of duty. I am conscious that this might be my own case; and I believe it to be theirs. As the right honourable gentleman, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has left the House, I will only say that, with respect to the question of slavery, he acted after the fashion of the class to which he belonged. But as the right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board of Trade, is in his place, he must allow me to bring to his recollection the part which he took in the debates of 1833. He then said, "You raise a great clamour about the cultivation of sugar. You say that it is a species of industry fatal to the health and life of the slave. I do not deny that there is some difference between the labour of a sugar plantation and the labour of a cotton plantation, or a coffee plantation. But the difference is not so great as you think. In marshy soils, the slaves who cultivate the sugar cane suffer severely. But in Barbadoes, where the air is good, they thrive and multiply." He proceeded to say that, even at the worst, the labour of a sugar plantation was not more unhealthy than some kinds of labour in which the manufacturers of England are employed, and which nobody thinks of prohibiting. He particularly mentioned grinding. "See how grinding destroys the health, the sight, the life. Yet there is no outcry against grinding." He went on to say that the whole question ought to be left by Parliament to the West Indian Legislature. [Mr Gladstone: "Really I never said so. You are not quoting me at all correctly."] What, not about the sugar cultivation and the grinding? [Mr Gladstone: "That is correct; but I never recommended that the question should be left to the West Indian Legislatures."] I have quoted correctly. But since my right honourable friend disclaims the sentiment imputed to him by the reporters, I shall say no more about it. I have no doubt that he is quite right, and that what he said was misunderstood. What is undisputed is amply sufficient for my purpose. I see that the persons who now show so much zeal against slavery in foreign countries, are the same persons who formerly countenanced slavery in the British Colonies. I remember a time when they maintained that we were bound in justice to protect slave grown sugar against the competition of free grown sugar, and even of British free grown sugar. I now hear them calling on us to protect free grown sugar against the competition of slave grown sugar. I remember a time when they extenuated as much as they could the evils of the sugar cultivation. I now hear them exaggerating those evils. But, devious as their course has been, there is one clue by which I can easily track them through the whole maze. Inconstant in everything else, they are constant in demanding protection for the West Indian planter. While he employs slaves, they do their best to apologise for the evils of slavery. As soon as he is forced to employ freemen, they begin to cry up the blessings of freedom. They go round the whole compass, and yet to one point they steadfastly adhere: and that point is the interest of the West Indian proprietors. I have done, Sir; and I thank the House most sincerely for the patience and indulgence with which I have been heard. I hope that I have at least vindicated my own consistency. How Her Majesty's Ministers will vindicate their consistency, how they will show that their conduct has at all times been guided by the same principles, or even that their conduct at the present time is guided by any fixed principle at all, I am unable to conjecture.

*****



MAYNOOTH. (APRIL 14, 1845) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 14TH OF APRIL, 1845.

On Saturday the eleventh of April, 1845, Sir Robert Peel moved the second reading of the Maynooth College Bill. After a debate of six nights the motion was carried by 323 votes to 176. On the second night the following Speech was made.

I do not mean, Sir, to follow the honourable gentleman who has just sate down into a discussion on an amendment which is not now before us. When my honourable friend the Member for Sheffield shall think it expedient to make a motion on that important subject to which he has repeatedly called the attention of the House, I may, perhaps, ask to be heard. At present I shall content myself with explaining the reasons which convince me that it is my duty to vote for the second reading of this bill; and I cannot, I think, better explain those reasons than by passing in review, as rapidly as I can, the chief objections which have been made to the bill here and elsewhere.

The objectors, Sir, may be divided into three classes. The first class consists of those persons who object, not to the principle of the grant to Maynooth College, but merely to the amount. The second class consists of persons who object on principle to all grants made to a church which they regard as corrupt. The third class consists of persons who object on principle to all grants made to churches, whether corrupt or pure.

Now, Sir, of those three classes the first is evidently that which takes the most untenable ground. How any person can think that Maynooth College ought to be supported by public money, and yet can think this bill too bad to be suffered to go into Committee, I do not well understand. I am forced however to believe that there are many such persons. For I cannot but remember that the old annual vote attracted scarcely any notice; and I see that this bill has produced violent excitement. I cannot but remember that the old annual vote used to pass with very few dissentients; and I see that great numbers of gentlemen, who never were among those dissentients, have crowded down to the House in order to divide against this bill. It is indeed certain that a large proportion, I believe a majority, of those members who cannot, as they assure us, conscientiously support the plan proposed by the right honourable Baronet at the head of the Government, would without the smallest scruple have supported him if he had in this, as in former years, asked us to give nine thousand pounds for twelve months. So it is: yet I cannot help wondering that it should be so. For how can any human ingenuity turn a question between nine thousand pounds and twenty-six thousand pounds, or between twelve months and an indefinite number of months, into a question of principle? Observe: I am not now answering those who maintain that nothing ought to be given out of the public purse to a corrupt church; nor am I now answering those who maintain that nothing ought to be given out of the public purse to any church whatever. They, I admit, oppose this bill on principle. I perfectly understand, though I do not myself hold, the opinion of the zealous voluntary who says, "Whether the Roman Catholic Church teaches truth or error, she ought to have no assistance from the State." I also perfectly understand, though I do not myself hold, the opinion of the zealous Protestant who says, "The Roman Catholic Church teaches error, and therefore ought to have no assistance from the State." But I cannot understand the reasoning of the man who says, "In spite of the errors of the Roman Catholic Church, I think that she ought to have some assistance from the State; but I am bound to mark my abhorrence of her errors by doling out to her a miserable pittance. Her tenets are so absurd and noxious that I will pay the professor who teaches them wages less than I should offer to my groom. Her rites are so superstitious that I will take care that they shall be performed in a chapel with a leaky roof and a dirty floor. By all means let us keep her a college, provided only that it be a shabby one. Let us support those who are intended to teach her doctrines and to administer her sacraments to the next generation, provided only that every future priest shall cost us less than a foot soldier. Let us board her young theologians; but let their larder be so scantily supplied that they may be compelled to break up before the regular vacation from mere want of food. Let us lodge them; but let their lodging be one in which they may be packed like pigs in a stye, and be punished for their heterodoxy by feeling the snow and the wind through the broken panes." Is it possible to conceive anything more absurd or more disgraceful? Can anything be clearer than this, that whatever it is lawful to do it is lawful to do well? If it be right that we should keep up this college at all, it must be right that we should keep it up respectably. Our national dignity is concerned. For this institution, whether good or bad, is, beyond all dispute, a very important institution. Its office is to form the character of those who are to form the character of millions. Whether we ought to extend any patronage to such an institution is a question about which wise and honest men may differ. But that, as we do extend our patronage to such an institution, our patronage ought to be worthy of the object, and worthy of the greatness of our country, is a proposition from which I am astonished to hear any person dissent.