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The Grand Old Man

R >> Richard B. Cook >> The Grand Old Man




The debate began in Parliament June 24, 1850. The stability of the Whig
administration, then in power, depended upon the results. In the House
of Lords, Lord Stanley moved a resolution, which was carried, expressing
regret that "various claims against the Greek Government, doubtful in
point of justice and exaggerated in amount, have been enforced by
coercive measures, directed against the commerce and people of Greece,
and calculated to endanger the continuance of our friendly relations
with foreign powers." A counter-resolution was necessary in the House of
Commons to offset the action of the Lords, so a Radical, Mr. Roebuck,
much to the surprise of many, came to the defense of the Government and
offered the following motion, which was carried: "That the principles
which have hitherto regulated the foreign policy of Her Majesty's
Government are such as were required to preserve untarnished the honor
and dignity of this country, and, in times of unexampled difficulty, the
best calculated to maintain peace between England and the various
nations of the world."

The debate which followed, and which was prolonged over four nights, was
marked on both sides by speeches of unusual oratorical power and
brilliancy. The speeches of Lord Palmerston, Sir Robert Peel, Mr.
Cockburn, Mr. Cobden, Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone were pronounced as
remarkable orations. Sir Robert Peel made a powerful speech against the
Ministers, which was made memorable not only for its eloquence, but
because it was his last. Lord Palmerston defended himself vigorously in
a speech of five hours' duration. "He spoke," said Mr. Gladstone, "from
the dusk of one day to the dawn of the next." He defended his policy at
every point. In every step taken he had been influenced by the sole
desire that the meanest, the poorest, even the most disreputable subject
of the English Crown should be defended by the whole might of England
against foreign oppression. He reminded them of all that was implied in
the Roman boast, _Civis Romanus sum_, and urged the House to make it
clear that a British subject, in whatever land he might be, should feel
confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England could
protect him. This could not be resisted. _Civis Romanus sum_ settled
the question.

Mr. Gladstone's reply was a masterpiece. It was exhaustive and
trenchant, and produced a great effect. He first spoke upon the position
of the Government and the constitutional doctrines which they had laid
down in regard to it, and then severely condemned the conduct of the
Premier for being so heedless of the censure of the House of Lords and
in trying to shield himself behind the precedents which are in reality
no precedents at all. With reference to the Greek question, he
repudiated precedents which involved the conduct of strong countries
against weak ones. The Greek Government had put no impediment in the way
of arbitration. Instead of trusting and trying the tribunals of the
country and employing diplomatic agency simply as a supplemental
resource, Lord Palmerston had interspersed authority of foreign power,
in contravention both of the particular stipulations of the treaty in
force between Greece and England and of the general principles of the
law of nations. He had thus set the mischievous example of abandoning
the methods of law and order, and resorted to those of force.
Non-interference had been laid down as the basis of our conduct towards
other nations, but the policy of Lord Palmerston had been characterized
by a spirit of active interference.

Mr. Gladstone's words were in part as follows: "Does he [Lord
Palmerston] make the claim for us [the English] that we are to be lifted
upon a platform high above the standing-ground of all other nations?...
It is indeed too clear ... that he adopts, in part, the vain conception
that we, forsooth, have a mission to be the censors of vice and folly,
of abuse and imperfection among the other countries of the world; that
we are to be the universal schoolmasters, and that all those who
hesitate to recognize our office can be governed only by prejudice or
personal animosity, and shall have the blind war of diplomacy forthwith
declared against them."

Again: "Let us recognize, and recognize with frankness, the equality of
the weak with the strong; the principles of brotherhood among nations,
and of their sacred independence. When we are asking for the maintenance
of the rights which belong to our fellow-subjects, resident in Greece,
let us do as we would be done by, and let us pay all respect to a feeble
State and to the infancy of free institutions.... Let us refrain from
all gratuitous and arbitrary meddling in the internal concerns of other
States, even as we should resent the same interference if it were
attempted to be practiced toward ourselves."

In this address Mr. Gladstone evinces his inclination to appeal to the
higher and nobler nature of man, to the principles of brotherhood among
nations, to the law of God and nature, and to ask as a test of the
foreign policy of the government, not whether it is striking, or
brilliant, or successful, but whether it is right.

This speech of Mr. Gladstone's was recognized as the finest he had
delivered in Parliament, and its power was acknowledged by both sides of
the House, by political opponent and friend. Lord Chief Justice
Cockburn, then a member of the House, referring in a speech the
following evening to Mr. Gladstone and his remarkable speech, uttered
these words: "I suppose we are now to consider him as the representative
of Lord Stanley in the House--Gladstone _Vice_ Disraeli, am I to say,
resigned or superseded?" The government was sustained.

We have already stated that it was during this memorable debate that Sir
Robert Peel made his last speech.--On the following day, 29th of June,
1850, Sir Robert called at Buckingham Palace for the purpose of leaving
his card. On proceeding up Constitution Hill on horse back he met one of
Lady Dover's daughters, and exchanged salutations. Immediately
afterwards his horse became restive and shying towards the rails of the
Green Park, threw Sir Robert sideways on his left shoulder. Medical aid
was at hand and was at once administered. Sir Robert groaned when lifted
and when asked whether he was much hurt replied, "Yes, very much." He
was conveyed home where the meeting with his family was very affecting,
and he swooned in the arms of his physician. He was placed upon a sofa
in the dining-room from which he never moved. His sufferings were so
acute that a minute examination of his injuries could not be made. For
two or three days he lingered and then died, July 2d. An examination
made after death revealed the fact that the fifth rib on the left side
was fractured, the broken rib pressing on the lung, producing effusion
and pulmonary engorgement. This was probably the seat of the mortal
injury, and was where Sir Robert complained of the greatest pain.

The news of Sir Robert's death produced a profound sensation throughout
the land. Great and universal were the tokens of respect and grief.
There was but one feeling,--that England had lost one of her most
illustrious statesmen. Even those who had been in opposition to his
views, alluded to the great loss the nation had sustained and paid a
fitting tribute to his memory. The House of Commons, on motion of Mr.
Hume July 3d, at once adjourned. In the House of Lords the Duke of
Wellington and Lord Brougham spoke in appreciative words of the departed
statesman. "Such was the leader whom Mr. Gladstone had faithfully
followed for many years."

Supporting Mr. Hume's motion, Mr. Gladstone said: "I am quite sure that
every heart is much too full to allow us, at a period so early, to enter
upon a consideration of the amount of that calamity with which the
country has been visited in his, I must even now say, premature death;
for though he has died full of years and full of honors, yet it is a
death which our human eyes will regard as premature; because we had
fondly hoped that, in whatever position he was placed, by the weight of
his character, by the splendor of his talents, by the purity of his
virtues, he would still have been spared to render to his countrymen the
most essential services. I will only, sir, quote those most touching and
feeling lines which were applied by one of the greatest poets of this
country to the memory of a man great indeed, but yet not greater than
Sir Robert Peel:"

'Now is the stately column broke,
The beacon light is quenched in smoke;
The trumpet's silver voice is still;
The warder silent on the hill.'

"Sir, I will add no more--in saying this I have, perhaps, said too much.
It might have been better had I confined myself to seconding the motion.
I am sure the tribute of respect which we now offer will be all the more
valuable from the silence with which the motion is received, and which I
well know has not arisen from the want, but from the excess of feeling
on the part of members of this House."

Upon the death of Sir Robert Peel began the disintegration of the party
distinguished by his name--Peelites. Some of its members united with the
Conservatives, and others, such as Sir James Graham, Sidney Herbert, and
Mr. Gladstone held themselves aloof from both Whigs and Tories.
Conservative traditions still exercised considerable influence over
them, but they could not join them, because they were already
surrendering to strong liberal tendencies. It is said that Mr. Gladstone
at this time, and for a decade thereafter, until the death of Sir James
Graham, was greatly indebted to this statesman, not only for the growth
of his liberal principles, but for his development as a practical
statesman. Sir James wielded great influence over his contemporaries
generally, because of his great knowledge of Parliamentary tactics, and
the fact that he was the best educated and most thoroughly accomplished
statesman of his age. "If he could be prevailed upon to speak in the
course of a great debate, his speech was worth fifty votes," so great
was his influence and power. "However great may have been the
indebtedness of Mr. Gladstone to Sir James Graham, if the former had not
been possessed of far wider sympathies--to say nothing of superior
special intellectual qualities--than his political mentor, he never
could have conceived and executed those important legislative acts for
which his name will now chiefly be remembered."

The other case occupying the attention of Parliament, to which we have
alluded, we must now consider--Mr. Gladstone and the prisons of Naples.
Owing to the illness of one of his children, for whom a southern climate
was recommended, Mr. Gladstone spent several months of the Winter of
1850-1 in Naples. His brief visit to this city on a purely domestic
mission was destined to assume an international importance. It came to
his knowledge that a large number of the citizens of Naples, who had
been members of the Chamber of Deputies, an actual majority of the
representatives of the people, had been exiled or imprisoned by King
Ferdinand, because they formed the opposition party to the government,
and that between twenty and thirty thousand of that monarch's subjects
had been cast into prison on the charge of political disaffection. The
sympathies of Mr. Gladstone were at once enlisted in behalf of the
oppressed Neapolitans. At first Mr. Gladstone looked at the matter only
from a humanitarian and not from a political aspect, and it was only
upon the former ground that he felt called and impelled to attempt the
redress of the wrongs which were a scandal to the name of civilisation
in Europe. And it was not long before England and the Continent were
aroused by his denunciations of the Neapolitan system of government. Mr.
Gladstone first carefully ascertained the truth of the statements made
to him in order to attest their accuracy, and then published two letters
on the subject addressed to the Earl of Aberdeen. These letters were
soon followed by a third. In the first of these letters, dated April 7,
1851, he brings an elaborate, detailed and horrible indictment against
the rulers of Naples, especially as regards their prisons and the
treatment of persons confined in them for political offenses. He
disclaimed any thought of having gone to Naples for the purpose of
political criticism or censorship, to look for defects in the
administration of the government, or to hear the grievances of the
people, or to propagate ideas belonging to another country. But after a
residence of three or four months in their city he had returned home
with a deep feeling of the duty upon him to make some endeavor to
mitigate the horrors in the midst of which the government of Naples was
carried on.

There were chiefly three reasons that led him to adopt the present
course: "First, that the present practices of the Government of Naples,
in reference to real or supposed political offenders, are an outrage
upon religion, upon civilization, upon humanity and upon decency.
Secondly, that these practices are certainly, and even rapidly, doing
the work of Republicanism in that country--a political creed which has
little natural or habitual root in the character of the people. Thirdly,
that as a member of the Conservative party in one of the great family of
European nations, I am compelled to remember that party stands in
virtual and real, though perhaps unconscious alliance with all the
established Governments of Europe as such; and that, according to the
measure of its influence, they suffer more or less of moral detriment
from its reverses, and derive strength and encouragement from its
successes."

He passed over the consideration of the all important question whether
the actual Government of the Two Sicilies was one with or without a
title, one of law or one of force, and came to the real question at
issue. His charge against the Neapolitan Government was not one of mere
imperfection, not corruption in low quarters, not occasional severity,
but that of incessant, systematic, deliberate violation of the law by
the power appointed to watch over and maintain it.

Mr. Gladstone, with impassionate language, thus formulates his fearful
indictment: "It is such violation of human and written law as this,
carried on for the purpose of violating every other law, unwritten and
eternal, human and divine; it is the wholesale persecution of virtue,
when united with intelligence, operating upon such a scale that entire
classes may with truth be said to be its object, so that the Government
is in bitter and cruel, as well as utterly illegal hostility to whatever
in the nation really lives and moves, and forms the mainspring of
practical progress and improvement; it is the awful profanation of
public religion, by its notorious alliance in the governing powers with
the violation of every moral rule under the stimulants of fear and
vengeance; it is the perfect prostitution of the judicial office which
has made it, under veils only too threadbare and transparent, the
degraded recipient of the vilest and clumsiest forgeries, got up
wilfully and deliberately, by the immediate advisers of the Crown, for
the purpose of destroying the peace, the freedom, aye, and even, if not
by capital sentences, the life of men among the most virtuous, upright,
intelligent, distinguished and refined of the whole community; it is the
savage and cowardly system of moral as well as in a lower degree of
physical torture, through which the sentences obtained from the debased
courts of justice are carried into effect.

"The effect of all this is a total inversion of all the moral and social
ideas. Law, instead of being respected, is odious. Force and not
affection is the foundation of government. There is no association, but
a violent antagonism between the idea of freedom and that of order. The
governing power, which teaches of itself that it is the image of God
upon earth, is clothed in the view of the overwhelming majority of the
thinking public with all the vices for its attributes. I have seen and
heard the strong expression used, 'This is the negation of God erected
into a system of Government.'"

It was not merely the large numbers imprisoned unjustly, to which public
attention was directed, that called for righteous indignation and made
Mr. Gladstone's words create such a sensation in Europe, but the mode of
procedure was arbitrary in the extreme. The law of Naples required that
personal liberty should be inviolable, except under warrant from a court
of justice. Yet in utter disregard of this law the authorities watched
the people, paid domiciliary visits, ransacked houses, seized papers and
effects, and tore up floors at pleasure under pretense of searching for
arms, imprisoned men by the score, by the hundred, by the thousand
without any warrant whatever, sometimes without even any written
authority whatever, or anything beyond the word of a policeman,
constantly without any statement whatever of the nature of the offense.
Charges were fabricated to get rid of inconvenient persons. Perjury and
forgery were resorted to in order to establish charges, and the whole
mode of conducting trials was a burlesque of justice.

He thus describes the dungeons of Naples, in which some of the prisoners
were confined for their political opinions: "The prisons of Naples, as
is well known, are another name for the extreme of filth and horror. I
have really seen something of them, but not the worst. This I have seen,
my Lord: the official doctors not going to the sick prisoners, but the
sick prisoners, men almost with death on their faces, toiling up stairs
to them at that charnel-house of the Vicaria, because the lower regions
of such a palace of darkness are too foul and loathsome to allow it to
be expected that professional men should consent to earn bread by
entering them." Of some of those sufferers Mr. Gladstone speaks
particularly. He names Pironte, formerly a judge, Baron Porcari, and
Carlo Poerio, a distinguished patriot. The latter he specially speaks of
as a refined and accomplished gentleman, a copious and elegant speaker,
a respected and blameless character, yet he had been arrested and
condemned for treason. Mr. Gladstone says: "The condemnation of such a
man for treason is a proceeding just as conformable to the laws of
truth, justice, decency, and fair play, and to the common sense of the
community--in fact, just as great and gross an outrage on them all--as
would be a like condemnation in this country of any of our best known
public men--Lord John Russell, or Lord Lansdowne, or Sir James Graham,
or yourself."

There was no name dearer to Englishmen than that of Poerio to his
Neapolitan fellow-countrymen. Poerio was tried and condemned on the sole
accusation of a worthless character named Jerrolino. He would have been
acquitted nevertheless, by a division of four to five of his judges, had
not Navarro (who sat as a judge while directly concerned in the charge
against the prisoner), by the distinct use of intimidation, procured
the number necessary for a sentence. A statement is furnished on the
authority of an eye-witness, as to the inhumanity with which invalid
prisoners were treated by the Grand Criminal Court of Naples; and Mr.
Gladstone minutely describes the manner of the imprisonment of Poerio
and six of his incarcerated associates. Each prisoner bore a weight of
chain amounting to thirty-two pounds and for no purpose whatever were
these chains undone. All the prisoners were confined, night and day, in
a small room, which may be described as amongst the closest of dungeons;
but Poerio was after this condemned to a still lower depth of calamity
and suffering. "Never before have I conversed," says Mr. Gladstone,
speaking of Poerio, "and never probably shall I converse again, with a
cultivated and accomplished gentleman, of whose innocence, obedience to
law, and love of his country, I was as firmly and as rationally assured
as your lordship's or that of any other man of the very highest
character, whilst he stood before me, amidst surrounding felons, and
clad in the vile uniform of guilt and shame." But he is now gone where
he will scarcely have the opportunity even of such conversation. I
cannot honestly suppress my conviction that the object in the case of
Poerio, as a man of mental power sufficient to be feared, is to obtain
the scaffold's aim by means more cruel than the scaffold, and without
the outcry which the scaffold would create.

Mr. Gladstone said that it was time for the veil to be lifted from
scenes more fit for hell than earth, or that some considerable
mitigation should be voluntarily adopted. This letter was published in
1851--the year of the great Exposition in London--and a copy was sent to
the representative of the Queen in every court of Europe. Its
publication caused a wide-spread indignation in England, a great
sensation abroad, and profoundly agitated the court of Naples.

In the English Parliament Sir De Lacy Evans put the following question
to the Foreign Secretary: "If the British Minister at the court of
Naples had been instructed to employ his good offices in the cause of
humanity, for the diminution of these lamentable severities, and with
what result?" In reply to this question Lord Palmerston accepted and
adopted Mr. Gladstone's statement, which had been confirmed from other
quarters, expressing keen sympathy and humanitarian feeling with the
cause which he had espoused, but Lord Palmerston pointed out that it was
impossible to do anything in a matter which related entirely to the
domestic affairs of the Government at Naples. He said: "Instead of
confining himself to those amusements that abound in Naples, instead of
diving into volcanoes, and exploring excavated cities, we see him going
into courts of justice, visiting prisons, descending into dungeons, and
examining great numbers of the cases of unfortunate victims of
illegality and injustice, with the view afterwards to enlist public
opinion in the endeavor to remedy those abuses." This announcement by
the Foreign Secretary was warmly applauded by the House. "A few days
afterwards Lord Palmerston was requested by Prince Castelcicala to
forward the reply of the Neapolitan Government to the different European
courts to which Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet had been sent. His lordship,
with his wonted courage and independent spirit, replied that he 'must
decline being accessory to the circulation of a pamphlet which, in my
opinion, does no credit to its writer, or the Government which he
defends, or to the political party of which he professes to be the
champion.' He also informed the Prince that information received from
other sources led him to the conclusion that Mr. Gladstone had by no
means overstated the various evils which he had described; and he [Lord
Palmerston] regretted that the Neapolitan Government had not set to work
earnestly and effectually to correct the manifold and grave abuses which
clearly existed."

The second paper of Mr. Gladstone upon the same subject was a sequel to
the first. His wish was that everything possible should be done first
in the way of private representation and remonstrance, and he did not
regret the course he had taken, though it entailed devious delays. In
answer to the natural inquiry why he should simply appear in his
personal capacity through the press, instead of inviting to the grave
and painful question the attention of the House of Commons, of which he
was a member, he said, that he had advisedly abstained from mixing up
his statements with any British agency or influences which were
official, diplomatic, or political. The claims and interests which he
had in view were either wholly null and valueless, or they were broad as
the extension of the human race and long-lived as its duration.

As to his general charges he had nothing to retract. His representations
had not been too strongly stated, for the most disgraceful circumstances
were those which rested upon public notoriety, or upon his own personal
knowledge. It had been stated that he had overestimated the number of
prisoners, and he would give the Neapolitan Government the full benefit
of any correction. But the number of political prisoners _in itself_,
was a secondary feature of the case, for "if they were fairly and
legally arrested, fairly and legally treated before trial--fairly and
legally tried, that was the main matter. For the honor of human nature
men would at first receive some statements with incredulity. Men ought
to be slow to believe that such things could happen, and happen in a
Christian country, the seat of almost the oldest European civilization."
But those thus disposed in the beginning he hoped would not close their
minds to the reception of the truth, however painful to believe. The
general probability of his statements could not, unfortunately
be gainsaid.

Many replies were made to Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet that were violent and
abusive. They appeared not only in Naples, Turin, and Paris, but even
in London.

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