HC Deb 21 February 1840 vol 52 cc448-54
Viscount Sandon

, in pursuance of the Motion of which he had given notice, wished "to call the attention of the House to the petition of British subjects, claimants on the Government of Portugal," which was presented to the House a few days ago. The House was aware of the nature of those claims, as he had taken the liberty on a former occasion of bringing them under its notice. The men who had been induced by the policy that was pursued by the Government of this country to enter into the service of Don Pedro in 1832 had afterwards been called on by the Portuguese government to abandon the conditions on which they had entered the service and accept others. That, however, they had refused, and in consequence of that refusal they had suffered the greatest hardships. It was hardly necessary to give the House an account of the atrocious conduct of the Portuguese towards those unfortunate men, it was too well known. They had been put into dungeons, deprived of every means of sustenance, and reduced almost to a state of nakedness; and yet those were the men who had been extremely serviceable in placing the present Queen of Portugal on the throne. Every species of fraud had been resorted to to make them lessen or give up their claims, and they were refused every shilling of what was due to them, unless they gave receipts in full admitting all sorts of fraud. Of their pay, from 1833 to 1835, they had not, to this day, received any part whatever. And how had that been contrived? By appointing commission after commission, for no other purpose than promoting chicanery and delay; and in the mean time those unfortunate men had been wandering about the streets of Lisbon, having in vain solicited relief from her Majesty's Government, and at length many of them in despair had destroyed themselves. In the month of August last, the noble Lord, the Secretary for the Foreign Department had interfered in this matter, and had made an application to the Portuguese Government for a joint commission, to sit in London, and inquire into these claims of her Majesty's subjects. That communication, however, having been rejected on the part of the Minister for Foreign Affairs in Portugal, the noble Lord proceeded, in October last, to make a still more peremptory communication. Lord Howard de Walden was instructed to repeat the application to the Portuguese Government, that they should appoint a commission in London, for the purpose of inquiring and deciding about the claims of British subjects in Portugal; and in the event of their refusing to do so, then he had orders to declare that her Majesty's Government would be under the necessity of naming commissioners of her own, who should inquire and find what was due to her subjects from the Portuguese Government; and that such amount as was due to them, her Majesty would feel bound to demand and extort from the Portuguese Government. That application, however, also remaining without effect; Lord Howard de Walden had been further instructed to inform the Portuguese Government, that he had received orders to demand from them immediate payment of the claims of her Majesty's subjects. That was on the 9th of November, and what advance had been made towards a settlement of those claims? None whatever. The only change in the circumstances was this—that a change of Government in Portugal had taken place, and that the present Minister of Foreign Affairs was a still more decided opponent to the claims of these men than the former one. It was true that two commissions had been sitting, nominally for the purpose of inquiring into those claims; but to show how inefficient they had been, he need only state, that the second commission, which had sat for three years, had decided only on one claim, and that was an amount of 40l. He asked nothing extraordinary in this case, but only that her Majesty's Government should carry out their own stated intentions of enforcing on Portugal that course which, in similar circumstances, had been pursued with regard to the Court of Spain. We heard nothing of French claims, or Belgian claims, or American claims; it happened in this, as in all other cases, that the claims of other countries obtained satisfaction, while those of Great Britain remained unsatisfied, and, in this instance, the country which withheld satisfaction from British subjects was one which owed everything to British assistance. He had no personal concern whatever in this question; it had accidentally fallen under his notice, and having perused the documents relating to it, he was determined that so just a cause should not fail for want of an advocate. The noble Lord concluded by moving, that an humble address be presented to her Majesty, praying that her Majesty would be pleased to appoint a commission to sit in London forthwith, to investigate the claims of British subjects upon the Crown of Portugal for military services rendered to that power, and that her Majesty would be pleased to take speedy and efficient measures with the Government of that country, for procuring an immediate settlement of the claims so to be established.

Viscount Palmerston

was very much disposed to agree with the noble Lord who had just sat down in a great part of what that noble Lord had said with respect to the conduct of the Portuguese Government. Undoubtedly, the conduct of the successive administrations of Portugal towards men to whom the Queen of that country was deeply indebted, was entirely deserving of reprobation, but the noble Lord was mistaken in supposing that her Majesty's Government had been less urgent in their applications to the present than in those which they had addressed to the former administrations of Portugal for the purpose of procuring the concurrence of the Portuguese government in the appointment of a commission which should sit in London. It was true that when the present Portuguese ministry first came into office, and professed a sincere desire to do justice to the claims of British subjects, it did appear to her Majesty's Government to be fitting and becoming to give that ministry an opportunity of taking a short time to make the necessary arrangements to carry its good intentions into effect, but when it appeared that, whatever might be the inclination of the Government, results did not follow in as swift and satisfactory a manner as we were entitled to expect, the Government of this country addressed to the Portuguese minister the communication which had been mentioned by the noble Lord opposite. An answer to that communication was daily expected. The Portuguese government had been told that the Government of this country could not expect justice from any commission sitting in Lisbon, and that no arrangement could be satisfactory but the appointment of a commission which should sit in London, and the Portuguese government was also told by that communication, that if it would not concur in the appointment of such a commission, the British Government would do that which the noble Lord opposite proposed to effect by an address to her Majesty. The address for which the noble Lord had moved would, in fact, merely ask the Government to take that course which was intended to be taken. On these grounds, he requested the noble Lord to suspend his motion for an address to her Majesty until it should be seen what answer should be returned by the Portuguese government. If that government should agree to the proposition which had been made to it there would be no ground for the proposed address. He thought he had now exculpated himself with respect to the charge that her Majesty's Government had been less pressing with the present Portuguese ministers than it had been with former administrations on the subject of these claims. He suggested to the noble Viscount the expediency of postponing his motion for the present, since it was possible that the Portuguese Government might agree to the proposition which had been made to it on the part of this country, and then the noble Lord's motion would fall to the ground.

Sir H. Hardinge

was not acquainted with all the circumstances connected with these claims, but he knew that some British subjects who had served in Portugal, had been driven by the injustice of the Portuguese Government to acts of mutiny, and had then been punished for those acts by being treated like galley slaves. It was quite notorious that British subjects had brought about the restoration of the present dynasty to the throne of Portugal, and that to their resolution and discipline the present Queen of Portugal owed her throne. Nevertheless, when those men put forth their just claims, they met with such treatment as drove them to acts of mutiny; and was it possible to conceive that the representative of the English Government at Lisbon could see these persons chained together, and forced to clear all kinds of filth from the streets, because they had pressed for a settlement of their just demands, without making representations on the subject to the Portuguese Government? He thought the noble Viscount, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, had fairly stated the case so far as regarded the interference of the British Government; but that the noble Viscount had not satisfactorily shown how it was that, for five years, those men had not been able to obtain a satisfaction of their claims. That appeared to be the pinching part of the question. He did not know all the facts of the case, but, in general, he disapproved of men enlisting for pay in the service of a foreign state, without the consent of their own Government, and he thought that such a proceeding should be discouraged, and not encouraged; still, when British subjects were exposed to such infamous and shameful treatment as they appeared to have suffered in this case in the public streets of Lisbon, he could not but think that it showed a want of energy on the part of her Majesty's representative at that court.

Mr. Hume

did not know in what way the British Government had sanctioned the services of these individuals to the Queen of Portugal: if any sanction had been given by the Government, the Government ought long ago to have required satisfaction from Portugal; but if these men had engaged themselves, without the knowledge or sanction of Government, they had no right to call upon Government for assistance in the prosecution of their claims.

Mr. O'Connell

said, that it did not lay in the mouth of Portugal to deny the authority by which these men acted when she had availed herself to the utmost of their services, and had by means of them obtained a completely successful result. A more perfect case could not be than that which those individuals had against the Portuguese Government. They had placed upon the throne of Portugal one of our allies, who, but for their bravery and success, would be now an outcast in a foreign land. He did not object to the postponement of the motion for a short time, to see what course would be taken by the Portuguese Government, although he felt sure that the claims would never be satisfied until peremptory steps were taken to enforce them.

Viscount Palmerston

said, with reference to what had fallen from the hon. Member for Kilkenny, that the services of those individuals had not been sanctioned by the Government, but that that circumstance did not lessen the obligation of the Portuguese Government to satisfy their demands; and with regard to the statement made by the right hon. Baronet opposite (Sir H. Hardinge), he begged leave to say, that it was a mistake to suppose that no representation had been made to the Portuguese Government by her Majesty's representative at Lisbon upon the subject to which the right hon. Baronet referred; representations had been made, and were considered to have been efficacious.

Sir H. Hardinge

thought that those representations must have been rather tardily made, for it appeared that the men had been chained together, and employed in all kinds of dirty officers, for several weeks; they were, in fact, paraded about the streets, and forced to act as the scavengers of Lisbon.

Viscount Sandon

would consent to withdraw his motion, in compliance with the suggestions offered to him from both sides of the House, but he had no hope of justice from anything short of compulsion.

Motion withdrawn.