LORD NUGENTwished to put a question to the noble Lord the Secretary for Foreign Affairs on a subject with respect to which he trusted the noble Lord would not be reluctant to satisfy the anxious feelings of a great part of this nation. He had seen, within the last three or four days, in the public newspapers, what purported to be a proclamation proceeding from the Austrian General, Haynau, and addressed to the populations of Pesth and Buda. This proclamation denounced the punishment of instant death upon the spot to any persons, of either sex, who might be presumed to have taken part in what this general called political offences, such as had never before been made punishable with death by any chief holding a commission under a civilised government. Instant death upon the spot was proclaimed; and the soldiers, who were to be the executioners of the sentence, were also to be the judges of the guilt, for such offence as wearing what might be deemed a revolutionary dress, spreading what might be deemed false reports, and, above all, committing what the general termed insult towards the soldiers. He wished to know whether this proclamation, which he would not trust his own feelings to characterise otherwise than by styling it a most astonishing proclamation, and to which the Foreign Minister's noble nature would doubtless prompt him to affix a much stronger term, was or was not genuine?
§ VISCOUNT PALMERSTONthought it was unnecessary for him to say that Her Majesty's Government, in common with everybody else, must have read the proclamation as it appeared in the newspapers with the deepest pain. He need not say more on that point. In reply to the question put to him, he had to state, that the Government had no official communication of the proclamation in question, and therefore he had no official knowledge as to whether it was genuine or not.
LORD NUGENTwould ask, on this last 1163 opportunity, should the circumstance turn out to be as reported in the newspapers, and should the Government be made officially cognisant of it, whether the Government would be then prepared, as in the case of the Eliot Convention between the contending parties in Spain, to interpose its good offices, and its authority, if necessary, to stop the perpetration of such horrors, which were never before committed or contemplated in war among civilised communities
§ VISCOUNT PALMERSTONsaid, that Her Majesty's Government must reserve to themselves a proper and legitimate discretion to act in accordance with what 1164 they might think fit as circumstances arose.
§ Subject at an end.