HC Deb 16 May 1862 vol 166 cc1826-32
COLONEL, SYKES

said, he wished to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether the active hostilities now being carried on by British Naval and Military Forces against the insurgents in the province of Kiangnan, not withstanding the friendliness of the insurgents to foreigners at Ningpo, have been authorized, or are now sanctioned, by Her Majesty's Government? With respect to the conduct of the rebels at Ningpo, it is stated in the Overland Trade Report, dated February 28th, 1862— Since the capture of Ningpo the Taepings have conducted themselves there in an exemplary manner; so much so as to obtain the confidence of the people, who are returning in numbers. The trade of the port is reviving, and there seems a fair probability of entirely recovering itself. With the permission of the House, he would read the following extract from the account of "The Fight with the Rebels near Ming-hong," which appeared in The Times of that morning:— The Marines had got close tip to the barricade, only waiting the Admiral's order to enter the intrenchments. At this time the enemy were observed to be retreating in great numbers from the rear, when the shells from Bradshaw's artillery were thrown rapidly among them, committing fearful havoc. Numbers also fell under the fire from the rifles of the French and English sailors, who were extended out on the left to cut them off; but the nature of the country precluded this, so they kept up an incessant fusilade on them as they ran away. Some of Colonel Ward's soldiers had got round on the other side, and were in hot pursuit. The fire from the earthworks being pretty well silenced, the British Admiral waved his cap, when the Marines under Captain Holland and Lieutenant Sturt, and the blue-jackets under Commanders Gibson, Fawkes, and Richardson, entered in front through a breach which was soon made by an extempore company of sappers and miners—blue-jackets—under Lieutenant Bosanquet, of Her Majesty's gunboat Flamer, who seemed to enjoy the work exceedingly. A severe contest then took place in the main street of the village, where the rebels rallied for a little, but they could not withstand the bayonet charge of the Marines and the heavy fire poured among them. Many fell, and some hand-to-hand conflicts took place. The British Admiral himself, accompanied by Mr. Alabaster, the consulate interpreter, was right in front, directing the attack in that part, while Ward and his men vigorously assailed the enemy on the left. After all was over, the village was set on fire, and the foreign troops embarked for Shanghai. Our loss is trifling, because our shot and shell reached the rebels, and their shot did not reach us. A street in Ming-hong is choked with dead, and we burn the place. He also read an account of the naval expedition dated the 31st of March, in which a British gunboat had attacked a large flotilla of 300 boats, containing men and provisions belonging to the Taepings, and bound to the Taeping camp from the interior, when about two-thirds of the boats were destroyed. He wished to ask what was the justification for this destruction of the property of parties who asked to be our friends; and to know if the Foreign Office had received official reports of these operations, and whether they would be laid on the table before the Motion of the hon. Member for Brighton came on.

MR. LAYARD

said, that he had to thank his hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. D. Griffith) for the courtesy he had shown in putting off more than once the questions he had now asked in order to give him the opportunity of obtaining the fullest information on the subject. But although he had done his best to obtain the information sought, he was afraid he could not give his hon. Friend a very satisfactory answer. With reference to the way in which the persons to whom the questions referred were employed, the matter stood thus:—By the concession granted by the Viceroy of Egypt—he spoke of the original agreement of January, 1856, with the company, at the head of which was M. Lesseps—it was stipulated that, in order to prevent the great influx of foreigners into Egypt, the persons employed to labour on the canal should never consist of more than one-fifth of Europeans, the other four-fifths being natives. The company considered that in consequence of this stipulation they had a right to call on the Viceroy to furnish them with labour, if they themselves were unable to procure it in Europe. Accordingly, in July, 1856, the Viceroy issued a decree by which he agreed to furnish labourers to the company. In that decree it was stipulated that the labourers so furnished should be duly cared for by those who employed them; that they should be housed, provisioned, and their welfare properly attended to. For some time these labourers were regularly paid by the company. It appeared, indeed, from what he had heard, that the payments were even made in advance; still, those who were set to work worked very unwillingly, and large numbers, having got their money, ran away. To avoid such a state of things, the company came to a resolution not to pay the labourers in advance, but at the end of their labour. That went on for some time, when it was asserted that payment on the part of the contractors had ceased altogether. That he must say, in justice to M. Lesseps, was denied by him; however, the Government had received reports that last year the contractors no longer paid the men themselves; that the payments which ought to have been made directly to them were partly made to the sheiks of the villages, and that a large amount of that labour being furnished by the Viceroy himself, as stated by the noble Lord who had given them so much information in so modest a manner, it was passed to the account of the Pasha, who, as they knew, was very largely interested in the works as a shareholder. That statement was confidently made on the one hand, and as confidently denied on the other. But it was admitted, that the contractors had entered into agreements with Greek firms at Cairo and other places, who contracted to furnish labourers, receiving a certain allowance per head. This was a state of things which led to great misery. There was no doubt that the labourers worked against their will, that they were torn away from their villages and families, and underwent great hardships and suffering. The noble Lord had stated that many of those men had to walk 100 miles to receive their miserable pay. Now, when it was considered that they did not work more than a month of twenty-eight days; that when discharged they received no more than 6d. a day, if they ever received that small sum, and that they had to walk 100 miles to get 14s. for their month's work, it might easily be conceived that that state of things produced great misery and discontent. But he regretted to say that many of these men came from even a greater distance than 100 miles So high up as the First Cataract they were found by Mr. Colquhoun in boatloads on their passage down to the Suez Canal. As these forced levies were made at all times of the year, in seed time and in the harvest time, great hardship and suffering were inflicted, not only on the men themselves, but on their wives and children. It was stated by the noble Lord that the company admitted they were employing 26,000 of these labourers; they denied they were employing 40,000, but, in fact, if they were ever employing 26,000, 52,000 peasants would be constantly abstracted from the population, because the men were replaced monthly, and time must he allowed for the change of gangs. All he could say was, that such a state of things must bring about very great suffering and misery in the country. He would not go into the political question, but would only add, that a very small portion of the work was executed, and one quarter of the capital had been already expended. As regarded the interpretation of the treaties between this country and other Powers in respect to the employment of forced labour in Egypt, no answer he could give would throw any light on that subject.

Then, as regarded the question of the hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. S. Fitzgerald), on the subject of the Guatemala road, he had complained bitterly of the Government entering into contracts with foreign countries and incurring the expenditure of large sums of money without the consent of Parliament. The attacks of the hon. Gentleman, and of those who acted with him, reminded him of a rocket which was sent out to the Crimea to be tried against the Russians—it went off with a tremendous hiss; but when it got a certain length, it suddenly turned back and burst over our own ranks. The hon. Gentleman seemed to forget that the convention referred to was entered into and ratified by his noble Friend the Earl of Malmesbury, when the hon. Gentleman filled the post of Under Secretary. It was rather hard that he (Mr. Layard) should have to defend the noble Earl as well as those with whom he had the honour to to be associated; but, nevertheless, he would defend them, and he was happy to say the case was better than it had been made to appear. In his statement on that subject his hon. Friend had omitted one or two rather material facts. The history of the convention with Guatemala was this:—Sir Charles Wyke was sent out from this country to negotiate a treaty with the republic of Guatemala, some important questions of boundary then remaining unsettled, and more particularly of the boundary between the Republic of Guatemala and the British possessions in Central America. Those questions were intimately connected with matters bearing upon the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, entered into between this country and the United States. Sir Charles Wyke took out the draught of a treaty which he was instructed to negotiate with the Government of Guatemala, but considerable opposition was offered on the part of that Government to the terms he proposed for the settlement of the boundary question. In return for certain concessions, they asked for an equivalent; that equivalent was for some time discussed, and at length the Guatemala Government demanded, as the equivalent which they desired, the construction by the British Government, at an expense to be shared between the two Governments, of a road from the city of Guatemala to Belize, connecting the Pacific with the Atlantic. It was very important to the Government of Guatemala to have a road by which to keep up their commercial intercourse with the Atlantic; and they stated, that if that concession were made, they would accept the terms that had been offered them. Sir Charles Wyke felt it to be so very desirable to get the boundary question settled, both as regarded our relations with the Republic of Guatemala and with the United States, that he undertook, on his own responsibility, to introduce an additional article into the treaty for the construction, of the road; and the treaty containing that additional article, accompanied by his explanatory despatch, arrived in England just a few days before the Earl of Malmesbury went out of office. The Earl of Malmesbury, however, was so anxious to complete the settlement of the question—thinking, and no doubt thinking rightly, that it was of great importance that matters constantly threatening difficulties to this country should be set at rest, and that it would be a feather in the cap of his Government to have achieved that result—that he immediately sent to Sir Bulwer Lytton, then at the head of the Colonial Department, to ask him whether the treaty was one that should not be ratified; and although a grant of public money was involved, and the convention consequently required the sanction of Parliament, yet, without that sanction being obtained, Sir Bulwer Lytton returned an answer to the effect that the ratifications should be exchanged. The order for the ratification was at once given by the noble Earl, although the actual execution of the order did not take place until after he had left office. Thus the entire merit of that treaty belonged to the Earl of Malmesbury and his hon. Friend; and certainly, although the proceeding was somewhat novel and not quite justified by strict Parliamentary precedent, yet the late Government deserved credit for what they had done, because since that day very important questions, which at one time threatened to create misunderstanding between England and the United States, had never again been raised, the matter of the boundaries had been arranged, and this country was now entirely at ease in respect to her relations with that part of Central America, He should like to have been able to claim the credit of this result for the present Government, but it fairly belonged to the Government of his hon. Friend, and he would not seek to rob them of it. That, then, was the history of the Guatemala road. When Mr. Mathew was sent out a few months ago to bring the question to a final close, he received instructions to communicate with the Guatemala Government on the subject, the road not having yet been commenced. Politi- cal events since his arrival there had prevented him from doing so; but Her Majesty's Government hoped soon to hear from him on the subject, and then they would be able to give his hon. Friend information relative to the condition of his own child.

With respect to the question asked by his hon. and gallant Friend (Colonel Sykes), he did not know that there would be any objection to publishing the despatches referred to. He would not now enter into the political question, but his hon. and gallant Friend would have ample opportunity of bringing the subject of the Tae-pings before the House; and when a formal debate arose upon it, he should himself be prepared to take part in the discussion. He would at present merely state that what had been done at Shanghai met the entire approval of Her Majesty's Government, and that they had every reason to believe that the steps which were being taken would lead to the final settlement of that important question.

MR. SEYMOUR FITZGERALD

was understood to say, in explanation, that the treaty with Guatemala was not ratified till the month of August, 1859.