§ MR. HENNESSYsaid, he had a Question to address to the noble Lord at the head of the Government in reference to Poland, though he did not intend to enter at any length into the question. But as a Motion on that subject would probably be submitted for the consideration of the House very soon, it was very desirable that they should be in possession of some important papers which be understood to be in the hands of the Government. He referred to the correspondence which had taken place between England and Austria, and between England and France conjointly and Austria, about Poland—a correspondence which had chiefly taken place during the Crimean war. He wished to ask the noble Viscount whether a proposal was made by Austria to the effect that Austria would agree to join the allies if the independence of Poland were declared, and in certain other eventualities? He also wished to know whether, owing to the favourable attitude taken by Austria, it had not been proposed to bring the subject of Poland before the Congress of Paris in 1856, and whether on that occasion Lord Clarendon did not suggest that it would be undesirable to discuss the Polish question, inasmuch as he hoped the 227 Emperor of Russia would grant reforms to the Poles. He begged to ask whether any such diplomatic action had taken place; and, if so, whether the noble Lord would have any objection to place it upon the table of the House?
§ MR. DARBY GRIFFITHsaid, he desired to put the Question of which he had given notice in no unfriendly spirit to the noble Lord at the head of the Government. A grave trust, however, was imposed upon Ministers, especially during the recess of Parliament, and he believed that the action taken by the Government in reference to the Ionian Islands was almost unprecedented, and was such as to demand the serious consideration of Parliament. The question was whether during the recess a Minister could be at liberty, by a mere despatch, to relinquish territories which had once been de facto in possession of the British nation. The noble Lord drew a distinction between States held under a protectorate and those in full possession of the Crown; but, on examination, that distinction appeared to be merely verbal. In colonies, as in countries held under a protectorate, there was a superior Sovereign, a governor appointed by the Sovereign, and in both cases the country was occupied by a military force. When the harbour and fortress of Corfu was placed in our hands by the Treaty of 1815, was there any provision made for our ever relinquishing them? The noble Lord knows that those arangements were intended to be permanent—Esto perpetua was written on every clause of that Treaty in the intention of its concoctors. Did the noble Lord mean to infer that the Government were at liberty during the recess to cast adrift any of our colonies? There was a great fortress at the other end of the Mediterranean, and the indifference with which the noble Lord the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, when he was a Member of this House, appeared to regard the possession of Tetuan by the Spaniards was calculated to inspire a belief that he did not attach greater importance to the retention of that military appendage, the fortress of Gibraltar, than he did to our holding the Ionian Islands. he would, therefore, conclude by asking the First Lord of the Treasury, How far the interpretation of the Prerogative of the Crown is considered by the Government to extend in empowering the Crown to relinquish territories which may have been in the 228 de facto possession of the British nation without the knowlege and consent of Parliament.
§ MR. PEACOCKEsaid, that before the noble Viscount answered the question, he wished to call his attention to the present state of the question of the Ionian Islands. He was one of those who held the retention of the protectorate of the Ionian Islands to be by no means advantageous to this country; but he doubted whether Her Majesty's Government had acted with due circumspection in publishing to Greece, to the Ionian Islands, and the world that they were ready to cede these islands if two conditions were complied with, one being that the Greeks should choose a Sovereign acceptable to this country, and the other that they should succeed in obtaining the assent of the contracting Powers to the Treaty of Vienna to that cession. He thought that the Government ought to have obtained an assurance first that a candidate acceptable to this country would be elected, and next, that the assent of the other four contracting Powers to the cession of the Ionian Islands would be likely to be obtained. The candidate who was favoured by the noble Viscount had like some other favourites "bolted," and the announcement of the intended cession was, he feared, only likely to give an immense premium to the agitation for annexation that had previously existed in the islands. An hon. Gentleman stated the other evening that Corfu in the hands of the kingdom of Greece would be a standing menace to Turkey; but he (Mr. Peacocke) thought there was another country to which Corfu, in the hands of an aggressive Power, would be a far more serious menace, and that country was Austria. The commerce of the Adriatic was principally carried on with the port of Trieste. That port was the one great issue by which the products of Austria, containing some 40,000,000 inhabitants, were poured into the other marts of the world. 10,000 vessels entered that port every year. Therefore, he wished to know whether the noble Lord had obtained the consent of Austria to the cession of our protectorate over the Ionian Islands, or whether there was the least chance of his doing so? If he was correctly informed, the upper classes and the upper middle classes of these seven Greek Islands were Greeks only in name, and were really Italians descended from those Venetians under whose domination those Islands were so long. He thought 229 it did not require the gift of prophecy to foresee that within a very few years after their annexation to Greece the inhabitants of the Ionian Islands might discover that they had made a remarkably bad investment, and a cry might then arise for annexation to some other country. Looking at the geographical position of Corfu, and the Italian descent of those islanders, it was by no means unlikely that they would demand to be annexed to the kingdom of Italy. An agitation of that kind would create the worst feeling between Austria and Italy, and would threaten to disturb the peace of Europe. If these Islands were annexed to the kingdom of Greece, there ought to be a stipulation that they should remain part and parcel of that kingdom, and should not be transferred to a sceptre under which they would become a standing menace to the tranquillity of Europe and the freedom of the Adriatic. If the consent of the four great Powers to the cession could not be obtained, the only result of the publication of the terms of cession by Her Majesty's Government would be to add fuel to the flame of dissatisfaction which had for some time prevailed in those Islands.
§ MR. ROEBUCKsaid, that in looking over the papers he saw no despatches from foreign Powers interested in the affairs of Greece and the Ionian Islands. He wished to know whether despatches had not been received from Austria in regard to the cession of these Islands; and, if so, why they were not laid upon the table?
§ VISCOUNT PALMERSTONSir, I am not able off-hand to answer the question of my hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Roebuck), but I will make inquiry. I will first answer the question of the hon. Gentleman the Member for the King's County (Mr. Hennessy) on Polish Affairs. He desires to know whether during the Crimean war Austria did not propose to France and England, to combine with her for the purpose of re-establishing an independent kingdom of Poland, and whether that subject was not again mooted at the Conferences of Paris. I answer that no proposal was made during the Crimean war by Austria to England and France to combine with her for the purpose of establishing a separate kingdom of Poland; but that, on the contrary, as far as we were informed—and the information came from the Austrian Minister at Paris, rather than directly from Vienna —the Austrian Government would never 230 have consented to such an arrangement. So far from inviting it, such an arrangement was one to which Austria would have had insurmountable objections. That which passed at the Conferences of Paris is recorded in the protocols that have been laid before Parliament, and I am not aware that anything took place in those Conferences with regard to Poland which did not appear in the protocols that were laid on the table. Therefore the impression on the mind of the hon. Member that England and France received a proposition from Austria for the purpose of separating Poland from Russia, and establishing it as an independent State, is unfounded, and the hon. Member has been misinformed as to the course of that transaction.
The hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Darby Griffith) asks me whether it is competent, according to the constitution, for the Crown by its prerogative to alienate, without the consent of Parliament, possessions that belong to the Crown; and he contended that the Ionian Islands are, to all intents and purposes, a possession of the British Crown. He says we take a vague and imaginary distinction between these Islands and a colony, because a colony has a British Governor, and the Ionian Islands have also a British Governor, while there are British garrisons also in both. This rather reminds one of the observation that there was an identity between Monmouth and Macedon. There was a river in Macedon and a river in Monmouth, and there were salmon in both. I do not think that the hon. Member has established the identity on which his argument is founded. There is a broad and substantial distinction between the two, and not one merely of form. The Ionian Islands have not been ceded by any treaty to England as a possession of the British Crown. They were by the Treaty of 1815 erected, or rather re-constituted, a separate and independent State—the Republic of the Seven Islands—and that separate and independent State was placed under the protectorate of the British Crown, and not given as a possession to the British Crown. The distinction is manifest and radical; therefore I contend, that if the hon. Member were able to establish that it is not competent for the Crown by an act of its prerogative to alineate any British possession—any possession acquired by conquest or ceded to the Crown by treaty, that argument would not apply to the Ionian Islands, 231 which are in a separate and entirely different category. But with regard to cases of territory acquired by conquest during war, and not ceded by treaty, and which are not therefore British freehold, and all possessions that have been ceded by treaty, and held as possessions of the British Crown, there is no question that the Crown by its prerogative may make a treaty alienating such possessions without the consent of the House of Commons. The history of the country furnishes numerous instances in which cessions of this kind have been made. To mention some of the most recent and strongest cases—I do not now speak of possessions occupied during war, and never fully and finally given to the British Crown, but possessions that have been legally vested in the Crown and afterwards ceded to some foreign Power—there were Senegal, Minorca, Florida, and the island of Banea—all of them for a greater or less period of time possessions of the British Crown, and they were all ceded by treaty to some foreign Power. Therefore, there cannot be a question as to the competency of the Crown to make such cessions. I can, however, relieve the hon. Member's mind with regard to Malta and Gibraltar, by assuring him that there is not the slightest intention on the part of the Crown of making a present of either of these possessions to any foreign Power. There has been a great deal of misapprehension in the public mind with regard to this question of the Ionian Islands, and people in general imagine that we have by a stroke of the pen made a present of them to Greece. But no such thing has been done. What we said was, that if they chose a Sovereign in whom the British Government could place confidence that he would govern the country internally upon liberal principles, and that externally he would abstain from aggression on his neighbours, then we would take those steps which were necessary for the purpose of ceding the islands to Greece. But it does not depend on the will of the British Crown singly to do so. Those islands were placed under British protection by a treaty signed by the great Powers of Europe—by the Powers who were parties to the Treaty of Vienna, and whose consent to the cession must be obtained. But then, again, we are not going, even with the consent of those Powers, to transfer the population of the islands to another Power if that population be not willing. There are, 232 therefore, required for the cession the consent of the Powers who were parties to the treaties of 1815, and the acknowledged and official consent of those who are the organs of the national will of the Ionians. But none of those steps have been taken, because the case has not arisen. No Sovereign has been chosen for Greece as yet, still less any Sovereign answering the conditions upon which further steps were to be taken. The hon. Member for Maldon (Mr. Peacocke) mentioned other conditions, which I agree with him would be indispensable; but, as the transaction has not arrived at that state in which one has to go into details, it is unnecessary to dwell on them. Undoubtedly it would be right, if those islands were to be annexed to Greece, that Greece should undertake by treaty not to alienate them, because it is quite clear that there might be arrangements by which the islands might come into the possession of some other foreign Power than Greece, to the detriment of neighbouring States. But we have not come to the point at which these details should be gone into. I wish the hon. Member (Mr. D. Griffith) and the House to understand that it is my opinion, founded on historical evidence, that the power to alienate even the possessions of the British Crown does exist in the Crown; but those islands are not possessions of the British Crown, and the transaction requires the consent of all the parties to the treaties of 1815. We have not taken any steps as yet to obtain that consent, because the transaction has not come to that point at which such proceedings on our part would be necessary.
§ SIR GEORGE BOWYERsaid, he was one of those who thought that on the whole it was desirable that this country should give up the protectorate of the Ionian Islands; but the fault he found with Her Majesty's Government was this. It appeared to him that before they declared their willingness to consent to the annexation of the islands to Greece they ought to have ascertained secretly from the other parties to the Treaty of Vienna whether they would give their consent to such annexation. Let the House consider the position of matters. There had been an agitation in Greece for the annexation of the islands to that country; and Her Majesty's Government had declared to the islands their willingness that such annexation should take place. But what was the position of the other Powers parties to the treaty? His hon. Friend (Mr. Peacocke) 233 had stated good reasons why Austria might object to the annexation. But the Government had thrown upon Austria all the odium of refusing to consent to a measure which was popular in the islands. He did not think that was acting either wisely or fairly. That was the objection which he made to the course taken by Her Majesty's Government. It was an objection which would doubtless be repeated in that House; and it would be for the Government to justify the publication of their intention— of their willingness, rather—to assent to the annexation of the Ionian Islands to Greece before ascertaining the wishes of the other Powers who were parties to the Treaty by which those islands were placed under the protectorate of Great Britain.