§ MR. URQUHARTrose to postpone until Monday his Motion relative to the expenditure for diplomatic agents abroad.
§ Sir DE L. EVANSwould take the opportunity of reminding the hon. Member for Stafford, that he had on a former occasion spoken disrespectfully of General D'Aguilar, Colonel Brotherton, and Brigadier General M'Doughal. He thought the hon. Member was not justified in speaking in such terms of disparagement of those who served their country, by serving in the armies of her allies.
§ MR. URQUHARTMr. Speaker, I will assure the hon. and gallant Member for Westminster, that he is perfectly correct in the statement that he has made regarding myself: he has hit the right nail on the head. It is precisely the part I have taken in the affairs of Greece, that is the origin of those conclusions which the hon. and gallant Gentleman says I have been so persevering in placing before my countrymen. He will recollect that these circumstances occurred in my early life; but they are the key of my future conduct. It was the share I had in that war, and the instinct of its injustice, that first led me to investigate this great subject; and when I did discover the delusion under which I had laboured in common with my fellow-countrymen at this particular time, I did feel myself oppressed with a load of shame and guilt, and I have been impelled unceasingly to labour to awaken others in like manner, and thereby to recover the sense of law and right among a nation from whose breast within a single generation it has utterly passed away. The hon. and gallant Member seems very needlessly sensitive at once, and contemptuous in refer-once to certain epithets which I have used, and which he chooses to say, and says justly, apply to myself no less than to those in reference to whom I had used them. But if I remember correctly, and if I have read aright, discussions which took place in former years in this House, the hon. and gallant Gentleman was not merely characterized as a Pirate, but as a Condottiere; consequently if the hon. and gallant Gentleman now says that he is indifferent to such an allegation as coming from me, I am not at all surprised. The words which I have uttered here have not been uttered for the first time, nor has the picture which has been drawn the merit of originality. These charges have been asserted repeatedly, without exciting the hon. 85 and gallant Gentleman's sensitiveness. As to General D'Aguilar, I entertain peculiar respect for his personal character; but the hon. and gallant Member will see that the question raised is a great and public matter; he will see that it is nothing less than that whole subject which has produced the volumes of Suarez, and Vattel, and Grotius, and all the great authorities upon international law; he will see that we are touching no less a question than the lawfulness or the unlawfulness of the acts of one nation in regard to another. This question was raised by the hon. and gallant Gentleman himself. I did not rush unexpectedly forward and tumble a correspondence upon the table. I was listening to the details of the Army Estimates, without the remotest intention of taking part in the discussion, when, in reference to the Caffre war and the officers engaged in it, the hon. and gallant Member himself called the attention of the House to the services rendered in China. Upon that occasion I said that there was a line to he drawn between the one and the other, because in the one case the officers had acted under lawful and in the other under unlawful orders. My observations were consequently directed, not against the officers employed, but against their employers. [Lord John Russell here entered the House, and took his seat on the Treasury Bench.] I am glad at length to see the noble Lord in his place. I invite the attention of the noble Lord, who is a constitutional authority, to the question we are now discussing, of the lawfulness of orders for making war. I had not in my mind, on the occasion to which I refer, any individuals; but certainly it was my duty as a representative in this House, before voting money to be expended for such purposes, to do my best to call the attention of the Government and of the House to the possible lawlessness of the service on which those men might be sent; and this was an act of mercy to them to prevent them as well as the nation from being subjected to the disgrace and guilt of such acts. My observations, moreover, were addressed to the noble Lord at the head of the Foreign Department; and yet the hon. and gallant Officer brings the charge against me that I had taken the occasion of his absence to make such statements and allegations. I trust I have satisfied the hon. and gallant Gentleman that I was not guilty of what he attributed to me; I trust, also, that I have 86 made it clear to him, both from what I have stated regarding the motives which have led me to enter upon this investigation, as well as from the particular reasons which induced me to make the remarks in question on the Army Estimates, that I have no personal feeling in this matter; that I am moved by no other feeling than that of deep shame for my country's guilt, and by a desire at all events to rid my own conscience from a share in it. I may further add, that if there could be one circumstance which I could have desired to be my fate and fortune, it would be to have been an officer employed in any one of those unlawful expeditions, that I might, by bearing testimony to the law by my own blood, have redeemed the nation from this delusion. I further say. Sir, that I have not lived in vain since I have raised this question—the legality of war—in the Senate of this nation, and denounced in its own face its crimes in the hour of its guilt and folly.
Sir, the question of the lawfulness of the order depends not upon the authority from which it emanates, but on the character with which it is invested. The order to a military man to draw a weapon or to shed blood in a foreign land, must he the act of the Crown, accompanied with all the legal formalities which the wisdom of our ancestors has deemed necessary to surround and to check so awful a prerogative.
§ LORD JOHN RUSSELLSir, the hon. Gentleman is raising a very large question. We wish now to go into Committee upon the Navy Estimates, and I trust the hon. Gentleman will allow the Committee to proceed.
§ MR. URQUHARTSir, the noble Lord was not present when the hon. and gallant Gentleman behind him made the observations to which I reply. The noble Lord was not present when I gave way with every desire not unnecessarily to interfere with the public business, and postponed my Motion. I therefore deserve, I think, the indulgence even of the noble Lord. I had characterised certain acts in a certain manner, and the hon. and gallant Gentleman tells me that I had no right do so; but he has not so much as touched on the ground of that qualification. The hon. and gallant Gentleman says these officers acted under lawful authority, and he does not know what lawful authority means. He says that he would act in obedience to a superior. An order has to be lawful in itself before it can be lawfully obeyed; and 87 I appeal to the hon. and gallant Gentleman, would he, as a military man (and I believe that military men understand much better than civilians their rights and duties, and have some sense of discipline which civilians have not), take upon himself the responsibility of firing upon a crowd not offending him unless the magistrates had interfered, and unless the Riot Act had been read? Is he so little of a soldier as not to know that he is responsible for every act he does? and that when he has not the due warrant he cannot touch one of his fellow-citizens in the streets, nor use the weapon that is hanging by his side? Is he to suppose that any authority is to justify him when he goes forth with thousands and tens of thousands to attack a whole people, and that such an act is not horrible unless sanctioned by the law and with the warrant of the Queen? If the hon. and gallant Gentleman will answer me one question, I am content to leave the subject. If he will say that he has the right at home to use his weapons without warrant, I will not add a word more; and on the other side I shall not add one word more if he says, "I know I have no authority to act as a soldier unless I am authorised by the civil power." That position no military man will deny in regard to home affairs, and the same rule must hold with respect to foreign affairs. That which is the Riot Act at home is the proclamation of war abroad.
§ SIR DE LACY EVANSThe hon. Member says he will be satisfied if I answer his question; I therefore tell him that I should not act against a crowd unless the Riot Act were read.
§ MR. URQUHARTSir, I close now my argument. I have here the judgment of Chief Justice Tindal in reference to the affairs of China; but I prefer the judgment of the hon. and gallant Gentleman, who has no crotchets such as might be attributed to that learned Judge or to myself.
§ CAPTAIN HARRISSir, I rise to order. I do not think we need have a chapter of Grotius or Vattel read. [Cries of "Oh!" and "Order!"]
§ MR. HUMESir, I do not agree in every particular with my hon. Friend (Mr. Urquhart), but I nevertheless go along with him to a great extent. I think the observations which have fallen from him of very great importance, and I think that he ought to bring on this subject separately, and not mix it up with these Esti- 88 mates, because the operations, as far as the Navy concerns have been conducted, are regulated under lawful orders. The question to be considered is the conduct of those who have issued the orders; and I promise my hon. Friend that if he will bring the subject forward as a separate Motion, I will give him my assistance. I think it better not to mix up this question with the Navy or Army Estimates. If the Navy or Army have acted wrong, they may have done it with no idea of its being illegal. I apprehend that those who have acted illegally in the first instance ought to be brought to justice, and not the gallant officers who have carried the orders into execution. I agree with my hon. Friend that it is a question of vast importance, involving as it does the law of nations; I therefore hope he will postpone his observations now upon these Estimates, and take another opportunity of introducing them by way of Motion. I dare say he will find an opportunity before the Session is over.
§ MR. URQUHARTSir, I am very much indebted to my hon. Friend (Mr. Hume) for his suggestion. If my hon. Friend had attended to what I have said, he would have seen that I was proceeding not to quote the authority of Grotius or Vattel, but that I preferred the authority of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Westminster (Sir De Lacy Evans). The noble Lord (Lord John Russell) two nights back gave me an answer with which I was forced then to be content, and which I wish now to record. I stated to the noble Lord that I should divide the Committee on every item of the Estimates, unless I had the assurance from himself that the Navy would not henceforward be employed unlawfully; and the noble Lord on the third occasion of my asking made this answer—that the Navy "would not be employed except according to the law of nations." I believe that this was the statement of the noble Lord, and if I am wrong I beg to be corrected. Now, then, I beg that the fact may be borne in mind—I have obtained that assurance from the noble Lord, that the troops of Her Majesty are no longer to be employed in violation of the law of nations. From the hon. and gallant Member for Westminster, I have got the judgment that the Riot Act is required to legalise force. Now, I assert, in like manner, that it is against the law of nations to draw a weapon against a fo- 89 reign Power without a formal declaration of war.
Subject at an end.