§ MR. HERRIES said that, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer had adverted to the Motion of his hon. Friend the Member for Dorsetshire; relative to the strange occurrences in Spain, which had excited so much attention, he would take the opportunity of asking the noble Lord at the head of the Foreign Department, or any Member of the Government, whether the papers which would be presented to-day would be in the hands of Members to-morrow; and, further, whether it was intended that those papers should convey to the House all the explanation and information which the Go- 1424 vernment thought it necessary to give respecting those most extraordinary occurrences; or whether they intended to furnish the House, upon some early occasion, with further explanations of the conduct of the Government, or of the British Minister at the Court of Spain? He should imaging that Ministers must themselves be burning with anxiety for an occasion to relieve themselves from the suspicion, at least, which attached to them on account of these extraordinary transactions. All that was known at present was, that a British Minister representing the interests of his country at the Court of Madrid, had been, if not ignominiously, at least unceremoniously ejected from Spain. He believed he might confidently state that such a thing never before occurred in the history of the diplomacy of this country. Never before, except with reference to immediate war, had a British Minister received a peremptory notice to quit the capital of a friendly State. Such an extraordinary event threw upon the Government the onus of explanation, and it was most desirable that they should lose no time in making their explanation to Parliament. The hon. Member for Dorsetshire was most anxious to bring the question under the consideration of the House; and every Member of the Government ought to be equally anxious to explain to Parliament the whole course which the Government had taken with reference to this unfortunate transaction.
§ The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER said, it was unfortunate that the right hon. Gentleman had not taken the opportunity of asking his questions when his noble Friend the Foreign Secretary was in his place, which he had not left more than ten minutes, because the right hon. Gentleman would then have obtained a more satisfactory answer than he could give him. He understood that his noble Friend purposed laying on the table of the House those papers which he thought it necessary to produce, with a view to enable the House to form an opinion upon what had taken place. The Motion of the hon. Member for Dorsetshire had not been postponed at the request of the Government; they were perfectly ready to meet it. All he wished to say was, that the Government did not shrink from explanation.
§ MR. DISRAELI was rather surprised at what had fallen from the right hon. Chancellor of the Exchequer. Originally the hon. Member for Dorsetshire gave no- 1425 tice of his intention to call the attention of the House to the documents connected with this subject which had been laid upon the table by Ministers; but the Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed to have entirely forgotten that, subsequently to the presentation of those documents, it appeared from publications in the Spanish newspapers that a most important document had been omitted from those laid before the English Parliament. What could be more natural on the part of the hon. Member for Dorsetshire than to decline to bring forward the question when the documents relative to it were incomplete, and when, too, the noble Lord at the head of the Foreign Department announced, on the same evening, his intention of producing other papers which could not be in the hands of Members until the morning after the intended discussion would have taken place? Under all the circumstances of the case, it was rather surprising that Ministers should now say that they were ready to meet the question, and that the hon. Member for Dorsetshire shrunk from the combat. Ministers, then, upon their own showing, were ready to meet the question, knowing all the time that the House was not in possession of the documents upon which the decision of the question must depend.
§ MR. HERRIES said, that he would gladly have put his question when the noble Secretary for Foreign Affairs was present, but other business then occupied the attention of the House, and before it was concluded Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs had disappeared. It was not his (Mr. Herries's) fault that he did not propose the question to the noble Lord himself.