PERSONAL EXPLANATION. (Hansard, 5 February 1878)

§ MR. TREVELYAN
Sir, I beg, most humbly and diffidently, the indulgence of the House while I very briefly allude to a personal matter. Last night the Secretary of State for War (Mr. Gathorne Hardy) made an imputation against me of so serious a nature, and couched in such very emphatic terms, that I cannot with honour allow it to pass unnoticed; and I am sure the House sufficiently regards the honour of its Members to give me its attention for a very few minutes. The right hon. Gentleman used these words— Lot the hon. Member for the Border Boroughs dare to say in his place in this House that the noble Earl at the head of the Government is desirous of plunging this country into war. Let the hon. Gentleman prove this statement, or lot it go into some category which it is not Parliamentary to name. Now, Sir, like other hon. Members in this House, I made to my constituents, and to my constituents only, during the Recess an address which provoked a certain amount of comment and observation; and, therefore, I thought it right as early as possible in this great debate, which was virtually the first opportunity in the Session, to address the House on the Eastern Question. In my speech on Friday last I distinctly took up the challenge dropped by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, that I should speak in the House as I had spoken in the country. My main argument, almost from first to last, referred to the warlike utterances, as I maintained them in this House to be, of the Prime 1058 Minister during the progress of this Eastern Question; and, as hon. Gentlemen who heard me can say, I, not once, but over and over again, stated the substance of the sentence which the right hon. Gentleman dared me to repeat in this House. I am anxious not to detain the House an undue length of time, so I will read one sentence, and one only, from my speech on Friday— The Prime Minister declared that the independence and integrity of Turkey must be maintained, and he on the same occasion spoke of England's readiness to fight one, two, or three campaigns; and everyone knows what such words, spoken in such a collocation, by a man in that position of responsibility, must undoubtedly mean. Now, Sir, that is a repetition, in the very strongest language that Parliamentary forms could admit of, of the sentence which the right hon. Gentleman dared me to repeat in this House. I then referred to the speeches of the Prime Minister at Aylesbury, and to the speech at Guildhall in November last, and I adduced at great length, and with the best logic I was enabled to command, the deduction that his policy was a warlike policy. I think the right hon. Gentleman should have answered those arguments in his speech; but I do not think that he should have ignored that speech, and then, on the ground of its non-existence, have brought a charge against the courage and sincerity of a brother Member—a brother Member whom hon. Gentlemen opposite, I am proud to believe, after 12 years' experience, do not for a moment—[Cheers from the Ministerial Benches] —do not for a moment believe to be a coward. I was unable to answer that grave charge in the course of the debate for the very reason that I had actually made a speech here of the same nature as that which I was challenged to repeat in the House. That speech is within the recollection of the House. If the right hon. Gentleman was not in the House at the time, he will find, on referring to his Colleagues, that my speech fairly answered the description which I have given of it. If he was in the House I am quite sure he will, on reflection, see that the sentence he used last night was not a fair weapon in Parliamentary warfare.

MR. GATHORNE HARDY
Sir, I did hear the speech of the hon. Member 1059 for the Border Boroughs (Mr. Trevelyan), and I certainly did not understand the hon. Member to repeat the statement which he had made at Selkirk—namely, that the Prime Minister desired, and had never concealed his desire, to plunge this country into war. If the hon. Member meant to say in his speech in this House what he said at Selkirk, I have nothing to withdraw in the terms I applied to him.

§ MR. PERCY WYNDHAM
I am quite certain my hon. Friend the Member for the Border Boroughs—["Order, order!"]

§ MR. SPEAKER
There is no question before the House. The hon. Member for the Border Boroughs has made a personal explanation, and the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War has replied. There is now no question before the House.

§ MR. PERCY WYNDHAM
Sir, I shall conclude with a Motion. If the hon. Member intended to use the same language with exactly the same meaning, when he criticized the conduct of a Minister as he did when he addressed his constituents in the country, he for some reason or other failed in that endeavour. I perfectly remember the speech at Selkirk. It made such an impression on me that I kept a copy of the paper in which it was reported, without any idea that it would come before the House; but when I understood that the hon. Member was about to bring it before the House, I told him that I should feel it my duty to read another extract from the same speech, which, with the permission of the House, I will now 5o. This is what the hon. Member said with regard to the conduct and object of Ministers in their policy with Russia— Her Majesty's Ministers are simulating dread of Russian access to the Mediterranean as a pretext for increasing the number of naval appointments open to the dunces "who are sons of Ministers and their constituents.

§ MR. TREVELYAN
What is the newspaper?

§ MR. PERCY WYNDHAM
A newspaper published amongst your own constituency. I got it at Carlisle.

§ COLONEL MURE
I regret, Sir, that this painful episode—

§ MR. SPEAKER
The hon. Member for West Cumberland did not conclude with a Motion.

§ MR. PERCY WYNDHAM
I am prepared to withdraw it. ["No, no!"]

§ COLONEL MURE
said, he did not think that painful episode could be allowed to remain where it was. The question at issue between his hon. Friend (Mr. Trevelyan) and the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Gathorne Hardy) was, not whether the expressions used by the hon. Member in the House were the same as those he had used outside, but whether the circumstance of his not repeating those expressions in that House justified his original statement being relegated to a category which they could all understand. Now, he could not believe that the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War really intended to impute to the hon. Member that it was from motives of cowardice and fear he did not repeat certain expressions he had used. It was due to the honour of that House and of the Secretary for War, as well as due to the hon. Member for the Border Boroughs, that the Secretary for War should state that he had no intention to impute such a disgraceful motive to the hon. Member.

§ MR. MARK STEWART
said, the speech of his hon. Friend the Member for the Border Boroughs (Mr. Trevelyan) produced very great consternation in Scotland, and many people believed and hoped it was delivered on the spur of the moment without the usual forethought which characterized his hon. Friend's words in the House. If his hon. Friend had spoken in that House the other night, in moving the adjournment of the debate, in the way he had done to his constituents, he should have been prepared to answer the speech which his hon. Friend made at Selkirk. That speech contained many strong statements besides those which had been read to the House, and he (Mr. Stewart) held in his hand a copy of The Scotsman, which he was ready to produce, containing those statements. He wished to say this because he felt that some notice ought to be taken of the strong remarks made by his hon. Friend against the Conservative Party. It was not fair for hon. Gentlemen to go down to their constituencies and there state matters which 1061 they were ashamed or afraid to bring forward here. In saying this he did not wish to produce any further amount of irritation, and he was quite sure the House would be satisfied with what had taken place.

§ THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER
Sir, I would venture to appeal to the House whether it is really advantageous, or even desirable or seemly, that a discussion of this kind should be allowed to continue. As I understand the matter, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War had no intention whatever of imputing anything whatever contrary to the personal honour of my hon. Friend the Member for the Border Boroughs. It was not his intention to do so. If my hon. Friend the Member for the Border Boroughs says it was his intention to repeat in this House, though in somewhat different language, what he said to his constituents, of course there can be no question of his right to do that. But the remark of my right hon. Friend remains the same—namely, that the observation made at Selkirk, whether it was repeated in this House or not, was one that my hon. Friend the Member for the Border Boroughs was bound either to prove, or that must be dismissed in the manner in which my right hon. Friend dismissed it. All I think it is necessary to say is, that there is no intention to impute anything against the personal honour of the hon. Member, or as to his character, in regards to his daring to repeat in this House what he had said elsewhere, and I hope the House will not consider it necessary to proceed with this question, which would lead to inconvenience.

§ MR. TREVELYAN
My right hon. Friend always tries to put the pleasantest face upon anything disagreeable, and I quite recognize the spirit in which he has spoken; but the matter remains thus—The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War places me in a certain category— which I will not soil my mouth by explaining to the House—unless I can prove a certain statement. I proved that statement on Friday last according to Parliamentary fashion; in a manner that is, at any rate, believed by many Members on these benches. It is a political difference. It is not a personal one. The right hon. Gentleman refuses to retract his attack on my personal honour. I leave the country, which has now learnt 1062 the matter in discussion, to judge between him and me.

THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON
Sir, I hope the House will be disposed to take the advice which has been given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that this matter should not be pursued further. The right hon. Gentleman has stated, and I think the assurance ought to be satisfactory to my hon. Friend the Member for the Border Boroughs (Mr. Trevelyan), that the Secretary for War made no imputation on his personal honour. As the right hon. Gentleman has sat still and not qualified the statement made in his name by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I think my hon. Friend may accept that statement. At the same time, I sincerely regret that the Secretary of State for War did not himself rise and make the statement, instead of leaving his right hon. Friend to make it for him. I cannot help thinking it is an inconvenient course for the right hon. Gentleman to take, if whenever some statement which is not proved to his satisfaction is made, it should be described by him in the strong terms he used last night, and which he has repeated this evening. My hon. Friend the Member for the Border Boroughs did endeavour, though imperfectly, perhaps, to prove the statement which he made at Selkirk, and which he says he repeated here. That statement may not have been satisfactory to the right hon. Gentleman opposite; but if, whenever we think our opponents are somewhat deficient in logic or in power of statement, we are to qualify their statements in the way in which the Secretary of State for War has done, it seems to me that our debates will assume a character which will not be an improvement to the reputation of this House.

MR. GATHORNE HARDY
There appears to me to be two questions before the House. One has reference to the courage of the hon. Member for the Border Boroughs in not stating in this House what he stated elsewhere. I certainly did not understand him to repeat here the statement he made elsewhere; but he says he did so, and that being the case I accept that statement. Therefore, I assume that he stated here what he stated at Selkirk. What was it? It was this, and he stated it as a fact—That there was a criminal and wicked desire on the part of the Prime 1063 Minister. I am bound to defend the Prime Minister, not only as my Chief but as a personal friend. The hon. Member charges him deliberately, in the strongest language, in a sentence which concludes, as far as I remember, with these terms, —"that the noble Lord has never concealed his desire to plunge this country into war." If that be the state of my noble Friend's mind, I say it is a criminal state of mind. It is one which is of itself a disgrace. The statement which was made is a statement of fact, and if the hon. Member for the Border Boroughs thinks proper to persist in that statement, I must say again that I have nothing to qualify in the language I used.

§ MR. O'DONNELL
said, that if the hon. Member for the Border Boroughs had been guilty of saying outside the House what he was not prepared to say in it, right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite had been guilty of the same offence. The Secretary of State for War, entertaining the opinions he did respecting the hon. Member for the Border Boroughs, would doubtless have expressed them in much stronger language if he had spoken them outside the House, and had not been fenced round by Parliamentary forms. The House should remember that the speeches of hon. Members outside were of a very different nature to the speeches of the same hon. Members inside the House; and he could be corroborated by hon. Members on the Government benches. He had often felt it his duty, and it would, no doubt, be so again, to make statements outside in very different language from that which he would use in the House. When making observations to ordinary people outside the House he used considerable latitude; but inside that Assembly he had to couch his language in consonance with peculiar forms, and follow arguments at a distance, in conformity with Parliamentary usages. In the same way, many hon. Members might be brought to task in the House for using outside the House language most gross and calumnious, and contrary to the commonest principles of public decency. Unless some hon. Members opposite were seriously misrepresented, they had outside the House described other hon. Members as persons whom they should not like to meet on a dark night, and as persons to whom the provisions of the Cattle Plague Prevention Act ought to 1064 be applied, and who ought to be slaughtered at the port of disembarkation. He believed that on a former occasion a hon. and gallant Member referred to another hon. Member in peculiarly gross terms. [Cries of "Order!"]

§ MR. SPEAKER
intimated that the hon. Member was wandering from the question.

§ MR. O'DONNELL
said, he would admit he had made a slip; but the fact was the hon. and gallant Member to whom he referred used peculiar and unusual terms—the result being a message of a kind better known in the time of our grandfathers than at the present day. He maintained the right hon. Gentleman ought not to stand up in the House and impugn, or seem to impugn, in such a very unsatisfactory manner the personal honour and veracity of hon. Members of that House, merely because those hon. Members had made speeches in the country in somewhat different terms to those which they were prepared to substantiate on the floor of the House.

§ MR. WHITBREAD
said, he had listened to the discussion with pain, and he thought the House had had a very good example of the extreme inconvenience to which these desultory conversations led. The charge made last night by the Secretary for War amounted to this—that he challenged the hon. Member for the Border Boroughs to repeat in the House, where it could be answered, the language he had used elsewhere. He (Mr. Whitbread) wanted the House to bear in mind that his hon. Friend the Member for the Border Boroughs had repeated in that House the arguments which he used outside. ["No, no!"] Yes, his hon. Friend had done so, and had given to the House the grounds upon which he rested his charge. It was, he would submit to the right hon. Gentleman, a matter of opinion whether the charge made by the hon. Member for the Border Boroughs was justified on the grounds upon which he rested it or not. He submitted to the House that it was possible his hon. Friend might honestly have arrived at the conclusion that the charge was justified on those grounds. Of course the right hon. Gentleman and others thought it was not; but he submitted, in the interests of free discussion, that when an hon. Member stated to the House the grounds on which he formed his opinion—which appeared to 1065 many of them to have some show of reason—["Oh, oh!"]—he did not commit himself to the full extent of the words; but, at all events, if he stated the grounds which led him honestly to the opinion he expressed, it was perfectly intolerable that he should be taunted with "not daring"—words they seldom heard in that House, but which were the very ones that were used—to repeat his expressions. And when, after 24 hours' consideration, his hon. Friend, feeling personally hurt, feeling that his character as a man of honour had been assailed, made his explanation and offered the right hon. Gentleman an opportunity of saying he was not attacking his honour, see how it was met! Then he had another graceful opportunity given him by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and what did he do then? He added to his words, and said it was a criminal state of mind. He made use of a word which he (Mr. Whitbread) was on the point of asking the right hon. Gentleman in the Chair whether it was Parliamentary.

MR. GATHORNE HARDY
I said that the hon. Member imputed to my noble Friend a criminal state of mind.

§ MR. WHITBREAD
If I misunderstood the right hon. Gentleman, I extremely regret it. Was the word "disgraceful" attached to Lord Beacons-field?

MR. GATHORNE HARDY
I said the charge which the hon. Member made was one which would show a criminal state of mind in my noble Friend, and one which was disgraceful.

§ MR. WHITBREAD
said, he would only add that, during the time the Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed to him to be trying to afford the right hon. Gentleman an opportunity of taking off some of the personal sting of the charge, the right hon. Gentleman sat there, and neither by word nor gesture did he show that he was disposed to do so. [Cries of" Divide!"]

MR. ASSHETON CROSS
appealed to the House not to divide. The whole question had been discussed, and were it not for the mistake made by the hon. Gentleman who had last spoken as to what fell from his right hon. Friend, the subject would have been closed.

§ MR. RYLANDS
said, the Home Secretary seemed to have overlooked the fact that the Secretary of State for War 1066 in his last speech repeated the charge over again that his hon. Friend the Member for the Border Boroughs (Mr. Trevelyan) had made a statement out of the House which he repeated in a similar form in the House, and that the statement was false and could not be proved.

§ SIR WILFRID LAWSON
Sir, no one below the Gangway, or anywhere else, wishes to delay the Business of this evening; but I do think this has been a very painful scene, and I regret it as much as anyone. I think it may be settled even yet. I do not think the Secretary for War really does wish to impute any improper conduct to the hon. Member for the Border Boroughs. The charge, as far as I understand it, was that the hon. Member would not repeat in this House what he said out-of-doors. Putting aside whether what he said was right or wrong—and it may have been a very imprudent speech—I do think that if the right hon. Gentleman would really say he does not impute anything dishonourable or dishonest or untruthful in the hon. Member's conduct, I think we should all be satisfied. Otherwise, if the charge is persisted in, there are some of us who, in vindication of my hon. Friend, will feel bound to vote for the Adjournment, which, by-the-bye, was moved from the other side.

MR. BROMLEY - DAVENPORT
Sir, in order, as has been suggested, to settle the matter, I would suggest that the hon. Member for the Border Boroughs should withdraw the statement of which the Secretary for War complained. [Cries of "No!"and "Divide!"]

§ MR. MITCHELL HENRY
I should like to know what we are going to divide about. The real issue is not whether the House should adjourn, but whether the hon. Member for the Border Boroughs is or is not a liar and a coward. That, in its naked simplicity, is the question on which we are asked to divide. I intend to give my vote in his favour; but it is not a de-cent issue to put before the House of Commons. I am an Irish Member, and you attribute to Irish Members many things they do not deserve. One thing shall never be attributed to me, and that is that I have not done my best to maintain the honour of Gentlemen and 1067 of the House of Commons. I maintain that this is not a decent issue to put before the House, and I hope the question will not be put.

MR. GATHORNE HARDY
I must appeal to the House to allow me to say one or two words, although I have already spoken on the subject. You, Mr. Speaker, heard what I said last night. I was not called to Order, and I was not aware, therefore, that I had said anything that was un-Parliamentary. There is nothing which this House has any right to condemn in what I said, because I sedulously avoided saying anything coming within the category of un-Parliamentary language. If the hon. Member for the Border Boroughs says that in his speech in this House, he repeated what he meant to say at Selkirk, and that it was in the form of argument and not the assertion of fact, that is a totally different thing. If the hon. Member is prepared to state that what he said in this House was founded upon arguments which he had made in his own mind, and which he was entitled to believe, that is one thing. But if he states it as a fact, imputing such conduct to my noble Friend, I cannot retract the saying that I cannot characterize it except in too strong terms to be Parliamentary. But if the hon. Member only means to say that which he said in this House, and to which I listened without taking exception, then I am in a totally different position, and if he will so qualify those words he used at Selkirk, then I shall be perfectly happy to withdraw my expression.

§ MR. TREVELYAN
Sir, I have not mentioned hitherto the deep pain which it would give me, if such a breach, as must exist between me and the right hon. Gentleman if the words were not withdrawn, were to take place. The last appeal which he has made to me I will answer in this way, by saving that both at Selkirk and in this House my meaning was that the deduction I drew from the Prime Minister's utterance was that he was in favour of a warlike policy. It is unnecessary for me to say that my right hon. Friend is much better acquainted with the Prime Minister than I am, and I can quite understand his having the very strongest, feelings as opposed to me. But that opinion with regard to the policy of the Prime Mini- 1068 ster is precisely what I stated at Selkirk, and what I repeated in this House. If my right hon. Friend will withdraw the second of his imputations, as he has withdrawn the first, I shall never have felt more relief and satisfaction.

MR. GATHORNE HARDY
I am really ashamed to trespass upon the House so much, but I only wish to explain the position in which I stand. The hon. Member, as I understand him, now says that what he said in this House— which never assumed the language he used at Selkirk—was only an argument as to the opinions of my noble Friend. That being so, it is a totally different thing from stating as a fact that my noble Friend the Prime Minister had never concealed certain opinions, and if he never concealed them they must have been opinions which he openly expressed. But, on the contrary, my noble Friend's own opinions were exactly the other way, and therefore to say that my noble Friend had never concealed his desire for war was to say that he had stated that which was not true, and that he was in a state of mind that was most unbecoming to himself and prejudicial to the country. I understand my hon. Friend to say now that he was only deducing an argument from the speeches of my noble Friend. That deduction was that my noble Friend was in favour of war, and therefore I have only to say that I shall argue against it, but shall not condemn it by any epithet.

§ MR. TREVELYAN
It is unnecessary for me to say that after what my right hon. Friend has said I am fully satisfied.