§ SIR WILPEID LAWSONasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether, before making final arrangements for the proposed costly increase to our Naval Armaments, he will consider the feasibility of consulting the Naval Powers of Europe as to some proportional basis on which the diminution of European warlike forces might be arranged?
§ MR. PULESTONasked, if it was not a fact that final arrangements had already been made?
MR. GLADSTONEThe question whether any steps have been taken by the Admiralty in anticipation of the judgment of this House is one which I could not answer without reference to the Admiralty. But I should suppose undoubtedly that, speaking generally, final arrangements have not yet been made for giving effect to the important statement by my hon. Friend the Secretary to that Department. With regard to the Question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle, I think that is a subject of very great importance and very great delicacy, which cannot receive the kind of reply to which it is entitled in answer to a Question. It is impossible to conceive a matter of greater 652 delicacy. I remember only one definite proposal for partial disarmament, it was in the year 1870—either 1869 or 1870, I am not quite sure. It received whatever support my noble Friend Lord Clarendon, who was then Foreign Secretary, could give it; but it took no effect. I remember also that so far back as the year 1842, when the military establishments of the European Powers were, I suppose, nothing like half so advanced as they are now, Sir Robert Peel spontaneously declared to this House his sense of what he thought a great public mischief, and expressed a fervent hope —at least, not a fervent hope so much as a fervent desire—that the Powers would reduce them. These general views are views which I think every Government would be glad to forward; but I have no positive assurance to give, and, further than that, I should be doing no good to anybody by undertaking to give any pledge.