HL Deb 23 April 1849 vol 104 cc600-2
LORD BROUGHAM

said, that he had heard with very great uneasiness—and should hear with indignation, if the report proved true—that those good-for-nothing persons who had expelled the Grand Duke of Tuscany from his dominions, and had possessed themselves of the government and the treasures of art at Florence—but who had now been put down—and those good-for-nothing persons at Rome, who were not yet put down—but that they would soon be put down could not be doubted, cither by the people coming to a sense of what they owed to themselves, or by foreign interference—that those persons who had signalised their revolution against the Papal Government, first by murder, afterwards by plunder, and completing in pillage what they had begun in assassination, had, for the purpose of obtaining funds to carry their base purposes into effect, laid sacrilegious hands on those ancient and admirable monuments of human genius which adorned their capitals. He would fain hope that these rumours were without foundation. In one respect he knew them to be without foundation—namely, that the greatest of all statues handed down from antiquity to modern times had been purchased by some person to be carried over to the United States of America. He found that that rumour was destitute of all foundation. He had also been told that the "Transfiguration," by Raffaelle, had been purchased by a noble Person, a Member of their Lordships' House. He had reason to believe that that rumour was also without foundation. He was sure, in the present state of the Government of Rome—in the absence of any legal title in that Government to dispose of any one picture or statue, no one could have made such a purchase except for the purpose of ransoming the noble captives from the bondage to which they were exposed, and of restoring them in happier times to their legitimate owners. He, therefore, must express his total disbelief in the rumour as far as it affected his noble Friend. No permanent title could ever be asserted in any such purchase. On that point he had no doubt whatever. The point, however, to which he wished to call the attention of his noble Friend opposite was this—the "lesser" works of art —of smaller bulk and of easier transport, were, he understood, finding their way to the shores of this country. He hoped that some steps, like those taken by the noble Secretary for Foreign Affairs for the protection of a valuable armoury brought here for sale from Austria, would be taken to prevent the destruction of those noble galleries of Italy by the sale of detached pictures here, to which the want of title in the vendors was notorious to all the world. He hoped that his noble Friend would state whether the reports to which he had alluded were correct or not; and he trusted that his answer would confirm his (Lord Brougham's) impression that they were much exaggerated.

The MARQUESS of LANSDOWNE

should be glad if he were able to give any satisfactory information from official sources upon the matter respecting which his noble and learnd Friend had just questioned him. His conviction was, that the reports on the subject were very great exaggerations. With regard to the smaller works of art, he was not able to say positively that they had not been touched; but, with regard to the larger works, they were still safe, and no attempt had been made to dispose of them. In fact, among the parties able to purchase them, the love of art would induce them to repudiate all illegitimate means of obtaining them. That any person, moving in the rank of their Lordships, would purchase an object of art procured in so violent and rapacious a manner, he considered to be a moral impossibility—nay more, he considered that in a country like our own, where every man was responsible to public opinion, no one would dare to make himself master of property acquired so ignobly and so unjustifiably. As to the trustees of the National Gallery and the British Museum, he know that they were of opinion that it would be disgraceful to acquire by purchase any works of art surreptitiously obtained by the vendors.

LORD REDESDALE

reminded their Lordships that when the pictures of Charles I. were sold by the Long Parliament on the disruption of the monarchy, they were bought even by those sovereigns who would not recognise the Commonwealth, and that some of them were, even to this day, the noblest ornaments of Continental galleries. He was afraid that we had been much too easy in our recognition of de facto governments; but if there ever was a government de facto it was that of Rome at present, and it would not cease to be so until it was put down by some alien intervention. Though no gentleman was likely to purchase these works of art, yet they might depend upon it that speculators would not be so squeamish; and if any man, who had 10,000l. lying idle, chose to invest it in the purchase of a picture from such a speculator, he believed that it would be impossible to dispute his title. It had been said, that the republican government could not give a good title because it was founded in murder; but he believed that if they looked into history they would find that every revolutionary government was so founded.