No More Learning

He asks why we are to suppose that the petitioners
are not competent to form a judgment on this question? My answer is,
that they have certified their incompetence under their own hands. They
have, with scarcely one exception, treated this question as a question
of divinity, though it is purely a question of property: and when I see
men treat a question of property as if it were a question of divinity, I
am certain that, however numerous they may be, their opinion is entitled
to no consideration. If the persons whom this bill is meant to relieve
are orthodox, that is no reason for our plundering anybody else in
order to enrich them. If they are heretics, that is no reason for our
plundering them in order to enrich others. I should not think myself
justified in supporting this bill, if I could not with truth declare
that, whatever sect had been in possession of these chapels, my conduct
would have been precisely the same. I have no peculiar sympathy with
Unitarians. If these people, instead of being Unitarians, had been Roman
Catholics, or Wesleyan Methodists, or General Baptists, or Particular
Baptists, or members of the Old Secession Church of Scotland, or members
of the Free Church of Scotland, I should speak as I now speak, and vote
as I now mean to vote.

Sir, the whole dispute is about the second clause of this bill. I can
hardly conceive that any gentleman will vote against the bill on account
of the error in the marginal note on the third clause. To the first
clause my honourable friend the Member for the University of Oxford
said, if I understood him rightly, that he had no objection; and indeed
a man of his integrity and benevolence could hardly say less after
listening to the lucid and powerful argument of the Attorney General. It
is therefore on the second clause that the whole question turns.

The second clause, Sir, rests on a principle simple, well-known, and
most important to the welfare of all classes of the community. That
principle is this, that prescription is a good title to property, that
there ought to be a time of limitation, after which a possessor,
in whatever way his possession may have originated, must not be
dispossessed. Till very lately, Sir, I could not have imagined that,
in any assembly of reasonable, civilised, of educated men, it could be
necessary for me to stand up in defence of that principle. I should have
thought it as much a waste of the public time to make a speech on such
a subject as to make a speech against burning witches, against trying
writs of right by wager of battle, or against requiring a culprit to
prove his innocence by walking over red-hot ploughshares. But I find
that I was in error. Certain sages, lately assembled in conclave at
Exeter Hall, have done me the honour to communicate to me the fruits of
their profound meditations on the science of legislation. They have,
it seems, passed a resolution declaring that the principle, which I had
supposed that no man out of Bedlam would ever question, is an untenable
principle, and altogether unworthy of a British Parliament. They have
been pleased to add, that the present Government cannot, without gross
inconsistency, call on Parliament to pass a statute of limitation.
And why? Will the House believe it? Because the present Government has
appointed two new Vice Chancellors.

Really, Sir, I do not know whether the opponents of this bill shine
more as logicians or as jurists. Standing here as the advocate of
prescription, I ought not to forget that prescriptive right of talking
nonsense which gentlemen who stand on the platform of Exeter Hall are
undoubtedly entitled to claim. But, though I recognise the right, I
cannot but think that it may be abused, and that it has been abused on
the present occasion. One thing at least is clear, that, if Exeter Hall
be in the right, all the masters of political philosophy, all the great
legislators, all the systems of law by which men are and have been
governed in all civilised countries, from the earliest times, must be
in the wrong. How indeed can any society prosper, or even exist, without
the aid of this untenable principle, this principle unworthy of a
British legislature? This principle was found in the Athenian law. This
principle was found in the Roman law. This principle was found in the
laws of all those nations of which the jurisprudence was derived from
Rome. This principle was found in the law administered by the Parliament
of Paris; and, when that Parliament and the law which it administered
had been swept away by the revolution, this principle reappeared in
the Code Napoleon. Go westward, and you find this principle recognised
beyond the Mississippi. Go eastward, and you find it recognised beyond
the Indus, in countries which never heard the name of Justinian, in
countries to which no translation of the Pandects ever found its way.
Look into our own laws, and you will see that the principle, which is
now designated as unworthy of Parliament, has guided Parliament ever
since Parliament existed. Our first statute of limitation was enacted
at Merton, by men some of whom had borne a part in extorting the Great
Charter and the Forest Charter from King John. From that time to this
it has been the study of a succession of great lawyers and statesmen to
make the limitation more and more stringent. The Crown and the Church
indeed were long exempted from the general rule. But experience fully
proved that every such exemption was an evil; and a remedy was at last
applied. Sir George Savile, the model of English country gentlemen, was
the author of the Act which barred the claims of the Crown. That eminent
magistrate, the late Lord Tenterden, was the author of the Act which
barred the claims of the Church. Now, Sir, how is it possible to believe
that the Barons, whose seals are upon our Great Charter, would
have perfectly agreed with the great jurists who framed the Code of
Justinian, with the great jurists who framed the Code of Napoleon, with
the most learned English lawyers of the nineteenth century, and with the
Pundits of Benares, unless there had been some strong and clear reason
which necessarily led men of sense in every age and country to the same
conclusion? Nor is it difficult to see what the reason was. For it is
evident that the principle which silly and ignorant fanatics have called
untenable is essential to the institution of property, and that, if you
take away that principle, you will produce evils resembling those which
would be produced by a general confiscation. Imagine what would follow
if the maxims of Exeter Hall were introduced into Westminster Hall.
Imagine a state of things in which one of us should be liable to be sued
on a bill of exchange indorsed by his grandfather in 1760. Imagine a
man possessed of an estate and manor house which had descended to him
through ten or twelve generations of ancestors, and yet liable to be
ejected because some flaw had been detected in a deed executed three
hundred years ago, in the reign of Henry the Eighth. Why, Sir, should
we not all cry out that it would be better to live under the rule of
a Turkish Pasha than under such a system. Is it not plain that the
enforcing of an obsolete right is the inflicting of a wrong? Is it
not plain that, but for our statutes of limitation, a lawsuit would be
merely a grave, methodical robbery? I am ashamed to argue a point so
clear.

And if this be the general rule, why should the case which we are
now considering be an exception to that rule? I have done my best
to understand why. I have read much bad oratory, and many foolish
petitions. I have heard with attention the reasons of my honourable
friend the Member for the University of Oxford; and I should have heard
the reasons of the honourable Member for Kent, if there had been any to
hear. Every argument by which my honourable friend the Member for the
University of Oxford tried to convince us that this case is an exception
to the general rule, will be found on examination to be an argument
against the general rule itself. He says that the possession which we
propose to sanction was originally a wrongful possession. Why, Sir, all
the statutes of limitation that ever were made sanction possession which
was originally wrongful. It is for the protection of possessors who are
not in condition to prove that their possession was originally rightful
that statutes of limitation are passed. Then my honourable friend
says that this is an ex post facto law. Why, Sir, so are all our great
statutes of limitation. Look at the Statute of Merton, passed in 1235;
at the Statute of Westminster, passed in 1275; at the Statute of James
the First, passed in 1623; at Sir George Savile's Act, passed in the
last century; at Lord Tenterden's Act, passed in our own time. Every one
of those Acts was retrospective. Every one of them barred claims arising
out of past transactions. Nor was any objection ever raised to what
was so evidently just and wise, till bigotry and chicanery formed that
disgraceful league against which we are now contending. But, it is said,
it is unreasonable to grant a boon to men because they have been many
years doing wrong. The length of the time during which they have enjoyed
property not rightfully their own, is an aggravation of the injury which
they have committed, and is so far from being a reason for letting them
enjoy that property for ever, that it is rather a reason for compelling
them to make prompt restitution. With this childish sophistry the
petitions on our table are filled. Is it possible that any man can be
so dull as not to perceive that, if this be a reason, it is a reason
against all our statutes of limitation? I do a greater wrong to my
tailor if I withhold payment of his bill during six years than if I
withhold payment only during two years. Yet the law says that at the
end of two years he may bring an action and force me to pay him with
interest, but that after the lapse of six years he cannot force me to
pay him at all. It is much harder that a family should be kept out of
its hereditary estate during five generations than during five days.
But if you are kept out of your estate five days you have your action of
ejectment; and, after the lapse of five generations, you have no remedy.
I say, therefore, with confidence, that every argument which has been
urged against this bill is an argument against the great principle of
prescription. I go further, and I say that, if there be any case which,
in an especial manner, calls for the application of the principle of
prescription, this is that case. For the Unitarian congregations have
laid out so much on these little spots of ground that it is impossible
to take the soil from them without taking from them property which is of
much greater value than the mere soil, and which is indisputably their
own. This is not the case of a possessor who has been during many years,
receiving great emoluments from land to which he had not a good title.
It is the case of a possessor who has, from resources which were
undoubtedly his own, expended on the land much more than it was
originally worth. Even in the former case, it has been the policy of all
wise lawgivers to fix a time of limitation. A fortiori, therefore, there
ought to be a time of limitation in the latter case.

And here, Sir, I cannot help asking gentlemen to compare the petitions
for this bill with the petitions against it. Never was there such a
contrast. The petitions against the bill are filled with cant, rant,
scolding, scraps of bad sermons. The petitions in favour of the bill
set forth in the simplest manner great practical grievances. Take, for
instance, the case of Cirencester. The meeting house there was built in
1730. It is certain that the Unitarian doctrines were taught there as
early as 1742. That was only twelve years after the chapel had been
founded. Many of the original subscribers must have been living. Many
of the present congregation are lineal descendants of the original
subscribers. Large sums have from time to time been laid out in
repairing, enlarging, and embellishing the edifice; and yet there are
people who think it just and reasonable that this congregation should,
after the lapse of more than a century, be turned out. At Norwich,
again, a great dissenting meeting house was opened in 1688. It is not
easy to say how soon Anti-Trinitarian doctrines were taught there. The
change of sentiment in the congregation seems to have been gradual: but
it is quite certain that, in 1754, ninety years ago, both pastor and
flock were decidedly Unitarian. Round the chapel is a cemetery filled
with the monuments of eminent Unitarians. Attached to the chapel are a
schoolhouse and a library, built and fitted up by Unitarians. And now
the occupants find that their title is disputed. They cannot venture to
build; they cannot venture to repair; and they are anxiously awaiting
our decision. I do not know that I have cited the strongest cases. I
am giving you the ordinary history of these edifices. Go to Manchester.
Unitarianism has been taught there at least seventy years in a chapel
on which the Unitarians have expended large sums. Go to Leeds. Four
thousand pounds have been subscribed for the repairing of the Unitarian
chapel there, the chapel where, near eighty years ago, Priestly, the
great Doctor of the sect, officiated. But these four thousand pounds are
lying idle. Not a pew can be repaired till it is known whether this bill
will become law. Go to Maidstone. There Unitarian doctrines have been
taught during at least seventy years; and seven hundred pounds have
recently been laid out by the congregation in repairing the chapel.
Go to Exeter. It matters not where you go. But go to Exeter. There
Unitarian doctrines have been preached more than eighty years; and two
thousand pounds have been laid out on the chapel. It is the same
at Coventry, at Bath, at Yarmouth, everywhere. And will a British
Parliament rob the possessors of these buildings? I can use no other
word. How should we feel if it were proposed to deprive any other class
of men of land held during so long a time, and improved at so large a
cost? And, if this property should be transferred to those who covet it,
what would they gain in comparison with what the present occupants would
lose? The pulpit of Priestley, the pulpit of Lardner, are objects
of reverence to congregations which hold the tenets of Priestley and
Lardner. To the intruders those pulpits will be nothing; nay, worse than
nothing; memorials of heresiarchs. Within these chapels and all around
them are the tablets which the pious affection of four generations
has placed over the remains of dear mothers and sisters, wives and
daughters, of eloquent preachers, of learned theological writers. To
the Unitarian, the building which contains these memorials is a hallowed
building. To the intruder it is of no more value than any other room
in which he can find a bench to sit on and a roof to cover him. If,
therefore, we throw out this bill, we do not merely rob one set of
people in order to make a present to another set. That would be bad
enough. But we rob the Unitarians of that which they regard as a most
precious treasure; of that which is endeared to them by the strongest
religious and the strongest domestic associations; of that which cannot
be wrenched from them without inflicting on them the bitterest pain and
humiliation. To the Trinitarians we give that which can to them be of
little or no value except as a trophy of a most inglorious victory won
in a most unjust war.

But, Sir, an imputation of fraud has been thrown on the Unitarians;
not, indeed, here, but in many other places, and in one place of which
I would always wish to speak with respect. The Unitarians, it has
been said, knew that the original founders of these chapels were
Trinitarians; and to use, for the purpose of propagating Unitarian
doctrine, a building erected for the purpose of propagating Trinitarian
doctrine was grossly dishonest. One very eminent person (The Bishop
of London. ) has gone so far as to maintain that the Unitarians cannot
pretend to any prescription of more than sixty-three years; and he
proves his point thus:--Till the year 1779, he says, no dissenting
teacher was within the protection of the Toleration Act unless he
subscribed those articles of the Church of England which affirm
the Athanasian doctrine. It is evident that no honest Unitarian can
subscribe those articles. The inference is, that the persons who
preached in these chapels down to the year 1779 must have been either
Trinitarians or rogues. Now, Sir, I believe that they were neither
Trinitarians nor rogues; and I cannot help suspecting that the great
prelate who brought this charge against them is not so well read in the
history of the nonconformist sects as in the history of that Church of
which he is an ornament. The truth is that, long before the year 1779,
the clause of the Toleration Act which required dissenting ministers
to subscribe thirty-five or thirty-six of our thirty-nine articles
had almost become obsolete. Indeed, that clause had never been rigidly
enforced. From the very first there were some dissenting ministers who
refused to subscribe, and yet continued to preach. Calany was one; and
he was not molested. And if this could be done in the year in which the
Toleration Act passed, we may easily believe that, at a later period,
the law would not have been very strictly observed. New brooms, as
the vulgar proverb tells us, sweep clean; and no statute is so rigidly
enforced as a statute just made. But, Sir, so long ago as the year 1711,
the provisions of the Toleration Act on this subject were modified. In
that year the Whigs, in order to humour Lord Nottingham, with whom
they had coalesced against Lord Oxford, consented to let the Occasional
Conformity Bill pass; but they insisted on inserting in the bill a
clause which was meant to propitiate the dissenters. By this clause
it was enacted that, if an information were laid against a dissenting
minister for having omitted to subscribe the articles, the defendant
might, by subscribing at any stage of the proceedings anterior to
the judgment, defeat the information, and throw all the costs on the
informer. The House will easily believe that, when such was the state of
the law, informers were not numerous. Indeed, during the discussions of
1773, it was distinctly affirmed, both in Parliament and in manifestoes
put forth by the dissenting body, that the majority of nonconformist
ministers then living had never subscribed. All arguments, therefore,
grounded on the insincerity which has been rashly imputed to the
Unitarians of former generations, fall at once to the ground.

But, it is said, the persons who, in the reigns of James the Second, of
William the Third, and of Anne, first established these chapels, held
the doctrine of the Trinity; and therefore, when, at a later period, the
preachers and congregations departed from the doctrine of the Trinity,
they ought to have departed from the chapels too. The honourable and
learned gentleman, the Attorney General, has refuted this argument so
ably that he has scarcely left anything for me to say about it. It is
well-known that the change which, soon after the Revolution, began to
take place in the opinions of a section of the old Puritan body, was a
gradual, an almost imperceptible change. The principle of the English
Presbyterians was to have no confession of faith and no form of prayer.
Their trust deeds contained no accurate theological definitions.
Nonsubscription was in truth the very bond which held them together.
What, then, could be more natural than that, Sunday by Sunday,
the sermons should have become less and less like those of the old
Calvinistic divines, that the doctrine of the Trinity should have been
less and less frequently mentioned, that at last it should have ceased
to be mentioned, and that thus, in the course of years, preachers and
hearers should, by insensible degrees, have become first Arians, then,
perhaps, Socinians. I know that this explanation has been treated
with disdain by people profoundly ignorant of the history of English
nonconformity. I see that my right honourable friend near me (Mr Fox
Maule. ) does not assent to it. Will he permit me to refer him to an
analogous case with which he cannot but be well acquainted? No person
in the House is more versed than he in the ecclesiastical history of
Scotland; and he will, I am sure, admit that some of the doctrines now
professed by the Scotch sects which sprang from the secessions of 1733
and 1760 are such as the seceders of 1733 and the seceders of 1760 would
have regarded with horror. I have talked with some of the ablest, most
learned, and most pious of the Scotch dissenters of our time; and they
all fully admitted that they held more than one opinion which their
predecessors would have considered as impious. Take the question of the
connection between Church and State. The seceders of 1733 thought that
the connection ought to be much closer than it is. They blamed the
legislature for tolerating heresy. They maintained that the Solemn
league and covenant was still binding on the kingdom. They considered
it as a national sin that the validity of the Solemn League and Covenant
was not recognised at the time of the Revolution. When George Whitfield
went to Scotland, though they approved of his Calvinistic opinions, and
though they justly admired that natural eloquence which he possessed in
so wonderful a degree, they would hold no communion with him because he
would not subscribe the Solemn League and Covenant. Is that the doctrine
of their successors? Are the Scotch dissenters now averse to toleration?
Are they not zealous for the voluntary system? Is it not their constant
cry that it is not the business of the civil magistrate to encourage any
religion, false or true? Does any Bishop now abhor the Solemn League
and Covenant more than they? Here is an instance in which numerous
congregations have, retaining their identity, passed gradually from one
opinion to another opinion. And would it be just, would it be decent in
me, to impute dishonesty to them on that account? My right honourable
friend may be of opinion that the question touching the connection
between the Church and State is not a vital question. But was that the
opinion of the divines who drew up the Secession Testimony? He well
knows that in their view a man who denied that it was the duty of the
government to defend religious truth with the civil sword was as much a
heretic as a man who denied the doctrine of the Trinity.

Again, Sir, take the case of the Wesleyan Methodists. They are zealous
against this bill. They think it monstrous that a chapel originally
built for people holding one set of doctrines should be occupied by
people holding a different set of doctrines. I would advise them to
consider whether they cannot find in the history of their own body
reasons for being a little more indulgent. What were the opinions of
that great and good man, their founder, on the question whether men not
episcopally ordained could lawfully administer the Eucharist? He told
his followers that lay administration was a sin which he never could
tolerate. Those were the very words which he used; and I believe that,
during his lifetime, the Eucharist never was administered by laymen
in any place of worship which was under his control. After his death,
however, the feeling in favour of lay administration became strong and
general among his disciples. The Conference yielded to that feeling. The
consequence is that now, in every chapel which belonged to Wesley, those
who glory in the name of Wesleyans commit, every Sacrament Sunday, what
Wesley declared to be a sin which he would never tolerate. And yet these
very persons are not ashamed to tell us in loud and angry tones that it
is fraud, downright fraud, in a congregation which has departed from its
original doctrines to retain its original endowments. I believe, Sir,
that, if you refuse to pass this bill, the Courts of Law will soon have
to decide some knotty questions which, as yet, the Methodists little
dream of.

It has, I own, given me great pain to observe the unfair and acrimonious
manner in which too many of the Protestant nonconformists have
opposed this bill. The opposition of the Established Church has been
comparatively mild and moderate; and yet from the Established Church we
had less right to expect mildness and moderation. It is certainly
not right, but it is very natural, that a church, ancient and richly
endowed, closely connected with the Crown and the aristocracy, powerful
in parliament, dominant in the universities, should sometimes forget
what is due to poorer and humbler Christian societies. But when I hear
a cry for what is nothing less than persecution set up by men who have
been, over and over again within my own memory, forced to invoke in
their own defence the principles of toleration, I cannot but feel
astonishment mingled with indignation. And what above all excites both
my astonishment and my indignation is this, that the most noisy among
the noisy opponents of the bill which we are considering are some
sectaries who are at this very moment calling on us to pass another
bill of just the same kind for their own benefit. I speak of those Irish
Presbyterians who are asking for an ex post facto law to confirm their
marriages. See how exact the parallel is between the case of those
marriages and the case of these chapels. The Irish Presbyterians have
gone on marrying according to their own forms during a long course of
years. The Unitarians have gone on occupying, improving, embellishing
certain property during a long course of years. In neither case did any
doubt as to the right arise in the most honest, in the most scrupulous
mind. At length, about the same time, both the validity of the
Presbyterian marriages and the validity of the title by which the
Unitarians held their chapels were disputed. The two questions came
before the tribunals. The tribunals, with great reluctance, with great
pain, pronounced that, neither in the case of the marriages nor in the
case of the chapels, can prescription be set up against the letter
of the law. In both cases there is a just claim to relief such as the
legislature alone can afford.
In both the legislature is willing to
grant that relief. But this will not satisfy the orthodox Presbyterian.
He demands with equal vehemence two things, that he shall be relieved,
and that nobody else shall be relieved. In the same breath he tells us
that it would be most iniquitous not to pass a retrospective law for his
benefit, and that it would be most iniquitous to pass a retrospective
law for the benefit of his fellow sufferers. I never was more amused
than by reading, the other day, a speech made by a person of great note
among the Irish Presbyterians on the subject of these marriages. "Is it
to be endured," he says, "that the mummies of old and forgotten laws are
to be dug up and unswathed for the annoyance of dissenters? " And yet a
few hours later, this eloquent orator is himself hard at work in digging
up and unswathing another set of mummies for the annoyance of another
set of dissenters. I should like to know how he and such as he would
look if we Churchmen were to assume the same tone towards them which
they think it becoming to assume towards the Unitarian body; if we were
to say, "You and those whom you would oppress are alike out of our pale.
If they are heretics in your opinion, you are schismatics in ours. Since
you insist on the letter of the law against them, we will insist on the
letter of the law against you. You object to ex post facto statutes; and
you shall have none. You think it reasonable that men should, in spite
of a prescription of eighty or ninety years, be turned out of a chapel
built with their own money, and a cemetery where their own kindred lie,
because the original title was not strictly legal. We think it equally
reasonable that those contracts which you have imagined to be marriages,
but which are now adjudged not to be legal marriages, should be
treated as nullities. " I wish from my soul that some of these orthodox
dissenters would recollect that the doctrine which they defend with so
much zeal against the Unitarians is not the whole sum and substance of
Christianity, and that there is a text about doing unto others as you
would that they should do unto you.

To any intelligent man who has no object except to do justice, the
Trinitarian dissenter and the Unitarian dissenter who are now asking us
for relief will appear to have exactly the same right to it. There
is, however, I must own, one distinction between the two cases. The
Trinitarian dissenters are a strong body, and especially strong among
the electors of towns. They are of great weight in the State. Some of
us may probably, by voting to-night against their wishes, endanger
our seats in this House. The Unitarians, on the other hand, are few in
number. Their creed is unpopular. Their friendship is likely to injure
a public man more than their enmity. If therefore there be among us
any person of a nature at once tyrannical and cowardly, any person who
delights in persecution, but is restrained by fear from persecuting
powerful sects, now is his time. He never can have a better opportunity
of gratifying his malevolence without risk of retribution. But, for my
part, I long ago espoused the cause of religious liberty, not because
that cause was popular, but because it was just; and I am not disposed
to abandon the principles to which I have been true through my whole
life in deference to a passing clamour. The day may come, and may come
soon, when those who are now loudest in raising that clamour may again
be, as they have formerly been, suppliants for justice. When that day
comes I will try to prevent others from oppressing them, as I now try
to prevent them from oppressing others. In the meantime I shall
contend against their intolerance with the same spirit with which I may
hereafter have to contend for their rights.

*****




THE SUGAR DUTIES. (FEBRUARY 26, 1845) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF
COMMONS ON THE 26TH OF FEBRUARY, 1845.

On the twenty-sixth of February, 1845, on the question that the order of
the day for going into Committee of Ways and Means should be read, Lord
John Russell moved the following amendment:--"That it is the opinion
of this House that the plan proposed by Her Majesty's Government,
in reference to the Sugar Duties, professes to keep up a distinction
between foreign free labour sugar and foreign slave labour sugar, which
is impracticable and illusory; and, without adequate benefit to the
consumer, tends so greatly to impair the revenue as to render the
removal of the Income and Property Tax at the end of three years
extremely uncertain and improbable. " The amendment was rejected by 236
votes to 142. In the debate the following Speech was made.

Sir, if the question now at issue were merely a financial or a
commercial question, I should be unwilling to offer myself to your
notice: for I am well aware that there are, both on your right and on
your left hand, many gentlemen far more deeply versed in financial and
commercial science than myself; and I should think that I discharged
my duty better by listening to them than by assuming the office of
a teacher. But, Sir, the question on which we are at issue with Her
Majesty's Ministers is neither a financial nor a commercial question.
I do not understand it to be disputed that, if we were to pronounce our
decision with reference merely to fiscal and mercantile considerations,
we should at once adopt the plan recommended by my noble friend. Indeed
the right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board of
Trade (Mr Gladstone. ), has distinctly admitted this. He says that
the Ministers of the Crown call upon us to sacrifice great pecuniary
advantages and great commercial facilities, for the purpose of
maintaining a moral principle. Neither in any former debate nor in
the debate of this night has any person ventured to deny that, both as
respects the public purse and as respects the interests of trade,
the course recommended by my noble friend is preferable to the course
recommended by the Government.

The objections to my noble friend's amendment, then, are purely moral
objections. We lie, it seems, under a moral obligation to make a
distinction between the produce of free labour and the produce of slave
labour. Now I should be very unwilling to incur the imputation of being
indifferent to moral obligations. I do, however, think that it is in
my power to show strong reasons for believing that the moral obligation
pleaded by the Ministers has no existence. If there be no such moral
obligation, then, as it is conceded on the other side that all fiscal
and commercial arguments are on the side of my noble friend, it follows
that we ought to adopt his amendment.

The right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board of
Trade, has said that the Government does not pretend to act with perfect
consistency as to this distinction between free labour and slave labour.
It was, indeed, necessary that he should say this; for the policy of the
Government is obviously most inconsistent. Perfect consistency, I admit,
we are not to expect in human affairs. But, surely, there is a decent
consistency which ought to be observed; and of this the right honourable
gentleman himself seems to be sensible; for he asks how, if we admit
sugar grown by Brazilian slaves, we can with decency continue to stop
Brazilian vessels engaged in the slave trade. This argument, whatever
be its value, proceeds on the very correct supposition that the test
of sincerity in individuals, in parties, and in governments, is
consistency. The right honourable gentleman feels, as we must all feel,
that it is impossible to give credit for good faith to a man who on one
occasion pleads a scruple of conscience as an excuse for not doing a
certain thing, and who on other occasions, where there is no essential
difference of circumstances, does that very thing without any scruple
at all. I do not wish to use such a word as hypocrisy, or to impute that
odious vice to any gentleman on either side of the House. But whoever
declares one moment that he feels himself bound by a certain moral rule,
and the next moment, in a case strictly similar, acts in direct defiance
of that rule, must submit to have, if not his honesty, yet at least his
power of discriminating right from wrong very gravely questioned.

Now, Sir, I deny the existence of the moral obligation pleaded by the
Government. I deny that we are under any moral obligation to turn our
fiscal code into a penal code, for the purpose of correcting vices in
the institutions of independent states. I say that, if you suppose such
a moral obligation to be in force, the supposition leads to consequences
from which every one of us would recoil, to consequences which would
throw the whole commercial and political system of the world into
confusion. I say that, if such a moral obligation exists, our financial
legislation is one mass of injustice and inhumanity. And I say more
especially that, if such a moral obligation exists, the right honourable
Baronet's Budget is one mass of injustice and inhumanity.

Observe, I am not disputing the paramount authority of moral
obligation. I am not setting up pecuniary considerations against
moral considerations. I know that it would be not only a wicked but
a shortsighted policy, to aim at making a nation like this great and
prosperous by violating the laws of justice. To those laws, enjoin what
they may, I am prepared to submit. But I will not palter with them: I
will not cite them to-day in order to serve one turn, and quibble them
away to-morrow in order to serve another. I will not have two standards
of right; one to be applied when I wish to protect a favourite interest
at the public cost; and another to be applied when I wish to replenish
the Exchequer, and to give an impulse to trade. I will not have two
weights or two measures. I will not blow hot and cold, play fast and
loose, strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Can the Government say as
much? Are gentlemen opposite prepared to act in conformity with their
own principle? They need not look long for opportunities. The Statute
Book swarms with enactments directly opposed to the rule which they
profess to respect. I will take a single instance from our existing
laws, and propound it to the gentlemen opposite as a test, if I must not
say of their sincerity, yet of their power of moral discrimination. Take
the article of tobacco. Not only do you admit the tobacco of the United
States which is grown by slaves; not only do you admit the tobacco of
Cuba which is grown by slaves, and by slaves, as you tell us, recently
imported from Africa; but you actually interdict the free labourer
of the United Kingdom from growing tobacco. You have long had in your
Statute Book laws prohibiting the cultivation of tobacco in England, and
authorising the Government to destroy all tobacco plantations except a
few square yards, which are suffered to exist unmolested in botanical
gardens, for purposes of science. These laws did not extend to Ireland.
The free peasantry of Ireland began to grow tobacco. The cultivation
spread fast. Down came your legislation upon it; and now, if the Irish
freeman dares to engage in competition with the slaves of Virginia and
Havannah, you exchequer him; you ruin him; you grub up his plantation.
Here, then, we have a test by which we may try the consistency of the
gentlemen opposite. I ask you, are you prepared, I do not say to exclude
the slave grown tobacco, but to take away from slave grown tobacco the
monopoly which you now give to it, and to permit the free labourer of
the United Kingdom to enter into competition on equal terms, on any
terms, with the negro who works under the lash? I am confident that
the three right honourable gentleman opposite, the First Lord of the
Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the late President of
the Board of Trade, will all with one voice answer "No. " And why not?
"Because," say they, "it will injure the revenue. True it is," they will
say, "that the tobacco imported from abroad is grown by slaves, and by
slaves many of whom have been recently carried across the Atlantic in
defiance, not only of justice and humanity, but of law and treaty. True
it is that the cultivators of the United Kingdom are freemen. But then
on the imported tobacco we are able to raise at the Custom House a duty
of six hundred per cent. , sometimes indeed of twelve hundred per cent. :
and, if tobacco were grown here, it would be difficult to get an excise
duty of even a hundred per cent. We cannot submit to this loss of
revenue; and therefore we must give a monopoly to the slaveholder, and
make it penal in the freeman to evade that monopoly. " You may be
right; but, in the name of common sense, be consistent. If this moral
obligation of which you talk so much be one which may with propriety
yield to fiscal considerations, let us have Brazilian sugars. If it be
paramount to all fiscal considerations, let us at least have British
snuff and cigars.

The present Ministers may indeed plead that they are not the authors of
the laws which prohibit the cultivation of tobacco in Great Britain
and Ireland. That is true. The present Government found those laws in
existence: and no doubt there is good sense in the Conservative doctrine
that many things which ought not to have been set up ought not, when
they have been set up, to be hastily and rudely pulled down. But what
will the right honourable Baronet urge in vindication of his own new
budget? He is not content with maintaining laws which he finds already
existing in favour of produce grown by slaves. He introduces a crowd
of new laws to the same effect. He comes down to the House with a
proposition for entirely taking away the duties on the importation of
raw cotton. He glories in this scheme. He tells us that it is in strict
accordance with the soundest principles of legislation. He tells us that
it will be a blessing to the country. I agree with him, and I intend
to vote with him. But how is all this cotton grown? Is it not grown by
slaves? Again I say, you may be right; but, in the name of common
sense, be consistent. I saw, with no small amusement, a few days ago, a
paragraph by one of the right honourable Baronet's eulogists, which was
to the following effect:--"Thus has this eminent statesman given to the
English labourer a large supply of a most important raw material, and
has manfully withstood those ravenous Whigs who wished to inundate our
country with sugar dyed in negro blood. " With what I should like to
know, is the right honourable Baronet's cotton dyed?

Formerly, indeed, an attempt was made to distinguish between the
cultivation of cotton and the cultivation of sugar. The cultivation of
sugar, it was said, was peculiarly fatal to the health and life of
the slave. But that plea, whatever it may have been worth, must now be
abandoned; for the right honourable Baronet now proposes to reduce, to
a very great extent, the duty on slave grown sugar imported from the
United States.

Then a new distinction is set up. The United States, it is said, have
slavery; but they have no slave trade. I deny that assertion. I say that
the sugar and cotton of the United States are the fruits, not only of
slavery, but of the slave trade. And I say further that, if there be on
the surface of this earth a country which, before God and man, is more
accountable than any other for the misery and degradation of the
African race, that country is not Brazil, the produce of which the right
honourable Baronet excludes, but the United States, the produce of
which he proposes to admit on more favourable terms than ever. I have
no pleasure in going into an argument of this nature. I do not conceive
that it is the duty of a member of the English Parliament to discuss
abuses which exist in other societies. Such discussion seldom tends to
produce any reform of such abuses, and has a direct tendency to wound
national pride, and to inflame national animosities. I would willingly
avoid this subject; but the right honourable Baronet leaves me no
choice. He turns this House into a Court of Judicature for the purpose
of criticising and comparing the institutions of independent States. He
tells us that our Tariff is to be made an instrument for rewarding the
justice and humanity of some Foreign Governments, and for punishing
the barbarity of others. He binds up the dearest interests of my
constituents with questions with which otherwise I should, as a Member
of Parliament, have nothing to do. I would gladly keep silence on such
questions. But it cannot be. The tradesmen and the professional men
whom I represent say to me, "Why are we to be loaded, certainly for some
years, probably for ever, with a tax, admitted by those who impose it to
be grievous, unequal, inquisitorial? Why are we to be loaded in time of
peace with burdens heretofore reserved for the exigencies of war? " The
paper manufacturer, the soap manufacturer, say, "Why, if the Income Tax
is to be continued, are our important and suffering branches of industry
to have no relief? " And the answer is, "Because Brazil does not behave
so well as the United States towards the negro race. " Can I then avoid
instituting a comparison? Am I not bound to bring to the test the truth
of an assertion pregnant with consequences so momentous to those who
have sent me hither? I must speak out; and, if what I say gives offence
and produces inconvenience, for that offence and for that inconvenience
the Government is responsible.

I affirm, then, that there exists in the United States a slave trade,
not less odious or demoralising, nay, I do in my conscience believe,
more odious and more demoralising than that which is carried on between
Africa and Brazil. North Carolina and Virginia are to Louisiana and
Alabama what Congo is to Rio Janeiro. The slave States of the Union are
divided into two classes, the breeding States, where the human beasts of
burden increase and multiply and become strong for labour, and the sugar
and cotton States to which those beasts of burden are sent to be worked
to death. To what an extent the traffic in man is carried on we may
learn by comparing the census of 1830 with the census of 1840. North
Carolina and Virginia are, as I have said, great breeding States. During
the ten years from 1830 to 1840 the slave population of North Carolina
was almost stationary. The slave population of Virginia positively
decreased. Yet, both in North Carolina and Virginia propagation was,
during those ten years, going on fast. The number of births among the
slaves in those States exceeded by hundreds of thousands the number of
the deaths. What then became of the surplus? Look to the returns from
the Southern States, from the States whose produce the right honourable
Baronet proposes to admit with reduced duty or with no duty at all; and
you will see. You will find that the increase in the breeding States
was barely sufficient to meet the demand of the consuming States. In
Louisiana, for example, where we know that the negro population is
worn down by cruel toil, and would not, if left to itself, keep up its
numbers, there were, in 1830, one hundred and seven thousand slaves; in
1840, one hundred and seventy thousand. In Alabama, the slave population
during those ten years much more than doubled; it rose from one hundred
and seventeen thousand to two hundred and fifty-three thousand. In
Mississippi it actually tripled. It rose from sixty-five thousand to one
hundred and ninety-five thousand. So much for the extent of this slave
trade. And as to its nature, ask any Englishman who has ever travelled
in the Southern States. Jobbers go about from plantation to plantation
looking out for proprietors who are not easy in their circumstances,
and who are likely to sell cheap. A black boy is picked up here; a black
girl there. The dearest ties of nature and of marriage are torn asunder
as rudely as they were ever torn asunder by any slave captain on the
coast of Guinea. A gang of three or four hundred negroes is made up;
and then these wretches, handcuffed, fettered, guarded by armed men,
are driven southward, as you would drive,--or rather as you would not
drive,--a herd of oxen to Smithfield, that they may undergo the deadly
labour of the sugar mill near the mouth of the Mississippi. A very
few years of that labour in that climate suffice to send the stoutest
African to his grave. But he can well be spared. While he is fast
sinking into premature old age, negro boys in Virginia are growing up as
fast into vigorous manhood to supply the void which cruelty is making in
Louisiana. God forbid that I should extenuate the horrors of the slave
trade in any form! But I do think this its worst form. Bad enough is it
that civilised men should sail to an uncivilised quarter of the world
where slavery exists, should there buy wretched barbarians, and should
carry them away to labour in a distant land: bad enough! But that a
civilised man, a baptized man, a man proud of being a citizen of a free
state, a man frequenting a Christian church, should breed slaves for
exportation, and, if the whole horrible truth must be told, should even
beget slaves for exportation, should see children, sometimes his own
children, gambolling around him from infancy, should watch their growth,
should become familiar with their faces, and should then sell them for
four or five hundred dollars a head, and send them to lead in a remote
country a life which is a lingering death, a life about which the best
thing that can be said is that it is sure to be short; this does, I own,
excite a horror exceeding even the horror excited by that slave trade
which is the curse of the African coast. And mark: I am not speaking of
any rare case, of any instance of eccentric depravity. I am speaking of
a trade as regular as the trade in pigs between Dublin and Liverpool, or
as the trade in coals between the Tyne and the Thames.

There is another point to which I must advert. I have no wish to
apologise for slavery as it exists in Brazil; but this I say, that
slavery, as it exists in Brazil, though a fearful evil, seems to me a
much less hopeless evil than slavery as it exists in the United States.
In estimating the character of negro slavery we must never forget one
most important ingredient; an ingredient which was wanting to slavery as
it was known to the Greeks and Romans; an ingredient which was wanting
to slavery as it appeared in Europe during the middle ages; I mean the
antipathy of colour. Where this antipathy exists in a high degree, it is
difficult to conceive how the white masters and the black labourers can
ever be mingled together, as the lords and villeins in many parts of
the Old World have been, in one free community. Now this antipathy is
notoriously much stronger in the United States than in the Brazils.
In the Brazils the free people of colour are numerous. They are not
excluded from honourable callings. You may find among them merchants,
physicians, lawyers: many of them bear arms; some have been admitted to
holy orders. Whoever knows what dignity, what sanctity, the Church
of Rome ascribes to the person of a priest, will at once perceive the
important consequences which follow from this last circumstance. It
is by no means unusual to see a white penitent kneeling before the
spiritual tribunal of a negro, confessing his sins to a negro, receiving
absolution from a negro. It is by no means unusual to see a negro
dispensing the Eucharist to a circle of whites. I need not tell the
House what emotions of amazement and of rage such a spectacle would
excite in Georgia or South Carolina. Fully admitting, therefore, as I
do, that Brazilian slavery is a horrible evil, I yet must say that, if
I were called upon to declare whether I think the chances of the African
race on the whole better in Brazil or in the United States, I should at
once answer that they are better in Brazil. I think it not improbable
that in eighty or a hundred years the black population of Brazil may
be free and happy. I see no reasonable prospect of such a change in the
United States.

The right honourable gentleman, the late President of the Board of
Trade, has said much about that system of maritime police by which we
have attempted to sweep slave trading vessels from the great highway of
nations. Now what has been the conduct of Brazil, and what has been the
conduct of the United States, as respects that system of police? Brazil
has come into the system; the United States have thrown every impediment
in the way of the system. What opinion Her Majesty's Ministers entertain
respecting the Right of Search we know from a letter of my Lord Aberdeen
which has, within a few days, been laid on our table. I believe that I
state correctly the sense of that letter when I say that the noble Earl
regards the Right of Search as an efficacious means, and as the only
efficacious means, of preventing the maritime slave trade. He expresses
most serious doubts whether any substitute can be devised. I think that
this check would be a most valuable one, if all nations would submit
to it; and I applaud the humanity which has induced successive British
administrations to exert themselves for the purpose of obtaining the
concurrence of foreign Powers in so excellent a plan. Brazil consented
to admit the Right of Search; the United States refused, and by refusing
deprived the Right of Search of half its value. Not content with
refusing to admit the Right of Search, they even disputed the right of
visit, a right which no impartial publicist in Europe will deny to be
in strict conformity with the Law of Nations. Nor was this all. In every
part of the Continent of Europe the diplomatic agents of the Cabinet of
Washington have toiled to induce other nations to imitate the example of
the United States. You cannot have forgotten General Cass's letter. You
cannot have forgotten the terms in which his Government communicated to
him its approbation of his conduct. You know as well as I do that, if
the United States had submitted to the Right of Search, there would have
been no outcry against that right in France. Nor do I much blame the
French. It is but natural that, when one maritime Power makes it a point
of honour to refuse us this right, other maritime Powers should think
that they cannot, without degradation, take a different course. It is
but natural that a Frenchman, proud of his country, should ask why the
tricolor is to be less respected then the stars and stripes. The right
honourable gentleman says that, if we assent to my noble friend's
amendment, we shall no longer be able to maintain the Right of Search.
Sir, he need not trouble himself about that right. It is already gone.
We have agreed to negotiate on the subject with France. Everybody knows
how that negotiation will end. The French flag will be exempted from
search: Spain will instantly demand, if she has not already demanded,
similar exemption; and you may as well let her have it with a good
grace, and without wrangling.