England's policy, it traditions and problems ..

II 3 1924 027 981 798 oKn

'ISB hi'

Cornell University Library

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ENGLAND'S POLICY.

Printed hy Tf/mhnl/ d' Spears. Edinburgh

FOR

EDINBURGH LONDON

HAMILTON ADAMS & CO.

ENGLAND'S Policy

ITS TRADITIONS AND PROBLEMS

BY

LEWIS SBRGEANT

AUTHOR OF " NEW GREECE," ETC.

EDINBURGH MACNIVEN AND WALLACE

HTHE time is past when an apology would have been thought necessary from one who, neither a minister nor an ambassador, and without the craftsmanship of a specialist, took it in hand to write about foreign policy. There are no sealed books for the student of history; and (in England at any rate) statesmen and diplomatists are now among the first to summon the na4:ion to open council.

A portion of the chapter on ' The European Concert (1880-1)' was written for and circulated by the Greek Committee in the spring of last year. It is embodied here in a slightly modified shape ; and the same remark applies to three pages in the tenth chapter, which were originally printed in a more fugitive form.

Li. b.

Erratum. — Page 48, 2 lines from bottom, for Montagu read

Montague.

Contents

I. THE BASES OF POLICY, II. WHIG TKABITIONS, III. TOEY TRADITIONS, lY. THE NATIONAL TEADITION, .

V. CANNING'S FOREIGN POLICY, YL PALMERSTON'S FOREIGN POLICY, VII. LATER WHIG POLICY (1859-66), VIII. DEVELOPMENTS (1868-74), IX. DIVAGATIONS (1874-80), X. THE NEW DEPARTURE, XL THE EUROPEAN CONCERT (1880-1), XII. DEMOCRATIC DIPLOMACY, .

XIIL DEMOCRATIC FOREIGN POLICY, SUMMARY, APPENDIX, INDEX, ....

IV. Popular Traditions

Lord Castlereagh, in a Circular Note addressed to our representatives at the foreign courts in January 1821, explaining his inability to concur in the decisions of the Congress of Laybach, pointed out that the scheme of intervention in Italy for the purpose of suppressing the Neapolitan revolt was *' diametrically opposed to the fundamental laws of Great Britain." And at a previous date, the principles of the Holy Alliance having been impugned by Brougham in Parliament, he admitted that the Prince Regent had been precluded by the Constitution from becoming a party to this agreement.

What, then, were the unwritten laws of this country which made such an alliance with the Eastern despotisms impossible for us ? What was the traditional spirit of our Constitution which happily preserved us from participatino- in so great an outrage on the liberties of other nations 1 What prevented the enthusiastic Foreign Minister of a Tory Government from acting in concert with England's allies '?

The saving fact was nothing more nor less than this — that our national edifice is based and built up on revolution ; that its foundation and corner stones are resistance to oppression and the forcible exaction of free institutions from reluctant monarchs and governments. It was impossible for King George or Lord Castlereagh to put his hand to a document declaring that the admission of the people to power must be a spoDtaneous grace of tlie sovereign, because every chapter of English history shows that the acknowledgement of our riohts has been forced upon our monarchs by their subjects. The nobles began it for us when they broke their own feudal bonds without specially consulting either their lord paramount or their inferiors. The Estate of the Commons were no sooner gathered in council than they carried on the work of emancipation, and made of their taxes an instrument against which the king was never able to contend for ^ many years at a time. And the people at large soon followed suit, wresting their liberty piecemeal from king and lords and Commons as occasion served, or as dire necessity urged them. The movement was always from below upwards — by violent upheaval and not by condescending grace. The royal goodwill was a royal accommodation to circumstances. Honest and consecrated revolution was the actual lever by which the people of this country made themselves free.

However it may have been up to the end of the Stuart tyranny — however much Bolingbroke and his school may have tried to persuade themselves that the restoration of Charles the Second had wiped out the stigma of the Puritan ascendency — there is no sober doubt as to the thoroughly revolutionary character of the Constitution after the compact of 1688. The arrangement between William of Orange and the lords who fetched him over, and between William and Mary and the Parliament of 1689, was simply a business-like contract, by which divine right was finally negatived, and hereditary right was overruled. A throne-market was set up : the people sold and William bought a crown. Henceforth we were to date our liberties from a pronunciamiento of the aristocracy and a revolt of the army, from a

POPULAR TRADITIONS, 8l

Dutch invasion and a declaration of rights. There was no escape from this logical conclusion except for those who contended that the people at large, mainly inarticulate at that moment, had no part in the contract, and that they had the right to overturn it. This in fact has been the argument and the theory of many inflexible Tories ; but it was not the argument of the Government in 1815. And it is not the argument of any statesman, whatever his party, who comprehends the genius of his country and the conditions of its developmeat.

The conduct of the English Ministry in holding aloof from the Holy Alliance and declining to take part in the interventions which sprang out of it was much criticised at the time by Eussian and German writers, as well as by a small section of the majority at home. It was urged that the action of Pitt and his colleagues in 1793 and the action of Lord Liverpool and his colleagues in 1821 were inconsistent, whilst the Continental Powers had every right to expect that the policy of the former crisis would have been maintained by the more distinctly Tory Government which had assisted in shaping the treaties of 1815. But it is manifest that the grounds of intervention were very different in the two cases. Whatever may be thought of the justification for any or all of the coalitions against France, they were formed to ward off a real danger to Europe, 'whereas there was no real danger in 1821 for any interests, monarchical or other, outside the borders of Italy and Spain. No propaganda was menaced from either of these countries, and it is difficult to believe that the Eastern Powers (great as their reason was for timidity) could have seriously anticipated one. But the French propaganda had been active and formidable, especially from the year 1792, and the Eepublican armies had shown themselves quite

F capable of making good the threats of the Convention. So far as England was concerned she had been extremely unwilling to fight the Republic, and the war broke out on the declaration of France. It was an absurdity to suppose that either Spain or Naples or Piedmont would wage war upon England, or that these countries would have the power, even if they had the will, to disturb the peace of united Europe.

Now it is scarcely necessary to point out that the influence which saved us from war in 1821 was not the influence of any traditional foreign policy, and least of all the influence of the Tory tradition. The systematic policies of the past century and a quarter had been built up more or less upon coalitions with European States for the maintenance of the balance of power. Nearly all our wars had been undertaken for this purpose, or as the result of an enmity created or nursed by this unreasonable view of our international position. Such systems and such traditions would clearly not have sufficed to guard us against a coalition at Laybach or Verona. That which did save us and guard us at this period was the revolutionary character which our forefathers had impressed upon the State, and the tradition of sympathy with oppressed peoples which we had inherited even from the davs of Elizabeth and of Cromwell. We had aided foreign Protestants in securing freedom ; we had conceded liberty to the American colonists as a right conquered by violence ; and it was felt to be absolutely impossible after such precedents that an English Minister, be he ever so anxious to retain the friendship of the king's allies, should consent to take part in suppressing a revolution in another State.

POPULAR TRADITIONS. S3

Here then we have a national tradition of forei<m policy — a tradition which had not grown up in courts and cabinets, which had not derived itself from a dynasty, or an alliance, or a '' natural enemy " or friend, but which was part and parcel of the national character, as necessary to Englishmen as the spirit and resolution which had won them their domestic liberties. It may not be an absolute necessity that men determined to be free should also determine that the people of other States should gain their freedom ; though if there be such an absolute rule it will account amongst other things for the tendency to propaganda observed in many free nations. It is enough to note as a fact that there has long been amongst us this ardent sympathy with struggling peoples — that it has on many occasions been a potent influence for ourselves and for others — that it is by this time a clearly recognised tradition of our foreign policy — and that it is a tradition identified with the national character, and not with either of the systems elaborated by the great political parties.

If the mass of the English people had been in possession of power, or if they had had their due share of power during several generations, the policy which is essentially national and popular would have been systematized, and it also like the other two would have achieved its roll of splendid triumphs. As it is, the triumphs of popular sentiment are sufiiciently great and glorious, but they are not triumphs of a system. They have been isolated, they have not hitherto availed to build up a strong, compact, definite foreign policy ; or, if the policy has at length been established, it is only in our own generation, and it has scarcely conquered for itself a place in history. Single traditions no doubt have a history of their own ; but the edifice of traditions such as may constitute a system is at most a construction of to-day. The tradition of ardent and somewhat aggressive sympathy with nationalities struggling to be free — which forbids our statesmen to take the side of the oppressor and occasionally compels him to take the side of the oppressed — is amply and gloriously illustrated in the annals of Great Britain. "We owe the credit of more than one chivalrous intervention between tyrants and their victims to the spirit of militant Protestantism ; for a nation did not cast off the yoke of Eome without taking a sword in its hands, and the common effort against the common persecution made it possible, if not indispensable, for the strong to come to the aid of the weak. The patronage of Protestants in the Low Countries by Elizabeth and the exaction of toleration for the Waldenses by Cromwell are notable instances of practical English sympathy for the oppressed on the score of religion. Nearer to our own times, the frequent interventions of our Government — at the instance of public opinion — in behalf of Greeks, of Syrians, of Poles, and of Slavs, afford ample evidence of the existence of this very effectual sentiment of universal freedom in the Enolish mind.

Closely allied with this traditional motive is another, equally powerful, more practical, and exercising a wider influence over the nation as a whole. This also is ardent and aggressive ; this also is essentially characteristic of the people, and has more than once or twice imposed action on Ministers of either party, engaged the efforts of diplomacy, and incited national wars. It is the motive of an industrious and commercial country, anxious to establish in all parts of the world new markets for its trade, new commercial centres, new alliances or monopolies as outlets to its superabundant energy. It is not altogether or of necessity a selfish instinct which has led the English people to cover the surface of the globe with a network of dependencies and colonies, of open ports and guaranteed harbours ; but no doubt the constructive selfishness of industry and enterprise is the spur whicli has driven us to plant our standards of trade in every productive clime, and which has placed our whole power of attack and defence at the disposal of our merchants.

The line of contact between the two motives above mentioned is to be found in the desire to surround ourselves with independent nations which, being free as we are free, may serve as bulwarks and buttresses of our own power, and, being industrious as we are industrious, may add to our commercial stability. This motive, the resultant force of the other two, has been rather instinctive than clearly defined in the past, but it is probably destined to be the most precise tradition in the system of national foreign policy which is gradually displacing the systems of other days. It is a motive in every sense worthy of a free and generous people, being equally devoid of the quixotism which would make us an indiscriminate champion of the oppressed and of the selfishness which would lead us to profit ourselves at the expense of the rest of mankind. In the strengthening and confirmation of this tendency we are able to perceive the harmonization of two traditions apparently irreconcilable — and not only apparently irreconcilable but actually antagonistic in spirit and operation. The tradition which cast its influence upon us when in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries we (often unscrupulously) endeavoured to oust the Spaniards from their monopolies in South America and the West Indies is' assuredly hard to reconcile with the tradition which caused us, at about the same times, to sacrifice life and treasure in defending the Protestants on the Continent. The tradition exemplified in the arbitrary establishment of our factories on the Indian Coast, and in plundering and outraging the native races, is scarcely one in kind with the tradition which constrained us to emancipate our own slaves, and to exert pressure on other nations in order to induce them to take a like course. The history of the present generation will be full of similar contrasts ; for the national desire to aid struggling nationalities and to promote the cause of universal freedom operates side by side with the keen determination to find a field for British commerce in every inhabited country.

As it is certain that neither the one tradition nor the other is in the meantime failing in vie^our — as in fact both motives grow stronger amongst us year by year — it is in the highest degree satisfactory that they should exhibit this tendency to a mutual modification of form, and that, whilst the sentiment of popular emancipation becomes more and more practical, the instinct of commercial aggression is chastened by a stronger respect for justice. The tendency in question was aptly illustrated at one and the same moment in the spring of 1881, by the common sense and moral coura2:e which liberated Thessaly without a blow and reverted to a policy of just dealing in the Transvaal.

There is a warning as well as a consolation in the check which the more generous policy is putting upon the more unscrupulous one ; for manifestly they are not always the same body of Englishmen who are obedient to these two traditions, and particular cases must arise in which the advocates of an aggressive policy will find themselves practically opposed by men of the other way of thinking, from whence grave evils may befall the State. Within the memory of living men there have been several critical instances of this antao^onism of ideas and interests — an antagonism severe and bitter whilst it endures, and bringing at least the semblance of humiliation upon us as a military Power, but nevertheless a prelude to harmony in the not far-distant future when pubhc opinion on these points shall be definitely formed. Twice has an English aggression on Afghanistan, undertaken by Anglo-Indians with a view to strengthening the north-western frontier, and so (in their judgment) consolidating an empire based on commercial development, been repudiated and reversed at home. On both occasions we had suffered disaster in the first place, whereby the repudiation was made infinitely more difficult for statesmen and soldiers ; but on both occasions we had first restored the military position and vindicated ourselves by force of arms, so that we might undoubtedly have held the country if we had wished. But the Englishmen who considered that the primary duty of all was to be upiight and moral, and that an immoral act such as the invasion of Afghanistan ought to be undone at any cost of pride and credit, were shown (especially in 1880) to be in the majority, and their will prevailed in spite of the most spirited protests of the other party. It was the same with the repudiation of the Transvaal aggression, which, unfortunately delayed until after the shedding of blood, was still in a very real sense the work of Englishmen who would not consent to ratify a transaction based on injustice and greed.

It is needless to say that these renunciations of conquest and revindications of national morality are not to be desired on their own account, or for any profit or advantage which they bring to the empire. If it is well not to keep a territory which has been gained by more or less unscrupulous public servants, it would be decidedly better not to have taken such territory at all, and not to have left a system in operation by which individual men may at any time arrogate to themselves the power to act unjustly in the name of their country. And if national morality needs to be strongly asserted, this might surely be done most reasonably by limiting the irresponsibility of our proconsuls, and by avoiding the entrance to transactions which the public conscience is likely to disavow. It is not by such acts as the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the retrocession of the Transvaal that Englishmen should rejoice to prove their moral strength, but rather by cultivating a public opinion and a system of policy in which there should be no place for aggression, whether authorised or unauthorised by the Government.

A distinction may fairly be draw^n between the aggressive policy of individuals or particular Ministries and the as^orressive commercial tradition of the nation at large ; for the one does not necessarily arise out of the other, and there is no reason why the follies and crimes of every public servant should be attributed to an inherent vice of the national character. The aggression concocted by a Government, or by a Viceroy and his council, or by a military clique, is usually undertaken for certain political ends, for the achievement of brilliant triumphs bringing promotions or prolongation of office in their train ; and these ends are distinctly and clearly vulgar. Against aggression of this kind the nation has undoubtedly declared itself, and it is improbable that we shall ever again be launched into wars of military aggression. The people have already condemned and renounced them ; and we may be sure that as the democracy advances in dignity and self-respect it will be less than ever disposed to sanction a war for the removal of onr neighbours' landmarks. But the aggressive tradition which in other days led our merchants to extend the sphere of their enterprise without much scruple was in a way more respectable, because it partook of the nature of ordinary competition in industrial pursuits, and w^as rarely in the first instance anything more than an arbitrary demand for freedom of commerce. This tradition also is tending to become obsolete amongst us, partly perhaps because we have already covered the inhabited area of the world with our network of trade, but chiefly because w^e are developing a courageous belief in the greater efficacy of legitimate, honest, peaceful extension.

There are those who contend that the policy of aggression has never in any case brought us even a material and sordid benefit. Not only, they say, is the policy immoral, whether its objects be political or commercial, but it is not and cannot be successful. It may give employment to the army and navy — but the men had better be adding to the wealth of their country by peaceful labours. It may, as in the case of India, open up a lucrative career for a vast number of. Englishmen — but there is room at home for as many able-bodied men as England can produce, and the conquest of great dependencies like India simply creates lucrative employment for members of the well-to-do classes at the expense of the British taxpayer.

Mr Bright developed this argument in a striking passage of the first speech delivered by him to his constituents at Birmingham ; and it would perhaps be impossible to find anywhere else a more forcible exposition, in a few words, of the contention that aggressive wars cannot develop the commercial interests of the nation. '* I am inclined to think," he said, '' that with the exception of Australia there is not a single dependency of the Crown which, if we come to reckon what it has cost in war and protection, would not be found to be a positive loss to the people of this country. Take the United States, with which we have such an enormous and constantly increasinof trade. The wise statesmen of the last sreneration, men whom your school histories tell you were statesmen, serving under a monarch who, they tell you, was a patriotic monarch, spent £130,000,000 of the fruits of the industry of the people in a vain — happily a vain — endeavour to retain the colonies of the United States in subjection to the monarchy of England. Add up the interest of that £130,000,000 for all this time, and how long do you think it will be before there will be a profit on the trade with the United States which will repay the enormous sum we invested in a war to retain those States as colonies of this empire ? It never will be paid off. Wherever you turn you will find that the opening of markets, developing of new countries, introducing cotton cloth with cannon balls, are vain, foolish, and wretched excuses for wars, and ought not to be listened to for a moment by any man who understands the multiplication table, or who can do the simplest sum in arithmetic.

Since the ' Glorious Revolution,' since the enthronisation of the great Norman territorial families, they have spent in wars, and we have worked for, about £2,000,000,000. The interest on that is £100,000,000 per annum, which alone, to say nothing of the principal sum, is three or four times as much as the whole amount of your annual export trade from that time to this. Therefore, if war has provided you with a trade, it has been at an enormous cost ; but I think it is by no means doubtful that your trade would have been no less in amount and no less profitable had peace and justice been inscribed on your flag instead of conquest and love of military renown.'' Meanwhile, whether we were at peace or whether we were at war, our public debt continually increased. Whatever the increase of our population, of our machinery, of our industry or our wealth, still the National Debt went on increasing. " Although we have not a foot more territory to conserve, or an enemy in the world who dreams of attacking us, we find that our annual military expenses during the last twenty years " — this was spoken in 1858— ''have risen from £12,000,000 to £22,000,000.'' The great progress of public opinion in this du-ection since Mr Bris^ht uttered these words is an evidence not so much of the personal influence of the speaker — though that influence could not easily be exaggerated — as of a reaction and return to the accepted doctrines of the days of Walpole. Walpole, as we have seen, clung to peace at almost any price. He laboured to show the country, and he did show it very successfully, how our national w^ealth and industries might be developed by peace instead of by war, and he would never consent, until the intrigues of his rivals and the madness of the people forced his hands, to adopt the barbarous method against which his judgment protested. The national and popular tradition of peaceful commercial development had scarcely come into existence in the eighteenth century. Walpole was one of its originators, and as such he stands out of the line of the Whig and Tory exponents of foreign policy. In the meantime the national and popular tradition of commercial development by aggression was in full force, and it was a gust of passion generated by this tradition which drove Walpole into.

the Spanish war of 1739. A century and a quarter after the fall of Walpole, aided by the lessons of the forty years' peace, and the deep misgivings excited by the Crimean war, Englishmen had begun to recognise a newer and better way, and to discern the outlines of the nobler system which their forefathers had been building up for them.

On the whole it seems reasonable to conclude that the temper of the English people in regard to questions of foreign policy has been developed from its best and most generous traditions. At any rate the process is in operation, and the chronicle of events from year to year attests the fact. Of the aspects of what has been shown to be in the present age the national policy of dealing with international affairs something further must be said hereafter in a different connection ; but in the meantime it is interesting to observe how steadily and logically the development just mentioned has been carried on during the past hundred years.

The popular sympathy with struggling nationalities (which combines with the cultivation of an industrious peace to constitute what is likely to be England's foreign policy in the future) received a notable stimulation towards the close of the last century. The revolutionary epoch from which the present political liberties of so many European peoples trace their origin gave to England less in the shape of political liberty than it gave to some other nations, whose need of liberty was greater ; but still the boons which it conferred upon us were neither few nor slight. Amongst them was a firmer conviction and a clearer demonstration of the rights of communities to self-government, and especially the right of a nation to take its affairs into its own hands. The success of the French outbreak had given a sanction to revolution, and the fairly judicious behaviour of the leaders during the first three years gained for the movement a certain kind of acceptance even amongst Tory politicians. In England it was of course rather a question of fellow-feeling for revolutionists by revolutionists than one of astonished admiration for a new departure in history. We too had had our rebellions, had dethroned our kings, and established Parliamentary supremacy. We too, both at home and in America, had crowned successful revolt. We were before and not behind the French in adapting old methods to new needs and circumstances — before and not behind them in making revolution respectable ; but perhaps for this very reason we looked on at the convulsions of our neighbours with the deepest interest.

It is impossible that we in our generation should be able to realise the intense sympathy felt by our grandfathers with the French people — with Assembly, Convention, and Directory — in their efi*orts to establish a solid Eepublic, in the thoroughness of their creed, and in the heroic struggle of the saiis-ciilottes against the armies of monarchical Europe. There can be no doubt whatever that this great spectacle, which was in itself a political education, drew out and confirmed our traditional preference for the revolutionary mode of national progress, and added strength to the sentiment which made our ancestors ever ready to espouse the cause of the peoples. For a few years the elation and enthusiasm excited by these events were shared by a majority of Englishmen. Pitt, as we have seen, was influenced by them long after the bulk of his party had taken sides with the eastern despotisms. It is true that the excesses of the Jacobins alienated a large section of the Whigs, and left only the more robust friends of liberty in sympathy with the French Republic. But Fox and his followers, with all who felt like them amongst the general English pu1)lic, were able to look beyond the troubles and crimes of the day, and to perceive the immeasurable advantages which the upheaval of France must ultimately confer upon the world. If passion and prejudice, as well as just reprobation, blinded men for a long time to the real achievements of the French revolution, and to the actual gains of the revolutionary epoch throughout Europe, there were some at any rate who could not be thus blinded ; and there came a time when the majority of Englishmen saw cause to acknowledge a balance of good.

The death of Napoleon at St Helena, and the similar course of England and France in regard to the Holy Alliance and the Congress of Lay bach (though the French Government were not unwilling to receive a mandate from the Alliance at Verona), tended to diminish the gulf which a quarter of a century of wars had created between the two countries. Their subsequent joint action in Greece — where they made it their business to promote the success of an insurrection — helped to draw them yet more nearly together. The revolutions of 1830 and 1848, regarded by many Frenchmen as vindicating the work of 1789 — ^just as in England 1688 had been taken to vindicate 1649 — ^certainly did much to reconquer the positions won and lost during the first Republic.