 Speech by Thomas Wentworth. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rachel Linton, Bristol, UK. Speech given to the House of Lords on the 13th of April 1641 by Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Stratford. My Lords, this day I stand before you charged with high treason. The burden of the charge is heavy, yet farther more so because it has borrowed the authority of the House of Commons. If they were not interested I might expect a no less easy than I do a safe issue. But let neither my weakness plead my innocence nor their power my guilt. If your Lordships will conceive of my defences as they are in themselves without reference to either party, and I shall endeavour so to present them, I hope to go hence as clearly justified by you as I now am in the testimony of a good conscience by myself. My Lords, I have all along during this charge watched to see that poisoned arrow of treason which some men would feign of feathered in my heart. But in truth it hath not been my quickness to discover any such evil yet within my breast, though now perhaps by sinister information sticking to my clothes. They tell me of a twofold treason, one against the statute, another by the common law, this direct, that consecutive, this individual, that accumulative, this in itself, that by way of construction. As to this charge of treason I must and do acknowledge that if I had the least suspicion of my own guilt I would save your Lordships the pains, I would cast the first stone, I would pass the first sentence of condemnation against myself, and whether it be so or not I now refer to your Lordships judgment and deliberation. You and you only, under the care and protection of my gracious master, are my judges. Under favour none of the commons are my peers, nor can they be my judges. I shall ever celebrate the providence and wisdom of your noble ancestors who have put the keys of life and death, so far as concerns you and your posterity, into your own hands. None but your own selves my lords know the rate of your noble blood, none but yourselves must hold the balance in disputing of the same. I shall now proceed in repeating my defences as they are reducible to the two main points of treason, and one for treason against the statute, which is the only treason in effect. There is nothing alleged for that but the 15th, 22nd and 27th articles. Here the Earl brought forth the replies which he had previously made to these articles, which contained all the charges of individual acts of treason. The 15th article affirmed that he had inverted the ordinary course of justice in Ireland and given immediate sentence upon the lands and goods of the king's subjects under pretense of disobedience. Had used a military way for redressing the contempt and laid soldiers upon the lands and goods of the king's subjects to their utter ruin. There was a deficiency of proofs as to the facts alleged. The Earl declared that the customs of England differed exceedingly from those of Ireland, and therefore though sessing of men might seem strange here it was not so there. And that nothing was more common there than for the governors to appoint soldiers to put all matters of sentences into execution. As he proved by the testimony of Lord Dylan, Sir Adam Loftus and Sir Arthur Teringham. The 27th article charged him with having, as Lieutenant General, charged on the county of York eight pence a day for supporting the train bans of said county during one month when called out, and having issued his warrants without legal authority for the collection of the same. The Earl replied that this money was freely and voluntarily offered by them of Yorkshire in a petition and that he had done nothing but on the petition of the county, the king's special command and the connivance at least of the Great Council and upon a present necessity for the defense and safety of the county when about to be invaded from Scotland. The 22nd and 23rd articles were the most pressing. Under these he was charged with saying in the privy council that the parliament had forsaken the king, that the king ought not to suffer himself to be over mastered by the stubbornness of the people, and that if his majesty pleased to employ forces he had some in Ireland that might serve to reduce this kingdom. Thus, counselling to his majesty to put down parliament and subvert the fundamental laws of the kingdom by force and arms. To this the Earl replied one that there was only one witness adduced to prove these words, this Sir Henry Vane, secretary of the council, that that two or more witnesses are necessary by statute to prove a charge of treason. Two, that the others who were present vis the Duke of Northumberland, the Marquess of Hamilton, Lord Cottington and Sir Thomas Lucas did not, as they deposed under oath, remember these words. Three, that Sir Henry Vane had given his testimony as if he was in doubt on the subject saying, as I do remember, and such or such like words, which admitted the words might be that kingdom, meaning Scotland. Two, as to the other kind vis constructive treason or treason by way of accumulation, to make this out many articles have been brought against me. As if in a heap of mere felonies or misdemeanours for they reach no higher, there could lurk some prolific seed to produce what is treasonable. But my lords, when a thousand misdemeanours will not make one felony, shall twenty-eight misdemeanours be heightened into treason? I pass, however, to consider these charges, which affirm that I have designed the overthrow both of religion and of the state. First, the first charge Seameth to be used rather to make me odious than guilty, for there is not the least proof alleged, nor could there be any concerning my confederacy with the popish faction. Never was a servant and authority under my lord and master more hated and maligned by these men than myself, and that for an impartial and strict execution of the laws against them, for observe my lords that the greater number of the witnesses against me, whether from Ireland or from Yorkshire, were of that religion. But for my own resolution I thank God I am ready every hour of the day to seal my dissatisfaction to the Church of Rome with my dearest blood. Give me leave my lords here to pour forth the grief of my soul before you. These proceedings against me seem to be exceeding rigorous and to have more of prejudice than equity. But upon a supposed charge of hypocrisy or errors in religion, I should be made so odious to three kingdoms. A great many thousand eyes have seen my accusations whose ears will never hear that which I come to the app shot. Those very things were not alleged against me. Is this fair dealing among Christians? But I have lost nothing by that. Popular applause was ever nothing in my conceit. The uprightness and integrity of a good conscience ever was and ever shall be my continual feast. And if I can be justified in your lordship's judgments from this great imputation as I hope I am, seeing these gentlemen have thrown down the bucklows, I shall account myself justified by the whole kingdom because absolved by you who are the better part, the very soul and life of the kingdom. Second, as for my designs against the state I dare plead as much innocencey as in the matter of religion. I have ever admired the wisdom of our ancestors who have so fixed the pillars of this monarchy that each of them keeps a due proportion and measure with the others, have so admirably bound together the nerves and sinews of the state that the straining of any one may bring danger and sorrow to the whole economy. The prerogative of the crown and the propriety of the subject have such natural relations that this takes nourishment from that and that foundation and nourishment from this. And so, as in the lute, if any one string be wound up too high or too low, you have lost the whole harmony, so here the excessive prerogative is oppression of pretended liberty in the subject is disorder and anarchy. The prerogative must be used as God doth his omnipotence upon extraordinary occasions. The laws must have place at all other times. As there must be prerogative because there must be extraordinary occasions, so the propriety of the subject is ever to be maintained if it go in equal pace with the other. They are fellows and companions that are and ever must be inseparable in a well-ordered kingdom and no way is so fitting, so natural to nourish and entertain both as the frequent use of parliaments by which a commerce and acquaintance is kept up between the king and his subjects. These thoughts have gone along with me these fourteen years of my public employments and shall God willing go with me to the grave? God, His Majesty and my own conscience, yea, and all of those who have been most accessory to my inward thoughts can bear me witness that I ever did inculcate this, that the happiness of a kingdom doth consist in a just poise of the king's prerogative and the subject's liberty. And that things could never go well till these went hand in hand together. I thank God for it, by my master's favour and the providence of my ancestors, I have an estate which so interests me in the Commonwealth that I have no great mind to be a slave but a subject. Nor could I wish the cards to be shuffled over again in hopes to fall upon a better set. Nor did I ever nourish such base and mercenary thoughts as to become a panda to the tyranny and ambition of the greatest man living. No, I have and ever shall aim at a fair but bounded liberty, remembering always that I am a free man, yet a subject, that I have rights but under a monarch. It has been my misfortune now when I am grey-headed to be charged by the mistakeers of the time who are so highly bent that all appears to them to be in the extreme for monarchy which is not for themselves. Hence it is that designs, words, yay, intentions are brought out as demonstrations of my misdemeanours. Such a multiplying glass is a prejudiced opinion. The articles against me refer to expressions and actions. My expressions either in Ireland or in England, my actions either before or after these late stirs. One. Some of the expressions referred to were uttered in private and I do protest against their being drawn to my injury in this place. If my Lord's word spoken to friends in familiar discourse, spoken at one's table, spoken in one's chamber, spoken in one's sick bed, spoken perhaps to gain better reason to gain oneself more clear light and judgement by reasoning. If these things shall be brought against a man's treason, this, under favour, takes away the comfort of all human society. By this means we shall be devoured from speaking, the principal joy and comfort of life with wise and good men to become wiser and better ourselves. If these things be strained to take away life and honour and all that is desirable, this will be a silent world. A city will become a hermitage and sheep will be found among a crowd and press of people. No man will dare to impart his solitary thoughts or opinions to his friend and neighbour. Other expressions have been urged against me which were used in giving counsel to the king. My Lord's, these words were not wantonly or unnecessarily spoken or whispered in a corner. They were spoken in full counsel when by the duty of my oath I was obliged to speak according to my heart and conscience in all things concerning the king's service. If I had foreborn to speak what I conceived to be for the benefit of the king and the people, I had been perjured towards Almighty God and for delivering my mind openly and freely shall I be in danger of my life as a traitor. If that necessity be put upon me, I thank God by his blessing, I have learned not to stand in fear of him who can only kill the body. If the question be whether I must be treated to man or perjured to God, I will be faithful to my creator and whatever shall be for me from popular rage or my own weakness, I must leave it to that Almighty being into the justice and honour of my judges. My Lord, I conjure you not to make yourself so unhappy as to disable your lordships and your children from undertaking the great charge and trust of this Commonwealth. You inherit that trust from your fathers. You are born to great thoughts. You are nursed for the weighty employments of the kingdom. But if it be once admitted that a councillor for delivering his opinion with others at the council board, Candidae Castae with candour and purity of motive under an oath of secrecy and faithfulness shall be brought into question upon some misapprehension or ignorance of law, if every word that he shall speak from sincere and noble intentions shall be drawn against him for the attainting of him, his children and posterity, I know not under favour, I speak it, any wise or noble person of fortune who will, upon such perilous and unsafe terms, adventure to be councillor to the king. Therefore I beseech your lordships so to look on me that my misfortune may not bring an inconvenience to yourselves. And though my words were not so advised and discreet or so well weighed as they ought to have been, yet I trust your lordships are too honourable and just to lay them to my charges high treason. Opinions may make a heretic, but that they make a traitor I have never heard till now. Two, I am come next to speak of the actions which have been charged upon me. Here the earl went through the various overt acts alleged and repeated the sum and heads of what had been spoken by him before. In respect to the 28th article which charged him with a malicious design to engage the kingdoms of England and Scotland in a national and bloody war at which the managers had not urged in the trial he added more at large as follows. If that one article had been proved against me it contained more weighty matter than all the charges beside. It would not only have been treason but villainy to have betrayed the trust of his Majesty's army. But as the managers have been sparing by reason of the times as to insisting on that article I have resolved to keep the same method and not utter the least expression which might disturb the happy agreement intended between the two kingdoms. I only admire how I being an incendiary against the Scots in the 23rd article and become a confederate with them in the 28th article. How I could be charged for betraying Newcastle and also for fighting with the Scots at Newburn since fighting against them was no possible means of betraying the town into their hands but rather to hinder their passage there. I never advised war any further than in my poor judgment it concerned the very life of the King's authority and the safety and honour of his kingdom. Nor did I ever see that any advantage could be made by a war in Scotland where nothing could be gained but hard blows. For my part I honour that nation but I wish they may ever be under their own climate. I have no desire that they should be too well acquainted with the better soil of England. My Lord you see what has been alleged for this constructive or rather destructive treason for my part I have not the judgment to conceive that such treason is agreeable to the fundamental grounds either of reason or of law. Not of reason for how can that be treason in the lump or mass which is not so in any of its parts or how can that make a thing treasonable which is not so in itself. Not of law since neither statute, common law nor practice hath from the beginning of the government ever mentioned such a thing. It is hard my Lord to be questioned upon a law which cannot be shown. Where hath this fire lane hid for so many hundred years without smoke to discover it till it thus bursts forth to consume me and my children. My Lords do we not live under laws and must we be punished by laws before they are made? Far better were it to live by no laws at all but to be governed by those characters of virtue and discretion which nature hath stamped upon us than to put this necessity of divination upon a man and to accuse him of a breach of law before it is a law at all. If a waterman upon the Thames split his boat by grating upon an anchor and the same hath no boy appended to it the owner of the anchor is to pay the loss but if a boy beset there every man passeth upon his own peril. Now where is the mark? Where is the token set upon the crime to declare it to be high treason? My Lords be pleased to give that regard to the peerage of England as never to expose yourselves to such moot points such constructive interpretations of law. If there must be a trial of wits let the subject matter be something else than the lives and honour of peers. It will be wisdom for yourselves and your posterity to cast into the fire these bloody and mysterious volumes of constructive and arbitrary treason as the primitive Christians did their books of curious arts and butake yourselves to the plain letter of the law and statute which telleth what is and what is not treason without being ambitious to be more learned in the art of killing than our forefathers. These gentlemen tell us that they speak in defence of the Commonwealth against my arbitrary laws. Give me leave to say it. I speak in defence of the Commonwealth against their arbitrary treason. It is now full 240 years since any man was touched for this alleged crime to this height before myself. Let us not awaken those sleeping lions to our destruction by taking up a few musty records that have lain by the walls for so many ages forgotten or neglected. My lords, what is my present misfortune may be forever yours. It is not the smallest part of my grief that not the crime of treason but my other sins which are exceeding many have brought me to this bar and accept your lordship's wisdom provided against it. The shedding of my blood may make way for the tracing out of yours. You, your estates, your posterity lie at the stake. For my poor self, if it were not for your lordship's interest and the interests of a saint in heaven who has left me here two pledges on earth at this his breath stopped and he shed tears abundantly in mentioning his wife. I should never take the pains to keep up this ruinous cottage of mine. It is loaded with such infirmities that in truth I have no great pleasure to carry it back with me any longer nor could I ever leave it at a fitter time than this when I hope that the better part of the world would perhaps think that by my misfortunes I had given a testimony of my integrity to my god, my king and my country. I thank god I count not the afflictions of the present life to be compared to the glory which is to be revealed in the time to come. My lord, my lord, my lord, something more I had intended to say but my voice and my spirit fail me. Only I do in all humility and submission cast myself down at your lordship's feet and desire that I may be a beacon to keep you from shipwreck. Do not put such rocks in your own way which no prudence, no circumspection can eschew or satisfy but by your utter ruin. And so my lord's even so. With all tranquility of mind I submit myself to your decision and whether your judgment in my case I wish it were not the case of you all. Be for life or for death. It shall be righteous in my eyes and shall be received with a te deem lordamus. We give god the praise. End of speech. Speech by William Pitt. First Earl of Chatham. This is a Libervox recording. All Libervox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit Libervox.org. Recording by David Federman. Speech given to the House of Lords on January 22nd, 1770 by William Pitt, the first Earl of Chatham. My lord's, I cannot agree with the noble duke that nothing less than an immediate attack upon the honor or interest of this nation can authorize us to interpose in defense of weaker states and in stopping the enterprises of an ambitious neighbor. Whenever that narrow selfish policy has prevailed in our councils we have constantly experienced the fatal effects of it. By suffering our natural enemies to oppress the powers less able than we are to make a resistance we have permitted them to increase their strength. We have lost the most favorable opportunities of opposing them with success and found ourselves at last obliged to run every hazard in making that cause our own in which we were not wise enough to take part in while the expense and danger might have been supported by others. With respect to Corsica I shall only say that France has obtained a more useful and important acquisition in one pacific campaign than in any of her belligerent campaigns. At least while I had the honor of administering the war against her. The word may perhaps be thought singular I mean only while I was the minister chiefly entrusted with the conduct of the war. I remember my lord's the time when Lorraine was united to the crown of France that too was in some measure a pacific conquest and there were people who talked of it as the noble duke now speaks of Corsica. France was permitted to take and keep possession of a noble province and according to his grace's ideas we did right in not opposing it. The effect of these acquisitions is I confess not immediate but they unite with the main body by degrees and in time make a part of the national strength. I fear my lord's it is too much the temper of this country to be insensible of the approach of danger until it comes with accumulated terror upon us. My lord's the condition of his majesty's affairs in Ireland and the state of that kingdom within itself will undoubtedly make a very material part of your lordship's inquiry. I am not sufficiently informed to enter into the subject so fully as I could wish but by what appears to the public and from my own observation I confess I cannot give the ministry much credit for the spirit or prudence of their conduct. I see that even where their measures are well chosen they are incapable of carrying them through without some unhappy mixture of weakness or imprudence. They are incapable of doing entirely right. My lord's I do for my conscience and from the best-weighted principles of my understanding applaud the augmentation of the army. As a military plan I believe it has been judiciously arranged. In a political view I am convinced it was for the welfare for the safety of the whole empire. But my lord's with all these advantages with all these recommendations if I had the honor of advising his majesty I would never have consented to his accepting the augmentation with that absurd dishonorable condition which the ministry have submitted to annex to it. My lord's I revere the just prerogative of the crown and would contend for it as warmly as for the rights of the people. They are linked together and naturally support each other. I would not touch a feather of the prerogative. The expression perhaps is too light. But since I have made use of it let me add that the entire command and power of directing the local disposition of the army is the royal prerogative as the master feather in the eagle's wing and if I were permitted to carry the illusion a little farther I would say they have disarmed the imperial bird. The ministrum Fuminis Alitem The army is the thunder of the crown. The ministry have tied up the hand which should direct the bolt. My lord's I remember that Minorka was lost for want of four battalions. They could not be spared from hence and there was a delicacy about taking them from Ireland. I was one of those who promoted an inquiry into that matter in the other house and I was convinced that we had not regular troops sufficient for the necessary service of the nation. Since the moment the plan of augmentation was first talked of I have constantly and warmly supported it among my friends. I have recommended it to several members of the Irish House of Commons and exhorted them to support it with their utmost interest in parliament. I did not foresee nor could I conceive it possible. The ministry would accept of it with a condition that makes the plan itself ineffectual and as far as it operates defeats every useful purpose of maintaining a standing military force. His majesty is now so confined by his promise he must leave 12,000 men locked up in Ireland let the situation of his affairs abroad or the approach of danger to this country be ever so alarming unless there be an actual rebellion or invasion in Great Britain. Even in the two cases accepted by the king's promise the mischief must have already begun to operate must have already taken effect before his majesty can be authorized to send for the assistance of his Irish army. He has not left himself the power of taking any preventive measures let his intelligence be ever so certain let his apprehensions of invasion or rebellion be ever so well founded unless the traitor be actually in arms unless the enemy be in the heart of your country he cannot move a single man from Ireland. End of speech recording by David Federman Speech by the Earl of Chatham This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Philip Pagevance Speech given to the House of Lords on November the 18th 1777 by William Pitt 1st Earl of Chatham I rise, my lords, to declare my sentiments on this most solemn and serious subject. It has imposed a load upon my mind which I fear nothing can remove but which impels me to endeavour its alleviation by a free and unreserved communication of my sentiments. In the first part of the address I have the honour of heartily concurring with the noble Earl who moved it. No man feels sincere joy than I do. None can offer more genuine congratulations on every accession of strength to the Protestant's accession. I therefore join in every congratulation on the birth of another princess and the happy recovery of Her Majesty. But I must stop here. My courtly complacence will carry me no farther. I will not join in congratulation on misfortune and disgrace. I cannot concur in a blind and servile address which approves and endeavours to sanctify the monstrous measures which have heaped disgrace and misfortune upon us. This, my lords, is a perilous and tremendous moment. It is not a time for adulation. The smoothness of flattery cannot now avail, cannot save us in this rugged and awful crisis. It is now necessary to instruct the throne in the language of truth. We must dispel the illusion and the darkness which envelop it and display in its full danger and true colours the ruin that is brought to our doors. This, my lords, is our duty. It is the proper function of this noble assembly sitting as we do upon our honours in this house, the Hereditary Council of the Crown. Who is the minister? Where is the minister that has dared to suggest to the throne the contrary unconstitutional language this day delivered from it? The accustomed language from the throne has been application to Parliament for advice and a reliance on its constitutional advice and assistance as it is the right of Parliament to give so it is the duty of the Crown to ask it. But on this day and in this extreme momentous exigency no reliance is reposed on our constitutional councils. No advice is asked from the sober and enlightened care of Parliament but the Crown from itself and by itself declares an unalterable determination to pursue measures. And what measures, my lords? The measures that have produced the imminent perils that threaten us the measures that have brought ruin to our doors. Can the minister of the day now presume to expect a continuance of support in this ruinous infatuation? Can Parliament be so dead to its dignity and its duty as to be thus deluded into the loss of the one and the violation of the other? To give an unlimited credit and support for the steady perseverance in measures not proposed for our parliamentary advice but dictated and forced upon us in measures, I say, my lords, which have reduced this late flourishing empire to ruin and contempt. But yesterday and England might have stood against the world now none so poor to do her reverence. I use the words of a poet, but though it be poetry it is no fiction. It is a shameful truth that not only the power and strength of this country are wasting away and expiring but her well-earned glories, her true honour and substantial dignity are sacrificed. France, my lords, has insulted you. She has encouraged and sustained America, and whether America be wrong or right the dignity of this country ought to spurn the officious insult of French interference. The ministers and ambassadors of those who are called rebels and enemies are in Paris. In Paris they transact the reciprocal interests of America and France. Can there be a more mortifying insult? Can even our ministers sustain a more humiliating disgrace? Do they dare to resent it? Do they presume even to hint of vindication of their honour and the dignity of the state by requiring the dismission of the plenipotentiaries of America? Such is the degradation to which they have reduced the glories of England, the people whom they effect to call contemptible rebels, but whose growing power has at last obtained the name of enemies, the people with whom they have engaged this country in war and against whom they now command our implicit support in every measure of desperate hostility. This people, despised as rebels or acknowledged as enemies, are abetted against you, supplied with every military store their interests consulted and their ambassadors entertained by your inveterate enemy. And our ministers dare not interpose with dignity or effect. Is this the honour of a great kingdom? Is this the indignant spirit of England who, but yesterday, gave law to the house of Bourbon? My Lords, the dignity of nations demands a decisive conduct in a situation like this. Even when the greatest prince that perhaps this country ever saw filled our throne, the requisition of a Spanish general on a similar subject was attended to and complied with. For, on the spirited remonstrance of the Duke of Alva, Elizabeth found herself obliged to deny the Flemish exiles all countenance, support or even entrance into her dominions, and the Count Le Marc, with his few desperate followers, were expelled the kingdom. Happening to arrive at the Brille and finding it weak in defence, they made themselves masters of the place, and this was the foundation of the United Provinces. My Lords, this ruinous and ignominious situation where we cannot act with success nor suffer with honour calls upon us to remonstrate in the strongest and loudest language of truth to rescue the ear of majesty from the delusions which surround it. The desperate state of our arms abroad is in part known. No man thinks more highly of them than I do. I love and honour the English troops. I know their virtues and their valour. I know they can achieve anything except impossibilities. And I know that the conquest of English America is an impossibility. You cannot, I venture to say it, you cannot conquer America. Your army's last war affected everything that could be affected, and what was it? It cost a numerous army, under the command of a most able general, now a noble lord in this house, a long and laborious campaign to expel five thousand Frenchmen from French America. My Lords, you cannot conquer America. What is your present situation there? We do not know the worst, but we know that in three campaigns we have done nothing and suffered much. Besides the sufferings, perhaps total loss of the northern force, the best appointed army that ever took the field commanded by Sir William Howe has retired from the American lines. He was obliged to relinquish his attempt, and with great delay and danger to adopt a new and distant plan of operations. We shall soon know, and in any event have reason to lament, what may have happened since. As to conquest, therefore, my Lords, I repeat, it is impossible. You may swell every expense and every effort still more extravagantly, pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow, traffic and barter with every little pitiful German print that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign prince. Your efforts are forever vain and impotent, doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely, for it irritates to an incurable resentment the minds of your enemies, to overrun them with the mercenary sons of rapin and plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty. If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms. Never, never, never. Your own army is infected with the contagion of these illiberal allies. The spirit of plunder and of rapin is gone forth among them. I know it, and notwithstanding what the noble Earl who moved the address has given as his opinion of the American army, I know from authentic information and the most experienced officers that our discipline is deeply wounded. While this is notoriously our sinking situation, America grows and flourishes, while our strength and discipline are lowered, hers are rising and improving. But, my lords, who is the man that, in addition to these disgraces and mischiefs of our army, has dared to authorise and associate to our arms the tomahawk and scalping knife of the savage, to call into civilised alliance the wild and inhuman savage of the woods, to delegate to the merciless Indian the defence of disputed rights, and to wage the horrors of his barbarous war against our brethren? My lords, these enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment, unless thoroughly done away it will be a stain on the national character. It is a violation of the constitution. I believe it is against the law. It is not the least of our national misfortunes that the strength and character of our army are thus impaired. Infected with the mercenary spirit of robbery and rapin, familiarised to the horrid scenes of savage cruelty, it can no longer boast of the noble and generous principles which dignify a soldier, no longer sympathise with the dignity of the royal banner, nor feel the pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war that make ambition virtue. What makes ambition virtue? The sense of honour. But is the sense of honour consistent with the spirit of plunder or the practice of murder? Can it flow from mercenary motives, or can it prompt to cruel deeds? Besides these murderers and plunderers, let me ask our ministers, what other allies have they acquired? What other powers have they associated to their cause? Have they entered into alliance with the King of the Gypsies? Nothing, my lords, is too low or too ludicrous to be consistent with their councils. The independent views of America have been stated and asserted as the foundation of this address. My lords, no man wishes for the due dependence of America on this country more than I do. To preserve it and not confirm that state of independence into which your measures hitherto have driven them is the object which we ought to unite in attaining. The Americans, contending for their rights against arbitrary exactions, I love and admire. It is the struggle of free and virtuous patriots. But contending for independency and total disconnection from England, as an Englishman, I cannot wish them success. For in a due constitutional dependency, including the ancient supremacy of this country in regulating their commerce and navigation, consists the mutual happiness and prosperity both of England and America. She derived assistance and protection from us, and we reap from her the most important advantages. She was indeed the fountain of our wealth, the nerve of our strength, the nursery and basis of our naval power. It is our duty, therefore, my lords, if we wish to save our country, most seriously to endeavour the recovery of these most beneficial subjects, and in this perilous crisis perhaps the present moment may be the only one in which we can hope for success. For in their negotiations with France they have, or think they have, reason to complain. Though it be notorious that they have received from that power important supplies and assistance of various kinds, yet it is certain they expected it in a more decisive and immediate degree. America is in ill humour with France. On some points they have not entirely answered her expectations. Let us wisely take advantage of every possible moment of reconciliation. Besides, the natural disposition of America herself still leans toward England, to the old habits of connection and mutual interest that united both countries. This was the established sentiment of all the continent, and still, my lords, in the great and principal part, the sound part of America, this wise and affectionate disposition prevails, and there is a very considerable part of America yet sound, the middle and the southern provinces. Some parts may be factious and blind to their true interests, but if we express a wise and benevolent disposition to communicate with them those immutable rights of nature and those constitutional liberties to which they are equally entitled with ourselves, by a conduct so just and humane we shall confirm the favourable and conciliate the adverse. I say, my lords, the rights and liberties to which they are equally entitled with ourselves, but no more. I would participate to them every enjoyment and freedom which the colonising subjects of a free state can possess, or wish to possess, and I do not see why they should not enjoy every fundamental right in their property, and every original substantial liberty which Devonshire or Surrey or the county I live in or any other county in England can claim, reserving always as the sacred right of the mother country the due constitutional dependency of the colonies. The inherent supremacy of the state in regulating and protecting the navigation and commerce of all her subjects is necessary for the mutual benefit and preservation of every part of the constitution and preserve the prosperous arrangement of the whole empire. The sound parts of America, of which I have spoken, must be sensible of these great truths and of their real interests. America is not in that state of desperate and contemptible rebellion which this country has been deluded to believe. It is not a wild and lawless bandit who, having nothing to lose, might hope to snatch something from public convulsions. Many of their leaders and great men have a great stake in this great contest. The gentleman who conducts their armies, I am told, has an estate of four or five thousand pounds a year, and when I consider these things I cannot but lament the inconsiderate violence of our penal acts, our declarations of treason and rebellion, with all the fatal effects of attainder and confiscation. As to the disposition of foreign powers, which is asserted to be pacific and friendly, let us judge my lords rather by their actions and the nature of things than by interested assertions. The uniform assistance supplied to America by France suggests a different conclusion. The most important interests of France, in aggrandising and enriching herself with what she most wants, supplies of every naval store from America, must inspire her with different sentiments. The extraordinary preparations of the House of Bourbon by land and by sea from Dunkirk to the Straits, equally ready and willing to overwhelm these defenceless islands, should rouse us to a sense of their real disposition and our own danger. Not five thousand troops in England, hardly three thousand in Ireland, what can we oppose to the combined force of our enemies? Scarcely twenty ships of the line so fully or sufficiently manned that any admiral's reputation would permit him to take the command of. The river of Lisbon in the possession of our enemies, the seas swept by American privateers, our channel trade torn to pieces by them. In this complicated crisis of danger, weakness at home and calamity abroad, terrified and insulted by the neighbouring powers unable to act in America or acting only to be destroyed, where is the man with the forehead to promise or hope for success in such a situation, or from perseverance in the measures that have driven us to it? Who has the forehead to do so? Where is that man? I should be glad to see his face. You cannot conciliate America by your present measures. You cannot subdue her by your present or by any measures. What then can you do? You cannot conquer, you cannot gain, but you can address. You can lull the fears and anxieties of the moment into an ignorance of the danger that should produce them. But, my lords, the time demands the language of truth. We must not now apply the flattering unction of servile compliance or blind complacence. In a just and necessary war, to maintain the rights or the honour of my country, I would strip the shirt from my back to support it. But in such a war as this, unjust in its principle, impracticable in its means and ruinous in its consequences, I would not contribute a single effort nor a single shilling. I do not call for vengeance on the heads of those who have been guilty. I only recommend to them to make their retreat, let them walk off and let them make haste, or they may be assured that speedy and condone punishment will overtake them. My lords, I have submitted to you with the freedom and truth which I think my duty, my sentiments on your present awful situation. I have laid before you the ruin of your power, the disgrace of your reputation, the pollution of your discipline, the contamination of your morals, the complication of calamities, foreign and domestic, that overwhelm your sinking country. Your dearest interest, your own liberties, the constitution itself, totters to the foundation. All this disgraceful danger, this multitude of misery, is the monstrous offspring of this unnatural war. We have been deceived and deluded too long. Let us now stop short. This is the crisis, the only crisis of time and situation to give us a possibility of escape from the fatal effects of our delusions. But if, in an obstinate and infatuated perseverance in folly, we slavishly echo the peremptory words this day presented to us, nothing can save this devoted country from complete and final ruin. We madly rush into multiplied miseries and confusion worse confounded. Is it possible, can it be believed, that ministers are yet blind to this impending destruction? I did hope that, instead of this false and empty vanity, this overweening pride engendering high conceits and presumptuous imaginations, ministers would have humbled themselves in their errors, would have confessed and retracted them, and by an active, though a late, repentance, have endeavoured to redeem them. But, my lords, since they had neither sagacity to foresee nor justice nor humanity to shun these oppressive calamities, since not even severe experience can make them feel, nor the imminent ruin of their country awaken them from their stupefaction, the guardian care of parliament must interpose. I shall therefore, my lords, propose to you that an amendment of the address to His Majesty to be inserted immediately after the first two paragraphs of congratulation on the birth of a princess, to recommend an immediate cessation of hostilities and the commencement of a treaty to restore peace and liberty to America, strength and happiness to England, security and permanent prosperity in both countries. This, my lords, is yet in our power. And let not the wisdom and justice of your lordships neglect the happy and perhaps the only opportunity. By the establishment of irrevocable law founded on mutual rights and ascertained by treaty these glorious enjoyments may be firmly perpetuated. And let me repeat to your lordships that the strong bias of America, at least of the wise and sounder parts of it, naturally inclines to this happy and constitutional reconnection with you. Notwithstanding the temporary intrigues with France, we may still be assured of their ancient and confirmed partiality to us. America and France cannot be congenial. There is something decisive and confirmed in the honest American that will not assimilate to the futility and levity of Frenchmen. My lords, to encourage and confirm that innate inclination to this country, founded on every principle of affection as well as consideration of interest, to restore that favorable disposition into a permanent and powerful reunion with this country, to revive the mutual strength of the empire, again to awe the House of Bourbon, instead of meanly truckling as our present calamities compel us to every insult of French Caprice and Spanish punctilio, to re-establish our commerce, to re-assert our rights and our honor to confirm our interests and renew our glories for ever, a consummation most devoutly to be endeavored, and which I trust may yet arise from reconciliation with America, I have the honor of submitting to you the following amendment, which I move to be inserted after the first two paragraphs of the address, and that this House does most humbly advise and supplicate His Majesty to be pleased to cause the most speedy and effectual measures to be taken for restoring peace in America, and that no time may be lost in proposing an immediate cessation of hostilities there in order to the opening of a treaty for the final settlement of the tranquillity of these invaluable provinces by a removal of the unhappy causes of this ruinous civil war, and by a just and adequate security against the return of the like calamities in times to come. And this House desire to offer the most dutiful assurances to His Majesty that they will in due time cheerfully cooperate with the magnanimity and tender goodness of His Majesty for the preservation of His people by such explicit and most solemn declarations and provisions of fundamental and irrevocable laws as may be judged necessary for the ascertaining and fixing for ever the respective rights of Great Britain and her colonies. End of speech. My Lords, the subject now submitted to Your Lordships for the first time, though new to the House, is by no means new to the country. I believe it had occupied the serious thoughts of all descriptions of persons long before its introduction to the notice of that legislature, whose interference alone could be of real service. As a person in some degree connected with the Suffering County, though a stranger not only to this House in general, but to almost every individual whose attention I presume to solicit, I must claim some portion of Your Lordship's indulgence, whilst I offer a few observations on a question in which I confess myself deeply interested. To enter into any detail of the riots would be superfluous. The House is already aware that every outrage short of actual bloodshed has been perpetrated, and that the proprietors of the frames obnoxious to the rioters and all persons opposed to be connected with them have been liable to insult and violence. During the short time I recently passed in Nottinghamshire, not twelve hours elapsed without some fresh act of violence, and on the day I left the county I was informed that forty frames had been broken the preceding evening, as usual without resistance and without detection. Such was then the state of that county, and such I have reason to believe it to be at this moment. But whilst these outrages must be admitted to exist to an alarming extent, it cannot be denied that they have arisen from circumstances of the most unparalleled stress. The perseverance of these miserable men in their proceedings tends to prove that nothing but absolute want could have driven a large, and once honest and industrious body of the people into the commission of excesses so hazardous to themselves, their families, and the community. At the time to which I elude, the town and county were burdened with large detachments of the military. The police was in motion, the magistrates assembled, yet all the movements, civil and military, had led to nothing. Not a single instance had occurred of the apprehension of any real delinquent actually taken in the fact, against whom there existed legal evidence sufficient for conviction. But the police however useless were by no means idle. Several notorious delinquents had been detected, men liable to conviction on the clearest evidence of the capital crime of poverty, men who had been nefariously guilty of lawfully getting several children whom, thanks to the times, they were unable to maintain. Considerable injury has been done to the proprietors of the improved frames. These machines were to them an advantage in as much as they superseded the necessity of employing a number of workmen who were left in consequence to starve. By the adoption of one species of frame in particular, one man performed the work of many, and the superfluous laborers were thrown out of employment. Yet it is to be observed that the work thus executed was inferior in quality, not marketable at home, and merely hurried over with a view to exportation. It was called in the can of the trade by the name of spider work. The rejected workmen in the blindness of their ignorance, instead of rejoicing at these improvements in arts so beneficial to mankind, conceived themselves to be sacrificed to improvements in mechanism. In the foolishness of their hearts, they imagined that the maintenance and well-doing of the industrious poor were objects of greater consequence than the enrichment of a few individuals by any improvement, in the implements of trade which threw the workmen out of employment and rendered the laborer unworthy of his hire. And it must be confessed that although the adoption of the enlarged machinery in that state of our commerce which the country once boasted might have been beneficial to the master without being detrimental to the servant, Yet in the present situation of our manufactures, rotting in warehouses without a prospect of exportation with the demand for work and workmen equally diminished, frames of this description tend materially to aggravate the distress and discontent of the disappointed sufferers. But the real cause of these distresses and consequent disturbances lies deeper. When we are told that these men are linked together not only for the destruction of their own comfort, but of their very means of subsistence, can we forget that it is the bitter policy, the destructive warfare of the last 18 years which has destroyed their comfort, your comfort, all men's comfort? That policy, which originating with great statesmen now know more, has survived the dead to become a curse on the living, unto the third and fourth generation. These men never destroyed their looms till they were become useless, worse than useless, till they were become actual impediments to their exertions in obtaining their daily bread. Can you then wonder that in times like these when bankruptcy, convicted fraud, and imputed felony are found in a station not far beneath that of your lordships? The lowest, though once most useful portion of the people, should forget their duty in their distresses and become only less guilty than one of their representatives. But while the exalted offender can find means to baffle the law, new capital punishments must be devised, new snares of death must be spread for the wretched mechanic who is famished into guilt. These men were willing to dig, but the spade was in other hands, they were not ashamed to beg, but there was none to relieve them. Their own means of subsistence were cut off, all other employments preoccupied and their excesses, however to be deplored and condemned, can hardly be subject of surprise. It has been stated that the persons in the temporary possession of frames conned at their destruction. If this be proved upon inquiry, it were necessary that such material accessories to the crime should be principles in the punishment. But I did hope that any measure proposed by His Majesty's government for your lordship's decision would have had conciliation for its basis. Or if that were hopeless, that some previous inquiry, some deliberation would have been deemed requisite, not that we should have been called at once without examination and without cause to pass sentences by wholesale and sign death warrants blindfolded. But admitting that these men had no cause of complaint, that the grievances of them and their employers were alike groundless, that they deserved the worst, what inefficiency, what indecility has been evinced in the method chosen to reduce them? Why were the military called out to be made a mockery of if they were to be called out at all? As far as the difference of seasons would permit, they have merely parodied the summer campaign of Major Sturgeon, and indeed the whole proceedings, civil and military, seemed on the model of those of the mayor and corporation of Garrett. Such marchings and counter-marchings, from Nottingham to Bulwell, from Bulwell to Banford, from Banford to Mansfield, and when at length the detachments arrived at their destination in all the pride, pump, and circumstance of glorious war. They came just in time to witness the mischief which had been done, and ascertain the escape of the perpetrators, to collect the Spolio Opima in the fragments of broken frames, and return to their quarters amidst the derision of old women and the hootings of children. Now, though, in a free country, it were to be wished that our military should never be too formidable, at least to ourselves, I cannot see the policy of placing them in situations where they can only be made ridiculous. As the sword is the worst argument that can be used, so should it be the last. In this instance, it has been the first, but providentially as yet only in the scabbard. The present measure will indeed pluck it from the sheath. Yet had proper meetings been held in the earlier stages of these riots, had the grievances of these men and their masters, for they also had their grievances, been fairly weighed and justly examined, I do think that means might have been devised to restore these workmen to their avocations, and tranquility to the county. At present, the county suffers from the double infliction of an idle military and a starving population. In what state of apathy have we been plunged so long that now for the first time the house has been officially apprised of these disturbances? All this has been transacting within 130 miles of London. And yet we, good, easy men, have deemed full sure our greatness was a ripening, and have sat down to enjoy our foreign triumphs in the midst of domestic calamity. But all the cities you have taken, all the armies which have retreated before your leaders, are but paltry subjects of self-congratulation. If your land divides against itself, and your dragoons, and your executioners must be let loose against your fellow citizens, you call these men a mob. Desperate, dangerous, and ignorant, and seem to think that the only way to quiet the Belua-Maltorum Capitum is to lop off a few of its superfluous hens. But even a mob may be better reduced to reason by a mixture of conciliation and firmness than by additional irritation and redoubled penalties. Are we aware of our obligations to a mob? It is the mob that labor in your fields and serve in your houses. That man, your navy, and recruit your army, that have enabled you to defy all the world, and can also defy you when neglect and calamity have driven them to despair. You may call the people a mob, but do not forget that a mob too often speaks the sentiments of the people. And here I must remark, with what alacrity you are accustomed to fly to the sucker of your distressed allies, leaving the distressed of your own country to the care of Providence, or the parish. When the Portuguese suffered under the retreat of the French, every arm was stretched out, every hand was opened, from the rich man's largesse to the widow's might. All was bestowed to enable them to rebuild their villages and replenish their granaries. And at this moment when thousands of misguided but most unfortunate fellow countrymen are struggling with the extremes of hardship and hunger, as your charity began abroad, it should end at home. A much less sum, a tithe of the bounty bestowed on Portugal, even if those men, which I cannot admit without inquiry, could not have been restored to their employments, would have been rendered unnecessary the tender mercies of the bayonet and the gibbet. But doubtless our friends have too many foreign claims to admit a prospect of domestic relief, though never did such objects demand it. I have traversed the seat of war in the peninsula. I have been in some of the most oppressed provinces of Turkey, but never under the most despotic of infidel governments did I behold such squalid wretchedness as I have seen since my return in the very heart of a Christian country. And what are your remedies? After months of inaction, and months of action worse than inactivity, at length comes forth the grand specific, the never failing nostrum of all state physicians, from the days of Draco to the present time. After feeling the pulse and shaking the head over the patient, prescribing the usual course of warm water and bleeding, the warm water of your mockish police and the landsets of your military, these convulsions must terminate in death, the sure consummation of the prescriptions of all political sangrados. Setting aside the palpable injustice and the certain inefficiency of the bill, are there not capital punishments sufficient in your statutes? Is there not enough blood upon your penal code that more must be poured forth to ascend to heaven and testify against you? How will you carry the bill into effect? Can you commit a whole country to their own prisons? Will you erect a gibbet in every field and hang up men like scarecrows? Or will you proceed, as you must to bring this measure into effect, by decimation, place the country under martial law, depopulate and lay waste all around you, and restore sureward forest as an acceptable gift to the crown in its former condition of a royal chase and an asylum for outlaws? Are these the remedies for a starving and desperate populace? Will the famished wretch who has braved your bayonets be appalled by your gibbets? When death is a relief and the only relief it appears that you will afford him, will he be dragooned into tranquility? Will that which could not be effected by your grenadiers be accomplished by your executioners? If you proceed by the forms of law, where is your evidence? Those who have refused to impeach their accomplices when transportation only was the punishment will hardly be tempted to witness against them when death is the penalty. With all due deference to the noble lord's opposite, I think a little investigation, some previous inquiry would induce even them to change their purpose. That most favorite state measure, so marvelously efficacious in many and recent instances, temperizing would not be without its advantages in this. When a proposal is made to emancipate or relieve, you hesitate, you deliberate for years, you temperize and tamper with the minds of men. But a death bill must be passed offhand without a thought of the consequences. Sure I am, from what I have heard and from what I have seen, that to pass the bill under all the existing circumstances without inquiry, without deliberation, would only be to add injustice to irration and barbarity to neglect. The framers of such a bill must be content to inherit the honors that the Athenian lawgiver, whose edicts were said to be written not in ink, but in blood. But suppose it passed, suppose one of these men, as I have seen them, meager with famine, sullen with despair, careless of a life which your lordships are perhaps about to value at something less than the price of a stocking frame. Suppose this man, surrounded by children, for whom he is unable to procure bread at the hazard of his existence, about to be torn forever from a family which he lately supported in peaceful industry and which it is not his fault that he can no longer so support. Suppose this man, and there are ten thousand such from whom you may select your victims, dragged into court to be tried for this new offense by this new law. Still there are two things wanting to convict and condemn him, and these are, in my opinion, twelve butchers for a jury, and a jeffreys for a judge. End of speech. Recording by David Federman. 28 May 1846 By the Duke of Wellington Repeal of the Corn Laws My lords, I cannot allow this question for the second reading of this bill to be put to your lordships without addressing to you a few words on the vote you are about to give. I am aware, my lords, that I address you on this occasion under many disadvantages. I address your lordships under the disadvantage of appearing here, as a minister of the Crown, to press this measure upon your adoption, knowing at the same time how disagreeable it is to many of you with whom I have constantly acted in political life, with whom I have long lived in intimacy and friendship with the utmost satisfaction to myself, on whose good opinion I have ever relied, and, I am happy to say, whose good opinion it has been my fortune hitherto to have enjoyed in no small degree. My lords, I have already in this house adverted to the circumstances which gave rise to this measure. My lords, in the month of December last, I felt myself found, by my duty to my sovereign, not to withhold my assistance from the government, not to decline to resume my seat in Her Majesty's councils, not to refuse to give my assistance to the government of my right honourable friend, knowing, as I did at the time, that my right honourable friend could not do otherwise and propose to Parliament a measure of this description. Nay, more, my lords, this very measure, for this is the first measure which my right honourable friend stated to the cabinet prior to their resignation in the month I have referred to. My lords, it is not necessary that I should say more upon that subject. I am aware that I address your lordships at present with all your prejudices against me for having adopted the course I then took. A course which, however little I may be able to justify it to your lordships, I considered myself bound to take, and which, if it was to be again adopted tomorrow, I should take again. I am in Her Majesty's service, bound to Her Majesty, and to the sovereigns of this country by considerations of gratitude, of which it is not necessary that I should say more to your lordships. It may be true, my lords, and it is true, that in such circumstances I ought to have no relation with party, and that party ought not to rely upon me. Be it so, my lords, be it so if you think proper, I have stated to you the motives on which I have acted. I am satisfied with those motives myself, and I should be exceedingly concerned if any dissatisfaction respecting them remained in the mind of any of your lordships. I am aware that I have never had any claim to the confidence which you have all reposed in me for a considerable number of years. Circumstances have given it to me, in some cases the confidence of the crown, and in other, the zeal with which I have endeavored to serve your lordships, to promote your lordship's views, and my desire to facilitate your business in this house, and I shall lament the breaking up of that confidence in my public life. But, my lords, I will not omit, even on this night, probably the last on which I shall ever venture to address to you any advice again, I will not omit to give you my counsel with respect to the vote you ought to give on this occasion. My noble friend, whose absence on this occasion I much lament, urged you, and in the strongest manner, to vote against this measure, and he told you in terms which I cannot attempt to imitate, that it was your duty to step in and protect the people of this country from rash and inconsiderate measures passed by the other house of parliament, and which, in his opinion, were inconsistent with the views and opinions of the people themselves. My lords, there is no doubt whatever that it is your duty to consider all the measures which are brought before you, and that it is your right to vote in regard to those measures as you think proper, and most particularly, it is your duty to vote against those that appear to be rash and inconsiderate. But, my lords, I beg leave to point out to your lordships that it is also your duty to consider well the consequences of any vote you give on any subject, to consider well the situation in which you place this house, nay, my lords, that it is the duty of every one of you to place himself in the situation of this house, to ponder well the consequence of his vote, and all the circumstances attending it, and the situation I repeat in which this house would be placed if it should adopt the vote which he himself is about to give. This, indeed, has been the line of conduct pursued by this house before. I myself once prevailed upon this house to vote for a measure on which it had pronounced positive opinions by former votes, and persuaded it subsequently to take a course different from that which it had pursued on previous occasions upon the same subject. My lords, I now ask you to look a little at the measure in respect of which you are going to give your votes this night, to look at it the way in which it comes before you, and to consider the consequences likely to follow your rejection, if you do reject it, of this bill. This measure, my lords, was recommended by the speech from the throne, and it has been passed by a majority of the House of Commons, consisting of more than half of the members of that house. But my noble friends said that this vote is inconsistent with the original vote given by the same House of Commons on this same question, and inconsistent with the supposed views of the constituents by whom they were elected. But, my lords, I think that is not a subject which this house can take into its consideration. For first, we can have no accurate knowledge of the fact, and secondly, whether it be the fact or not, this we know, that it is the House of Commons from which this bill comes to us. We know by the votes that it has been passed by a majority of the House of Commons. We know that it is recommended by the Crown, and we know that, if we should reject this bill, it is a bill which has been agreed to by the other two branches of the legislature, and that the House of Lords stands alone in rejecting this measure. Now that, my lords, is a situation in which I beg to remind your lordships, I have frequently stated you ought not to stand. It is a position in which you cannot stand, because you are entirely powerless. Without the House of Commons and the Crown, the House of Lords can do nothing. You have vast influence on public opinion. You may have great confidence in your own principles. But without the Crown or the House of Commons, you can do nothing, till the connection with the Crown and the House of Commons is revived, there is an end of the functions of the House of Lords. But I will take your lordships a step further and let you see what will be the immediate consequence of rejecting this bill. It appears very clear that whatever may be the result of this bill in this House, the object I had in view of resuming my seat in Her Majesty's Councils will not be attained. I conclude that another government will be formed. But whether another government is formed or not, let me ask, do your lordships suppose that you will not have this very same measure brought before you by the next administration which can be formed? And do your lordships mean to reject the measure a second time? Do you mean the country to go on in the discussion of this measure two or three months longer? But the object of the noble Duke and of the noble Lords who have addressed the House against this bill is that Parliament should be dissolved, that the country should have the opportunity of considering the question and of returning other representatives, and that it may be seen whether or not the new House of Commons would agree to this measure or not. Now really, if your lordships have so much confidence as you appear to have in the result of other elections and in the exercise of public opinion on this question, I think that you might venture to rely upon elections which must occur, according to the common course of law, in the course of a twelve-month from this time, and that you might leave it to the Parliament thus elected to consider the course which it will take on the expiration of the term of the bill now before you, for that bill is to last only till the year 1849. I think your lordships might trust to that Parliament to take the matter into consideration at that time without interfering with the prerogative of the Crown by compelling the Queen to dissolve Parliament as the immediate consequence of the rejection of the present measure. Your lordships, therefore, have now the option of immediately accepting this bill, reserving it to another Parliament to pass or reject it again, if again the question should be brought forward or of rejecting the bill now and obtaining a fresh election of which you are so desirous. Your lordships have that choice. You may reject the bill now or you may appeal again to the new Parliament to confirm or reject it at the time when its operation will cease in the year 1849. End of speech. Please visit LibreVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsville, South Carolina. The Speech in the House of Lords Defending His Conduct at Balaklava by the Earl of Lucan. March 19, 1855 I rise, my lords, in pursuance of notice to move for a copy of Lord Raglan's report of the Battle of Balaklava. I consider it due to your lordships and to myself not to forgo this, the first opportunity which has occurred to me, to make a statement of what was my conduct on the day of that battle and at the same time to show what has happened since in reference to it. Up to the present moment I have most scrupulously abstained from saying one word in this house upon the subject in my own vindication. However prejudicial to me such silence was likely to be as it has proved. Having applied for a court-martial, considering such a court the most competent from its composition to entertain and dispose satisfactorily of charges, of so exclusively a professional character, as long as I could hope to have such a tribunal I considered it best became me to be silent in this house. But my applications for such trial, however earnestly made, have been as resolutely refused. I have therefore, I feel, no other course open to me than to present myself before your Lordships, confidently hoping that you will kindly indulge me with your attention and give to my statement a fair and impartial consideration. It will be necessary, I fear, to trouble your Lordships at some length, and in the statement I am about to make it shall be my endeavour as it is my wish whilst exculpating myself not to inculpate others. It is my wish to make my statement as clear as possible, and to do so I shall have to take your Lordships to the battle of Balaklava. At about eleven o'clock, on the twenty-fourth of October, that excellent soldier, Sir Colin Campbell, I cannot allow myself to mention in this house the name of that officer with whom I was acting at concert for four months without stating that a more gallant or useful soldier there is not in the army. Before me that a spy had come in, and then he wished me to see him. Having examined the spy together, we considered his news so important that Sir Colin Campbell at once wrote a report to Lord Ragland, and I had it conveyed to his Lordship by my Ed De Camp, who happened on that day to be my son. The spy had stated that twenty thousand infantry and five thousand cavalry were marching against our position at Balaklava from the east and southeast. My Ed De Camp told me that he had delivered the letter to General Airy, who made no reply, and that he subsequently met Lord Ragland, who only said that if there was anything new it was to be reported to him. It was the habit of the cavalry at this time to be always mounted an hour before daylight. I proceeded to fort number three on the plan, a copy of which is in the hands of many of your Lordships. This was the extreme fort of the position. At dawn I perceived that heavy columns of infantry were advancing from the direction of the Chernaya River and Kamara Range. I immediately placed my cavalry in position and posted my horse-battery on the right of number three fort. The Russians immediately opened fire and attacked numbers one, two, three and four forts occupied by Turks. Number one was only taken after a very respectable resistance. I am anxious to say so because I considered that they got less credit than they deserved. The other three were all evacuated, and with the forts the enemy took nine English guns. After the evacuation of these forts by the Turks, having previously arranged with Sir Colin Campbell to do so, I threw my cavalry back to give his guns in position clear range and took post in line facing to the east between forts four and five. My cavalry were then well placed to take in flank and the Russian forces marching against Balaklava went to my great discomforture. I received from Lord Raglan an order which I shall number one. It was as follows. Cavalry to take ground to the left of second line of redoubts occupied by Turks. This order was immediately obeyed and the cavalry were placed en masse facing the north, looking into Anchorman Valley. Very shortly after order number two reached me, desiring that eight squadrons of heavy dragoons should move towards Balaklava to support the Turks who were said to be wavering. The heavy dragoons had already preceded some distance when I perceived through the orchard that a body of Russian cavalry was coming over the hill. I rode at speed and just succeeded in joining the leading squadrons of greys and eniskillen dragoons as they were rounding the orchard and had only time to wheel them into line and to order an immediate charge under General Scarlett. The enemy was advancing in a dense column with their flanks protected by two wings. These, so soon as they found that they had outflanked my four squadrons, wheeled about inwards and totally enveloped them, on which I attacked them with the fifth dragoon guards in the rear and in flank with the fourth dragoon guards. When the whole mass of the enemy, amounting to at least thirty-five hundred men, was repulsed and routed by eight small squadrons of about seven hundred men, only one-fifth of their number. I should do little justice to this gallant heavy brigade and their gallant general if I did not take this opportunity of stating how much I considered they had distinguished themselves. I believe there never was an action in which English cavalry distinguished themselves more and I do not think that there is a disposition in this country to attribute sufficient importance to this heavy dragoon charge and to do it full justice. The French, then whom there are certainly no better soldiers nor officers who more perfectly understand the art of war, do full justice to it and pronounce it a brilliant feat of arms and one adding less to our British cavalry. I know it has been imputed to me that I did not pursue the routed enemy with my light cavalry as I should have done. To this I will not allow myself to say any more that they had been placed in a position by Lord Raglan, that they were altogether out of my reach and that to me they were unavailable. After this charge the cavalry were dismounted and the wounded imprisoners were being removed when an aid to camp of the commander-in-chief brought me order number three. I wish your lordships to observe that the heavy cavalry were at this moment standing on the ground occupied by the Russian cavalry in the plan. Number three order was to this effect. Cavalry to advance and take advantage of any opportunity to recover the heights. They will be supported by the infantry which had been ordered. Advance on two fronts. It is necessary here to observe that the copy given in Lord Raglan's letter of the 16th of December is incorrect and materially so. In the original, which I hold in my hand and which your lordships can see, there is a full stop after the word ordered and the word advance is written with a large A. Therefore making two distinct sentences. In Lord Raglan's copy the two sentences are made one by the omission of the stop and by a small A being substituted for a large one. Therefore whilst in the original the order was for the cavalry to advance in the copy it applied to the infantry. I do not wish to impute anything to Lord Raglan on account of this difference as it is possible that the arrow was in the copy with which I furnished his lordship. The cavalry were in consequence immediately mounted and moved to the positions in the center valley and on the ridge as shown in the plan. No infantry had at this time arrived from the heights of Sevastopol. I remained myself between my two brigades, anxiously awaiting their arrival. When they did arrive, instead of being formed for an attack or to support an attack they were, the greater part of them, sitting or lying down with their arms piled. From thirty to forty minutes had elapsed and the whole of the infantry had not arrived when Captain Nolan galloped up to me with number four order, in my opinion a fresh order quite independent of any previous order and having no connection with number three or any other order. Indeed I do positively affirm that neither by my lord raglan or general airy or any other person whatsoever did I ever hear or suppose that any connection whatever existed or was intended to exist between this new order number four and number three, the preceding one or that they had the slightest reference to each other. Number four order is as follows. Raglan wishes the cavalry to advance rapidly to the front, follow the enemy and try to prevent the enemy carrying away the guns. Troop of horse artillery may accompany. French cavalry is on your left. Immediate. I had perhaps better read from my letter to Lord Raglan of the thirtieth November how I acted on the receipt of number four order. The extract is as follows. After carefully reading this order I hesitated and urged the uselessness of such an attack and the dangers attending it. The ed to cap, in a most authoritative tone stated that they were Lord Raglan's orders that the cavalry should attack immediately. I asked where and what to do. Neither enemy nor guns being in sight. He replied in a most disrespectful but significant manner pointing to the further end of the valley. There, my lord, is your enemy. There are your guns. So distinct, in my opinion, was your written instruction and so positive and urgent were the orders delivered by the ed to cap that I felt it was imperative on me to obey and I informed Lord Kartigan that he was to advance and to the objections he made and in which I entirely agreed I replied that the order was from your lordship. Having decided, against my conviction to make the movement, I followed my power to render it as little perilous as possible. I formed the brigade in two lines and led to its support two regiments of heavy cavalry, the Scots Gray and Royals, and only halted them when they had reached the point from which they could protect the retreat of the light cavalry in the event of their being pursued by the enemy. And when, having already lost many officers and men by the fire from the batteries and fort, any further advance would my lords, this I think is the time to show your lordships what an ed to camp is. In page 59 of the queen's regulations which cannot be violated with impunity, under the head of ed to camp it is ordered all orders sent by ed to camp are to be delivered in the plainest terms and are to be obeyed with the same readiness as if delivered personally by the general officers to whom such ed to camp are attached. I ask any military man, I ask the noble Duke near me, the Duke of Richmond, who was ed to camp to that great man, the late Duke of Wellington, whether an ed to camp is not the organ of his general, and whether a general officer who took upon himself to disobey an order brought by an ed to camp, verbal or written, would not risk the loss of his commission. If this were not so, why could not an orderly dragoon convey orders as well as an ed to camp? An ed to camp is chosen because he is an officer of education and intelligence, he is therefore supposed to deliver an order more correctly and is considered as being in the confidence of his general. Shall I be told that Captain Nolan was not in general Ares' confidence? Why, he told me himself that he had given to Captain Nolan his instructions verbally, and it was only when that officer was turning his horse away that he detained him and committed the instructions to writing. I would ask any reasonable man, after this, whether any mistake was or could be committed by Captain Nolan. And how could I, at the time, or can now, doubt that Captain Nolan was instructed to deliver to me the positive order to attack, which he did? My lords, I must direct your attention to this. In the order it is stated, French cavalry is on your left. Evidently, for the purpose of informing me where the French cavalry were, an admission that they were out of my sight, if not out of my reach, and again informing me that it was a combined movement in which they were to join and assist me. I felt ordered, as I was, to advance immediately without an opportunity of sending to ask for further instructions, that I could not fail to perform my part of this combined movement, and so leave the brunt of the affair to be borne by the French cavalry alone. Under these circumstances my course was clear to me, and I considered it a positive duty to order Lord Cartigan to advance with the light cavalry brigade, and to lead the heavy cavalry brigade to its support. Your lordships are so well acquainted with the details of this charge, and so fully appreciate the extraordinary valor and gallantry displayed by the light cavalry on that occasion, and also the steadiness and bravery of the heavy brigade, more particularly the Scots Gray and Royals, and two regiments most exposed, that I would only add that the brilliancy of the charge and the gallantry display by the whole of the cavalry were never surpassed at any former period. Your lordship should be told that the infantry, which I was informed was coming to support me, was composed of two divisions, the first commanded by His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, by an officer whose death the army in the country so much deplore, both my seniors, and therefore both my commanding officers. In the evening of the action I saw Lord Raglan, his first remark to me was, You have lost the light brigade. I had once denied that I had lost the light brigade, as I had only carried out the orders conveyed to me, written and verbal, by Captain Nolan. He then said that I was a lieutenant general, and should therefore have exercised my discretion and not approving of the charge should not have made it. He subsequently said that I had not moved sufficiently in advance in the previous movement, but he never attempted to show then, or has he ever allowed me to suppose since, until the present time, that he ever intended that number four order was at all to be connected with the preceding order. It was a fact that the Duke of Cambridge, commanding the First Division, received no order to give the cavalry any support. Nor did Sir George Cathcart, for that gallant officer told one of my aide-de-camp that he was unable to give any assistance, not having received any authority to do so. Under these circumstances I did all I could do. I placed my division in the position which Lord Raglan's aide-de-camp told me to take, and there waited for the cooperation of the infantry, but which was never given. From thirty to forty minutes elapsed between the receipt of the two orders. If the former order had been badly carried out, Lord Raglan was in a position to see it, and had only to send an aide-de-camp to point out my error. The cavalry were ordered to advance and take advantage of any opportunity to recover the heights. Did any opportunity occur which I neglected? Was I to create the opportunity myself? Or was I to do more than to profit by the opportunities created by others? As to recovering the heights, I declare that there was not a single Russian on the heights to the westward of No. 3 Redoubt. For, after the heavy dragoon charge in the morning, the enemy evacuated six, five, and four forts. Indeed, No. 4 was subsequently occupied by Sir George Cathcart. If, as I contend, there were no Russians until you came to No. 3 Fort, and they were all either in that fort or beyond it, I should wish to ask any military man how I was to execute this order. Is it to be supposed that Lord Raglan intended the cavalry to attack the fort? Or is it not more reasonable to suppose that the infantry were to attack the fort, and that the cavalry were to wait for the opportunity of cutting off the retreat of the enemy when the assault had proved successful? I ask, will this order admit of any other construction? I'm very certain that had I acted otherwise than I did, I should have been charged and justly charged, with imprudence and incapacity. In fine, as I have already said, there were no heights occupied by Russians to recover, but there were three forts, and I know that it was intended that the infantry should attack and retake them, and it was the wish of Sir George Cathcart to make the attempt, but it was not attempted, because it was considered that they could not be held, and that it was not worth the loss of life that must necessarily attend their assault. I think I have shown that thus far there is not a single sentence in Lord Raglan's letter that I have not refuted and shivered. Lord Raglan proceeds, so little had he sought to do as he had been directed that he had no men in advance of his main body. The fact is, Lord Cardigan's brigade was so much in advance that I received a communication from his lordship through his edicamp objecting to stand where he was, because the position was so much in advance, and he expected the batteries on the left to open upon him. He made no attempt to regain the heights. I have already stated that firstly, that there were no heights, but forts to regain, and secondly that I had not the promised cooperation of the infantry. Lord Raglan continues, and was so little informed of the position of the enemy that he asked Captain Nolan what and where he was to attack, as neither enemy nor guns were in sight. Now, if your lordships would only read my letter, you will readily understand the tone and manner in which these questions were put. I was sensible of the absurdity and uselessness of the order, and when he persisted in his orders to attack I said, Attack, sir! Attack what and where? What guns are we to recover? Captain Nolan pointed to the farther end of the valley and said, There, my lord, are your guns and your enemy. I have already stated the erroneous impressions which prevailed, that the Russians were at that moment taking our guns from forts one, two and three, and the spot pointed out by Captain Nolan was in the direction they would have been taken. Now, the guns were not moved at all that day, and to use a popular word just now the whole was a misconception. Is it not trifling to pretend that there was no order to attack when I was desired to advance rapidly to the front to follow the enemy and to try to prevent the enemy from carrying away the guns? I ask any military man whether such an order means anything but attack. Could it be pretended that we were to advance slowly under a crossfire of batteries, and having reached the enemy were not to attack them, but to halt with their hands in our pockets? The idea is too purile and absurd. But to proceed. I was told that in carrying out this operation a troop of horse artillery may accompany. Your lordship will observe that the word may is here introduced. I therefore considered so much of the order discretionary and did not take the troop. When I inform your lordships that the artillery would have had to proceed up a long valley, much of it plowed land under a crossfire of batteries, and without a chance of ever bringing their guns usefully into action, your lordships will, I think, consider that I exercise to a wise discretion. Had the troop of horse artillery accompanied me the horses must have been killed and the guns lost. The letter proceeds. He was informed that the French cavalry was on the left and he did not invite their cooperation. This is a most extraordinary charge. They were out of sight on the other side of the ridge of the Inkerman Valley, and much nearer to Lord Raglan and General Canrobert than to me. I knew not what was the force of French cavalry, how commanded, or what orders they had received. Moreover, my advance was to be immediate, and I could not have communicated with the French cavalry in less than a quarter of an hour. My lords, you might be inclined to suppose that we had not the cooperation of the French cavalry, when on the contrary we had it, and it was most useful to us. Three squadrons of French chasseurs most gallantly attacked a Russian battery in flank and reverse, silenced several of its guns, and thus rendered the greatest service to my heavy brigade. End of speech.