Australia and the Empire - Arthur Patchett Martin

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Americans had a deal to answer for in cherishing a bad feeling towards England, which was entirely unjustified by the disposition of the English people towards them; but a worse spirit than anything I have ever read of in America is constantly displaying itself among the factory squires and ​shopocrats of England, while the sympathies of the aristocracy are undisguisedly offered to the rebellious Southerners. And it is remarkable how little original thought appears to be expended on this fratricidal war. Liberal journalists and popular lecturers repeat each other without end; but no one thinks it worth his while to investigate the causes of the quarrel with earnestness, and place the whole case before the public in the light which the history of the last five-and-twenty years might throw upon it."

      "This will be a solemn Christmas Eve in England. Thousands of artisan families will meet it with the bitter prospect of want and starvation blanching their cheeks, and very many of their employers will hardly be able to turn their gaze from the brink of ruin on which they stand to the objects of grief and apprehension which weigh down the public mind. Breaking through the commercial gloom, every hour and from every quarter, have come of late the discordant notes of warlike preparation, and the heavy tolling of the bell of death. Never, perhaps, was the nation in a more sorrowful mood, and never had it deeper cause for sorrow. Let us reason as we will, we cannot free ourselves ​from the painful consciousness that we are about to plunge into a fratricidal war—about to vindicate our honour in the shadow of the blood-red banners of slavery. Bold and boastful as is the language of the London Press, it is easy to see that there is a tremor in the writer's hand. Every second morning a tone of misgiving seems to soften the reckless bravery of the Times. It will not do; people cannot satisfy their consciences, though goaded on by the sense of insult, that it is a high Christian thing to burden the nation with debt, and to spill the nation's blood on the wrong side of the American civil broils. At first the sense of wrong sent every man's hand to the sword-hilt. But the hard logic of consequences has tempered men's minds wonderfully during the last three weeks. Those who are little affected by feelings of brotherhood, or sympathy with freedom, see reason to pause in the loss of trade and the increase of taxation, and I doubt much whether if war be declared it will long remain a popular war."

      This letter, we must bear in mind, was being penned at the time when the British Cabinet were hastily summoned to consider the affair of the Trent. The writer was fully aware that a Privy Council, attended by the Queen, was held at Windsor ​three days after the news of the seizure of Slidell and Mason had reached England, and that, on the same day, a Queen's Messenger left London with a despatch for Lord Lyons. Above all, he was not likely to forget that Lord Palmerston was the Prime Minister. To the eyes of the Australian, indeed, war seemed imminent. He weighed the pros and cons with a judicial hand. But on the whole he evidently came to the conclusion that the war party would carry the day, unless the two men, taken from the deck of a British ship, were given up to the British Ambassador. The whole affair, as we know, passed away like a summer cloud; the two Southerners were surrendered by the American Government to Lord Lyons, and duly resumed, on board the war-ship Rinaldo, their voyage to England, where their mission ended in failure. But the words of Sir Henry Parkes must have made a profound impression in Sydney a quarter of a century ago; for, be it remembered, this was before the era of the submarine cable, and the anxious colonists had to wait a month, sitting as it were in outer darkness, between each flash of intelligence, knowing not what fate was in store either for the mother country or themselves.

      ​On that "solemn Christmas Eve" Sir Henry did not close his budget without giving his fellow-colonists a timely warning. In emphatic words he pointed out that the British statesmen and journalists, who were so loudly clamouring for war with America, took no heed whatever of the defenceless condition of the Australian colonies. He could only charitably think that the sudden appearance of Yankee armed cruisers in the waters of Port Jackson and Hobson's Bay had never even been dreamt of by these bellicose Englishmen; but he added:

      "You may depend upon it that if England and America plunge into a great naval war, American privateering will exceed anything of the kind known of other countries in former times. There are thousands of men who sail under the stars and stripes who possess the adventurous spirit and desperate courage which fit the privateer for his peculiar kind of aggressive operations in a naval war. You had better lose no time in preparing for your defence. Do not lull yourselves into a false sense of security by depending too much upon the naval superiority of England. … Sydney and the surrounding district ought to muster five thousand volunteers."

      In the same letter Sir Henry records, not without ​pathos, the death of Prince Albert. All that he says concerning the bereaved Queen and her departed consort is in excellent taste, but I prefer to present his stray comments on the men and events that fell more directly under his own searching eyes. In a letter dated February 28, 1862, he gives a full account of the opening of Parliament, and makes some interesting remarks on the great and little parliamentarians of the day. His description of Disraeli's speech, considering the writer's pronounced Liberal proclivities, is certainly conceived in a generous spirit. After disposing of its earlier portion, with the dubious compliment that "no man could have contrived to say nothing with more adroitness or more show of profundity," he pays this high tribute to its closing eloquence:—

      "With faltering voice he passed on to the great sorrow of the nation, and as he took up his new subject the true orator appeared. His voice scarcely rose above a mournful whisper—so tremulous with feeling and yet so clear—and his words were of the simplest and fittest as he spoke of the true worth of the departed Prince, and of the immeasurable greatness of the nation's loss. Every breath communicated its pathetic tones to every heart among his ​listeners as he recounted the many virtues that survived to perpetuate the memory of the dead; and when he had concluded with a soul-touching allusion to the grief of the Queen, one felt that the strain of eloquence which had just ceased was of that order which could never be given to others in written words."

      Of Lord Palmerston's speech in reply to Mr. Disraeli, the Australian parliamentarian is somewhat contemptuous. "Your Mr. Cowper," he observes, with an adroit hit at a very capable rival Sydney politician, "might have said all that the Prime Minister of England said, and said it with quite as much oratorical effect. But there was this difference between Lord Palmerston's commonplaces and Mr. Cowper's: the old English Minister knew exactly the limits within which he must confine himself, and seemed perfectly to know the temper of his audience and the state of feeling outside."

      The minor lights that attempted to shine that evening, notably Sir Robert Peel (Sir Robert fils, of course), struck him as beneath contempt.

      On a subsequent evening he attended the House of Commons in order to hear a debate of special interest to himself and his colonial readers. It was ​the debate raised by Mr. Arthur Mills, then member for Taunton, on the question of Colonial defences. At this time Professor Goldwin Smith was raising the great controversy as to the mutual benefits that would flow from England's recognising the complete independence of her self-governing colonies. The discussion in Parliament was devoted to the minor point of the advisability of withdrawing English troops from these dependencies. Sir Henry confesses himself little edified, and was compelled

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