POSTSCRIPT.
SATURDAY.
The House of Lords sat yesterday to transact the remaining business of the session. The Earl of ELLENBOROUGH availed himself of the opportunity afforded by the motion for the third reading of the Appropriation Bill, to call attention to the peculiar circumstances which have led to the premature termination of the session. The war arose limause the Governor of Hongkong made an unpropitious demand on the Chinese authorities at Canton. The dissolution occurred because the House of Commons said there were not sufficient grounds for the proceedings of the Governor of Hongkong. Two questions are submitted to the people,—Do they prefer Lord Palmerston to any other Ministar? and do they approve of the war ? The answer to the first may be in the affirmative; the answer to the second will be in the negative. From this he turned to consider who are to " suffer " from the dissolution. The Whigs—and he had "an old feeling in favour of the old Whigs "—are, contrary to the party practices of former times, to be rewarded by the retention of their seats. He could not extend his favourable feeling to the "Whigs and something more" ; and as to the "Radical," he concurred with the Marquis of Wellesley" radiee in Tartan tendit." But why should the Conservatives and Peelites suffer ?—they never gave their confidence to the Government. He next argued that the war in China would have so disastrous an effect on the finances of India, that it would be the duty of the home Government to lend the Indian Government two or three millions. Then he examined the question, whether Lord Palmerston should be preferred as a Minister. The war he conducted was not glorious, for Ears had been abandoned; the peace was not satisfactory, for Russia was left in possession of the upper line of the Pruth. Nor in home policy is Lord Palmerston distinguished for economy. In three years 1,392,546/. has been added to the public charge under the head of Miscellaneous Estimates. What are Lord Pahnerston's principles? Be has been a Member of ten out of thirteen Governments, two of them the most extreme that can be conceived: he served under Mr. Perceval, and under Lord Grey; "and I never heard that he came to the smallest difference with either of his chiefs. Therefore I do not know what the principles of Lord Palmerston are."
Earl GRANY/LLE replied to some of the points raised by Lord Ellenborough. Ile took a much more hopeful view of the effect of the war on Indian finance, and on the trade of China. The opium traffic will be injured; but tea in immense quantities, shut out from Canton, is making way to the other ports. With respect to the increased charge under the Miscellaneous Estimates during the last three years, he reminded Lord Ellenborough that Lord Palmerston has not been in office three years. As to the increase in the vote for Education, he felt some difficulty in arguing with Lord Ellenborough, because he remembered hearing Lord
enborough refer with "a sigh to the money wasted on the education of the people, which might, he said, have been usefully employed in the construction of gun-boats."
The Earl of MALMESEURY struck in with some retorts upon Earl Granville. Lord MONTEADLE censured our reckless and extravagant expenditure, but expressed some confidence in the economical principles of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Earl GREY insisted with much force on the necessity of not confining economy to the civil expenditure. The Army has been increased in strength and cost, while our demands on it have been greatly reduced. He entered his protest against keeping up an army upon such a scale as would enable us at a very short notice to carry on groat foreign wars.
The Lord Mayor entertained Lord Palmerston and his colleagues at the Mansionhouse last night, avowedly as a mark of " confidence " in the Government and its head. The whole of the Cabinet, and many Members of Parliament, not wholly of the Liberal party, and many civic and scientific notables, were present. Among the diplomatists present wore the Belgian, Sardinian, Greek, Prussian, Austrian, Saxon, Spanish, and Persian Ministers. The principal speakers were Sir Charles Wood, Lord Pa]nerston, Earl Granville, the French Ambassador, and the Earl of Clarendon. Sir Charles Wood warmly defended the naval officers and sailors at Canton from the charge of inhumanity. Count Persigny glorified the alliance, and complimented London City on its promptitude in presenting an address to the Emperor Napoleon, four years ago. Earl Granville spoke for the Peers, and in reference to the China vote thanked God that there is a House of Lords. The Earl of Clarendon vindicated his foreign policy from the charges of turbulence and aggressiveness.
The special speech of the occasion was Lord l'almerston's, in acknowledgment of the toast, "The health qf Viscount Palmerston, and may he long be spared to guide the councils of our land."
After giving thanks for this sentiment, Lord Palmerston referred to the recent vote of censure on the. Government in the House of Commons. He said he knew well, that some who voted against the Government persuaded themselves they were not pronouncing a censure and some had assured him they did not thereby intend to withdraw their confidence. But the majority knew perfectly well the full political import of their votes. The resolution asserted that the proceedings at Canton were unjustifiable. "We were persuaded, on the contrary, that those proceedings were right and necessary. We felt that a great wrong had been inflicted upon this country. )1t o felt that our fellow countrymen in a distant part of the globe had been exposed to every sort of insult, outrage, and atrocity ; that a treaty with this country had been broken and that those who were locally charged with the defence of our interests were not only justified in resorting, but were bound to resort, as far as the means at their command enabled them, to the measures requisite for their vindication." When a Government is censured by the House of Commons, is has only one course—to retire, if it believes the country concurs in the censure. The present Government did not believe the country shared the opinions of the majority; and the result has shown how entirely Ministers were justified in that conviction. "We know—our fellow countrymen know well—that such will be the result of the appeal we are about to make ; and even now, although the time when that appeal can practically be answered has not yet arrived, we have proof that the heart of the country is sound, and that it will reverse the censure which was passed upon us the other day by the House of Commons.
" It seems that it is not permitted to me to talk of coalitions or combinations, because they have been distinctly repudiated ; but there was, ill am obliged to say so, an accidental concurrence of the leaders of opposite parties in the lobby against us. In that lobby there were the elements of a Government which expected to succeed to power by making the humiliation and degradation of their country a stepping-stone to office. We are truly told that party spirit and party ties are essential to the working of the British constitution. Some party ties were remembered on that occasion, but one party tie was wholly forgotten—the tie that ought to bind every Englishman to the interests, the honour, and the glory of his country. If those who voted against us had risen to power, what ought they to have done as the logical and inevitable consequence of their vote ? They asserted tha our proceedings were unjustifiable ; they were bound, therefore, in the event of their success, to have apologized to the Chinese barbarians for the wrongs we had done—to have rebuilt the forts which our gallant sailors had destroyed—to have sent from Woolwich new cannon in lieu of those which our brave seamen had rendered unserviceable—and at the sometime, in order to complete the measure of redress, they must have paid the rewards which had been given for the heads of our merchants, and the cost of the arsenic which had been used in poisoning our fellow subjects at Hongkong. Gentlemen, I cannot envy the feelings of those men who could witness with calmness the heads of respectable British merchants on the walls of Canton, or the murders and assassinations and poisonings perpetrated on our fellow countrymen abroad, and who, instead of feeling their blood boil with indignation at such proceedings, would have had us make an abject submission to the barbarians by whom these atrocities were committed. But we are told by others that we are addicted to war; we are told that, while we direct affairs, this country will always be embroiled with other nations. Why, Sir, our conduct is a refutation of that charge. Some of the men who are now foremost in advocating these doctrines of peace were among those who concurred in engaging the country in that necessary war—the first great struggle in which we have been engaged during the last forty years. These men, however, forgot to help us to carry that war through to a successful termination,' they did not assist us in obtaining, in conjunction with our glorious allies the French, the Sardinians, and the Turks, that safe and honourable peace the conditions of which these men had before pronounced to be unreasonable to ask and hopeless to obtain. They forget to assist RS in that ; and when they accuse us of an inveterate propensity for war, they overlook the fact that we succeeded in restoring peace to Europe. We too are for peace abroad and for progressive improvement at home ; but the peace which we want is peace with honour, peace with safety, peace with the maintenance of our national rights, peace with security to our fellow countrymen abroad. We believe that that is also the opinion of the British nation ; and as long as the nation regards these as the principles upon which the government of the country is to be conducted—as long as it shall continue to honour us with its confidence—so long shall we feel pride in discharging the duty, however laborious and responsible it may be, which our Sovereign and her people intrust to us. If the day should come when a different doctrine shall prevail—when peace is to be Bought by humiliation and degradation, the country must look elsewhere—I will not now say where--the country, I say, must look elsewhere for the instruments of the national dishonour and disgrace." This address was interrupted, as is usual on these occasions, by some laughter and frequent cheering, which at the close became "enthusiastic and prolonged.'
The Fulton arrived at Southampton yesterday, with advices from New York to the 7th. She brings the inaugural speech of President Buchanan, delivered in the Capitol at Washington on the 4th March. This i
speech s remarkable for its moderate tone ; its grappling with the question of slavery as it affects the rights of States and Territories and its full adherence to the doctrine of State rights. It enlarged also on the evils that would follow disunion ; and approved of the proposed Pacific Railway. The new President's Cabinet is composed as follows— Secretary of State, Lewis Case; Secretary of the Treasury, Howell Cobb ; Secretary of War, Johu Buchanan Floyd ; Secretary of the Navy, Isaac Toucey ; Secretary of the Interior, Jacob Thompson ; Attorney-General, Jeremiah S. Black ; Postmaster-General, Aaron Venable Brown, The Supreme Court of the United States has given a decision on a point of considerable importance. Dred Scott, a Negro, claimed his freedom, because he had resided two years, with the consent of his owner, in a State where slavery is prohibited by its constitution, and afterwards in a Territory from which it was excluded by the Missouri Compromise. The Court decided, that a Negro is not a citizen, and therefore cannot sue in the Courts of the United States ; and that "d0 act of 1820, commonly called the Missouri Compromise, in so far as it undertook to exclude Negro slavery from and give freedom and citizenship to Negroes in, the Northern part of the Louisiana cession, was a legislative act exceeding the powers of Congress, and void and of no legal effect to that end."
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