Chapter XXXVI.: the danish war—last speeches in parliament—correspondence.

It was truly said by a Member of the House of Commons at the time, that if the Session of 1864 were remembered at all twenty years afterwards, it would only be remembered for the answer which it gave to the question, Shall or shall not England take part in the struggle between Germany and Denmark? This entitles it to a notable place in any account of Cobden. The answer that was then given was as remarkable a triumph for Cobden’s principles, as the result of the Don Pacifico debate had been a victory for Lord Palmerston fourteen years before. The great wave of Nationality which was the moving force in Europe for so many years after the storm of 1848, now swept into Schleswig-Holstein, and brought Danes and Germans into violent collision. We may here content ourselves with Cobden’s own account of what he justly called that most complicated of all questions. “In 1852,” he said, “by the mischievous activity of our Foreign Office, seven diplomatists were brought round a green table in London to settle the destinies of a million of people in the two provinces of Schleswig and Holstein, without the slightest reference to the wants and wishes or the tendencies or the interests of that people. The preamble of the treaty which was there and then agreed to stated that what those seven diplomatists were going to do was to maintain the integrity of the Danish monarchy, and to sustain the balance of power in Europe. Kings, Emperors, Princes were represented at that meeting, but the people had not the slightest voice or right in the matter. They settled the treaty, the object of which was to draw closer the bonds between those two provinces and Denmark. The tendency of the great majority of the people of those provinces—about a million of them altogether—was altogether in the direction of Germany. From that time to this year the treaty was followed by constant agitation and discord; two wars have sprung out of it, and it has ended in the treaty being torn to pieces by two of the Governments who were prominent parties to the treaty.”

The question was whether England should go to the aid of the weak Power against the two strong ones. Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell were in favour of vigorous intervention both before the war broke out, and after the failure of the London Conference. They undoubtedly encouraged Denmark to resist. They were held back by colleagues, against whose timidity the two veterans bitterly murmured to one another. When the London Conference. broke up, there was a universal apprehension that the active party in the Cabinet would still carry the day, and that Great Britain would find herself committed without an ally to the terrible peril of a war with Germany.

“At the end of June,” as Cobden described it, “the Prime Minister announced that he was going to produce the protocols, and to state the decision of the Government upon the question. He gave a week’s notice of this intention, and then I witnessed what has convinced me that we have achieved a revolution in our foreign policy. The whippers-in—you know what I mean—those on each side of the House who undertake to take stock of the number and the opinions of their followers—the whippers-in during the week were taking soundings of the inclination of Members of the House of Commons. And then came up from the country such a manifestation of opinion against war, that day after day during that eventful week Member after Member from the largest constituencies went to those who acted for the Government in Parliament, and told them distinctly that they would not allow war on any such matters as Schleswig and Holstein. Then came surging up from all the great seats and centres of manufacturing and commercial activity one unanimous veto upon war for this matter of Schleswig and Holstein.” The result was that when Lord Palmerston came down to the House on that memorable afternoon of the 27th of June, it was to make the profoundly satisfactory, but profoundly humiliating announcement, that there was to be no war. They had ascertained, he said, that France declined to take any active part in support of Denmark. They had ascertained that Russia would take no part. The whole brunt of the effort requisite for dislodging the German troops would fall upon this country alone. Under these circumstances, they had not though it consistent with their duty to advise the Sovereign to undertake the task. Lord Palmerston wound up his statement by menaces of great things to be done by the Government if Prussia and Austria went a step further in certain possible directions. These curiously hollow and ill-timed threats were received with loud shouts of derision, and Mr. Disraeli had the whole House with him when he denounced them as spiritless and senseless. He had the House with him when he went on to say that judging from the past, he would prefer that the affairs of the country should be conducted on the principles of the Member for Rochdale and the Member for Birming ham. In that case the consequences might be the same, but the position of England would be more consistent and more dignified. At least these two gentlemen would threaten nobody; at least they would not have told Denmark that if she were attacked she would not find herself alone; at least they would not have exasperated Germany by declaiming in the full Parliament of England against the “aggravated outrages” of her policy; at least they would not have lured Denmark on by delusive counsels and fallacious hopes.

When in course of time Mr. Disraeli moved a vote of censure, Cobden did not let the opportunity slip. The inherent strength of his position made his speech even more free than usual from bitterness or personality. It was felt that the humiliating breakdown of the Foreign Office, and the meddling and impotent diplomacy of which Lord Palmerston was now the traditional representative, was a complete justification of the great principles of non-intervention as he had preached them for a whole generation. For the last time, as it was destined to be, he pressed home the old arguments for taking all reasonable and possible precautions for avoiding continental quarrels. “Our country,” he said, “requires peace. Some people think it is very degrading, very base, that an Englishman should speak of his country as requiring peace, and as being entitled to enjoy its blessings; and if we allude to our enormous commercial and industrial engagements as a reason why we should avoid these petty embroilments, we are told that we are selfish and grovelling in our politics. But I say we were very wrong to take such measures as were calculated to extend our commerce, unless we were prepared to use prudential precautions to keep our varied manufacturing and mercantile operations free from the mischiefs of unnecessary war. You have in this country engagements of the most extensive and complicated kind. You have extended your operations during the last twenty-five years to such a degree, that you are now actually exporting three times as much as you did twenty-five years ago—that is, your foreign commerce, and the manufactures on which it depends, have grown in a quarter of a century twice as much as they grew in a thousand years before.”—(July 5.)

Lord Robert Cecil, who followed him in the debate, observed caustically that though Cobden was about to support the Government against the vote of censure, his enthusiasm for them was not very warm. The Member for Rochdale, he said, was about as good a friend of Her Majesty’s Government, as Her Majesty’s Government had been of the kingdom of Denmark; there was, however, the remarkable difference between the two cases, that whereas the Government gave to Denmark abundance of good words but no material aid, the honourable member was about to give the Government all his material aid, while he accompanied it with a full dose of what certainly could not be called fair words. When the division was taken, the Government won by a majority of eighteen, but Lord Palmerston must have felt that the policy of Free Trade had, among many other changes which it had wrought, finally taken the supreme control of peace and war out of the hands of the old territorial oligarchy.

Cobden made two other elaborate speeches in the course of the session. One was introductory of a series of resolutions on a subject on which he had long entertained strong views, the great extension of Government manufacturing establishments. In this, as in his views on the greater subject of Free Trade, Cobden was able to quote the illustrious authority of Burke in favour of the principle which he was now advocating, that the Government should not be allowed to manufacture for itself any article which could be obtained from private producers in a competitive market. The other important speech had been made earlier in the session, and carried his views of foreign policy into a field where their application was becoming, and has remained, more urgently necessary than it was even in the sphere of continental Europe. He moved a resolution to the effect that the policy of non-intervention by force of arms in the internal political affairs of foreign countries, which we profess to observe in Europe and America, should also be observed in our intercourse with the Empire of China. What gave special point to the resolution was the fact that at this time we were in danger of repeating the same violence and the same impolicy which had worked such confusion in China, in forcing intercourse upon the people of Japan. Now, as on many occasions before, Cobden showed his sense of the danger that the cry for new markets might become as mischievous as the old cry for extended dominion. The enormous expansion of manufacturing industry had made some of the commercial class as ready to use violence in opening fresh fields for the sake of gain, as the aristocracy had ever been to use it in satisfying their national pride or military ambition. cobden’s demonstration of the perils which lie before us on this side, and he was not ashamed to consider moral as well as material perils, still remains as apt and as timely as it was in his own day.

Cobden wrote his longest letters at this time to Mr. Sumner and M. Chevalier. He protested, as we see, against the early tendencies of his American friend, to imitate the worst faults of the worst kind of European diplomacy; and to his French friend he put a question as to what might happen in 1870, which subsequent events made curiously significant.