them, in order to stop the budget being voted in any form?
Of all the mad pranks which Lord Russell has played, this is certainly
the most insensate. What a precedent he makes! With equal reason France
might interfere in the affairs of our own country, and demand that
Ireland should have a Parliament of her own, and also that the consent
of that Parliament should be requisite before a single tax could be
levied in any part of the United Kingdom! With equal reason Russia might
demand separate governments for any or every part of the Turkish empire,
and, moreover, insist that each of these parts should have a power of
checkmating all the others. We naturally protest against the despatches
of Lord Russell on account of their absurdity—we protest also on account
of their injustice and substantial hostility to Denmark; and not less do
we protest against any such act of interference being committed at all.
Is it not strange, ludicrous, humiliating, to see our Foreign Minister
lecturing little Denmark on her duties to her own subjects, and
submitting a constitution cut-and-dry for her adoption, even prescribing
minute details of taxation, &c.; and yet, at the very same time, our
Government dare not say a word to the Cabinet of Washington—nay, is full
of ample apologies for one of its own members who happened to express an
opinion which is universal in this country—and stands by in humble
silence and inaction while “the North fights for conquest and the South
for independence”? The contrast is striking and humiliating. The attempt
to coerce little Denmark is ignoble—the proposals which it is desired to
enforce are absurd in their form, and most impolitic in their object. We
wait to hear what the British Parliament will say to a policy in which
folly and meanness are combined in equal proportions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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