Newfoundland and the Jingoes: An Appeal to England's HonorFretwell, John
History
Newfoundland and the Jingoes: An Appeal to England's Honor
Fretwell, John
Newfoundland and Labrador -- History
chapter a list of twenty-four members of the British House of Commons,
ten members of the British Peerage, one admiral, one vice-admiral, one
captain, one colonel, one lieutenant-colonel, and a host of knights
and baronets who subscribed money to the Confederate Cotton Loan,
while he gives extracts from the speeches of Bernal Osborne, Lord John
Russell, Lord Palmerston, Mr. Gregory, M.P., Mr. G.W. Bentinck, M.P.,
Lord Robert Cecil, now Marquis of Salisbury, M. Lindsy, M.P., Lord
Campbell, Earl Malmesbury, Mr. Laird, M.P. (the builder of the
"Alabama" and the rebel rams), Mr. Horsman, M.P. for Stroud, the
Marquis of Clanricarde (a name familiar to all Irishmen from its
connection with the evictions), Mr. Peacocke, M.P., Mr. Clifforde,
M.P., Mr. Haliburton, M.P., Lord Robert Montague, Sir James Ferguson,
the Earl of Donoughmore, Mr. Alderman Rose, Lord Brougham, and the
Right Hon. William Ewart Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer,
breathing hostility to the cause of the Union States and friendship
for the slaveholder; while the few honest men in the House of Commons,
who, like John Bright, Foster, Charles Villiers, Milner Gibson, and
Cobden, spoke for the cause of the North, were reviled, not alone by
their colleagues, but even by many of their constituents, because they
defended the side of liberty, truth, and justice.
Why should we withhold from the just cause of Ireland and Newfoundland
the sympathy which England gave to the secessionist slaveholder?
Of course the London _Times_ was on the slaveholder's side. On the
last day of December, 1864, it said that "Mr. Seward and other
teachers and flatterers of the multitude still affect to anticipate
the early restoration of the Union"; and in three months from that
date the rebels were conquered.
It was on March 7, 1862, that Lord Robert Cecil said in Parliament:
"The plain fact is that the Northern States of America can never be
our sure friends, because we are rivals politically, rivals
commercially. We aspire to the same position. We both aspire to the
government of the seas. We are both manufacturing people, and, in
every port as well as at every court we are rivals of each other....
With the Southern States the case is entirely reversed. The people are
an agricultural people. They furnish the raw material of our industry,
and they consume the products which we make from it. With them,
therefore, every interest must lead us to cultivate friendly
relations; and we have seen that, when the war began, they at once
recurred to England as their natural ally."
It was easy enough for the most cowardly man, in Lord Robert Cecil's
position, to use such words, even were he naught more than a lath
painted over to imitate steel. Even if England is ruined, he is safe.
But it was quite another matter when, sixteen years later, the poor
Newfoundlander applied to him and Disraeli-Beaconsfield for the right
to build a railroad.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account