On the 16th of September, 1859, the account of the repulse on the Peiho was received in England. Instead of summoning Parliament, Lord Palmerston addressed himself to Louis Bonaparte, and conversed with the autocrat on a new AngloFrench expedition against China. During three months, as Lord Grey says, the British ports and arsenals "have resounded with the din of preparation," and measures were taken for dispatching artillery, stores, and gun-boats to China, and for sending large forces of not less than io,000 men, in addition to the naval forces. The country having thus been fairly embarked in a new war, on the one hand by a treaty with France, on the other by a vast expenditure incurred without any previous communication to Parliament, the latter, on its meeting, is coolly asked "to thank Her Majesty for having informed them of what had happened and of the preparations that were being made for an expedition to China." In what different style could Louis Napoleon himself have addressed his own corps legislatif, or the Emperor Alexander his senate?
In the debate on the Address in the House of Commons in 1857, Mr.
Gladstone, the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to the Persian war, had indignantly exclaimed:
"I will say, without fear of contradiction, that the practice of commencing wars without associating Parliament with the first measures is utterly at variance with the established practice of the country, dangerous to the Constitution, and absolutely requiring the intervention of this House, in order to render the repetition of so dangerous a Proceeding utterly impossible."Lord Palmerston has not only repeated the proceeding, "so dangerous to the Constitution"; he has not only repeated it this time with the concurrence of the sanctimonious Mr. Gladstone, but as if to try the strength of ministerial irresponsibility, wielding the rights of Parliament against the Crown, the prerogatives of the Crown against Parliament, and the privileges of both against the people -- he had the boldness to repeat the dangerous proceeding within the same sphere of action. His one Chinese war being censured by the Parliament, he undertakes another Chinese war in spite of Parliament. Still, in both Houses, only one man mustered courage enough to make a stand against this ministerial usurpation; and, curious to say, that one man belonging not to the popular, but to the aristocratic branch of the Legislature. The man is Lord Grey. He proposed an amendment to the Address in answer to the Queen's Speech to the purport that the expedition ought not to have been entered upon before the sense of both Houses of Parliament was taken.
The manner in which Lord Grey's amendment was met, both by the spokesman of the ministerial party and leader, Her Majesty's opposition, is highly characteristic of the political crisis which the representative institutions of England are rapidly approaching. Lord Grey conceded that, in a formal sense, the Crown enjoyed the prerogative of entering upon wars, but since ministers were interdicted from spending one single farthing on any enterprise without the revious sanction of Parliament, it was the constitutional law and practice that the responsible representatives of the Crown should never enter upon warlike expeditions before notice having been given to Parliament, and the latter been called to make provision for defraying the expenditure which might be thus incurred. Thus, if the council of the nation thought fit, it might check, in the beginning, any unjust or impolitic war contemplated by ministers. His Lordship then quoted some examples in order to show how strictly these rules were formerly adhered to. In 1790, when some British vessels were seized by the Spaniards on the north-west coast of America, Pitt brought down to both Houses a message from the Crown calling for a vote of credit to meet the probable expenses. Again, in December 1826, when the daughter of Don Pedro applied to England for assistance against Ferdinand VII. of Spain, who intended an invasion of Portugal to the benefit of Don Miguel, Canning brought down a similar message notifying to Parliament the nature of the case and the amount of expenditure likely to be incurred. In conclusion Lord Grey. broadly intimated that the Ministry had dared to raise taxes upon the country without the concurrence of Parliament, since the large expenditure alreadv incurred must have been defrayed one way or an other, and could not have been defrayed without encroaching upon money-grants provided for entirely different demands.
