“Stand between two churchmen, good my Lord; 
For on that ground [ll make a holy descant.” 

Palmerston does not exactly comply with the advice tendered by 
Buckingham to Richard III. He stands between the churchman on 
the one side, and the opium-smuggler on the other. While the 
‘Low Church bishops, whom the veteran impostor allowed the Earl 
of Shaftesbury, his kinsman, to nominate, vouch his “righteous- 
ness,” the opium-smugglers, the dealers in “sweet poison for the 
age’s tooth,”? vouch his faithful service to “commodity, the bias of 
the world.”* Burke, the Scotchman, was proud of the London 
“Resurrectionists.” **! So is Palmerston of the Liverpool ‘“‘poison- 
ers.”” These smooth-faced gentlemen are the worthy representa- 
tives of a town, the pedigree of whose greatness may be directly 
traced back to the slave trade. Liverpool, otherwise not famous for 
_ poetical production, may at least claim the original merit of having 
enriched poetry with odes on the slave trade. While Pindar 
commenced his hymn on the Olympian victors with the celebrated 
“Water is the best thing” (Ariston men hudor),4 a modern 
Liverpool Pindar might, therefore, be fairly expected to open, his 
hymn on the Downing-street* prize-fighters with the more 
ingenious exordium, “Opium is the best thing.” 

Along with the holy Bishops and the unholy opium-smugglers, 
there go the large tea-dealers, for the greater part directly or 

indirectly engaged in the opium traffic, and, therefore, interested 
in oversetting the present treaties with China. They are, besides, 
actuated by motives of their own. Having in the past year 
ventured upon enormous speculations in tea, the prolongation of 
hostilities will at once enhance the huge stocks they hold, and 
enable them to postpone the large payments to their creditors at 
Canton. Thus, war will allow them to cheat at once their British 
buyers and their Chinese sellers, and consequently realize their 
notions of “national glory” and “commercial interests.” Generally 
the British manufacturers disagree from the tenets of this 
Liverpool catechism, upon the same lofty principle which puts in 
opposition the Manchester man, wanting low cotton prices, to the 
Liverpool gentleman, wanting high ones. During the first Anglo- 
Chinese war, extending from 1839 to 1842, the British manufactur- 
ers had flattered themselves with false hopes of marvelously 
extended exports.*’ Yard by yard they had measured the cotton 
stuffs the Celestials were to be clothed in. Experience 
broke the padlock Palmerstonian politicians had put upon their 
mind. From 1854 to 1857 the British manufactured exports to China 
did not average more than £1,250,000 sterling, an amount 
frequently reached in years preceding the first war with China. 

“In fact,” as Mr. Cobden, the spokesman of the British manufacturers, stated in 
the House of Commons, “since 1842 we” (the United Kingdom) “have not added 

to our exports to China at all, at least as far as our manufactures are concerned. 
We have increased our consumption of tea; that is all.”@ 

Hence the broader views with which British manufacturers, in 
contradistinction to. British Bishops, opitum-smugglers, and _ tea- 
dealers, are able to take of Chinese politics. If we pass over the 
tax-eaters and place-hunters who hang on the skirts of every 
administration, and the silly coffee-house patriots who believe “the 
nation to pluck up a heart” under Pam’s auspices, we have in fact 
enumerated all the bona fide partisans of Palmerston. Stull we must 
not forget The London Times and Punch, the Grand Cophta*™ and 
the Clown of the British press, both of whom are riveted to the 
present administration by golden and official links, and, conse- 
quently, write up a factitious enthusiasm for the hero of the 
Canton massacres. But then, it ought to be considered that the 
vote of the House: of Commons betokened a rebellion against 
Palmerston as much as against The Times. he imminent elections 
have, therefore, to decide not only whether Palmerston shall 

4 R. Cobden’s speech in the House of Commons on February 26, 1857, The 
Times, No. 22615, February 27, 1857.— Ed. 

engross all the power of the State, but also whether The Times 
shall monopolize the whole manufacture of public opinion. 
Upon which principle, then, is Palmerston likely to appeal to the 
general election? Extension of trade with China? But he has 
destroyed the very port upon which that commerce depended. For 
a more or less protracted period he has transferred it from the sea 
to the land, from the five ports to Siberia, from England to Russia. 
In the United Kingdom he has raised the duty upon tea—the 
greatest bar against the extension of the Chinese trade. The:safety 
of the British merchant-adventurers? But the Blue Book,?** 
entitled “Correspondence Respecting Insults in China,” laid upon 
the table of the Commons by the Ministry itself, proves that, since 
the last seven years, there occurred but six cases of insult, in two 
of which the English were the aggressors, while in the four others 
the Chinese authorities exerted themselves to the full satisfaction 
of the British authorities in order to punish the offenders. If, 
then, the fortunes and the lives of the British merchants in 
Hong-Kong, Singapore, &c., are at present endangered, their 
perils are conjured up by Palmerston himself. But the honor of 
the British flag! Palmerston has sold it for £50 a piece to the 
smugglers of Hong-Kong, and stained it by the “wholesale 
massacre of helpless British customers.” Yet, these pleas of 
extension of trade, safety of British merchant-adventurers, and 
honor of the British flag, are the only ones put up by the 
Government oracles which till now have addressed their con- 
stituents. They wisely refrain from touching any point of internal . 
policy, as the cry of “no reform,” and “more taxes,” would not 
do. One member of the Palmerstonian Cabinet, Lord Mulgrave, 
the Household Treasurer, tells his constituents’? that he has “no 
political theories to propound.” Another one, Bob Lowe, in his 
Kidderminster address,” girds at the ballot, ‘the extension of 
suffrage, and similar “humbug.” A third one, Mr. Labouchere, 
the same clever fellow who defended the Canton bombardment on 
the plea that, should the Commons brand it as unjust, the English 
people must prepare to pay a bill of about £5,000,000 to the 
foreign merchants whose Canton property had been destroyed — 
this same Labouchere, in his appeal to his Taunton constituents,‘ 

Times, No. 22627, March 13, 1857.— Ed. 

ignores politics altogether, simply resting his claims upon the high 
deeds of Bowring, Parkes and Seymour. 

The remark, then, of a British provincial paper, that Palmerston 
has got, not only no “good cry for the hustings, but no cry at all,” 
is perfectly true. Yet his case is by no means desperate. 
Circumstances are altogether altered since the vote of the 
Commons. The local outrage on Canton has led to a general war 
with China. There remains the question only, who is to carry on 
the war? The man who asserts that war to be just, is he not better 
enabled to push it on with vigor than his adversaries, getting in by 
passing sentence upon it? 

During his interregnum will Palmerston not embroil matters to 
such a degree as to remain the indispensable man? 

Then the mere fact of there taking place an electoral battle, will 
it not decide the question in his favor? For the greater part of the 
British electoral bodies, as at present constituted, an electoral 
battle means a battle between Whigs and Tories. Now, as he is the 
actual head of the Whigs, as his overthrow must bring the Tories 
in, will not the greater part of the so-called Liberals vote for 
Palmerston in order to oust Derby? Such are the true considera- 
tions upon which the Ministerialists rely. If their calculations prove 
correct, Palmerston’s dictatorship, till now silently suffered, would 
be openly proclaimed. The new Parliamentary majority would owe 
their existence to the explicit profession of passive obedience to 
the minister. A coup d’état might then, in due course of time, 
follow Palmerston’s appeal from the Parliament to the people, as it 
followed Bonaparte’s appeal from the Assemblée Nationale to the 
nation.” That same people might then learn to their damage that 
Palmerston is the old colleague of the Castlereagh-Sidmouth 
Cabinet, who gagged the press, suppressed public meetings, 
suspended the Habeas Corpus act,**° made it legal for the Cabinet 
to imprison and expulse at pleasure, and lastly butchered the 
people at Manchester for protesting against the Corn Laws.”*’ 

Written on March 13, 1857 Reproduced from the newspaper 

Tribune, No. 4975, March 31, 1857