TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. FORSTER ON IMPERIAL DUTIES.
THE doctrine of non-intervention laid down by Mr. W. E. Forster when speaking to his constituents on Tuesday night deserves attentive consideration, for besides the con- siderable merit of the speech as a model of lucid statement, the member for Bradford is in many respects a representative man. Belonging externally to the school of Mr. Bright, like him of Quaker descent, like him intensely anxious for the diffusion of prosperity among the people, and for a wider distribution of power as a means to that diffusion, like him a fixed opponent of slavery, and like him impatient of meddling in the affairs of the old European States, he nevertheless stands in some respects alone, represents a democracy wider than that of the Manchester School. Whether from higher education, or wider sympathies, or, which we take to be the truth, a greater power of bringing himself en rapport with average English instinct as well as the average English mind, he is while strenuously advocating peace still essentially an Imperialist. He cannot say, "Perish, Savoy !" simply, for he allows that "if it be the duty of England to keep up this inter- vention in foreign affairs, I care not for the cost, I am willing to incur it," and therefore, to begin with, raises duty above economy as a motive to national action. This duty, more- over, is not an abstract one, not an idea, like the duty of turning one cheek to the smiter after the other has been smitten, which is allowed to have no meaning except as an extreme proposition of a great truth, but is one which may at any hour become imperative. "I will say that there are times in which it is necessary, in which it may be necessary, for a nation to step forward and sacrifice its own money and the lives of its people in intervention in foreign affairs," and if there be "duties" which justify intervention and times which require it, non-intervention cannot be the policy of Great Britain. Indeed, Mr. Forster admits it, and gives up the policy of isolation altogether. "I do not go upon the prin- ciple that one country should resolve always to be isolated from all other countries. There may be cases in which isolation would be selfishness and a national crime," and in that hard word, thrown, as it were, by an irrepressible instinct at selfishness, Mr. Forster in fact condemns the solitary moral argument in favour of the principle, which he is nevertheless holding up to admiration. This may be Radicalism, it certainly is quite consistent with it, but it is not exactly that of the men of peace. The duty of man, moreover, with Mr. Forster is not merely to get money, to increase trade, to struggle forward towards material civilization, to postpone thought to sugar, freedom to cotton, faith to improvements in steam machinery, he has a higher function, namely among other things to civilize and Christianize five-sixths of mankind, —in other words, to intervene in the affairs of a continent for an object which will cost millions, occupy generations, and only result in the happiness of foreigners after all. "Have I no ambition for my country? Do I look forward to England, being a second-rate Power—rich, but weak, cor- rupted by its riches, a prey to the spoiler, and dwelling in the mournful recollections of that glorious place among the nations which she has sold for commercial gains ? No; my dream for my country is very different. I look at what she is—I look at what she may be. I say England, so far from being likely to become a second-rate Power, has such a destiny before her as never was given by Providence to any other nation 'We have the East to civilize and Christianize ; we have to undo all the harm we have done, and to do all the good that Providence has put into our hands to do. And to turn to our own colonies, was there ever such a task given to any nation as is given to us ? Surely we may leave dynastic and national quarrels, at any rate, until we have performed that duty to the best of our ability. I will not despair of the greatest problem ever given to any race being solved by us—the problem of how a colony, when it has arrived at maturity may yet remain in alliance with the mother country."
We need not say how cordially we approve all that, only we should just like to know in what Mr. Forster's opinion differs from that of those who, like ourselves, maintain that wise intervention, the constant, unswerving, unfearing readiness to throw English influence, and when necessary English strength upon the side of the right, is the only policy which justifies our enduring and immense prosperity. They never argued that England should intervene where it was not her duty to do so, never dreamt of such a folly, never asserted that England's duty to India and her colonies, the obligation to civilize and to conciliate, was not more immediate and more lofty than the obligation to free Hungarians or Poles, but have repeatedly urged the contrary. They do not indeed believe that the one should wholly extinguish the other, are rather apt to doubt whether the man who decries a mission because there are so many heathen at home- ever gives sixpence to improve those heathen, but that is all. If England is, in the opinion of Radicals, to intervene when it is her duty to do so ; if cost is no element in the question ; if isolation may at times be a national crime, there is no. " Radical policy of non-intervention," it is a mere phrase expressing only the conviction that intervention is unjust without adequate cause —a definition thinking Liberals can. most cordially accept. Whether the duty arose or the cause was adequate in the matter of Denmark or Poland is a matter of detail, depending on evidence, argument, and calculation. of resources. To us it certainly seemed that the cause of Denmark involved the right of every small nationality in the. world to exist,—to retain for the world's use that reservoir of separate possibilities, new civilizations, various forms of pro- gress, and divergent modes of thought which every nation. must contain. We could not see, as Mr. Forster evidently sees,. that Attica was not worth Sparta's aid because Xerxes' host was so exceedingly big; but still that is not a question of prin- ciple, but of the time at which to act on it, of judgment, not of' political morals. So with Poland. It seemed to us that when a nation of sixteen millions, possessed of many great and separate qualities, was trying to emancipate her higher civilization from the gripe of a stronger but lower one, there arose Et claim to assistance from all free States more especially from one which had five years before intervened to rescue an. uncivilized people from the same gripe. That also, however,. is a question of judgment, for had the member for Bradford" thought the appeal one which involved a duty he also would have intervened, he also would have denounced isolation as selfishness without counting the cost. He lays down indeed' three restrictions, but they are those which we all lay down. We ought, he says, before we interfere, "to be sure that the cause for which we interfere is certainly good, that we shall do good, and that we can interfere with success." Does Mr... Forster know anybody who ever at any time wanted to. intervene for a cause he did not consider good, or who incurred enormous risk and cost and worry without believing he should do good thereby ? If he does we congratulate him on the acquaintance of a politician so exceptional that studying him_ must be something like reading a new literature, in which. the very arrangement of the words requires a separate expla- nation. The third rule as it stands would be indeed a real_ limitation, for it would destroy the possibility of any inter- vention at all. There never was a struggle since yeoman. Cain killed nomad Abel in which either party could before- hand be sure of success, any more than of any other future event. Mr. Forster, we presume, only means that we should have a reasonable prospect of success, and as we do not call on a man who cannot swim to jump into a river after the drowning, we can agree in that limitation. It requires, however, this one qualification. It can never be the duty of a nation any more than of a man to court certain destruction on behalf of another, but it may be its duty, as it may be his, to run very serious risk of it, to jump into the water when not by any means sure that he can swim the distance. If a great Power were striding visibly towards universal monarchy, as has occurred twice in modern history, that duty would arise, and intervention be again as imperative as it was for Holland in 1690, for Spain in 1807. There is, however, one point of difference between Mr. Forster's principle and the one on which we have endeavoured. to stand, and it is a difference which must have awakened in his audience, at least when they studied his speech next morning, some surprise. It certainly will awaken some in. his own mind when we point out the use to which his principle might be turned. Mr. Forster thinks Englishmen wrong in "indulging the luxury" of expressing strong sym- pathy with races they cannot help. Newspapers ought not to publish leaders full of pity, politicians ought not to go to meet- ings and make fme speeches full of commiseration, lest what is sport to editors and orators should be death to those they are anxious to befriend. There is to be no help, and also no free speech, the oppressor and the despot are to pass on unchecked even by the expressed condemnation of free men. England is to give to all the struggling nations of the world the help of an angry silence, unless in- deed they are winning the game. Then we may write, then politicians may speak, for then our sport,—it might happen to be our earnestness,—cannot be death to those whom we have not helped to save. Now, as it happens, there is one race in the world which had at one time an apparently hopeless cause, for which we never meant to interfere, to -which hope was really a danger, which might have been, probably would have been, destroyed—literally killed out— if it had rebelled. That was the negro race of North America, and when their cause was most completely lost, when hope was to them most dangerous, when denunciation of their oppressors riveted their chains to all human eyes most tightl v.—there was no voice in England raised more clearly on their behalf than that of William Forster, no man who sympathized more visibly in their misery, no man who maintained in louder tones the truth that, however triumphant or however strong, oppression must come to an end. It has come, this special oppression, to an end, and if we read aright the American section of Mr. Forster's speech regret is not the senti- ment with which he looks back on his share in that great work. is it only because the negroes are not a nation that Mr. Forster held himself justified in intervening by voice and pen, money and influence, for these down-trodden men ? Sym- pathy, he says, may tempt Poles to acts for which they will be killed. Very likely. It helped to tempt John Brown to acts—acts, by the way, clearly of intervention,—for which he was killed. And unless we misread all Mr. Forster's career, he would not only have had John Brown killed, but would have been hanged beside him sooner than be content to look in angry silence on the wrongs to redress which John Brown died. The plain truth of the matter is, that it is impossible at once to be honestly on the side of the people and for consistent non-intervention. The time will always come when the deep pity for suffering, and the strong hate of oppression, and the immoveable faith in divine justice which breed true liberals, will compel them to speak and act for those they pity, to denounce and resist those they hate, to appeal visibly to the justice in which they believe, as Mr. Forster did on behalf of the slaves, and as he will have it we ought not to do on behalf of the Poles.
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