TO TILE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR-
Miteside, Cumberland, lfl'A August 1849.
Sin—I have waited, hoping to see your able pen employed in urging the spe- cial attention of Englishmen to that meanest act of the meanest Ministry—the forbidding Italian refugees to land in Malta. Since other matters have oc- cupied you, may I be allowed to make some few comments in your columns, pos- sibly to provoke a more powerful echo from the indignation of my countrymen ? I would ask, even of the least chivalrous of shopkeepers, if we can, as a nation, afford to have the one clean spot upon our banner thus soiled by the hands of the Liberal Lord Palmerston? or if it is not enough to have our moral influence ut- terly ruined among the nations, without being deprived of the sole claim to Eu- ropean respect left to us by our "foreign policy "? One is absolutely at a low for any reason to account for this act. It is true, Malta is an Italian island : but not even Whig timidity could have feared the descent of these Italian refugees. It is true, our esteemed ally of Naples threatened us with consequences if we should dare admit those rebels against his protégé the Pope: but surely, low as Whig- gism has degraded us, we are not so low as to fear the Neapolitan. And, to speak intelligibly to those who make small account of honour or national in- tegrity, what was to be gained by the proceeding? Was there any expected -alliance to countervail the inconvenient—not to say disgraceful—precedent of allowing the worst of the Bourbons, or any foreign power, to overrule the arrivals at our ports? Base as the act is in itself, that dictation makes it baser gill. To lower the British flag at the order of Nicholas had been disreputable enough; but at the bidding of King Bombe! Should it not be his portrait which our Liberals should present to our well-worded Minister? And, bad as the act is, there is farther a savageness, nay, (not savageness, for the wildest Arab would give a refuge to the fugitive,) a refinement of cruelty, when we notice that this denial of British hospitality follows immediately on similar harshnesses adopted by Switzerland and France. Is this the " accord " between France and England, boasted of by the French President, the new entente cordialef It were well our Liberals (those, at least, who do not subscribe to the picture of a Foreign Minister) should consider what such alliance bodes—coupling it with the good understanding between Napoleon and the East- ern Cossacks. Here again is a breach of what is called our neutrality: for it is notorious that British ships, and British officers of every service, are at the dis- posal of any royal personages who may be compelled to seek refuge from their justly-incensed subjects. Have Mr. Cobden and his " peace" friends no valorous words on this occasion ? The meaning of nonintervention is plain enough here. It signifies alknoing French and Spanish and Austrian and Neapolitan troops to invade the Roman states, to crush the Roman people, and to outrage their mostsacred rights; and refusing promised refuge (promised by an honourable custom, more explicitly than by words) to the Romans flying from their invaders,—the invaders with whom, as a Liberal, noninterveniog Minister phrases it, " we have nothing to do." If this refusal of hospitality is a beginning, do not let the course go under the name of a "Liberal policy. It would be handsomer to have the old Tories of the Holy Alliance in office; and the world might know what to expect. We are doubly disgraced by hanging out the false colours of a pretended sympathy. The veriest tyranny should abstain from shabbiness, putting on some dignity of con- science. The Tories at all events would not bungle after the dirty fashion of the Whigs, the graceless even in their most natural acts. Give us Aberdeen and Stanley rather than the men whom they so justly characterized as "promoters of freedom " and betrayers of all who would be free. Give us any rule rather than that of the imbecile, the double-dealer, and the unprincipled.
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