MR. LALOR ON ENGLISH FOREIGN POLICY.* IT was a wise
thing to separate this admirable little dissertation on the duties of England to other nations, and the conditions under which alone she can fulfil those duties, from the economi- Cal theories with which it was bound up in Mr. Lalor's volume on "Money and Morals." Nor does the date at which that book was published, n ow twelve years ago, render the really
independent essay here extracted from it in any sense whatever obsolete. On the contrary, we think it adds to its value. Mr. Lalor, who was for many years one of the principal editors of the Morning Chronicle during its brightest days of competition and perhaps equality with the Times, had watched the foreign policy of England during the greater part of the forty years' peace, not only with the minuteness of an acute and practised writer, but with an
interest that had a deeper tone of earnestness in it than it is at all common to find introduced into politics at all. It was his deep conviction that the commercial spirit which was gradually pushing more and more into the management of our political life was sapping the morality of the national Government, and hence the mistake,—from a literary point of view we think it was a mistake,—of engrafting on a somewhat abstruse mone- tary discussion concerning what he thought the dangerous tendency to accumulation in English wealth this vigorous and thoughtful essay on our political ethics. The interest of the essay now is twofold, consisting not only in its able recital of the argu-
ments which almost every thoughtful Englishman will more or less
clumsily advance against the narrow theory of absolute non-inter- vention, but in the comparison it enables us to make between the fears which thinking men entertained concerning England in 1852 and the actual course of events since. Mr. Lalor's essay is not limited to an indictment against the selfish theory of international politics, it also presses vehemently on the country the duty of re-organizing both the Army and the Navy, in order to qualify England for performing her international duties. On both sub- jects Mr. Lalor was in perfect sympathy with a tide of opinion at that time only just beginning to flow, but which, soon after Mr. Lalor wrote, assumed a strength that surprised the Government, and probably hurried it into the Crimean war almost against its own prepossessions. By that war we were compelled perforce to reform our Army and Navy administration, and so, as it seemed, within five years from the date of Mr. Lalor's book the two
great political aims of it were both of them effectually reached.
Nor can we doubt that as regards the second of the two national convictions which Mr. Lalor sought to implant or strengthen,—
the conviction that England ought always to have at her dis- posal ample material means for exercising her fit influence in inter- national affairs,—the popularity of the views which Mr. Lalor expresses has continued up to the present moment. The school which argues for the preservation of peace by depriving thecoun try of the power to go to war shoWed more appearance of vitality in 1852 than it shows now. The demands for money for fortifi- cations, for volunteer naval force, for rifle volunteers, for army, for navy, for experiments in artillery, for experiments in ship- building, were never so cheerfully conceded as in the last few years. Were Mr. Lalor still living, he would admit that in such matters there is no longer tenable ground for complaint, indeed, that if there be any ground for complaint at all, it is that Parlia- ment gives too easily without any disposition to check the items of the expenditure proposed.
And yet, in spite of all this, though the means of contributing our share to the fund for the maintenance of international justice * ingland among the Nations. By John Lalor, A.B. London: Chapman and are more willingly granted than ever, the great political aim for which Mr. Later wrote never probably seemed so distant. There never was a time in which the shrinking back of our statesmen and of the Parliamentary opinion which influences our statesmen from very plain and very clearly defined national duties was so conspicuous. The following lines, for instance, instead of having been written twelve years ago, might well have been composed expressly as a rebuke to England in the present crisis :— " That a strong nation should step in with her aid whenever a weak one is struggling against oppression is a course which recommends itself to our best feelings ; but it may often be impossible to resist the injustice successfully, or without giving rise to an amount of disorder and misery so vast that the risk is too great to be voluntarily incurred by the limited human intelligence. No general rule of that kind therefore can be admitted. Each specfal case, as it arises, must be dealt with upon its own merits ; but the best security for a right decision in the cases where the national obligation is doubtful will be sure to exist when a nation is habitually prepared to discharge those obligations towards other nations of the extent and force of which there can be no doubt whatever. `-'0• "Now, by the consent of all nations, there are cases in which in ference is both right and practicable, and nations have bound themsel to each other by treaties in which such cases are provided for. It however, a question with some whether such treaties ought to s observed. It is true they have been repeatedly broken. But are wri, advancing towards a better state of things, or declining towards a worse, by laying down the rule that no treaty stipulations are to be observed any more ? The law of nations is a loose, defective, and, in some respects, wholly indeterminate rule of action ; buts if it is ever to become clear, and adequate, and binding—if, in a word, we are ever to realize that grand conception, the Federation of the World,' which is presented to us not only by the imagination of Tennyson, but by the practical sense of Cobden—it would seem natural to begin by giving all possible sacredness and validity to those parts of the law the ob- ligation of which is universally admitted. There are some very refined moral questions which an individual may meditate respecting the use of property, but it would not help him, in the establishment of a perfect moral standard, to begin with a doubt as to his obligation to pay his tradesmen's bills. Now the tradesiii_egs bills of England are the treaties which she has deliberately signek binding her to aid in main- taining the independence of certain foreign nations."
It would be said of course that the last sentence refers in strict- ness only to treaties of guarantee, and that though we are con- senting to the breach of a treaty with Denmark, it was not a treaty of guarantee. And no doubt verbally this is true, we doubt whether any explicit guarantee, however strong, could have much more moral obligation for England than the transactions of the last twelvemonth—including, as they do, a sort of promise given by Lord Palmerston in Parliament, and founded as they are upon a treaty which was devised, recommended, and carried into operation by the influence of England,—would have in binding any sensitive political power. There never had been a moment at the time Mr. Lalor wrote at which it could have been more truly said than it can now that "England's desire foipeace at any price will not allow her to press for even the most just reparation wherever she is likely to encounter resistance." We can heartily recommend this vigorous and thoughtful essay to all who are musing either on the theory or practice of English foreign policy, and who want the guidance of a writer who had both watched it closely for a generation, and had thought deeply of the principles which should guide it.
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