Salisbury reviewed
Sir: In response to Noel Malcolm's `Europe's unholy godfathers' (23 Septem- ber) I would like to point to a brief passage in a speech by Lord Salisbury made during his premiership at the end of the last century. I think it explains what really lies at the root of the difference between the British and the Continental attitudes to- wards Europe — and it is one that Voltaire would have understood with sympathy towards the English. His argument was:
. . . that people in the localities should govern themselves — and that attempting to imitate Continental plans by drawing all authority from central power, though it might produce a more scientific, a more exact and furthermore a more effective admi- nistration, yet it was destitute of these two essentials of all good government. It did not produce a government that was suited to the facts and idiosyncrasies of the particular community for whom it was designed, and it did not teach people to take an interest in their own government.
Surely the lure of the more efficient system was never more poignantly under- stood nor the advantages of the less effi- cient more clearly stated. It seems to me vital that the 'new Europe', whatever that may turn out to be, must not cast over- board 'the two essentials of all good government'. That is what as 'good Euro- peans' we should be striving for even if, like the prophets of ancient Israel, we have stones cast at us for our message and we are labelled as tad Europeans' in the process. We certainly won't find many of Europe's unholy godfathers on our side.
John Coleman
Editor, New European, 14-16 Carrown Road, London SW8
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