On Thursday, Mr. Herschel, Q.C. (M.P. for Durham), opened the
adjourned debate, and made probably the ablest speech of the- evening, at least on the legal side. He showed that if it was a breach ,of the comity of nations to help an escaped slave to defy the local law by receiving him on board of a British ship-of- war at all, it was equally so to enable him to defy the local law by saving him from peril of death, which the Circular allows Naval commanders to do. " When it was once admitted that danger to human life was a good ground for refusing to enforce local law, there was no ground for stopping at that point, and saying that this was the only reason for interference." The comity of nations never requires us to outrage humanity in deference to local law. Yet it may outrage humanity just as much to send back an escaped slave into slavery as to let him die under the vengeance of his pursuers. After Mr. Herschel, Mr. Gorat raked up rather ably on the Government side all the cases in which Liberal Ministers had been false to the principles which the Liberal party now support. Mr.. Forsyth and Lord Ellington expressed the bitterness of the Con- servative mutineers against the party discipline of the Govern- ment; Mr. Stansfeld made out the best apology he could for former Liberal Ministers ; Sir William Harcourt and the Solicitor- General for Ireland (Mr. Plunket) had a good sparring-match Lord Hartington went over the chief points of the Liberal case ; and Mr. Disraeli, in a speech of much violence and little moral force, in which be spoke of the policy of the Opposition as a. " dastardly scheme " to gain a " petty and hypercritical triumph by sacrificing the reputation of distinguished statesmen,—like Lord Clarendon,—appealed to the House to give him a victory, which it did in a division showing 290 for the Government, and 245 for Mr. Whitbread's motion,—majority, 45. Mr. Disraeli found it convenient to speak as though Lord Clarendon had been politically canonised, and as if it were a gross sin to dispute the spotlessness of his administrative judgment ; but that was an attitude of mind invented for the occasion.
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