ion, gentlemen; but there has
been even worse than that--worse, I am grieved to say it. I cannot
help saying it without being in a condition to trace home the charge
if this was thought needful, and I am very unwilling to fasten it upon
any one without that full and demonstrative evidence which the
case hardly admits of; but I will say this, that news--that
intelligence--has been falsified to bewilder and mislead to their
own peril and detriment the people of this country. You remember,
gentlemen, what happened at the outbreak of the great war between
France and Germany in 1870. At that time there existed for a few
days a condition of things which produced in that case excitement of
expectation as to the points upon which the quarrel turned; and you
remember that a telegram was sent from Berlin to Paris, and was
published in Paris, or rather, if I recollect aright, it was announced
by a Minister in the Chamber, stating that the King of Prussia, as he
was then, had insulted the ambassador of France by turning his back
upon him in a garden, where they had met, and refusing to communicate
with him. The consequence was an immense exasperation in France; and
the telegram, which afterwards proved to be totally and absolutely
false, was a necessary instrument for working up the minds of the
French people to a state in which some of them desired, and the rest
were willing to tolerate, what proved to be a most disastrous war.
That war never was desired by the French nation at large, but by false
intelligence heat was thrown into the atmosphere, party feeling and
national feeling to a certain extent were excited, and it became
practicable to drag the whole nation into the responsibility of the
war. I remember well at that time what passed through my mind. I
thought how thankful we ought to be that the use of methods so
perilous, and so abominable--for the word is not too strong--never
could be known in our happy country. Yes, gentlemen; but since that
time it has been known in our happy country. Since that time false
telegrams about the entry of the Russian army into Constantinople have
been sent home to disturb, and paralyse, and reverse the deliberations
of Parliament, and have actually stopped these deliberations, and
led experienced statesmen to withhold their action because of this
intelligence, which was afterwards, and shortly afterwards, shown to
be wholly without ground. Who invented that false intelligence I
do not know