s vain to struggle. Events were speedily to
show that Lord Palmerston had more magic at his disposal than his
valiant foe believed. The agent of the British government in the China
seas--himself, by the way, a philosophic radical--had forced a war upon
the Chinese. The cabinet supported him. On the motion of Cobden, the
House censured the proceeding. Mr. Gladstone, whose hatred of
high-handed iniquities in China had been stirred in early days,[362] as
the reader may recall, made the most powerful speech in a remarkable
debate. 'Gladstone rose at half-past nine,' Phillimore says (Mar. 3),
'and delivered for nearly two hours an oration which enthralled the
House, and which for argument, dignity, eloquence, and effect is
unsurpassed by any of his former achievements. It won several votes.
Nobody denies that his speech was the finest delivered in the memory of
man in the House of Commons.' Apart from a rigorous examination of
circumstance and fact in the special case, as in the famous precedent of
Don Pacifico seven years before, he raised the dispute to higher planes
and in most striking language. He examined it both by municipal and
international law, and on 'the higher ground of natural justice'--'that
justice which binds man to man; which is older than Christianity,
because it was in the world before Christianity; which is broader than
Christianity, because it extends to the world beyond Christianity; and
which underlies Christianity, for Christianity itself appeals to it....
War taken at the best is a frightful scourge upon the human race; but
because it is so, the wisdom of ages has surrounded it with strict laws
and usages, and has required formalities to be observed which shall act
as a curb upon the wild passions of man.... You have dispensed with all
these precautions. You have turned a consul into a diplomatist, and that
metamorphosed consul is forsooth to be at liberty to direct the whole
might of England against the lives of a defenceless people.' Disraeli
in turn denounced proceedings which began in outrage and ended in ruin,
mocked at 'No reform, new taxes, Canton blazing, Persia invaded,' as the
programme of the party of progress and civilisation, and reprobated a
prime minister who had professed almost every principle, and connected
himself with almost every party. Palmerston replied by a stout piece of
close argument, spiced by taunts about coalitions, combinations, and
eloquent flourishes. But this time in