LORD PALMERSTON.

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 382, 21 June 1861, Page 3

LORD PALMERSTON.

MUTILATION OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS.

Not many weeks ago Lord Palmerston justified the dismissal of a servant of the Crown on the ground that the Protestant public at large choose to suspect him of a desire to falsify history. Nobody supposed that Mr, Turnbuli had actually suppressed—far less altered—any documents. All that could be said was that he was a violent partisan, and that violent partisans are not to be trusted with public papers. • The history of Queen Mary's reign is safe henceforwardsafer, it seems, from some strange circumstances we are about to speak of, than the history of Queen Victoria's.

A curious and disgraceful episode in the House of Commons, this week, proves it. Lord Palmerston has been placed at the bar of public opinion, and charged with having, some years ago, permitted to be printed despatches so mutilated as no longer to be the identical despatches the Government had received. Some one behind the scenes, before they could be laid on the table of the House of Commons, had been at them with the scissors and the pen. From some the point had been carefully extracted by removing the very passages for the sake of which the rest had been written. Others, as they were forced in print, represented the writer as maintaining the very opinion which it was his object in writing to refute, and as condemning the very persons whose honesty it was his purpose to uphold. In others, names have been suppressed, and words actually inserted.

Lord Palmerston does not deny that the documents in question have been tampered with. The evidence of the fact stands in black and white against either himself or his subordinates. We have no wijjh to rake up old offences, or to say what may be disagreeable to the Prime Minister. But he has chosen to draw down public animadversion on his head by justifying what has been done. To shield the criminal, whoever he may have been, the Premier has adopted a tone so lax, has treated so cruelly the reputation of the dead man whose despatches have been garbled, and has put forward a code of political honesty so different from what we wish to see ever tolerated in this country, that it is impossible to keep silence.

If the Emperor of the French had acted as somebody has acted when Lord Palmerston was chief of the Foreign Office, the English press would not spare him. The whole import of a mass of official correspondence has been unscrupulously altered to suit the purposes of a particular Ministry, just as it might have been altered by the most despotic Government abroad. Lord Palmerston does not deny it. He does not la seem to see that what iias been done is almost a crime. We are sorry, accordingly, to have to use very plain language on the subject. No other language, under the circumstances, will apply.

The stoty, though bearing on erents now twenty years old, can be related very briefly. About the year 1837 the Indian Government had some reason to be alarmed at the increasing influence of Russia in Central Asia. That Power had entered into an alliance with the Shah of Persia, and her agents were scattering themselves through the smaller Asiatic Courts. Much depended upon the line adopted at Cabul by Dost Mahomed Khan. It was of great importance that the ruler of Afghanistan should be our friend and ally. Irritated by the loss of Peshawur—which had been taken from Him by Runjeet Singh, during the civil war which ended in the expulsion from Cabul of Shah Soojah, the previous sovereign—the Dost wavered between a Russian alliance and a war with the rulers of Lahore, on the one hand, or an English alliance and a peaceful solution of all difficulties on the other.

It was at this critical moment that Alexander Burnes, a man whose name stands very high in the history of Indian diplomacy was despatched to the Court of Mahomed Khan. It was his business to watch the Dost, to report generally upon his disposition, and to adopt such measures as might generally further the interests of the Indian Government. The despatches of Sir A Burnes relate entirely to these topics.

The question to be decided was this— was the Dost to be trusted by England, or was he crifling with us and playing into the hands of Russia.

Sir A. Burnes thought that he was to be trusted. The Government at home came to a different conclusion, and the disastrous Affghan war broke out.

A good deal of criticism was naturally expended in this country on our foreign policy in the matter. By some it was said that the war was as unrighteous and unholy as it was certainly calamitous. Others maintained that the Government had dealt wisely with the Dost in treating him as a determined foe. In deference to the general anxiety, the official correspondence on the subject was laid before Parliament in 1839. Among it, of course, were printed what were supposed to be the letters of Sir A. Burnes. Public attention fastened on them at once. Everybody looked to see what Sir A. Burnes, the English Envoy at Cabul, said of the Dost's sincerity in his despatches to the Central Government.

The public were not aware of what had taken place behind the scenes. These despatches had been deliberately sifted, selected, mangled, and mutilated, before printing. Whols letters, the drift of which was to Qwmfyate thg ptjst t werQsapproqsQ^

Every single paragraph that told in the Dost's favour had been studiously cut out. Passages narrating the arrival at Cabul of Russian envoys were given at length. Passages narrating the cold reception they had received at the Dost's hands had disappeared. Wherever Sir A. Burnes had spoken o! Mahomed Khan's desire to accept our to.rms, and to contract a firm friendship with England, the knife of an unseen censor had removed the sentence.

We have said that Burnes believed in the good faith of the ruler of Cabul. When his correspondence emerged from the pigeonholes of the Cabinet it had been so completely changed in form and substance, that it seemed as if ho was of tho same mind with the Government as to Dost's undoubted insincerity. The British envoy at Cabul was represented to the public as if he had suggested a policy which he had consistently combated. For a long time, in consequence, it was thought by many persons that on the head of Sir A. Burnes rested the entire responsibility of the Affghan war. In order to prove our statements we reprint two out of many passages from his despatches which were absolutely and entirely suppressed: —

23rd December, 1837,

"The indication of friendship which has been put forward by your Lordship's administration, has arrested for a time the despair which had taken possession of the Affghan nation. The language which Dost Mahomed and every Mahomedan has held since a British mission entered this country —viz., that they will stand by us to the. last, and seek no aid or connexion while there was a hope of fi iendship from a nation dear to them for the strict maintenance of its treaties, and celebrated above all others for its liberality, justice, and honor, —with these words in his mouth Dost Mahomed came to inform me of the arrival of the Russian agent, of his determination to be guided ( by my advice, and even to refuse to receive him, if it were disagreeable to me. I saw that I dare not seek to hinder an independent chief from receiving an agent; for as it is justly held to be a law in civilized countries never to attack a nation in one of these, its most sacred rights, I should have incurred a responsibility, and I am sure have never been honored with your Lordship's approbation. Though the messenger has been received and delivered his letters, I trust that the friendly devotion of Do«t Mahomed in asking my advice, and next handing to me all the letters brought by the Emissary, will remain in your Lordship's mind as proofs of sincerity and conciliation h'ghly to be appreciated, and the more so as the British have as yet made no avowal of their support to his power, while he has received declarations from others, the sincerity of which can no longer be q'uea^ tioned."

The next extract proves that Sir A. Burnes persisted to the last in his opinion as to the advisability ot an alliance with the Dost, in spite of the expressed opinions of Lord Auckland to the contiary effect:—

" I have already in my despatch of the 30th of April, suggested a prompt and active counteraction of Dost Mahomed Khan, since we cannot act with him. But it remains to be reconsidered why we cannot act with Dost Mahomed. He is a man oi undoubted ability, and has at heart high opinions of the British nation; and if half you must 'do for others were done for him, and offers made which he could see conduced to his interests, he would abandon Persia and Russia to-morrow. It may be said that that opportunity has been given him, but I would ratherdiscuss that in person with you, for I think there is much to be said for him. Government has admitted that at best he had but a choice of difficulties, and it should not be forgotten that wo promised nothing, and Persia and Russia held out a great deal. lam not now viewing the question in the light of what is to be said of his rejection of our good offices so far as they went, or as to his doing so in the faceof a threat held out to him, but these fac:s show that the rn^n has something in him, and if Affghans are proverbially not to be trusted, I see no reason for having greater mistrust in him than others."

The unfortunate Sir A. Burnes, who gave his life subsequently for his country, lived long enough to protest against the treatment his letters had received. Various motions, however, were made in Parliament with the view of getting at the originals, without success. The entire set of papers were not printed until 1859, ia which year permission to print them was easily extracted from a Tory Government. Meanwhile the friends of Sir A. Burnes had not been silent. The draft of his original letters were placed in the hands of some members of Parliament, and the charge of mutilation openly preferred against Lord Palmerston. Let us hear a portion of the noble Lord's defence on March 1,1848:—

"The charge (viz., "of'having suppressed many passages, and of having perverted the documents laid before Parliament') has more than once been urged against us; it was brought forward frequently in the debates upon those important matters : We all took part in the discussion. My right hon. friend Sir John Hobhouse, who was then out of office, but at the same time felt himself bound to defend his own conduct and the acts of the Government of which he was a member, replied to the accusation ; and I affirm, if any man will give himself the trouble of referring to those debates, as recorded in Hansard, respecting the despatches of Sir Alexander Burnes, he will see that it is not true to assert that the papers produced to the House did not contain a faithful report of the opinions which that gentleman gave to the Governor-General and the Board of Control. Ido not mean to say that Sir A. Burnes did not himself subsequently alter those opinions; but the passages omitted contained opinions on subjects irrelevant to the question at issue; and whoa the Housq remowbers how much

Government is blamed for printing matters which do not boar upon the question, and how liable it is to the charge of endeavoring to obscure tho understanding of members, the House will be of opinion that we were not wrong in striking out such passages as wero irrelevant and unimportant."

The papers have since been laid on the tatle of tho House of Commons. We are warranted, accordingly, in saying that such a defence as the above is no longer open to Lord Palmerston. The line ho adopted on Tuesday night was a slightly different dhe. He boldly confessed that the opinions of Sir A. Burnes, with respect to Dost Mahomed, had been weeded out of the first published set of despatches. Sir A. Burnes, he said, was a simple-minded man, and had been deceived by tho Dost. The Affghan war was necessitated by reliable intelligence as 'to the designs of the latter which reached the hands of the Government from other and better informed quarters. Sir A. Burnes, he went on to remark, was not the Governor-General of India—his policy was not to influence the policy of the Government —nor was it necessary to lay before the House of Commons the detailed opinions of a subordinate who had been thrown overboard by his superiors.

Lord Palmerston is too logical a reasoner not to be aware that his answer is entirely beside the point. The liberality of the House of Commons with regard to public papers is well known. It is rarely that they press for the .^ production of any at a time when their production would disturb pending negotiations or injure public interests. It was quite within the power of the Foreign Office to persuade the House at that time uo t to ask for the despatches of Sir A. Burnes. But these despatches, onco given, should not have been garbled. The object of laying correspondence on the table at all was to exhibit the reasons on which the Cabinet had acted in their Indian measures, and by which the public" were to judge them.

By an ingenious system of docking and manipulation, our Envoy's letters are cut down and twisted, till they are made to say precisely what it was,his distinct object not to say. His name is then printed at the end, and a forged document is foisted on the country. Thus the unhappy Burnes, who had objected to the policy of his chiefs in office, as soon as the policy is called in question by the public, is made ingeniously to play the part of a witness in their favor.

It is idle to say that it is of no importance to the country what were his private views. If so, we ask Lord Palmerston, with one of the speakers of Tuesday night, what was the object of that minute, ingenious, and unmatched care which was taken in mutilating the despatches of a gentleman whose views were of no importance ?

It has been known for some time back that the Affghan papers had been subjected to a process such as we have described. It was only known on Tuesday night that Lord Palmerston would avow and justify it. If the noble Lord had pleaded the Statute of Limitations—if he had said that, after twenty years, political offences should have been forgotten—we should have dropped the subject without remark. But he has endorsed the principles on which he, or, at all events, his colleague of twenty years ago, acted in this affair. That being so, the case is different.

Motives of State policy may prevent the House;of Commons from a retrospective condemnation of acts now gone by. The Press of this country is bound by no such course. It is bound, on the contrary, io protest, in the name of honesty and fairness, against proceedings which are dangerous and intolerable. Are the Blue-books daily presented to Parliament, under Lord Palmerston's supervision, docked with the same tender care? When we read a despatch, say from Sir J. Hudson, or from Lord Cowley, are we to understand that we are reading a composition of the Foreign Office? Did the letters from our Syrian Consuls, last year printed* really arrive, or were they only fictions founded upon fact. Has the Foreign office a Government domestic editor like the Paris journals ?

The revelations which have been made in the House on Tuesday night are so completely beyond all precedent—so out of the common run of things—so damaging to Lord Palmerston's statesmanship—that it it difficult to cloak our indignation in conventional form. The conduct of the guilty person, whoever he may be, has been thoroughly un-English. It is not English conduct for a Minister, when put on his trial, to mntiliate the correspondence which would tell against him (whatever be its worth), and to twist it into evidence in his favor.

It is not English conduct to leave a subordinate to bear the odium of having advised a war which he endeavored to prevent.

It is not English conduct to mar the reputation of an able and distinguished servant when he is dead, in order to justify oneself or one's colleagues in office. Such conduct is not English, and we hope it may never become so.— / Saturday Beview % March 23rd.