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In his _Parliamentary Remembrances_ he gives many precedents, both from the histories of England and Scotland, showing that no peace was made, no war was made, without Parliament being summoned. Henry V, he says, would not enter
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(war with France, for instance) without the consent of Parliament; and when the French king wished for peace, Henry replied that peace needed to
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The same process was gone through with regard to the French king and his Estates of France. Newman quotes Rome, whose citizens went through a long formality before making any war, the King and Senate
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and what
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One may see some other country assuming a warlike attitude towards ourselves, and it might very possibly be allowed to come within the bounds of the word
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if we were prepared to strike the initial blow before our enemy--to all intents and purposes, save for the actual throwing of the glove--were fully prepared as to armaments, etc. It is well known how earnestly Richard Cobden, the Manchester Apostle of Free Trade, was one of the most prominent champions of peace; he who, for championing the cause of the Abolition of corn duties for the sake of his poorer countrymen, when he and others pushed forward the
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Anti-Corn Law League (which was passed in 1846), lost all his own private funds, and his business was ruined, simply because his time was _all_ given not to his own affairs, but to the service of his country. Mr. Cobden, as Newman reminds us,
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Indeed, he prevailed on the Ministers of his day so far that, when the Russian War ended in 1856,
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Lord Clarendon, in the name of England, initiated some important clauses, of which one avowed that the Powers who signed the treaty would never thenceforward undertake war without first attempting to stay and supersede it by arbitration. England, France, Russia, Sardinia, and Turkey all signed this treaty, yet in a very few years the solemn promise proved itself to be mere wind. He goes on say,
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When passions are at work, superior might, not unarmed arbitration, is needed to control them.
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It is the singular disgrace of modern England to have allowed the solemn responsibility of war to be tampered with by the arbitrary judgment of executive officers: ... this same nation permits war to be made; lives by the twenty thousand or fifty thousand to be sacrificed ... at the secret advice of a Cabinet, _all of one party, acting collectively for party objects_, no one outside knowing how each has voted.... The orders to make or not to make war went out direct from the Board of Control--that is, really from the Ministry in Downing Street. Two, or even one resolute man had power to make war without check.... If Earl Grey is right, and a Cabinet must be a _party_, this is a decisive, irrefragable reason why a Cabinet must _never_ exercise the function of deciding on Peace or War. The recent [Footnote: He is writing in 1859.] overthrow of the East India Company has swept away all the shams which have hidden from England that the Ministry in Downing Street worked the Indian puppet.... Parliament should claim that public debate shall precede all voluntary hostilities, small or great ... to protest in the most solemn way that henceforth no blow in war shall be struck until the voice of Parliament has permitted and commanded it.
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On the War Power, he goes on to say:
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In regard to the difficulties as regards arbitration, and also as regards the voice of the people being made a _sine quâ non_, whenever a proposal for war emanates from the powers that be: When an evil is undeniable, serious, unjust in principle ... (referring to secret diplomacy), a remedy must exist. Where there is a will there is a way: nay, many ways.