Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/269

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Free Trade and the Channel Tunnel.
261

gonists were 'honourable men.' This was the cue given at once to the Cabinet, to the nation, and to as many as Baron Stockmar chose to acquaint with the 'views' of the British Court. The change in the temper of the nation was as sudden as a transformation scene, and we were irrevocably committed to war. … The scheme for enlisting foreigners, which got us into such a scrape with the United States, was of the Prince's suggesting. The Cabinet eyed it with suspicion at first, but ended by adopting it, as is duly noted to the Prince's glorification."[1]

All this is now before the British nation, and the nation can judge how far the Prince Consort's advocacy of the Channel Tunnel is a guarantee that the Channel Tunnel is likely to be a powerful element of good, and not a powerful element of evil to the island of Great Britain. A man can have but one country. An Englishman looks upon England from an Englishman's point of view. A German looks upon England from a German's point of view; and as the Channel Tunnel would seem to do little more than place England and France on the same footing as Germany and France are, the German sees no objection to the Channel Tunnel. But I do not think that the Englishmen of the last quarter of the nineteenth century will submit to be governed by Germans.