Page:Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy, 1738-1914 - ed. Jones - 1914.djvu/132

 of the alliance',—'an alliance never intended as a union for the government of the world, or for the superintendence of the internal affairs of other States.' And this, I say, was accomplished.

With respect to Verona, then, what remains of accusation against the Government? It has been charged, not so much that the object of the Government was amiss, as that the negotiations were conducted in too low a tone. But the case was obviously one in which a high tone might have frustrated the object. I beg, then, of the House, before they proceed to adopt an Address which exhibits more of the ingenuity of philologists than of the policy of statesmen—before they found a censure of the Government for its conduct in negotiations of transcendent practical importance, upon refinements of grammatical nicety—I beg that they will at least except from the proposed censure, the transactions at Verona, where I think I have shown that a tone of reproach and invective was unnecessary, and, therefore, would have been misplaced.

Among those who have made unjust and unreasonable objections to the tone of our representations at Verona, I should be grieved to include the honourable member for Bramber (Mr. Wilberforce), with whose mode of thinking I am too well acquainted not to be aware that his observations are founded on other and higher motives than those of political controversy. My honourable friend, through a long and amiable life, has mixed in the business of the world without being stained by its contaminations: and he, in consequence, is apt to place—I will not say too high, but higher, I am afraid, than the ways of