Page:Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy, 1738-1914 - ed. Jones - 1914.djvu/133

 the world will admit, the standard of political morality. I fear my honourable friend is not aware how difficult it is to apply to politics those pure, abstract principles which are indispensable to the excellence of private ethics. Had we employed in the negotiations that serious moral strain which he might have been more inclined to approve, many of the gentlemen opposed to me would, I doubt not, have complained, that we had taken a leaf from the book of the Holy Alliance itself; that we had framed in their own language a canting protest against their purposes, not in the spirit of sincere dissent, but the better to cover our connivance. My honourable friend, I admit, would not have been of the number of those who would so have accused us: but he may be assured that he would have been wholly disappointed in the practical result of our didactic reprehensions. In truth, the principle of non-interference is one on which we were already irrecoverably at variance in opinion with the allies; it was no longer debatable ground. On the one hand, the alliance upholds the doctrine of an European police; this country, on the other hand, as appears from the memorandum already quoted, protests against that doctrine. The question is, in fact, settled, as many questions are, by each party retaining its own opinions; and the points reserved for debate are points only of practical application. To such a point it was that we directed our efforts at Verona.

There are those, however, who think that with a view of conciliating the Continental Powers, and of winning them away the more readily from their purposes, we should have addressed them as