Page:Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy, 1738-1914 - ed. Jones - 1914.djvu/137

 So far as Great Britain is concerned, I answer—in the first place, as we did not wish the affairs of Spain to be brought into discussion at all, we could not take or suggest a preliminary step which would have seemed to recognize the necessity of such a discussion. In the next place, if Spain had been invited, the answer to that invitation might have produced a contrary effect to that which we aimed at producing. Spain must either have sent a Plenipotentiary, or have refused to do so. The refusal would not have failed to be taken by the allies as a proof of the duresse of the King of Spain. The sending one, if sent (as he must have been) jointly by the King of Spain and the Cortes, would at once have raised the whole question of the legitimacy of the existing Government of Spain, and would, almost to a certainty, have led to a joint declaration from the alliance, such as it was our special object to avoid.

But was there anything in the general conduct of Great Britain at Verona, which lowered, as has been asserted, the character of England? Nothing like it. Our Ambassador at Constantinople returned from Verona to his post, with full powers from Russia to treat on her behalf with the Turkish Government; from which Government, on the other hand, he enjoys as full confidence as perhaps any Power ever gave to one of its own Ambassadors. Such is the manifest decay of our authority, so fallen in the eyes of all mankind is the character of this country, that two of the greatest States of the world are content to arrange their differences through a British Minister, from reliance on British influence, and from confidence in British equity and British wisdom!