Page:Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy, 1738-1914 - ed. Jones - 1914.djvu/140

 might offer for averting, or for terminating, hostilities.

From Verona we now come, with our Plenipotentiary, to Paris.

I have admitted on a former occasion, and I am perfectly prepared to repeat the admission, that, after the dissolution of the Congress of Verona, we might, if we had so pleased, have withdrawn ourselves altogether from any communication with France upon the subject of her Spanish quarrel; that, having succeeded in preventing a joint operation against Spain, we might have rested satisfied with that success, and trusted, for the rest, to the reflections of France herself on the hazards of the project in her contemplation. Nay, I will own that we did hesitate, whether we should not adopt this more selfish and cautious policy. But there were circumstances attending the return of the Duke of Wellington to Paris, which directed our decision another way. In the first place, we found, on the Duke of Wellington's arrival in that capital, that M. de Villèle had sent back to Verona the drafts of the dispatches of the three Continental allies to their Ministers at Madrid, which M. de Montmorency had brought with him from the Congress;—had sent them back for reconsideration;—whether with a view to obtain a change in their context, or to prevent their being forwarded to their destination at all, did not appear: but, be that as it might, the reference itself was a proof of vacillation, if not of change, in the French counsels.

In the second place, it was notorious that a change was likely to take place in the Cabinet of the Tuileries, which did in fact take place