Page:Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy, 1738-1914 - ed. Jones - 1914.djvu/145

 towards Spain. The complaint was quite of another sort. It complained of want of communication from this Government, of what was passing at Verona. The substance of this complaint was true; but in that want of communication there was no want of kindness. The date of M. San Miguel's dispatch is the 15th of November; the Congress did not close till the 29th. It is true that I declined making any communication to Spain, of the transactions which were passing at Verona, whilst the Congress was still sitting. I appeal to any man of honour, whether it would not have been ungenerous to our allies to make such a communication, so long as we entertained the smallest hope that the result of the Congress might not be hostile to Spain; and whether, considering the peculiar situation in which we were placed at that time, by the negotiation which we were carrying on at Madrid for the adjustment of our claims upon the Spanish Government, such a communication would not have been liable to the suspicion that we were courting favour with Spain, at the expense of our allies, for our own separate objects? We might, to be sure, have said to her, 'You complain of our reserve, but you don't know how stoutly we are fighting your battles at Verona.' But, Sir, I did hope that she never would have occasion to know that such battles had been fought for her. She never should have known it, if the negotiations had turned out favourably. When the result proved unfavourable, I immediately made a full disclosure of what had passed; and with that disclosure, it is unnecessary to say, the Spanish Government were, so far as Great Britain was concerned, entirely