Page:Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy, 1738-1914 - ed. Jones - 1914.djvu/190

 sion in this sentence—the metaphor (such as it is) about 'striking at the root of the British Constitution'—is mine. It is in my dispatch to Sir Charles Stuart of the 4th of February. I claim it with the pride and fondness of an author; when I see it plagiarized by those who condemn me for not using sufficiently forcible language, and who yet, in the very breath in which they pronounce that condemnation, are driven to borrow my very words to exemplify the omission which they impute.

So much for the justice of the Address; now for its usefulness and efficacy.

What is the full and sufficient declaration of the sense of the House on this most momentous crisis, which is contained in this monitory expostulation to the throne? It proceeds: 'Further to declare to His Majesty the surprise and sorrow with which this House has observed that His Majesty's Ministers should have advised the Spanish Government, while so unwarrantably menaced'—(this 'so' must refer to something out of doors, for there is not a word in the previous part of this precious composition to which it can be grammatically applied)—'to alter their constitution, in the hope of averting invasion; a concession which alone would have involved the total sacrifice of national independence, and which was not even palliated by an assurance from France, that on receiving so dishonourable a submission, she would desist from her unprovoked aggression.' (I deny this statement, by the way; it is a complete misrepresentation.) 'Finally to represent to His Majesty that, in the judgement of this House, a tone of more dignified remonstrance