Page:Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy, 1738-1914 - ed. Jones - 1914.djvu/234

 Prussia—these three great and mighty monarchies, with such vast military forces, with such unbounded means, having command of all the roads which lead to Cracow, having the power of marching their troops at any moment into the city of Cracow, having certain rights which were constituted and assigned to them in the Treaty of Vienna—should have found themselves so powerless, as to be unable to prevent Cracow becoming dangerous to their peace and welfare. I cannot, indeed, but suspect, especially looking at the latter part of this transaction, when government was dissolved in Cracow—when disorganization took place that it was not unwelcome, or altogether unpalatable to those three Powers, to be enabled to say, 'All means of government are gone; Cracow is a scene of anarchy and disorder, and no remedy remains but the total abolition of the existence of that republic.' Therefore, Sir, both on the grounds of the Treaty of Vienna, the distinctness of the stipulations referring to Cracow, and with regard to the reasons which were urged for its extinction, I think, in the first place, there was a manifest violation of the Treaty of Vienna; and I believe, in the second, that, if the question had been discussed in a congress or conference among the Powers, there is no sufficient proof, so far as we have hitherto seen, that the three Powers would have been in a position to show good cause for the course they have adopted. Neither, Sir, am I convinced by the instances that are furnished by the Minister of Austria, as to various stipulations of the Treaty of Vienna, which have been altered by uncontested agreement between Powers who were concerned, and whose territories were