Page:Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy, 1738-1914 - ed. Jones - 1914.djvu/260

 It would give me great satisfaction if, having thus accidentally touched upon the transactions of Southern Italy, I could proceed at once thither in the progress on which I am now asking your Lordships to accompany me. But I find, my Lords, from what has been taking place within the last few weeks, how reluctant soever I may be to discuss the events of the northern divisions of Italy, and recur to questions often agitated here, and by none of your Lordships more ably than by the noble Earl near me (Lord Aberdeen), that I must allude to the conduct of his late Sardinian Majesty, to the still unfinished negotiations between Sardinia and Austria, to the still unremoved fleets of Sardinia in the Adriatic, to the beleaguering of Austria in her Venetian dominions, and to the prevention of her employing her undivided resources in crushing the rebellion in the eastern parts of her empire; and that I cannot examine the whole foreign policy of this country without adverting to the events which have happened in Northern Italy. It was at the beginning of the present session of Parliament that I had occasion to foretell before your Lordships the speedy discomfiture of the then monarch of Sardinia by the victorious troops of Marshal Radetzky. After a temporary success the year before, his Sardinian Majesty had been repulsed, had been compelled to repass the Ticino, had been driven to seek protection within the walls of his own capital, and had only not been pursued within those walls because his opponents had mercifully abstained from urging their victory to the utmost, and had preferred the redemption of their pledge of maintaining the Treaties of Vienna and the settlement of territory made under them,