Page:Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy, 1738-1914 - ed. Jones - 1914.djvu/263

 and he has paid, in consequence, the penalty of giving ear to evil counsellors. Then there was more of negotiation, although one would have thought that, when Radetzky stopped in the full career of victory, there would have been an end of all resistance on the part of Sardinia. The negotiation which then began has been continued from day to day up to the present hour, and, if common fame can be trusted, there is less chance now of that negotiation leading to the pacificationof Northern Italy than there was three or four months ago. I deeply lament this, my Lords. Every friend of the true policy of England, and every friend of the peace of Europe, must lament it. I hear it said, our Foreign Office lends its aid to the delay of peaceful measures in Turin; and I hear it with wonder, considering what has passed within the last two years; But I am afraid that there are some natures far too sanguine—some whom no failure can cure of the most extravagant hopes—who, while they are sinking, cling to the feeblest straw, and derive hope from the slightest change, and who, because things are not just as they were twenty-four hours before, expect that better times are coming, and hope even against hope itself. I think that what has recently taken place in Hungary, in Croatia, and in Transylvania, has been the foundation of the hopes recently entertained by the friends of Sardinia, and that some parties in England, but still more in Turin, have conceived expectations that Austria, if these negotiations are allowed to drag their slow length along, will be frustrated in her designs of—what? Aggrandizement? Oh, no. If that were all, the difficulty might easily be removed. For look, my