Page:Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy, 1738-1914 - ed. Jones - 1914.djvu/270

 ment of her prodigious resources—whether it was in harmony with their professions of peace to send an army to overthrow the infant Republic of Rome—I will not stop now to inquire. Suffice it to say, that the assistance of France was invited by the Pope, as he says in his allocution from Gaeta, but not severally or distinctly—it was invited in conjunction with that of Austria, Spain, and Naples; and it is one of the very few criticisms which I am disposed to make upon the French Government, that the second difficulty in this question is the manner in which the French army went alone to Rome when the Pope asked them to come conjointly with the forces of the other Powers; for it seemed as if they meant to anticipate others, and to gain a footing in Rome before the Austrians could take the field.

But all my unfavourable remarks touching France are now at an end, for no Government, no army, could have acted more blamelessly—I should rather say, more admirably—than that French army and its commanders. In the first place, can any man doubt that they could have taken Rome long ago if they had not been averse to the effusion of blood? Little do they know the gallantry of French troops who entertain a contrary notion. Then they were strongly impressed with the idea that it was not right the innocent should suffer with the guilty. Again, they felt that they were not going against the Romans, but against those who had usurped and exercised an intolerable tyranny over the Romans, properly so called. They were marching against Mazzini and Garibaldi, that Garibaldi for whom a noble friend of mine (Lord Howden), whose eulogy is really praise, bespoke your sympathy