Page:Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy, 1738-1914 - ed. Jones - 1914.djvu/273

 difficulties, they must have seen that it was an enterprise in which success could give their country little glory, while failure must cover it with disgrace. But what signifies to France the loss of such renown as victory bestows? What to her is the forgoing of one sprig of laurel more in addition to the accumulated honours of her victorious career? The multitude of Paris rather than France, the statesmen of the club and coffee-house, the politicians of the salons, the reasoners of the Boulevards, may retain their thirst for such additions, such superfluous additions, to the national fame. The sounder reasoners, the true statesmen, have, I trust, learnt a better lesson, and will teach her gallant people to prefer the more virtuous and more lasting glories of peace.

But whatever the Paris mob, in the drawing-rooms or in the streets, may have desired, I am confident the Government, if left to itself, had one object only in view, the rescue of Rome from the usurpation of a foreign rabble, and restoring the authority of the Pope, whom that rabble's violence had driven from his States. And here let me say a word which may not be popular in some quarters, and among some of my noble friends, upon the separation of the temporal and spiritual authority of the Pope. My opinion is that it will not do to say the Pope is all very well as a spiritual prince, but we ought not to restore his temporal power. That is a short-sighted and I think a somewhat superficial view of the case. I do not believe it possible that the Pope could exercise beneficially his spiritual functions if he had no temporal power. For what would be the consequence? He would be stripped of all his authority. We are