Page:Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy, 1738-1914 - ed. Jones - 1914.djvu/441

 This is a question which the English Government has had more than one opportunity of considering, and in every instance they considered it fully and completely. It recurred again in the year 1855, when a Conference was sitting at Vienna in the midst of the Russian War, and again the English Government—the Government of the Queen—had to deal with the subject of Poland. It was considered by them under the most favourable circumstances for Poland, for we were at war then, and at war with Russia. But after performing all the duties of a responsible Ministry on that occasion, Her Majesty's Government arrived at these—conclusions first, that it was not only not expedient for England to go to war to restore Poland, but that it was not expedient even to prolong a war for that object; and, in the next place, that any interference with a view to provoke a war in Poland, without action on our part, was not just to the Poles, and must only tend to bring upon them increased disasters. I say, therefore, that this question of Poland in the present century, and within the last thirty-four years, has been twice considered by different Governments; and when I remind the House that on its consideration by the Cabinet of Lord Grey in 1831, the individual who filled the office of Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and who, of course, greatly guided the opinion of his colleagues on such a question, was the noble lord the present First Minister of the Crown; and when I also remind the House that the British plenipotentiary at the Conference of Vienna in 1855, on whose responsibility in a great degree the decision then come to was arrived at, is the