Page:Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy, 1738-1914 - ed. Jones - 1914.djvu/452

 as heir of all the states which, according to the Treaty of London, were united under the sceptre of the late King. And on the 23rd, four days before he refused the invitation to the Congress, he writes to Lord Bloomfield:

To Sir Augustus Paget, our Minister at Copenhagen, on November 30—the House will recollect that this was after he had refused the Congress, after the King had died, and after the question had become an international one—he writes announcing his refusal of the Congress and proposing the sole mediation of England. Then he writes to Sir Alexander Malet in the same month, that Her Majesty's Government can only leave to Germany the sole responsibility of raising a war in Europe, which the Diet seemed bent on making.

This is the tone which the Government adopted, after the consideration, as we are bound to believe, which the question demanded, after having incurred the responsibility of refusing the Congress offered by the Emperor of the French, after the death of the King of Denmark, after the question had been changed from a federal to an international one—such, I repeat, is the tone they took up, and in which they sent their menacing messages to every Court in Germany. I say that at the death of the King of Denmark it behoved Her Majesty's Ministers, instead of adopting such a course, maturely to consider their position in