Page:Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy, 1738-1914 - ed. Jones - 1914.djvu/465

 another Bill for the purpose of reforming the constitution, would it not have been asking an utter impossibility? But how did Her Majesty's Government act towards Denmark in similar circumstances? First of all, the noble lord at the head of the Foreign Office wrote to Lord Wodehouse on December 20, giving formal advice to the Danish Government to repeal the constitution, and Lord Wodehouse, who had been sent upon this painful and, I must say, impossible office to the Danish Minister, thus speaks of the way in which he had performed his task:

And Sir Augustus Paget, who appears to have performed his duty with great temper and talent, writing on December 22, says:

Now, I ask, what are the conclusions which any gentleman—I do not care on what side of the House he may sit—would have drawn from such language as that? But before that, a special interview took place between Lord Wodehouse and the Danish Minister, of which Lord Wodehouse writes:

It was my duty to declare to M. Hall that if the Danish Government rejected our advice, Her Majesty's Govern-