Page:Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy, 1738-1914 - ed. Jones - 1914.djvu/475

 burg. Twice have we supplicated in vain at Paris. We have menaced Austria, and Austria has allowed our menaces to pass her like an idle wind. We have threatened Prussia, and Prussia has defied us. Our objurgations have rattled over the head of the German Diet, and the German Diet has treated them with contempt.

Again, Sir, during the last few months there is scarcely a form of diplomatic interference which has not been suggested or adopted by the English Government—except a Congress. Conferences at Vienna, at Paris, at London, all have been proposed; protocols, joint declarations, sole mediation, joint mediation, identic notes, sole notes, united notes—everything has been tried. Couriers from the Queen have been scouring Europe with the exuberant fertility of abortive projects. After the termination of the most important Conference, held in the capital of the Queen, over which the chief Minister of Her Majesty's foreign relations presided, and which was attended with all the pomp and ceremony requisite for so great an occasion, we find that its sittings have been perfectly barren; and the chief Ministers of the Cabinet closed the proceedings by quitting the scene of their exertions and appearing in the two Houses of Parliament to tell the country that they have no allies, and that, as they have no allies, they can do nothing. Pardon me, I must not omit to do justice to the exulting boast of the Secretary of State, who, in the midst of discomfiture, finds solace in the sympathy and politeness of the neutral Powers. I do not grudge Lord Russell the sighs of Russia or the smiles of France; but I regret that, with characteristic discretion, he should have quitted