Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914
History
Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914
Great Britain -- Foreign relations; Speeches, addresses, etc., English
nations, the nature, the causes, and the magnitude of the danger
against which we have to guard, in order to judge of the security
which we ought to accept.
I say, then, that before any man can concur in opinion with that
learned gentleman--before any man can think that the substance of His
Majesty's answer is any other than the safety of the country required;
before any man can be of opinion, that to the overtures made by the
enemy, at such a time, and under such circumstances, it would have
been safe to have returned an answer concurring in the negotiation--he
must come within one of the three following descriptions: he must
either believe that the French revolution neither does now exhibit,
nor has at any time exhibited, such circumstances of danger, arising
out of the very nature of the system and the internal state and
condition of France, as to leave to foreign Powers no adequate ground
of security in negotiation; or, secondly, he must be of opinion, that
the change which has recently taken place has given that security,
which, in the former stages of the revolution, was wanting; or,
thirdly, he must be one who, believing that the danger existed, not
undervaluing its extent, nor mistaking its nature, nevertheless
thinks, from his view of the present pressure on the country, from his
view of its situation and its prospects, compared with the situation
and prospects of its enemies, that we are, with our eyes open, bound
to accept of inadequate security for everything that is valuable and
sacred, rather than endure the pressure, or incur the risk, which
would result from a farther prolongation of the contest.
In discussing the last of these questions, we shall be led to consider
what inference is to be drawn from the circumstances and the result of
our own negotiations in former periods of the war;--whether, in the
comparative state of this country and France, we now see the same
reason for repeating our then unsuccessful experiments;--or whether
we have not thence derived the lessons of experience, added to the
deductions of reason, marking the inefficacy and danger of the very
measures which are quoted to us as precedents for our adoption.
Unwilling, Sir, as I am to go into much detail on ground which has
been so often trodden before, yet, when I find the learned gentleman,
after all the information which he must have received, if he has read
any of the answers to his work (however ignorant he might be when
he wrote it), still giving the sanction of his authority to the
supposition that the order to M. Chauvelin to depart from this kingdom
was the cause of the war between this country and France, I do feel it
necessary to say a few words on that part of the subject.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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