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
Her Majesty's Government expect, as a matter of course, that all the
Powers will recognize the succession of the King of Denmark 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:
Her Majesty's Government would have no right to interfere
on behalf of Denmark if the troops of the Confederation
should enter Holstein on federal grounds. But if execution
were enforced on international grounds, the Powers who
signed the treaty of 1852 would have a right to interfere.
(No. 3, 230.)
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 behooved Her Majesty's
Ministers, instead of adopting such a course, maturely to consider
their position in relation to the events which had occurred. There
were two courses open to Her Majesty's Government, both intelligible,
both honourable. It was open to them, after the death of the King
of Denmark, to have acted as France had resolved under the same
circumstances to act--France, who occupies, we are told, a position in
reference to these matters so dignified and satisfactory that it has
received the compliments even of a baffled Minister. That course was
frankly announced shortly afterwards to the English Minister by the
Minister of France in Denmark. On November 19 General Fleury said to
Lord Wodehouse at Copenhagen:
That his own instructions from the Emperor were, not
to take part in any negotiations here, but to tell the
Danish Government explicitly that if Denmark became
involved in a war with Germany, France would not come
to her assistance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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