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
In compromise and treaty with such a power, placed in such hands as
now exercise it, and retaining the same means of annoyance which it
now possesses, I see little hope of permanent security. I see no
possibility at this moment of concluding such a peace as would justify
that liberal intercourse which is the essence of real amity; no chance
of terminating the expenses or the anxieties of war, or of restoring
to us any of the advantages of established tranquillity; and as
a sincere lover of peace, I cannot be content with its nominal
attainment; I must be desirous of pursuing that system which promises
to attain, in the end, the permanent enjoyment of its solid and
substantial blessings for this country, and for Europe. As a sincere
lover of peace, I will not sacrifice it by grasping at the shadow,
when the reality is not substantially within my reach--_Cur igitur
pacem nolo? Quid infida est, quia periculosa, quia esse non potest_.
If, Sir, in all that I have now offered to the House, I have succeeded
in establishing the proposition that the system of the French
revolution has been such as to afford to foreign Powers no adequate
ground for security in negotiation, and that the change which has
recently taken place has not yet afforded that security; if I have
laid before you a just statement of the nature and extent of the
danger with which we have been threatened; it would remain only
shortly to consider, whether there is anything in the circumstances
of the present moment to induce us to accept a security confessedly
inadequate against a danger of such a description.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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