I contend, Sir, that whatever might grow out of a separate conflict between Spain and France (though matter for grave consideration) was less to be dreaded, than that all the Great Powers of the Continent should have been arrayed together against Spain; and that although the first object, in point of importance, indeed, was to keep the peace altogether--to prevent _any_ war against Spain--the first, in point of time, was to prevent a _general_ war; to change the question from a question between the allies on one side and Spain on the other, to a question between nation and nation. This, whatever the result might be, would reduce the quarrel to the size of ordinary events, and bring it within the scope of ordinary diplomacy. The immediate object of England, therefore, was to hinder the impress of a joint character from being affixed to the war--if war there must be--with Spain; to take care that the war should not grow out of an assumed jurisdiction of the Congress; to keep within reasonable bounds that predominating _areopagitical_ spirit, which the memorandum of the British Cabinet of May, 1820, describes as 'beyond the sphere of the original conception, and understood principles of the alliance',--'an alliance never intended as a union for the government of the world, or for the superintendence of the internal affairs of other States.' And this, I say, was accomplished. With respect to Verona, then, what remains of accusation against the Government? It has been charged, not so much that the object of the Government was amiss, as that the negotiations were conducted in too low a tone. But the case was obviously one in which a high tone might have frustrated the object. I beg, then, of the House, before they proceed to adopt an Address which exhibits more of the ingenuity of philologists than of the policy of statesmen--before they found a censure of the Government for its conduct in negotiations of transcendent practical importance, upon refinements of grammatical nicety--I beg that they will at least except from the proposed censure, the transactions at Verona, where I think I have shown that a tone of reproach and invective was unnecessary, and, therefore, would have been misplaced.