After mentioning that he had not long before informed Lord Palmerston, that ’while he was resolved to maintain an independent position in Parliament, it was nevertheless his desire and intention, subject to that qualification and reserve, to support the Government,’ he proceeded: 

I formed this resolution not only because I had reason to believe that on questions of public policy my sentiments would generally be found to be in accordance with those of the present Government, nor yet only because I felt I owed to the noble Viscount himself, and many at least of his colleagues, a debt of obligation for the generous support they uniformly gave me at critical periods in the course of my foreign career; but also, and principally, because in the critical position in which this country was placed—­at a time when we had only recently presented to the astonished eye of Europe the discreditable spectacle of a great country left for weeks without a Government, and a popular and estimable Monarch left without councillors, during a period of great national anxiety and peril; when there was hardly a household in England where the voice of wailing was not to be heard, or an eye which was not heavy with a tear—­it appeared to me, I say, under such circumstances, to be the bounden duty of every patriotic man, who had not some very valid and substantial reason to assign for adopting a contrary course, to tender a frank and generous support to the Government of the Queen.

Having come to that determination, he had now to ask himself whether circumstances were so altered as to make it his duty to revoke the pledge spontaneously given?  To this conclusion he could not bring himself.

It seems to me (he said) these Resolutions divide themselves naturally into two parts.  The first part has reference to what I may call the general policy of the Government with respect to the war; and that portion of them is conceived in strains of eulogy and commendation—­I may almost say in strains of exultation.  The Resolutions speak of firm alliances, of brotherhood in arms, of a sympathetic and enthusiastic people; but not a word of regret for national friendships of old standing broken—­desolation carried into thousands of happy homes—­Europe in arms—­Asia agitated and febrile—­America sullenly expectant.

This exuberance of exultation, he said, was amply met by the exuberance of denunciation which characterises the latter part of the Address; but it was to his mind even less just than the former.

But even (he continued) if I could bring myself to believe, which I have failed in doing, that censure might be passed in the terms of these Resolutions upon Her Majesty’s present Government without injustice, I should still be unwilling to concur in them, unless I could find some better security than either the Resolutions themselves afford, or, as I regret to be obliged to add, the antecedents