the lips of any member in this House. (Mr. Osborne:  Napoleon said it.) Whatever my hon. and gallant friend’s accurate acquaintance with the correspondence of Napoleon may induce him to say, I may be permitted to observe that I am not prepared to take my impression of the character, of the strength, of the dignity, of the duty, or of the danger of this country, from that correspondence.  I will avail myself of this opportunity of expressing my opinion, if I may presume to give it, that too much has been said by my hon. and gallant friend and others of the specially distinct, separate, and exclusive interest which this country has in the maintenance of the neutrality of Belgium.  What is our interest in maintaining the neutrality of Belgium?  It is the same as that of every great Power in Europe.  It is contrary to the interest of Europe that there should be unmeasured aggrandizement.  Our interest is no more involved in the aggrandizement supposed in this particular case than is the interest of other Powers.  That it is a real interest, a substantial interest, I do not deny; but I protest against the attempt to attach to it the exclusive character which I never knew carried into the region of caricature to such a degree as it has been by my hon. and gallant friend.  What is the immediate moral effect of those exaggerated statements of the separate interest of England?  The immediate moral effect of them is this, that every effort we make on behalf of Belgium on other grounds than those of interest, as well as on grounds of interest, goes forth to the world as a separate and selfish scheme of ours; and that which we believe to be entitled to the dignity and credit of an effort on behalf of the general peace, stability, and interest of Europe actually contracts a taint of selfishness in the eyes of other nations because of the manner in which the subject of Belgian neutrality is too frequently treated in this House.  If I may be allowed to speak of the motives which have actuated Her Majesty’s Government in the matter, I would say that while we have recognized the interest of England, we have never looked upon it as the sole motive, or even as the greatest of those considerations which have urged us forward.  There is, I admit, the obligation of the treaty.  It is not necessary, nor would time permit me, to enter into the complicated question of the nature of the obligations of that treaty; but I am not able to subscribe to the doctrine of those who have held in this House what plainly amounts to an assertion, that the simple fact of the existence of a guarantee is binding on every party to it irrespectively altogether of the particular position in which it may find itself at the time when the occasion for acting on the guarantee arises.  The great authorities upon foreign policy to whom I have been accustomed to listen—­such as Lord Aberdeen and Lord Palmerston—­never, to my knowledge, took that rigid and, if I may venture to say so, that impracticable