view of a guarantee.  The circumstance that there is already an existing guarantee in force is of necessity an important fact, and a weighty element in the case, to which we are bound to give full and ample consideration.  There is also this further consideration, the force of which we must all feel most deeply, and that is the common interest against the unmeasured aggrandizement of any Power whatever.  But there is one other motive, which I shall place at the head of all, that attaches peculiarly to the preservation of the independence of Belgium.  What is that country?  It is a country containing 4,000,000 or 5,000,000 of people, with much of an historic past, and imbued with a sentiment of nationality and a spirit of independence as warm and as genuine as that which beats in the hearts of the proudest and most powerful nations.  By the regulations of its internal concerns, amid the shocks of revolution, Belgium through all the crises of the age, has set to Europe an example of a good and stable government, gracefully associated with the widest possible extension of the liberty of the people.  Looking at a country such as that, is there any man who hears me who does not feel that if, in order to satisfy a greedy appetite for aggrandizement, coming whence it may, Belgium were absorbed, the day that witnessed the absorption would hear the knell of public right and public law in Europe?  But we have an interest in the independence of Belgium, which is wider than that—­which is wider than that which we may have in the literal operation of the guarantee.  It is found in the answer to the question whether, under the circumstances of the case, this country, endowed as it is with influence and power, would quietly stand by and witness the perpetration of the direst crime that ever stained the pages of history, and thus become participators in the sin?  And now let me deal with the observation of the hon. member for Waterford.  The hon. member asks:  What if both these Powers with whom we are making this treaty should combine against the independence of Belgium?  Well, all I can say is that we rely on the faith of these parties.  But if there be danger of their combining against that independence now, unquestionably there was much more danger in the position of affairs that was revealed to our astonished eyes a fortnight ago, and before these later engagements were contracted.  I do not undertake to define the character of that position which, as I have said, was more dangerous a fortnight ago.  I feel confident that it would be hasty to suppose that these great States would, under any circumstances, have become parties to the actual contemplation and execution of a proposal such as that which was made the subject of a communication between persons of great importance on behalf of their respective States.  That was the state of facts with which we had to deal.  It was the combination, and not the opposition, of the two Powers which we had to fear, and I contend—­and we shall