My third principle is this.  Even, gentlemen, when you do a good thing, you may do it in so bad a way that you may entirely spoil the beneficial effect; and if we were to make ourselves the apostles of peace in the sense of conveying to the minds of other nations that we thought ourselves more entitled to an opinion on that subject than they are, or to deny their rights—­well, very likely we should destroy the whole value of our doctrines.  In my opinion the third sound principle is this:  to strive to cultivate and maintain, ay, to the very uttermost, what is called the concert of Europe; to keep the Powers of Europe in union together.  And why?  Because by keeping all in union together you neutralize and fetter and bind up the selfish aims of each.  I am not here to flatter either England or any of them.  They have selfish aims, as, unfortunately, we in late years have too sadly shown that we too have had selfish aims; but then, common action is fatal to selfish aims.  Common action means common objects; and the only objects for which you can unite together the Powers of Europe are objects connected with the common good of them all.  That, gentlemen, is my third principle of foreign policy.

My fourth principle is—­that you should avoid needless and entangling engagements.  You may boast about them; you may brag about them.  You may say you are procuring consideration for the country.  You may say that an Englishman can now hold up his head among the nations.  You may say that he is now not in the hands of a Liberal Ministry, who thought of nothing but pounds, shillings, and pence.  But what does all this come to, gentlemen?  It comes to this, that you are increasing your engagements without increasing your strength; and if you increase engagements without increasing strength, you diminish strength, you abolish strength; you really reduce the Empire and do not increase it.  You render it less capable of performing its duties; you render it an inheritance less precious to hand on to future generations.

My fifth principle is this, gentlemen, to acknowledge the equal rights of all nations.  You may sympathize with one nation more than another.  Nay, you must sympathize in certain circumstances with one nation more than another.  You sympathize most with those nations, as a rule, with which you have the closest connexion in language, in blood, and in religion, or whose circumstances at the time seem to give the strongest claim to sympathy.  But in point of right all are equal, and you have no right to set up a system under which one of them is to be placed under moral suspicion or espionage, or to be made the constant subject of invective.  If you do that, but especially if you claim for yourself a superiority, a pharisaical superiority over the whole of them, then I say you may talk about your patriotism if you please, but you are a misjudging friend of your country, and in undermining the basis of the esteem and respect of other people for your country you are in reality inflicting the severest injury upon it.  I have now given you, gentlemen, five principles of foreign policy.  Let me give you a sixth, and then I have done.