Now, gentlemen, I go back to the foreign policy of the Liberal party, and I ask, what has that done?  I do not think that any party is perfect in its foreign or any other policy; but I prefer the policy of the Government of Mr. Canning, and the policy of the Government of Lord Grey, and the greater part of what was done by Lord Palmerston in foreign affairs, and by Lord Russell in foreign affairs, to that which is now recommended to you.  But they did not earn any praise at the hands of the press at Vienna or Berlin.  There was no man more odious, no man more detested by the Continental press of those capitals than Mr. Canning, unless, possibly, it may have been Lord Palmerston.  He did not seek honour in these quarters; and seeking honour there is not a very good sign.  But the praises of the Liberal party, if they are to be sung, are sung elsewhere; they are sung in Italy, which had its hearty sympathy, and its efficient though, always its moral aid.  They were sung in Spain, when Mr. Canning, though he was too wise to undertake the task of going single-handed to war for the purpose—­when Mr. Canning firmly and resolutely protested against the French invasion of that country under the Bourbon restoration.  They were sung in Greece, when he constituted himself the first champion of the Greek regeneration, which has now taken effect in the establishment of a free and a progressive country, with, I hope, a bright future before it.  They were sung in Portugal, when Mr. Canning sent the troops of England to defend it against Spain.  Nay, even poor Denmark, unhappy as has been its lot, does not owe the unhappiness of that lot to England, for the British Government of Lord Palmerston, in which I was Chancellor of the Exchequer, did make a formal offer to France that we should join together in forbidding the German Power to lay violent hands upon Denmark, and in leaving the question of Denmark’s territorial rights to be settled by a process of law.  We made that proposal to France, and the reason that it was not acted upon was that, most unfortunately, and, I think, most blindly, the Emperor of the French refused it.

These are the acts of the Liberal party.  The Liberal party has believed that while it was the duty of England above all things to eschew an ostentatious policy, it was also the duty of England to have a tender and kindly feeling for the smaller States of Europe, because it is in the smaller States of Europe that liberty has most flourished; and it is in the smaller States of Europe that liberty is most liable to be invaded by lawless aggression.  What we want in foreign policy is the substitution of what is true for what is imposing and pretentious, but unreal.  We live in the age of sham.  We live in the age of sham diamonds, and sham silver, and sham flour, and sham sugar, and sham butter, for even sham butter they have now invented, and dignified by the name of ‘Oleo-Margarine’.  But these are not the only shams to which we have been treated.