Sir, it is my business to-night to vindicate the noble lord from those who have treated this declaration of policy as one used only to amuse the House.  I am here to prove the sincerity of that declaration.  It is long since the speech of the noble lord was delivered, and we have now upon our table the diplomatic correspondence which was then being carried on by Her Majesty’s Government on the subject.  It was then secret—­it is now known to us all; and I will show you what at that very time was the tone of the Secretary of State in addressing the Courts of Germany mainly interested in the question.  I will show how entirely and how heartily the secret efforts of the Government were exercised in order to carry into effect the policy which was publicly in the House of Commons announced by the noble lord.  I think it must have been very late in July that the noble lord spoke—­upon the 23rd, I believe—­and I have here the dispatches which, nearly at the same period, were being sent by the Secretary of State to the German Courts.  For example, hear how, on July 31, the Secretary of State writes to Lord Bloomfield at Vienna: 

You will tell Count Rechberg that if Germany persists in confounding Schleswig with Holstein, other Powers of Europe may confound Holstein with Schleswig, and deny the right of Germany to interfere with the one any more than she has with the other, except as a European Power.  Such a pretension might be as dangerous to the independence and integrity of Germany, as the invasion of Schleswig might be to the independence and integrity of Denmark. (Denmark and Germany, No. 2, 115.)

And what is the answer of Lord Bloomfield?  On August 6, after having communicated with Count Rechberg, he writes: 

Before leaving his Excellency I informed him that the Swedish Government would not remain indifferent to a federal execution in Holstein, and that this measure of the Diet, if persisted in, might have serious consequences in Europe. (P. 117.)

I am showing how sincere the policy of the noble lord was, and that the speech which we have been told was mainly for the House of Commons, was really the policy of Her Majesty’s Government.  Well, that was to Austria.  Let us now see what was the dispatch to Prussia.  In the next month Earl Russell writes to our Minister at the Prussian Court: 

I have caused the Prussian charge d’affaires to be informed that if Austria and Prussia persist in advising the Confederation to make a federal execution now, they will do so against the advice already given by Her Majesty’s Government, and must be responsible for the consequences, whatever they may be.  The Diet should bear in mind that there is a material difference between the political bearing of a military occupation of a territory which is purely and solely a portion of the Confederation, and the invasion of a territory which, although a part of the German Confederation, is also a portion