This is the tone which the Government adopted, after the consideration, as we are bound to believe, which the question demanded, after having incurred the responsibility of refusing the Congress offered by the Emperor of the French, after the death of the King of Denmark, after the question had been changed from a federal to an international one—­such, I repeat, is the tone they took up, and in which they sent their menacing messages to every Court in Germany.  I say that at the death of the King of Denmark it behooved Her Majesty’s Ministers, instead of adopting such a course, maturely to consider their position in relation to the events which had occurred.  There were two courses open to Her Majesty’s Government, both intelligible, both honourable.  It was open to them, after the death of the King of Denmark, to have acted as France had resolved under the same circumstances to act—­France, who occupies, we are told, a position in reference to these matters so dignified and satisfactory that it has received the compliments even of a baffled Minister.  That course was frankly announced shortly afterwards to the English Minister by the Minister of France in Denmark.  On November 19 General Fleury said to Lord Wodehouse at Copenhagen: 

That his own instructions from the Emperor were, not to take part in any negotiations here, but to tell the Danish Government explicitly that if Denmark became involved in a war with Germany, France would not come to her assistance.

If England had adopted that course it would have been intelligible and honourable.  We were not bound by the treaty of 1852 to go to the assistance of Denmark if she became involved in a war with Germany.  No one pretends that we were.  As a matter of high policy, much as we may regret any disturbance in the territorial limits of Europe, being a country the policy of which is a policy of tranquillity and peace, there were no adequate considerations which could have justified England in entering into an extensive European war, without allies, to prevent a war between Denmark and Germany.  That was, I say, an honourable and intelligible course.

There was another course equally intelligible and equally honourable.  Though I am bound to say that the course which I should have recommended the country to take would have been to adopt the same position as that of France, yet, if the Government really entertained the views with respect to the balance of power which have been expressed occasionally in the House by the noble lord, and in a literary form by the Secretary of State—­from which I may say I disagree, because they appear to me to be founded on the obsolete tradition of an antiquated system, and because I think that the elements from which we ought to form an opinion as to the distribution of the power of the world must be collected from a much more extensive area, and must be formed of larger and more varied elements:  but let that pass: