But where is the testimony in favour of the effect which this intimation produced?  I have it, both written and oral.  My first witness is the Duke Mathieu de Montmorency, who states, in his official note of the 26th of December, that the measures conceived and proposed at Verona ’would, have been completely successful, if England had thought herself at liberty to concur in them’.  Such was the opinion entertained, by the Plenipotentiary of France of the failure at Verona, and of the cause of that failure.  What was the opinion of Spain?  My voucher for that opinion is the dispatch from Sir W. A’Court, of the 7th of January; in which he describes the comfort and relief that were felt by the Spanish Government, when they learnt that the Congress at Verona had broken up with no other result than the bruta fulmina of the three dispatches from the courts in alliance with France.  The third witness whom I produce, and not the least important, because an unwilling and most unexpected, and in this case surely a most unsuspected witness, is the honourable member for Westminster (Mr. Hobhouse), who seems to have had particular sources of information as to what was passing at the Congress.  According to the antechamber reports which were furnished to the honourable member (and which, though not always the most authentic, were in this instance tolerably correct), it appears that there was to be no joint declaration against Spain; and it was, it seems, generally understood at Verona, that the instructions given to His Majesty’s Plenipotentiary, by the Liberal—­I beg pardon, to be quite accurate I am afraid I must say, the Radical—­Foreign Minister of England, were the cause.  Now the essence of those instructions was comprised in that little sentence, which has been so much criticized for meagreness and insufficiency.

In this case, then, the English Government is impeached, not for failure, but for success; and the honourable baronet, with taste not his own, has expressed himself dissatisfied with that success, only because the machinery employed to produce it did not make noise enough in its operation.

I contend, Sir, that whatever might grow out of a separate conflict between Spain and France (though matter for grave consideration) was less to be dreaded, than that all the Great Powers of the Continent should have been arrayed together against Spain; and that although the first object, in point of importance, indeed, was to keep the peace altogether—­to prevent any war against Spain—­the first, in point of time, was to prevent a general war; to change the question from a question between the allies on one side and Spain on the other, to a question between nation and nation.  This, whatever the result might be, would reduce the quarrel to the size of ordinary events, and bring it within the scope of ordinary diplomacy.  The immediate object of England, therefore, was to hinder the impress of a