opinion with the allies; it was no longer debatable ground.  On the one hand, the alliance upholds the doctrine of an European police; this country, on the other hand, as appears from the memorandum already quoted, protests against that doctrine.  The question is, in fact, settled, as many questions are, by each party retaining its own opinions; and the points reserved for debate are points only of practical application.  To such a point it was that we directed our efforts at Verona.

There are those, however, who think that with a view of conciliating the Continental Powers, and of winning them away the more readily from their purposes, we should have addressed them as tyrants and despots—­tramplers on the rights and liberties of mankind.  This experiment would, to say the least of it, be a very singular one in diplomacy.  It may be possible, though I think not very probable, that the allies would have borne such an address with patience; that they would have retorted only with the ‘whispering humbleness’ of Shylock in the play, and said,—­

  Fair Sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last;
  You spurn’d me such a day; another time
  You called me—­dog; and, for these courtesies,

‘we are ready to comply with whatever you desire.’  This, I say, may be possible.  But I confess I would rather make such an experiment, when the issue of it was matter of more indifference.  Till then, I shall be loath to employ towards our allies a language, to which if they yielded, we should ourselves despise them.  I doubt whether it is wise, even in this House, to indulge in such a strain of rhetoric; to call ‘wretches’ and ‘barbarians’, and a hundred other hard names, Powers with whom, after all, if the map of Europe cannot be altogether cancelled, we must, even according to the admission of the most anti-continental politicians, maintain some international intercourse.  I doubt whether these sallies of raillery—­these flowers of Billingsgate—­are calculated to soothe, any more than to adorn; whether, on some occasion or other, we may not find that those on whom they are lavished have not been utterly unsusceptible of feelings of irritation and resentment: 

  Medio de fonte leporum
  Surget amari aliquid, quod in ipsis floribus angat.

But be the language of good sense or good taste in this House what it may, clear I am that, in diplomatic correspondence, no Minister would be justified in risking the friendship of foreign countries, and the peace of his own, by coarse reproach and galling invective; and that even while we are pleading for the independence of nations, it is expedient to respect the independence of those with whom we plead.  We differ widely from our Continental allies on one great principle, it is true:  nor do we, nor ought we to disguise that difference; nor to omit any occasion of practically upholding our own opinion.  But every consideration, whether of policy or of justice, combines with the recollection of the counsels which we have shared, and of the deeds which we have achieved in concert and companionship, to induce us to argue our differences of opinion, however freely, with temper; and to enforce them, however firmly, without insult.