This last consideration would perhaps alone have been decisive; but when it was coupled with the others which I have stated, and with the hopes of doing good which they inspired, I think it will be conceded to me that we should have incurred a fearful responsibility, if we had not consented to make the effort, which we did make, to effect an adjustment between France and Spain, through our mediation.

Add to this, that the question which we had now to discuss with France was a totally new question.  It was no longer a question as to that general right of interference, which we had disclaimed and denied—­disclaimed for ourselves, and denied for others,—­in the conferences at Verona.  France knew that upon that question our opinion was formed, and was unalterable.  Our mediation therefore, if accepted by France, set out with the plain and admitted implication, that the discussion must turn, not on the general principle, but upon a case of exception to be made out by France, showing, to our satisfaction, wherein Spain had offended and aggrieved her.

It has been observed, as if it were an inconsistency, that at Verona a discouraging answer had been given, by our Plenipotentiary to a hint that it might, perhaps, be advisable for us to offer our mediation with Spain; but that no sooner had the Duke of Wellington arrived at Paris, than he was instructed to offer that mediation.  Undoubtedly this is true:  and the difference is one which flows out of, and verifies, the entire course of our policy at Verona.  We declined mediating between Spain and an alliance assuming to itself that character of general superintendence of the concerns of nations.  But a negotiation between kingdom and kingdom, in the old, intelligible, accustomed, European form, was precisely the issue to which we were desirous of bringing the dispute between France and Spain.  We eagerly grasped at this chance of preserving peace; and the more eagerly because, as I have before said, we received, at that precise moment, the application from Spain for our good offices.

But France refused our offered mediation:  and it has been represented by some gentlemen, that the refusal of our mediation by France was an affront which we ought to have resented.  Sir, speaking not of this particular instance only, but generally of the policy of nations, I contend, without fear of contradiction, that the refusal of a mediation is no affront; and that, after the refusal of mediation, to accept or to tender good offices is no humiliation.  I beg leave to cite an authority on such points, which, I think, will not be disputed.  Martens, in the dissertation which is prefixed to his collection of treaties, distinguishing between mediation and good offices, lays it down expressly, that a nation may accept the good offices of another after rejecting her mediation.  The following is the passage to which I refer: