I believe that at one time the French Government hoped to avert it; and that, up to the latest period, some members of that Cabinet would gladly have availed themselves of the smallest loophole through which the Spanish Government would have enabled them to find their retreat.  But we, forsooth, are condemned as dupes, because our opponents gratuitously ascribe to France one settled, systematic, and invariable line of policy; because it is assumed that, from the beginning, France had but one purpose in view; and that she merely amused the British Cabinet from time to time with pretences, which we ought to have had the sagacity to detect.  If so, the French Government made singular sacrifices to appearance.  M. de Montmorency was sent to Verona; he negotiated with the allies; he brought home a result so satisfactory to France, that he was made a duke for his services.  He had enjoyed his new title but a few days when he quitted his office.  On this occasion I admit that I was a dupe—­I believe all the world were dupes with me, for all understood this change of Ministers to be indicative of a change in the counsels of the French Cabinet, a change from war to peace.  For eight-and-forty hours I certainly was under that delusion; but I soon found that it was only a change, not of the question of war, but of the character of that question; a change—­as it was somewhat quaintly termed—­from European to French.  The Duke M. de Montmorency. finding himself unable to carry into effect the system of policy which he had engaged, at the Congress, to support in the Cabinet at Paris, in order to testify the sincerity of his engagement, promptly and most honourably resigned.  But this event, honourable as it is to the Duke M. de Montmorency, completely disproves the charge of dupery brought against us.  That man is not a dupe, who, not foreseeing the vacillations of others, is not prepared to meet them; but he who is misled by false pretences, put forward for the purpose of misleading him.  Before a man can be said to be duped, there must have been some settled purpose concealed from him, and not discovered by him; but here there was a variation of purpose; a variation, too, which, so far from considering it then, or now, as an evil, we then hailed and still consider as a good.  It was no dupery on our part to acquiesce in a change of counsel on the part of the French Cabinet, which proved the result of the Congress at Verona to be such as I have described it, by giving to the quarrel with Spain the character of a French quarrel.

If gentlemen will read over the correspondence about our offer of mediation, with this key, they will understand exactly the meaning of the difference of tone between the Duke M. de Montmorency and M. de Chateaubriand:  they will observe that when I first described the question respecting Spain as a French question, the Duke de Montmorency loudly maintained it to be a question toute europeenne; but that M. de