in whom he confided—­I remember well hearing him say, in 1793, that he expected that war to be of very short duration.  That duration ran out to a period beyond the life of him who made the prediction.  It outlived his successor, and the successors of that successor, and at length came suddenly and unexpectedly to an end, through a combination of miraculous events, such as the most sanguine imagination could not have anticipated.  With that example full in my recollection, I could not act upon the presumption that a new war, once begun, would be speedily ended.  Let no such expectation induce us to enter a path, which, however plain and clear it may appear at the outset of the journey, we should presently see branching into intricacies, and becoming encumbered with obstructions, until we were involved in a labyrinth from which not we ourselves only, but the generation to come, might in vain endeavour to find the means of extrication.

For the confirmation of these observations I appeal to that which I have stated as the last of the considerations in reference to which the policy of the British Government was calculated—­mean, to the present state of the world.  No man can witness with more delight than I do the widening diffusion of political liberty.  Acknowledging all the blessings which we have long derived from liberty ourselves, I do not grudge to others a participation in them.  I would not prohibit other nations from kindling their torches at the flame of British freedom.  But let us not deceive ourselves.  The general acquisition of free institutions is not necessarily a security for general peace.  I am obliged to confess that its immediate tendency is the other way.  Take an example from France herself.  The Representative Chamber of France has undoubtedly been the source of those hostilities, which I should not have despaired of seeing averted through the pacific disposition of the French King.  Look at the democracies of the ancient world.  Their existence, I may say, was in war.  Look at the petty republics of Italy in more modern times.  In truth, long intervals of profound peace are much more readily to be found under settlements of a monarchical form.  Did the Republic of Rome, in the whole career of her existence, enjoy an interval of peace of as long duration as that which this country enjoyed under the administration of Sir Robert Walpole?—­and that interval, be it remembered, was broken short through the instigation of popular feeling.  I am not saying that this is right or wrong—­but that it is so.  It is in the very nature of free governments—­and more especially, perhaps, of governments newly free.  The principle which for centuries has given ascendancy to Great Britain is that she was the single, free State in Europe.  The spread of the representative system destroys that singularity, and must (however little we may like it) proportionally enfeeble our preponderating influence—­unless we measure our steps cautiously and accommodate our conduct to