herself at the head of—­those who supported the Reformation:  but can it be either our interest or our duty to ally ourselves with revolution?  Let us be ready to afford refuge to the sufferers of either extreme party:  but it is not surely our policy to become the associate of either.  Our situation now is rather what that of Elizabeth would have been, if the Church of England had been, in her time, already completely established, in uncontested supremacy; acknowledged as a legitimate settlement, unassailed and unassailable by papal power.  Does my honourable and learned friend believe that the policy of Elizabeth would in that case have been the same?

Now, our complex constitution is established with so happy a mixture of its elements—­its tempered monarchy and its regulated freedom—­that we have nothing to fear from foreign despotism, nothing at home but from capricious change.  We have nothing to fear, unless, distasteful of the blessings which we have earned, and of the calm which we enjoy, we let loose again, with rash hand, the elements of our constitution, and set them once more to fight against each other.  In this enviable situation, what have we in common with the struggles which are going on in other countries, for the attainment of objects of which we have been long in undisputed possession?  We look down upon those struggles from the point to which we have happily attained, not with the cruel delight which is described by the poet, as arising from the contemplation of agitations in which the spectator is not exposed to share; but with an anxious desire to mitigate, to enlighten, to reconcile, to save—­by our example in all cases, by our exertions where we can usefully interpose.

Our station, then, is essentially neutral:  neutral not only between contending nations, but between conflicting principles.  The object of the Government has been to preserve that station; and for the purpose of preserving it, to maintain peace.  By remaining at peace ourselves, we best secure Portugal; by remaining at peace, we take the best chance of circumscribing the range and shortening the duration of the war, which we could not prevent from breaking out between France and Spain.  By remaining at peace, we shall best enable ourselves to take an effectual and decisive part in any contest into which we may be hereafter forced against our will.

The papers on the table, the last paper at least (I mean the dispatch of the 31st of March, in which is stated what we expect from France), ought, I think, to have satisfied the honourable baronet, who said that, provided the Government was firm in purpose, he should not be disposed to find fault with their having acted suaviter in modo .  In that dispatch our neutrality is qualified with certain specified conditions.  To those conditions France has given her consent.  When we say in that dispatch, we are ‘satisfied’ that those conditions will be observed, is it not obvious that we use a language of courtesy, which is always most becomingly employed between independent Powers?  Who does not know that, in diplomatic correspondence, under that suavity of expression is implied an ‘or’, which imports another alternative?