So far, then, as the interests and honour of Great Britain are concerned, those interests and that honour have, been scrupulously maintained.  Great Britain has come out of the, negotiations, claiming all the respect that is due to her; and, in a tone not to be mistaken, enforcing all her rights.  It is true that her policy has not been violent or precipitate.  She has not sprung forth armed, from the impulse of a sudden indignation; she has looked before and after; she has reflected on all the circumstances which beset, and on all the consequences which may follow, so awful a decision as war; and instead of descending into the arena, as party in a quarrel not her own, she has assumed the attitude and the attributes of justice, holding high the balance, and grasping but not unsheathing the sword.

Sir, I will now trouble the House no further than to call its attention to the precise nature of the motion which it has to dispose of this night.  Sir, the result of the negotiations, as I have before stated, rendered it unnecessary and irregular for the Government to call for the expression of a parliamentary opinion upon them.  It was, however, competent for any honourable member to suggest to the House the expression of such opinion; which, if expressed at all, it will readily be admitted ought to be expressed intelligibly.  Now, what is the Address which, after a fortnight’s notice, and after the menaces with which it has been announced and ushered in, the House has been desired to adopt?  The honourable gentleman’s Address first proposes to ’represent to His Majesty, that the disappointment of His Majesty’s benevolent solicitude to preserve general peace appears to this House to have, in a great measure, arisen from the failure of his Ministers to make the most earnest, vigorous, and solemn protest against the pretended right of the Sovereigns assembled at Verona, to make war on Spain in order to compel alterations in her political institutions’.  I must take the liberty to say that this is not a true description.  The war I have shown to be a French war, not arising from anything done, or omitted to be done, at Verona.  But to finish the sentence:—­’as well as against the subsequent pretension of the French Government, that nations cannot lawfully enjoy any civil privileges but from the spontaneous grant of their kings.’  I must here again take the liberty to say that the averment is not correct.  Whatever the misconduct of Government in these negotiations may have been, it is plain matter-of-fact, that they protested in the strongest manner against the pretension put forward in the speech of the King of France, that the liberties and franchises of a nation should be derived exclusively from the throne.  It is on record, in this very Address, that the honourable gentlemen themselves could not have protested more strongly than the Government; since, in the next sentence to that which I have just read, in order to deliver