he alliance',--'an alliance never
intended as a union for the government of the world, or for the
superintendence of the internal affairs of other States.' And this, I
say, was accomplished.

With respect to Verona, then, what remains of accusation against the
Government? It has been charged, not so much that the object of the
Government was amiss, as that the negotiations were conducted in too
low a tone. But the case was obviously one in which a high tone might
have frustrated the object. I beg, then, of the House, before they
proceed to adopt an Address which exhibits more of the ingenuity of
philologists than of the policy of statesmen--before they found
a censure of the Government for its conduct in negotiations of
transcendent practical importance, upon refinements of grammatical
nicety--I beg that they will at least except from the proposed
censure, the transactions at Verona, where I think I have shown that a
tone of reproach and invective was unnecessary, and, therefore, would
have been misplaced.

Among those who have made unjust and unreasonable objections to the
tone of our representations at Verona, I should be grieved to include
the honourable member for Bramber (Mr. Wilberforce), with whose
mode of thinking I am too well acquainted not to be aware that his
observations are founded on other and higher motives than those of
political controversy. My honourable friend, through a long and
amiable life, has mixed in the business of the world without being
stained by its contaminations: and he, in consequence, is apt to
place--I will not say too high, but higher, I am afraid, than the ways
of the world will admit, the standard of political morality. I fear
my honourable friend is not aware how difficult it is to apply to
politics those pure, abstract principles which are indispensable to
the excellence of private ethics. Had we employed in the negotiations
that serious moral strain which he might have been more inclined to
approve, many of the gentlemen opposed to me would, I doubt not,
have complained, that we had taken a leaf from the book of the Holy
Alliance itself; that we had framed in their own language a canting
protest against their purposes, not in the spirit of sincere dissent,
but the better to cover our connivance. My honourable friend, I admit,
would not have been of the number of those who would so have accused
us: but he may be assured that he would have been wholly disappointed
in the practi