ent 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
themselves with the utmost force, they have condescended to borrow my
words. For the Address goes on: '... principles destructive of the
rights of all independent States, which _strike at the root of the
British Constitution_, and are subversive of His Majesty's legitimate
title to the throne.' Now by far the strongest expression in this
sentence--the metaphor (such as it is) about 'striking at the root
of the British Constitution '--is mine. It is in my dispatch to Sir
Charles Stuart of the 4th of February, I claim it with the pride and
fondness of an author: when I see it plagiarized by those who condemn
_me_ for not using sufficiently forcible language, and who yet, in the
very breath, in which they pronounce that condemnation, are driven to
borrow my very words to exemplify the omission which they impute.

So much for the justice of the Address: now for its usefulness and
efficacy.

What is the full and sufficient declaration of the sense of the House
on this most-momentous crisis, which is contained in this monitory
expostulation to the th