now of that
negotiation leading to the pacification of Northern Italy than there
was three or four months ago. I deeply lament this, my Lords. Every
friend of the true policy of England, and every friend of the peace of
Europe, must lament it. I hear it said, our Foreign Office lends its
aid to the delay of peaceful measures in Turin; and I hear it with
wonder, considering what has passed within the last two years. But I
am afraid that there are some natures far too sanguine--some whom no
failure can cure of the most extravagant hopes--who, while they
are sinking, cling to the feeblest straw, and derive hope from the
slightest change, and who, because things are not just as they were
twenty-four hours before, expect that better times are coming, and
hope even against hope itself. I think that what has recently taken
place in Hungary, in Croatia, and in Transylvania, has been the
foundation of the hopes recently entertained by the friends of
Sardinia, and that some parties in England, but still more in Turin,
have conceived expectations that Austria, if these negotiations are
allowed to drag their slow length along, will be frustrated in her
designs of--what? Aggrandizement? Oh, no. If that were all, the
difficulty might easily be removed. For look, my Lords, how the matter
stands. Here is craving ambition on the one side, against a steady
adherence to a pacific policy on the other; here is a desire to
enlarge dominion against the solemn faith of treaties on the one part,
and a resolution not to swerve a hair's breadth from that faith on the
other, even when tempted by aggression the most unjust, and crowned
by success the most absolute and complete. Here is good faith
unsurpassed, almost unexampled moderation in victory, met by incurable
thirst of aggrandizement, and reckless love of change under the most
grievous disaster.

Thus stand the rival powers of Sardinia and Austria opposed to each
other. I hope that I view these matters more gloomily than the real
state of things warrants; but I certainly feel not a little uneasy
when I reflect on the great length to which these negotiations have
been sedulously spun out. And here, my Lords, I must observe, that
this brings me, among many of the views which I now, anticipating
somewhat, have taken of the present state of the Powers, to the
conviction that the various matters now in dispute can only be
settled by some general congress. This would at once close the Turin
Con