'The acts to winch I allude', says M. San Miguel, 'would in no wise compromise the most strictly conceived system of neutrality. Good offices, counsels, the reflections of one friend in favour of another, do not place a nation in concert of attack or defence with another, do not expose it to the enmity of the opposite party, even if they do not deserve its gratitude; they are not (in a word) effective aid, troops, arms, subsidies, which augment the force of one of the contending parties. It is of reason only that we are speaking; and it is with the pen of conciliation that a Power, situated like Great Britain, might support Spain, without exposing herself to take part in a war, which she may perhaps prevent, with general utility.' Again: 'England might act in this manner: being able, ought she so to act? and if she ought, has she acted so? In the wise, just, and generous views of the Government of St. James's, no other answer can exist than the affirmative. Why then does she not notify to Spain what has been done, and what it is proposed to do in that mediatory sense (en aquel sentido mediador)? Are there weighty inconveniences which enjoin discretion, which show the necessity of secrecy? They do not appear to an ordinary penetration.'
I have already told the House why I had not made such a notification; I have told them also that as soon as the restraint of honour was removed, I did make it; and that the Spanish Government was perfectly satisfied with it. And with respect to the part which I have just quoted of the dispatch of M. San Miguel, that in which he solicits our good offices, and points out the mode in which they are to be applied, I am sure the House will see that we scrupulously followed his suggestions.
Most true it is, and lamentable as true, that our representations to France were not successful. The honourable member for Westminster attributes our failure to the intrigues of Russia; and has told us of a bet made by the Russian Ambassador in a coffee-house at Paris, that he would force France into a war with Spain.
[Mr. Hobhouse disclaimed this version of his words. He had put it as a conjecture.]
I assure the honourable gentleman that I understood him to state it as a fact: but if it was only conjecture, it is of a piece with, the whole of the Address which he supports; every paragraph of which teems with guesses and suppositions, equally groundless.
The honourable member for Bridgenorth (Mr. Whitmore) has given a more correct opinion of the cause of the war. I believe, with him, that the war was forced on the French Government by the violence of a political party in France.
I believe that at one time the French Government hoped to avert it; and that, up to the latest period, some members of that Cabinet would gladly have availed themselves of the smallest loophole through which the Spanish Government would have enabled them to find their retreat. But we, forsooth, are condemned as dupes, because our opponents gratuitously ascribe to France one settled, systematic, and invariable line of policy; because it is assumed that, from the beginning, France had but one purpose in view; and that she merely amused the British Cabinet from time to time with pretences, which we ought to have had the sagacity to detect. If so, the French Government made singular sacrifices to appearance. M. de Montmorency was sent to Verona; he negotiated with the allies; he brought home a result so satisfactory to France, that he was made a duke for his services. He had enjoyed his new title but a few days when he quitted his office. On this occasion I admit that I was a dupe—I believe all the world were dupes with me, for all understood this change of Ministers to be indicative of a change in the counsels of the French Cabinet, a change from war to peace. For eight-and-forty hours I certainly was under that delusion; but I soon found that it was only a change, not of the question of war, but of the character of that question; a change—as it was somewhat quaintly termed—from European to French. The Duke M. de Montmorency. finding himself unable to carry into effect the system of policy which he had engaged, at the Congress, to support in the Cabinet at Paris, in order to testify the sincerity of his engagement, promptly and most honourably resigned. But this event, honourable as it is to the Duke M. de Montmorency, completely disproves the charge of dupery brought against us. That man is not a dupe, who, not foreseeing the vacillations of others, is not prepared to meet them; but he who is misled by false pretences, put forward for the purpose of misleading him. Before a man can be said to be duped, there must have been some settled purpose concealed from him, and not discovered by him; but here there was a variation of purpose; a variation, too, which, so far from considering it then, or now, as an evil, we then hailed and still consider as a good. It was no dupery on our part to acquiesce in a change of counsel on the part of the French Cabinet, which proved the result of the Congress at Verona to be such as I have described it, by giving to the quarrel with Spain the character of a French quarrel.
If gentlemen will read over the correspondence about our offer of mediation, with this key, they will understand exactly the meaning of the difference of tone between the Duke M. de Montmorency and M. de Chateaubriand: they will observe that when I first described the question respecting Spain as a French question, the Duke de Montmorency loudly maintained it to be a question toute européenne; but that M. de Chateaubriand, upon my repeating the same description in the sequel of that correspondence, admitted it to be a question at once and equally toute française, et toute européenne: an explanation the exact meaning of which I acknowledge I do not precisely understand; but which, if it does not distinctly admit the definition of a, question française, seems at least to negative M. de Montmorency's definition of a question TOUTE européenne.
In thus unavoidably introducing the names of the French Ministers, I beg I may be understood to speak of them with respect and esteem. Of M. de Montmorency I have already said that, in voluntarily relinquishing his office, he made an honourable sacrifice to the sincerity of his opinions, and to the force of obligations which he had undertaken but could not fulfil. As to M. de Chateaubriand, with whom I have the honour of a personal acquaintance, I admire, his talents and his genius; I believe him to be a man of an upright mind, of untainted honour, and most capable of discharging adequately the high functions of the station which he fills. Whatever I may think of the political conduct of the French Government in the present war, I think this tribute justly due to the individual character of M. de Chateaubriand. I think it further due to him in fairness to correct a misrepresentation to which I have, however innocently, exposed him. From a dispatch of Sir W. A'Court, which has been laid upon the table of the House, it appears as if M. de Chateaubriand had spoken of the failure of the mission of Lord F. Somerset as of an event which had actually happened, at a time when that nobleman had not even reached Madrid. I have recently received a corrected copy of that dispatch, in which the tense employed in speaking of Lord F. Somerset's mission is not past but future; and the failure of that mission is only anticipated, not announced as having occurred.
The dispatch was sent in cipher to M. Lagarde (from whom Sir W. A'Court received his copy of it), and nothing is more natural in such cases than a mistake in the inflection of a verb.