Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914. Various

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       Various

      Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4064066165055

Table of Contents

       PREFACE

       WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM

       WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM JANUARY 22, 1770 THE DEFENCE OF WEAKER. STATES

       RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN

       RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN

       WILLIAM PITT

       GEORGE CANNING

       SIR ROBERT PEEL JUNE 1, 1829 PORTUGAL—DON MIGUEL

       SIR ROBERT PEEL JULY 16, 1832 BELGIUM

       SIR ROBERT PEEL JULY 20, 1832 RUSSIAN DUTCH LOAN

       LORD JOHN RUSSELL MARCH 4, 1847 THE ANNEXATION OF CRACOW

       VISCOUNT PALMERSTON MARCH 1, 1848 THE POLISH QUESTION

       HENRY, LORD BROUGHAM

       EARL RUSSELL JUNE 27, 1864 DENMARK AND GERMANY

       LORD STANLEY JULY 20, 1866 AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA

       WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE

       WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE

       WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE

       BENJAMIN DISRAELI

       JULY 4, 1864

       BENJAMIN DISRAELI EARL OF BEACONSFIELD JULY 18, 1878 BERLIN TREATY

       SIR EDWARD GREY

       HERBERT HENRY ASQUITH

       DAVID LLOYD GEORGE

PREFACE

       Table of Contents

      A selection of speeches made for the purpose of illustrating the best rhetorical form of British Oratory has already been published in 'The World's Classics'. The governing principle of this volume is not rhetorical quality, but historical interest. Speeches have been selected from the earliest days of reporting downwards, dealing with such phases of foreign policy as are of exceptional interest at present. They have been chosen so as to cover a variety of international crises affecting various states.

      In such a selection some very interesting speeches have had to be set aside, because they represented temporary or individual and sectional views rather than permanent national and official views, and in order to avoid disproportionate reference to the same situation or country.

      It is to be hoped that the selection, such as it is, may, through the words of the statesmen of the past, help to prepare our minds for the sound and worthy consideration of the problems of European re-settlement which will arise at the termination of the War.

      EDGAR R. JONES.

      WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM

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      MARCH 8, 1738

      THE CONVENTION WITH SPAIN

      You have been moved to vote an humble address of thanks to His Majesty, for a measure which (I will appeal to gentlemen's conversation in the world) is odious throughout the kingdom. Such thanks are only due to the fatal influence that framed it, as are due for that low, unallied condition abroad, which is now made a plea for this convention. To what are gentlemen reduced in support of it? First, try a little to defend it upon its own merits; if that is not tenable, throw out general terrors—the House of Bourbon is united—who knows the consequence of a war? Sir, Spain knows the consequence of a war in America; whoever gains, it must prove fatal to her; she knows it, and must therefore avoid it; but she knows England does not dare to make it; and what is a delay, which is all this magnified convention is sometimes called, to produce? Can it produce such conjunctures as those you lost, while you were giving kingdoms to Spain, and all to bring her back again to that great branch of the House of Bourbon which is now thrown out to you with so much terror? If this union be formidable, are we to delay only till it becomes more formidable, by being carried farther into execution, and more strongly cemented? But be it what it will, is this any longer a nation, or what is an English Parliament, if, with more ships in your harbours than in all the navies of Europe, with above two millions of people in your American colonies, you will bear to hear of the expediency of receiving from Spain an insecure, unsatisfactory, dishonourable convention? Sir, I call it no more than it has been proved in this debate; it carries fallacy, or downright subjection, in almost every line. It has been laid open and exposed in so many strong and glaring lights, that I can pretend to add nothing to the conviction and indignation it has raised.

      Sir, as to the great national objection—the searching your ships—that favourite word, as it was called, is not omitted, indeed, in the preamble to the convention, but it stands there as the reproach, of the whole—as the strongest evidence of the fatal submission that follows. On the part of Spain, an usurpation, an inhuman tyranny, claimed and exercised over the American seas; on the part of England, an undoubted right, by treaties, and from God and nature, declared and asserted in the resolutions of Parliament, are referred to the discussion of plenipotentiaries, upon one and the same equal foot. Sir, I say this undoubted right is to be discussed and to be regulated. And if to regulate be to prescribe rules (as in all construction it is), this right is, by the express words of this convention, to be given up and sacrificed; for it must cease to be anything from the moment it