honourable and learned gentleman think, if as a pendant to the picture which he had drawn of the trials at Milan, the transactions at Hertford were to be critically commented upon in a foreign assembly, and converted into an argument against the character of the British people? Such an argument would be quite as fair, and quite as much to the purpose, as the argument which had been employed by the honourable and learned gentleman.

The next point to which he would advert, and he should do it in a word, was the observation of the honourable and learned member upon his question last session, on the subject of Switzerland. The answer which he had given to the honourable and learned gentleman's question, he had given at the time, in perfect sincerity; and when the honourable and learned gentleman said, that he ought to have been better informed, by so well paid a mission, upon the subject, that argument certainly did not apply ad hominem, whatever other merits it might lay claim to. If the quantity of information derived, was to depend upon the payment of the mission, he, upon that principle, ought not to have been informed, for he had reduced the costs of the mission by one-half. In point of fact, however, he had not been informed in the slightest degree as to the reports in question, when he had given his answer to that effect, to the honourable and learned gentleman, and it was only on going to his office, about a quarter of an hour after, that he had found the same detail of facts upon his table, which the honourable and learned gentleman had opened in his speech, coming, perhaps, from the very same source from which they had come to the honourable and learned gentleman. As to the reports of an Austrian prince having been in view at any time for Switzerland, he believed there was not a shadow of a foundation for the story. For the charge of harbouring conspirators, and the remonstrances, he would say

only thus much, that if the accusations had been true, the remonstrances were justifiable. But he believed, that both the honourable and learned gentleman and himself, had been misled in what that statement of facts, as it was called, contained; and that a great part of the stories circulated abroad, had been founded upon the solicitations of ill-disposed persons in Switzerland herself, who desired-and there were some whom he knew to be capable of such a purpose who desired to bring the great powers of Europe upon their country; because they themselves, in the objects of some particular faction, had been defeated. The more he reflected upon the subject, the more he was convinced that such had been the fact; and as to the Austrian prince, he believed such an idea had never existed but in the brain of the drawer up of those state papers which had furnished him with his information as well as the honourable and learned gentleman opposite; and had, in fact, teased every court in Europe which would take the trouble to look at the writer's lucubrations.

With respect to Germany herself, as regarded those circumstances upon which the honourable and learned gentleman had commented, he certainly could hardly conceive a more inconvenient arrangement, than that power of the German diet to interfere with all the states of which Germany was composed. But the independent state (Wurtemburg) to which the honourable and learned gentleman alluded— this independent state, which had been interfered with, was part, let it be recollected, of the German federation. He himself thought the principle was bad; but it was not fair to call an application of it a flagrant outrage. The power in question might, or might not, have been exercised improperly, as regarded a particular state; but still it was the law. And, even under any circumstances, was it to be said that, wherever there had been an improper interference

with a paragraph in a newspaper, we, England, were to blot out of the map of Europe, that state, and to say we would have no alliance with it? The honourable and learned gentleman must give up the old world, and look only to the new, if he meant to establish any such a principle. He knew that it was maintained by some, that England ought to set herself up as a barrier for all Europe, against principles of a despotic tendency; but he could not be persuaded that it was the policy of England to do lightly any act which might plunge herself and all Europe into a bloody and unceasing war. Of all the wars-and unhappily we had experienced but too many varieties of them-of all the wars which we had seen, and which had brought desolation in their train, the wars of opinion had been decidedly the most fatal; and a single spark, flashing unhappily from the hasty zeal of England, might light up a conflagration on the Continent, which no after exertions could extinguish-might lead to a contest of opinions and principles, which would divide all the nations of Europe, and only terminate, probably, with the total destruction of one of the contending factions. Was this, then, an object for England to aim at? Was this to be laid down as the intent by which Ministers were to regulate their conduct? Or, might they be allowed to say, that their object was peace, be the component parts of that peace more or less perfect?—to see England moving steadily on in her own orbit, without looking too nicely to the conduct of the powers in alliance with her to see her content with her own glory, and by that glory exciting other nations to arrive at the same advantages which her peculiar system had bestowed upon her; but not, by a wild crusade, or endeavour, to force those advantages upon free countries, converting blessings into curses as respected them, and courting danger and difficulty as regarded herself? It was

this course which he took to be the true policy of England. It was with this view to peace, while peace might be maintained, that His Majesty's Government had acted, and were prepared to act. But it did not follow, because they forebore to seek for difference, that, when it came, it would not find them on the alert; or that the strength which had slumbered would be the less effective when called into action. He did not know that, in what had fallen from the honourable and learned gentleman opposite, there were any other points on which he needed to detain the House; but he would just say a very few words, with reference to those observations respecting Ireland, which had been made by the honourable seconder of the address, at the conclusion of his speech. With regard to Ireland, he wished it to be understood, that his sentiments were what they had ever been. He retained all his old opinions with respect to that great question: and fully believed, that, sooner or later, those opinions would make their way in that House; but he differed from the opinions which had been laid down by the honourable and learned gentleman opposite. There was no word, which, in parliamentary oratory, was more bandied about than the word "inconsistency;" and, in general, the person who charged another with that offence, did not measure the consistency of the accused by his own, but by some arbitrary standard that he had chosen to set up. Now, it might be an absurd opinion to hold, that, in the present state of public feeling in England, the Catholic concession could not (to use the common parlance) be carried as a "government question ;" and that the public men of the country did not afford the materials for an Adminis tration, united upon that point, and upon other questions of paramount importance. But, if that opinion of his was absurd, it was not an opinion of the present day; it was the opinion which he had always expressed in that House;

and "inconsistency," as he took it, was the differing, not from others, but from one's self. The honourable and learned gentleman, however, on the opposite bench, and another individual in another place, had thought it expedient to charge him with inconsistency in his conduct with respect to the Catholic Question; and, by rather a whimsical choice, they had both laid hold of that particular period of his public life, in which he had enjoyed the best opportunity for showing what his sentiments upon that question really were. It was said of him, that in the year 1812, he had been willing to become part of an Administration, which was to consist of the Marquis of Wellesley and himself, and other gentlemen on the same side of the House; that that Administration would have been an Administration united upon the Catholic Question; and that therefore it was inconsistency for him to act with any Government otherwise constituted. Now, whoever might be the historian that had referred to this passage of his (Mr. C.'s) life, he had looked, by some accident, at only part of the transaction. If he had examined one side of the page as carefully as he had the other, he would have found (continued the right honourable secretary) "that, in the year 1812, when His Royal Highness the Prince Regent was graciously pleased to instruct the Marquis Wellesley and myself to form a Government, the stipulation of Marquis Wellesley had been, that he should make proposals to some of the gentlemen on the opposite side, and my stipulation-what was it? Was it to exclude the Protestant faction, as it is called, altogether? No; but it was that I should be at liberty to make similar proposals to Lord Liverpool, which accordingly I did." Such, then, had been his (the right honourable secretary's) expression of his opinions; not when he had been called upon to join a Government, but to form one. It was true, that Lord