This, whatever the result might
be, would reduce the quarrel to the size of ordinary events, and bring
it within the scope of ordinary diplomacy. The immediate object of
England, therefore, was to hinder the impress of a joint character
from being affixed to the war--if war there must be--with Spain; to
take care that the war should not grow out of an assumed jurisdiction
of the Congress; to keep within reasonable bounds that predominating
_areopagitical_ spirit, which the memorandum of the British Cabinet of
May, 1820, describes as 'beyond the sphere of the original conception,
and understood principles of the alliance',--'an alliance never
intended as a union for the government of the world, or for the
superintendence of the internal affairs of other States.' And this, I
say, was accomplished.
With respect to Verona, then, what remains of accusation against the
Government? It has been charged, not so much that the object of the
Government was amiss, as that the negotiations were conducted in too
low a tone. But the case was obviously one in which a high tone might
have frustrated the object. I beg, then, of the House, before they
proceed to adopt an Address which exhibits more of the ingenuity of
philologists than of the policy of statesmen--before they found
a censure of the Government for its conduct in negotiations of
transcendent practical importance, upon refinements of grammatical
nicety--I beg that they will at least except from the proposed
censure, the transactions at Verona, where I think I have shown that a
tone of reproach and invective was unnecessary, and, therefore, would
have been misplaced.
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