Among those who have made unjust and unreasonable objections to the
tone of our representations at Verona, I should be grieved to include
the honourable member for Bramber (Mr. Wilberforce), with whose
mode of thinking I am too well acquainted not to be aware that his
observations are founded on other and higher motives than those of
political controversy. My honourable friend, through a long and
amiable life, has mixed in the business of the world without being
stained by its contaminations: and he, in consequence, is apt to
place--I will not say too high, but higher, I am afraid, than the ways
of the world will admit, the standard of political morality. I fear
my honourable friend is not aware how difficult it is to apply to
politics those pure, abstract principles which are indispensable to
the excellence of private ethics. Had we employed in the negotiations
that serious moral strain which he might have been more inclined to
approve, many of the gentlemen opposed to me would, I doubt not,
have complained, that we had taken a leaf from the book of the Holy
Alliance itself; that we had framed in their own language a canting
protest against their purposes, not in the spirit of sincere dissent,
but the better to cover our connivance. My honourable friend, I admit,
would not have been of the number of those who would so have accused
us: but he may be assured that he would have been wholly disappointed
in the practical result of our didactic reprehensions.
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