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.
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