For, when the
mind labours under any such feelings, expressions are apt to be used
which, whether they are well understood or ill understood, give
umbrage elsewhere, and endanger the peace as well as the policy, in a
word, all the highest interests of the country. I present myself to
your Lordships to handle the important subject of which I have given
notice, under the deep impression of sentiments such as these; and it
will be no fault of mine if I am betrayed into any discussion, or even
into any passing remark, which shall give offence in any quarter, at
home or abroad, and shall thus endanger what is most essential to the
interests of the country, a good understanding with, and a friendly
feeling towards, foreign nations. It gives me great satisfaction,
seeing that I have to express a difference of opinion from my
noble friends opposite, and to blame the measures which they have
adopted,--it gives me great satisfaction, I say, to commence what I am
about to state, by declaring my entire approval of such sentiments as
I am about to cite, in language far better than my own, used by them
when they instructed our envoy at the Court of the Two Sicilies to
give the 'strongest assurance of the earnest desire of the British
Government to draw, if possible, still closer the bonds of friendship
which had so long united the crowns of Great Britain and the Two
Sicilies'. It is therefore grateful, most grateful to me--whilst I
join in their sentiments, which are better expressed than I could
have expressed them, but not more warmly expressed than I would have
expressed them--that, in the remarks which I am about to make, and
which are wrung from me by the accusations brought against the
Ministers, the authorities, and the troops of Naples, I shall, in the
true sense of the passage I have just quoted, have to defend those
Ministers, those authorities, and those troops from attacks which
have been made upon them by the authors of that passage injuriously,
inconsiderately, and unjustly.
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