If you refer to that speech, delivered on the morning of the
very day on which occurred the accident which terminated his life, you
will find that its whole tenor is in conformity with all the doctrines
that I have urged upon my countrymen for years past with respect to
our policy in foreign affairs. When Sir Robert Peel went home, just
before the dawn of day, upon the last occasion that he passed from the
House of Commons, the scene of so many of his triumphs, I have heard,
from what I think a good authority, that after he entered his own
house, he expressed the exceeding relief which he experienced at
having delivered himself of a speech which he had been reluctantly
obliged to make against a Ministry which he was anxious to support,
and he added, if I am not mistaken, 'I have made a speech of peace.'
Well, if this be so, if I can give you four names like these--if there
were time I could make a longer list of still eminent if inferior
men--I should like to know why I, as one of a small party, am to be
set down as teaching some new doctrine which it is not fit for my
countrymen to hear, and why I am to be assailed in every form of
language, as if there was one great department of governmental affairs
in which I was incompetent to offer any opinion to my countrymen. But
leaving the opinions of individuals, I appeal to this audience, to
every man who knows anything of the views and policy of the Liberal
party in past years, whether it is not the fact that up to 1832 and
indeed to a much later period, probably to the year 1850, those
sentiments of Sir Robert Walpole, of Mr.
Pages:
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332