resent, you will find that an
entirely new policy was adopted, and that while we had endeavoured in
former times to keep ourselves free from European complications, we
now began to act upon a system of constant entanglement in the affairs
of foreign countries, as if there were neither property nor honours,
not anything worth striving for, to be acquired in any other field.
The language coined and used then, has continued to our day. Lord
Somers, in writing for William III, speaks of the endless and
sanguinary wars of that period as wars 'to maintain the liberties of
Europe'. There were wars to 'support the Protestant interest', and
there were many wars to preserve our old friend 'the balance of
power'.

We have been at war since that time, I believe, with, for, and against
every considerable nation in Europe. We fought to put down a pretended
French supremacy under Louis XIV. We fought to prevent France and
Spain coming under the sceptre of one monarch, although, if we had not
fought, it would have been impossible in the course of things that
they should have become so united. We fought to maintain the Italian
provinces in connexion with the House of Austria. We fought to put
down the supremacy of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the Minister who was
employed by this country at Vienna, after the Great War, when it was
determined that no Bonaparte should ever again sit on the throne of
France, was the very man to make an alliance with another Bonaparte
for the purpose of carrying on a war to prevent the supremacy of the
late Emperor of Russia. So that we have been all round Europe and
across it over and over again, and after a policy so distinguished, so
pre-eminent, so long-continued, and so costly, I think we have a fair
right--I have, at least--to ask those who are in favour of it to show
us its visible result. Europe is not at this moment, so far as I know,
speaking of it broadly, and making allowance for certain improvements
in its general civilization, more free politically than it was before.
The balance of power is like perpetual motion, or any of those
impossible things which some men are always racking their brains and
spending their time and money to accomplish.

We all know and deplore that at the present moment a larger number
of the grown men of Europe are employed, and a larger portion of the
industry of Europe is absorbed, to provide for, and maintain, the
enormous armaments which are now on foot in every consid