XIV
But the Minister of Foreign Affairs displayed talents far beyond those of the mere orator on this occasion. He took a step which was certain to incur the displeasure and excite the open hostility of a powerful party throughout Europe. Many who might have felt themselves obliged by honour to take this step would have done so with a timid and downcast air, endeavouring by an affectation of humanity to deprecate the anger of the high personages they were offending. Such men, exciting no sympathy, creating and maintaining no allies, encouraging the attacks and justifying the insults of all enemies, would have placed their country in a false and pitiful position, where, powerless and compromised, she would have stood before her opponents, exposed by her advance, tempting by her weakness. But the sagacious know that a bold game must be played boldly, and that the great art of moderating opponents consists in gaining friends.
Mr. Canning, then, neither flinched nor faltered. In venturing upon a measure which aroused the anger of so many powerful foes, he made those foes aware that if we were assailed because, in fulfilment of treaties, we marched to the defence of a country which was attacked on account of its liberal institutions, England would gather beneath her standard all those who loved liberty throughout Europe. Our country was on the verge of a contest with the most potent sovereigns. Our minister neither provoked nor quailed before those sovereigns, but plainly told them, that if such a contest did arise, it would be a contest in which many of the governments eager to provoke it might expect to find, side by side with our soldiers, not a few of their own people—a contest in which, were Englishmen forced to take a part, they would not shrink from taking the part that befitted the brave and free descendants of men who had suffered for their religion at the stake, and adjudged their monarch to the scaffold.