"Lastly, during the war in the Peninsula, where they endeavoured to prolong the existence of anarchy and confusion, their principal object was to traffic with the wants and the blood of the Spanish nation, by obliging it to purchase their services and their supplies at the expense of gold and concessions.
"Whilst all Europe, through their intrigues and their subsidies, was bathed in blood, they were only intent upon providing for their own safety, gaining advantages for their trade, and obtaining the sovereignty of the sea and the monopoly of the world. As for myself, I had never done any thing of the kind, and, until the unfortunate business with Spain, which after all is not to be compared with the affair of Copenhagen, I can say that my morality was unimpeachable. My actions had perhaps been dictatorial and peremptory, but never disgraced by perfidy. Who can be surprised, after all this, if, in 1814, although England had really been the deliverer of Europe, not a single Englishman could show himself on the Continent without meeting at every step with maledictions, hatred, and execrations? Who can ask how this happened? Every tree bears its own fruit; we reap only what we have sown; and such was necessarily the infallible result of the misdeeds of the English Government, the tyranny and the insolence of the Ministers in London, and of their agents all over the globe.
"For the last fifty years the administrations of Great Britain have gradually declined in consideration and in public estimation. Formerly, the struggle for power was between great national parties, characterised by grand and distinct systems; but now we see only the bickerings of one and the same oligarchy, having constantly the same object in view, and whose discordant members adjust their differences by compromise and concessions: they have turned the Cabinet of St. James’s into a shop.
"The policy of Lord Chatham was marked by acts of injustice, no doubt; but at least he proclaimed them with boldness and energy; they had a certain air of grandeur. Pitt introduced into the Cabinet a system of hypocrisy and dissimulation. Lord Castlereagh, the self-styled heir of Pitt, has brought into it the extreme of every kind of turpitude and immorality. Chatham gloried in being a merchant; Lord Castlereagh, to the serious injury of his nation, has indulged himself in the satisfaction of acting the _fine gentleman_; he has sacrificed his country to fraternise with the great people of the continent, and from that moment has united in his person the vices of the saloon with the cupidity of the counting-house; the duplicity and obsequiousness of the courtier with the haughtiness and insolence of the upstart. The poor English constitution is in imminent danger. What a difference between such men and the Foxes, the Sheridans, and the Greys, those splendid talents, those noble characters of the Opposition, who have been the objects of the ridicule of a victorious oligarchy!
