Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh Quotes

I hope you will be able to make M. de Blacas and those about the king understand, that John Bull fights best, when he is not tied, and that, altho' as a line of policy we can with good management connect the support of the Bourbons with the avowed object of the war, we never could sustain as a principle, that we were committed irrevocably to His Majesty to make this a sine qua non under every possible circumstance. Such an engagement would defeat its own purpose by rendering that questionable, which if done voluntarily, would command a general concurrence.

It is this common danger which ought always to be kept in view as the true basis of the alliance, and which ought to preclude defection from the common cause. It must be represented to the Allies that having determined to deliver themselves from the vengeance of the conqueror by their collective strength, if collectively they fail, they are separately lost. He never will again trust any one of them with the means of self-defence—their only rational policy then is inseparable union—to make the contest that of their respective nations, to persevere under every disaster, and to be satisfied that to end the contest safely the enemy must be compelled to treat with them collectively, whilst the best chance of an early peace is at once to satisfy the enemy that a separate negotiation is unattainable.

If we are to undertake the job, we must leave nothing to chance. It must be done upon the largest scale... [Y]ou must inundate France with force in all directions. If Bonaparte could turn the tide, there is no calculating upon his plan; and we must always recollect that Poland, Saxony, and much Jacobinism, are in our rear.

In this Alliance, as in all other human Arrangements, nothing is more likely to impair, or even to destroy its real utility, than any attempt to push its duties and its obligations beyond the Sphere which its original conception and understood Principles will warrant.—It was an Union for the re-conquest and liberation of a great proportion of the Continent of Europe from the military domination of France; and having subdued the Conqueror, it took the State of Possession, as established by the Peace, under the protection of the Alliance.—It never was, however, intended as an Union for the Government of the World, or for the Superintendence of the Internal Affairs of other States.

The system of the Emperor [of Russia] did him honour as a monarch and as a man. Nothing could be more pure than the ends which he had set before himself in all his actions; but this system aims at a perfection, which we do not believe applicable to this century or to mankind. We cannot follow him along this path. It is a vain hope, a beautiful phantom, which England above all can not pursue. All speculative policy is outside her powers. It is proposed now to overcome the revolution; but so long as this revolution does not appear in more distinct shape, so long as this general principle is only translated into events like those of Spain, Naples and Portugal—which, strictly speaking, are only reforms, or at the most domestic upsets, and do not attack materially any other State—England is not ready to combat it. Upon any other question purely political, she would always deliberate and act in the same way as all the other Cabinets.

I feel no wrath against the people. I am only doing my duty.

The present Confederacy may be considered as the union of nearly the whole of Europe against the unbounded and faithless ambition of an individual <nowiki>[</nowiki>Napoleon<nowiki>]</nowiki>. It comprehends not only all the great monarchies, but a great proportion of the secondary Powers. It is not more distinguished from former Confederacies against France by the number and magnitude of the Powers engaged than by the national character which the war has assumed throughout the respective states. On former occasions it was a contest of sovereigns, in some instances perhaps, against the prevailing sentiment of their subjects; it is now a struggle dictated by the feelings of the people of all ranks as well as by the necessity of the case. The sovereigns of Europe have at last confederated together for their common safety, having in vain sought that safety in detached and insulated compromises with the enemy. They have successively found that no extent of submission could procure for them either safety or repose, and that they no sooner ceased to be objects of hostility themselves, than they were compelled to become instruments in the hands of France for effectuating the conquest of other unoffending states. The present Confederacy may therefore be pronounced to originate in higher motives and to rest upon more solid principles than any of those that have preceded it, and the several Powers to be bound together for the first time by one paramount consideration of an imminent and common danger.

Great Britain has perhaps equal Power with any other State to oppose Herself to a practical and intelligible Danger, capable of being brought home to the National Feeling:—When the Territorial Balance of Europe is disturbed, she can interfere with effect, but She is the last Govt. in Europe, which can be expected, or can venture to commit Herself on any Question of an abstract character.

Fouché and men of his stamp are nowhere so little to be dreaded as in office, mixed up with other materials. Tyrants may poison or murder an obnoxious character, but the surest and only means a constitutional sovereign has to restrain such a character is to employ him. Office soon strips him of his most dangerous adherents—he comes unpopular, he can be laid aside at pleasure, and sinks to his true lead. So far from making himself visibly responsible for everything, the King ought to throw upon his Ministers the odium and risk of conducting his service. His Majesty ought to turn the political control towards the Minister for the time being and not entertain it himself beyond affording him the due support which his services may deserve. This is the true strength of a constitutional king. All paper constitutions are of comparatively small importance; the essence of a free state is so to manage the party warfare, as to reconcile it with the safety of the sovereign—to do this, the King must give the contending parties facilities against each other, and not embark himself too deeply with any.

If Buonaparté succeeded in re-establishing his authority in France, peace must be despaired of; at least such a peace as we had recently the hope of enjoying. The question now was, whether Europe must once more return to that dreadful system which it had so long pursued; whether Europe was again to become a series of armed nations, and whether Great Britain among them was to abandon that wholesome state into which she was now settling, to resume her station as a military people, and again to struggle for the independence of the world? These were questions of no small magnitude, depending upon events now in issue, depending upon a new and an unexpected contest, in which the liberties of mankind were once more assaulted and endangered.

It is impossible not to feel the appeal; and if a statesman were permitted to regulate his conduct by the counsels of his heart instead of the dictates of his understanding, I really see no limits to the impulse, which might be given to his conduct, upon a case so stated. But we must always recollect that his is the grave task of providing for the peace and security of those interests immediately committed to his care; that he must not endanger the fate of the present generation in a speculative endeavour to improve the lot of that which is to come.

I have no doubt the middle line would be the most popular, and that, in extorting the permanent cession of one or two fortresses of great name, our labours would carry with them an éclat which is not likely to attend them, according to the course we recommend. But it is not our business to collect trophies, but to try if we can bring back the world to peaceful habits. I do not believe this to be compatible with any attempt now materially and permanently to affect the territorial character of France, as settled by the Peace of Paris; neither do I think it a clear case (if we can, by imposing a strait waistcoat upon that Power for a number of years, restore her to ordinary habits, and weighing the extraordinary growth of other States in latter times, and especially of Russia) that France, even with her existing dimensions, may not be found a useful rather than a dangerous member of the European system.

To suppose that the Powers on the side of Germany might be induced to sign a peace, leaving Great Britain and the nations of the Peninsula to carry on the war, or that the enemy being expelled from the Peninsula, Spain might sheath the sword, leaving the Continental Powers to sustain the undivided shock of French power, is to impute to them all a total blindness to their common safety. Were either of these interests to attempt to shelter themselves in a separate peace, it must leave France master of the fate of the other, and ultimately of both. It is by the war in Spain that Russia has been preserved, and that Germany may be delivered; it is by the war in Germany that Spain may look to escape the subjugation that otherwise ultimately await her. So long as both manfully contend in the field against France, neither can be absolutely overwhelmed, and both, upon every sound principle of military calculation, must by perseverance triumph. To determine to stand or fall together is their only safety, and to effect this the confederates must be brought to agree to certain fixed principles of common interest.

I much suspect neither Austria nor Prussia, and certainly none of the smaller Powers, have any sincere desire to bring the present state of things to a speedy termination: so long as they can feed, clothe, and pay their armies at the expense of France, and put English subsidies into their pockets besides, which nothing can deprive them of, previous to the 1st of April, 1816, but the actual conclusion of a treaty with France, you cannot suppose they will be in a great hurry to come to a final settlement, since the war may be said to have closed.

No doubt, the prevailing sentiment throughout Germany is in favour of territorially reducing France. After all the people have suffered, and with the ordinary inducements of some fresh acquisitions, it is not wonderful that it should be so; but it is one thing to wish the thing done, and another to maintain it when done; and, in calculating the chances of the latter, we ought to be aware that none of these Powers can, for any time, keep up war establishments, or, having once laid them down, find the means of speedily resuming them; and that, if the course adopted materially increases the chances of early war with France, these acquisitions may be of short duration, whilst our chances of an interval of peace will be diminished, and we may be obliged, in order to keep France within any bounds, to take the weight of the war, in a pecuniary sense, upon ourselves.