If I were asked to define Conservative policy, I should say that it was the upholding of confidence. - Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

I feel it is our duty to sustain the federated action of Europe. I think it has suffered by the somewhat absurd name which has been given to it—the Concert of Europe—and the intense importance of the fact has been buried under the bad jokes to which the word has given rise. But the federated action of Europe—if we can maintain it, if we can maintain this Legislature—is our sole hope of escaping from the constant terror and the calamity of war, the constant pressure of the burdens of an armed peace which weigh down the spirits and darken the prospects of every nation in this part of the world. ["Hear, hear!"] The federation of Europe is the only hope we have; but that federation is only to be maintained by observing the conditions on which every Legislature must depend, on which every judicial system must be based—the engagements into which it enters must be respected.

You do not imagine that the adversary of centuries can be converted by the honeyed words of two or three months into a fast, benevolent, and trusty friend. ... That section of Irishmen, of the inhabitants of Ireland who are commanded by Archbishop Walsh and Mr. Healy (hisses), represent the enemy which England has contended for centuries. They represent the enemy against whom England appealed to settlers from Great Britain to come here and help her in her almost impossible task; they are the people who resisted you and threatened you and threatened the English interest again and again in 1641, in 1690, in 1798.

Conflict in free states is the law of life.