No doubt, the prevailing sentiment throughout Germany is in favour of territorially reducing France. After all the people have suffered, and with the… - Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh

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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.

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About Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh

Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry (18 June 1769 – 12 August 1822), usually known as Lord Castlereagh, derived from the courtesy title Viscount Castlereagh, by which he was styled from 1796 to 1821, was an Anglo-Irish politician and statesman. As secretary to the Viceroy of Ireland, he worked to suppress the Rebellion of 1798 and to secure passage in 1800 of the Irish Act of Union. As the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom from 1812, he was central to the management of the coalition that defeated Napoleon, and was British plenipotentiary at the Congress of Vienna. In the post-war government of Lord Liverpool, Castlereagh was seen to support harsh measures against agitation for reform. He killed himself while in office in 1822.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Lord Castlereagh
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Additional quotes by Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh

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.

He had now the satisfaction to say, that although he was unable to announce the immediate and actual abolition of the [slave] trade, all the Powers of Europe had agreed that it should not be extended beyond the period at which by possibility it could be terminated. They had concurred in a solemn address to the world, on the necessity of sweeping a trade, so intolerable in a moral point of view, from the face of the earth, and had pledged themselves to take no further time for that purpose than was necessary for the internal regulation of their own dominions.

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These arguments about natural defences and strategic boundaries are pushed too far. Real defence and security comes from the guarantee which is given by the fact that they cannot touch you without declaring war on all those interested in maintaining things as they are.

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