[T]he effect of that [Crimean] war was ... to substitute a European conscience, expressed by collective guarantee and the concerted and general actio… - William Ewart Gladstone

Upon one great class of subjects, the largest and the most weighty of them all, where the leading and determining considerations that ought to lead to a conclusion are truth, justice, and humanity, there, gentlemen, all the world over, I will back the masses against the classes.

There is but one way of maintaining permanently what I may presume to call the great international policy and law of Europe—but one way of keeping within bounds any one of the Powers possessed of such strength as France, England, or Russia, if it be bent on an aggressive policy, and that is, by maintaining not so much great fleets, or other demonstrations of physical force, which I believe to be really an insignificant part of the case, but the moral union—the effective concord of Europe.

To be engaged in opposing wrong affords, under the conditions of our mental constitution, but a slender guarantee for being right.