enforce the independence of free States, relatively small and weak, against the encroachments and the violence of the strong—[cheers]—and in the third place, to withstand what we believe, in the best interests not only of our own Empire, but of civilization at large, the arrogant claim of a single Power to dominate the development and the destinies of Europe. [Cheers.]
My Lord Provost, since I last spoke, some faint attempts have been made in Germany to dispute the accuracy and the sincerity of this statement of our attitude and aims. It has been suggested, for instance, that our professed zeal for treaty rights and for the interests of small States is a new-born and a simulated passion. What, we are asked, has Britain cared in the past for treaties or for the smaller nationalities except when she had some ulterior and selfish purpose of her own to serve? I am quite ready to meet that challenge—[hear, hear, and cheers]—and to meet it in the only way in which it can be met—by reference to history.
And, out of many illustrations which I might take, I will content myself here to-night with two, widely removed in point of time, but both, as it happens, very apposite to the present case. I will go back first to the war carried on at first against the revolutionary Government of France, and then against Napoleon, which broke out in 1793, and which lasted for more than twenty years. We had then at the head of the Government of this country one of the most peace-loving Ministers who has ever presided over our fortunes, Mr. Pitt. [Cheers.] For three years, from 1789 to 1792, he resolutely refused to interfere in any way with the revolutionary proceedings in France, or with the wars that sprang out of them, and as lately, I think, as February in 1792, in a memorable speech in the House of Commons, which shows amongst other things the shortness of human foresight, he declared that there never was a time when we in this country could more reasonably expect fifteen years of peace. And what was it, gentlemen, within a few months of the declaration, led this pacific Minister to war? It was the invasion of the treaty rights guaranteed by ourselves to a small European State—that is the States General of Holland. [Cheers.] For nearly 200 years the Great Powers of Europe had guaranteed to Holland the exclusive navigation of the River Scheldt. The French Revolutionary Government invaded what is now Belgium, and as a first act of hostility to Holland declared the navigation of
