(1852, November 2) The Evening Courant, p. 3.Philosophical Institution Public Lecture—29 October 1852, Segment 8.
Passing over the Reformation—the great event certainly of this period—it was about this time that the struggles among the different nations of Europe gave rise, and by degrees gave consolidation, to the system of the balance of power. The aim of this system is to secure every state in the full possession and enjoyment of its rights, by making its safety and independence objects of interest and guardianship, not only to itself, but to all its neighbors. According to this system, if any one nation, actuated by ambitious views or aiming at undue aggrandisement, threatens the independence of any other, it is the duty even of those states which are not immediately menaced to take up arms against the aggressor, and to defend the weak against the strong. And the policy of this course is plain; because unless the first encroachments of ambition, whatever quarter they may be directed against, are successfully resisted, they will never stop; their tendency is to open up a pathway to the establishment of a universal monarchy, which would engulf the liberties and the independent existences of all the nations of the world. To prevent that consummation, as far as human means can prevent it, —to avert the possibility of that catastrophe—the system called the balance of power exists; and on the basis of this system the foreign policy of all nations, in so far as they pursue a righteous and enlightened course of policy, is now-a-days administered. Its principles regulate the formation of treaties, the contraction of alliances. This system was understood by the Italian politicians of the fifteenth century; and prevailing throughout Italy, it shed a bloom and a glory over an otherwise very depraved time, and raised the Italian States of that particular era to the highest rank among civilised nations of mankind. Spreading itself by degrees over the rest of Europe, its deep importance was fathomed—its value was appreciated—it was matured and practically developed in its whole extent by the consummate political genius of the Prince of Orange, our King William III; and finally, after being endangered and, I may say, overthrown for a time, at the commencement of the present century, before the irresistible onslaught of a great nation, led on by the genius of Napoleon Bonaparte, it was again restored and reanimated under the fostering auspices and indominable energies of a still greater man—our own invincible Duke—him whom we have so recently lost—a man whose character, in its might and in its moderation, was itself a type of the European equilibrium which he was so instrumental in readjusting. Should the equilibrium of this balance be again threatened with overthrow, we have not, indeed, his strong arm to trust to; but let us carry in our minds this reflection and this consolation—that, after the majestic dead shall have been lowered, amid England's thunder, to his final resting-place, to sleep beside his illustrious brother, the victor of Trafalgar, that not even then is his power departed, or his stay withdrawn; for, as has been nobly said, the bodies of our buried heroes are the sunk anchors which, lying unseen below, hold the good ship of the State to
