"I also object generally to making public the working of diplomacy, because it is the tendency of disclosures in that department to shut up future sources of information." Vidocq would have defended the identical cause in the identical terms. As to the act of piracy, while admitting that Denmark had evinced no hostility whatever towards Great Britain, he contended that they were right in bombarding its capital and stealing its fleet, because they had to prevent Danish neutrality from being, perhaps, converted into open hostility by the compulsion of France. This was the new law of nations, proclaimed by my Lord Palmerston.
When again speechifying, we find this English minister par excellence engaged in the defence of foreign troops, called over from the Continent to England, with the express mission of maintaining forcibly the oligarchic rule, to establish which William had, in 1688, come over from Holland with his Dutch troops. Palmerston answered to the well-founded "apprehensions for the liberties of the country," originating from the presence of the King's German Legion, in a very flippant manner. Why should we not have 16,000 of those foreigners at home, while you know that we employ "a far larger proportion of foreigners abroad"?—(House of Commons, March 10, 1812.)
When similar apprehensions for the Constitution arose from the large standing army, maintained since 1815, he found "a sufficient protection of the Constitution in the very Constitution of our army," a large proportion of its officers being "men of property and connections."—(House of Commons, March 8, 1816.)
When a large standing army was attacked from a financial point of view, he made the curious discovery that "much of our financial embarrassments has been caused by our former low peace establishment."—(House of Commons, March 8, 1816.)
When the "burdens of the country" and the "misery of the people" were contrasted with the lavish military expenditure, he reminded Parliament that those burdens and that misery "were the price which we (viz., the English
