XI

The benighted policy of keeping in power a mawkish Sicilian Court,
saturated with the incurable vices of cowardice, falsehood,
dishonesty, and treachery, failed; and the Government of the day was
saddled with the crime of squandering human life, wealth, and energy
without receiving any commensurate return. If it was in the national
interest to involve the country in war with France, it could have
been carried on with greater credit and effect by not undertaking the
hopeless task of bolstering up a Court and a people that were openly
described by our own people who were sent to fight for them as "odious
damned cowards and villains." We had no _real_ grounds of quarrel with
France nor with her rulers. The Revolution was their affair, and was
no concern of ours, except in so far as it might harmfully reflect on
us, and of this there was no likelihood if we left them alone. The
plea of taking the balance of power under our benevolent care was a
sickly exhibition of statesmanship, and the assumption of electing
ourselves guardians of the rights of small nations mere cant. It was,
in fact, the canker of jealousy and hatred on the part of the
reactionary forces against a man, a principle, and a people.

Had those who governed this country then held aloof from the imbroglio
created by the French Revolution, observed a watchful, conciliatory
spirit of neutrality towards the French Government, and allowed the
Continental Powers to adjust their own differences, the conditions of
human existence and the hurtful administration of autocratic
governments would have been reconstituted, and the world would have
been the better for it; instead of which we helped to impose on Europe
twenty years of slaughter and devastation. Our dismal, plutocratic
rulers, with solemn enthusiasm, plunged England with all her power and