It will be admitted that we want a Government; that if the country is to
be saved from the breakers which now surround it, there must be a
Government; and it devolves upon the House of Commons to rise to the
gravity of the occasion, and to support any man who is conscious of his
responsibility, and who is honestly offering and endeavouring to deliver
the country from the embarrassment in which we now find it. We are at
war, and I shall not say one single sentence with regard to the policy
of the war or its origin, and I know not that I shall say a single
sentence with regard to the conduct of it; but the fact is that we are
at war with the greatest military Power, probably, of the world, and
that we are carrying on our operations at a distance of 3,000 miles from
home, and in the neighbourhood of the strongest fortifications of that
great military Empire. I will not stop to criticise--though it really
invites me--the fact that some who have told us that we were in danger
from the aggressions of that Empire, at the same time told us that that
Empire was powerless for aggression, and also that it was impregnable to
attack. By some means, however, the public have been alarmed as if that
aggressive power were unbounded, and they have been induced to undertake
an expedition, as if the invasion of an impregnable country were a
matter of holiday-making rather than of war.
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