"The system of the Emperor [of Russia] did him honour as a monarch and as a man. Nothing could be more pure than the ends which he had set before himself in all his actions; but this system aims at a perfection, which we do not believe applicable to this century or to mankind. We cannot follow him along this path. It is a vain hope, a beautiful phantom, which England above all can not pursue. All speculative policy is outside her powers. It is proposed now to overcome the revolution; but so long as this revolution does not appear in more distinct shape, so long as this general principle is only translated into events like those of Spain, Naples and Portugal—which, strictly speaking, are only reforms, or at the most domestic upsets, and do not attack materially any other State—England is not ready to combat it. Upon any other question purely political, she would always deliberate and act in the same way as all the other Cabinets."
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SuicidesMembers of the Parliament of the United KingdomMembers of the Parliament of Great BritainPresbyteriansGovernment ministers of the United Kingdom
Original Language: English
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Remarks to Christoph von Lieven during the Congress of Troppau (October 1820), quoted in C. K. Webster, The Foreign Policy of Castlereagh 1815–1822: Britain and the European Alliance (1925), pp. 282-283
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Stewart%2C_Viscount_Castlereagh
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Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh
Robert Stewart, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry (18 June 1769 – 12 August 1822), usually known as Lord Castlereagh, derived from the courtesy title Viscount Castlereagh, by which he was styled from 1796 to 1821, was an Anglo-Irish politician and statesman. As secretary to the Viceroy of Ireland, he worked to suppress the Rebellion of 1798 and to secure passage in 1800 of the Irish Act of Union. As the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom from 1812, he was central to the management of the coalitio
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