"Certainly much depends upon the posture in which you converse of peace. What is the real foundation of the strength of a nation? Spirit, security, and conscious pride, that cannot stoop to dishonour. It comprehends a character that will neither offer nor receive an insult. Give me peace consistently with that principle, and I will not call it a peace "nominal or delusive;" and there is no man who will go farther than I will to obtain it. To any thing dishonourable I will never submit; nor will this country ever submit to it, I trust. There can be no man who has an English heart within his bosom who can wish it; or can wish that you may, by an untimely diminution of your strength, expose yourselves to the renewal, with aggravated insults, of those evils which we have already had too much reason to deplore."
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Prime Ministers of the United KingdomPoliticians from EnglandLawyers from EnglandPeople from LondonChancellors of the Exchequer
Original Language: English
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Speech in the House of Commons (5 December 1797), quoted in The Speeches of the Right Honourable William Pitt, in the House of Commons. Vol. III. (1806), pp. 218-219
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Pitt_the_Younger
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William Pitt the Younger
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