I do not accuse the people of England. As to the great majority of the
nation, they have done whatever in their several ranks, and conditions,
and descriptions, was required of them by their relative situations in
society; and from those the great mass of mankind cannot depart, without
the subversion of all public order. They look up to that government
which they obey that they may be protected. They ask to be led and
directed by those rulers whom Providence and the laws of their country
have set over them, and under their guidance to walk in the ways of
safety and honour. They have again delegated the greatest trust which
they have to bestow to those faithful representatives who made their
true voice heard against the disturbers and destroyers of Europe. They
suffered, with unapproving acquiescence, solicitations which they had
in no shape desired, to an unjust and usurping power whom they had
never provoked, and whose hostile menaces they did not dread. When the
exigencies of the public service could only be met by their voluntary
zeal, they started forth with an ardour which out-stripped the wishes of
those who had injured them by doubting whether it might not be necessary
to have recourse to compulsion. They have, in all things, reposed an
enduring, but not an unreflecting, confidence. That confidence demands
a full return, and fixes a responsibility on the ministers entire and
undivided. The people stands acquitted, if the war is not carried on in
a manner suited to its objects. If the public honour is tarnished, if
the public safety suffers any detriment, the ministers, not the people,
are to answer it, and they alone. Its armies, its navies, are given to
them without stint or restriction. Its treasures are poured out at their
feet. Its constancy is ready to second all their efforts. They are not
to fear a responsibility for acts of manly adventure. The responsibility
which they are to dread is, lest they should show themselves unequal
to the expectation of a brave people. The more doubtful may be the
constitutional and economical questions upon which they have received so
marked a support, the more loudly they are called upon to support
this great war, for the success of which their country is willing to
supersede considerations of no slight importance. Where I speak of
responsibility, I do not mean to exclude that species of it which the
legal powers of the country have a right finally to exact from those
who abuse a public trust; but high as this is, there is a responsibility
which attaches on them, from which the whole legitimate power of this
kingdom cannot absolve them: there is a responsibility to conscience and
to glory; a responsibility to the existing world, and to that posterity
which men of their eminence cannot avoid for glory or for shame; a
responsibility to a tribunal at which not only ministers, but kings and
parliaments, but even nations themselves, must one day answer.