up to the present hour, and, if common fame can be trusted, there is less chance now of that negotiation leading to the pacification of Northern Italy than there was three or four months ago.  I deeply lament this, my Lords.  Every friend of the true policy of England, and every friend of the peace of Europe, must lament it.  I hear it said, our Foreign Office lends its aid to the delay of peaceful measures in Turin; and I hear it with wonder, considering what has passed within the last two years.  But I am afraid that there are some natures far too sanguine—­some whom no failure can cure of the most extravagant hopes—­who, while they are sinking, cling to the feeblest straw, and derive hope from the slightest change, and who, because things are not just as they were twenty-four hours before, expect that better times are coming, and hope even against hope itself.  I think that what has recently taken place in Hungary, in Croatia, and in Transylvania, has been the foundation of the hopes recently entertained by the friends of Sardinia, and that some parties in England, but still more in Turin, have conceived expectations that Austria, if these negotiations are allowed to drag their slow length along, will be frustrated in her designs of—­what?  Aggrandizement?  Oh, no.  If that were all, the difficulty might easily be removed.  For look, my Lords, how the matter stands.  Here is craving ambition on the one side, against a steady adherence to a pacific policy on the other; here is a desire to enlarge dominion against the solemn faith of treaties on the one part, and a resolution not to swerve a hair’s breadth from that faith on the other, even when tempted by aggression the most unjust, and crowned by success the most absolute and complete.  Here is good faith unsurpassed, almost unexampled moderation in victory, met by incurable thirst of aggrandizement, and reckless love of change under the most grievous disaster.

Thus stand the rival powers of Sardinia and Austria opposed to each other.  I hope that I view these matters more gloomily than the real state of things warrants; but I certainly feel not a little uneasy when I reflect on the great length to which these negotiations have been sedulously spun out.  And here, my Lords, I must observe, that this brings me, among many of the views which I now, anticipating somewhat, have taken of the present state of the Powers, to the conviction that the various matters now in dispute can only be settled by some general congress.  This would at once close the Turin Conference.  I have before mentioned to your Lordships that the favour which the Government of England has shown to Sardinia, and the prejudice against Austria, has exhibited itself—­indeed, I may say, has broken out very conspicuously, in two portions of these transactions.  First, it was displayed in the general difference of the language used to Austria and to Sardinia.  To Austria we have held out everything short of threat—­we have addressed her in language gentle indeed in outward