If the public honor 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 the
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.
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