Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh quotes

Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh was a British statesman and diplomat, renowned for his role during the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna. As Foreign Secretary, he played a crucial part in shaping post-war Europe and securing peace among major powers. He is remembered as a key architect of 19th-century international diplomacy. Here are 8 of his quotes:

It is impossible not to perceive a great moral change coming on in Europe, and that the principles of freedom are in full operation. The danger is, that the transition may be too sudden to ripen into anything likely to make the world better or happier. We have new constitutions launched in France, Spain, Holland, and Sicily. Let us see the result before we encourage farther attempts. The attempts may be made, and we must abide the consequences; but I am sure it is better to retard than accelerate the operation of this most hazardous principle which is abroad.

Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh

You will fully appreciate the Parliamentary importance of not having imputed to us that Louis XVIII., by being made an Ally against Buonaparte, has been made master of the confederacy for his own restoration. His Majesty cannot wish us to feel more decisively the importance of his restoration than we do; and most assuredly every effort will be made so to conduct the war so as to lead to this result, but we cannot make it a sine qua non. Foreign Powers may justly covenant for the destruction of Buonaparte's authority as inconsistent with their own safety, but it is another question avowedly to stipulate as to his successor. This is a Parliamentary delicacy.

Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh

The question which the House would have to decide was, whether a system had been created under which all countries might live in that peace which it was the great object of the confederacy to establish. A difference of sentiment on some points of the arrangements could be no impeachment of the wisdom of the whole. Perfection belonged to no work of human beings, even when many years were devoted to it; much less when its completion was accelerated by the necessity of circumstances. On this general principle he applauded and was prepared to maintain the proceedings of the Congress at Vienna.

Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh

It was not merely a question whether the Bourbon family, which had already given so many benefits to France, and among them, that best of all benefits, peace, should continue to reign in France, but whether tyranny and despotism should again reign over the independent nations of the continent? Whether as applied to this country, we should enjoy the happy state that we had bought with our blood after a long struggle, or whether we should once more revert to that artificial system which, during that struggle, we were compelled to maintain? Upon these points there could exist only one feeling, and his lordship trusted that Providence would ordain only one result.

Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh

It provided specifically against an infraction on the part of France of the state of possession then created: It provided against the Return of the Usurper or any of his Family to the throne: It further designated the Revolutionary Power which had convulsed France and desolated Europe, as an object of it's constant solicitude, but it was the Revolutionary power more particularly in its Military Character actual and existent within France against which it intended to take Precautions, rather than against the Democratic Principles, then as now, but too generally spread throughout Europe.

Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh

In this country at all times, but especially at the present conjuncture, when the whole Energy of the State is required to unite reasonable men in defence of our existing Institutions, and to put down the spirit of Treason and Disaffection which in certain of the Manufacturing Districts in particular, pervades the lower orders, it is of the greatest moment, that the public sentiment should not be distracted or divided, by any unnecessary interference of the Government in events, passing abroad, over which they can have none, or at best but very imperfect means of controul.

Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh

It will naturally occur to every virtuous and generous mind, and to none more probably than to the Emperor of Russia's own,-indeed it is the first impression which presents itself to every reflecting observer when he contemplates the internal state of European Turkey-viz. : Is it fit that such a state of things should continue to exist? Ought the Turkish yoke to be for ever rivetted upon the necks of their suffering and Christian subjects; and shall the descendants of those, in admiration of whom we have been educated, be doomed in this fine country to drag out, for all time to come, the miserable existence to which circumstances have reduced them?

Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh