altered; and what is said often ought not to be said because it is
captious, and what is not said ought as often to be said because it
is material. We should have a manlier and plainer way of dealing
with foreign policy, if Ministers were obliged to explain clearly
their foreign contracts before they were valid, just as they have to
explain their domestic proposals before they can become laws. The
objections to this are, as far as I know, three, and three only.

First, that it would not be always desirable for Ministers to state
clearly the motives which induced them to agree to foreign compacts.
"Treaties," it is said, "are in one great respect different from
laws, they concern not only the Government which binds, the nation
so bound, but a third party too--a foreign country--and the feelings
of that country are to be considered as well as our own. And that
foreign country will, probably, in the present state of the world be
a despotic one, where discussion is not practised, where it is not
understood, where the expressions of different speakers are not
accurately weighed, where undue offence may easily be given." This
objection might be easily avoided by requiring that the discussion
upon treaties in Parliament like that discussion in the American
Senate should be "in secret session," and that no report should be
published of it. But I should, for my own part, be rather disposed
to risk a public debate. Despotic nations now cannot understand
England; it is to them an anomaly "chartered by Providence"; they
have been time out of mind puzzled by its institutions, vexed at its
statesmen, and angry at its newspapers. A little more of such
perplexity and such vexation does not seem to me a great evil. And
if it be meant, as it often is meant, that the whole truth as to
treaties cannot be spoken out, I answer, that neither can the whole
truth as to laws. All important laws affect large "vested