areopagitical

Updated: October 10, 2025

The immediate object of England, therefore, was to hinder the impress of a joint character from being affixed to the war if war there must be with Spain; to take care that the war should not grow out of an assumed jurisdiction of the Congress; to keep within reasonable bounds that predominating areopagitical spirit, which the memorandum of the British Cabinet of May, 1820, describes as 'beyond the sphere of the original conception, and understood principles of the alliance', 'an alliance never intended as a union for the government of the world, or for the superintendence of the internal affairs of other States. And this, I say, was accomplished.

- Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914