英国的利益是永恒的，我们有责任遵循这些利益。

 柯利達爵士对向议会负责的部长们负责，但他并没有把这个过程理想化。

他写下了本杰明-迪斯雷利（Benjamin Disraeli）的警告："如果你建立一个民主制度，你必须在适当的时候收获民主的果实。

至于公众的知情权，他将其视为外交政策的瘟疫。

他赞许地引用了艾尔-克罗爵士（Sir Eyre Crowe）的话，他是外交部的一位严谨的负责人，他曾警告说不要姑息德皇，而且他 "对所有关于外交事务的公开演讲感到遗憾"。

另一方面，他认识到，现代的公众舆论在政治上是很重要的，"任何外交部长都不能在十八世纪无视它的情况下行事。

 

Cradock answered to ministers who answered to Parliament, but he did not idealise that process. He wrote down a warning from Benjamin Disraeli: ‘If you establish a democracy you must in due course reap the fruits of democracy.’ As for the public’s right to know, he treated it as a plague upon foreign policy. He cited with approval Sir Eyre Crowe, an austere head of the Foreign Office who had warned against appeasing the Kaiser and who ‘deplored all public speeches on foreign affairs’. On the other hand he appreciated that modern public opinion was politically important and ‘no foreign secretary can act in eighteenth century disregard of it.’

 

柯利達爵士相信帕麦斯顿勋爵的箴言，并忠实地抄录下来，即 "我们没有永恒的盟友，也没有永久的敌人。

我们的利益是永恒的，我们有责任遵循这些利益。

他认为，顾虑和道德可以发挥一定的作用，但它们给决策者带来的负担让他想起了十七世纪法国红衣主教黎塞留的一句话："在国家事务中，拥有权力的人往往拥有权利，而软弱的人只能在世界大多数人的意见中艰难地避免做错。

在这之后，他记录了教皇乌尔班八世在听到黎塞留的死讯时所说的话："如果有上帝，那么黎塞留就有很多事要做。

如果没有，那么他就是一个伟大的人"。

 

Cradock believed in Lord Palmerston’s dictum, faithfully transcribed, that ‘we have no eternal allies and no permanent enemies. Our interests are eternal and those interests it is our duty to follow.’ Scruple and morality could play a part, he felt, but the burden they placed on policy-makers reminded him of a saying by Cardinal Richelieu in seventeenth-century France: ‘in matters of state, he who has the power often has the right and he who is weak can only with difficulty keep from doing wrong in the opinion of the majority of the world.’ After this, he recorded the words of Pope Urban VIII on hearing of Richelieu’s death: ‘if there is a God then Richelieu has much to answer for. If not, then he was a great man.’