might have been attached to their ancient monarchy, and with one hand upheld Ferdinand VII. whilst with the other they worshipped the Lady of the Pillar. The right honourable gentleman had objected to the appointment of any other than a military man on a mission to Spain; but as the objects of that right honourable gentleman were of a philosophical nature, military men would not have been the most proper persons for their accomplishment. The military part of the transactions in Spain might have disappointed expectation, but the cause was not desperate. The soldiers who conquered at Baylen, and those who rallied after the defeat of Medina del Rio Seco, those who defended Madrid before they were soldiers, and drove the French out of Castille, were still staunch in the cause. The spirit of the people was unsubdued. The boundaries of the power of the French were confined within their military posts. The throne of Joseph was erected on sand, and would totter with the first blast. When he compared the present situation of Spain with what it was when the French were in the undisturbed possession of Biscay, Castille, Catalonia, and Portugal, he could not discover any grounds for despondency. The French had now Gallicia, but they had not Portugal: so that, upon the whole, the situation of Spain was not so unpromising as in June last. Whatever might be the fruits of Buonaparte's victories in other respects, the spirit of the Spanish nation was yet unsubdued. His fortune, no doubt, had been augmented; but still it was fortune, not fate. There was

something unworthy in the senti ment that would defer to this fortune as to the dispensations of providence, looking upon it as immutable in its nature, and irresistible by human means. Mr. C. concluded by stating his intention to give his negative to the motion.

Mr. Windham was determined to confine what he had to say to the objects of the proposed inqui ry, and should therefore pass by four-fifths of the speech of Mr. C. It was an odd moment for the right honourable gentleman to express his hopes, and an odd quar ter from which such hopes proceeded, when our army had been withdrawn from Spain, and when we had left the Spaniards to fight their own battles. It appeared a great fault in the military councils of this country, that on the 12th of July, they were so very badly informed of the situation of Portugal, where every man was our friend, and where information would issue from every port, to suppose that there was but 5,000 French in that country, when, in fact, there were 25,000. If Spain had been assisted in the best manner, there was every reason to suppose, that our assistance would have been effectual. There were, evidently, two courses to be pursued: either to strike a stroke on the part that first presented itself, namely, on the Ebro, and to endeavour to drive the enemy out of Spain, by attacking him instantly, while his force was small, and when his views upon Austria, or his jealousy of what Austria might design against him, divided his attention, and made it impossible greatly to augment his numbers; or, giving up that attempt as hopeless,

to

to proceed at once to what ought to be the general plan of the campaign, with a view of affording to Spain any hope of final deliverance. On the former of these modes of proceeding, though the most tempting, he avoided giving an opinion, because few but those in office could possess the necessary means of judging.

It was not, at the same time true, that the one plan created any necessity of giving up the other: the force sent to the Ebro, had, as it ought to have been, chiefly cavalry, (the force which the Spaniards most wanted, and what we had most ready and could best spare) such a force, even found in the event insufficient for its immediate object, could still have been able to take care of itself, and to have retired in safety through Spain, a country of friends and allies, to that part of the peninsula, where at all events, and in every view, the great mass of our force should be collected. This part was no other than the southern provinces, the neighbourhood of Cadiz and Gibraltar. Whatever force we send into Spain, could we be sure even with all the aid that the armies or masses of Spain could give us, would be able to resist the hosts that Buonaparte could pour in against us, having for his supply nothing less than a sort of inexhaustible ocean, the whole population of Europe?-The inference drawn from these premises by his majesty's ministers seemed to be, that we ought to send only a small force: but great or small, the necessity of a retreat being provided seemed nearly equal. the army was large, the stake was

If

greater: and if small, the chance was greater of losing it. Now there was in the whole peninsula, including Spain and Portugal, but two places, and those in the same quarter, from which a large body of troops when pressed by a supe rior army, could hope to get away, viz. Cadiz and Gibraltar. Το meet in the south of Spain, a British force of 100,000 men, Buonaparte must bring over the Pyrennees a force not less than 200,000, to say nothing of the demand that would be made upon him by the large Spanish army that might be raised in that part of Spain to co-operate with the British army, and which the presence of a British force would help to raise. Buonaparte would have a whole kingdom, which he must garrison behind him, if he could either be sure of his supplies, or make provision against total destruction in case of a reverse: he must fight us at arms length, while our strength would be exerted within distance, with an impregnable fortress at hand, furnishing at once a safe retreat in case of disaster, and a source of endless supply, by means of its safe and undisturbed communication with this country. And let it not be supposed, that while the army continued in the south, Buonaparte might continue master of the north.

What mastery could he have of any part of Spain, while such an army could be kept on foot in another? A force raised to the greatest possible amount to which the mind and means of the country, then elevated above itself, and raised to something of a preternatural greatness, could have raised it,

should

should have been placed in Spain in a situation, the only one which the country afforded, where it would have been safe from the risk of total loss or capture, and would not have been kept down by the idea that the deposit was too great for the country to hazard. This should have been the great foundation, the base-line of the campaign. On this the country might have given a loose to all its exertions, with the consolatory reflection that the greater its exertions, the greater its security; that the more it made its preparations effectual for their purpose, the less was the risk at which it acted. From this, other operations might have branched in different directions, as circumstances pointed out. It was scandalous that nothing had been ever done to assist our friends or annoy our enemies on the east side of Spain, where to a power having the complete command of the sea, the finest opportunities were presented, and had been most unaccountably neglected. Ministers had forgotten that there was such a coast as the eastern coast of Spain; that it was accessible every where to our ships; placed as the high road for the entry of troops from France; inhabited by the race of men who fought at Saragossa and Gerona: and on the other hand, that we had a large army doing nothing in Sicily, or who, if we were to attempt to employ them in the quarter where they were, must be employed in worse than doing nothing. For all operations in this quarter of Spain, Gibraltar afforded the most marked facilities.

With a large army stationed in

the south, the enemy could never know what detachments were slipping out behind us, nor with what descents they might be threatened in their rear or their flanks: the army needed never to have been idle: or, what was hardly less advantageous, to have been supposed to be idle. A great army assembled at such a nation would have had the farther advantage, that it would have given us an ascendancy in the Spanish councils, highly advantageous to them, and such as with tolerable good conduct, might have been made not less popular.

Mr. W. observed that the great and pregnant source of error in the conduct of the present administration, next to their misinformation and general ignorance, was, what they had in common with many other ministers, and what he had signally witnessed in some of his own time, their mistaking bustling for activity; and supposing that they were doing a great deal, when they were only making a great noise and spending a great deal of money. While they were writing long dispatches, issuing orders in all directions, keeping up clerks to unusual hours, covering the roads with messengers, and putting the whole country into a ferment, they were very apt to fancy that the public service must be making prodigious advances. It was thus too, they supposed, that an administration was to acquire the character of vigour! They looked at every measure, not with a view to the effect it was to produce abroad, but to the appearance which it was to make at home: and the public, it appeared, joined them heartily

in the delusion: as if any military preparations could avail without a proper plan for the direction of military exertions.-Mr. W. concluded with expressing his determination to support the motion for an enquiry.

Mr. Ponsonby replied to some statements in the speech of the right hon. gentleman opposite. Lord Castlereagh said, that the government of Spain considered its salvation to depend upon the appearance of an English army in Spain, and yet gave no reason for the extraordinary delay of sending that army; or why, when it did arrive at Corunna, that government had given no orders for its landing. From keeping an army waiting for intelligence, what could be expected but defeat-Mr. P. observed, that Mr.

CHAP.