thrown in the way of any troops they might afterwards send. The Juntas in Gallicia and on the frontiers of Leon, were apprized of the expeditions then going out, and letters to different English officers from our government, requiring them to try every method to secure the troops accommodations on their landing; and necessaries for their continuing their march, were laid before the respective Juntas. But Lord C. was very sorry to say, that the Juntas had neglected to act according to those communications. He did not wish to censure, or complain of their conduct; but such was the fact. Mr. P. had expressed surprise, that the movements of the British army had been so slow, and those of the French comparatively so rapid. But there was a difference between an army fully equipped, and one not equipped; between an army that would seize every thing on its way that could facilitate its march, whether provisions or carriages, and an army that could not have any such resource. Though the Spanish armies under Blake and Romana, and that of Estremadura, had, before the arrival of Sir John Moore at Salamanca, suffered severe reverses, still this was not a fair test of the general spirit of the people. They had at that period the most difficult task imposed upon them, that could devolve to the nation in such circumstances. They were at the same time to make head against a powerful enemy, and to make a government. After the march of the army from Salamanca, the only object was to draw off the force of the enemy from pushing his conquests to the south. And surely

never was a diversion more completely effected.

Lord C. ridiculed the notion of our military character being lost in consequence of the late reverses, and asked if the disgraces of Vimeira and Corunna were to be blotted from the memories of Englishmen. If gentlemen were anxious for enquiry, they might go into a committee that would occupy them three months. Nothing, however, could be a greater mistake, than the supposition that those who called for inquiry meant that they wanted information. He left it with confidence to the house to say, whether any case had been made out to justify the motion of the right honourable gentleman; and where no case was made out, no enquiry could be called for.

The speech of Lord Castlereagh in answer to Mr. Ponsonby, was animadverted on at great length by Mr. Tierney. Among the most important of his animadversions were the following. He wanted to know why we had not taken possession of Ferrol. If the government of Spain had not sufficient confidence in us to grant us this much, why were troops sent to that country at all? Why had not Sir John Moore fallen back upon Vigo and Portugal, which, at one period, he certainly would have done, if he had been left to his own discretion? Mr. Tierney was followed by a great number of speakers on the present most interesting question, and the debate was continued till half past three on Saturday morning. We have already stated the principal arguments pro and con. It is not to do justice to the ability and dexterity of orators, or to record the most brilliant

brilliant specimens of wit and eloquence, that is by any means so much our object, as to state the most solid and weighty reasonings, whether in condemnation or justification of the great measures of government. It may, and does not unfrequently happen, that the same arguments that have been used by movers, and those that second, or by those that step forth early in a debate, are placed in a more striking light by subsequent speakers. But we beg leave, and we understand that it is not altogether unnecessary, to remind some of our readers, that it is parliamentary proceedings, with the Views on which they are founded, not eloquence, that is, or ought to be, the principal consideration, in Brief Annals of Europe. In our accounts of parliamentary business, we are restricted in some measure, to the order in which the different speakers appear in the conversation, or the debate. If only a few passages are selected from the speeches of some members, and those of others wholly passed over: this is by no means intended, and ought not to be considered as a test of their comparative excellence or merit. They who wish to enter minutely into the particular talents and turns of all the different speakers, and when there was a laugh in the house, or when a cry of hear! hear! &c. &c. must have recourse to newspapers, or to the ponderous volumes, from thence principally collected, of parliamentary debates.

General Stewart observed, that the junction of Sir J. Moore and Sir D. Baird, was not at first critical, though it afterwards became

so, in consequence of the defeat of Castanos. Mr. Colborne maintained that the honour which the British army had gained in Spain, by raising its character, had done more than all the plans that had been devised for the recruiting of that army. Lord Milton said, that had the expeditions to Ferrol and the Helder been enquired into, they should not now have to regret the failures to which the motion referred.

Mr. Secretary Canning laboured principally to shew that the military movements of Sir John Moore were not dictated by the British ministry, but spontaneous on his part, and arranged in concert with the Spanish government. On the tender point of the interference of Mr. Frêre in military plans and operations, he affirmed, that nothing had been done by that gentleman, but what was calculated to raise the character of this country in Spain, and to conciliate the attachment of that country to Great Britain. -It had been urged by Mr. P. that before the assistance of this country had been given to Spain, it ought to have been ascertained whether or not the Spaniards were instigated by the monks, by a spirit of popery, or encouraged by the higher ranks. These were questions better suited for a period of learned leisure, than for the hour of action. His majesty's ministers, of whom he was a humble one, felt that the Spanish nation, wanted other aids than lectures on municipal institutions. They were content that a British army should act in Spain, though the grand inquisitor might have been at the head of the Spanish armies; though the people

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 sentiment 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. con cluded 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 inquiry, 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 quarter 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. If the army was large, the stake was

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 superior army, could hope to get away, viz. Cadiz and Gibraltar. To meet in the south of Spain, a British force of 100,000 men, Buonaparte must bring over the Pyrenees 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 ser-. vice 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