information, and that extreme incapacity which have marked all the expeditions of his Majesty's minis ters. At the first point of attack, where, according to the information of ministers, only 2000 men were stationed; 14,000 were found; and the second point of attack, which, according to the same information, was stated to be completely open and accessible, was found to be strongly fortified beyond the reach of our attack, secure from hostile approach, and inaccessible to our force. These different disastrous expeditions have been attended with a dreadful waste of life; they were collected and dispatched at an immense expence; the resources of the country, and the lives of its armies, were squandered upon vain and impracticable objects, under circumstances naturally to be foreseen, and which ought consequently to have been guarded against. There may be cases in which it may be necessary to expose your armies not only to the dangers of battle, but also to those of disease. Deeply to be regretted as such cases are, yet they may exist. Why our armies were exposed in unhealthy situations in Spainwhether it was necessary they should be so exposed, will be matter for future inquiry. How has that happened as to Walcheren? the place, the situation, nay, the season of the year were chosen by his majesty's ministers. There is a season of the year when the air of that place is most pestilential and dangerous; yet to that place, and at that time, say his majesty's ministers, "We will send the flower of the British army." Have they then been ignorant, have they not read of the nature of the climate of Walcheren, in that book to which one would think they would naturally resort under their circumstances-

gence of the signature of that armis tice had actually arrived in this country. And thus, when all prospect of operating a diversion in favour of Austria had failed, the expedition had sailed from our shores, and the destruction of a few ships, and the plunder of the docks of the enemy, were to be substituted for the object so much boasted of-that of making a diversion in favour of Austria. Your ally, vanquished and subdued, had accepted the law from the conqueror, and then your tardy army left your shores. Shall I be told that it was a great armament; that it was delayed by necessity; that, like every naval force, it depended on the winds, and the transports being in readiness? Why all this is. not new to you. If you want to land 40,000 men in the neighbourhood of the Scheldt, it is necessary to have transports to convey them; but if, by events which you could not controul, it was impossible to send this armament sooner, why send it at all? But besides incurring an immense expence to achieve an object of comparatively trifling value, a still more serious objection exists to this expedition. We have been charged upon the continent with sacrificing the interests of our allies to expeditions, the only objects of which were to burn a few ships, and destroy docks, with the mere view of some little interest of our own. Till the hour of the Copenhagen expedition, nothing had ocoured in our conduct to give currency to this false hood; now, however, a still greater and more just currency must be given to it from the nature and achieve ments of this expedition to Walche. ren, which terminated in the mighty exploit of blowing up the basin and the docks of Flushing! The plan displayed all that egregious want of

I mean Sir John Pringle's work upon the Diseases of the Army? Have they not examined that work, where they would find the pestilential effects of the climate of that unhealthy island described, and proved by our own dearly-bought experience? Nay, so notorious have been the effects of that climate, that the Swiss Cantons, when they furnished mercenary troops as auxiliaries to the Dutch, thought it necessary to stipulate expressly that they should not be sent to Walcheren during the noxious season, it being well known that if they were sent there they must inevitably perish. This, then, is not a case of unforeseen calamity. Ministers knew, or ought to have known, all these things before they sent an army into Walcheren; and they are of consequence most deeply responsible for the lives of those brave men who perished there, without the chance of being able to confer any benefit upon their country, which might afford her some consolation under a loss so afflicting. Our armies had hardly been there a month, when the object appeared clearly impracticable to all but to his majesty's ministers: The commander-in-chief determined to return. On the 27th of August, we were told by him who had advised the expedition, and who had been appointed to command it, that the object was not to be accomplished; still the troops were suffered to remain in the island for two or three months, a prey to the diseases of that pestilential climate! To whom, then, are to be imputed the deaths that took place in consequence? To whom is to be imputed this wanton waste of the valuable lives of our brave defenders? What excuse can these ministers offer to the parents, the relations, the friends, of those brave men, who were

suffered to perish thus uselessly, and thus ingloriously? What excuse can they offer to their country for this most afflicting loss? While letters were passing and repassing on this subject, hundreds of British soldiers were perishing for no object whatever.- With such a case then already established, do you mean to wait for inquiry before you pronounce upon that which is now evident? Will garbled papers be a compensation for all this mass of calamity and disgrace to an injured and outraged country? Separate yourselves, my lords, I beseech you, in this awful and perilous crisis of your fate, from this miscon duct of ministers ;-declare your severe reprobation of their conduct on that point, which is already completely before you; and which, from its very nature, can admit of no defence. You will find them, no doubt, attempting, as on former occasions, to shift the blame from themselves to the officers: They will not stop there, they will involve your lordships in the same charge; you, who after the experience you had of their mode of proceeding in the expedition under General Moore, encouraged them to go on in the same course. And how can you entirely exculpate yourselves? How can you, who saw what had taken place before in Spain and Portugal, without expressing your disapprobation, excuse yourselves from a share in the disasters which have since happened in the same countries? Obligation does not, in these cases, rest solely with ministers.-You, too, have a duty to perform, which, if you do not perform, you are justly chargeable with your share in the public calamities. We must look to parliament. These are not times for votes of confidence, and implicit reliance upon ministers. Parliament

must now exert itself in this most imminent crisis of the fate of our country. You cannot be ignorant of the tremendous situation in which your country is placed. Its dangers are no longer to be enhanced by eloquence, or aggravated by description. If you cannot look to parliament for its deliverance, where can you look? Can you look to the government? See it, my lords, broken, distracted, incompetent, incapable of exerting any energy, or of inspiring any confidence. It is not from the government, then, that our deliverance is to be expected. It must be found, if it is to be found at all, in your own energy, and in your own patriotism.'

Lord Grenville concluded by moving, as an amendment to the address, that the house "had seen, with the utmost sorrow and indignation, the accumulated failures and disasters of the last campaign; the unavailing waste of our national resources, and the loss of so many thousand of our brave troops, whose distinguished and heroic valour had been unprofitably sacrificed in enterprizes productive not of advantage, but of lasting injury to the country;-enterprizes marked only by a repetition of former errors; tardy and uncombined, incapable in their success of aiding our ally in the critical moment of his fate; but exposing, in their failures, his majesty's councils to the scorn and derision of the enemy: that the house, therefore, felt themselves bound, with a view to the only atonement that could now be made to an injured people, to institute without delay such rigorous and effectual inquiries and proceedings as duty impelled them to adopt in a case when their country had been subjected to unexampled calamity and disgrace."

Earl Moira, though he went the

whole length of the amendment, as he expressed himself, differed from Lord Grenville respecting the hopes which the last campaign had offered. "It would," he said, " have threatened most formidable consequences to France, had we landed an army in the south of Germany; or had we landed one in the north, what might not have been expected, from it acting in the rear of the French, and combining and sustaining the scattered troops on that part of the continent. Concerning Spain, he differed from him still more; for there an opportu nity was afforded of terminating the war with glory, and of shaking, if not overturning, the power of Buonaparte. The enthusiasm which existed in that country could not be questioned, for nothing but enthusiasm could have kept armies still together after so many defeats and disasters. That enthusiasın made Spain a lever by which the power of France might have been removed from its foundation. But what was done there? Sir Arthur Wellesley's army had advanced into Spain and gained a victory, but although the stronger and victorious army, it immediately retreated. Either, therefore, his instructions were erroneous and defective, or he had not means to carry forward his victorious troops. And what was worse, two great Spanish armies had been since successively cut to pieces, while a British army remained idle and inactive in their vicinity!" Earl Grey also supported the amendment. Concerning the Austrian war, he agreed with Earl Moira, that an expedition either to the north of Germany, or to the Adriatic, might have been undertaken with some prospect of success. Concerning Spain, he expressed no hope, and detracted from the merit of Lord,

Wellington. "Ministers," he said, "did not venture to speak so boldly in their defence as they had done in the speech; and he was glad to find, from their humble and chastened tone, that they appeared to feel some remorse for the numerous miseries which they had inflicted, by their imbecillity and misconduct, upon their country. Had it been otherwise, he should have supposed that Almighty vengeance was hanging over this nation, and that therefore the hearts of its rulers had been hardened in proportion as their understandings were darkened."

Viscount Sidmouth, with his usual fairness, desired a full and rigorous inquiry, but objected to Lord Grenville's amendment, because it condemned without inquiry. "There was much of irritation," he said, "and much of despondency at that moment in the public mind, and such language neither tended to soothe the one, nor to reanimate the other." Ministers themselves argued as Lord Sidmouth had done, that the mode of proceeding which Lord Grenville advised, was unusual and unprecedented; for it would make the house pass a vote of absolute condemnation, previous to any inquiry. Lord Mulgrave said, "he never remembered any legislative measure resembling such a proposition, except an act of parliament, enacting that persons found poaching for game under certain circumstances were to be flogged at the cart's tail; but a clause was added, that those who found themselves aggrieved thereby might make an appeal to the next quarter sessions. In the same man. ner, it was proposed first to punish his majesty's ministers, and then to inquire whether they had deserved that punishment." In defending their own measures they had a more diffi

cult task. They argued, that to have transported an army to the Adriatic was actually impracticable, on account of the expences and difficulty. In the north, also, it would have been impracticable to subsist and pay a sufficient army. All that could be done had been done. The enemy had for years been erecting a naval arsenal and depot, from whence he might menace the most vulnerable part of these realms. He boasted of having opened a river which had so long been shut, and of having made it the sta tion of a naval power, as well as the source of commercial wealth. He boasted of having brought his designs and means at Antwerp to full maturity. A well directed effort was made to destroy those means. This design, through various, unexpected, and unforeseen, because unascertainable difficulties, had not been wholly accomplished; yet it had been ac complished so far as to render abortive his schemes of hostility from that quarter, for the complete destruction of the harbour and arsenal of Flushing had effected this.

These were Lord Harrowby's ar guments. They were enforced by the Earl of Liverpool, who said, "it was always the opinion of professional men, that an invasion of this country could never be effected except from the Scheldt, and in preventing this danger we had succeeded. Nor was this the only object which the expedition had accomplished. It was the desire of Austria that we should retain Walcheren till she made terms of peace; and expressly at the request of Austria we had held it after the ulterior objects of the armament were abandoned, in order that our ally might thereby be enabled to make better terms. Hard as these terms were, yet when compared with the

threats of Buonaparte, it must be admitted that some cause had induced him to relax from his intended severity, and that cause he attributed to the retention of Walcheren." Thus. perfidiously had Austria deceived the British government! 92 peers voted for Lord Grenville's amendment; 144 against it, a greater majority than the opposition had expected.

The address was moved by Lord Bernard in the House of Commons, the amendment by Lord Gower, who was vehemently supported by the Hon. J. W. Ward. "During the few months," he said, "which had elapsed since the last session of parliament, we had been engaged in various military operations upon a most extensive scale, and those operations had been attended by failure more complete, by loss more deplorable, and by disgrace more signal, than any that we find recorded within an equal space of time in the history of this or any former war in which the country was ever engaged. We were called upon to declare that accident had been every thing, and misconduct nothing, in these transactions,-which was to believe that a miracle had been worked against us; we were required to believe this in favour of a government of departments, at the head of which, till lately, stood a nobleman of no very distinguished talents, enfeebled by age and sufferings, and labouring ineffectually to keep toge. ther the discordant parts of a precarious administration; we were required to believe it in favour of a cabinet, the members of which entertained for each other the most profound contempt, or the most deadly antipathy; whose time, instead of being devoted to the public business, was spent in dark intrigues, in personal discussions, and in devising schemes

for parcelling out the great offices of state, which they seem to have considered as a private inheritance, to be divided for their individual benefit, not as a solemn trust, to be adminis tered for the general good. We were required to believe in the capacity of those who had pronounced upon each others incapacity; and it was from discord at home, and disgrace abroad, that we were to infer wisdom and good conduct. When I call to mind,” said he," the ignominious history of their internal dissensions, when I see that their whole administration has been one uniform tissue of calamities, a foul and detestable blot in the annals of the country, I do not hesitate to declare my unalterable conviction, that such a government was unworthy to possess the confidence of parliament; and that a government which differs from it chiefly by the loss of those talents for business and debate, which formed its great ornament, and which is a little more united, at the price of being a great deal weaker in all other respects, is unfit to carry on the affairs of state, and that it is the duty of every member of this house, and the interest of every man who is concerned in the preservation of the country, to contribute by all lawful means to its subversion."

The speech was in the same tone as this violent exordium. For the sake of heaping more honour on Sir John Moore, whom party spirit had magnified into a hero, and exalted as a political martyr, Mr Ward spoke of those officers who, knowing the Spaniards better, entertained brighter hopes for Spain, in a manner as ungenerous as it was unjust. He depreciated their talents, and vilified their motives. "It was natural enough for them," he said, "to represent in their dispatches only the fair side of things; it was