This was a triumphant reply. The arguments of the opposition had been so misdirected, that there was no occasion of subterfuge, sophistry, or the shield of a majority to baffle them: they were refutable by a plain statement of facts, where they relied on facts, ... by an appeal to principles and feelings, where they pretended to philosophy. Mr. Canning spoke from his heart. There was nothing which he was required to extenuate or to exaggerate; all that was needful was a manly avowal of what had been done, and of the reasons why it had been done. He had a good cause to plead, and he pleaded it with a force and eloquence worthy of the occasion. The same cause was in effect ♦Mr. Windham.♦ pleaded by Mr. Windham, though he took his place in the opposition ranks, and voted for the inquiry as an opposition question. “Our expedition to Spain,” he said, “had been so managed as to produce what was much worse than nothing. What we called our best army had retreated from the field without striking a blow, on the mere rumour of the enemy’s advance. We had shown them that our best troops could do nothing, and therefore that there was little chance of their undisciplined peasantry succeeding better. There were two courses which might have been pursued, either that of striking a blow upon the Ebro while the enemy were weak and their attention distracted, ... or, if this were hopeless, of proceeding at once upon some general plan with a view to the final deliverance of the Peninsula. The first was a mere question on which few but those in office could have the means of judging. But if the force sent to the Ebro had (as it ought to have been) been chiefly cavalry (which the enemy most wanted, and we could best spare), such a force, even if it had been found insufficient for its immediate object, could have retired in safety to that part of the Peninsula where, at all events, and in every view, the great mass of our force should be collected ... the neighbourhood of Cadiz and Gibraltar. These were the only two places from which a large body of troops, when pressed by a superior army, could hope to get away; and there was no other part of Spain to which a British army, large enough to be of any use, could with propriety be trusted.

“There, therefore,” Mr. Windham continued, “I would have collected the greatest force that this country could by any possibility have furnished. There was no reason why we might not have had an army of 100,000. An hundred thousand men, with Gibraltar to retreat upon, was a far less risk to the country than 30,000 in the situation in which the ministry had placed them; nay, than 30,000 in the very situation spoken of; because a general must be miserably deficient in knowledge of his business, who, in such an abundant country, and with such a fortress behind him, would, with an army of that amount, suffer himself to be prevented from making good his retreat, by any force which the enemy could bring against him. For when we talked of Buonaparte’s numbers, we must recollect where those numbers were to act. To meet in the south of Spain a British force of 100,000, Buonaparte must bring over the Pyrenees a force of not less than 200,000; to say nothing of the demand that would be made upon him by the Spanish army which might be raised in that part of Spain, to co-operate with the British, and which the presence of such a British force would help to raise. Buonaparte would have a whole kingdom, which he must garrison, behind him, if he would either be sure of his supplies, or make provision against total destruction, in the event of any reverse. He must fight us at arm’s-length, while our strength would be exerted within distance, with an impregnable fortress at hand, furnishing a safe retreat in case of disaster, and a source of endless supply, by means of its safe and undisturbable communication with this country. And let it not be said, 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 keep on foot in any other? And why, in case of success, did the security of its retreat require that it should never advance? There was never any thing so demonstrable, therefore, as that the only way of carrying on effectually a campaign in Spain, whatever else you might have done, was to collect your army in the south. A force raised to the greatest possible amount to which the mind and means of the country, ... then elevated above itself, and exalted to something of a preternatural greatness, ... could have carried it, should have been placed where it would have been safe from the risk of total loss, 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 plan 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, ... the more it made its preparations effectual to their purpose, the less was the risk at which it acted.”

Mr. Windham then censured in strong terms the neglect of those opportunities which our command at sea had offered upon the eastern coast of Spain; “a coast,” he said, “which was placed as the high road for the entry of troops from France, which was every where accessible for our ships, and which was inhabited by the race of men who fought at Gerona and Zaragoza. Total forgetfulness could alone explain this most unaccountable neglect. But the great and pregnant source of error in ministers,” he observed, “besides the fault of not knowing better, was that which they had in common with many other ministers, and which he had signally witnessed in some of his own time, ... that of mistaking bustle for activity, and supposing that they were doing a great deal, when they were only making a great deal of noise, and spending a great deal of money. They looked at every measure, not with a view to the effect which it was to produce abroad, but to the appearance which it was to make at home.” He then spoke of the campaign in Spain more fairly than either party had ventured to represent it. “He could not,” he said, “help perceiving in the conduct of this war, and certainly in much of the language held about it, a certain mixture of that error which prevailed in many years of the last, of looking to other powers for what ought to have been our own work. We did not set our shoulders to the wheel, as people would who estimated truly what the exertions of this country could do, when fairly put forth. In this point there was a want of confidence in ourselves; ... in another there was a want, not merely of generosity, but of common justice toward our allies. There could be nothing more fallacious than to estimate the feelings of a country towards any cause by the feelings excited in that part of it which should be exposed to the immediate pressure of an army. If the scene of war lay in England, and we had an army of allies, or even of our own countrymen, acting for our defence, they would not be very popular in the places where they were quartered or encamped; and there would not be wanting complaints among the farmers whose provisions were consumed, whose hen-roosts were plundered, whose furniture was stolen, whose ricks were set on fire, and whose wives and daughters might not always escape insult, that the French themselves could not do them greater mischief. Now, if this were true, as infallibly it would be, of English troops upon English ground, might we not suppose that a good deal more of the same sort would happen when English troops were on Spanish ground, where every cause of dissatisfaction must be aggravated a thousand-fold, by difference of habits and manners, and the want of any common language, by which the parties might understand one another? It must be confessed, too, he was afraid, that we were not the nation who accommodated ourselves best to strangers, or knew best how to conciliate their good will: and when to all this was added, that we were a retreating army, and an army compelled to retreat with extraordinary rapidity, and much consequent disorder, it would not be surprising if neither we appeared to the people, nor they to us, in the most advantageous form. Nor were the inhabitants of the towns and villages on the line of our march to be considered as a fair representation of the feelings and sentiments of the mass of people in Spain. On many occasions the soldiers, at the end of a long march, had nothing provided for them to eat, and were obliged to help themselves. The inhabitants, whether they staid or had fled, had locked up their houses, and nothing was to be got but by breaking them open; and when once soldiers, whether from necessity or otherwise, began to break open houses, farther irregularities must be expected. Galicia was probably an unfair specimen of what was to be looked for from the rest of Spain; not so much from the character of the inhabitants, as from the state of society there, where the gentry were few, and of little influence; and where there was almost a total want of those classes which might direct and methodize the exertions of the lower orders. But to talk of the Spaniards generally, as wanting in zeal, or courage, or determination to defend their country, was more than any one would venture, after such examples as Zaragoza. A defence had there been made, so far exceeding what was to be expected from a regular army, that a general in this country would have been made a peer for having surrendered Zaragoza, in circumstances far short of those in which its inhabitants defended it.”

There was an English spirit in this speech, such as might have been looked for from Mr. Windham: for if sometimes he seemed to delight in making with perverse ingenuity the worse appear the better reason, and treated as a sport for the intellect subjects which deserved a serious and severe feeling, no political views or enmities ever betrayed him into an unworthy act, or sentiment inconsistent with his natural generosity. The motion for inquiry was rejected; but whatever papers were called for were granted, though Lord Liverpool warned his opponents, that if they insisted upon making ♦Sir John Moore’s dispatches.♦ some of these documents public, they would perceive the impropriety when it was too late. They found in these papers what they wanted, ... an assertion broadly made by Sir John Moore, “that the Spaniards had neither the power nor the inclination to make any efforts for themselves. To convince the people of England, as well as the rest of Europe, of this,” he said, “it was necessary to risk his army, and for that reason he made the march to Sahagun. As a diversion,” he continued, “it succeeded. I brought the whole disposable force of the French against this army, and it has been allowed to follow me, without a single movement being made to favour my retreat. The people of Galicia, though armed, made no attempt to stop the passage of the French through the mountains. They abandoned their dwellings at our approach, drove away their carts, oxen, and every thing that could be of the smallest aid to the army. The consequence has been, that our sick have been left behind: and when our horses or mules failed, which, on such marches, and through such a country, was the case to a great extent, baggage, ammunition, stores, and even money, were necessarily destroyed or abandoned.” This was a heavy charge against the Spaniards, and it was triumphantly repeated by those who, being the opponents of ministry, became thereby the enemies of the Spanish cause. Yet it might have occurred to them that it was neither generous nor prudent to reproach an undisciplined peasantry for not attempting to defend defiles through which the finest army that had ever left England, with a man who was supposed to be their best general at its head, was retreating faster than ever army had retreated before. If these passes were not defensible, why should the Galicians be condemned for not defending them? If they were, why did the British army run through, leaving their baggage, stores, and ammunition, their money, their horses, their sick, their dying, and their dead, to track the way?

This accusation against our allies the opposition had expected to find; but they had not looked for a heavier charge against the army itself from the same authority, ... a charge too which, if any thing more than the consternation and flight of the British force had been required to excuse the Galicians, would have supplied it. For the General added in this unhappy dispatch, “I am sorry to say, that the army whose conduct I had such reason to extol on its march through Portugal, and on its arrival in Spain, has totally changed its character since it began to retreat. I can say nothing in its favour, but that when there was a prospect of fighting the enemy, the men were then orderly, and seemed pleased, and determined to do their duty.” “Of what nature,” it was asked, “was this misconduct with which General Moore so roundly accused a whole army, almost with his dying breath? Did the officers behave ill, or the men, or both? Did they refuse to fight, or did they refuse to fly? What had they done, or what had they omitted to do?” These questions were asked by the wiser part of the public, and the narratives of the campaign, which were afterwards published, amply answered them. It then appeared that the army, from the hour in which it was turned into a rout, considered themselves like sailors after a shipwreck, released from all discipline by the common ruin; ... that they plundered, burnt, and destroyed before them; ... that while many of the officers murmured against the conduct of the commander, the men cried out loudly against the disgrace of running away; ... that order, discipline, temperance, and even humanity, were laid aside by them in their desperation: but that they had never forgotten the honour of England; and that whenever a hope of facing the enemy was held out to them, order was instantaneously restored, they were themselves again, and, in spite of all their fatigues and sufferings, manifested that invincible courage which, happily for themselves and for their country, they were allowed at last to prove upon the French at Coruña.

Such consequences, however, humiliating as they were, were inevitable in a retreat so conducted. But Sir John Moore’s dispatch contained a more startling avowal, for it was then first made known that he had been advised to propose terms to the enemy, that he might be permitted to embark quietly. It was indeed an unexpected shock to learn that there were officers, and of such rank as to offer advice to the General, who were for asking leave of the French to embark, and purchasing by such dishonour that safety which the army, broken-hearted as it was, without horse, and almost without artillery, won gloriously for itself. From this incalculable evil, this inexpiable disgrace, Sir John Moore had saved us. But who were the men who had so little confidence in British valour, that they would not have fought the battle of Coruña? Who were they who, instead of relying upon their own hearts and hands, would have proposed terms to Marshal Soult, and set the Spaniards an example to which every traitor or every coward among them might have appealed as a precedent for any baseness? This question was not asked in Parliament; nor was any pledge required from Government, or given, that these men should never on any future occasion be trusted with command. Not a single remark was made in either House by either party upon this subject, nor upon any of the information contained in a dispatch which had been loudly called for as of such great importance. It furnished no matter of reproach against the ministry, and therefore it was not the kind of information which their opponents wanted. And ministers themselves could make no use of it in their own justification, for, having it in their hands, they had passed a vote of thanks to the officers and men of whose previous misconduct they possessed these proofs; and instead of defending their own measures by arguing that the campaign might probably have turned out well, and beyond all doubt less disastrously, if the Commander had acted with more vigour and more discretion, they had asserted that every thing had been ably executed, as well as wisely planned.

Some matter, however, for accusation the opposition thought they had found in Mr. Frere’s correspondence with Sir John Moore. They affirmed that the fatal event of the campaign had been caused by his interference, he having been the sole cause of the army’s advance. To have his conduct fairly and impartially considered is what no agent of the British government expects from a party in opposition to the government, the just and honourable feelings of private life being so commonly cast aside in political warfare, that the wonder is when a trace of them is found remaining. But Mr. Frere was attacked with peculiar acrimony, as the intimate friend of Mr. Canning; this being motive enough for virulence when a spirit of faction prevails. He was charged in the most unqualified terms with folly, ignorance, and presumption; it was declared that his incapacity had given Buonaparte the same advantage as that Emperor was accustomed to derive from corruption and treason; and it was announced that an address would be moved for his immediate recall. That intention was not pursued when it was understood that Marquis Wellesley would be appointed to succeed him in the embassy; and upon every point except that of having desired that Colonel Charmilly might be examined before a council of war, his conduct was fully vindicated and ♦1809.
April.♦ approved by the ministers. In so doing they thought he had adopted an improper course; but they proved from the documents which had supplied the grounds of the accusation, that Sir John Moore had not been guilty of the gross fault which his admirers, in their desire of criminating another, imputed to him: he had not made a forward movement which endangered the army contrary to his own judgement, and in deference to an opinion which he disapproved; but upon his own plans, and in consequence of the information which he obtained from an intercepted dispatch.

In the course of these debates Earl Grey complained that only 2000 cavalry had been sent to Spain, though we had 27,000, and though that description of force was peculiarly necessary in that country; and he contrasted the conduct of the British government with that of Buonaparte, “the consummate general whose plans they had to oppose. In rapidity of execution,” said his lordship, “he is only equalled by his patience in preparing the means. He has all the opposite qualities of Fabius and Marcellus, whether you consider the country in which he acts, the people with whom he has to contend, or the means by which he is to subdue them. He rivals Hannibal in the application of the means, and is exempt from his only fault, that of not improving by past experience. The means provided by Buonaparte for the accomplishment of his purposes are so well combined, and his objects so ably prosecuted, as generally to give him a moral certainty of success; and whatever may be thought of his total disregard of the justice of those objects, it is impossible not to admire the ability and wisdom with which he combines the means of accomplishing them. In order to maintain against such an antagonist the ultimate contest which is to decide for ever the power and independence of this country, the true policy of those who govern it must be, to pay a strict attention to economy, to be actuated by a determination to concentrate our means, not to endanger them in any enterprise or speculation in which the event is doubtful; but pursuing the economical system of husbanding our resources, by which alone we could enable ourselves to continue a contest, the cessation of which does not depend upon us, but upon the injustice of our enemy.”

The Earl of Liverpool remarked, in reply, how singular it was that every one who censured the plan which ministers had followed with regard to Spain had a plan of his own, and that none of those plans should have a single principle of agreement with each other. This at least, he said, showed the difficulty which government must have felt in forming its measures, though it afforded a facility in defending them. As to the accusation of not sending a sufficient force of cavalry, he stated that as much tonnage was required for 5000 horse as for 40,000 foot; and moreover that vessels of a different description were necessary, of which a very limited number could at any time be procured. Yet from 8000 to 9000 horse had been sent, and there would have been not less than 12,000, had not the General countermanded the reinforcements which were ready. Weak as Earl Grey might be pleased to deem the ministers, they had not been so foolish as to expect that the first efforts of the Spaniards would meet with uninterrupted success; they were not yet guilty of calculating upon impossibilities; they had not supposed that such a cause as the cause of Spain, to be fought for with such an enemy as the ruler of France, could be determined in one campaign. Reverses they had met; but those reverses were not owing to the indifference or apathy of the Spaniards; they were imputable to their want of discipline, and to an ill-judged contempt for the French, a proof in itself of their zeal and ardour. And what would have been the general sentiment in that country and in this if our army had retired without attempting any thing? If, when after all her repeated disasters, the spirit of Spain was unsubdued, and her capital bidding defiance to an immense army at the very gates; if a British army, so marshalled and equipped, and after a long march to the aid of their ally, had in that hour of trial turned their backs upon her danger, what would have been thought of the sincerity of our co-operation? “I believe in my conscience,” he continued, “that that movement of Sir John Moore saved Spain. There are some, perhaps, who may be startled at the assertion: it is my fixed and decided opinion, and as such I will avow it. After the destruction of Blake’s army, the defeat of Castaños, and the dispersion of the army of Extremadura, ... after the capitulation of Madrid, which promised to emulate the glory of Zaragoza, and would have done so, had not treachery interposed; if at that crisis Buonaparte had pursued his conquests, by pushing to the southern provinces, the Spanish troops would never have had time to rally there. But that time was given by Sir John Moore’s advance in their favour. Never was there a more effectual diversion. Sir John Moore himself said, that as a diversion it had completely and effectually succeeded. Nor was the moral effect of thus re-animating the spirit of the nation to be overlooked. Let the final issue of the contest be what it may, France has not yet succeeded in subduing Spain. I admit that Buonaparte has 200,000 men in that country; that his troops are of the bravest, and his generals among the most skilful in the world; and, above all, that he has been himself at their head: and yet, with all this, he has not got possession of more territory than he had last year: he only holds such parts as in every war fell to the lot of whichever brought the largest army into the field. I am far from saying, regard being had to the man and the circumstances of the case, that the Spaniards must ultimately succeed; but, at the same time, looking at the spirit they have evinced, and the actions that have happened, particularly the defence of Zaragoza, I cannot feel lukewarm in my hope that their efforts will be crowned with ultimate success. In that fatal contest with America we gained every battle; we took every town we besieged, until the capture of General Burgoyne; and yet the Americans ultimately succeeded, by perseverance, in the contest. In the present struggle, do not the extent and nature of the country afford a hope of success? does not its population forbid despair? We have not lost the confidence of the Spanish people; we know that every true Spanish heart beats high for this country; we know that whatever may happen, they do not accuse us. Submission may be the lot they are fated to endure in the end; but they do not impute to us the cause of their misfortunes: they are sensible that neither the thirst after commerce, nor territory, nor security, is to be imputed to us, in the assistance we have afforded to them upon this important occasion. Whatever may be the result, we have done our duty; we have not despaired; we have persevered, and will do so to the last, while there is any thing left to contend for with a prospect of success.”

Mr. Canning also declared, that considering Sir John Moore’s advance in a military point, in his poor judgement he could not but think it a wise measure; but in every view which ennobles ♦1809.
May.♦ military objects by exalting military character, he was sure it was so. With all its consequences and disasters, he preferred it to a retreat at that time. Of those disasters he would not say a word: the battle of Coruña covered every thing; but the retreat itself, and the precipitancy of it, he could never cease to regret. This single expression was the only hint even of censure as to the conduct of the retreat which was heard in Parliament. In the course of the debate an extraordinary confession was made ♦May 9.♦ by Mr. Canning. “During the whole time,” he said, “that these events were passing, government had no means of arguing from the past: the occasion was without precedent, and such as it was impossible to lay their hand on any period of history to parallel, either from its importance with regard to individuals, to this happy country and to Europe, or the difficulty that arose from there being so little knowledge to guide their steps in the actual scene of their operations. Why should government be ashamed to say they wanted that knowledge of the interior of Spain, which they found no one possessed? With every other part of the continent we had had more intercourse: of the situation of Spain we had every thing to learn.” With what contemptuous satisfaction must Buonaparte and the French politicians have heard such a confession from the British secretary of state for foreign affairs! With whatever feelings the government might make this avowal, it was heard with astonishment by the thoughtful part of the people, and not without indignation. To them it was a mournful thing thus to be told that their rulers laid in no stock of knowledge, but lived, as it were, from hand to mouth, upon what they happened to meet with! Is there a country or a province in Europe, it was asked; is there a European possession in any part of the world, of which the French government does not possess maps, plans, and the most ample accounts of whatever may guide its politics, and facilitate its invasion? Even respecting Spanish America, such a confession would have been disgraceful, because it would have betrayed an inexcusable negligence in seeking for information; but as regarding Spain itself, it became almost incredible. Did there not exist faithful and copious accounts of that kingdom, both by foreign and native writers? Had we not still living, diplomatists who had resided for years at the Spanish court; consuls and merchants who had been domesticated, and almost naturalized in Spain; and travellers who, either for their pleasure, or on their commercial pursuits, had traversed every province and every part of the Peninsula? Was not information always to be found, if it were wisely and12 perseveringly sought?

The truth was, that though we had means adequate to any emergency, troops equal to any service, and generals worthy to command them, Government had the art of war to learn: it had been forgotten in the cabinet since the days of Marlborough and Godolphin. The minds of men expand with the sphere in which they act, and that of our statesmen had long been deplorably contracted. The nation, contented with its maritime supremacy, hardly considered itself as a military power; and had well nigh acquiesced in what the French insultingly proclaimed, and the enemies of the Government sedulously repeated, that we had ceased to be so. We had been sinking into a feeble, selfish policy, which would have withered the root of our strength; its avowed principle being to fix our attention exclusively upon what were called British objects; in other words, to pursue what was gainful, and be satisfied with present safety, regardless of honour, and of the certain ruin which that regardlessness must bring on. The events in Spain had roused the country from a lethargy which otherwise might have proved fatal; and ministers, as undoubtedly the better ♦1809.♦ part of their opponents would have done had they been then in office, heartily participated the national feeling: but when vigorous measures were required, they found themselves without precedent and without system. They had entered, however, into the contest generously and magnanimously, with a spirit which, if it were sustained, would rectify the errors of inexperience, and work its way through all difficulties.

Earl Grey took occasion in one of his speeches to notice an opinion, that it was of no consequence by which party the administration of affairs was directed. “How can it,” he asked, “be seriously urged, that it is the same thing whether the government be entrusted to incapable persons, or able statesmen? I am really astonished at the absurd extravagance of the doctrine into which men of general good sense and good intentions have been recently betrayed upon this subject.” But no person had ever pretended that it was the same thing whether the government were administered by weak heads or by wise ones. What had been maintained was, that the party out of place was in no respect better than the party in, and in many respects worse: that they did not possess the slightest superiority in talents; that a comparison of principles was wholly to their disadvantage; and that the language respecting the present contest held, even by those among them whose attachment to the institutions of their country could not be doubted, was such as left no hope for the honour of England if it were committed to their hands. The existing ministry acted upon braver and wiser principles, and, whatever errors they committed in the management of the war, to the latest ages it will be remembered for their praise, that in the worst times they never despaired of a good cause, nor shrunk from any responsibility that the emergency required.

An error, and one most grievous in its consequences, they committed at this time, by dividing their force, and sending a great expedition against the Isle of Walcheren, as a diversion in aid of Austria, instead of bringing all their strength to bear upon the Peninsula. It was a wise saying of Charles V. that counsels are to be approved or condemned for their causes, not for their consequences. When the causes which led to this unhappy resolution are considered, it will appear imputable in part to the conduct of the Spanish government, still more to that of the opposition in England. By refusing to put us in possession of Cadiz as a point of retreat and safe depôt, the Spaniards afforded their enemies in England an argument in support of their favourite position, that these allies had no confidence in us. The opposition writers did not fail to urge this as an additional proof that they were unworthy of our assistance; and the impression which they laboured to produce was strengthened by persons whose hearts were with their country, but who thought by heaping obloquy upon the Spaniards, and making their very misfortunes matter of accusation against them, to excuse the manner of Sir John Moore’s retreat. To the effect which had been thus produced on public opinion ministers in some degree deferred. They deferred still more to the pitiful maxim that the British government ought to direct its efforts towards the attainment of what were called purely British objects: now there were ships at Antwerp and at Flushing, and it was deemed a British object to destroy the naval resources of the enemy.

Men in England regarded the commencement of the Austrian war with widely different feelings, each party expecting a result in conformity to its own system of opinions. Those journalists who taught as the first political commandment that Buonaparte was Almighty, and that Europe should have none other Lord but him, as from the commencement of the troubles in Spain they had represented the cause of the Spaniards to be hopeless, so they predicted now that that resistless conqueror was only called a while from his career of conquest in the Peninsula to win new victories upon the Danube, after which he would return to the Guadalquivir and the Tagus, and bear down every thing before him there. Others, who had too sanguinely expected immediate success from the Spaniards, with equal but less excusable credulity rested their hopes now upon Austria, ... there, they said, the battle was to be fought, and the fate of Spain as well as of Germany depended upon the issue. The wiser few looked for little from the continental governments, though they knew that much was possible from the people; but from the beginning of this new contest, it appeared to them important chiefly because it effected a diversion in favour of the Spaniards; especially they hoped that England would seize the opportunity, and by meeting the enemy upon that ground with equal numbers, secure a certain and decisive victory.

Great and unfortunate as the error was of dividing their efforts, the Government acted with a spirit and vigour which have seldom been seen in the counsels of a British cabinet. At a time when they expected that not Spain alone, but Portugal also, would be abandoned by our troops, they made preparations for sending thither another army with all speed, under Sir Arthur Wellesley, who consequently resigned his seat in Parliament, and his office as Chief Secretary in Ireland. Sir John Craddock, who had then the command in Portugal, being a much older officer, was appointed Governor of Gibraltar. ♦Earl of Buckinghamshire.
April 10.♦ The Earl of Buckinghamshire complained of this, as being an ill reward for those exertions in collecting the scattered British force, and preparing it for resistance, to which it was owing that the determination of embarking from Lisbon was abandoned. This complaint drew from the Earl of Liverpool a just tribute to Sir John Craddock’s merits, and some remarks not less just upon the impropriety of bringing such a subject before Parliament, as at once trenching upon the prerogative, and virtually destroying that responsibility which ministers possessed.

Lord Buckinghamshire was of opinion that we had acted unwisely in reinstating the Portugueze Regency; that it became the duty of ♦May 1.♦ ministers to form a provisional government in that country till the subject could be submitted to the Prince of Brazil’s decision; and that when Marquis Wellesley went out as ambassador to Seville, he should take with him powers for making those changes in Portugal which could not be delayed without most serious injury to the common cause of that kingdom and of Spain, and to the security of Great Britain and Ireland. To this it was replied, that what had been done was done because it was presumed to be most in accord with the sentiments of the government in Brazil, at the same time that due regard was paid to the feelings and even the prejudices of the people. Lord Buckinghamshire strongly recommended that we should avail ourselves of the strength of Portugal as a military position, and of the excellent qualities of the Portugueze, which, under good discipline, whenever they had had it, made them among the best soldiers in the world. Such measures for that great purpose had at that time been taken as the Earl of Buckinghamshire wished. That nobleman spoke more wisely upon the affairs of the Peninsula than any other member of the opposition, and without the slightest taint of party spirit. There were some, of whom it would be difficult to say whether their speeches displayed less knowledge of facts, or less regard of them.