PARLIAMENT met before Jan. 19. the issue of Sir John Moore's campaign was known; but it was known that his army was rapidly retreating, or rather flying toward the coast, and intelligence was hourly expected, with more of anxiety than of hope. The king's speech was in a tone suited to the times. He had given orders, he said, that copies of the proposals for opening a negociation, which had been transmitted from Erfurth, and of the correspondence which thereupon took place, should be laid before both houses; and he was persuaded that they would participate in the feelings which he had expressed, when it was required that he should consent to commence the negociation by abandoning the cause of Spain. He continued to receive from the Spanish government the strongest assurances of their determined perseverance in the cause of their lawful monarchy, and their national independence; and

VOL. II. PART I.

so long as the people of Spain should remain true to themselves, so long would he continue to them his most strenuous assistance and support. He had renewed to them, in the moment of their difficulties and reverses, the engagements which he had voluntarily contracted at the outset of their struggle against the usurpation and tyranny of France: those engagements had been reduced into the form of a treaty of alliance, which, as soon as the ratifications were exchanged, should be laid before parliament. Concerning Portugal, he said, that while he contemplated with the liveliest satisfaction the atchievements of his forces in the commencement of the campaign, and the deliverance of the kingdom of his ally, he most deeply regretted the termination of that campaign, by an armistice and convention, of some of the articles of which he had felt himself obliged formally to declare his disapprobation. He relied on the disposition of parliament