happy result, that he would be ready to take the whole responsibility upon himself. By this strong, and, as it afterwards proved, false statement, the general was induced to change his prudent determination of retreat ing. Accompanying these communications of false intelligence, was a most improper letter from Mr Frere, which deserves the strongest terms of reprobation, a letter which, by recommending the examination of the messenger who bore it before a council of war, in the event of his not complying with the recommendation it contained, actually proposed to take out of the hands of Sir John Moore the command of his army. And who was the bearer, to whose representations such respectful attention was to be paid? Was he any great officer of experience? Was it Dumourier, or Moreau, the great rival of Buonaparte? No such thing;-but M. Charmilly, one of the most infamous characters existing a man against whom Lord Sidmouth, when in office, was cautioned. He is, in fact, one of those who commenced the sanguinary revolution at St. Domingo, where he was actually concerned in assassination. From St Domingo he went to France, as one of the delegates from that island; and from France he came to take refuge here, where he attempted to impose upon the government, by assuming an authority and official character, which he did not possess, from the government of St Domingo. Such was the man whom ministers thought fit to entrust. How, I would ask, could they be ignorant of his character? He who, for several years, has notoriously practised usury in this town, who can be traced through all the courts of law in actions for such practices, and whose name the noble lord

on the woolsack may find among the list of fraudulent bankrupts. This, then, my lords, is the sort of man whom Mr Frere thought proper to select for the purpose of influencing the decision, if not of superseding the authority, of Sir John Moore. In denouncing this man, whose name I have learned from private letters transmitted by Sir John Moore to his relations, and in marking him as one of those emigrants who took refuge in this country in consequence of the French revolution, I beg I may not be understood as casting any general reflection on that description of persons. God forbid that I should use any expression calculated, in the slightest degree, to disturb the feelings of those high-minded persons; those generous spirits, who, from a chivalrous devotion to their sovereign and his family, fled from the French revolution! The conduct of such men not only entitles them to com. passion, but to admiration. This person, who was the bearer of this extraordinary letter from Mr Frere, left Madrid on the 2d, and of course could not be unaware of the state of that city at the time. He also brought a letter from Morla, who, on the very day he wrote the letter exhorting Sir John Moore to advance towards Madrid, was actually nego ciating with Buonaparte for the surrender of that city. Thus, had Sir John Moore been influenced by Mr Frere's confidential messenger, whom there was great reason to consider as a traitor and a spy for the enemy, or by the exhortation of Morla, whose treachery to the Spanish cause had since become glaring, the probability was, that our whole army would have been destroyed or taken prisoners: certainly, if Sir John Moore had advanced towards Madrid, such must

have been the consequence; and it was not alone the loss of that everto-be-lamented officer that the country would have had to deplore, but the destruction of his whole army." In the course of his speech Earl Grey introduced a panegyric upon Buonaparte. "What a contrast," he said, "does the conduct of his Majesty's ministers afford to that of the consummate general whose plans they had to oppose! Whoever speaks of him, it is not possible he should speak of him without admiring him for his great abilities, whatever may be thought of his character in other respects. In rapidity of execution 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 accomplish ing them."

Earl Grey did not, however, speak with the utter despondency which is professed by the other admirers of Buonaparte." Even after all our losses," he said, "great as they were, in blood and treasure, in character and honour, he was persuaded that, under an administration of prudence and wisdom, the country was pos

sessed of ample means to bring the contest in which it was engaged to an honourable termination." But he added, "that in order to maintain the ultimate contest which is to decide for ever the power and independence of the 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 the contest, the cessation of which does not depend upon us, but upon the injustice of our enemy." At the close of his speech he recurred to this topic. "How is it possible," he asked, "to attend to the cant of modern patriotism, that it is of nó consequence by whom the administration of our government and resources is conducted? How can it seriously be 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 the doctrine into which men of general good sense and good intention have been recently betrayed upon this subject. To the principles of reform, to a temperate, intelligible, and definite reform, I have been always, and still continue a friend. To promote that desirable object was the study of the last administration; and it was in our endeavours to attain that end that we incurred the reproaches of those who covered their censure under the specious phrases of a sordid economy, and a want of vi gour.” His lordship misrepre ented the opinion advanced by men of ge, neral good sense and good intention.

of

They never urged that it was the same thing whether government were administered by weak men, or by wise ones. What they maintained was, that the party out of place was in no respect better than the party in place, and in some respects worse; that the opposition did not possess the slightest superiority in talents; that they had still less the advan tage in principles; that the measures which they recommended towards Ireland were factious and fallacious; and that the language which they held respecting Spain was such as left no hope for the honour of England, if it were entrusted to their hands.

The Earl of Liverpool rose in reply. "Earl Grey," he said, " censured his Majesty's government for precipitation; declaring it to be his opinion that they ought to have waited to ascertain the probability of the success of the patriotic cause in Spain, before they offered assistance to the Spaniards. What! when the feeling of resistance against oppression was so strong and so general in Spain, would it have been honourable to have told the Spaniards, We will not give you aid while you are most in want of it, but we will defer our assistance till you are in full strength, and need it not? Had such been the language held by ministers, they would have deserved the reprobation of every man in the country. It was a singular circumstance, with respect to their conduct in the affairs of Spain, that every individual who censured their plan had a plan of his own; but, unfortunately, none of those plans had a single principle of agreement with each other. This at least shewed the difficulty under which ministers had laboured in the forma tion of their own measures, although

it afforded a facility in defending them."

After again defending the destination of Sir Arthur Wellesley's army, his lordship proceeded to acharge advanced by Earl Grey, concerning the deficiency of cavalry in Sir John Moore's expedition; "only 2000 altogether," he said, "having been sent, to a country, too, where that description of force was peculiarly necessary;-a deficiency that could not proceed from the limited number of our cavalry, for we had no less than 27,000." To this the Earl of Liverpool replied, by saying, "that the public mind had been very much misled upon this topic; and it was material, both with reference to this and other expeditions, that the country should not be led astray by false ideas. Had his lordship ever inquired what the proportion of tonnage for cavalry bore to that of tonnage for infantry? For infantry (and for a long distance) a ton per man was considered as sufficient; for every horse transported, not less than nine or ten tons were allowed: thus it would require as much tonnage to carry 5000 cavalry as 40,000 infantry. But the amount of the tonnage was a small part of the question: the quality of the transports was a more material consideration. A horse transport must be a vessel of a certain description, having a certain height between the decks, &c.; and the quantity that government could at any time procure of such vessels was very limited. Yet, notwithstanding this, and notwithstanding cavalry could only be sent to the peninsula by degrees, on account of the difficulty of procuring forage there, from 8 to 9000 horse were sent; and no less than 12,000 would have been sent in all, had it not been for the in

formation that Sir David Baird was retreating.

"In embarking in support of the Spanish cause, his Majesty's ministers were not so weak, so improvident, so foolish, as to expect that the first efforts of the Spanish people, contending with such an enemy, would be crowned with unqualified success; that no discomfitures, no checks, no disasters, no reverses would retard and embarrass the early and crude operations of undisciplined bravery, when brought down into open plains, to contend with the superior discipline, the superior strength, and the superior generalship of such a power as France. No; weak as the noble lord might suppose ministers, they were not yet guilty of calculating with certainty upon impossibilities; they did not expect that such a cause as the cause of Spain, to be fought for with such an enemy as the ruler of France, could possibly be determined in one campaign. Reverses they had certainly met; but they had not been owing to the cause to which the noble earl seemed so anxious to ascribe them. Those reverses had not been owing to the indifference or the apathy of the Spaniards. They were to be imputed to their want of discipline; to an illjudged contempt of their enemy,-a sentiment that was to be traced to any other feeling rather than that of apathy or indifference, and that in itself was a proof of their zeal and ardour and this, in the commencement, was so much relied upon, that the Marquis de la Romana did not think it would be eventually necessary for our reinforcements to act in the interior of the peninsula, such confidence was reposed in the native spirit of the country."

His lordship then omitting all un

necessary discussion upon the previous operations, which had been already so fully discussed, came at once to the question of Sir John Moore's advance from Salamanca. "His army," he said, "by the junction with General Hope, had received its fair proportion of cavalry, and its full proportion of artillery. Thus circumstanced, and apprized, as he then was, of the spirit manifesting itself at Madrid, was it, or was it not an opportunity that called for some effort upon the part of the British army, situated as they then were? What would have been the general sentiment in Spain and in England, had the army retired without attempting any thing? If, in that most interesting crisis, when, after all their repeated disasters, the spirit of Spain was reviving, and her chief city bidding defiance to an immense army at her very gates; if in such a moment a British army, so marshalled and equipped, after a long march to the aid of their ally, had in the hour of trial coldly turned their backs upon her danger, what would have been thought of the sincerity of this effort of British co-operation? But in advancing at this time, it was asserted that Sir John Moore had been influenced, contrary to his own judgment, by Mr Frere. He believed this assertion would not be found correct; at least he hoped it would not, for the sake of Sir John Moore himself. Nothing appeared in the correspondence to justify it; but it did appear that he refused to suffer Mr Frere's judgment to influence his military movements, and in so doing there could be no doubt of the propriety of his conduct. As to Mr Frere's letter, requiring that the messenger might be examined before a council of war, he did not mean to vindicate