said he held in his hand the Petition and Remonstrance of the electors of the borough of Southwark, legally convened by the high bailiff, on the 13th inst. He apprehended there was nothing in the language of the petition that would prevent it from being received, and therefore presented it to the House.

The petition was then read, setting forth, "That the petitioners feel deeply interested and alarmed at the extraordinary proceedings of the House, in the imprisonment of John Gale Jones, and the forcible entry and seizure of sir Francis Burdett in his own house, because, in the first place, they humbly conceive that contempts which are punishable by prompt imprisonment can only be construed as arising out of those overt acts which obstruct the pro- ceedings of the House; that a supposed libel upon the House, without such acts, may be safely referred to a jury of Englishmen consistent with all those privileges of the House, which may form part of the common law of the land, and consistent with the honour, dignity, and independence of the House; they humbly conceive that such conclusions are well warranted by a recent case of libel, in which the monarchy was represented as a goodly tree, from which the branches of the Lords and Commons might be safely lopped off, and that still the constitution would remain, all which was referred by the House to the verdict of a jury; and that, in the latter case, the petitioners were sadly reminded of the arbitrary proceedings of military governments on the continent, when neither police magistrates nor crown officers could find precedents to regulate them in inforcing their authority, the minister was found ready to advise his Majesty's government to employ its army, and however the petitioners were rejoiced to see their countrymen return from disastrous expeditions and the pestilential shores of Walcheren, they conceive the honour of a British soldier was tarnished when his valour was improperly directed against unarmed citizens; and that the petitioners have long been convinced, that the only safe and effectual remedy for our political evils is a substantial reform in parliament by a more equal representation of the people; they are convinced that, one of the most radical defects of those ancient governments, which were overturned by power, or subverted by popular fury, arose from ignorance of the uses of representation; that a late statesman, many years at the head of his Majesty's government, declared that representation was the true principle of the British constitution, that to reform it was not to innovate but to recover; and that the petitioners humbly conceive alterations in the representation of the people, by extending the right of voting, are sanctioned by the House, as at Shoreham, Cricklade, and Aylesbury; where bribery is proved against the electors reform is safe, but not where seats are purchased as publicly as at noon-day, at the bare mention of which our ancestors would have started with indignation; and notwith-withstanding the right hon. Spencer Perceval and lord Castlereagh were detected in the traffic, they are still sitting unimpeached as members of the House; and that the petitioners trust they have always manifested a readiness to defend their King and country with their purses and their swords, and that the public liberty, which was acquired and defended by the best blood of our ancestors, may be preserved inviolate, and transmitted to the latest posterity, they trust that the House will restore that confidence to their feelings by the release of John Gale Jones and sir F. Burdett, and by a speedy reform."

said, that unfortunately he did not attend the meeting, not having been applied to, and consequently not knowing more of the circumstance than any other member in the House. It was the duty of every representative to attend a meeting of his constituents to give them his assistance and advice. He approved of the sentiments contained in the petition, except where it denied the right of the House to imprison for a breach of privilege; and begged leave to second the motion that it do lie on the table,

The Petition was ordered to be laid on the table.

, before the session broke up, wished to call the attention of the House to the proceedings on private bills above stairs. Great inconvenience arose from the present system for arranging the bringing in and passing of private bills, as in the course of six weeks the whole of them were under consideration, which caused very great trouble and inconvenience to the members. He was of opinion, that the time for reporting them ought to be enlarged, and that some means ought to be adopted to enforce the attendance of gentlemen on committees, which would greatly tend to facilitate the business. And also he was of opinion, that a short-hand writer should be appointed to attend each committee.

observed, that the several matters stated by the hon. gent. were worthy of the most grave and serious consideration. It was desirable therefore, that he should follow them up with a specific proposition, or give notice of a motion. The House was too much at the mercy of agents and solicitors of bills, whether they should be conducted quick or slow. There was another subject also worthy of consideration, and that was the petitions of hostile parties being presented in a late stage of a bill, which was attended with delay, and great and unnecessary expence and inconvenience. It might perhaps be for the conveni- of gentlemen that he should advert to some of the points in which inconvenience was felt in the progress of private bills. They were, 1st, The great pressure of the business up-stairs in point of quantity at the close of the session. This had been partially remedied already, and deserved further attention. 2d, The attendance of members. This must be left to the consideration and discretion of members themselves. 3d, The facility from short-hand writers. It was the duty of the clerks to give every possible facility in this way. 4th, The appointment of an officer to put into technical legislative language the ideas of members wishing to draw up bills. This was a point of difficulty, but all these deserved consideration, and gentlemen would do well during the recess to turn their minds to them with a view to some specific proposition.

rose to bring forward the motion of which he had given notice for the liberation of John Gale Jones. He expressed his conviction that if the proposition for the commitment of Mr. Jones had been discussed with the same deliberation as other acts of the House, it never would have obtained the prompt and unanimous assent with which it was so suddenly carried. He had heard several members who were not present on the occasion, since declare, that if they had been present, they would have opposed the commitment; and he did not scruple to declare his own regret that he was one of the unanimous few who assented to that commitment. For, upon mature reflection, he thought the decision of the House was in a great degree owing to Mr. Jones's own acknowledgment of the charge against him; and that the acknowledgment he made, the contrition he had expressed, and the very humble and respectful apology he had offered at the bar, should have induced the House not to proceed with severity, but to have liberated him after a proper reprimand. Another ground was, that Mr. Jones was punished with the same degree of severity as sir Francis Burdett, although there was no degree of parity between the nature of their offences. For the latter not only assumed to censure openly the conduct of the House, of which he was a member, but to publish a libellous pamphlet, arraigning its proceedings, and defying its authority with a degree of outrage and acrimony bordering on frenzy. He had also afterwards disputed the authority of the Speaker's warrant, and resisted the serjeant at arms sent to take him into custody; barring his doors, and exciting tumult, by rendering his house and his vicinage a rendezvous for the assemblage of disorderly and riotous persons, from all parts of this metropolis, whose turbulence it was impossible for the civil power to suppress, without the assistance of military force. Mr. Jones, on the contrary, instantly obeyed the orders of the House, acknowledged his error, and expressed his contrition. In the motion, therefore, which he was now about to submit for his liberation, he was aware that the remission of a few days confinement during the short remnant of the session, might not be considered as any great boon. Yet, as the power of the House to imprison him would expire with the session, he thought the House, in its justice and discretion, ought to draw a marked line of distinction between the cases of the two parties committed. The liberation of Mr. Jones, he thought would tend completely to allay the popular ferment excited upon this subject; but he was convinced there was not a man of common sense or discretion in this country, who had any respect for the rights or the authority of the House of Commons, who would condole or sympathize with sir Francis, or think that his punishment had been too severe. Sir James concluded by moving "That John Gale Jones, now under confinement, during the pleasure of the House, in his Majesty's prison of Newgate, be forthwith set at liberty without payment of any fees."

seconded the motion.

opposed the motion, on the ground that Gale Jones was a voluntary prisoner, as he might be enlarged months ago, if he had thought fit to petition the House. He opposed his liberation more particularly, because a similar motion was brought forward some time ago, and negatived, and therefore the House would act inconsistently, if it agreed to the present proposition of the hon. member.

supported the motion, which was then put and negatived without a division.

rose, pursuant to notice, to call the the attention of the House to the state of the Slave Trade: a subject, he said, of the first importance; and although it was neither a personal question, nor a party one —though its diicussion involved neither the pursuit nor the defence of place—although, indeed, it touched matters of no higher concernment than the honour of the House and the country, and the interests of humanity at large, he trusted that it would, nevertheless, receive the same favourable consideration which it had so often experienced upon former occasions. The question he purposed to submit to the House was, whether any, and what measures could be adopted, in order to watch over the execution of the sentence of condemnation which parliament had, with a singular unanimity, pronounced upon the African Slave Trade? It was now four years since Mr. Fox made his last motion in that House, and, he believed, his last speech there, in favour of the Abolition. He then proposed a Resolution, pledging the House to the Abolition of the traffic, and an Address to the crown, beseeching his Majesty to use all his endeavours for obtaining the concurrence of other powers in the pursuit of this great object. An Address to the same effect was made by the other House, with equal unanimity; and, early in the next year, two noble friends of his (Lords Grenville and Grey), who were second only to his hon. friend, prevented by indisposition from attending this day (Mr. Wilberforce), in their services to the cause, and would yield not even to him in their zeal for its success, gave the parliament an opportunity of redeeming its pledge, by introducing the Abolition Bills into the two Houses. That measure, which had formerly met so many obstacles, whether, as some were willing to believe, from the slowness with which truth works its way, or, as others were prone to suspect, from the want of zeal in its official supporters, now experienced none of the impediments that had hitherto retarded its progress: far from encountering any formidable difficulties, it passed through parliament almost without opposition; and one of the greatest and most disputed of measures, was at length carried by larger majorities, perhaps, than were ever known to divide upon any contested question. The friends of the Abolition, however, never expected that any legislative measure would at once destroy the Slave Trade: they were aware how obstinately such a trade would cling to the soil where it had taken root: they anticipated the difficulties of extirpating a traffic which had entwined itself with so many interests, prejudices, and passions. But he must admit, that although they had foreseen, they had considerably underrated, those difficulties. They had not made sufficient allowance for the resistance which the real interests of those directly engaged in the trade, and the supposed interests of the colonists, would oppose to the execution of the acts: they had underrated the wickedness of the Slave Trader, and the infatuation of the planter. While on the one hand it appeared, from the documents he formerly moved for, that nothing had been done to circumscribe the foreign Slave Trade, it was now found, that this abominable commerce had not completely ceased, even in this country! He hoped the House would favour him with its attention; while, from the papers on the table, and from such other information as he had been enabled to obtain, he laid before it a statement, which would, in some measure, enable it to appreciate the extent of the evil, and to apply the proper remedies.

He then proceeded to call the attention of the House to the state of the Slave Trade in foreign countries. In these it existed variously. In America it was contraband, as in England, having been prohibited by law, but still carried on, illegally, for the supply of the American as well as of foreign plantations: while in the colonies of Portugal and Spain it was still sanctioned by the laws, and even received peculiar encouragement from the government. The extent of the Spanish Slavs Trade he could not state very accurately, but, from returns of the custom-house at Cadiz, to which he had had access, and from the well-known increase of the sugar culture in Cuba, the importation of negroes appears to be very great. The average annual importation into that island during 13 years, from 1789 to 1803, was 5,840; and it was evidently upon the increase, for the average of the last lour years of the period was 8,600: the total number imported during the period exceeded 76,000 slaves. This statement, among other things, proved how much the American flag was used in covering the foreign Slave Trade; for, after the commencement of hostilities between Spain and this country, the trade could only have been carried on to a very limited extent in Spanish bottoms; and yet, instead of being checked by the war, it had greatly increased since 1795. The culture of sugar had likewise increased at Porto Rico, and on the Main, and with it, of course, the importation of slaves. The precise amount of this he could not speak to; but he had every reason to suppose it very inconsiderable, when compared with the traffic in Cuba. The annual importation of Mexico did not exceed 100 negroes, and that of the settlements on the South Sea was only 500. The other colonies obtained their supplies principally from the Brazils. With regard to the Portuguese Slave Trade, he could speak with more precision. During his residence at Lisbon, in the King's service, he had official communication with the Portuguese minister, and also with a person of high rank, who had been governor of the northern provinces of Brazil, and was then going out as governor of Angola and Benguela, upon the African coast. It appeared, from the returns of a capitation-tax on negroes exported from Africa (which gentlemen would perceive, must give the lowest amount of the exportation), that there were annually sent to the Brazils from that part of Africa alone above 15,000 negroes; and this was reckoned only one half of the total exported from all parts of the Portuguese settlements. From another quarter, of high authority, he learnt that this, if estimated at 30,000, would not be overrated. But the branch of the trade which it was the most important to attend to at present, was that carried on by American vessels, in open violation of the laws of the United States. He firmly believed, as he had before stated when the matter had been questioned by a right hen. gent. opposite (Mr. Canning), that the American government had all along acted, in regard to the Slave Trade, with the most perfect sincerity. They had, indeed, set us the example of abolishing it. All the states, except two, Georgia and South Carolina, had early abolished it by acts of their separate legislatures before the period arrived when the constitution gave congress a right to pass such a law for the whole union; and as soon as that period arrived, viz. at the beginning of the year 1808, the traffic was finally prohibited by an act of congress. But it was one thing to pass a law, and another to carry it into execution, as we had ourselves found on this side of the water, he was sorry to think: and although the American legislature and the government had done all that lay in their power, it required much greater naval means than they possessed to suppress effectually their contraband Slave Trade. They might, in a great measure, by their police, prevent the importation of negroes into the United States; and this they had done; but the bulk of their contraband Slave Trade was carried on between Africa and the islands, or Africa and South America; and, to check this, a very different navy was wanted from any that the Americans (happily for this country, in every point of view, except the one now in question) were likely, for a long series of years, to possess. By such a contraband trade, the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, and not only they, but our own settlements, were supplied with slaves; and in this manner it was that the foreign Slave Trade interfered with our own Abolition. What he intended to propose was, that the executive government should be exhorted to take such further steps as might be conducive to the object of the joint Address of the other branches of the legislature. Unless the American flag could, by some means or other, be excluded from its large share in this abominable commerce; and unless the Spanish and Portuguese governments could be brought to some concurrent arrangement, the trade must still be carried on to an enormous extent; and it was in vain to talk even of abolishing it entirely in our own colonies. Our largest island was within a day's, he should rather say, a night's sail, of the largest slave colony of Spain. Our other old colonies lay in the very track both of the Spanish and American slave-ships. When the vast plantations of Trinidad and Guiana were in such want of negroes to clear their waste lands, and were situated almost within sight of the Spanish slave market, where the law still sanctioned that infernal traffic, how could it be expected that the British abolition should be effectual? A gentleman of the profession to which he had the honour of belonging, having lately returned from Berbice informed him of the manner in which our planters carried on this contraband intercourse. The Oroonoko falls into the sea between Trinidad and Guiana. The Spanish slave-ships take their station near its mouth, and our planters send large boats along the coast to the station of the ships, from whence they are supplied with cargoes of sixty or seventy negroes by trans-shipment at sea, and those cargoes they land on their return in the various creeks of the settlements, so as to elude the utmost vigilance of the colonial officers. Did not this single fact evince the necessity of forming some arrangement with the Spanish government, while the friendly relations between the two governments subsisted? The great obstacle which he always found opposed to such a proposition was, What can we do? Those nations, it was pretended, are wedded to their own prejudices; they had views of their own, and we cannot interfere. Of this argument he entertained very great suspicion, and for one plain reason, that it was on the single subject of the abolition that he ever heard it used; it was here alone that any want of activity was ever observed in our government, or that we ever heard of our want of influence in the councils of our neighbours. On all other measures, some of suspicious, some of doubtful policy—in matters indifferent, or repugnant to humanity—we were ready enough to intrigue, to fight, to pay. It was only when the interests of humanity were concerned, and ends the most justifiable, as well as expedient, were in view, that we not only all at once lost our activity and influence, but became quite forward in protesting that we had no power to interfere. From one end of Europe to the other our weight was felt, and in general it was no very popular thing to call it in question. At all times we were ready enough to use it, as well as to magnify it; but on this one occasion we became both weak and diffident, and while we refused to act, must needs make a boast of our inability. Why, we never failed at all when the object was to obtain new colonies, and extend the Slave Trade; then we could both conquer and treat; we had force enough to seize whole provinces, where the Slave Trade might be planted, and skill enough to retain them by negotiation, in order to retain with them the additional commerce in Slaves, which their cultivation required. It was natural, therefore, for him to view with some suspicion our uniform failure, when the object was to abolish or limit this same Slave Trade. He suspected it might arise from there being some similarity between our exertions in the cause and those of some of its official advocates in this House; that we had been very sincere, no doubt, but rather cold—without a particle of ill-will towards the abolition, but without one spark of zeal in its favour. He should then answer the question of, "What 'can we do to stop the foreign Slave Trade?" by putting another question; and he would ask, "How had we contrived to promote the Slave Trade when that was our ob- ject?" He would only desire one tenth part of the influence to be exerted in favour of the abolition, which we had with such fatal success exerted in augmenting the Slave traffic; when, by our campaigns and our treaties, we had acquired the dominion of boundless regions, and then laid waste the villages and the fields of Africa, that our new forests might be cleared. But if he were asked to what objects our influence should be directed, he had no hesitation in pointing them out: And first, he should say, the Spanish and Portuguese governments. Happily in those quarters where most was to be attempted, our influence was the greatest at the present moment; for both countries we had done much, and having lavished our blood and our treasure in defending them from cruelty, injustice, and every form of ordinary oppression, it was certainly not asking too much to require that they should give over a course of iniquity towards nations as innocent as they, and infinitely more injured by them. Every thing favoured some arrangement with Spain on this point. The only Spanish colonies, where the sugar cane was extensively cultivated, were the Islands, and of these principally Cuba. To that settlement the bulk of the Slave Trade was confined. On the main land there was little demand for Slaves; about 1400 were annually sent to Buenos Ayres, 500 to Peru and Chili, and only 100 to Mexico, while Cuba received 8,600 a year. This then was the only Spanish colony which could suffer materially; and it was reasonable to expect that the Spanish government would not refuse this inconsiderable sacrifice. At any rate, some arrangement might be made both with Portugal and Spain, to prevent their flags from being used for the purposes of the foreign Slave Trade. Adverting next to the means which we had of inducing the American government to make some arrangement (which our limits compel us to state briefly;) he admitted that our influence in that quarter was not so powerful; but he would throw out one or two remarks for the consideration of ministers. First, an attempt ought to be made to supply the deficiency of naval resources in America, by lending the assistance of our own; and he suggested the necessity of the two governments coming to some understanding, that the cruisers of each might capture the contraband slave ships of the other country. From communications which he had held with persons of high rank in the service of the United States, he had reason to think that such an arrangement would not be greatly objected to in America. An opening for a proposal of this nature was certainly afforded by the correspondence which had taken place between Mr. Erskine and the American government relative to the orders in council and Non-Intercourse laws; for an assurance was there given, that if a British cruiser captured an American found acting contrary to the American municipal law, the government of the United States would never notice the capture; and though there was an objection to recognising by treaty the right of capture on the ground of the Non-Intercourse law, it by no means followed that a similar recognition could not be obtained in the present instance. The right thus given must no doubt be mutual, but so was every right which this country claimed under the law of nations; and it should be remembered, that the two parties were very differently affected by it; for while the Americans could scarcely search or detain half a dozen of our slave-vessels in a year, we should be enabled to stop hundreds of theirs. The advantage of such an arrangement to our own planters would also be great: for if rival foreigners carry on the Slave Trade, while it is prohibited in our settlements, our planters are, for a certain time at least, liable to be undersold in the sugar market, and subjected to a temporary pressure.—Another circumstance with regard to American ships he threw out for the consideration of merchants and cruisers. It appeared to him, that even without any such arrangement between the two governments, the experiment of capturing American slave ships might safely be made. He had every reason to believe that no reclamation whatever would be made by the American government if such vessels were detained, however great their numbers might be. A claim might no doubt be entered by individual owners, when the vessels were brought in for condemnation, and the courts of prize had been in the practice of saying that they could not take notice of the municipal laws of other countries. But, besides the great risk to which American owners exposed themselves by making such claims (the risk of the penalties which they thereby proved themselves to have incurred under the Abolition acts of America), it was to be observed that the courts required a proof of property in the claimants; and he wished to see whether courts sitting and judging by the law of nations were prepared to admit of a property in human flesh ^*. He wished to know in what part of that law any such principle was recognised. He desired to be informed where the decision or where the dictum was which allowed a person to bring forward a claim in a court of the law of nations, for the bodies of human beings forcibly and fradulently obtained, or at all events carried away from their homes against their will, and by violence confined, and compelled to labour and to suffer? What he was anxious to see was, how such a claim could be stated with common decency in such courts: he had no great fears as to the reception it would meet with: it was repugnant to the whole law of nature, and any knowledge of the law of nations which he possessed afforded him no authority for it. He earnestly hoped some persons connected with privateers and cruisers might soon try the question. They could run no risk, he ventured to assert on his own authority; and still more confidently on that of professional friends who frequented the prize courts, that no risk whatever of being condemned in costs could possibly be incurred, even if the vessels were restored. Without any risk, much good might thus be done; and he should feel satisfied that he had more than announced the ends he had in view when he began this discussion, if he could persuade himself that what he now said might lead any one to make this important trial.

^* This opinion has since been fully confirmed by the decision of the lords of prize appeal in the case of the Amedie, as appears by the following

REPORT of the Judgment of the Lords Commissioners of Prize Appeals, at the Privy Council, Saturday, July 28, 1810.

Case of the Amedie; James Johnson, Master.

This was a vessel under American colours, with slaves from Africa, captured, in December, 1807, in the West Indies, and carried into Tortola. The claimant pretended that she was bound to Charles-town, South Carolina, where the importation of slaves continued to be lawful to the end of that year; but that having been detained on the coast, and there being no prospect of reaching Charlestown before the 1st of January 1808, the period appointed for the cessation of the slave trade in every part of the United States, by a law of the general congress, the master of necessity bore away for the island of Cuba, there to wait directions from his owners.—It was contended, on the other hand, by the captor that this statement was a mere pretence, and that, in truth, the original plan of the voyage was a destination to Cuba, which was unlawful under the American laws, long previous to their general abolition of the slave trade.—Admitting, however, the case to be so, it was strenuously contended for the claimant, that a British court of prize had no right to take any cognizance of American municipal law, and that, as no belligerent right of this country had been violated, the property ought to be restored to the neutral owner. A series of precedents seemed to support this doctrine.—The ship was condemned at Tortola, and the enslaved Africans were, according to our abolition act, restored to their freedom; but the claimant appealed, and the liberty of the Africans, as well as the property of the ship, depended on the issue of this appeal.—The case was solemnly argued in March last, and as, in the opinion of the court, it turned on the new question of the effect of the American and British abolition acts on this species of contraband commerce, when brought before a court of prize, the case, on account of its importance, has since stood over for judgment. Several other cases of American slave-ships have also stood over, as depending on the same general question.—The Judgment of the court was delivered by sir William Grant, the master of the rolls, nearly in the following terms:—"This ship must be considered as being employed at the time of capture in carrying slaves from the coast of Africa to a Spanish colony. We think that this was evidently the original plan and purpose of the voyage, notwithstanding the pretence set up to veil the true intention. The claimant, however, who is an American, complains of the capture, and demands from us the restitution of property, of which he alleges that he has been unjustly dispossessed. In all the former cases of this kind, which have come before this court, the slave trade was liable to considerations very different from those which belong to it now. It had at that time been prohibited (as far as respected carrying slaves to the colonies of foreign nations) by America, but by our own laws it was still allowed. It appeared to us, therefore, difficult to consider the prohibitory law of America in any other light than as one of those municipal regulations of a foreign state, of which this court could not take any cognizance. But by the alteration which has since taken place the question stands on different grounds, and is open to the application of very different principles. The slave trade has since been totally abolished in this country, and our legislature has pronounced it to be contrary to the principles of justice and humanity. Whatever we might think as individuals before, we could not, sitting as judges in a British court of justice, regard the trade in that light, while our own laws permitted it. But we can now assert, that this trade cannot, abstractedly speaking, have a legitimate existence.—When I say abstractedly speaking, I mean that this country has no right to control any foreign legislature that may think fit to dissent from this doctrine, and to permit to its own subjects the prosecution of this trade; but we have now a right to affirm, that primafacie the trade is illegal, and thus to throw on claimants the burden of proof that in respect of them, by the authority of their own laws, it is otherwise. As the case now stands, we think we are entitled to say, that a claimant can have no right upon principles of universal law, to claim the restitution in a prize court, of human beings carried as his slaves. He must show some right that has been violated by the capture, some property of which he has been dispossessed, and to which he ought to be restored. In this case, the laws of the claimant's country allow of no right of property such as he claims. There can therefore be no right to restitution. The consequence is, that the judgment must be affirmed."

Having hitherto only spoken of the foreign slave trade, it was with great mortification that he now felt himself obliged to call the attention of the House to the evasions of the abolition acts in this country. For accomplishing this detestable purpose, all the various expedients had been adopted which the perverse ingenuity of unprincipled avarice could suggest. Vessels were fitted out at Liverpool, as if for the innocent commerce with Africa. The ships and even the cargoes, were, for the most part, the same as those used in the trade of gold-dust, grains, and ivory. The goods peculiarly used in the slave trade were carefully concealed, so as to elude the reach of the port officers. The platforms and bulkheads which distinguished slave ships were not fitted and fixed until the vessel got to sea, and cleared the channel, when the carpenters set to work and adapted her for the reception of slaves. For better concealment, some of the sailors, and not unfrequently the master himself, was Portuguese. But it was remarkable, that, lurking in some dark corner of the ship, was almost always to be found a hoary slave trader—an experienced captain, who, having been trained up in the slave business, from his early years, now accompanied the vessel as a kind of supercargo, and helped her, by his wiles, both to escape detection and to push her iniquitous adventures. This was not a fanciful description; he held in his hand the record of a court of justice, which threw so much light on the subject, that he had moved, on a former night, to have it laid on the table. It appeared from thence, that, but a few months ago, in the very river which washed the walls of that House, not two miles from the spot where they now state, persons daring to call themselves English merchants—(Hear! hear!) had been detected in the act of fitting out a vessel of great bulk for the purpose of tearing seven or eight hundred wretched beings from Africa, and carrying them through the unspeakable horrors of the middle passage to endless bondage and misery, and toil which knows no limits, nor is broken by any rest, in the sands and swamps of Brazil. (Hear! hear!) This detection had been made by the zeal and knowledge of a friend of his (Mr. Macaulay), who was only enabled to pursue so difficult an investigation by that perfect acquaintance with the subject, which he had acquired by his residence in Africa as governor of Sierra Leone, and by having even submitted to the pain of a slave voyage, for the purpose of better learning the nature of the traffic. Mr. Brougham here read several extracts from the record of condemnation of the Comercio de Rio, in the Court of Exchequer last Hilary term. It appeared, that besides an enormous stock of provisions, water-casks, mess-kits, &c. there were found on board 55 dozen of padlocks, 93 pair of hand-cuffs, 197 iron shackles for the feet, 13 cwt. 3 qrs. of iron chains— (Hear! hear!)—one box of religious implements; and, that the bodily as well as the spiritual health of this human cargo might not be neglected, the slave merchants, out of their rare humanity—which one must really have known a good deal of the sort of character, easily to believe—allowed, for the medical wants of 800 negroes, of all ages, crammed into a loathsome cage, and carried through new and perilous climates during a voyage of weeks, or even months, one little medicine-chest, value 5l.—(Hear! bear!) This was not the only instance of the kind, not even the latest one, he grieved to say, recent though it was. He had mentioned on a former night, that at one port of this country, six vessels had only just been fitted out, by a smilar course of base frauds, for the same trade, or rather let him call it, the same series of detestable crimes.—(Hear! hear!) It was now three years since that abominable traffic had ceased to be sanctioned by the law of the land; and, he thanked God, he might therefore now indulge in expressing feelings towards it, which delicacy rather to the law, than the traffic, might, before that period, have rendered it proper to suppress. After a long and most unaccountable silence of the law on this head, which seemed to protect, by permitting, or at least by not prohibiting, the traffic, it had now spoken out, and the veil which it had appeared to interpose being now withdrawn, it was fit to let our indignation fall on those who still dared to trade in human flesh, not merely for the frauds of common smugglers, but for engaging in crimes of the deepest die; in crimes always most iniquitous, even when not illegal; but which now were as contrary to law as they had ever been to honesty and justice. He must protest loudly against the abuse of language, which allowed such men to call themselves traders or merchants. It was not commerce, but crime, that they were driving. He too well knew, and too highly respected, that most honourable and useful pursuit, that commerce whose province it was to humanize and pacify the world—so alien in its nature to violence and fraud—so formed to flourish in peace and in honesty—so inseparably connected with freedom, and good will, and fair dealing, he deemed too highly of it to endure that its name should, by a strange perversion, be prostituted to the use of men who lived by treachery, rapine, torture, and murder! and were habitually practising the worst of crimes for the basest of purposes.—(Hear! hear!) When he said murder, he spoke literally and advisedly. He meant to use no figurative phrase: and he knew he was guilty of no exaggeration. He was speaking of the worst form of that crime. For ordinary murders, there might even be some excuse. Revenge might have arisen from the excess of feelings honourable in themselves. A murder of hatred, or cruelty, or mere blood-thirstiness, could only be imputed to a deprivation of reason. But here we had to do with cool, deliberate, mercenary murder;—nay, worse than this; for the ruffians who went on the highway, or the pirates who infested the seas, at least exposed their persons, and, by their courage, threw a kind of false glare over their crimes. But these wretches durst not do this; they employed others as base as themselves, only that they were less cowardly; they set on men to rob and kill, in whose spoils they were willing to share, though not in their dangers.—(Hear! hear!) Traders, or merchants, did they presume to call themselves! and in cities like London and Liverpool, the very creations of honest trade? He would give them the right name, at length, and call them cowardly suborners of piracy and mercenary murder!—(Hear! hear! hear!) Seeing this determination, on the part of these infamous persons, to elude the abolition act, it was natural for him to ask, before he concluded, whether any means could be devised for its more effectual execution. He suggested the propriety of obtaining, from the Portuguese government, either in perpetuity, or for a term of years, the Island of Bissao, situated on the African Coast, and the only foreign settlement in that quarter where our commerce chiefly lay. This cession would leave us a coast of 500 miles extent, wholly uninterrupted, and greatly facilitating the destruction of the slave traffic in that part of Africa. Next he remarked, that the number of cruizers employed on the African coast was too scanty. It was thither, and not to America, that vessels intended to detect slave traders, should be sent: because a slave-ship must remain for some weeks on the coast to get in her cargo; whereas she could run into her port of destination in the West Indies in a night, and thus escape detection; yet, to watch a coast so extensive as the African, we had never above two, and now only one, cruiser. He recommended, that the ships thus employed should be of a light construction and small draught of water, that they might cross the bars of the harbours, in order to follow the slave-ships into the shallows and creeks, and up the mouths of rivers; and also that they should be well manned, and provided with boats, for the same purpose. It would be impossible to employ six or seven light ships better than on such a service. It was even more economical to employ a sufficient number; the occasion for them would, by this means, speedily cease. Once root out the trade, and there was little fear of its again springing up. The industry and capital required by it would find other vents. The labour and ingenuity of the persons engaged in it would seek the different channels which would continue open. Some of them would naturally go on the highway; while others would betake themselves to piracy, and the law might, in due time, dispose of them.—(Hear! hear!)

But he should not do justice either to his own sentiments, or to the great cause which he was maintaining, were he to stop here. All the measures he had mentioned were mere expedients—mere makeshifts and palliatives, compared with the real and effectual remedy for this grand evil, which he had no hesitation in saying it was now full time to apply. He should, indeed, have been inclined to call the idea of stopping such a traffic by pecuniary penalties, an absurdity and inconsistency, had it not been adopted by parliament, and were he not also persuaded, that in such cases it is necessary to go on by steps, and often to do what we can, rather than attempt what we wish. Nevertheless, he must say, after the trial that has been given to the abolition law, he was now prepared to go much further, and to declare that the Slave trade should at once be made felony.—(Hear! hear! hear!) When he considered how easily laws were passed, declaring those acts even capital offences, which had heretofore been either permitted, or slightly punished; when scarce a session ended without some such extension of the criminal code; when even capital offences were among the most numerous progenies of our legislative labours; when he saw that difficulty experienced by an hon. and learned friend of his (sir S. Romilly) in doing away the capital part of the offence of stealing five shillings: when it was remembered that lord Ellenborough, by one act (and he honoured him for it), had created somewhere about a dozen capital felonies; when, in short, so many comparatively trivial offences were so severely visited, could one, who knew what Slave Trading meant, hesitate in admitting that it ought at length to be punished as a crime? Adverting, again, to the record before mentioned, he found that the vessel, ready fitted out for the slave coast, had sold for about 11,000l. including guns, tackle, cargo, and all; but making allowance for seamen's wages, wear, and tear, &c. he calculated the whole expense of carrying 800 slaves over to America, at 20,000l. and as they would sell for 100l. a-head, the net profits would be near 60,000l. Was this to be stopped by a pecuniary penalty? If one such speculation, in four or five, succeeded, they were safe: there was even a temptation to engage in many speculations, because the adventurer thus insured against the risk of capture, and became his own underwriter against the chance of detection, which he could in no other way insure against. If an inhuman being of this class fitted out ten or twelve such ships, and escaped with three or four, his vile profits were enormous; but it should be recollected, that all his vessels, those which escaped as well as those which were taken, spread devastation over the African continent; and even a single cargo was the utter ruin of whole villages. To this case, more than to any other that could be fancied, pecuniary checks were peculiarly inapplicable.—While you levied your pence, the wholesale dealers in blood and torture pocketed their pounds, and laughed at your two-penny penalty. He next adverted to the 10th of Geo. 2, for regulating watermen between Gravesend and Chelsea. If a person of this description carried above a certain number of persons although no accident happened, he forfeited the use of the river; and if by accident any one was drowned, the boatman who had so overloaded was transported for seven years as a felon. How did we treat those who overloaded their vessels with miserable negroes, so as knowingly and wilfully to ensure the death of many, and the torments of all? Why, the Slave carrying bill, which is somewhat similar to the statute of George 2, in its object, did not even deprive such offenders of the use of the sea, which they had so perverted and polluted by their crimes; far less did it transport for seven years, even where the deaths of hundreds on board of such vessels happened not by accident, but as a necessary consequence of the overloading. He made no reflection on the statute of George 2, but its provisions appeared somewhat more applicable to the slave-trader, than the boat-man. What had the divine legislator said on this subject? There was a most false and unfounded notion, that the sacred writings were silent upon it; he should prove the contrary. "Whosoever" (says "the Scripture) stealeth a man, and selleth him, or in whose hands he shall be found, shall surely be put to death." And what was our gloss or application on this divine text? "Whosoever" (says the English law) "stealeth a man, and tortureth him, and killeth him, or selleth him into slavery for all the days of his life, shall surely—pay twenty pounds!" (Hear! hear!)—He trusted that this grievous incongruity would at length be done away, and pledged himself to bring in a bill to that effect early in the ensuing session; but he earnestly hoped, that in the mean time the House would leave nothing unattempted which might tend to diminish the great evils complained of, and give effect to one of the most holy of our laws. He moved, "That an humble Address be presented to his Majesty, representing to his Majesty, that this House has taken into its serious consideration the papers which his Majesty was graciously pleased to cause to be laid before this House upon the subject of the African Slave Trade.—That while this House acknowledges with gratitude the endeavours which his Majesty has been pleased to use, in compliance with the wishes of parliament, to induce foreign nations to concur in relinquishing that disgraceful commerce, this House has to express its deep regret that those efforts have been attended with so little success.—That this House does most earnestly beseech his Majesty to persevere in those measures which may tend to induce his allies, and such other foreign states as he may be able to negociate with, to co-operate with this country in a general Abolition of the Slave Trade, and to concur in the adoption of such measures as may assist in the effectual execution of the laws already passed for that purpose.—That this House has learnt with the greatest surprise and indignation, that certain persons in this country have not scrupled to continue in a clandestine and fraudulent manner the detestable traffic in slaves.—And that this House does most humbly pray his Majesty that he will be graciously pleased to cause to be given to the commanders of his Majesty's ships and vessels of war, the officers of his Majesty's customs, and the other persons in his Majesty's service, whose situation enables them to detect and suppress these abuses, such orders as may effectually check practices equally contemptuous to the authority of parliament, and derogatory to the interests and the honour of the country."

highly approved of the leading sentiments of the speech of the hon. and learned gent. and added, that it was with no view of opposing him in any respect that he had now risen, nor was he disposed to weaken the impression of his speech, by going over the same grounds. He concurred with him as to the expediency and propriety of the object he had in view, and expressed himself most anxious to embrace every rational means to carry into full effect the provisions of the Abolition act—a measure which always had and ever would have his sincere and zealous support. There was, however, one passage in the Address proposed by the hon. and learned gent. of which he could not so entirely approve, as he did of all the rest. The passage to which he alluded was that which went to pledge the House to the adoption of some measure next sessions. The very different views different men, who agreed as to the object, might take as to the efficacy or propriety of the means proposed, make it desirable not to pledge the House to a specific plan; and though this was not proposed, but only a general engagement to adopt some measure on the subject, it seemed to him not a case in which it would be quite regular in point of form to insert even that general engagement in an Address from the House to his Majesty. He should therefore suggest to the learned gent. the propriety of altering the passage; and the Address, if amended in that point, should have his most hearty support. He concurred in hoping that something might be done towards promoting the abolition of the Slave Trade in the foreign countries which are still friendly; and though he was aware that the difficulties which lay in the way of such an attempt were greater than the hon. gent. allowed, he rejoiced in being able to state, that the treaty just concluded would prove that some progress had already been made in obtaining the co-operation of the Portuguese government. He re- peated the expression of his wish to see the abolition carried completely into effect, and joined in those terms of reprobation with which the conduct of the persons who still presumed to violate that law had so properly been branded.

said, that in his opinion we were still assisting the Slave Trade, by our convoying its produce, and finding a market for it in other countries. We had in the beginning abolished it on the grounds of justice and humanity; but we had afterwards admitted policy into the calculation, and it was much to be feared our policy made us swerve from our purer motives. The inhumanity of this trade was generally allowed. He would ask, if it was so bad, why we should not treat those whom we found engaged in it as pirates? When we met pirates on the high seas, we never inquired to what country they belonged; we knew they were the common enemies of all, and we treated them accordingly. Why should we use the enemies of humanity more mercifully? But we bowed to policy, and we of course defeated justice. Such was the universal fate of all temporizing systems. We ought to adopt not a nominal but an effectual abolition of this abominable traffic. He alluded more particularly to the Spanish Slave Traders, who carried on a traffic, enormous in extent, and in its effects ruinous to the British colonies. We should tell those Slave Traders who come to ask our assistance, that we would not fight for liberty with one hand, and for slavery with the other; and that if they wished to be rescued from the thraldom of their enemies, they must not act the tyrant to those within their power. In truth, as some had formerly predicted, the Slave Trade was not destroyed, it had only changed hands. Trinidad no longer obtained the negroes so necessary for its cultivation (and here the hon. member stated the claims of the purchasers of new lands in Trinidad to a compensation or indemnity for the want of hands arising from the Abolition); but the same number of negroes, he continued, were exported from Africa; only, they went to the Spanish colonies instead of our own. He appealed to the British parliament on the part of our own planters, and trusted that effectual steps would yet be taken for remedying so serious an evil. While we carried our Abolition Act into execution, we should endeavour to extend it to our neighbours, and he should certainly support the Address, as having such a tendency.

heartily concurred in the Address, and in all the sentiments of his hon. friend who moved it. He thought it highly honourable to the House, and he felt it peculiarly cheering to the friends of the Abolition, that so general an expression of concurrence was manifested in every invective which had been bestowed on the Slave Trade, and upon those great criminals, who, under the false name of merchants, dared to persist in those vicious practices. He thought the co-operation of other states might have been obtained in a greater degree, and particularly of Portugal and Spain.

said, that he was glad, though not at all surprised, to perceive that there was likely to be no substantial difference of opinion in the House on this interesting question. He nevertheless felt that it was right in him to offer a few remarks on some topics that had been introduced into the debate, especially as an hon. friend and near connection of his own (Mr. Wilberforce) was unavoidably absent from indisposition. The opinions of that gentleman would always be held of the first importance in questions relative to the Slave Trade, and they were, on the subjects to which he should advert, so exactly coincident with his own, that, in delivering his own sentiments, he might fairly desire to be considered as speaking at the same time those of his absent friend.—He not only cordially approved of the motion (subject to the formal alteration that had been suggested), but in most points entirely concurred in the views which his learned and hon. friend (Mr. Brougham) had so ably and eloquently opened. Indeed he entirely agreed with him in every part of his argument that he (Mr. S.) had heard; but having unfortunately entered the House some time after his learned friend rose, he had lost that part of his speech in which some dissatisfaction at the conduct of his Majesty's ministers in relation to the Slave Trade was supposed to have been expressed or implied. He therefore thought it pvobable that his learned friend's meaning had been misconceived: but if not, this was a point on which he (Mr. S.) entirely disagreed with him. It was but justice to the present administration to say, that they had shown no disinclination to give effect to the abolition, though some of them when out of office had opposed it. Having become a law of the land, it was their duty, and he was confident also their inclination, to do all in their power to promote its object, and carry it into full execution. He was not aware that any gentlemen on the other side of the House differed from him in this respect; but if they did, sure at least he was that they would give him credit for the sincerity of his opinion. It was proved by his general line of conduct in that House, in which he had the misfortune to differ widely with them; "for I would as soon (said Mr. S.) affiance myself in the bonds of friendship with a man who had strangled my infant child, as lend my feeble support to an administration disposed to violate the sacred duty of adhering to and enforcing the Abolition of the Slave Trade." He would not, however, be understood to mean that nothing had been omitted that could possibly have been done. He thought the contrary; for instance, he believed that the stationing some additional ships of war on the coast of Africa, for the purpose of capturing vessels engaged in a contraband Slave Trade, would have tended to give greater efficacy to the Abolition. But then it was but just to the board of admiralty to say, that they reasonably looked to the public promoters and friends of that measure, who are so intimately connected with Sierra Leone, and who have long been in the habit of communicating with the government boards on these subjects, for suggestions as to the means that might be wanted for enforcing the new law in Africa. Such suggestions had been furnished as to other means adapted to the same end, and had been readily attended to; for instance, the establishment of a court of vice-admiralty at Sierra Leone; and an application having lately been made for another ship of war or two to be put under the command of commodore Columbine at Sierra Leone, he was able to say from authority, that two ships were now preparing for that purpose. If there had been blame in not adopting such a measure sooner, candour demanded the confession that he himself and other gentlemen on both sides of the House who were in the habit of communicating with government on such subjects, were more in fault than the Board of Admiralty.—The same might be truly said of what he understood his learned and hon. friend to have alluded to, the omission to negociate with Sweden for the Abolition of her Slave Trade. Surely it was natural that his right hon. friend, the late secretary of state for the foreign department (Mr. Canning,) should be unconscious that a power like Sweden, which had not one agricultural colony in the West Indies, had any interest in the Slave Trade, and should not foresee that her flag would be abused for the purpose of covering the Slave Trade of other powers, when the most zealous and best-informed friends of the Abolition must tax themselves with the same inadvertency. True it was, that he and other members of the African Institution having received intimation of abuses of that kind, applied as a Committee of that society to his right hon. friend on the subject, but this was only about a fortnight before the revolution in Sweden, which extinguished every hope of a successful negotiation with that power.—It would, however, be extravagant injustice to his right hon. friend (Mr. Canning,) and his right hon. friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to suppose any want of attachment to the sacred cause of Abolition in either of them, considering their important services to it, when it was in the hands of their political opponents. They were content to augment the popularity of an administration to which they were hostile, for the sake of carrying a measure so near to their hearts as the Abolition of the Slave Trade.—After all, he trusted that there were no longer two parties in Parliament on this great and interesting subject. For his part, he doubted not that if the measure were now to be originated after the experience we have had, it would be carried without any difficulty. The hardest tax to which his candour could be subjected was that of doing justice to his old opponents in this cause; and yet he must say, that on the face of the evidence by which the credulity of Parliament had been abused, there was room enough for difference of opinion in every view but that of strict abstract moral principle. Humanity had fraudulently been enlisted in the service of her enemies, by pretences that the Abolition would produce massacres on the coast of Africa, and insurrection, with all its revolutionary horrors, in the West Indies, as well as ruin to our unfortunate planters, to the merchants of Liverpool, and the general commerce of the country.—He doubted not that many gentlemen who disliked the Slave Trade on moral principles as strongly as himself, had been led away by these bold and false predictions of self-interested and pre- judiced men. But experience had dispelled all such illusions; for these supposed consequences of the Abolition were in their nature, if real, to be immediate. During between two and three years the British Slave Trade had been totally abolished by law; yet there had been no massacres on the coast; no insurrections in the colonies; Liverpool had not been ruined or injured; and the general commerce of the country was flourishing beyond example. He verily believed, therefore, that gentlemen once zealous against the Abolition of the Slave Trade, would now, if the question could be revived, be found among its most active promoters. He could distinguish among them men eminent for their humanity and their attachment to the interests of the poor; but they had been led to believe that humanity itself pleaded against a sudden cessation of that commerce.—Mr. Stephen then proceeded to make some observations on the speech of Mr. Marryatt. His hon. friend was always entitled to the attention of the House from the good sense and perspicuity which never failed to distinguish his arguments, but more especially on a question like the present, on account of his known connexions, both public and private, with the sugar colonies. [Mr. M. is colonial agent for Trinidada, as well as an eminent West India merchant.] He was therefore peculiarly happy to hear his strong and impressive condemnation of the Slave Trade, on principles of humanity and justice. He certainly agreed with his hon. friend that we were bound not only by those principles, but in just attention to the interests of our own colonies, to use our best endeavours with foreign powers to induce them to follow our example, and to renounce their shares of that detestable commerce. But he could not admit to him, that if we unfortunately failed in those endeavours, all the evils of the Abolition would be ours, and all the benefits theirs. On the contrary, our colonies, supposing the Abolition to be effectual, would acquire a great increase of interior strength, while the foreign colonies would be progressively weakened, and endangered by the effects of their opposite system.—Still less could he admit that we had gained nothing by the Abolition, or even that the trade had not in practice been greatly diminished; he should be sorry so to undervalue the effects of a measure which had been the best boast of the country, and the times we live in; and the greatest compensation for the crimes and miseries of the age. Much had been done, though much, he admitted, still remained to do: a vast proportion of the former export of slaves from Africa had been cut off, and the contraband trade, though probably great, was trifling when compared with the legalized commerce that before prevailed under the British flag.—But if the reverse of all this were true; if the exportation from Africa had not been diminished by a single slave, still he would be far from admitting that we had gained nothing from the Abolition. We had at least delivered ourselves as a nation from the guilt and shame of authorizing that cruel and opprobrious traffic; and this, in his mind, was an advantage above all price.—If we had effected nothing more, he should rejoice and bless God to the last hour of his life for that happy deliverance. The treatment of the trade when carried on by foreigners, by the consent of their own legislature, was a subject of very difficult consideration. He could not at present agree with his hon. friend (Mr. Marryatt,) that we could warrantably compel them to relinquish it, though the proposition that the act is in its nature piracy, and such as all nations not involved in the same guilt have a common right and duty to suppress, was by no means so untenable as some gentlemen seemed to suppose. But there was a wide medium between prohibiting the trade to independent countries, and contracting commercial or defensive alliances with those who chose to persist in it. He hoped never to see a treaty with the new South American powers by which this country could be called on to give them any auxiliary aid or protection, unless the abolition of their Slave Trade was one of its stipulations. It would be reason enough for avoiding such a compact, that their exposure to convulsions while their population is increased by that commerce, and their interior weakness in a military view, must make their defence when no longer supported by a mother-country in Europe, extremely onerous and dangerous to an ally. But their prosecuting the Slave Trade was also a positive prejudice to us; especially by making it extremely difficult to carry our own prohibitory laws into effect, and by frustrating our efforts to civilize Africa, and profit by her innocent commerce. We had strong ground here to negociate upon with allies for whose freedom and independence we were struggling; and we had an unquestionable right to make their renouncing the Slave Trade the condition of our further support; though he was not prepared to say that it would be right under the circumstances of the case to do so. It must be admitted that the court of Brazil would have great difficulties in acceding to such a demand, however well disposed to adopt our own principles.—As to subjects of our allies carrying on a contraband Slave Trade from England, or by means of their residence here, the case clearly ought not to be endured. If the existing penalties were found insufficient, as the case of the Commercio de Rio seemed to prove, they ought to be increased, and persons who so abused our hospitality, though they might be clothed with a public character, ought to be sent with ignominy out of the country.—His hon. friend had said, that among the sacrifices which we had made in renouncing what he admitted to be a detestable commerce, we had imposed a great hardship on the settlers in Trinidada, who had embarked their capitals there, relying on being able to procure slaves to cultivate their lands. This proposition he must intirely deny: no such hardships could be with any colour of reason alleged. If any person had settled in Trinidada, or embarked capital in the purchase of lands there, since the island first came under his Majesty's dominion, relying on its being a place where he should be able to buy or import slaves, or even to cultivate his lands by slave labour, as in our other sugar colonies, he had speculated without any authority or encouragement from his Majesty's government, and in opposition to express and authoritative declarations on the subject. Both Mr. Pitt and lord Sidmouth, when in administration, had publicly disavowed having any design to acquire in Trinidada a new slave colony.—The latter had with some indignation disclaimed in that House the having any such purpose; and it had been generally given out and understood, that this new island, far from being settled on the same principles with our old sugar colonies, was to furnish a happy contrast to them, and become a farm of experiment, by means of which the practicability of an improved and beneficial system of colonization in the West Indies was to be ascertained.—(Cries of hear! hear! especially from Mr. Canning.) If, under such circumstances, any British proprietor in that island was disappointed in his speculations by the Abolition, he had clearly only his own folly and rashness to blame.—Mr. S. adverting to the form of the resolutions and address as proposed by Mr. Brougham, admitted that it might be irregular to insert in an Address of this kind to the crown a pledge or declaration of what the House intended hereafter to do. It would, he agreed, be better to put that part of the Address into the form of a separate resolution, as his right hon. friend had suggested. But he saw no objection whatever to the House now resolving that such a measure as was generally described should be taken early in the next session of Parliament. The motion did not propose to pledge the House to any specific measure, but that some law for the more effectual execution of the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was necessary, no man who knew the case could doubt.—If there were no other defect in the law as it stood, the provisions as to appeals from condemnation of negroes as prize, or as forfeitures, for the purpose of restoring them to freedom, would clearly want some emendation. Here Mr. Stephen described some great inconveniences that arise, as the law stands, from such appeals, by which the state of the negroes, as slave or free, may be kept for years in suspense. He mentioned also an important and difficult question depending before the lords commissioners of appeals in prize causes, as to the effect of the American Abolition Act upon claims for Africans unlawfully carried under the American flag^*.—He professed himself to be of opinion with Mr. Brougham, that the penalties for contraband Slave Trade, when carried on by British subjects, ought to be increased: the offence was, in its nature, piracy and murder! for it could rarely, if ever, happen, that a cargo of slaves could be carried across the Atlantic without some lives being lost, from the effects of their illegal imprisonment. Unlawful homicide, proceeding from wilful violence, perpetrated from the most sordid of motives, could not, he thought, be consistently treated as an ordinary case of contraband trade, and punished only with the ordinary penalties of forfeiture of the property engaged in it. Upon the first renunciation, indeed, of a trade so long unfortunately sanctioned by law, it might have been thought too strong a course to apply those penalties which its moral character would well justify; but if British subjects were found abandoned enough to prosecute a trade in human blood, in defiance of the laws of their country, Parliament would be bound to put a stop to such atrocious crimes, by the terror of adequate punishments.

^* This has since been happily decided in favour of the African captives.

concurred entirely in the motion both for the Address and the Resolution, pledging the House to further measures. He thought that those should should only be generally alluded to—for he was against coming to any specific Resolution on so grave a matter as the creation of a new felony, without mature deliberation; and while it might be ascribed to the House being heated with the honourable mover's address. The reasons which justified the punishment as crimes, of acts once permitted, were, either that the temptations to commit them were so strong as to overcome any ordinary apprehension of a pecuniary nature, and to render the commission of them extremely frequent; or, that the means of concealment were very easy. In such cases it was found necessary to provide other checks, and to consider the acts as objects of penal sanction. He did not say that the Slave Trade might not fall within the scope of this proposition; but neither could he at once say that it did fall within it. All he contended for was, caution and delay in so delicate a matter, and one involving so many weighty considerations. He agreed, however, in the reprobation of the Slave Trade, and the violators of the law who still practised it; and trusted, that every means would be used to detect and punish such great enormities, whatever persons might happen to be involved. (Hear! hear!)—With respect to the Foreign Slave Trade, he feared the difficulties had been underrated. The Spanish and Portuguese governments had been blamed for not joining in the Abolition by some gentlemen; and the hon. mover had insinuated, by his manner of treating this subject, some blame against the government of this country, for not prevailing upon those allies to do so. But had gentlemen duly reflected on the situation in which those governments were placed at the moment when it was said our negotiations ought to have begun, for this purpose? The government of Spain was providing for its self-defence, and was constantly shifting its seat under the pressure of a powerful enemy; and the govern- ment of Portugal had just removed its seat from Europe to South America, where it was placed in the midst of those whose prejudices were the most inveterate, and whose interests, real or supposed, were the largest in favour of the Slave Trade. This was not the moment to attempt such changes. Suppose, to put a parallel case, that this country had been invaded, and the government driven over to Jamaica, would that be the point of time when the Abolition would most easily have been carried? We must observe, however, that, after all, the Americans were the great Slave Traders. He had stated his opinion upon this point when the hon. mover first brought forward this subject, and he must still repeat it. He was certainly confirmed in it by the knowledge of a material fact, that the American government granted licences to vessels engaged in carrying on the Slave Trade, and thus made itself a party to the violation of its own laws, and a sharer in the profits arising from the Slave Trade. The right hon. gent. bestowed an encomium on the efforts of Mr. Pitt, for the Abolition, and denied that Trinidad had ever been intended as a Slave Colony; and therefore there could be no ground for the compensation claimed by an hon. member (Mr. Marryatt,) in behalf of the planters of that island as an indemnity for the supposed losses from the Abolition. They had purchased, under an understanding that the Slave Trade never would be permitted in that island. On this point he could speak with the more confidence, because he had brought forward this subject in the year 1802, after the peace had ceded Trinidad to this country, and had obtained a pledge from the noble lord (lord Sidmouth), then at the head of the government, that the grants of land in that island should be made on the express understanding that the Slave Trade should not be extended to it. Mr. Canning concluded with professing, that no man was more anxious than himself to see this detestable traffic completely destroyed, and that he heartily concurred in that motion as having such a tendency.

said: He did not rise to oppose the motion of his hon. friend, or to attempt to diminish the impressions made by his eloquence, and by that of others who had followed him in the same strain. If he had at another time, objected, upon the ground of its inexpediency and impracticability, to a measure which was not then the law of the country, he knew what was now his duty in deference to what is the law of the country. He had at no time denied that an Abolition of the Slave Trade, could it be effected, would be a vast benefit to humanity, but he had opposed the act for abolition, because he believed that it would deprive the British colonies of all possible means of recruiting their population, leaving at the same time the rival colonies of France, and of other nations in possession of those means, and consequently failing to effect the good it pretended to confer upon Africa. The proposition before the House shewed, that hitherto experience had only confirmed his opinion, for, at the time when we abolished our slave trade, we had no reason to reckon upon those favourable events, which have given us, as it were, almost an entire control over the intercourse between Africa and the West Indies, and enabled us to approach to an interruption, for a short interval, at least, of the traffic in slaves upon the African coasts. This he had ever conceived to be the most probable, nay, the only possible means of effecting a real and complete abolition. But although the cards which had been put into our hands, had been better than we had a right to expect, yet, after doing the best we could with them, his hon. friend was that night complaining to the House that the miseries on the African coast were continued, foreign colonies supplied, and that the old British colonies were suffering by an unequal competition: he did not wonder that it was so, that our efforts to stop the trade of our allies, had even under the most favourable circumstances, been ineffectual; for besides what had been so ably urged on this part of the subject by the hon. gent. who had spoken last, our allies might say to us. You did not think of abolishing this trade till your colonies were prospering under high cultivation, and until by their means you had established a marine which hat given you the dominion of the sea; and, when you were already master of the sea, you yet took twenty years for discussion before you would deprive your colonies of this resource, call not upon us then, who have made no such progress and whose colonies are only beginning to flourish, to adopt without hesitation and without mitigation a law which you yourselves have so reluctantly and so gradually adopted.

Of all the West India islands, he was most acquainted with Jamaica, and after the most diligent enquiry, he was satisfied that into that island there had not been illegally imported one single negro since the Abolition Act took effect. Yet Jamaica, he was well persuaded, from the most authentic reports, was, in spite of all that humane regulations could do, declining in its black population. He had heard it said, in the course of this debate, that if such were the case in any of our colonies, the blame rested on the colonists, by their having been backward to adapt themselves to their new situation, and to make those wise and humane provisions for the support of their population, which the act of Abolition called for. He was one that believed that in all our old colonies laws calculated for this purpose had long existed, but he recollected that when the measure of Abolition was debating, its advocates had said: Of what avail are laws betwixt the master and the slave? pass but this act and it will do more than volumes of legislation to secure the humane treatment of the slaves, for it will then become the evident interest of the master to support their numbers by good usage instead of wasting their lives, by hard labour and scanty food, as he will be tempted to do as long as he remains secure that he can replace them by purchase.—Such had been the argument then used, the fallacy of which would soon appear, for although the Abolition act had passed, and the interest of the planters had received the wished for direction, yet, it would be found that the population of Jamaica could not be maintained.—He thought it was somewhat soon for his hon. friend to assume the tone he had done in speaking of all that related to this trade. His hon. friend surely forgot that the acts of parliament were still upon the table, and but three years ago were in force, which not only tolerated but expressly encouraged and stimulated, as intimately connected with the prosperity of the kingdom, that trade which was now the object of such unqualified reprobation. It was too soon he thought also to pass a decisive opinion upon the political consequence of what we had done. The time he looked to with dread, and which would indeed present the subject under a new aspect, would be when France was again in possession of extensive colonies in the West Indies. Cultivating them as she would do, under every advantage of a free and uninterrupted intercourse with the coast of Africa; through their means possessing a formidable body of experienced seamen, and beginning to rival us upon our old domain, the ocean, at a time too, when our own colonies, hitherto a main support of our naval power, should be fast going to decay. At that time, which he believed would arrive, it must greatly add to our grief and vexation, a grief and vexation in which he should heartily partake, if on turning our eyes to the coast of Africa we should see that we had effected no revolution there in favour of humanity. That the same disregard of civil liberty, the same unprotected state of property, still continued among that people to impede civilization, and to perpetuate the crime and miseries which we had fondly believed would cease with the sacrifice we had made.—Meantime, he could not but agree with his hon. friend, that we should under our present circumstances use every possible effort to put an end to any illicit trade which might exist among ourselves, and to checker discourage the trade, more or less direct, of other nations, by which the foreign colonies continued to be supplied with slaves, and he should therefore give his support to the Address.

said, that as there had been in the course of the discussion no material opposition given to what he had siated in his speech, he should not feel it necessary to make any reply. He should however, offer an explanation as to one or two points on which he had been misunderstood. He did not intend to reflect upon the sincerity or diligence of his Majesty's government in seconding the Abolition Act—he was willing to give them credit for both; but he could not help regretting that they had been able to effect so little in carrying the object of the address presented to the crown by both Houses four years ago. It had been said, that the slave trade had not been materially diminished by our abolition acts. Nothing could be more unfounded. After mentioning several other proofs, he said it might be enough to instance the reduced prices of slaves on the coast since the acts passed; instead of 100 dollars, they now sold for 20: a reduction wholly owing to the lessened demand, for no man could pretend that the supply had been increased. He contended, therefore, that great progress had been made towards the complete abolition of the traffic, and only wished to accelerate it. It had been said, by a right hon. gent. (Mr. Canning,) that the American government gave licences to ships to evade the American abolition laws. This he took upon himself flatly to contradict. The right hon. gent.'s statement was utterly improbable, and would be found to have originated in total misinformation. He ventured to deny it upon the positive authority of those most intimately connected with the American government, most in the confidence of that government, and most likely to know the truth or falsehood of such an assertion. It was impossible for any man to have been more grossly deceived than the right hon. gent. had been in this particular—he spoke without the slightest partiality towards the Americans, excepting only on account of their exertions in favour of the abolition; but fairness and truth compelled him, as it had forced others, who could not be suspected of undue partialities towards America (Messrs. Stephen and Wilberforce,) upon a former occasion distinctly to repel such insinuations. With respect to the measure of which he had given notice for making the traffic in slaves a felony, he was confirmed in his sentiments by all that had passed that night, as well as by every consultation he had had with the most enlightened and able persons in the House. And he concluded—after shortly replying to some objections thrown out on this head—with exhorting the House to prepare for taking such steps as alone could do justice to its own feelings, preserve its consistency, and thoroughly extirpate the traffic; namely, a statutory declaration, punishing those deeds as crimes and felonies, which were, in their whole nature, most felonious and criminal. He had no objection whatever to separate the Resolution, pledging the House, from the Address; and the Address was carried accordingly nem. con.

Mr. Brougham then moved the following resolution, which was also carried unanimously: "That this House has learnt, with great surprise and indignation, the attempts which have recently been made to evade the prohibitions of the Act abolishing the African slave trade; and that this House will, early in the next session of parliament, take into its consideration such measures as may tend to prevent such daring violations of the law."

rose and said, that having forborne to bring forward any motion on the state of the nation, seeing that the general attention of the public was fixed upon one great question, he thought it better to postpone any observations he had to offer, as well upon the general situation of the affairs of the country, as upon what might take place between this and the next session of Parliament, to some of the stages of the bill upon the table. But before he should proceed to the consideration of these topics, he must be allowed to make a remark upon the manner in which the public business had been transacted in that House, during the last six weeks. Gentlemen must recollect the late sittings, and the unusual and unprecedented fatigue of attendance, to which they had been uninterruptedly constrained to submit within the whole of that period. Sufficient time was not allowed for the due consideration of public business. To suit the views of the minister, who wished to get rid of Parliament as soon as he could, the members of that House, who were not inclined to abandon their duty, were compelled to devote night after night, without rest or intermission, to watch the precipitate progress of the many important public measures which had been so inconveniently forced together, within that short space of time. The consequence was, that the session, laborious perhaps beyond example, was still insufficient to allow of that just, and deliberate, and ample discussion, which it was of the very essence of the constitution of that House to bestow upon public business. If this practice were to be persevered in, that House would, by and by, become a cypher in the state, possessing probably still all the forms of unfettered deliberation, but incapable of controuling a corrupt or profligate administration, and, in reality, exercising its functions only in registering the edicts of the executive government, upon whose conduct it should constitutionally be a vigilant and effectual check. However monstrous such a state of things would be, he could assure gentlemen, that the transition was not so difficult or extravagant, as might at first be thought, if the course pursued in the present session should be followed in future Parliaments. For himself he could discover in principle no great difference, between registering, with insulting because unmeaning, forms, the decrees of a government, and passing the measures of a minister with- out sufficient examination, and upon hasty and imperfect, and consequently ineffectual discussion. If mature deliberation was essential to the performance of their legislative functions, to deprive that House of the opportunity of such deliberation, would be to destroy the first principle of its institution. How far the manner of conducting public business during the latter part of the present session, might have a tendency that way, he should leave to the House to decide; but thus much he felt it necessary to say upon the subject, before the Parliament should separate, as he considered the practice he had alluded to, not only productive of much present inconvenience, but pregnant with future mischief.

With respect to the arrangement of public business in future sessions, he had been given to understand, that it was the intention of the right hon. gent. (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) to propose a regulation, which would in a great measure obviate the inconvenience of which he had been complaining. The principle of that regulation was, that notices and orders of the day should take precedence of each other on alternate days. That such an arrangement would be attended with some advantages he was ready to admit, but he must protest against the principle, that the House, by adopting any resolution on the subject, should put it out of the power of any member to make a motion without previous notice or regard to such an arrangement. Occasions, when it might be necessary to make motions in that summary manner, would not often occur, but unquestionably whenever they should arise, it would be inconsistent even with the object of the right hon. gent. himself, that an arrangement, made for the convenience of the House, should operate to the disadvantage of the public interest, by precluding the right of submitting any motion on a sudden, when delay would be fatal to the object of such motion. It was upon the principle, that delay might be attended with injurious consequences, that according to the established usage of the House, precedence was uniformly given to notices. With this reservation, therefore, of the right of dispensing with the form of notice in cases of an urgent description, he should feel no objection to the regulation intended to be proposed by the right hon. gentleman.

Before, however, he should proceed to call the attention of the House to the important considerations arising out of, and connected with, the bill upon the table, it might not be altogether amiss to say a few words upon some subjects of a more limited though not less interesting description, which had been incidentally brought before the House in the course of the session. The first of these was the case of the seaman Jeffery. With respect to this case, he was bound to do the Admiralty board the justice to declare, that they had shewn a most laudable anxiety to inquire into and ascertain every circumstance connected in any degree with it. It was likewise due from himself to that board to acknowledge his sense of the attention with which they communicated to him all the information they received respecting this unfortunate man. The result of these communications and of the publication which had recently appeared, and which gentlemen must have read in the public prints, was a thorough conviction in his mind, that Jeffery had been taken off the island by an American vessel, after having remained there several days, and that he either now was, or lately had been working at his trade of a blacksmith, at Beverley in America. He hoped that the noble marquis at the head of the foreign department, would therefore take, if he had not already done so, immediate steps to procure the return of Jeffery, and his restoration to his family and friends.

Another subject, upon which it was his intention to have troubled the House at some length, if the session had lasted long enough to have afforded him an opportunity, was the report made to the House upon the conduct of certain officers of that exchequer, on the late occasion of funding exchequer bills. It was painful to press the necessity of removing any public officer, particularly when he was far advanced in life, and not in affluent circumstances, except in cases of very gross and aggravated misconduct. But it was actually impossible for any one, who should read the report, to which he alluded, to entertain the least doubt, not alone of the propriety, but of the indispensable necessity, of removing sir John Peter from the office he held. With respect to Mr. Planta, he felt it due to hint, to declare, that it was most obvious from the report, that that gentleman had conducted himself not only as an honest, but as a faithful and meritorious officer, and that not the slightest shadow of blame was in any shape imputable to him. Against Dr. Cudlipp, the third paymaster of exchequer bills, he had nothing to say. That gentleman was in the country at the time of the transaction to which he was pointing the attention of the House, and consequently could neither be a party to, nor responsible for the disgraceful misconduct exposed in the report. But there was another person in the office, who was deeply implicated in the transaction;—whose conduct had been as reprehensible as that of sir John Peter—he meant Mr. Palethorp. The criminal impropriety of his conduct was greatly aggravated by the prevaricating manner in which he gave his evidence before the Committee, having by his evasions and shuffling answers, detained them for hours in extorting facts from him, which he might have disclosed in three minutes, had he been disposed to give his evidence plainly and honestly. A man, who had so misconducted himself in office, and had given such a testimony, ought not on any account to be suffered to retain his situation. These were points, however, which he must now leave to the discretion of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, relying with confidence that his decision, under the circumstances he had stated, must be alike consistent with propriety, and satisfactory to public justice. He also took that opportunity to suggest to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the necessity of making some alteration in the system of the exchequer bill office;—if that could be called system, which, as appeared from the report of the Committee, was a scene of the most disgraceful irregularity, confusion and mobbing.

But to come now to the question immediately under consideration. The bill before the House in effect called upon them not only for a vote of credit, but for a vote of confidence also. By the increase or diminution of the sum they were thus about to place at the disposal of his Majesty's ministers, they would effectually enable them to put off, or inevitably oblige them to hasten, the meeting of parliament. In the course of the session, then nearly at an end, many events had taken place which were wholly unexpected. But there was one, and a most important event it was, which though at one time daily and hourly expected, had nevertheless not taken place—he meant the dissolution of the present administration, (a laugh from the ministerial benches). As soon as the gentlemen on the other side had recovered from their expected smile of derision, he would take occasion to bring some few circumstances to their recollection, which would show, perhaps, even to these right hon. gentlemen themselves, that the expectation of their fall was neither idle nor extravagant. He should only beg the House to consider how the right hon. the leading member of the administration stood, or could stand, in the just estimation of the country. When they looked to the manner in which the first lord of the admiralty had been appointed to that office, and called to mind the circumstances of that right hon. gent.'s recent public conduct, could they, he would ask, bring themselves for a moment to suppose that an administration so acting and so composed, was entitled to their confidence or that of the nation? In pointing at the right hon. gent. at the head of the admiralty: he was ready to admit all the worth of his private character, and all his merits as a useful colleague: but he must still contend, that, as a public man, he had sunk considerably in character, in consequence of the course he had thought proper of late to pursue in that House; and that the appointment of a person so circumstanced to one of the most important situations in the government, was highly indecent, and could not fail to excite the disgust and exasperate the inflamed and dissatisfied feelings of the country. That this was the case had been made abundantly manifest by the reception with which that right hon. gent. had met from his former constituents; when on being appointed a teller of the exchequer he vacated his seat, and, instead of being re-elected as he wished was decidedly rejected as he deserved to be, by the electors of Cambridgeshire. After this mortifying defeat in the county he had so long represented, the right hon. gent. was lost to that House, till a vacancy was made for him, and he was returned for St. Germains. All this time it was unsettled whether that right hon. gent. should be appointed to the office now held by him. The doubts and differences and distractions which prevailed in the cabinet respecting the manner of bringing him into office, kept the appointment in suspence for some weeks. At length however the distractions were composed or compromised, the right hon. gent. accepted the office, and though he had not at the time taken his seat for St. Germains, was obliged to go back, to be re-elected, to that borough, having taken office after his former return.

But this was not all. He would beg leave to state to the House how that right hon. gent. otherwise stood, unconnected with the circumstances of his recent acceptance of office, or the particular services which obtained it for him. It must be in the recollection of gentlemen, that that right hon. gent. had held the office of secretary of state for the home department in the administration of lord Sidmouth, who felt bound to resign his office when he found that he could not obtain the confidence of a larger majority than 38. Such a reduction of the numbers of his supporters in that House was considered a sufficient intimation, that the confidence of the House of Commons was withdrawn, and a very strong reason for his retiring.—But the administration still had a majority. He well remembered too the manner in which that right hon. gent. treated his bill to suspend the army of reserve then in progress through the House, when the result of a division on a question arising out of it, obliged him and his colleagues to abdicate their offices. Lord Liverpool was another of those who retired from administration on that occasion. There were several others in office at present who had been in the same situation, but it was unnecessary to go through the whole list. What he had already stated was sufficient to shew how the right hon. gentleman's sentiments must have been altered since that period. Such were his feelings then: what are they now?

Immediately after the decision of the question respecting the Walcheren enquiry by a majority against the minister, the right hon. gent. accepted the tellership of the exchequer, by which he vacated his seat! His last vote before his leaving the House was in a minority. In his return to parliament he found his colleagues in the same disastrous condition, and he gave his first vote after his return in a minority, and that too upon a question which was represented by the Chancellor of the Exchequer as one of vital importance to the nation. He who despaired of carrying on the government with a majority in his favour, went out of parliament leaving ministers in a minority; he returned to parliament to find them in a minority; and yet these ministers still retained their places, and the right hon. gent. himself had not only accepted of office with them, and notwithstanding the repeated minorities in which they had been left, he must be supposed to consider office even under such circumstances as a post of honour. The House would recollect, that in the debate on the Catholic petitions the Chancellor of the Exchequer had argued, that though the question were carried, if not by a large majority, it ought not to be acted upon; as a measure of such magnitude and national importance, and which would make so material an alteration in the whole system of our municipal policy, could not be safely adopted, when the opinion of parliament was nearly balanced, and the decision rested only upon a narrow majority. What then was the state of the administration in the efficiency of which the nation was so deeply interested? When it succeeded either in proposing or resisting measures in that House, was it not standing upon the narrowest majority that ever an administration dared to rest upon? Was it then to be endured that any set of men in such a situation should claim to be entitled to confidence, or think to go on with the conduct of public affairs?

He had dwelt thus long upon this topic with a view to shew, that the opinions of the right hon. gent. now at the head of the admiralty, of lord Liverpool, and of the others to whom he had alluded, had been, very materially changed, since the former resignation of office. Whether they had changed for the better, or for the worse, was quite another question. They, he had no doubt, would assert the affirmative, but he could have no hesitation to declare and to maintain the negative. One great practical lesson, however, might be derived by the parliament and the country, from the continuance in office, namely, that the influence of the crown could now maintain an administration in power without the confidence of that House. This was now an indisputable and incontrovertible fact, however inconsistent it may be with the principles or dangerous to the existence of the British constitution. What but such ah unconstitutional influence could have supported in office a minister, who had been so often and so signally defeated, and upon so many important questions, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer had been during the present session? The right hon. gentleman had been defeated in the nomination of the different committees appointed during the session to prosecute the important inquiries connected with economy and reform. He had, in the first place, been defeated in the nomination of the finance committee, that committee, from whose labours so much important information was derived, and from whose future exertions so much public good was to be looked for; or, if not totally defeated, the result, at least, was different from what it would have been according to his wishes.

He had been defeated in a still more repent instance in the bullion committee, for the appointment of which, and for the beneficial results of the profound and enlightened investigations in which it had been engaged, the public was indebted to an hon. friend of his (Mr. Horner). That committee had already made one report, which was on the table, and though he had not had time to make himself quite master of it, he was persuaded, that the nation would derive essential advantage from the important facts, and the sound and liberal suggestions it contained upon that most difficult and interesting subject—the state of the national currency. The right hon. gent. who was a member of that committee, when a question was to be decided in it respecting the restriction of cash issues from the bank, a question essentially connected with the interest of the whole commercial body, came down to the committee with all the force he could muster, determined to oppose that part of the report, and was defeated by a majority of fourteen to four. This defeat was the more remarkable because the right hon. gent. considered the whole as a subject of vital importance, and had consequently assembled all the members he could influence to stifle that part of the report of which he disapproved. Whether after his disappointment the right hon. gent. will look upon the question as of the same consequence is not quite so certain; but unquestionably the majority of the Committee, sensible of the evils brought upon the country by the restriction, and anxious to lay the foundation of some remedy, resisted the views of the right hon. gent.; and to their firmness it was owing, that the House and the public have now the benefit of that part of the report, which it was his intention to strangle at its birth.

Notwithstanding the great inconvenience suffered by the public from the present state of national currency, an inconvenience now more severely felt than at any previous period, it was not his opinion, that the evil was of very recent growth. He apprehended that the calamity, now so sensibly felt, had originated in 1797, when the restriction was first imposed. It had been then predicted, that, if the restriction should continue but three months, the country would be ruined; yet that restriction had continued until it was feared it would become permanent: and though national ruin had not followed, great and extensive public embarrassment had been the consequence. It was upon a vital question of this description, and under such circumstances, that the prime minister of England had been foiled by a majority of fourteen to four, and yet that minister dared still to cling to office. If Mr. Pitt, the author of that restriction, possessing as he did the unlimited confidence of a great majority of that House, and of the nation, had been defeated in such a way, it would have shaken his administration. The right hon. gent. however, having sustained the defeat, not only outlived the shock, but, Antæus-like, seemed to derive fresh vigour from prostration; maintaining his administration, and calling for unlimited confidence from that House and from the country!

Unable to give such confidence to such men, and not seeing in what manner three millions of money could be well applied, he thought the vote proposed much too large. He most certainly could not extend such confidence to the present administration, as to place at their disposal so large a sum, without knowing any certain and definite service to which it was to be applied. The sum was infinitely too large, and the confidence too great, for him to accede to the measure. They all knew well, that the King's minister had postponed the meeting of parliament this year to the latest possible period; and they must all equally well know, that he was determined to get rid of parliament as soon as he possibly could. What then was the natural inference, but that if he should obtain this Vote of Credit, he would avail himself of it, to keep parliament from assembling to the latest possible day? What he had already done, the right hon. gent. would do again, and he must repeat the assertion, that he had postponed the meeting of parliament this session, not upon public grounds, but for his own private political purposes,—that he had not advised his Majesty to assemble his parliament, until the last guinea was spent, and he was unable to go on longer, without obtaining grants of money from that House. Gentlemen cannot have forgotten the distractions which took place in the cabinet, during the last summer. The differences which then prevailed, and the difficulty of completing the arrangements thereby rendered necessary, a difficulty not got over till after December, must be fresh in the recollection of the House. These indecent and disgraceful proceedings, were reasons for putting off the meeting of parliament, which the right hon. gent. could not assemble, until he had patched up some sort of an administration, with which to face parliament. It was scarcely possible, that the shameful scenes which took place last summer, should be renewed, but yet from every appearance at the close of the last session, any one might have thought it morally impossible, that such vile intrigues as were at that time in progress, could have been conceived, still less acted upon by honourable men.

Before he quitted the consideration of matters purely domestic, he had a few observations to submit to the House, on a question of the last importance to the public, which had occupied much attention, and excited no small degree of alarm during the last six weeks, an alarm which he trusted had been principally owing to exaggerated representations of danger. The question was of so delicate a nature, that he should not have thought of touching upon it in that House, if it had not been already freely canvassed out of doors: the question he alluded to, was the alarming prospect of a scanty harvest. As there was but too much reason to suppose, that the crop of the present year, would be greatly short of an average crop, be trusted that no measures would be omitted for procuring as large a supply as possible from abroad. He hoped also, that in the event of the visitation of a scarcity, no legislative interference should be resorted to, as during the former infliction. In his opinion such laws were worse than useless, they were mischievous, in such cases; and it would infinitely better answer every purpose, for which the interference of the legislature might be thought necessary, if the members of the legislature were, after the separation of parliament, to use all their influence each in his own neighbourhood, to put the people upon economizing against the period of need.

He was happy to add that the accounts from various quarters throughout the country, concurred in representing the ap- pearance of all descriptions of grain, as having greatly improved. At all events, he hoped, that no more complaints would be heard of, against persons for buying up corn, or for monopoly. It must be obvious, that nothing could so effectually secure a supply for the season of dearth, as that individuals with capital should, whilst grain is comparatively abundant, establish private granaries wherever public granaries could not be provided.

It was no unimportant part of this great question, that by far the larger part of our supplies of corn at present and for a considerable time past, had been imported from the ports of France, and Holland. The quantity he understood to have been not less than 20,000 quarters a week since Christmas. If this source of supply were cut off, and who could foresee how soon it might, the consequences might prove calamitous. But, thank God, the ports of America were again open, and offered to us a ready resource and an ample supply, provided that nothing should be done injudiciously to take that supply out of the market. He did not mean to press this subject farther, but he could not take leave of it without again recommending most strongly and most solemnly to his Majesty's ministers to adopt every measure of active and timely precaution, that may afford any prospect of warding off from this country, in these perilous times, the horrible scourge of scarcity and famine.

To return then to the amount of the vote under discussion. Upon what grounds, he would ask, arising out of our foreign relations, was it, that so large a Vote of Credit could be required? The Vote of last year did not exceed three millions, though Austria had, at the period of passing that vote, been known to have commenced the war, and bills even had been drawn by the Austrian cabinet upon London, in anticipation of the pecuniary aid to be solicited from this country. For his own part he had never foreboded any great advantages from the result of that war; but still the policy of aiding Austria, as she had actually embarked in the war, was a good ground to intitle ministers to come to that House for a Vote of Credit. Scarcely twelve months had since elapsed, and not only Austria was completely subdued, but one of the greatest efforts ever made by this country had, so far from succeeding, terminated in defeat, disaster, and disgrace. Austria was now in alliance with France, and that alliance was cemented by the mar- riage of Buonaparté with an Austrian princess. So that there could not now remain any possible chance of a renewal of war upon the continent, and consequently so far as the continent was concerned, there could be no occasion: for such a Vote of Credit.

But if the right hon. gent. called for three millions, it would be desirable that he should state to what point of Europe he could direct the application of any armament he might fit out with that sum. The House must be aware, that on one hand, every power in Europe had been reduced to subjection by Buonaparté, whilst on the other hand, every thing had been tried unsuccessfully by us. A considerable addition had been made to the navy this year, and a very large establishment voted for the army. When there was therefore no point against which an expedition could be directed, and when a very considerable increase to the strength of the army and navy had been already amply provided for, for what other purpose could the right hon. gent. want this money, but to enable him to put off the meeting of parliament to a distant day?

Having proved that no such vote could be wanted in the existing circumstances of Europe, he was happy to be able to add, that, as things stood now between America and this country, it was not likely that any part of the vote of credit would be wanted so far as America was concerned. Having adverted to America, he should take leave to say a few words in the shape of explanation on the subject of some little difference which had taken place between himself and a right hon. gent. (Mr. Canning), respecting the instructions under which Mr. Erskine acted. He was the more desirous of doing this as the right hon. gent. had spoken on the subject in a former evening, with a warmth which the occasion had not called for, and he would own that the right hon. gent. surprised him as much by his heat in that instance, as he had by his previous and extraordinary silence, on other topics. The right hon. gent. seemed to think that he had pledged himself to bring forward a question, respecting America, in the shape of charge against him, but no such pledge had he ever given. The right hon. gent. had also complained of his having taken advantage of the state of the House, to bring forward the matter without any question immediately before it, whereby the right hon. gent. was precluded from going on with the debate and speaking in his own justification; from this charge Mr. Whitbread could vindicate himself, and he would appeal to the right hon. gent. himself for the fulness of his vindication. On the Friday he had told the right hon. gent., that on the Monday following, he should be prepared to state his opinion, respecting the conduct of Mr. Erskine, and of the right hon. gent. towards that minister. On the Monday he had a motion to make relative to the stamp office, and with the few words he had to say upon that business he had intended to have coupled his opinions upon the American question. He waited till the latest period of the night for the arrival of the right hon. gent., before he made his motion; and as he did not come to the House that night at all, he, (Mr. Whitbread), had not touched upon the subject then. He was therefore reduced to the necessity of acting irregularly in delivering his opinion at the time he did, which was upon the first appearance of the right hon. gent., and having waited, in courtesy to the right hon. gent., till it had suited him to come to the House, he was not altogether prepared for the reception which he had thought proper to give him.

He had said enough, he trusted, to vindicate himself from that part of the charge against him. He came next to the question of difference more immediately between the right hon. gent. and himself. He had never stated that the right hon. gent. had told a falshood in the face of the world, that expression belonged to the right hon. gent. himself: what he had stated was, that he was convinced, when the additional papers should be produced, that a different impression would be made by them on the House, from that, which the right hon. gent.'s statement, and the papers first laid on the table, were calculated to convey. These additional papers he had himself moved for, and he would still contend that the impression was different; in commenting upon the letter of the right hon. gent. charging Mr. Erskine with having departed from the spirit as well as the letter of his instructions, he had never imputed to the right hon. gent. that he had used any personal incivility towards Mr. Erskine. He had, however, undoubtedly asserted, from the information he had received, that the conduct of Mr. Erskine would be completely justified. After a perusal of the papers he was ready to admit that persons might form conclusions different from those which he had drawn, and that it was competent to the right hon. gent. to assert that Mr. Erskine had deviated from his instructions. But to him (Mr. Whitbread,) it appeared that under all the circumstances, Mr. Erskine was justified in the line he had taken, and that another golden opportunity of settling our differences with America had been lost, when the King's ministers refused to ratify the arrangement made with the American government; for these reasons he had forborne to make any motion on the subject of America. Other reasons would have rendered the expediency of any motion upon the subject questionable; he should be sorry to disturb the smoothness with which it was understood things were now going on with America, and above all, that right hon. gent. was no longer in office.

Having said so much as to America, he could not refrain from making a few observations upon a great event, which according to late intelligence from that quarter had taken place in the American legislature; and which presented a new opportunity of combining America with this country against the interests of France. If this was not sufficient to prove the disposition of America to amicable adjustment, and to put to the test the sincerity of the British government, what more, he would ask, could be required of America? Could she do any thing more to demonstrate her impartiality without an absolute surrender of her national independence by the unqualified adoption of our cause and by direct and immediate hostility against France. Having resorted to the line of policy, of which the information had been recently received; having taken off her embargo; having opened her ports to the commerce of both belligerents, and having placed the military marine of both on an equal footing with respect to exclusion from her waters, what more, in the name of God, could America do against France? what ought this country to do then in this most fortunate conjuncture? What! but rescind her orders in council, and, by thus taking advantage of the just and honest feelings of irritation excited in the American government by the madness of Buonaparté (for he could call it by no other name) in confiscating their ships, make America unite with this country and engage against France. But then there remained the point of honour to be considered. This country cannot rescind her orders in council till America shall oblige the enemy to revoke his unjust decrees. How is she to compel France to this measure? If this be required of her, was it not obvious that it would make the repeal of the British orders in council depend upon a condition, absolutely beyond the power of America to comply with, in fact, to demand of her an impossibility? If she was unable to effect this before, how was it to be expected that she could accomplish it now, that she had adopted a line of policy which though regulated by a spirit of just impartiality would yet be considered by Buonaparté as a demonstration against France? Was not the commerce of France with America completely interdicted and annihilated. And did not that situation of these two nations open an invaluable opportunity to this country, by the means of a liberal and enlightened policy, to make America combine with her against the enemy? He would not on that occasion go into a consideration of what was, and what had produced, the present situation of American councils and policy: it was enough for him to know, that this situation was favourable to an accommodation, and he was perfectly satisfied, that the false point of honour, under such circumstances ought to be altogether disregarded, and every measure of conciliation taken, which might promote that most desirable consummation—an union of America with this country in a common cause against France.

Having disposed of that topic, he wished to be informed, whether any part of the vote of credit was to be wanted as against America. He remembered well, that at the commencement of the session an hon. gent., a lord of the admiralty (Mr. Ward) proposed a considerable augmentation of the navy, in order that government might be prepared, in the event of its being necessary to employ any part of the British naval force against America. No part of the vote of credit then could be wanted for the increase of the navy, which had already been enlarged to an extent, beyond any thing, which any possible exigency could require, in contemplation of a contingency, no longer likely to happen. There were but few other countries, where even the vigour of the king's ministers could look with any prospect of disposing of any part of this vote of credit. Sweden was now gone, she had made her peace with the enemy, and he was happy to find, that she had been left perfectly at liberty so to do by his majesty's ministers. We had not an ally in the North upon whom a single shilling of the vote could be lavished. What countries remained then but the peninsula and Sicily? The situation of the former, as the more important, he would reserve till the last, and would come to it after he had made a few observations on the state of Sicily.

It would not, he was persuaded, be affirmed, that the vote of credit proposed, or any part of it, would be wanted for any service connected with Sicily. Every occasion that could possibly arise in that country, had already been amply provided for by a grant in the present session of 100,000l. more than the amount of the subsidy paid to the king of Sicily in the last year. And here he must beg of the House always to bear in mind the precarious situation of Sicily; precarious not as a military position, but from the notorious fact of the people being disaffected to their government. He would readily admit, that we had no right to interfere with the municipal policy of that country. But we were bound, if we could, by timely and salutary advice, to induce some change in that system of government, and those measures of internal administration, which spread disaffection throughout the community, because if that disaffection should, as it most probably would, break out into a popular ferment, it must be kept down by British troops. Whilst our army was likely to be employed in such a service, our troops were subjected to severe exactions; and Great Britain, in the island of Sicily, was in fact one of the least favoured nations in point of commerce. The British army, upon which the Sicilian government relied for its defence both internal and external, was oppressed by that very government, and an object of jealousy to the people for the support it gave to a government so justly odious. What, then, must be the very critical situation of the British army in case of any serious attack upon that island? Besides, gentlemen should remember what was the nature and character of the government of Palermo. They all knew well how that court had acted at Naples, and unless they should shut their eyes against the lessons of experience; if they would judge of the future by the past, they must equally know that we had no hold upon that court but the tie of interest, of which they were to be the judges. The queen, who had governed at Naples on the occasions he had alluded to, was no less the ruler at Palermo, and it was not without apprehension he looked to what might be the future policy of that court, and what would be the inevitable danger to the British army in the event of any capricious change in favour of the enemy. This was by no means to be considered a chimerical anticipation of an improbable event.

By the late marriage of Buonaparté with an Austrian princess, a family connection was established between him and the queen of Sicily: and, however strange the supposition might appear at first, considering all that had passed, it was not at all improbable that that connection would lead to some good understanding between the courts of Palermo and Paris. They had already seen a letter said to have been written by Buonaparté to the queen of Naples; upon its authenticity he would not undertake to decide. But there had appeared lately in print some letters (alluding to the letters found on the baron de Kolli) still more extraordinary, and were they not since found to be genuine and authentic? He was satisfied that the adequate means will be systematically employed by Buonaparté, until at length the alliance with this country shall be broken off at Palermo, and a close connection established—founded on the adoption of his continental system against us, substituted for it. Let gentlemen then but consider, what would be the very alarming situation of the British army, in case of an attack on the part of the enemy, secretly abetted by the court of Palermo! What is its actual situation but that of police agents restraining the population of Sicily from acts of violence against their grinding tyrannical government?

If then, as he had endeavoured to shew, no part of the vote of credit, which his Majesty's ministers had thought it right to demand, could be wanted either for America or Sicily; and if there was not, as the House must be sensible there was not, a single point in Europe, to which a British expedition could now be sent, not alone without any prospect of success, but without a certainty of destruction, upon what rational ground could that House be induced to place so large a sum at their disposal? The continuance of the contest in the peninsula by no means would justify such a vote, because the most ample provision had already been made in the annual estimates for the force necessary to be maintained in Spain and Portugal.

There now only remained for him to consider the present circumstances of the peninsula. This subject, which from the magnitude of the interests at issue, and the nature of the consequences, that may result from an improvident perseverance in the hopeless contest, he looked upon as of the highest moment, he had reserved to the last, in order, that, by previously dispatching every other topic, he might be enabled to submit his views upon it in an unbroken tenor. He could assure the House, however, that it was not his intention to go at any length into the papers upon the table; though he must be allowed to give way to an expression of his regret, that there had not been in that House, in the whole course of the session, any particular discussion upon the affairs of Spain. He had likewise to lament that a right hon. friend of his (Mr. Sheridan) had from time to time put off the motion of which he had early given notice upon the subject, until at length he had abandoned it altogether. Whatever difference of opinion might exist between him and his right hon. friend, he still wished that the discussion should have taken place, and that the House of Commons should not have been exposed to the slur of having omitted, during an entire session, to pass any opinion upon or give any consideration to the most momentous point that could have come under their consideration. He was extremely sorry that the last star (Mr. Sheridan) in that brilliant constellation of orators, who were at the same time the pride and ornament of their age and nation, should have let slip such an opportunity of again displaying the extent of his exalted powers and commanding eloquence.

When he looked back to the votes which that House had been called upon to give on questions connected with this subject, he must contend, that they had not been treated with all the fairness and attention to which parliament was in all cases intitled. Why, he would wish to know, had they not more information laid upon their table, before they had been required to vote their thanks to lord Wellington? When the House was induced to pass that vote, what had been in reality the extent of their information on the various questions connected with the merits of the action, for which they were to bestow the high honour and transcendant reward of the thanks of parliament? Who then knew of the imbecility or treachery of the Supreme Junta?—Who knew of the extreme incapacity or gross misconduct of general Cuesta?—Who knew of the dire distresses and privations to which the British army was exposed before the battle of Talavera, and after that battle when obliged to retreat?—Who knew that in that action above 4,000 Spanish troops deserted their colours and fled with precipitation, throwing away their arms, and stripping off their regimental clothing before they received a shot from the enemy, terrified at the sound of their own fire?—Who knew, that at the bridge of Arcobispo the Spanish troops, (though it must, be admitted that in both actions, some of their corps behaved extremely well) acted in the same dastardly manner, and fled in all directions without waiting for the fire of the enemy?—Who knew, that for these repeated instances of pusillanimity and flight, the horrible measure of decimation for capital punishment had not only been held out as a menace, but inflicted as an example?—Who knew, that a vile traitor had been sent by the Junta as commissary to lord Wellington's army—a traitor, who whilst writing to lord Wellington that the magazines at Truxillo should be appropriated to the use of the British army, was actually taking measures to apply them to another purpose; and whom lord Wellington had afterwards the opportuity of convicting of the treachery to his face by producing a letter in his own hand writing, stating his determination to appropriate these same magazines at Truxillo to that other purpose?—Who knew, or could suspect after the very eloquent panegyric pronounced last session by the right hon. gent. (Mr. Canning) upon the members of the Junta, that they would have wasted the season of activity and enterprise in low intrigues, or postponed the vital interests of their country to the prosecution of their own selfish objects and the gratification of their criminal personal ambition?—Who knew that the army of lord Wellington had been received in Spain, which it entered to protect it, in a manner in which no army had ever been received in any friendly or even neutral country? What hon. member was in possession, at the time, of a particle of information upon any one of these points? And yet the House should have had the fullest information upon all, before it was called on to vote its thanks for the victory of Talavera. What he had to complain of therefore was, that the fullest information upon these and various other equally important heads was detailed in the papers on the table; that most of these papers were at the time in the possession of his Majesty's ministers; and that, nevertheless, they had not thought fit to furnish that House with any of these documents so essentially necessary to enable them to form a correct judgment upon a question which they were called upon to decide.

It would be endless to enumerate all the instances of the deplorable weakness and the criminal misconduct of the government of Spain. Under such imbecility and impotence it was impossible to look upon the cause of Spain, at any period of it, otherwise than as hopeless of success, and certain of ultimate subjection. Had they it not on the authority of Mr. Frere, that the only military men in Spain competent to command an army, were Blake and the duke of Albuquerque; and was it not the fact, that, at a time when it was so essential to the maintenance of their cause, if any effort could now maintain it, to place all their best officers at the head of their remaining troops, the duke of Albuquerque was, through a low and abominable intrigue, at present in London in a diplomatic character? With all this, and infinitely more before their eyes, could they be so weak, so credulous, so infatuated as to expect any fortunate result from a cause so grossly mismanaged and so foully betrayed?

At the time the Spanish nation first burst forth into active resistance to the usurpation of France, he was ready to avow, that he felt sanguine in their cause, because he confidently expected that in the prosecution of the contest they would have displayed the same energies, the same generous ardour, the same heroic character which had been the proud distinction of their ancestors in the best periods of their history. The result, however, had frustrated his fond expectations, and with whatever reluctant feelings he found himself constrained by the irresistible force of facts uncontroverted and incontrovertible, to exchange the agreeable anticipation of the ultimate triumph, for the melancholy certainty of the present desperation of their cause. When he found the Junta of government incapable of vigorous exertion; when he saw all their measures tending only to ruin the cause which they professed to sustain; when he found, that lord Wellington, during the whole of his progress through the country could discover no energy in the people, except in packing up their moveables and in their sudden flight, at the appearance of a French patrol, and that that general could neither procure biscuit for his men, nor forage for his cavalry in any part of the country, how in the name of Heaven could he think, that we ought to continue to assist such a cause? We might, if we could be so infatuated, send out our last man to starve in Spain, but with such apathy in the people, and such ignorance and incompetence in the government, it was actually impossible, unless a total revolution in the feelings and conduct of the Spaniards should take place, that any effectual stand could be made there.

The hurry in which the business of the session had been forced upon their attention, must necessarily have prevented gentlemen from being able to look with any diligence into the papers upon the table; if they had examined them they would have found that there never had existed a government in Spain since the first moment of the general rising, round which the Spaniards could, or would rally. From the first to the last all was suspicion, jealousy, caballing and intrigue. There was neither wisdom in their councils, strength in their measures, nor enterprise in their operations. The conduct of that government was marked throughout by a jealousy and distrust of us, until the presence of a British army was necessary for their salvation, and then by an ungrateful neglect to provide the means for its support whilst fighting their own battles in their own country. It appeared from the papers, that, when lord Wellington and general Cuesta formed a junction after the battle of Talavera, the army of Cuesta was uniformly and abundantly supplied, whilst the British army was suffering every privation; and so far was Cuesta from allowing the brave defenders of his country to participate in the abundance of his supplies, as they had sustained the brunt of the battle, that parties of the Spaniards were actually engaged in intercepting our convoys and cutting off the supplies provided for the British army. Yet it was at such a moment, when the absolute want of every necessary obliged lord Wellington to retreat, when his mind was harrassed with devising the means of relieving his wants, and his heart agonised in witnessing the severe privations to which his brave troops were subjected, without his having a possibility of removing them, it was at that moment that he was insulted by charges on the part of the Junta that he was deserting their cause, and that Cuesta had the modesty to assert to him that it was the principle of the English not to fight. Good God, then! with all these facts in their recollection, was it posble that they should ever consent to send another man into Spain? Could they expose another army in a country, where our brave soldiers were nearly starved, whilst the Spanish armies were abundantly supplied? where even the French armies were well supplied, and horses, and prisoners well fed, whilst the horses of the British cavalry were scarcely able to move for want of forage? Was it possible that they should determine to go on to the last upon the mere point of honour? For his own part, as he considered the contest hopeless, he was of opinion that the sooner the question was decided the better: and under that impression he wished sincerely that lord Wellington and his brave army were safe back. If that noble general, however, should be attacked in the position he occupied, he had no doubt he would obtain a most glorious victory, but, he feared, like the victory obtained at Talavera it would prove barren and unproductive. It would give the French another specimen of British valour, but he must deprecate such a waste of human life for the mere purpose of shewing what has been so frequently and fully demonstrated.

He must here beg to call the attention of the House to another branch of the question, though perhaps of minor consideration when compared with the topics he had been just discussing. The House must recollect the enormous amount of supplies of every description which had been sent from this country to Spain. In what manner, he would ask, had these supplies been disposed of? From the constant demand reiterated from the same quarters, it would seem they had fallen into a gulph which swallowed them up. But who were actually in possession of the clothes and arms furnished by England to Spain? The French troops. When the Spaniards fled they always threw down their arms and cast off their clothes for the greater facility of flight, and the better prospect of security in case of capture. This was no idle statement: the account was given by lord Wellington himself, in one of his dispatches; and in truth the contents of these dispatches were alone sufficient to shew him how little was to be expected from the Spanish people. He was bound, however, in fairness and justice, to except some splendid instances of undaunted valour, and exemplary heroism, which had been displayed in particular places, such as the defence of Saragossa, and Gerona, of which it was impossible to speak in too extravagant terms. But that battle was now over; and though we might find resources to continue to send out men to Spain, and we may succeed in protracting the struggle, yet it was not any assistance of ours which could, in his opinion, prevent the final subjugation of the peninsula.

It had been represented, and was admitted, that the Portuguese troops had greatly improved in discipline and efficiency, but their steadiness was yet to be tried: and even supposing them equal to British troops, what chance would that give of any progress in Spain? Was any man so absurd as to imagine, that if the French were once completely masters of Spain, the force now in Portugal would be sufficient to maintain possession of that country against the whole concentrated power of France? He trusted they should not soon again hear of a British army advancing into Spain. It was scarcely to have been supposed, that such an event would have so soon occurred, after the fatal experience of sir John Moore's campaign. The experiment, however, had again been tried; lord Wellington not only advanced into Spain, but staid there, until the want of all supplies obliged him to withdraw; it was to be hoped, therefore, that no British army would again be sent into Spain, until a physical security of the necessary supplies should be obtained.

As things now stood Spain was completely closed against us. So far from looking to any progress of the British arms in Spain, the whole nation, as well without, as within that House, was expecting momentarily the intelligence of that victory, which he was confident would be glorious, though he feared it would be barren, and which would be the result of any attack upon the British army on the Portuguese frontier. Were they not apprised that Massena had arrived at Salamanca, and taken the command of the French army? Was it not known, that he was concentrating his force to make an attack upon lord Wellington; and was it not likely, that lord Wellington would consequently be committed with the allied army against superior numbers? Whatever might be the case he had no doubt of victory attending the British arms, but he was no less sure, that such triumph would be fruitless, and that the British army would be compelled to embark in the course of a very short space of time after the achievement. What must be done at last, he thought ought to be done in time: the sooner, therefore, the British army should be withdrawn, the more it would be for our benefit. Operations in Spain were quite out of the question. It was not upon the arena of Portugal that we could fight for Europe: and if we should be mad enough to attempt it, the final reduction of Portugal would necessarily follow the subjugation of Spain. What obstacle was there, in fact, to the conquest of Spain at present? All that we possessed in Spain was confined to the fortress of Cadiz. Even there we had been at first refused admittance. The right hon. gent. over against him (Mr. Canning) had admitted on a former night that he had wished much to secure that fortress, yet such had been the besotted jealousy of the Supreme Junta, that they denied entrance to the British troops sent out to secure that most important post for them.

Though he had stated strongly his conviction, that the cause of the Spaniards was hopeless, and the ultimate subjugation of the whole peninsula by the French, he feared, was but too certain, he plainly saw, however, that the French had still much to do in Spain; it would be a most uneasy possession; if even they could succeed in the reduction of Cadiz the contest would not be over, nor would their work be complete. But this consideration alone was not sufficient to induce this country to exhaust its resources by prolonging the struggle, when from the experience of the past no future co-operation was to be expected, either from the character of the government, or the moral or physical energies of the people, at a time when France, disengaged from other objects, was at liberty to employ all her vast military resources for her subjugation. With all his heart and soul, therefore, he wished the British army was safe out of Spain and Portugal; for he could never allow, that the protracting the period of their final conquest, for a short time, was of any value when compared with the waste of means and resources, which would be a certain consequence of the undertaking. It should be remembered that lord Wellington had stated, in one of his dispatches, that if the French were to take up a position behind the Ebro, he could not with the whole force of Spain, supported by 40,000 British troops, make any impression upon them.

He had dwelt thus at length on this topic, not only on account of its superior importance, but because it was a subject least understood, in as much as few gentlemen could have had an opportunity of reading the papers. Any one who did must be shocked to the soul at the horrible scenes of cruelty, by way of retaliation, which were acted in that country, to which he feared we might be considered, in some degree, parties. What could justify the terrible act of retaliation for the excesses of the corps of Ney and Soult, of drowning 700 prisoners in cold blood? What could apologize for the cold indifference with which the deed itself is related?

Before he sat down he would wish to ask, what was the policy of his Majesty's government with regard to the government of Spain? He had read with great satisfaction the dispatches on this subject written by the noble marquis, late our ambassador extraordinary to the Supreme Junta, and now at, the head of the foreign department. He could scarcely believe that the noble marquis who wrote those able and important dispatches, could have been the author of that notable, but absurd plan, for stealing Ferdinand VII. from France; a plan, which as the papers stated, was frustrated by Ferdinand VII. himself denouncing the emissary to the French government. But suppose the plan had succeeded, and that the baron de Kolli, aided by captain Colbourne with 3 ships under his command, had brought away Ferdinand VII. what would his Majesty's ministers have done with him? What were their views with regard to the present government of Spain? That the present government was not better than the Junta, they had a most convincing proof in the presence in this country of the brave and patriotic duke of Albuquerque, who had been sent from the command of the army with which he saved Cadiz, by a dirty intrigue that would deprive the country of his military services at a moment so critical. He trusted, therefore, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would afford to the House some explanation of the policy he intended to pursue on the part of this country, with regard to the present or any future government of Spain.

He had thus laid before the House his conscientious opinions upon the various important subjects, internal and foreign, connected with the essential interests of this country. The general result of the whole was, that in Europe, all was lost, every bright prospect had closed. In the other hemisphere, however, if wise measures were pursued, great scenes would rapidly be developed. South America presented a spacious field. His Majesty's ministers should devote their most serious attention to that country, because upon the policy they should adopt with regard to the South American colonies and the United States, would, in a great measure, depend, whether this should remain a great nation after the total loss of Europe. To think of the conquest of Spanish America, would be downright madness: to assist her people in the establishment of their independence, in the event of the subjugation of the mother country, would not only confer a substantial benefit on them, but open new and unexplored sources of prosperity for Great Britain, nearly sufficient, perhaps, to counterbalance any advantages she may lose by the vast preponderance of France in the old world. But, as the navy had already been most amply provided for, and a naval force alone would be applicable to any service in South America, no part of the vote of credit would be wanted for that purpose. Considering, therefore, that there was nothing in our internal situation—nothing in our foreign relation—existing, or probable, that could render so large a vote of credit necessary, he should for all the reasons he had urged, dissent from the third reading of the bill, although he should not put the House to the trouble of a division upon the question.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer and Mr. Canning rose at the same time. The Chancellor of the Exchequer gave way.

then spoke to the following effect: I should hesitate, Sir, to avail myself of the courtesy of my right hon. friend, especially as there are some topics in the speech of the hon. gent. (Mr. Whitbread) to which a person in my right hon. friend's situation, as one of his Majesty's ministers, can alone be competent to afford a satisfactory answer; were it not that the hon. gent. has done me the honour to address himself, in many parts of his speech, personally to me, and in a manner which naturally makes me anxious to reply to him. I trust, therefore, that I shall meet the indulgence of the House, while I state distinctly, but as shortly as I can, the reasons which induce me to give my most cordial assent to the measure which the hon. gent. opposes.

As to the grounds which the hon. gent. has laid for this opposition in the character which he ascribes to the present administration, and the distrust which he professes to feel in them, it is not my intention to follow the hon. gent. through that part of his speech. I leave these topics to those who may hereafter take part in the debate. It is sufficient for me to say, that whatever might be my general opinion of any administration, yet, if they continued in office at the end of a session of Parliament, I know nothing that would justify me in leaving them during the recess, unarmed with the means usually placed at the disposal of all administrations, to provide for unforeseen contingencies, and to take advantage of any fortunate, though unexpected change, in the situation of Europe.

A government does exist, to which his Majesty has entrusted the administration of public affairs, and from which the confidence of Parliament has not been withdrawn. If the determination of the hon. gent. be to withhold from this government, such means as have never been hitherto refused to any other, far from approving of the candour which he has shown in putting off his opposition to the last stage of the bill now under discussion, I should have thought that he had acted more consistently with that determination on his part, if he had made some distinct motion for placing the administration of affairs in other hands. To tie up the hands of those, who are still left in the conduct of the government, appears to me to be neither a wise mode of marking distrust, nor a happy expedient for remedying imbecility.

If, then, the present government be entitled to the usual confidence given to every administration, by a vote of credit at the close of a session; there remains only the question as to the amount of that vote:—a question of degree, which would equally apply to any government, even to one in which the hon. gent. could place the most unlimited confidence. That a vote to some amount ought to be granted, is a proposition, which, I apprehend, will not be denied, if the functions of the go- vernment are to be discharged at all, and the affairs of the nation to be at all administered. But the amount of such a vote is undoubtedly matter fit for discussion; and is to be decided by the view which the House may take of actual and probable circumstances in the situation of the country.

The view which the hon. gent. would induce the House to take of those circumstances is such as would justify, in his mind, the withholding of any vote of credit: or at least of the vote proposed; though he has not stated exactly in what degree he would desire that vote to be diminished. He foresees no use, at least no advantageous use, that can be made of it. To whatever point he directs his view all prospect of good seems closed upon him; he looks for nothing from continued exertion but renewed disappointment, and ultimate despair.

The hon. gent. I perceive (and not without some degree of surprise) has not concluded his speech this night in the same manner as his former annual exhibitions at the close of the session, by a declaration of the necessity of peace, and an avowal of his conviction that the attainment of peace is practicable. If to terminate a contest, into which this country has been forced, and in which it is compelled to continue by the violence and injustice of the enemy, the hon. gent. could have contended, that a safe and honourable peace might be obtained, and had recommended the immediate opening of negotiations for the purpose of obtaining it; however, I might be disposed to disagree with the hon. gent. in that opinion, I should yet be compelled to admit that he had laid some parliamentary ground for the course which he is taking. He might argue, that, if a secure and honourable peace, the only legitimate end of all war, could be procured, this House ought not to grant to the government the means of meeting the contingencies of unnecessarily protracted warfare. But as the hon. gent. appears to have abandoned the opinion which he entertained respecting peace; ("I have not abandoned it," said Mr. Whitbread across the table, "I omitted to state it") well then, the hon. member has not abandoned his opinion, but he has omitted to state it; if the omission was voluntary, that hon. gent.'s sentiments have clearly undergone a considerable change; if inadvertent, it at least shews, that he does not feel quite so confidently upon the subject as heretofore: for no man forgets the main article of his creed while his faith continues unshaken. In either case therefore it is obvious, that according to the hon. gent.'s own present views we are to look to, and ought to provide for, a state of indefinite, not to say interminable, war.

The observations made by the hon. gent. respecting the rapid and unexpected changes which have of late years taken place in Europe, appear to me to suggest a reply to much of his general reasoning; because the more frequent these sudden changes, the greater is the chance that some one may be favourable; and the more necessary is it for this House to furnish to the government the means of taking advantage of such a change. Let the hon. gent. retrace the awful and extraordinary events of the last year, and then say, whether it appears even to him prudent to shut our eyes to the variations of the still shifting scene; and wantonly to put it out of our power to profit of any possible opening, not to say of any probable contingency, in our favour? The hon. gent. admits that he felt sanguinely in the cause of Spain at the outset: but had he anticipated that glorious struggle? did he foresee or foretell that sudden ebullition of the heroic spirit of Spain, that simultaneous and universal effort against the formidable French force which at the time occupied every advantageous position in that country? The hon. gent. augured unfavourably, and expected little, from the result of the war in which Austria embarked last year: He told us so (to do him justice) at the moment when that war broke out. But while he indulged these forebodings had he any notion that, within the space of one month from the date of his prophecy, such a turn of affairs would have arrived, as not only arrested the victorious career of the enemy, but rendered the issue of the campaign doubtful, and, by poising equally for one critical month the chances of the war, opened to the nations of Europe a cheering, though alas! a short lived, prospect of deliverance? Were either of these chances foreseen? Was either of them not worth seizing as it arose? Argue then from the past to the future, and let the hon. gent. say whether in the unsettled and anomalous situation of the continent, it is not now equally impossible to foresee what events may burst upon us, in the course of a few months, with as little previous notice as those to which I have referred?

But although events are not exhausted, the hon. gent.'s hopes are so. Is parliament then not to make provision for any possible case but such a one as may have in it demonstrable certainty of success? Or is there in the present state of the Spanish cause, to which the hon. gent.'s expressions of despondency particularly apply, such utter hopelessness, such irrecoverable exhaustion and decay, that nothing can henceforth be rationally attempted on its behalf; and that on that ground alone, therefore, to prevent a wasteful application of the resources of this country, to an absurd and unattainable object, government ought to be left without any discretionary power of applying them?

If the hon. gent. is resolved to despair of Spain, I cannot hinder him. But I think I can prove to him that he has no right to despair, on the same principles, on which he has despaired so often, during the last fourteen years (and so often, I am grieved to add, has been justified by the event) respecting the other states of Europe.

What has been the nature of those former contests? and what the character of the states which have been successively subdued by France? What that of France as compared with them? I speak, Sir, of the earlier stages of the French revolution, and refer to the language then held by the hon. gent. and his friends. France was then a nascent republic—the neighbouring nations were governed by old and feeble despotisms; military despotisms, it is true—but feeble from the inherent vices of their constitution. In France a liberal and enlightened philosophy had brought forth a spirit of revolutionary freedom; had reared this new and formidable birth to a sudden maturity of strength and vigour—had

—"Torn from his tender limbs the bands away And bade the infant giant run and play"—

He did so—and the effete and tottering monarchies of the continent, military despotisms though they were, fell before the first touch of this regenerating conqueror.

But now the spirit, at least, if not the strength, has changed sides. France, as if, according to the doctrines of barbarian superstition the soul of the slain had transmigrated into the slayer, France is herself become a military despotism.—She is opposed in that character to the new born independence of Spain; and, if victory had been faithful to the precepts of the hon. gent. and his friends, victory ought no longer to declare in favour of arms which are no longer wielded in the cause of freedom, but in that of tyranny and oppression.

Victory, indeed, the Spaniards have not to boast. The military power of France has unfortunately outlived the causes which produced it, and in spite of theory flourishes not only unsupported by freedom, but opposed to it. But yet the theory is not wholly shamed. And, if France has not at once lost her good fortune because she is enslaved, there is yet sufficient distinction between the degrees of resistance opposed to her by Spain and that of any other country, to justify the generous belief, that a truly national spirit is not to be subdued.

In other instances, when once the French armies had overcome the regular and disciplined armies of the continent, the conquered power fell without further effort, and submitted to the will of the conqueror. But is that the case in Spain? Has the enemy, with all his military superiority, and with all the advantage of having taken the Spaniards unprepared—of having occupied in peace the strong holds, which he afterwards turned to the purposes of war—has he yet succeeded in establishing his will as the law of Spain? Whatever faults the hon. gent. may find with the Spaniards, I am sure he cannot accuse them of tame submission, or of a want of persevering exertions in the glorious contest, into which they have been driven and betrayed. We have seen their armies beaten down, their towns taken and razed; yet have not those calamities broken their spirits. From the ashes of their slaughtered countrymen, and from the smoking ruins of their cities and their hamlets, has burst forth a renovated flame, kindling anew that ardour and enthusiasm, which misfortune may for a time smother and overwhelm, but has no power to extinguish.—A people so animated and so resolute may be exterminated, but they cannot be subdued; from each disaster that befalls them they derive new energies as they do fresh motives of resistance. Immediate and decisive success was not to be expected in such a contest; but surely to have so long protracted the struggle against such an enemy, and under all the disadvantages, under which they were forced into it, affords indisputable proof of qualifications in the Spaniards, which demand our admiration and esteem; of a patriotism, a steadiness, a zeal, a perseverance, of which no people in Europe had hitherto afforded an example.

The more I contemplate the circumstances of Spain, the more pleasure I derive from the consideration, that the hon. gent. himself, with all the doubts and apprehensions which he professes to entertain, has not thought it wise to recommend any step to be taken with a view to peace. He feels, no doubt, that whilst there remains a chance of rescuing that country from the unjust and tyrannical usurpation of France, it would be as little politic as generous to withdraw our assistance from the peninsula. We cannot do so, unless we be prepared to leave the peninsula to to be occupied by France; and all its means, opportunities, and resources to be immediately employed against ourselves.

It is not now a question, whether Spain and Portugal shall be suffered to return to a state of neutrality, upon our consenting on one part, and France on the other, to retire from the peninsula as from a field of battle; it is not now to be decided whether Cadiz shall send forth her peaceful fleets of commerce, to pass, unmolested by either belligerent, over the surface of the ocean, and to waft the products of the remote dependencies of Spain, indiscriminately to both; the only question is whether, by abandoning the footing which we possess in the peninsula, we shall leave France at liberty to occupy the ground which we abandon, to occupy the ports and arsenals, to seize the naval resources of Spain and Portugal, and to fit out in harbours now in our possession, or under our protection, hostile fleets destined (though destined, I trust, in vain) for the object most dear to the heart, and always uppermost in the thoughts of Buonaparté, the invasion and destruction of Great Britain.

We are engaged in the struggle, therefore, inevitably; and have no alternative, but to maintain it with vigour, or, declining it, to be prepared to pay, in our own perils, and in exertions for self-defence, the price of our own pusillanimity and baseness. Is this the situation of things, in which the hon. gent. would recommend to us to pause on our policy—to cease our efforts on behalf of our allies, and to acquiesce in the injustice and usurpation of the enemy?

But again I ask, what are the grounds of the hon. gent.'s despondency?—There has been, (says the hon. gent.) no order, no plan, no combination in the military efforts of Spain: and is this wonderful? The population of universal Spain, roused by a sense of insult and injury, and actuated by the powerful and heroic determination to preserve their existence as a people, rose against their invaders in different and distant parts of the country, rose at once, but without previous concert or combination. Who could expect to find in that unparalleled national explosion, at a time too when the French troops were in possession of all the strong places of the kingdom, all the order, all the arrangement, all that efficient organization of means, and all that wise and judicious application of them, which are to be traced in the operations of governments of regular constitution, and established authority, representing and uniting the general will, and capable of directing the general resources of a country? But these advantages of regular governments, we know, have been frequently more than counterbalanced by their inherent disadvantages in the tremendous conflicts which of late years they have had to sustain. And Spain, with the disadvantages which belong to her, has some counterbalancing advantages. If the old governments have fallen an easy prey before the energies of regenerated France, let it be recollected, as I have already had occasion to observe, that the principle from which these energies were supposed to spring, no longer exists; that the spirit of liberty in France has been extinguished, that its republican throes and convulsions have quietly subsided into a military despotism, while, on the other hand, the Spanish nation, rising in vindication of its invaded rights, and for the preservation of its integrity and independence, is animated by every sentiment, and impelled by every motive, which can insure a determined resistance against tyranny, and a steady devotion to the country's cause. And whilst the Spaniards, true to these motives and these sentiments, continue to maintain the struggle, can we doubt that it is the first duty, as well as the clearest interest of this country, to afford them all possible assistance?

I do not mean to deny that, if the object of this war were one of Spanish interest, merely, and if it were a question as to the claims of Spain upon this country for support, there may have been, there undoubtedly has been, cause of dissatisfaction, in the conduct of the Spanish government. The papers upon the table, the correspondence of lord Wellington particularly, shew, that, in respect to the reception of the British army, there is great reason for complaint, that as between Spain and England, Spain has been much in the wrong. But the question now at issue is really of a higher order: it relates indeed in the first instance, to the immediate existence of Spain; but it ultimately and intimately involves the most essential interests of this country?—and the hopes, if hope remain, of subjugated, but yet restless Europe.

Considerations of such magnitude must not give way to the resentments,—even to the just resentments of the moment; to differences, between parties whose object and whose interests are so closely united. True,—we have a good cause against Spain; and could make out a very sufficient ground of quarrel, if this were the time—if we had at this moment the leisure and if we had the inclination to bring her to account. But what is our case against Spain compared with the case of Spain, and with our own case, against France? And to whose advantage would it be, but to that of France, if we were now to separate ourselves from the Spanish cause;—or to waste in complaint against our ally the season of action against the enemy? Our interests demand that we should defend the Peninsula to the last extremity; even if we were released by the conduct of Spain from all other obligation;—even if honour did not bind us not to abandon her, whilst there remains a possibility of defence. Our citadel lies here, it is true, in this impregnable island: but Spain and Portugal are its outworks; and, though I can have no doubt of a glorious triumph if we should ever have to maintain the contest in this country, I cannot consent to be a party to that chivalrous feeling, that would retreat from the outworks and admit the enemy to the gates, in order that we might have the satisfaction of defeating him under the walls of our fortress. Our obvious policy, if policy alone were in question, is to keep the war alive in every quarter where France has an enemy in arms, to prevent her from converting those enemies into conscripts for her armies, to fight our battle, with combined, rather than against confederated nations.

This, I say, would be the dictate of policy, even if we were to banish from the maxims of a great, a powerful, and a generous nation those enlarged views of interest, and that just sense of duty, which prescribe to us to resist tyranny even when exercised against others, and to aid the oppressed even though our aid may be unsolicited or unacknowledged.

Let us then continue to aid Spain in spite of her weakness, in spite even of her ingratitude, if she has proved ungrateful; cautious where we have found reason to distrust her, but not eagerly seizing on every pretext, which the conduct of her government might offer for abandoning her to her fate.

But the faults of the Spanish government, it is contended, are attributable to us; to the administration in this country, by whom no measures had been taken to procure for Spain a better form of government. Hence the mismanagement of the internal affairs of Spain; and hence also the spirit of jealousy manifested by the Spaniards towards this country!

For my own part I am desirous to claim my full share of responsibility for all the measures taken by the administration of which I was a member, with respect to Spain, and in relation to its government;—a share, which must be the more ample from my having had the honour to fill that department, within the province of which it fell to advise and execute whatever measures were taken on that subject. One point the hon. gent. will find sufficiently established by the papers laid before parliament, that no pains were spared, even from the earliest period of our intercourse with Spain, to obtain the establishment of a supreme and central government, which should collect into one point the scattered authorities of the several provincial Juntas, and controul, and guide, and give consistency and energy to, the whole. This was made the condition of the continuance of our aid:—it was the express and sine quâ non condition of the employment of a British army in Spain.

It is true, we did not go so far as to prescribe the precise form of the government so to be constituted. And I am ready to explain, and to defend the grounds of our forbearance in this particular. But let the hon. gent. look at Mr. Stuart's correspondence—the first British agent sent to Spain. He will find Mr. Stuart constantly insisting upon the establishment of one uniform government, and stating that as the condition of sending a British military force into Spain. At length this point was accomplished.

As to the characters of the persons com- posing the supreme government, for which the hon. gent. would make me responsible, because I was, as he affirms, the warm panegyrist of the Spanish Junta, I beg leave, in the first place, to ask the hon. gent. by what possible knowledge, by what intuition rather I could be prepared, not only to stipulate for the establishment of a supreme central government, but to dictate the selection of the members who were to compose it! What could I know of them but from the communications of the British agent? And when in dispatches, received previously to the formation of the Junta, the names of distinguished persons in Spain, of Florida Blanca, Saavedra, and Jovellanos, were stated to be in the mouths of every body, as the fittest persons to be intrusted with the conduct of the government; and when I found by the first dispatch transmitted after the establishment of the government, that these persons were actually appointed, not only members of the Junta, but to the leading situations of the executive government, could I possibly have supposed, that they were not, as they had been previously represented to me, the most proper persons in Spain, to whom that high and important trust could have been committed, or that the government, which had the sanction of their approbation, and the advantage of their assistance, was not the best, upon the whole, that could be put together under the very difficult circumstances of the country? The eulogium, therefore, which I am accused by the hon. gent. of having pronounced upon the members of the Supreme Junta, was not, because it could not be, the result of personal knowledge on my part; nor was it so imposed by me upon the House: neither could it by any fair construction render me in any degree responsible for the consistency of their conduct with the tenor of my representations. What I said here, was, in fact, but the echo of the voice of the Spanish nation, conveyed to me through the medium of official reports, and repeated by me to this House and to the world. I conceived it an act of justice to the Junta, and an act of duty to my country, whose interests were so intimately connected with the existence of an efficient government in Spain, to afford every encouragement in my power, to a government professing that character, and represented to me as deserving it?

If the Junta disappointed the hopes which were entertained of it—if it either wanted the energy or the authority, which it was intended to possess—undoubtedly there is much cause for regret; but there is hone for blame as to the administration here, unless it can be shewn, that some other form of government in Spain would have been obviously preferable—and also could have been, with equal facility, and at an equally early period, obtained. For let it not be forgotten how precious were the moments of this glorious and unexpected opportunity!—let it not be forgotten that, while on the one hand it was necessary for the ultimate and permanent success of the Spanish cause, that the efforts of the nation should be combined and directed by one presiding authority—it was no less necessary for its immediate safety, that the enemy, once taken by surprise, should not be allowed to recover from the first shock of the insurrection! Had we then time to pick and choose—even if we had had the means of judging, and had conceived a sound and rational preference for one form of provisional government over another? Were the feelings of the country here disposed to give us time? What would my right hon. friend, (Mr. Sheridan) who has so repeatedly renewed his notice of a motion respecting the campaign in Spain, and of whose presence I should have been extremely glad on the present occasion, what would he say to the charge of the hon. gent. that we had too hastily acquiesced in the form of government established by the Spaniards? he, who two years ago, when no deputation had been received in this country, except from the Asturias, one of the smallest of the Spanish provinces, and consisting of a rocky and mountainous tract, though containing a brave, a loyal and independent population, reproached the administration with being too tardy in adopting the Spanish cause,—too timid in hesitating to give it at once every possible assistance and support? I should wish to know whether my right hon. friend, who then reproached us for having paused, before we determined to act, on the solicitation of a single province, would now condemn us for having supported the Spanish people with all the means of this country, after deputations had been received from the north, and from the south, and when we had a certainty of the whole nation having determined to rise as one man against their unprincipled oppressors? Would he, who thought us wanting to the interests of this country and of the world, because we did not send fleets and armies to the port of Gijon, when that port alone, (for aught we knew) was open to us throughout the whole coasts of the peninsula—who stimulated us to action, when a single principality had taken up arms against the French, and therewith, for aught that we could know, against the rest of Spain also? when, what turned out undoubtedly to be a faithful specimen of a general national effort, might have been for aught that we could know, the insulated and unsupported burst of mere provincial patriotism;—would he, I say, or any rational man have desired that when not Asturias, but all Spain had declared itself—when what might have been a partial, proved to be the universal sentiment of the nation;—When the will of the whole country was expressed beyond the possibility of misapprehension—would any man have thought, that it was then our duty to boggle about the precise shape and denomination of the presiding government, by which the collective will was to be provisionally represented and embodied?

In a crisis of such extraordinary novelty, and such transcendant importance; when interests so mighty were committed to the issue of the struggle; and where that issue, after all that could be done, was necessarily so hazardous and uncertain; it was impossible to take any step, or to offer any counsel, which must not at the time, be felt and acknowledged to be of doubtful and questionable policy; and to which it was not foreseen, that in the event of a disastrous result, that disaster would be, however unjustly, ascribed! But in this difficulty of choice, were we to do nothing? were we to counsel nothing, till the use of counsel and the period of action was past? or were we at some risk, but with a determined purpose, conscious of a just end, though necessarily less confident in our means, to take the course which appeared upon the whole liable to the fewest objections?

Gentlemen talk very glibly now of what might have been, and what ought to have been, our mode of proceeding. Some would have done nothing, the safest opinion of all: but they must have found another ministry to act upon their opinion; and another people, than such a one as the people of England were in June 1808, to countenance and support them in doing so.

Some think, that we ought to have insisted upon the immediate assembling of the Cortes! Some, that we ought not to have acknowledged Ferdinand at all; others again, that we ought not to have stipulated for, (in truth, we did not stipulate, they mean that we ought directly to have discountenanced) the monarchical constitution in Spain. A word upon each of these suggestions.

And first, as to our acknowledgment of Ferdinand 7th, or, as it is sometimes stated, our imposition of him upon the Spanish people. On the one hand, it is said, that by acknowledging Ferdinand 7th as king of Spain, in exclusion of his father, we thereby gave a sanction to the principle and the practice of the revolutionary deposition of sovereigns; whilst on the other hand, we are accused of making the preservation of monarchy in Spain the peremptory condition of our assistance. Nothing, however, could be more unfounded than either and both of these charges. Perhaps, in any other kingdom of Europe, we should have been slow to recognize the accession of the son before the demise of the father. But in Spain, the elevation of the son by the voluntary resignation of the father, is familiar to the people by the recorded transactions of some of the brightest periods of their history. There was therefore no ground for jealousy at such an event unless there had been good cause for suspicion respecting the means by which it had been accomplished. The resignation of Charles 5th, their greatest monarch, and of Philip 5th, the founder of the Bourbon dynasty in Spain, who subsequently resumed the reins of government on the death of the son, to whom he had transferred them, must be in the recollection of every gentleman who hears me: and with these precedents before us, and whilst there existed no ground whatever for suspicion, the government of this country was bound to consider the resignation of Charles as voluntary, and the accession of Ferdinand as legitimate, according to the usage of the Spanish monarchy. As to the charge of imposing Ferdinand, and in his person monarchy on Spain. Why, Sir, the name of Ferdinand resounded from every corner of the kingdom; it became the watch word of Spanish patriotism; the pledge of popular enthusiasm; the bond and cement of national union; the charm, before which all separate interests, all discordant passions and prejudices faded away. It was no suggestion, no fancy of ours; we found this symbol of Spanish loyalty interwoven with every part of the Spanish cause. It was the burden of every oral, and the stamp and sanction of every written communication, which, in my official character, it was my duty and my happiness to receive from the Spanish agents or ministers. It was not left to our option, whether Spain should be a monarchy under Ferdinand 7th. If we had denied Ferdinand, they would have disclaimed us; if we had stipulated against monarchy we should have been repudiated by Spain.

I say not this as matter of defence; I state the plain truth. Upon this point we have no responsibility, because we had nothing to. decide. Upon every principle by which our conduct could be guided, whether drawn from legal precedent, or from the unequivocal demonstrations of national feeling, we could look upon Ferdinand 7th in no other light, than as being at once the lawful monarch of Spain, by the established constitution of the kingdom, and the sovereign of the nation's affections, the king of the people's choice.

But then we should have insisted on the assembling of the Cortes, the ancient, legal, recognised estates of the realm—whereas we acknowledged the weak and incapable authority of the Supreme Junta. First, as I have before argued, what right had we to criticise the form of that institution, or the pretensions of the members? Was it not enough that we were assured of its having the sanction and the confidence of the Spanish nation; and were we not justified thereby in recognizing the Junta as representative of the authority of the legitimate sovereign during the period of his most unfortunate absence and captivity? Let us only look back to a memorable instance in our own history, I mean the glorious revolution of 1688, and judge what would have been the consequence, if the proceedings of that period had been criticised with too scrupulous nicety, or required to have been conducted with all the solemnity and precision of the most minute forms and established precedents? What might have been the consequences of such a scrupulous adherence to established ceremonials, such an appeal to ancient usage, at a period, when the novelty of the circumstances and the urgency of the case called for the adoption of extraordinary measures, if William the 3d had refused to take upon himself the government before the meeting of the convention, because the address to him to do so proceed- ed from an irregular authority; from a few members of extinct parliaments gathered together, in haste, with the lord mayor, aldermen, and common council of the city of London? if he had declined taking any share in administering the affairs of the kingdom, or affording any assistance to the nation, until a parliament, summoned by regular writs and assembled with all the forms of the constitution, should have ceremoniously invested him with the powers of the executive government. The case of Spain was still more urgent, because at the very moment, when, it is said, we should have waited for all the tardy forms and all the regular process of the old constitution of Spain for the election, and assembly of the Cortes, the French troops were in possession of all the fortresses of the country. At such a moment, it was rather to be considered as miraculous, that the Spaniards should have found in each of the several provinces a spot whereon to plant the standard of resistance, than to be expected, that they should be able to conduct the election of the Cortes with all the requisite solemnities, and with all the deliberation, which would have been necessary to find out what those solemnities were. For let it not be forgotten, that these same Cortes had been long disused, that, when last assembled, they had been assembled in mere form, and to register the edicts of the crown?—that the Cortes of Arragon and Castile have never been brought to act cordially together even if brought together at all, except by compulsory means;—that many of the provinces, foremost in the great struggle against France, had not the privilege of sending representatives to the Cortes;—that Asturias had never sent any, Gallicia seldom if ever—certainly not uniformly, nor of custom and right; and that to the two provinces therefore, which were the earliest in their application to us for assistance, if we had answered, "assemble the Cortes," they might have replied, "with the Cortes we have nothing to do;" that to bring into shape and into action this grand but obsolete machinery would have required deep and laborious research into records and registers;—that perhaps after all a representative might have been produced less satisfactory to the nation at large than that, which sprang from their own concurrent though irregular impulse, but that, at all events, much precious time must have been lost in the process, and that while we were discussing antiquated forms and adjusting contested elections, the enemy would have rallied from his first consternation, and effected the conquest of the country.

That the assembling of the Cortes would be a wise and salutary measure, when it could be effected peaceably and regularly, no doubt was entertained: and accordingly the Junta were advised, and had determined, to make it one of their first acts. But I am not surprised, for one, that it was not earlier effected. I doubt whether a general election could be speedily accomplished here after a long disuse of parliaments, and with an enemy occupying all the country north of Trent. And I cannot but make some allowance for the Spanish government, when I recollect, that at almost every period since the establishment of the Junta, the French have been masters of Arragon and of the greatest part of the countries behind the Ebro.

In truth, the uniform experience of all similar revolutions shews that time only and practice can safely be relied on for modelling and perfecting the form of a government, struck out at a heat, as it were, by the immediate necessity of the occasion. The natural effect of the pressure of the immediate exigency is, in all such cases, it was in this, to unite in one body the two distinct branches of the legislative and executive authority. The equally natural tendency of experience, is to shew the expediency of separating these authorities as soon as proper depositories can be found, or contrived for them. A regent, or a regency, for the one, and the Cortes for the other, formed obviously the natural division of the combined authorities of the Junta. And, even if we had had the right, and the leisure to prescribe the course which should be taken, I doubt whether it would have been wise to insist upon erecting these separate powers in the first instance; whether the Junta, or something like the Junta, was not a necessary stage, preparatory to the more regular distribution of the functions of the government. It is plain that the regency could be claimed by no one, without something like the form of a choice, and something, or somebody to choose it. And it may be doubted, whether, if the Cortes had been called at once, they would have been contented with their own share of authority and power—whether the Cortes assembled in the first instance and exigency would not have been in fact, a Junta under another name. At any rate, these were questions exclusively of domestic cognizance, upon which it was neither our duty, nor our right, to dictate to Spain, if we had even been competent to do so. Much less should we have been justified in withholding our assistance, until this most delicate, difficult, and perplexing question should have been settled to our satisfaction, at a period so critical to the existence of Spain as a nation, that the delay of a moment might have been ruin to the cause.

Such then were the principles, on which the government, of which I was a member, acted; and such are the answers which I offer to the several clashing and contradictory charges of having been too precipitate, and of having been too dilatory; of having exacted too much, and of having exacted too little, from Spain; of having dictated improperly the constitution of the government, and of having suffered the government to constitute itself.

The truth is, that we interfered to the extent, to which we had a right to interfere, and no further, when we insisted that there should be a central government formed, before a British army entered Spain.

Sir; in following the hon. gent. next to his observations on the conduct of the war, I pass over the campaign of sir John Moore, because it has been, heretofore, the subject of ample and detailed discussion; and because the hon. gent. himself has very properly avoided dwelling upon it this night. I come now therefore to the operations of last summer. The hon. gent. has condemned in strong terms the impolicy, the madness as he calls it, of sending another army into Spain, after the dear-bought and fatal experience which we had acquired in the campaign which terminated in the battle of Corunna. But here the hon. gent. assumes what was not the fact, in order to make his unfounded assumption the ground of a charge, to which his Majesty's government is not justly liable. The army of lord Wellington was not sent out to penetrate into Spain; it was sent out to liberate Portugal from the yoke of the French; to provide for the security of that kingdom against any fresh attack; and, so far as could be done consistently with these objects, and so far only, upon any favourable occasion that might be presented, to co-operate with the Spanish generals, and armies in the provinces of Spain, that border on the Portuguese frontier. Would the hon. gent. then have left the British general inactive in Portugal, after having accomplished the first object of his expedition by the expulsion of the enemy from that country? or would he have restricted him from extending the line of his operations with a view to the relief of Spain, when that could be done without abandoning or endangering the other object for which the force under him was immediately destined? Would he blame lord Wellington for availing himself of the latitude given him by his instructions occasionally to lengthen the chain which bound him to the frontiers of Portugal? Would he have prevented him from pursuing that course which brought on the battle, and led to the brilliant victory of Talavera; a victory, which covered the British arms with unfading laurels, and crowned the gallant general and his brave troops with immortal glory? But, says the hon. gent. that victory was barren. Barren undoubtedly it was, if you know no fruits of victory but districts overrun, fortresses taken, extent of territory acquired; yet not barren but fruitful; not unproductive, but as advantageous as brilliant, if you take into account, that it immediately opened the gates of Cadiz, and that it will hereafter open to you the ports of Spanish America. These are advantages, which far outweigh the ordinary military results of a victory. But even were the effects of all our exertions confined to the prolonging the struggle against France in European Spain, so thoroughly am I convinced of the policy of supporting that struggle to the last extremity, that were the question at this moment a new and undecided question, were our armies and our fleets hitherto not engaged, nor our faith pledged in the cause, I should be of opinion, that it would be the duty no less than it would be the interest of this country, even now to begin our efforts in aid of the peninsula, if now for the first time we were called upon to begin them.

It is not, however, only with respect to Spain itself, to the formation and controul of her government, and to the conduct of the war in the peninsula, that we are accused of great and sinful negligences and omissions, but with respect to the Spanish colonies, we are said to have been criminally neglectful. We have been told to night, in the course of a discussion upon another subject, that we should have made it a condition of our alliance with the government of Spain, that the Spaniards should give up the slave trade in their colonies. The hon. gent. (Mr. Brougham) who made that observation, must be aware, that it would have been much easier to declare, than to effectuate, our wishes in such a case. I am as anxious as that hon. gent. for the total extermination of that abominable trade, and with him I am ready to allow that we ought to make every sacrifice to principle, whenever such sacrifice may be likely to advance the principle: but I very much question, whether by such a proposition, prematurely brought forward, we might not have thrown the Spanish colonies into the arms of France, without at all advancing the object of humanity. England and the abolition, on one side, might possibly have had but an unfavourable competition against Buonaparté and unlimited slave trade on the other, in bidding for the affections of the colonies.

Sir, I have noticed this subject incidentally, only to shew, that, in the colonial no less than in the European part of this great political question, the course, which the British government have had to steer, has not been altogether plain sailing—has not been so little embarrassed with difficulties of different kinds, as to entitle gentlemen to turn round upon the King's ministers and make it matter of charge against them, that they have not provided for every interest, and secured the operation of every principle, which they and we may, concur in our desire to promote and to maintain. It is true, it is perfectly true, as gentlemen are fond of observing, that Spain is a country of prejudice and of bigotry: bigotry and prejudice, however, not without their use in such a contest as that, in which they are engaged—prejudice, which exalts the spirit of patriotism by the rooted preference for their own manners and institutions—and bigotry, which, if it is akin to intolerance on one side, is allied to perseverance on the other; which, however to be deprecated as an active principle, is of powerful operation in inspiring resistance, and sustaining courage under oppression. I am not sure, that balancing the good and the evil of such qualities, I would strip the Spanish nation of them, in their present circumstances, if I could. But it is enough for my argument that I could not, if I would. And, with this conviction, nothing can be more unreasonable than to make it matter of reproach to the British government, that they have not, at the same time that they were aiding the Spaniards in a struggle for the preservation of the mother country, been able, or attempted, to engage them to revise the whole system of their colonial polity; to adopt reformations and improvements, which, if they had been disposed to adopt them, they might have found it impossible to reconcile to the feelings of the colonies, and equally impossible to enforce against those feelings, at a time when the circumstances of the war must necessarily, have loosened the ties of colonial allegiance.

Advice, however, has not been withheld, nor has the Spanish government shewn itself unwilling to listen to the advice which has been offered to them, for extending privileges to the colonies, and uniting them closer with the mother country by community of rights and of interests. To promote this union has been the object of our policy. Some, I know, are of opinion, that we ought rather to have played a separate game with the colonies. The hon. gent. who spoke last, has alluded to the benefits, which might be derived to this country from a connection with Spanish America altogether distinct from Spain. I have only to observe, that in my opinion, if any advantages are to result to us from a connection with the Spanish trans-atlantic colonies, we should rather wait for them as a reversion, as the reward of the success, or the consolation under the reverses of the European struggle, than consider them as a temptation to the premature abandonment of the mother country. With these feelings deeply impressed upon my mind I shall never consent that the hand of Great Britain should be laid, in untimely interference, for the sake of immediate gain upon Spanish America. I shall never be one of those, who, professing the warmest wishes for the success of Spain, would aim the most deadly blow at her existence, by robbing her of those foreign dependencies, now more than ever necessary to enable her to maintain her independence, by prosecuting to a successful issue the mortal contest in which she is engaged. Still less will I consent to starve the Spanish cause for the sake of hastening that consummation of evil, which, if it is not to be averted, may yet be delayed; and of profiting by the rich spoil, which we may gather in Spanish America, after European Spain has fallen. I cannot bring myself to con- template the fate of Spain, as our inimitable dramatic poet describes one of his most exquisitely drawn characters, Shylock, contemplating the fate of his daughter, who had fled from him with a heap of gold and jewels—while he is lamenting her flight, and his friends undertake to console him with the hope, that after all she may be still alive; he presently undeceives them as to the real cause of his wailing. It is not his daughter, but his treasure that is uppermost in his thoughts. "As for her," says he, "Would she lay dead at my feet, with the jewels in her ear; would she were coffined at my feet, so that my ducats were in her coffin!" So it is that the hon. gent. and others appear to think of Spain; they think of the money that she has cost us; they think of the little return in profit that she has made to us; they look to the advantages, which we may hope to inherit after her struggle is well over; and they are disposed rather to blame the obstinacy of that struggle, and to deplore the length of that agony, which keeps us out of our expected inheritance.

And yet, Sir, surely the coldest heart, the most calculating head, cannot but be warmed and exalted by such a spectacle as Spain affords to the world! There can surely be but one feeling in this House with regard to the character of the Spanish cause: no man can entertain a doubt that a contest of such a description ought to succeed: and, if in spite of all the difficulties, which the Spaniards have had to encounter, (and formidable those difficulties have been) they have contended with unbroken spirit, though with various fortunes, against the gigantic power of France in a manner, and for a period, to shame by the comparison the efforts of almost all the nations of the continent, I must again ask, why are we to despair? I cannot bring myself yet to despair of the ultimate success of Spain, because I would fain believe in the success of any people, that shall act upon the same principle, and persevere with the same courage in so righteous a cause; because I would not despair of ourselves under similar circumstances.

If the enemy should pass those outworks, which the line of policy recommended by the hon. gent. opposite, (Mr. Whitbread) would level: if ever we shall have to contend against that enemy on British ground, I trust that our resistance will be signal, and his defeat certain: but I doubt how far we can expect to exceed the example which is set to us by the Spaniards. In prowess in the field, no doubt we shall, and must exceed them, because that depends upon a variety of circumstances and advantages, which the Spanish nation did not possess; not on valour only but on skill—on discipline in the soldier—on science and experience in the officer—and above all upon an efficient government to organize the establishments, to provide for the accommodation, and to direct the movements of the various masses of individuals, that compose an army. In these particulars unquestionably we shall have greatly the advantage of the Spaniards; but in other qualities not less essentially necessary for maintaining a defensive struggle—in firmness under defeat—in contentment under privations—in patience and long suffering, we may equal, but I doubt, if we can go beyond them.

Let any gentleman, who hears me, ask his own mind, and ask impartially, whether he can answer for the town or city near which he lives, that, if attacked in the same way, it would rival in its defence the heroic perseverance of Saragossa or Gerona? If any man, who confides (as I trust every man does) in the ability of this country to defend itself against any force of the enemy, yet hesitates how far he can answer this question in the affirmative, that man has no right to despair of the eventual triumph of Spain.

The contest is not at an end. The French, it cannot be denied, have gained very considerable advantages, and the Spaniards have on the other hand suffered most severely. But the fortress of Cadiz, containing the principal arsenal and the principal naval means of Spain, and garrisoned in part by British troops, detains before it a large portion of the French army; no impression of a serious nature has been made upon the defences of that important place; every day brings fresh accounts of the unabated enthusiasm displayed by the population of the various provinces; the French troops are harrassed in their movements and straitened in their quarters by the desultory activity of the Spanish peasants; their supplies cut off, and their communications intercepted;—place all these things before your eyes, and then say, if it be at such a time, and under such circumstances, that we are to withdraw ourselves from the support of Spain, and to leave the peninsula to the mercy of its ruthless oppressors?

I have said that there is a British garrison in Cadiz. I admit to the hon. gent. that some jealousy has been manifested by the Spanish government upon this subject. I must however, in this respect, do justice to the Spanish government. It is true, that I thought it my duty to press earnestly for the admittance of a British force into Cadiz, after the failure of the first campaign, and to make that admittance the sine quâ non condition of ever again sending British troops into Spain. It is equally true, that the Spanish government would not at that time consent to receive them. But it is no less true, that in such refusal, and in the explanation given of the cause of it, I did not find any just ground for supposing, that it had proceeded from distrust in the British government. A government, depending for its existence, and certainly for its authority, wholly upon public opinion, and aware of the jealousy, (for some jealousy of us did most certainly prevail amongst the people of Spain,) with which the nation might view the introduction, at that critical period, of foreign troops into one of their most important naval stations, might feel itself obliged to decline opening the gates of Cadiz to a British corps, until an adequate and obvious necessity for that measure had arisen.. But although the admittance of our troops was in the first instance refused on these grounds, I never had a doubt, but that they would be received whenever the necessity became obvious. The period of necessity has since arrived, and the event has most fully justified my expectation. Cadiz is now occupied by British conjointly with Spanish troops: the pledge of that alliance by which Spain may yet be rescued and saved. Whilst Cadiz is safe, Spain is not lost; and while all is not yet lost, all is ultimately retrievable.

The French army has achieved and may continue to achieve the conquest of province after province; but it has not been, and will not be able to maintain such conquests in a country, where the influence of the conqueror does not extend beyond the limits of his military posts; where his authority is confined within the fortresses which he garrisons, or the cantonments which he occupies; where all that is behind him, and before him, and around him, is sullen discontent and meditated vengeance—unconquerable resistance and inextinguishable hate.

And if the Spaniards hare their sufferings to endure, at what price do the French carry on this war? at a price which no former war with the other powers of Europe has ever cost them. The hon. gent. indeed, has lamented, that we should be parties, as he expressed himself, to the system of warfare pursued by the Spaniards, which he describes as transgressing the limits of legitimate hostility. I would intreat the House to contrast that sentiment with what fell from the same hon. gent. in a former debate, when another hon. member detailed to the House the abominable atrocities committed by the French on their approach to the Isle of Leon. On that occasion the hon. gent. affected to discredit the statement of crimes so shocking in the recital, and warmly deprecated the introduction of such horrible details into the discussions in this House, lest their circulation should have the effect of substituting wicked enormities of that description for the more humane spirit of generous warfare! Generous warfare! Good God! the generous warfare begun by Buonaparté against unoffending Spain! the generosity of him,—the outrageous violator of every sacred obligation, the bloody and unfeeling destroyer of the Tights of sovereigns, and the independence of nations! Far am I, as far as any man, from justifiing the commission, under any circumstances, of excesses, which deform the character, and brutalize the feelings, of man. But the crime and the shame are in the original perpetrator. There are insults and injuries, which to have endured at the hand of an oppressor, degrades a man in his own esteem, and forces him to recover his level by a signal and terrible revenge. Such are the inflictions, which the French armies have poured out upon the Spaniards. If ever acts of ferocious retaliation might admit of extenuation, it is in such a cause, and upon such provocation as they have received from an enemy unrestrained in his career of ambition and blood by any law human or divine.

Such is, in my opinion, the justification of the Spaniards. Thus they defend and avenge their invaded country—their pillaged and desolated homes—their murdered parents—their violated wives and daughters—and who shall say that such vengeance is not justified in the eyes of God and man? Who shall pretend that the assailant of unoffending and defenceless innocence is privileged from resistance or retaliation, that the invader has a right to make his inroad when he thinks fit, to commit what excesses he pleases;—but that he is only to be met in the listed field and by regular battalions, that the cottage or the altar are to be defended or avenged only by an enrolled soldiery; that the peaceful population of a country must be passive under every species of outrage and of wrong.

That our army has had any share in committing or countenancing such excesses is not pretended, and would not admit of excuse. Our business with the enemy is in the field. But that I should, therefore, whine over his sufferings and his losses—that I should deny or disguise the satisfaction, which I derive from the consideration that every French soldier, who falls a sacrifice to Spanish vengeance, is one oppressor the less for the rest of the nations of the world,—would be a hypocrisy, which I disdain. Long may the struggle be! And be its course as deathful to the French armies as heretofore! One French army has already been worn down and destroyed in Spain: and I know no precept of humanity that forbids me to exult in the prospect of a similar fate awaiting those, who are now the instruments of tyranny and violence.

War is unavoidably attended with calamities, as well as with glories. Its glories are sullied and darkened by its calamities: its calamities redeemed,—or in part redeemed, by its glories. But if we act custom ourselves to look only at one side of the picture in the case of an enemy and at the other in our own;—at all that is gloomy on one part, and all that is brilliant on the other—if we count for the enemy all that he gains and all that we lose—but for ourselves only our positive gains, without admitting into the account the losses of the enemy: against such a mode of calculating results no spirit can long stand unimpaired;—we go to the field already half subdued; we may intitle ourselves to commendation for the fineness of our sympathies; but we are utterly unfitted for continuing the contest.

I fear, that I may have detained the House to an unpardonable length upon the subject of Spain: though I feel it even now difficult to tear myself from it. I hope however that my excuse for having dwelt upon it so long may be found in the share, which I personally had in the counsels and measures of this government at the commencement of the Spanish struggle, and in the desire, which I natu- rally feel, that these counsels and measures should be distinctly and fairly understood, but, above all, in my earnest zeal for the success of our allies, and for the continuance of our effective support of a cause involving as much our interest as our glory.

I shall now proceed to follow the hon. gent. briefly into one or two of the other topics, to which he has alluded. As to the statements made by the hon. gent. with respect to Sicily; to the disaffection of its inhabitants; to the probable change in the policy of the Sicilian government and the consequent critical situation of the British army in that island, I shall only assert, as an individual, (having no official knowledge to support my assertion)—that I believe his opinions and his apprehensions to be unfounded. I do not believe that there is any correspondence open between Buonaparté and the queen of Naples. I have not seen the letter to which the hon. gent. refers, but from the description of it, I should doubt if it be genuine.

As to the effect of the Austrian marriage upon the politics of the court of Palermo, I cannot oblige the hon. gent. to forego his conjecture, though I do not agree with him in it. I will only say by the way, that I am glad to miss, in the hon. gent.'s speech of to night, the epithet of "felix" which he applied on a farmer night to this inauspicious alliance. The painter of old, when he drew the picture of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, despairing to express the workings of anguish and shame in the countenance of the father by whom she was sacrificed, hid Agamemnon's face in his robe, so would I have the hon. gent. deal on this occasion with the emperor of Austria, and at least not insult his paternal feelings by ascribing to them the character of "felicity."

But whatever may be the soundness of the hon. gent.'s speculations in respect to the ultimate policy and conduct of the court of Sicily, I am not prepared to recommend the anticipation of treachery: I cannot agree therefore with the hon. gent. to withhold the vote of credit, lest part of it should be expended in defeating the designs of the enemy upon Sicily, and keeping him out of possession of it too long. I am still less prepared (even if that were a cheap expedient) to seize on Sicily for ourselves.

From Sicily—declaring, that in Europe he sees nothing to require or justify so large a vote of credit, the hon. gent. passes to America, and specifically objects to the vote of credit on the ground, that a war with the United States is no longer. probable. I hope and trust it is not. The recent proceedings of congress have effected so much of what it was the anxious wish of the government, of which I was a member, to attain, that I trust all our differences with America may be speedily adjusted. In truth I had never much doubt upon my mind, that America, if left to her own policy and to the effect of those discussions, which would take place in her own legislatures, general and provincial, would at no distant period arrive at that point, at which by the late act of Congress she appears to have arrived. No man is more anxious than I am for an amicable accommodation with that power. But I trust, at the same time, that the change in the policy of the United States has not been effected by any improper concessions on our part: a circumstance, which I can fully disclaim, during the period that I remained in office. I should rather hope, that it has been the consequence of a determined adherence to that system, which has been so often declaimed against in this House, but which has proved as clearly beneficial to the commercial interests, as it has been consistent with the political dignity, of this nation.

The hon. gent. has introduced into this part of the discussion a reference to the instructions given to our minister to the United States, (Mr. Erskine) upon which it was not my wish to have touched, if the hon. gent. had not forced me to do so, because I cannot touch upon it without speaking unfavourably of the conduct of a i gentleman towards whom I entertain no feeling of hostility whatever. But, as the hon. gent. has thought proper again to advert to the subject, I am compelled, in my I own defence again to assert as I have repeatedly before asserted, that Mr. Erskine, in the arrangement, which he concluded with the American government, did violate both the letter and the spirit of the instructions, under which he acted. That he violated the letter of his instructions, is admitted by every body—by the hon. gent. himself. Mr. Erskine was expressly directed to do certain things, which he did not do. But it was not, as the hon. gent. insinuates, a mere formal error—a merely literal mistake. Mr. Erskine violated the spirit of his instructions, because, being authorised to concede certain points to the American government, in consideration only of concessions to be by them reciprocally, and simultaneously made—he did that absolutely, which he was instructed, to do only conditionally, and thereby lowered the tone, and just pretensions of his country. I am still ready, as I ever have been, to go into the full discussion of this question, whenever the hon. gent. may think proper; but unless he should advert to it again I shall now take a final leave of it, and never again revive it.

Sir, I have now only to add, with respect to the bill before the House, that it is not, because I think that a war is to be apprehended with America, or that a question may arise as to the abandonment or seizure of the island of Sicily, that I assent to the vote of credit; but because I wish to enable his Majesty's ministers to aid to the utmost extent, to maintain to the last extremity, the contest in Portugal and Spain, and also to take advantage of any opportunities which may arise, for the annoyance of the enemy, and for which, without a vote of credit, they might be unprovided. For the application of the means, which this vote entrusts to them, the ministers are responsible. And I can assure the hon. gent., that, if he and his friends had now the conduct of the government, for the same purposes, and under the like responsibility, I should not be disposed to withhold from them that degree of confidence (whatever it be) which this vote may be construed to imply.

was ready to do justice to the eloquence of the right hon. gent. but could not avoid confessing, that notwithstanding the impression, which such a display of oratory was calculated to make, the papers upon the table, and the dispatches from lord Wellington, afford a conclusive answer to the splendid hopes still held out in the speech of the right hon. gent. All the representation of persons lately arrived from Spain, were more in conformity with the contents of lord Wellington's dispatches, than with the right hon. gent.'s sanguine picture of the prospects of that country. Did, he would ask, any recent accounts encourage the expectations raised by the inspiriting declamation, which the House had just heard? Did not, on the contrary, the latest advices demonstrate that no hopes were to be entertained of co-operation on the part of Spain? With respect to the horrible acts of retaliation, stated to have been committed by the Spaniards, though he was persuaded they had been provoked by the atrocities of the French, yet they were too shocking to be countenanced. If the contest was to be continued in Spain he had no hesitation in stating, that he would rejoice in all the legitimate losses which the French might sustain there in the progress of the war. This feeling, however, was confined to losses suffered by the casualties of open and regular warfare, but, when he heard of drowning 700 French prisoners in cold blood, he could not give way to any other feeling than a sensation of horror and reprobation. As to the war in the peninsula he should only say, that, as Buonaparté had declared he would not negociate till he had subdued Spain, if Spain were to be used by his Majesty's ministers as an instrument of negociation, it might be desirable to carry on the struggle there. With respect to Sicily, he had good information that the people there were not attached to their government, and if a French force were to land in that island, he feared that between the vacillating policy of the government and the decided dissatisfaction of the people, our army would be placed in a very dangerous situation. It was true the command of the Sicilian army had been given to the British general, but, if its sentiments should change with circumstances, the same government which conferred the command of its army on our general, might as readily transfer it to a French general. Whilst he made these observations, however, he would not be understood, to mean that we should take measures upon an anticipation of treachery, but that argument appeared to him to come with a very bad grace, from those who had defended the unprincipled attack upon Copenhagen. The policy which he would recommend, was, that every endeavour should be made to conciliate the Sicilian people, to attach them to their government, and render them zealous in co-operating with our army for the effectual defence of their country. Having made these few remarks he should not refuse his assent to the vote of credit.

, in explanation, adverted to the general scope of the right hon. gent.'s (Mr. Canning's) speech, which was, in fact, no answer to him, but which seemed to have been prepared rather as a reply to a speech expected from a right hon. friend of his (Mr. Sheridan) who had announced his intention of bringing forward a motion upon the subject of Spain. That motion, however, was abandoned; but yet the right hon. gent. was resolved that his prepared speech should not be lost, and therefore the House had been entertained by his display of eloquence. With regard to the allusions made by the right hon. gent. to his opinion respecting peace, he could assure the right hon. gent. that he had not abjured, as he seemed to suppose, nor abandoned, but omitted stating any opinion he had ever expressed upon that point.—He still thought, that up to the invasion of Spain, the continuance of the war was solely owing to this country. For the termination of that war he still naturally wished and hoped, and he confessed that his hope of peace was considerably encouraged by the circumstance of the right hon. gent.'s exclusion from the cabinet. As to the misconduct or cruelty ascribed to Buonaparté, he believed that nothing of the kind could exceed that actually committed by lord Wellesley in India. It did not, therefore, become the friends of that noble marquis to be so forward and loud in their complaints against Buonaparté. In concluding, the hon. member took notice of the omission of ministers to advert to the singular attempt to steal Ferdinand the 7th from France, an attempt which these ministers could not deny nor venture to justify.

, perceiving that the hon. gent. having no personal knowledge of the transactions in India must have derived his information relative to the marquis of Wellesley's conductin India, from other sources, undertook to say, that such information was totally false.

asked whether the hon. baronet could deny, or would attempt to vindicate the conduct practised towards the Nabob of Arcot, who was given into the hands of his enemies, and never more heard of, or the invasion of his territory, with all its consequent cruelties.

asserted that, to his knowledge, lord Wellesley was 2400 miles from the spot when the Nabob of Arcot was so surrendered.

observed, that such might be the case, but that none of the cruelties which took place in Spain were upon the same principle attributable to Buonaparté. For they were not committed by him but by the army. Probably, indeed, Buonaparté was as little concerned as lord Wel- lesley in the personal perpetration of any cruelty or injustice, but was that an admissible defence for any government which knew, or ought to know, of the misconduct of its agents?

said a few words in vindication of lord Wellesley and Mr. Frere.—The bill was then read a third time and passed.