s who
served in the armies in the Peninsula under the command of the Duke
are anxious to receive and wear a medal, struck by command of the
Sovereign, to commemorate the services performed in that seat of the
late war.

Many of them have, upon more than one occasion, expressed such
desire, in their letters addressed to the Duke, in their petitions
to Parliament, and, as the Duke has reason to believe, in petitions
presented to your Majesty.

Although the Duke has never omitted to avail himself of every occasion
which offered to express his deep sense of the meritorious services of
the officers and soldiers of the Army which served in the Peninsula,
he did not consider it his duty to suggest to the Sovereign, under
whose auspices, or the Minister under whose direction the services in
question were performed, any particular mode in which those services
of the Army should be recognised by the State.

Neither has he considered it his duty to submit such suggestion since
the period at which the services were performed, bearing in mind the
various important considerations which must have an influence upon
the decision on such a question, which it was and is the duty of your
Majesty's confidential servants alone to take into consideration, and
to decide.

Neither can the Duke of Wellington now venture to submit to your
Majesty his sense of a comparison of the services of the Army which
served in the Peninsula, with those of other armies in other parts of
the world, whose recent services your Majesty has been most graciously
pleased to recognise by ordering that medals should be struck, to
commemorate each of such services, one of which to be delivered to
each officer and soldier present, which your Majesty was graciously
pleased to permit him to wear.

Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington humbly solicits your Majesty,
in grateful submission to your Majesty upon the subject of the last
paragraph of your Majesty's most gracious letter, that, considering
the favour with which his services were received and rewarded by the
gracious Sovereign, under whose auspices they were performed; the
professional rank and the dignity in the State to which he was raised,
and the favour with which his services were then and have been ever
since received, that your Majesty would be graciously pleased to
consider upon this occasion only the well-founded claims upon your
Majesty's attention of the officers and soldiers who served in the
Arm