tain has done on this
occasion has been, not to disturb the course of political experiment,
but to endeavour to avert the calamity of war. Good God! when it is
remembered how many evils are compressed into that little word 'war',
is it possible for any man to hesitate in urging every expedient that
could avert it, without sacrificing the honour of the party to which
his advice was tendered? Most earnestly do I wish that the Duke of
Wellington had succeeded: but great is the consolation that,
according to the best accounts from Spain, his counsels have not been
misunderstood there, however they have been misrepresented here. I
believe that I might with truth go further, and say, that there are
those in Spain who now repent the rigid course pursued, and who are
beginning to ask each other why they held out so pertinaciously
against suggestions at once so harmless and so reasonable. My wish
was, that Spain should be saved; that she should be saved before the
extremity of evil had come upon her, even by the making of those
concessions which, in the heat of national pride, she refused. Under
any circumstances, however, I have still another consolation--the
consolation of knowing, that never, from the commencement of these
negotiations, has Spain been allowed by the British Government to lie
under the delusion that her refusal of all modifications would induce
England to join her in the war.

The very earliest communication made to Spain forbade her to entertain
any such reliance. She was told at the beginning, as she was told in
the end, that neutrality was our determined policy. From the first
to the last, there was never the slightest variation in this
language--never a pause during which she could be for one moment in
doubt as to the settled purpose of England.

France, on the contrary, was never assured of the neutrality of
England, till my dispatch of the 31st of March (the last of the first
series of printed papers) was communicated to the French Ministry
at Paris. The speech of the King of France, on the opening of the
Chambers (I have no difficulty in saying), excited not only strong
feelings of disapprobation, by the principles which it avowed, but
serious apprehensions for the future, from the designs which it
appeared to disclose. I have no difficulty in saying that the speech
delivered from the British throne at the commencement of the present
session did, as originally drawn, contain an avowal of our intention