his side of the House. It would be remembered, that he had yesterday distinctly maintained that time for deliberation ought to be afforded upon the very grounds precisely which the learned gent. on the other side had urged in the course of this night's discussion. It did not therefore become the right hon. gentleman to impugn the conduct of the gentlemen on his side of the House. But as to the right hon. gentleman's allusion to our triumph, said Mr. Ponsonby, he really rates himself too high and us too low, if he supposes that there is any thing in his conduct or character which should make us feel elated by any triumph over him.

The Amendment was accordingly withdrawn. Upon the question being put for adjourning the debate till to-morrow s'ennight, some Noes were heard, but the Speaker declared that the Ayes had it. Mr. Lethbridge declared the contrary, and a division was called for. Before, however, the whole of the strangers had withdrawn from the gallery, Mr. Lethbridge was induced to withdraw his opposition.

HOUSE OF LORDS.

Thursday, March 29.

[CAMPAIGN IN SPAIN.] Lord Grenville rose, and said, that he held in his hand certain papers which had been laid before their lordships, respecting the conduct of the late campaign in Spain. Further papers had been moved for, some of which had been delivered to their lordships, and others were daily expected to come from the printer's. In looking over those which have already been delivered, he had discovered a fresh proof, either of the culpable neglect, or the palpable incapacity, of his Majesty's ministers. They had now published papers, (a thing, he believed, almost wholly unprecedented,) which went not only to compromise the characters, but to expose the lives, of persons officially or confidentially employed in Spain. This, he believed, was the first instance, in diplomatic correspondence, in which persons of the description he alluded to, had been so compromised. He thought the matter a most serious one; so much so, that he should now give notice of a motion, which he should submit to their lordships, to-mor row, respecting the propriety of deferring the farther publication and delivery of those papers, until the nature and tendency

VOL. XVI.

of their contents were better ascertained. In the absence of the noble lord (Wellesley) to whom these matters more particularly, but not exclusively, belonged, he should not now enter into any details, wishing, however, to be informed by the noble secretary opposite, (lord Liverpool) whether more, and what papers, were intended to be delivered.

The Earl of Liverpool had only to observe, that the papers alluded to by the noble baron had been divided into two sets, those that belonged to the diplomatic and those which belonged to the military department. He believed the diplomatic papers were already before the House, as they were in a greater degree of forwardness. The remaining documents, viz. the military papers, would soon be ready; but, in the absence of his noble friend, he should likewise decline going into any detail on the subject, while he expressed a wish, at the same time, that the production or non-production of the papers should not be decided by motion, but by an understanding that no further papers should be delivered until after the discussion, of which the noble baron had given notice for to-morrow. In the mean time he should take occasion to communicate with his noble friend.

Lord Grenville expressed his acquiescence in the noble earl's proposition, and it was ordered that the House be summoned for to-morrow.

HOUSE OF COMMONS.

Thursday, March 29.

[EXPEDITION TO THE SCHELDT.] On the order of the day for resuming the adjourned debate on the policy and conduct of the Expedition to the Scheldt, being read,

General Tarleton rose to reply to the speech delivered on a former night by ge neral Craufurd. That hon. general had described the horrors of campaigns that never existed, and entered minutely into the particulars of assaults, ambuscades, stormings, and other miseries of war, so much that it was enough to deprive members, who were not military men, of their sleep. He had then gone into a disquisition on the fallibility of man, illustrating thereby the fallibility of ministers; and, he really believed, that a more fallible set than the present, in war, never existed. The hon. general then examined the chances, and explained the probable hardX

ships of a contest, supposing 40,000 troops had been transported to the north of Germany, to act between the Ems and the Weser. But this was not required, for all that Austria asked of this country, was, detachments of cavalry and artillery. From Germany, the hon. general travelled into Spain; and here he agreed with him, that from the season of the year, nothing could have been done in that quarter. From Spain, he went to Italy, and contended, that to this point an Expedition would have been too late. He (general T.) did not think so. As ministers were in possession of information of what was passing between Austria and France, so early as December, 1808, they might have had an effective force joined to the 20,000 men already in Sicily, ready to act, where alone the enemy was vulnerable, in time sufficient effectually to co-operate with Austria. But they would have the Scheldt, and nothing but the Scheldt; and an Expedition, to waste our resources, must be sent somewhere. He was firmly convinced that, having now overcome all opposition on the continent, we must expect that the greatest warrior of this or other times would gratify his ruling passion, by an invasion of this country. It became us, then, to husband our means of defence, and not squander them in such a manner and upon such fruitless enterprises as the calamitous Expedition to Walcheren and the Scheldt. He denied that this Expedition was any diversion in favour of Austria; as, before it sailed, ministers knew of the battle of Wagram, and the conclusion of the armistice. Whenever they were informed that Napoleon had entered into negociations, experience ought to have taught them to anticipate the complete triumph of France, and the certain prostration of Austria. Such had been the consequences to the powers who treated with him after the battles of Marengo, Austerlitz, and Friedland. A noble lord (Castlereagh) had told them, that the general officers, with whom government chose to consult, were not, when they delivered their opinions, in possession of the facts on which government decided. These officers were rash in declaring their opinions, without a perfect knowledge of the grounds on which they stood; and as no data had been given them, he considered the consultation of government to be one of the greatest mockeries and insults ever offered to the military profession. The hon. general

opposite (Craufurd) had commented somewhat too severely on the evidence given by a worthy friend of his (sir W. Erskine,) in whose answers so much accuracy, information, skill, judgment, and intelligence was displayed, as to make him almost believe that the soul of his illustrious father again lived in him. There was no similarity between the late campaign and that of 1746, for then we were masters of the country, and able completely to invest the fortified places; while in the last campaign the relief every day to be expected from their friends, would induce the be sieged to hold out to the last extremity, He then proceeded to remark on the evidence of gen. Brownrigg, for whose professional knowledge he professed very high veneration. That general had given it, as his opinion, that the Expedition might reach Santvliet, and land in divisions, on the 1st, 2d, and 3d of August; and in 13 or 14 days, accomplish all the ob. jects in view and be on their return home. This was a mere visionary opinion, upon which government was so much buoyed up, as to undertake this impracticable Expedition, where every thing depended on the veni, vidi, vici.

He should now take a view of the campaign, and see how different to these pleasing speculations, which the planners of it indulged in by anticipation so confi dently, every thing turned out. After an unaccountable and culpable delay of nineteen days, the army obtained possession of Flushing. With regard to the capture of Walcheren, their operations were as slow and clumsy as any he had ever had occasion to contemplate in the whole course of his military observation. stead of proceeding in the way they did, as time was their object, they ought to have marched down at once a single column of 6,000 men. By these means they would have cut off the reinforcements thrown into Flushing from the country, prevented inundation, and, if the garrison came out to fight, terminated the affair, by defeating them, and entering the town with the flying enemy.

In

As for the operations against Antwerp, there appeared some contradiction between the evidence of general Brownrigg and the other officers who had been examined, as to the state of its fortifications. General Brownrigg appeared to have paid more attention to the suburbs and outworks, than to what in general more occupied a soldier's attention-the height of

the ramparts, and depth of the ditch. In his opinion, respecting a landing at Cadsand, he was also at variance with other officers. Having animadverted upon gen. Brownrigg's opinions, on this point, the hon. general also argued against the opinions of gen. Mac Leod, that a bombardment of Antwerp would have had any effect, and of gen. Sontag, that it might be easily compelled to surrender; and contended, upon the whole, that the fall of this place could not be expected so early as ministers were led to calculate upon. The noble lord (Castlereagh) had brought before the House many instances of failure, as if all the failures in the world could ever exculpate him from his share of responsibility upon this disastrous Expedition. He had gone to the Dardanelles, to Egypt, to Buenos Ayres, and when the winds failed, had tried the waves, and steered to the Baltic. After endeavouring to excuse his failure, he had tried to make them believe that the expence was no more than 800,000l.; but surely they must be blind and lame who could give credit to this. He would mention a few of the extraordinary items in which the expence incurred must have been very great. It must have been very great in transports; in the additional ships of war placed in commission; in the great and expensive changes in these ships, taking out their guns and taking in horses; in the hospital ships, fitted up in the peculiar way they were; in the commissariat de partment; in the expenditure of ordnance; in the medical department; in the new staff appointments; in secretservice money; in materials for building, bricks, lime, &c.; in the flotilla; in the carrying out of general officers; in the miscellaneous charges; and in the loss of 7,000 men, the expence of recruiting whom, estimated at 40l. per man, in itself would amount to little short of half a million. Upon all these items the expence could not reasonably be taken at less than 3,000,000l. When our force arrived at Bathz, then it was that the officers, so sanguine in England, discovered that the object of the Expedition was impracticable; that Lillo was not to be taken; that Antwerp was not to be approached, and that the shipping, the great end of their equipment, were moved entirely out of their reach. He would not go into arguments on the unhealthy season selected by ministers for this Expedition, and the cruel detention of the men at Walcheren, after

General Craufurd explained. It had never been said that government kept back information from the officers they consulted, but that the information that resolved them was received after that consultation, and induced them to determine upon a measure, to which they had previously inclined, but upon which they had not already made up their minds.

Mr. Rose said, he would not undertake nor was he competent to follow the hon. general through all his military details and observations, particularly as all his arguments went against the operations in Walcheren, in approbation of which a vote of the House bad passed. He contended, however, in opposition to the hon. general, that the Expedition had operated as a diversion in favour of Austria, and had drawn troops from the north of Germany, which would otherwise have been brought to bear upon the Danube. The Expedition was prepared and in readiness, before the news of the armistice was received; and would the hon. general and his friends have, merely on that account, laid it aside, without doing any thing? By being sent to the Scheldt, it had drawn general Gratien, with 7000 men, from the north of Germany; it had brought the garrisons from Stettin, Custrin, &c. and the whole Westphalian army was on its march to oppose it. But, even stripping the affair of its merits as a diversion, after the hopes of assisting our allies were over, the British object was worthy of the Expedition, and the taking of Flushing alone, could it have been retained, was worth the whole expence. This was not his opi nion alone; it was the opinion of men, to whose sense and skill the country would ever bow with deference, and not expressed privately to him, but publicly, to public men. Lord Nelson, when employed against Boulogne, had declared it to be his opinion, that the conquest of Flushing was the most important object this country could achieve. In his letter to lord St. Vincent, on the subject, he stated, that to get to Helvoet or Flushing, and destroy the enemy's shipping, would be the greatest service that could be rendered to the

of the attack by coup-de-main, and a narrative of the capture of Bergen-opZoom by general Lawendahl by a sudden attack.) It was, said he, by a coup de-main, that this fortress, then the strongest in the world, was taken. Ismael, with a large army within its walls, was taken by the same rapid and bold assault. But to revert to the Expeditions of which he had been previously speaking. Lord Anson, when first lord of the admiralty, sailed with an army on board, commanded by the great duke of Marlborough, on an expedition to the coasts of the Bay of Biscay. That expedition returned, re infecta; the Duke went to command in Germany; and general Bligh, at the head of the forces, landed to destroy Cherbourgh. He could there do nothing more than burn a few merchant ships, destroy a basin, and carry off a few brass guns. He marched a short distance up the country, and was attacked; his return to the shore was impeded, and on the embarkation at St. Cas, his rear-guard were taken prisoners or slain. Thus ended that expedition. He (Mr. Rose), now turned to another instance, in which nothing but accident could have prevented a total failure. It was on the expedition under general Barrington against the French West India islands. After a two months resistance, Guadaloupe was taken; but the general, in his dispatches, acknowledged himself deeply indebted to fortune that it was not lost to the country, as count Beauharnois, the father (said Mr. Rose) of, I believe, the vice-king of Italy (a laugh)-appeared off the island at the moment of its capture with 2,600 men, whose arrival, a few hours earlier, would have foiled the whole Expedition. He then turned to more modern times, and hinted at the Dardanelles, Egypt, and other miscarriages of the last administration. He did not state these things in order to throw any censure on any administration, but to disprove what had been asserted; and to shew that if nothing was ever to be undertaken but with an absolute certainty of success, nothing worthy a nation would ever be done. After enumerating some additional cases of unavoidable failure, Mr. Rose proceeded to reply to other points, which had been touched upon in the course of the debate. It had been asserted that the expence of this present Expedition must have been understated at 800,000l. The The calculation of an hon. general (Tarleton) ingeniously swelled it up to three millions,

but the idea was absurd. The estimates were all before the House, and it was idle to suppose public officers capable of putting so low and unartificial a trick on the common sense of the House; 246,0007. had been charged for ordnance transports. This was the charge not of the ordnance, but of the transport board, with whom those matters lay, and whose peculiar province and duty it was to collect all transport services, which were formerly separate, into one system and direction. He still felt the most perfect conviction that the retention of Flushing was a wise measure; and when the country bad given itself time to consider its value, and calmly estimate the dangers which menaced it from that quarter of the enemy's force, he was convinced that their judgment would be altogether in favour of the wisdom which planned the Expedition, and the policy by which its great objects were endeavoured to be retained.

Lord F. Osborne (in a maiden speech) said, he should not venture to deliver his opinion or trespass upon the attention of the House to night, when he was aware the time of the House might be so much better engaged, did he not feel it to be his duty on a question of such importance, not to give a silent vote. The question, as it struck him, was, whether ministers in the Expedition they had undertaken had made a wise and judicious use of the means entrusted to their care? After a result which had so little satisfied the expectations of the nation, an inquiry seemed generally to have been required, and that inquiry had taken place in that House, where alone it could satisfactorily proceed. After an attentive perusal of every part of the case, it did not seem to him that the evidence was calculated to excuse, but, on the contrary, that it went wholly to condemn the ministers, by whom the Expedition had been undertaken. The invasion of Holland in the year 1799, should have shewn them what chance they had of success in adventuring on similar enterprizes in future. Even after the Expedition was ready, ministers should have looked to the state of the country. they were about to attack, before they sacrificed the army. They should also have looked to what the shoulders of the people of this country would bear, before they added six-pence to the expences, which already pressed on them so severely. It was alledged, that we might have taken Antwerp by a coup-de-main. He agreed