As a farther avowal of these sentiments, Mr. Whitbread addressed a letter, on the situation of Spain, to Lord Holland; “the subject,” he said, “being peculiarly interesting to that distinguished nobleman, from the attachment he had formed to a people, the grandeur of whose character he had had the opportunity to estimate, and to which he had always done justice, even when that character was obscured by the faults of a bad government.” Having repeated his professions of ardent sympathy with the Spaniards, he recurred to his proposal for negotiating. “It has been falsely and basely stated,” said he, “that I advised the purchase of peace by the abandonment of the heroic Spaniards to their fate. God forbid! A notion so detestable never entered my imagination. Perish the man who could entertain it! Perish this country, rather than its safety should be owing to a compromise so horridly iniquitous! My feelings, at the time I spoke, ran in a direction totally opposite to any thing so disgusting and abominable. I am not, however,” he pursued, “afraid to say, that the present is a moment in which I think negotiation might be proposed to the Emperor of the French by Great Britain, with the certainty of this great advantage, that if the negotiation should be refused, we should be at least sure of being _right_ in the eyes of God and man; an advantage which, in my opinion, we have never yet possessed, from the commencement of the contest to the present hour; and the value of which is far beyond all calculation.”