In vindicating himself from the imputation of regarding the cause of the Spaniards with indifference, Mr. Whitbread succeeded for the time; but, in other respects, this letter lowered him in the opinion of judicious minds. The folly of wasting time in a farce of negotiation; the certainty that such delay would injure the Spaniards, and the probability that it might induce them to regard us with a suspicion, which such conduct would render reasonable; above all, the absurdity of proposing to treat with the tyrant at the very time when he was perpetrating the most flagrant breach of treaties; when he had proved in the eyes of all Europe, that no treaties, no alliances, no ties of public faith, or individual honour, could restrain him, ... were so glaring to every man’s understanding, that Mr. Whitbread’s advice appeared like absolute infatuation. So far, indeed, from opening a negotiation at that time, and on these grounds, with the Corsican, it behoved the British Government then to have made the war a personal war against him, ... to have proclaimed loudly before God and the world, that this country never would treat with a man who had avowed his contempt for the laws of nations; and given open proof that he made treaties only for the purpose of more securely effecting the destruction of those who were credulous enough to rely upon his faith. Then was the time to have appealed to the French people themselves.... The Spanish war was a war of the Buonaparte family, not of France. Hitherto, Buonaparte and his immediate agents were the only persons implicated in the infamy of this unexampled treachery and usurpation. Would France appropriate that infamy to herself? Would she, for the sake of this foreign family, entail upon herself the privations, the sacrifices, and the hazards of interminable war? To France we offered peace, under any other ruler; we reclaimed none of her conquests; we asked nothing from her, ... we were ready to restore prosperity to her merchants, her citizens, and her peasantry; and to open her ports to the commerce of the world. But peace with Buonaparte was impossible. How could England, so long the object of his avowed and inveterate hatred, trust him, when his insatiable ambition did not spare the oldest, the most faithful, the most serviceable, the most submissive of his allies and friends! If proclamations to this tenor had been scattered over the whole coast of France, Buonaparte might have been endangered by the British press and the force of truth, when he stood in no fear of any other force. The importance of communicating true intelligence to the French was manifested by the care with which he kept them in ignorance, and the shameless falsehoods which continually appeared in his official papers. ♦MEASURES OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT.♦