Mr. Canning then proceeded to examine the more general arguments of Mr. Ponsonby. “It had been argued,” he said, “that before the assistance of this country had been given to Spain, we ought to have ascertained whether or not the Spaniards were instigated by the monks; whether they were encouraged by the higher ranks; whether they were wedded to their ancient institutions, or disposed to shake off the oppression of their former government; to abjure the errors of a delusive religion; and to forswear the Pope and the Grand Inquisitor. The policy of his Majesty’s government was different. They felt that the Spanish nation wanted other and more aids than lectures on municipal institutions; they were content that a British army should act in Spain, though the Grand Inquisitor might have been at the head of the Spanish armies; though the people might have been attached to their ancient monarchy, and with one hand upheld Ferdinand VII., whilst with the other they worshipped the Lady of the Pillar. God forbid we should be so intolerant as to make a conformity to our own opinions the price of our assistance to others, in their efforts for national independence; to carry the sword in one hand, and what we may choose to call the Rights of Man in the other! But the enthusiasm of the Spaniards was not pretended; what they had in their mouths, they felt in their hearts: they were enthusiastically determined to defend their country to the last extremity, or to perish under its ruins. The cause was not desperate; the spirit of the people was unsubdued; the boundaries of French power were confined within the limits of their military posts; the throne of Joseph was erected on sand, and would totter with the first blast; and Buonaparte, even should he succeed, instead of a yielding and unreproaching ally, would have an impatient, revolting, and turbulent nation to keep down. The cause was not therefore desperate, because our army of 30,000 or 40,000 men had been obliged to withdraw; and it was not just to the country, or to the army, which he hoped would again prove the stay and bulwark of Europe, to assert that its honour was in consequence gone for ever. All the energy of liberty, and all the sacredness of loyalty, still survived; and the Spanish revolution was, he trusted, destined by Providence to stand between posterity and French despotism, and to show to the world, that, amidst the paroxysms of freedom, a monarch might still be loved. If, therefore, ministers could show that these were the feelings by which they were influenced, and that they had acted up to these feelings, their justification would be complete; and he was convinced that the liberal and disinterested measures of his Majesty’s government towards Spain were more congenial to British feeling, and more honourable to the national character, than if they had set out in their career of assistance by picking up golden apples for ourselves. For himself, as