Mr. Windham then censured in strong terms the neglect of those opportunities which our command at sea had offered upon the eastern coast of Spain; “a coast,” he said, “which was placed as the high road for the entry of troops from France, which was every where accessible for our ships, and which was inhabited by the race of men who fought at Gerona and Zaragoza. Total forgetfulness could alone explain this most unaccountable neglect. But the great and pregnant source of error in ministers,” he observed, “besides the fault of not knowing better, was that which they had in common with many other ministers, and which he had signally witnessed in some of his own time, ... that of mistaking bustle for activity, and supposing that they were doing a great deal, when they were only making a great deal of noise, and spending a great deal of money. They looked at every measure, not with a view to the effect which it was to produce abroad, but to the appearance which it was to make at home.” He then spoke of the campaign in Spain more fairly than either party had ventured to represent it. “He could not,” he said, “help perceiving in the conduct of this war, and certainly in much of the language held about it, a certain mixture of that error which prevailed in many years of the last, of looking to other powers for what ought to have been our own work. We did not set our shoulders to the wheel, as people would who estimated truly what the exertions of this country could do, when fairly put forth. In this point there was a want of confidence in ourselves; ... in another there was a want, not merely of generosity, but of common justice toward our allies. There could be nothing more fallacious than to estimate the feelings of a country towards any cause by the feelings excited in that part of it which should be exposed to the immediate pressure of an army. If the scene of war lay in England, and we had an army of allies, or even of our own countrymen, acting for our defence, they would not be very popular in the places where they were quartered or encamped; and there would not be wanting complaints among the farmers whose provisions were consumed, whose hen-roosts were plundered, whose furniture was stolen, whose ricks were set on fire, and whose wives and daughters might not always escape insult, that the French themselves could not do them greater mischief. Now, if this were true, as infallibly it would be, of English troops upon English ground, might we not suppose that a good deal more of the same sort would happen when English troops were on Spanish ground, where every cause of dissatisfaction must be aggravated a thousand-fold, by difference of habits and manners, and the want of any common language, by which the parties might understand one another? It must be confessed, too, he was afraid, that we were not the nation who accommodated ourselves best to strangers, or knew best how to conciliate their good will: and when to all this was added,