“Let our relative situation with the enemy,” he pursued, “be well considered! Austria gone, the French force concentrated, and Spain their only object. We are told that Portugal may be defended by 30,000 men; but would not Buonaparte know our force to a drummer? and where we had 30,000 he would have three score. Who would struggle against such fearful odds? We held our ground in that country just at the will of the French Emperor, and at his option he could drive us out of it. And what could we expect from our present ministry, ... or rather from a single man, for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in fact, stood alone? Marquis Wellesley, of whom such account had been made, might be considered as completely insignificant. Who was he? The governor of India, ... the man who had scarcely escaped the censure of that house for his cruel tyranny! the man who had assailed the press, that sacred palladium of the people! the friend of despotism! the foe to liberty! Could this man say to Buonaparte, in the noble indignation of insulted virtue, ‘I have not done as you have!’ Alas! if such a man had strength, he would indeed be a fearful acquisition to such a government; but he was known, and therefore weak and harmless. Peace,” Mr. Whitbread concluded, “should be the cry of the nation. Peace, ... particularly because the thraldom of millions of our fellow-subjects was the tenure by which this incapable junto held their offices.” ♦MR. PERCEVAL.♦ Mr. Perceval replied to this speech in all its parts. “As to the situation,” he said, “which he had the honour to hold in his Majesty’s council, he must state, in the most explicit manner, that it was not an object of his own desire; on the contrary, if his wishes had been realized, another person would then have held the office of first lord of the treasury. When, by his Majesty’s directions, he had applied to Lords Grey and Grenville, for the purpose of forming an extended administration, the first proposition which he should have made to them, if they had given him an opportunity of stating it, would have been, that it should be left to themselves to determine who should be the first lord of the treasury.” This was a confession of weakness: twelve months before, Mr. Perceval was strong in the opinion of the people; but now the deplorable Walcheren expedition hung about him like a mill-stone, and, even in his own feelings, weighed him down. Having said what he could in defence of that expedition, he rose into a higher strain, when speaking of the Spaniards, and the unjust and unfeeling manner in which their conduct had been represented. “Was it liberal,” he said, “that the defenders of Zaragoza and Gerona should be said to have displayed no generosity, no enthusiasm, no patriotism? Well, indeed, might those persons censure what was done to aid the Spanish cause, who could assert that the cause did not deserve success! But neither in ancient nor in modern history could an example be found of