Mr. Leslie Foster then rose, and his speech, in the spirit which it breathed, and the knowledge which it displayed, formed a singular contrast to the harangues of the opposition. “The present proposition of his majesty,” said he, “is partly connected with his past conduct towards the Peninsula; it is but a continuance and extension of the same spirit of British resistance. It is now, however, open to the reprehension of two classes of politicians; those who think we never ought to have committed ourselves for the salvation of Portugal and Spain; and those who, having approved of that committal while the event appeared doubtful, think that the overwhelming power of France has at length brought this tragedy so nearly to a close, that nothing is left for us, but to escape if possible from being sharers in its catastrophe. Hope, they contend, has vanished; there is no longer room for prediction; history has already recorded, in letters of blood, the fate that awaits our perseverance. To me the aspect of the Peninsula appears an enigma, which it is no reflection on any ministers not perfectly to have understood; a revolution bursting out at a period the least expected, exhibiting events in its progress the most singularly contradictory, and pregnant with results which I still think no man living can foresee. If, on the one hand, we are referred to the apathy of Gallicia during the retreat of Sir John Moore, ... if we are desired to remember Ocaña and Tudela, and all the other defeats which the Spaniards have endured, and endured without despondency, ... must we not in candour remember that there was a battle of Baylen? Are we to shut our eyes to the extraordinary phenomenon, that in Catalonia, the very next province to France, the French, at this hour, appear to be as often the besieged as the besiegers? and can we forget Zaragoza and Gerona? But above all, shall we not do justice to that singular obstinacy, to give it no more glorious a character, which has sustained their spirit under two hundred defeats, and which, in every period of the history of Spain, has formed its distinguishing characteristic? The expulsion of the Moors was the fruit of seven centuries of fighting uninterrupted, and of 3600 battles, in many of which the Spaniards had been defeated. In the beaten but persevering Spaniards of these days we may trace the descendants of those warriors, as easily as we recognize the sons of the conquerors of Cressy and of Agincourt in the English who fought at Talavera. We may trace the same fortitude and patience, the same enthusiastic superstition, the same persevering insensibility of failure, and, I will add, the same absolute indifference as to liberty, constitution, or cortes, that distinguished the expellers of the Moors. Because we feel that freedom is the first of blessings, it is too much to say that other nations are to be raised in arms by no other motives than its influence. History should have taught us,