Why has it happened that we have seen the great conqueror who chased the French armies from the plains of Salamanca, pursued in his turn, by those whom he had conquered, over those plains which had been the scene of his former triumphs? Why, in conclusion, has a system of offence shrunk into a system of defence, and what is the reason that our military operations in the Peninsula have ended where they began? “I should be lost to every feeling of honour, and to every sense of duty to the country, if I did not state that the effect of this campaign altogether has been not to approximate you towards your object, but to remove you from it; and that this calamity has arisen from the insufficiency of those means which, by a small addition, might have been rendered effective. I maintain, that the object we had in view, (the only honest object ... the only great object ... which we could pursue, or hope to obtain by our operations in Spain,) was the expulsion of the French, or, at least, a considerable diminution of their power, with a view to the freedom of the people, and the independence of the Spanish monarchy. This was, certainly, the main object which we ought to have contemplated; the ultimate object of the British nation was, certainly, by the deliverance of the peninsula of Spain, to lay a solid foundation for the establishment of a permanent and honourable peace. “What I have contended is, that the efforts we have made have not been equal to the resources of the country; that they have not been such as the magnitude, the infinite importance of the cause demanded, and as the favourableness of the opportunity particularly called for; that we have not made even a faint approximation to the object of the war, the expulsion of the French from the Peninsula; but that the French have been enabled, by our reverses, to consolidate their power in Spain, and to systematize the moral and military subjugation of the country. We ought to have called forth all our resources, ... and we have made no extraordinary sacrifices; we ought to have strained every nerve at this momentous crisis, ... and we have remained little better than idle spectators of the fate of Spain. We have been deterred by petty objections; by calculations of expense, which are but as dust in the balance.” ♦EARL GREY.♦