“When the junta refused to admit general Mackenzie’s detachment, you tell me it was merely from alarm respecting the disposition of the inhabitants of Seville and Cadiz. I am not aware of the feelings which prevail in Seville, but with respect to this town, whatever the navy or the English travellers, may assert to the contrary, I am perfectly convinced that there exists only a wish to receive them, and general regret and surprise at their continuance on board.” Nor was the mischief confined to Spain. Mr. Frere, apparently tired of the presence of a man whose energy and talent were a continued reflection upon his own imbecile diplomacy, ordered Mr. Stuart, either to join Cuesta’s army or to go by Trieste to Vienna; he chose the latter, because there was not even a subordinate political agent there, although this was the critical period, which preceded the Austrian declaration of war against France in 1809. He was without formal powers as an envoy, but his knowledge of the affairs of Spain, and his intimate personal acquaintance with many of the leading statesmen at Vienna, enabled him at once to send home the most exact information of the proceedings, the wants, the wishes, and intentions of the Austrian government, in respect to the impending war. That great diversion for Spain, which with infinite pains had been brought to maturity by count Stadion, was on the point of being abandoned because of Mr. Canning’s conduct. He had sent no minister to Vienna, and while he was lavishing millions upon the Spaniards, without conditions, refused in the most haughty and repulsive terms, the prayers of Austria for a subsidy or even a loan, without which, she could not pass her own frontier. And when Mr. Stuart suggested the resource of borrowing some of the twenty-five millions of dollars which were then accumulated at Cadiz, it was rejected because Mr. Frere said it would alarm the Spaniards. Thus, the aid of a great empire with four hundred thousand good troops, was in a manner rejected in favour of a few miserable self-elected juntas in the peninsula, while one-half the succours which they received and misused, would have sent the whole Austrian nation headlong upon France; for all their landwehr was in arms, and where the emperor had only calculated upon one hundred and fifty battalions three hundred had come forward, voluntarily, besides the Hungarian insurrection. In this way Mr. Canning proved his narrow capacity for business, and how little he knew either the strength of France, the value of Austria, the weakness of Spain, or the true interests of England at the moment; although he had not scrupled by his petulant answers to the proposals of Erfurth to confirm a war which he was so incapable of conducting. Instead of improving the great occasion thus offered, he angrily recalled Mr. Stuart, for having proceeded to Vienna without his permission. In his eyes the breach of form was of much higher importance than the success of the object.