The assertion that lord Collingwood was incapable of judging of the efforts of the Catalans, although he was in daily intercourse with their chiefs, co-operating with their armies and supplying them with arms and stores, _because he was a seaman_, is certainly ingenious. It has just so much of pertness in it as an Admiralty clerk of the Melville school might be supposed to acquire by a long habit of official insolence to naval officers, whose want of parliamentary interest exposed them to the mortification of having intercourse with him. And it has just so much of cunning wisdom as to place it upon a par with that which dictated the inquiry which we have heard was sent out to sir John Warren during the late American war, namely, “whether _light_—_very light_ frigates, could not sail up the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario?” And with that surprising providence, which did send out birch-brooms and tanks to hold _fresh water_ for the use of the ships on the said lake of Ontario. But quitting these matters, the reviewer insinuates what is absolutely untrue, namely, that I have only quoted lord Collingwood as authority for my statements about Catalonia. The readers of my work know that I have adduced in testimony the Spanish generals themselves, namely, Contreras, Lacy, and Rovira; the testimony of sir Edward Codrington, of sir Edward Pellew, of colonel Doyle, and of other Englishmen. That I have referred to St. Cyr, Suchet, Lafaille, and other French writers; that I have quoted Vacani and Cabane’s Histories, the first an Italian serving with the French army in Catalonia, the last a Spaniard and chief of the staff to the Catalan army: and now, to complete the reviewer’s discomfiture, I will add the duke of Wellington, who is a landsman and therefore according to this reviewer’s doctrine, entitled to judge:— _Letter to lord Liverpool, 19th Dec. 1809._ ‘In Catalonia the resistance is more general and regular; but still the people are of a description with which your armies could not co-operate with any prospect of success, or even of safety. You see what Burghersh says of the Somatenes; _and it is notorious that the Catalans have at all times been the most irregular, and the least to be depended upon of any of the Spaniards_.’ So much for light frigates, birch-brooms, fresh-water tanks, and Collingwood’s incapacity to judge of the Catalans, _because he was a seaman_; and as for Reding’s complaints of the Spaniards when dying, they must go to sir George’s big book with this marginal note, that St. Cyr is not the authority. But for the grand flourish, the threat to prove at another time, ‘_from Wellington’s despatches_,’ that the Spaniards gave excellent intelligence and made _no false reports_, let the reader take the following testimony in anticipation:— _Extracts from lord Wellington’s Correspondence, 1809._