Then the noble Earl says, that the state of things just mentioned existed when he came into office; and that the late government was willing to recognize Don Miguel, provided he would grant a general amnesty. The noble Earl has omitted to state all. It would have been fair, had the noble Earl stated what had previously occurred. The first thing we did was to advise a reconciliation between the two branches of the House of Braganza, and we referred the question to Brazil. The Emperor of Brazil was perfectly ready to go to war if we would make war for him, but he would not go to war himself, because, in fact he had no resources of his own to do so. What then became our duty? Our duty was to place Portugal in the society of nations as soon as we could, and to endeavour to induce Don Miguel to do that which would have the effect of attaining that object. For that purpose, we called on Don Miguel to reconcile the country to him, by some act of grace towards those who had been connected with the former government of the country. But it is not true that we desired to impose any condition with respect to that act of grace. The principle on which we invariably acted was to make an act of amnesty be given without any condition whatever, because it was our wish not to interfere in any manner whatever with the government of Portugal; and it would have been interfering, had we made any condition which we might have been afterwards called upon to enforce. We would not make ourselves responsible for that amnesty. We urged him repeatedly to grant it, and if he had done so, he would most undoubtedly have been recognized; and we fully expected, when that paragraph was inserted in the King's Speech, that he would have given the amnesty, and have enabled us to recognize him. I have no hesitation in saying, that I was exceedingly anxious at that time to recognize this Prince, not because I disputed the claim or right of the other branch of the House of Braganza, nor because I ventured to decide upon that right, but I wanted to do that which was done by the government of this country in a similar case with respect to France,--I wanted to recognize the authority of the king _de facto_, in order to enable him to carry on the government of the country with advantage, not only to himself, and his country, but also to Europe. If I had remained in office much longer, I would have done it in order to remove from that country, and from Europe, the inconveniences which have resulted from the existing state of things in Portugal. It was not done before, because the amnesty was not given.